As Tom rose he saw that the fresh paint on the pantry window ledge hadbeen smeared. Then he looked at the ground. Below the window was a longsmooth mark on the soil. "The fellow had jumped from that window," saidhe, "slid when he touched the groun'." He stopped, but not to pick up arock. Then he went down on his hands and knees, with never a thought ofthose treasured khaki trousers, and while the telephone bell rang andrang again in the house he read the writing which is written all overthe vast, open page of nature for those who have eyes and know how tosee.
He was very much engrossed now; he forgot everything. He was a scout ofthe scouts, and he screwed up his face and studied the ground as ascholar pores over his books.
"Huh," said he, "his shoes need soling, that's one sure thing."
He examined with care a little thin crooked indentation in the soil, asif a petrified angleworm had been pushed into the hard earth.
"Huh," said he, "I hope he kicked into it hard enough so it staysthere."
He was satisfied that the fugitive's shoe was worn in the sole so thatthe outer layer, worn thin and flopping loose, had slid onto one of thelittle malleable leaden bars used in the cathedral-glass windows. Thishad evidently pushed its way into the tattered sole, bent a little fromthe impact, and lodged securely. Either the fugitive did not feel it,or did not care to pause and remove it. It made a mark as plain asTom's patrol sign.
He cast one apprehensive look at the open windows of the upper floorand, taking a chance, made a bold dash across the rear lawn, where hethought he could discern footprints in the newly-sprouting grass.Several hundred feet away was the boundary fence and here thecorrectness of his direction was confirmed by a painty smooch on thetop rail where the fugitive had climbed over.
Tom leaped across the fence and, as usual, after any vigorous move, hefelt instinctively to see if his precious five-dollar bill was safe. Helived in continual dread of losing it. He paused a minute scrutinizingthe small crooked marks left by the leaden bar. Then he thought ofsomething which added fresh zest to his thus far successful search. Itwas provision four of the Second Class Scout tests:
Track half a mile in twenty-five minutes, or,...
"If I do that," said he, looking at his dollar watch, "it'll land me inthe Second Class with a rush, and if I should get the pin for her thatwould knock the Commissioner off his feet, all right. Here's mytracking stunt mapped out for me. I never claimed I could cook. Oh,cracky, here's my chance!"
He got the word "Cracky" from Roy.
As he turned and cast a last look toward the house someone (a woman, hethought) seemed to be waving her arm from one of the upper casements.He could not make up his mind whether she was beckoning to him or onlyscrubbing the window. Then he entered the woods where the ground wassparsely covered with pine-needles.
He had to stoop and search for the guiding mark and there were placeswhere for thirty or forty feet at a stretch it was not visible, but thetumbled appearance of the pine-needle carpet showed where someone hadrecently passed. Then the marks took him into a beaten way and hejogged along with hope mounting high.
He had tracked for more than twenty-five minutes and a very skillfultracking it had been, entirely independent of its possible result. Sofar as the tracking requirement was concerned he had fulfilled that ingood measure, and the possible danger in connection with it wouldcommend it strongly to the Scout Commissioner. Moreover, the deductivework which preceded the tracking and the chivalrous motive would surelymake up for any lack in first aid and cooking. "One thing has to makeup for another," he thought, recalling Mr. Ellsworth's words.
He was breathing hard, partly from a nervous fear as to what he shoulddo if he succeeded in overtaking the robber, and his little celluloidmembership booklet with the precious bill in it, flapped against hischest as he hurried on. "I'll be in the Second Class before Pee-wee,"he thought.
Suddenly he came to a dead stop as he saw a figure sitting against thetrunk of a tree a couple of hundred feet away. The tree trunk wasbetween himself and the man and about all he could see was two kneesdrawn up.
Now was the time for discretion. Tom was a husky enough boy; he seemedmuch larger since he had acquired the scout habit of standing straight,but he was not armed and he felt certain that the stranger was.
"I wish I had Roy's moccasins," he thought.
He retreated behind a tree himself and quietly removed his shoes. Theposition of the stranger was favorable for a stealthy approach and Tomadvanced cautiously. A flask lay beside the man and he was just takinga measure of encouragement in the prospect of the man's being asleepwhen the drawn-up knees went down with a sudden start and the figurerose spasmodically, reeled slightly and clutched the tree.
Tom stepped back a pace, staring, for it was the face of Bill Sladewhich was leering, half stupidly, at him.
"Stay--stay where you are," said Tom, his voice tense with fear andastonishment, as his father made a step toward him. "I--I tracked you-staywhere you are--I--didn' know who I wuz trackin'--I didn'. Don'tyou come no nearer. I--I wouldn' do yer no hurt--I wouldn'."
It was curious how in his dismay and agitation he fell into the oldhoodlum phraseology and spoke to his father just as he used to do whenthe greasy, rickety dining-table was between them.
The elder Slade was a pathetic spectacle. He had gone down quite asfast as his son had gone up. He leered at the boy with red and heavyeyes out of a face which had not been shaved in many a day. His cheekbones protruded conspicuously. The coat which at the time of Mrs.Slade's funeral had been black and which Tom remembered as a sort ofgrayish brown, was now the color of newly rusted iron. His shoe, whichhad turned traitor to him and whispered the direction of his flight tothe trailing scout, was tied with a piece of cord. He was thin, evenemaciated, and there was a little twitch in his eye which grotesquelycounterfeited a wink, and which jarred Tom strangely. He did not knowwhether it was his lately-acquired habit of observation which made himnotice this or whether it was a new warning from Mother Nature to hisfather. But Tom was not afraid of a man whose eye twitched like that.He stood as firm as Roy Blakeley had stood that night of his firstmeeting with him. That is what it means to be a scout for two months.
"Yer--a--a one o' them soldier lads, hey, Tommy?" said his fatherunsteadily.
"You stay there," said Tom. "Yer seen what I d-did ter de marshal. I'mstronger now than I wuz then, but I'm--I'm gon'er be loyal."
"Yer one o' them soldier fellers, hey?"
"I'm a scout of the Second Class," said Tom with a tremor in his voice:"or I would be if 'twasn't for you. I--I can't tell 'em the trackin' Idone _now_. I gotter obey the law."
"Yer wouldn' squeal on yer father, would yer, Tommy?" said Slade,advancing with a suggestion of menace. "I wouldn' want ter choke yer."
Tom received this half-sneeringly, half-pityingly. He felt that hecould have stuck out his finger and pushed his father over with it, sostrong was he.
"Gimme the pin yer took," he said. "I don't care about nothin' else-butgimme the pin yer took."
"What pin?" grumbled Slade.
"You know what pin."
"Yer think I'd steal?" his father menaced.
"I _know_ yer did an' I want that pin."
For a minute the elder Slade glared at his son with a look of fury. Hemade a start toward him and Tom stood just as Roy had stood, without astir.
"Yer'd call me a thief, would yer--yer--"
"I was as bad myself once," said Tom, pitying him. "I swiped her ball.Gimme the pin."
"'Taint wuth nothin'," he said.
"Gimme it."
Slade made an exploration of his pockets as if he could not imaginewhere such a thing could be. Then he looked at Tom as if reconsideringthe wisdom of an assault; then off through the woods as if to determinethe chance for a quick "get away."
"Yer wouldn' tell nobuddy yer met me," he whined.
"No, I'll _never_ tell--gimme the pin."
"I didn' hev nothin' to eat fer two days, Tommy, an' I've got me crampsbad."
>
The same old cramps which had furnished the excuse for many an idleday! Tom knew those cramps too well to be affected by them, but he saw,too, that his father was a spent man; and he thought of what Mr.Ellsworth had said, "There wasn't any First Bridgeboro Troop when hewas a boy, Tom."
"I wouldn' never tell I seen yer," he said. "I wouldn' never-_ever_tell. It's my blame that we wuz put out o' Barrel Alley. Itwas you--it was you took me--to the--circus."
He remembered that one happy afternoon which he had once, long ago,enjoyed at his father's hands.
"An' I know yer wuz hungry or you wouldn' go in there in the daytime-'causeyou'd be a fool to do it. I'm not cryin' 'cause I'm--a-scared--Idon't get scared so easy--now."
Fumbling at his brown scout shirt he brought forth on its string thefolding membership card of the Boy Scouts of America, attached to whichwas Tom's precious crisp five-dollar bill in a little bag.
"Gimme the pin," said he. "Yer kin say yer sold it fer five dollars-like,"he choked.
"Is this it?" asked Slade, bringing it forth as if by accident, andknowing perfectly well that it was.
"Here," said Tom, handing him the bill. "It ain't only becuz yer giveme the pin, but becuz yer hungry and becuz--yer took me ter thecircus."
It was strange how that one thing his father had done for him keptrecurring to the boy now.
"Yer better get away," he warned. "Old John sent automobiles out andtelephoned a lot. Don't--don't lose it," he added, realizing the largeamount of the money. "If yer tied it 'round yer neck it 'ud be safer."
He stood just where he was as his father reeled away, watching him alittle wistfully and doubtful as to whether he was sufficientlyimpressed with the sum he was carrying to be careful of it.
"It 'ud be safer if you tied it 'round yer neck," he repeated as hisfather passed among the trees with that sideways gait and half-limpwhich bespeaks a prideless and broken character.
"I'll never tell 'em of the tracking I do--did," he said, "so I won'tpass on that; but even if I did I couldn't pass, 'cause I haven't gotthe money to put in the bank--now."
He had lost his great fortune and his cherished dream in one fellswoop.
And this was the triumph of his tracking
CHAPTER XI
R-R-R-EVENGE