UNDER
BOY SCOUT COLORS
UNDER BOY SCOUT COLORS
CHAPTER I
THE LIVE WIRE
Dale Tompkins slung the bulging bag of papers over one shoulder, and, turning away from the news-stand, walked briskly down the main street of Hillsgrove. The rain had ceased, and the wind that had howled fiercely all day long was shifting into the west, where it tore to tatters the banks of dun gray clouds, letting through gleams and patches of cold blue sky tinged with the pale, chill yellow of a typical autumn sunset.
The cold look of that sunset was well borne out by a keen nip in the air, but Dale was too thankful to have it clear at all to complain. Besides, he wasn’t exactly the complaining sort. Turning up the collar of a rather shabby coat, he thrust both hands deep into his trousers’ pockets and hurried whistling along, bent on delivering his papers in the quickest possible time.
“I ought to get home by seven, anyhow,” he thought calculatingly. “And if Mother’ll only give me a hurry-up snack, I’ll be in time for meeting.”
He rolled the last word under his tongue with the prideful accent of a novice. Then, with a sudden start, one hand jerked out of his pocket and slipped between the buttons of the thread-bare coat. For an anxious moment it groped there before the fingers closed over a metal badge, shaped like a trefoil, that was pinned securely to the flannel shirt. A somewhat sheepish grin overspread the freckled face, and through an open gate Dale shot a paper dexterously across the porch to land accurately in the middle of the door-mat.
“I’d hate to lose it the very first week,” he muttered, with a touch of apology. Mechanically he delivered another paper, and then he sighed. “Gee! A month sure seems an awful long time to wait when you know about all the tests already. I could even pass some of the first-class ones, I bet! That handbook’s a dandy, all right. I don’t guess there was ever another book printed with so much in it, exceptin’, maybe–”
The words froze on his lips, and he caught his breath with a sharp, hissing intake. From somewhere in the next block a scream rang out on the still air, so shrill, so sudden, so full of surprise and pain and utter terror that Dale’s blood turned cold within him, and the arm, half extended to toss a folded paper, halted in the middle of its swing, as if encountering an invisible obstacle. The pause was only momentary. Abruptly, as if two hands were pressed around a throbbing throat, the cry was cut off, and in the deathly silence that followed, Dale hurled the paper hastily, but accurately, from him, and turned and ran.