The Wolf Patrol Part 42

'Hallo!' he murmured feebly. 'What's wrong? Have I got home?'

'Not just yet, old chap,' said d.i.c.k cheerily, 'but you'll soon be there. A friend has gone ahead for help.'

'It's only a little way now,' muttered the injured boy.

'How far?' cried d.i.c.k, but he received no answer. The other was fast falling into a stupor again.

d.i.c.k felt very uneasy. He did not know a great deal about wounds, but he knew that his brother scout had lost a large amount of blood, and that it was very urgent that he should be swiftly conveyed to a place where he could receive proper attention.

'I'll carry him in,' thought d.i.c.k. He looked at the bandage, and carefully tightened it a little again. Then he turned the boy, now insensible once more, on his face, and knelt down. Raising the body, d.i.c.k worked his way beneath it until his right shoulder was under the other's stomach. Slipping his right arm between the legs of his burden, d.i.c.k gripped the wrist of the sound arm, and slowly raised himself. This was the hardest part of the task, but the Wolf's strong, limber knees made sure work of it, and in a moment he stood nearly upright with the injured scout across his shoulders. Then d.i.c.k stepped out at a gentle, even pace, following the path Chippy had taken. He was in sight of the farmhouse when the Raven and his followers came streaming through the gate, and the farmer, running at full speed, was the first up to the marching scout.

'Give him to me, give my boy to me,' cried the pale-faced man.

'Better not,' said d.i.c.k quietly; 'we mustn't move him about too much, or the bandage may work loose. Is that your house?'

'Yes,' cried the other.

'I'll run him right in,' said d.i.c.k. 'Shift the wicket.'

One of the men hurried forward and swung the wicket-gate from its hinges, and, piloted by the farmer, d.i.c.k crossed the farmyard, marched through a door into a pa.s.sage, and thence into an ample kitchen, where, with the aid of the farmer, he set down his burden on a broad settle.

As he did so, the boy's mother came hurrying in from the dairy. She gave a little gasping cry when she saw the ghastly face of her son, but at once took command in a quiet, sensible fashion.

'Have you sent for the doctor?' she said to her husband.

'Yes; Joe's gone,' he answered. Joe was one of the men. He had raced off at once to the village.

The wounded boy was again lifted very carefully, and carried away to a bedroom. In a few moments the farmer came back, eager to hear how the scouts had found his son. He was astonished to find that their only clue, as he understood clues, was the seeing of the broken bicycle. It took him some time to grasp the methods by which the scouts had pieced together the evidence and followed up the wounded rider, and his thankfulness and grat.i.tude were beyond expression.

'To think he was barely a field away from home, and couldn't move another step!' cried Mr. Hardy--for that was the farmer's name. 'And then you tracked him down in that clever fashion. Well, if you two are not a credit to Baden-Powell's Scouts, my name isn't George Hardy.'

'Your son is a scout too, I think,' said d.i.c.k. 'I saw he was wearing our uniform and badge.'

'Of course he is,' cried Mr. Hardy. 'He's fairly crazy about it--thinks of nothing else, he's so keen on it. There's a patrol over in the village yonder, and he's joined it. He's what they call a second-cla.s.s scout at present, and he wants to become first-cla.s.s. So off he set on his bike for a fifteen-mile ride, as it seems that's one of the things he's got to do.'

'Test 7,' grunted Chippy.

'Ah, very likely,' agreed Mr. Hardy. 'I don't know the numbers.

Hallo! that's good. Here's the doctor.'

He sprang up, and took the medical man to the bedroom, while Joe came into the kitchen, wiping his face.

'Met the doctor on the road, so that's lucky,' said Joe, and then began to ask the scouts about the accident; for Fred was a great favourite, and all were anxious to know how ill had befallen him.

d.i.c.k and Chippy would now have resumed their interrupted march had they not been desirous of hearing the doctor's report on their brother scout's condition.

Twenty minutes pa.s.sed before Mr. Hardy returned to the kitchen, and his face shone with joy.

'He'll pull through,' cried the farmer. 'Doctor says there's a chance for him yet. But if he'd lain there half an hour longer there'd have been no mortal hope of saving him, and I can never tell you how thankful his mother and me do feel towards you.'

'Oh, very likely someone would have found him in time if we hadn't tracked him,' said d.i.c.k.

'Never in this world,' said Mr. Hardy solemnly--'never in this world!

That path is but little used. The village lies t'other way. He might have lain there for hours and hours.'

'Well, we're very glad we were so lucky as to be of service,' said d.i.c.k; 'and now we must push on our way. We're making a scouting journey, and have to finish it by to-morrow night.'

'Nay, nay,' cried the farmer; 'you'll have dinner, at least, before you go. 'Twill be ready soon, and I'd take it very onkindly if you left us without bite or sup.'

At this moment Mrs. Hardy came in, and thanked the clever scouts warmly for the great service they had rendered. She seconded her husband's invitation, and as one o'clock struck in thin chimes from a tall eight-day clock, they sat down to a plentiful dinner. Over the meal the talk turned on the journey the scouts were making, and the farmer and his wife were deeply interested in their adventures.

'But look here, now,' said Mr. Hardy; 'this fine piece of work you've done for us--and we shall never forget it--has fetched you out of your way, and cost you a lot of time.'

'We'll make it up before dark,' said d.i.c.k.

'Ay, by overtiring yourselves,' said the farmer. 'Now, suppose I run you along a piece of your way in my trap. I've got a Welsh cob that'll slip us along as if he'd but a feather behind him. I'll set you ten or twelve miles on your road, and be thankful if you'd give me the chance.'

The scouts looked at each other. It was a temptation. It was an undeniable temptation. It would make the march into Bardon a very simple affair on the morrow.

Then Chippy spoke up, his keen eye reading d.i.c.k's puckered brow and considering face.

'Yer want to march all the way,' he said quietly.

'I didn't at first, Chippy,' replied d.i.c.k. 'The offer of the lift seemed splendid, and it is immensely good of you,' he went on, turning to Mr. Hardy. 'But I'll tell you just where I stand. I'm under a sort of agreement with my father that it's to be a genuine march all the way. If I had a lift from you, it would hardly be fair as I see it.

But that doesn't apply at all to my chum; he's quite at liberty to come with you.'

'I'll take one or both, and be proud to do it,' cried the farmer.

'Much obliged,' said Chippy in his hoa.r.s.est notes; 'but me and my comrade march together.' Nor could either of the scouts be shaken from his determination.

CHAPTER XLVI

d.i.c.k'S ACCIDENT

d.i.c.k and Chippy took the road again an hour after dinner amid a volley of cheers raised by the labourers on the farm. The men had gathered in the stockyard to see them start, and gave them three times three and a tiger; for the Hardys were very popular with their dependents, and, beyond that, the men felt respect for coolness, pluck, and skill for the sake of the qualities themselves.

The two scouts felt a glow of delight in this achievement such as no words can describe. They marched on their way with a swinging stride, as if they stood on air. First they had the keen professional delight of having built up by their own observation a theory which proved true in every particular save one--that the blood found on the scene of the accident had flowed from a cut in the arm, and not in the head. But that was a mere detail; in every item that mattered their deductions had proved sound.

'I should just like to have asked him when the brake went,' said d.i.c.k.

'Pretty well at the top of the hill, I know.'

'Must ha' done,' said Chippy, 'by the spin he'd got on the machine.'

They had not seen or spoken to their comrade before leaving the farm.

Fred Hardy was in too weak a state even to know what his brother scouts had done for him, let alone seeing them or thanking them; his life still hung on a thread, but that thread would for a surety have been snapped had not the patrol-leaders discovered him and checked the bleeding.