“Had enough?” he asked gruffly.
There was a pause. Garrity’s head drooped wearily. “Y—yes,” he mumbled.
In silence they went back to the fire and began to put on their dried clothing. Not a word was spoken until they were nearly dressed. Then it was Garrity who broke the silence.
“I—I didn’t say nothing—about your—pulling me out,” he muttered, eyes fixed on a refractory shoelace.
“You needn’t,” returned McBride briefly, reaching for the haversack which held the grub he had brought on this solitary hike. “Any scout would have done the same.”
Red’s glance shifted from the fire to the empty rack of sticks and then back to McBride’s mussed and wrinkled shirt and breeches. A poignant memory of those horrible moments in the river made him shiver. He picked up a narrow strip of bark and began to twist it about his fingers.
“I—I want to tell you—I’m sorry for—for what I’ve said about the—scouts,” he said presently in a low, embarrassed voice. His head was lowered and his face flushed. “I—I didn’t understand, I guess. They’re not—like what I thought they was—”
“I don’t suppose you did,” cut in Micky suddenly. “Why should you?” He had accomplished what he had set out to do, and with the responsibility of it gone, he was more like his old easy going, friendly self than he had been for weeks. And as he looked at Garrity’s downcast, embarrassed face he realized all at once that the fellow wasn’t wholly bad. In fact at the moment he found something almost appealing about him. “Nobody ever does really understand scouts unless they travel around with them or see a troop working,” he went on impulsively. “You’d better come down some Friday night and look us over.”
Garrity’s head went up and he stared.
“You—you don’t mean that?”