A minute later, as boys and officers stared, and mentally gave Merritt credit for knowing all about "first aid to the injured," the corporal went on to say:
"It is just as I thought, for there is no fracture of the bones that I can find. But you have neglected it so long and strained it so by walking and running that I'm afraid you're going to have a bad time with that leg. But I'll put something on that will ease the pain, more or less, and bind it up fresh for you. Then we'll get you to the wagon somehow, without your having to walk."
"Say, are you what they call the Boy Scouts?" asked the injured man, who had been listening to all Merritt said, as well as watching his deft fingers work, with amazement written large upon his peaked face.
"Just what we are," Tubby hastened to inform him; "and you can see now what the scouts learn. You are not the first man who has been handled by the members of the Eagle Patrol, Mister."
"Well, I wanted to know!" muttered the man, still staring, as though he could not understand how mere boys could master the art of handling a bad wound like that with such skill, and show the nerve to do it at the same time.
"Where's Rob going?" asked Tubby just then.
While Merritt was working Rob had held the torch so that he could see, until Andy had taken a hint, and scraped enough dead leaves together to make a little fire, and in this way given all the light that was needed.
Apparently the patrol leader was not satisfied with having overtaken one of the desperate fugitives who had escaped from the Riverhead jail. He must have figured, while standing there, waiting until the fire had attained sufficient size to allow his moving off, that possibly the other rascal might not have run much further, as they would surely have caught the sound of his pressing through all that dense undergrowth; for at the time Con was helped up into his tree by the shorter man, the pursuers could not have been far away.
And so the scout who carried that useful electric hand torch proceeded to find the tracks of the second man; after which he began to follow the trail.
It immediately led him into the thickest of the underbrush; and this fact only added strength to the boy's former deduction, to the effect that no one could push on through all this matted growth without making all sorts of sounds capable of being readily heard by keen ears a quarter of a mile away almost.