Then Paul found a chance to arouse the ambition of Eben in turn, by hinting at what Noodles had boasted. Thus Paul presently had the two lads jealously watching each other. They did not come to any open rupture, because they were good fellows, and fast friends, but did Eben happen to take a notion to go up a little in the line in order to speak to one of the others, Noodles clung to him like a leech.
Indeed, Paul had to restrain the eager pair more than once, for they were so determined to excel the record, each of the other, that they gave evidences of even wanting to run.
By carefully nursing this spirit of emulation and rivalry the patrol leader believed he was assisting the cause, without doing either of his chums the slightest injury. It was a case of simply bringing out all there was in a couple of lads who, as a rule, were prone to give up too easily.
And so they kept tramping along the turnpike leading toward home, jollying each other, and every now and then, when resting for a bit, trying to remove some of the dreadful evidences of black mud from their usually natty uniforms and leggins.
"P'raps they'll think it the biggest joke going," remarked Seth, "when they get on to it that we've been in the Black Water Swamps, and I guess Freddy's crowd'll laugh themselves sick, like a lot of ninnies, but just wait till we tell what took us there, and show the card Mr. Anderson gave us, with his message for St. Louis on the back. Then it seems to me the laugh will be on them."
They took great consolation in remembering what a gallant piece of work they had been enabled to carry out since leaving Camp Alabama that morning. It would perhaps be carried far and wide in the papers, when Mr. Anderson's story was told, and reflect new glory on the uplifting tendency of the Boy Scout movement. People who did not understand what a wonderful lot of good was coming out of teaching growing lads to be able to take care of themselves under any and all conditions, besides being considerate for others, brave in time of danger, and generous toward even their enemies, would have their eyes opened.
And so it was a happy and merry parcel of scouts that plodded along the road leading to Beverly town that afternoon, as the sun sank lower and lower toward the West.