on this rock," continued
Scout Ward, as cool as you please. "You ought to cut the cloth away from
that wound; then you dissolve this bichloride of mercury tablet in a
quart of water, and flush that hole out thoroughly; then you moisten a
pad of this cloth in the water and bind it on the hole with this
surgical bandage. See?" (Note 46.)

"I'll bind you on a hole, if I ketch you," snarled the man. That hole
ached, I reckon.

But Scout Ward advanced and laid the first-aid stuff on a stone about
ten feet from the man, so that he could crawl and get it.

"Now hadn't you better give us that message? It's no good to you, and
it's done you harm enough," said Scout Van Sant.

"Give you nothin', except a dose of lead, if you don't git out pronto,"
snarled the man. "You git! Hear me? GIT! If you weren't kids, you'd git
something else beside jes' git. But I'm not goin' to tell you many more
times. GIT!"

The Red Fox Patrol Scouts looked at me and I looked at them, and we
agreed--for the man was growing angrier and angrier. There was no sense
in badgering him. A fellow must use discretion, you know.

"All right; we'll 'git,'" answered Scout Ward. "But we'll keep on your
trail till you turn over that message. You've no business with it."

The man just growled, and as we turned away he began to pull his
trouser-leg up further and to fuss with his dirty sock and his pink
underdrawers there. Those were no things to have about an open wound.

"You'd better use that first-aid wash and bandage," called back Scout
Ward.

We went to the packs and the Red Fox Patrol Scouts slung them on. They
wouldn't let me carry one. We didn't know exactly what to do, now:
whether to go on and wait, or wait here, while we watched. Only--

"You Scouts take the trail for your rendezvous," I said. Rendezvous, you
know, is the place where Scouts come together; and these two boys were
on their way to meet the rest of their party, for Salt Lake and the
Yellowstone, when I had come in on them.

"No," they said; "your trail is our trail. Scouts help each other. We
can meet our party somewhere later, and still be in time."

Scouts mean what they say, so I didn't argue, and I was mighty glad to
have them along. We decided to follow the trail we were on for a little
way, and then to climb the side of the gulch and make Sunday camp where
we could watch the man's movements.

We passed the dug-out; up back of it the beaver man was tying his
bandanna handk