That was true. You have to be a Tenderfoot before you can get to be a real Scout.
"It's the same thing," he said, winking one eye. "One of the robbers has a tender foot, anyhow."
"Look here, Bill," I told him. "You are getting to be worse than Skinny. What are you talking about?"
"Pedro," he said, "you'll never make a Scout. You're a good bandit and a good secretary, but this Scout business is too much for you. I saw their tracks; that's what."
"In the alley?"
He nodded. "Come on and I'll show you."
We hurried down to Center Street and turned into the alley back of the stores. The ground in the alley was hard and didn't show any tracks except wagon ruts.
Bill looked up and down the alley to make sure that nobody was watching; then tiptoed over to one side, and lifted up a big piece of wrapping paper, which lay there as if it had been blown out of the store. Under the paper there was the same kind of footprint which we had followed from Plunkett's woods the day before.
There was no doubt about it. The man with a bandaged foot must have been in the alley back of the store which had been robbed.
Bill was the proudest fellow you ever saw over that footprint. When I had finished looking at it he put the paper back again and we went out into the street.