Toby and Nat stared, first at Elmer, and then at each other. Plainly they could not understand what he meant by these strange words.

"Er—d'ye mean you forget just where you left it, Elmer?" asked Toby.

"I tell you it's gone, vanished completely, disappeared!" said the scout leader, with a show of anger in his usually steady voice.

"Great goodness, Nat, he means somebody's swiped it!" ejaculated Toby, his mouth opening in his astonishment.

Nat looked all around him, and then, not seeing a single trace of the fine motorcycle, he began "barking," as Toby called it, after his own peculiar way.

"Gee, whiz, now what d'ye think of that for a hummer! The old story over again of the traveler on the highway falling among thieves. My stars, Elmer, now who under the sun do you think would be so mean as to run off with your machine!"

"I don't know—yet; but I'm going to find out," replied Elmer, setting his teeth in a way he had when greatly aroused.

They saw him bend down again, and start to examine the ground near a tree, against which he evidently had leaned the motorcycle at the time he hurried to the rescue of his comrades in distress.

"Get next to him, would you, Toby?" remarked Nat, as he watched the mysterious actions of the one who had been robbed.

"Why, sure, I can understand what he's doing easy enough," the other declared.

"Then for goodness' sake put me wise, won't you please?" cried Nat.

"He's examining the tracks left by the chap who got away with his machine while he was working with your old ice wagon!" observed Toby, proudly.

"Well, now, I guess that's just what he is doing, sure as you're born. And don't I just hope he gets on to him! How is it, Elmer?" as the scout leader started to move away.

Toby and Nat followed as close to his heels as they could, considering that he immediately moved into the woods; and they were compelled to trundle their heavy machines along, no easy task under the best of conditions.

"He went this way, all right. I only hope he won't think to smash the thing when he finds we're after him," said Elmer over his shoulder.

He was keeping his head bent low, and following the trail with apparent readiness. The lessons he had learned when on that ranch in the Canadian Northwest were undoubtedly coming in "pat" just now; though really the trail was so very plain that even a novice might have followed it.

"Who d'ye thing could have done it, Toby?" asked Nat, as he pushed his motorcycle through the scrub with a desperate intention not to be left behind.

"Well, Elmer hasn't said a thing yet; but all the same I can give a pretty good guess," returned the other.

"Go on and do it, then, for I'm all in the dark and up a stump. Put me wise, Toby."

"Huh, reckon you forget mighty soon!" grunted the other, who was struggling manfully to rush his heavy wheel along and did not have any spare breath, to tell the truth.

"Oh, slush, now I'm on!" cried Toby. "You mean them Fairfield chaps that came out here to break up Lil Artha's great winning streak?"

"Sure!" Toby grunted again, beginning to conserve his breath when possible.

"They flagged us, and saw a chance to put us on the blink!" exclaimed Nat who, like Lil Artha, was more or less addicted to present-day slang, though otherwise he was known to be a clean fellow, with no serious faults.

"That's it!" snapped Toby, gritting his teeth as though even the thought made him furious.

"It's a punk deal, that's what," Nat went on. "They just believe that if Elmer's out of the running the game is in their hands. But he can have my machine, if he wants to go ahead. If anybody can make it behave, Elmer can."

"Or mine either," declared Toby.

Now Elmer, of course, heard all this talk, even though he seemed to be devoting himself wholly to the business in hand. And at this juncture he beckoned to his comrades.

"He wants us to pick up, and get even with him," declared Toby.

"Sure thing. Guess Elmer is going to take us at our word, and borrow a mount," observed Nat, cheerfully.

Accordingly they put on an extra spurt, and managed to gain enough ground so as to come alongside.

"I heard what you were saying, boys," Elmer immediately remarked, as soon as he saw that they were up with him; "but you're away off in your calculations. It isn't one of those Fairfield fellows at all who's jumped my claim with that borrowed motorcycle!"

"W—w—what's that?" gasped Toby.

"I said that it wasn't a Fairfield fellow who ran off with my machine," repeated Elmer, more positively than before.

"Well, you make me feel like thirty cents," observed Nat; "now, what under the sun would one of our boys want with a motorcycle when, if he rides on it, for even a minute, he's disqualified in the race?"

"It wasn't one of our scouts either," said Elmer.

"Then for goodness' sake tell us who it could be, Elmer!" cried Toby.

"I haven't even glimpsed him once yet, though he's only a little way ahead of us right now," the scout leader said; "but judging from the fact that his shoes are all broken out, I'm almost dead sure he's some Wandering Willie."

"He means a hobo, a common tramp!" exclaimed Toby in astonishment.

"Tell me about that, will you!" cried Nat. "Just to think of a four flusher like that making off with Elmer's motorcycle, when he needs it the worst kind to block that nasty little game of the envious Fairfield dubs! Oh, it's a cruel world!"

"But we're goin' to get it back, don't you forget that!" Toby insinuated.

"You never spoke truer words, Toby," laughed Elmer; though there was little of mirth in the sound; for the boy was tremendously aroused by this new calamity that threatened to upset all his calculations.

"Hurry, hurry! I can go a bit faster, now that I know what's on!" declared Toby, although his manner of gasping belied his words.

"Oh, there he is right now! Look, look, Elmer!" cried Nat.

All of them caught a glimpse of some moving object that was pushing at top speed through the scrub ahead. Undoubtedly it was the party who had run away with Elmer's motorcycle. They had gained on him constantly, and were now surely overtaking the rascal.

"We're just bound to get him, fellows!" said Toby.

"That's so, Toby; it looks good to me," remarked Nat, as he strained every muscle to keep alongside the others.

Elmer, being free to make a sprint, since he had no machine to trundle along, suddenly left his chums in the lurch. They saw him leaping through the low underbrush as might a deer.

"Hurrah! He'll get him!" shouted Toby.

"Twenty-three for yours, Mr. Wandering Willie!" added Nat.

"Don't I wish Elmer would just hold him till we come up," added the other, with a threat in his manner that hardly became a scout; but then Toby had been a boy long before this scout movement was dreamed of, and the natural instinct is very hard to repress.

"Hey, do we drop our wheels, and make a spurt, so as to be in at the finish?" demanded Nat.

"You can, if you want to," replied his mate; "but something tells me a machine may come in handy yet, even if it is an old huckleberry makeshift like mine."

"Gee, yes! I didn't think of that," Nat muttered, still clinging to his motorcycle. "The hobo might strike the road again, you mean?"

"Yep, that's what, Nat."

"And go skeetering off on Elmer's wheel?"

"Just what I meant," replied Toby. "He's been making a sorter curve all along, like he wanted to strike the road; I noticed that, Nat."

"So did I. Don't like the job of pushing that machine through the scrub any too much, I reckon," Nat remarked, panting from his own exertions.

"And say, do you blame him?" Toby asked.

"Listen!" and Nat cocked his head as though he could hear better in that position.

"What was it? Did you catch a shout for help? Perhaps Elmer's caught up with him, Nat!"

"I thought I heard somebody call out, or laugh," Nat began, when he was interrupted by a shout.

"Toby—Nat, hurry along with your wheels!"

"That's Elmer!" gasped Toby, as he tried to add a little more speed to his forward progress.

"Perhaps he's got him under his knee, and is holding him for us," suggested Nat.

"That's silly," returned the other, immediately. "It won't hold water, Nat. Whatever would he tell us to bring our machines, if he had the hobo? Tell you what, I reckon he's made off along the road with Elmer's motorcycle, that's a fact!"

"And he wants one of ours to chase him with! Oh, I wish I could fly right now, so's to hurry!" Nat cried.

"A fine mess you'd make of it, if even a fellow like me, that's up to snuff, don't seem able to get it down pat," sneered Toby.

"I see Elmer, and he's waving his hand to us like fun!" exclaimed Nat, without appearing to take any notice of the slur cast upon his abilities in the line of aviation.

Elmer came bounding toward them just then, as though meaning to lend all the assistance in his power toward getting the machine he fancied, if there was any choice in the matter, to the road near by.

He clutched hold of Toby's motorcycle, possibly believing that its recent regeneration might prove fairly lasting.

So they came upon the edge of the road again, after making all that half circle through the woods and scrub.

Toby's first act was to stretch his neck, and stare along the road. A moving object caught his eye, which he had no difficulty in making out to be a motorcycle, upon which a ragged specimen of a tramp was seated, and which he was working at a great rate with his feet on the pedals!

"He don't know beans about how to run the engine!" Toby exclaimed, with sudden delight, as he saw this plain fact.

The road just there was as straight as a rule, for at least a couple of miles; and the fellow had not gotten more than a quarter of a mile away.

He happened to turn his head to look back just then, while the machine "yawed" at an alarming rate, threatening to dispose of the tramp in the bushes. To the indignation of Toby and Nat, the latter having also managed to reach the spot by this time, the Wandering Willie jauntily waved a hand toward them, as though bidding them a fond adieu.

There was a sudden sputter, and a rattling volley. Then away sped Elmer, mounted on Toby's old machine, which seemed about to redeem itself in this momentous crisis.

"Wow! Watch his smoke, will you!" shrieked Nat.

"Now will you be good, Mr. Hobo!" cried Toby; hoping in his heart that the pursuing machine might not take a notion to perform any of its frequent tricks and betray its new master.

The man on the stolen wheel must have heard that rattle as of artillery behind him, for Elmer never bothered using the hush pedal, such was his desire to speed up and overtake the thief who was running off with his mount.

They saw him look back over his shoulder as if in sudden alarm. Then his legs began to work faster than they could possibly have done in ten years, as he endeavored to pedal his stolen property at a rate of speed that would take him beyond reach of the relentless pursuer. But like a meteor shooting across the sky, Elmer bore down on the hobo motorcycle thief.