"I--I just did it. I'm going to do more so as to be sure. Will you stay with me so you can tell them? Because maybe they won't believe me."

"They'll believe you, Skinny, or I'll break their heads, one after another. What did you do, Alf, old boy?"

"Maybe they'll say I'm lying."

"Not while I'm around," Hervey said. "What's on your mind, Skinny?"

"I ain't through yet," Skinny said. "I know your name and I like you. I like you because you can dive fancy."

"Yes, and what are you doing here, Alf?" Hervey asked, sitting down beside the little fellow.

"I'm a second-cla.s.s scout," Skinny said; "I found the tracks and I tracked them. See them? There they are. Those are tracks."

"Yes, I see them."

"I tracked them all the way up from camp and I've got to go further up yet, so as to be sure. You got to be _sure_--or you don't get the badge.

So now I won't be a tenderfoot any more. Are you a second-cla.s.s scout?"

"First-cla.s.s, Skinny."

"I bet you don't care about tracks--do you?"

Hervey put his arm over the little fellow's shoulder and as he did so he felt the little body trembling with nervous excitement.

"Not so much, Skinny. No, I don't care about tracks. I--eh--I like diving better. How far up are you going to follow the tracks?"

"I'm going to follow them away, way, way up so as I'll be _sure_. They might say it wasn't a half a mile, hey?"

The hand which rested on the little thin shoulder, patted it rea.s.suringly.

"Well, I'll be there to tell them different, won't I, Skinny, old boy?"

"Will you go with me all the way up to where the mountain begins--will you?"

"Surest thing you know."

"And will you prove it for me?"

"That's me."

"Then I won't be a tenderfoot any more. I'll be a second-cla.s.s scout."

"Is that what you have to do to be a second-cla.s.s scout, Skinny? I forget about the second-cla.s.s tests. You have to track an animal, or something like that? I've got a rotten memory."

"And I'll--I'll have a trail named after me, too; it'll be called McCord trail. These are _my_ tracks, see? Because I found them. Only maybe they'll say I'm lying. Anyway, how did _you_ happen to come here?" he asked as if in sudden fear.

"I was just taking a walk through the woods, Skinny."

Skinny continued to stare at him, still with a kind of lingering misgiving, but feeling that gentle patting on his shoulder, he seemed rea.s.sured.

"I was just flopping around in the woods, Skinny; just flopping around, that's all...."

CHAPTER XV

SKINNY'S TRIUMPH

And that was the triumph of Hervey Willetts, who would let nothing stand in his way. "_Nothing!_"

A hundred yards or so more and the stalking badge would have been won, and with it the Eagle award. The bicycle that he had longed for would have been his. The troop which in its confidence had commissioned him to win this high honor would have gone wild with joy. Hervey Willetts would have been the only Eagle Scout at Temple Camp save Tom Slade, and, of course, Tom didn't count.

Yet, strangely enough, the only eagle that Hervey Willetts thought of now was the eagle which he had driven off--the bird of prey. To have killed little Skinny's hope and dispelled his almost insane joy would have made Hervey Willetts feel just like that eagle which had aroused his wrath and reckless courage. "Not for mine," he muttered to himself.

"Slady was right when he said he wasn't so stuck on eagles. He's a queer kind of a duck, Slady is; a kind of a mind reader. You never know just what he means or what he's thinking about. I can't make that fellow out at all.... I wonder what he meant when he said that a trail sometimes doesn't come out where you think it's going to come out...."

Hervey had greatly admired Tom Slade, but he stood in awe of him now.

"Well, anyway," said he to himself, "he said I'd win the award and I didn't; so I put one over on him." To put one over on Tom Slade was of itself something of a triumph. "He's not _always_ right, anyway," Hervey reflected.

He was aroused from his reflections by little Skinny. "I followed them from camp," he said. "They're _real_ tracks, ain't they? And they're _mine_, ain't they? Because I found them? Ain't they?"

"Bet your life. I tell you what you do, Alf, old boy. You just follow them up a little way further toward the mountain and I'll wait for you here. Then we can say you did it all by yourself, see? The handbook says a quarter of a mile or a half a mile, I don't know what, but you might as well give them good measure. I can't remember what's in the handbook half of the time."

"You know about good turns, don't you?"

"'Fraid not, except when somebody reminds me."

"I'm going to keep you for my friend even if I _am_ a second-cla.s.s scout, I am," Skinny a.s.sured him.

"That's right, don't forget your old friends when you get up in the world."

"Maybe you'll get that canoe some day, hey?"

"What canoe is that, Alf?"

"The one for the highest honor; it's on exhibition in Council Shack. All the fellows go in to look at it. A big fellow let me go in with him, 'cause I'm scared to go in there alone."

"I haven't been inside Council Shack in three weeks," Hervey said. "I don't know what it looks like inside that shanty. I'm not strong on exhibitions. I'll take a squint at it when we go down."

"The highest honor, that's the Eagle award, isn't it?" Skinny asked.

"I suppose so," Hervey said; "a fellow can't get any higher than the top unless he has an airplane."

"Can he get higher than the top if he has a balloon?" Skinny wanted to know.

"Never you mind about balloons. What we're after now is the second-cla.s.s scout badge, and we're going to get it if we have to kill a couple of councilmen."

"Did you ever kill a councilman?"