“You think so too, don’t you?” he said.
“I don’t know what I think,” I said. “But I know I like you, and I’m going to stay right here as long as you do. A scout has to—no matter what, a scout has to——”
He just laughed kind of sneering like. He said, “You call yourself a scout. G-o-o-d night! You’re a peachy bunch, you fellows. You ought to all be slapped on the wrists—Arnoldson and the whole crowd.”
I said, “Yes, and how aren’t we scouts?”
“You’re all the time shouting about deduction, and observation and all that bunk,” he said. “I don’t claim to be a scout. But if I did I wouldn’t wear a pair of blinders. I wouldn’t hear a friend called a liar, I wouldn’t. Hey, Sandwich?”
“What did we do?” I asked him.
“Well, one thing,” he said, “did you notice the ’phone in Administration Shack to-night? Did you notice the receiver was hung upside down? Did you notice how somebody must have been rattled and hung it up in a hurry? Did you notice the map portfolio lying open? Did you stop to think that it was while everybody was at supper that I ’phoned? And one thing more I’ll tell you too; the voice that answered me lisped. Now you better run to bed. Hey, Sandwich?”
“What do you mean—lisped?” I asked him. “What of it?”
“Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “You don’t even remember that the sharpy we met on the other side of the lake to-day, lisped. You don’t remember how he was asking about the trail here? He was the fellow that gave me the name of Wilkins, because he was all rattled when the ’phone rang. Stick around a little if you’d like to see him dance. He’s going to do a dance to-night that he never did before. And it isn’t going to cost him a cent. Is it Sandwich?”