Tom Slade on Mystery Trail Part 9

"No, but I will, if Alf McCord, second-cla.s.s scout, doesn't get his badge. I feel just in the humor. Go on now, chase yourself up the line a ways and then come back. I'll be waiting at the garden gate."

"What gate?"

"I mean here on this log."

"Do you know Tom Slade?"

"You bet."

"He likes me, he does; because I used to steal things out of grocery stores just like he did--once."

"All right," Hervey laughed. "Go ahead now, it's getting late--Asbestos."

"That isn't my name."

"Well, you remind me of a friend of mine named Asbestos, and I remind myself of an eagle. Now don't ask any more questions, but beat it."

And so the scout who had never bothered his head about the more serious side of scouting sat on the log watching the little fellow as he followed those precious tracks a little further so that there might be no shadow of doubt about his fulfilling the requirement. Then Hervey shouted to him to come back, and shook hands with him and was the first to congratulate him on attaining to the dignity of second-cla.s.s scout.

Not a word did Hervey say about the amusing fact of little Skinny having followed the tracks backward; backward or forward, it made no difference; he had followed them, that was the main thing.

"They're _my_ tracks; all mine," Skinny said.

"You bet," said Hervey; "you can roll them up and put them in your pocket if you want to."

Skinny gazed at his companion as if he didn't just see how he could do that.

And so they started down for camp together, verging away from the tracks of glory, so as to make a short cut.

"I bet you're smart, ain't you?" Skinny asked. "I bet you're the best scout in this camp. I bet you know everything in the handbook, don't you?"

"I wouldn't know the handbook if I met it in the street," Hervey said.

Skinny seemed a bit puzzled. "I had a bicycle that a big fellow gave me," he said, "but it broke. Did you ever have a bicycle?"

"Well, I had one but I lost it before I got it," Hervey said. "So I don't miss it much," he added.

"You sound as if you were kind of crazy," Skinny said.

"I'm crazy about you," Hervey laughed; and he gave Skinny a shove.

"Anyway, I like you a lot. And they'll surely let me be a second-cla.s.s scout now, won't they?"

"I'd like to see them stop you."

CHAPTER XVI

IN DUTCH

That Hervey Willetts was a kind of odd number at camp was evidenced by his unfamiliarity with the things that were very familiar to most boys there. He was too restless to hang around the pavilion or sprawl under the trees or idle about with the others in and near Council Shack. He never read the bulletin board posted outside, and the inside was a place of so little interest to him that he had not even seen the beautiful canoe that was exhibited there, and on which so many longing eyes had feasted.

Now as he and Skinny entered that sanctum of the powers that were, he saw it for the first time. It was a beautiful canoe with a gold stripe around it and gunwales of solid mahogany. It lay on two sawhorses.

Within it, arranged in tempting style, lay two shiny paddles, a caned back rest, and a handsome leather cushion. Upon it was a little typewritten sign which read:

This canoe to be given to the first scout this season to win the Eagle award.

"That's rubbing it in," said Hervey to himself. "That's two things, a bicycle and a canoe I've lost before I got them."

He sat down at the table in the public part of the office while Skinny, all excitement, stood by and watched him eagerly. He pulled a sheet of the camp stationery toward him and wrote upon it in his free, sprawling, reckless hand.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

This will prove that Alfred McCord of Bridgeboro troop tracked some kind of an animal for more than a half a mile, because I saw him doing it and I saw the tracks and I came back with him and I know all about it and it was one good stunt I'll tell the world. So if that's all he's got to do to be a second-cla.s.s scout, he's got the badge already, and if anybody wants to know anything about it they can ask me.

HERVEY WILLETTS, Troop Cabin 13.

After scrawling this conclusive affidavit and placing it under a weight on the desk of Mr. Wade, resident trustee, Hervey sauntered over to the cabins occupied by the two patrols of his troop, the Leopards and the Panthers. They were just getting ready to go to supper.

"Anything doing, Hervey?" his scoutmaster, Mr. Warren, asked him.

"Nothing doing," Hervey answered laconically.

"Maybe he doesn't know what you're talking about," one of his patrol, the Panthers, suggested. This was intended as a sarcastic reference to Hervey's way of losing interest in his undertakings before they were completed.

"Have you got a trail--any tracks?" another asked.

Hervey began rummaging through his pockets and said, "I haven't got one with me."

"You didn't happen to see that canoe in Council Shack, did you?" Mr.

Warren asked him.

"Yes, it's very nice," Hervey said.

Mr. Warren paused a moment, irresolute.

"Hervey," he finally said, "the boys think it's too bad that you should fall down just at the last minute. After all you've accomplished, it seems like--what shall I say--like Columbus turning back just before land was sighted."

"He didn't turn back," Hervey said; "now there's one thing I didn't forget--my little old history book. When Columbus started to cross the Delaware----"

"Listen, Hervey," Mr. Warren interrupted him; "suppose you and I walk together, I want to talk with you."

So they strolled together in the direction of the mess boards.

"Now, Hervey, my boy," said Mr. Warren, "I don't want you to be angry at what I say, but the boys are disgruntled and I think you can't blame them. They set their hearts on having the Eagle award in the troop and they elected you to bring it to them. I was the first to suggest you. I think we were all agreed that you had the, what shall I say, the pep and initiative to go out and get it. You won twenty badges with flying colors, I don't know how you did it, and now you're falling down all on account of _one single requirement_.