Bill McBride merely nodded. He was too busy getting his breath to speak. At length he sat up and presently got on his feet.
“Come on,” he said curtly.
Garrity followed him without question. His mind was a turmoil of dazed thoughts. In silence they climbed the bank and pushed through the undergrowth. Presently they reached a little clearing amongst the pines. A scout axe, a hat and an open haversack lay there, and close to them a neat pile of twigs and small sticks.
McBride knelt down and with fingers that shook a little drew a box of matches from the haversack. With one of these he lit the pile of sticks and when the fire was well going, he stood up.
“Take off your clothes and dry ’em out,” he told Garrity briefly.
As one in a dream, Red obeyed. When he had wrung out his soaking garments, he followed the scout’s example and made a little frame of sticks to hang them on before the fire. And all the time he was doing this he watched his companion with furtive, curious glances. He did not seem at all like the boy he had knocked about on the street that day. There was an air of quiet competence about his every movement which roused in Red’s heart an odd, unexpected admiration. Though he would never have admitted it, he knew he couldn’t have made that fire so quickly and so skillfully. Even his frame of sticks was crude and wobbly compared with McBride’s. And as for the horrible experience in the water—
“Well?” said Micky suddenly, straightening his slim, white body. “Are you through?”
Garrity nodded and thrust one upright stick more firmly into the pine needles. It was cool here in the shade and he shivered slightly.
“All right,” said McBride. “Come out here in the open, then. I’m going to give you a lesson.”
Garrity’s jaw gaped. “A—what?” he repeated. “Whatcher mean?”