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-class scout, I am," Skinny assured 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-class scout badge, and we're going to get it if we have to kill a couple of councilmen."

"Did you ever kill a councilman?"

"No, but I will, if Alf McCord, second-class 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-class 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-class scout now, won't they?"

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