"Sure I'll do whatever you say while I'm along, Elmer," he declared. "And when we ketch up with that coward Dolph, I hope you set me on him. I'm just boiling over for a fight; and he'll get his medicine or else my name is Mud."
"That's just it, Matt," remarked Elmer. "We hope not to have to fight at all, if we can manage to get the child away from her stepfather. But one thing I will promise you, Matt—if there should be any need of strong-arm action, I'll call on you to do your share. You'll be on the firing line."
"All right, Elmer; and now forget I'm along, and just go on like you would if I hadn't come tumbling down that pesky slope like a bag of oats. Wow! my elbows must be skinned to beat the band."
And Elmer knew full well that after that his every movement would be watched by Matt with the utmost eagerness. A new world was opening up to this rough boy of Fairfield; through the open door he was beginning to catch enticing glimpses of things he had never dreamed existed on this earth. And Elmer could not find it in his heart to close that door that was ajar.
So they started again.
Whenever there came a brief halt, as the trailer found a temporary hitch in his work, Matt Tubbs invariably pressed to the front, and had eyes and ears only for the one whom he had begun to take as his pattern. And knowing his utter ignorance along the line of reading signs, Elmer took especial pains to explain just why he did this thing or that.
It was an object lesson that was apt to prove invaluable to every fellow who clustered around "the boy who knew." Besides the information they thus picked up, the fascination of the thing appealed strongly to their inquiring minds; and as a consequence, every fellow would make it a point to study the gentle arts of woodcraft more and more, as opportunities for doing so arose.
They had gone possibly another mile when Elmer came to a halt, and raised his hand in a way that told his companions he wanted them to stop.
"No noise, please, now, fellows," he said, in a low tone; and the manner of his saying this struck most of the scouts as highly significant.
"Thay, are we near him now?" asked Ted, in a hoarse whisper—he had been keeping close to Matt all the while, from time to time suggesting something in the way of relief from the aches and pains the Fairfield boy was suffering, even to the extent of promising to bind up his skinned elbows at the first chance.