“Why, over there where you see them bushes waving in the night wind, whenever the fire picks up. I’ll foller after you, as soon as I can; I’m afraid I sorter sprained my ankle turning so sudden-like after I shot, and it hurts like anything, let me tell you. Go ahead, Thad, and take a light along. If you haven’t got that handy little electric torch, why, just snatch up a stick from the fire. And look out everybody, that he ain’t playing possum, and meaning to shoot when you come close up.”
Of course Thad understood. It was not that Giraffe was growing timid, for he had always been accounted the boldest of the boys in the Silver Fox Patrol; but a sudden sickening realization that by his incautious shot he may have taken a human life, however worthless, made him feel weak about the knees; that talk of a possible sprain of his ankle was a pure fabrication to cover his hesitation about, looking on his work.
Thad, however, would not hold back on that account. If there was a wretched human outcast lying there in pain, the quicker they found this out the better, because, as scouts they had a plain duty to perform.
So Thad sprang over to the smouldering fire. As Giraffe had said, the flames occasionally leaped up as they found new places to eat into the brands; and quickly selecting a promising torch he waved it several times around his head until he had coaxed it to flame forth, when he led the way in the quarter mentioned by Giraffe.
The latter came limping after, no doubt all of a quiver as to what he would hear said in another minute.
“There he is now, lying over yonder!” suddenly gasped Step Hen, pointing; and Bumpus gripped his gun nervously as he tried to crane his fat neck in order to see.
“Yes, there is something lying there!” announced Allan; “and I saw it move just a little then, so I reckon that it’s pretty nearly gone!”
“Oh, that would be tough on the poor critter!” said Bumpus, sympathizingly.
“Yes, and on our chum Giraffe!” echoed Davy, with something about his voice as though he meant to imply that he would not envy the one who had been so hasty about firing at an intruder.
Thad kept right on advancing, and suddenly he was heard to give a queer little hysterical laugh of relief; which proved that the scout-master must have also been laboring under quite a strain.