"

"That's me."

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

"Is that what you have to do to be a second-class scout, Skinny? I
forget about the second-class 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
reassured.

"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 th