“I wouldn’t let you talk against him—I wouldn’t.”
Tom smiled. “That’s right, Alf, you stand up for him.”
“Maybe you don’t know what kind of an animal made these tracks, maybe, hey?”
Indeed Tom did not know. But one thing he knew which amused him greatly. They were following the path of glory the wrong way. Not that it made any particular difference, but it seemed so like Skinny. He had not actually tracked an animal at all, since the animal had come toward the lake. He had followed tracks, to be sure, but he had not tracked an animal. Hervey must have known this but he had not mentioned it. The thought thrilled even stolid Tom with fresh admiration for that young adventurer. Hervey Willetts was no handbook scout, but Tom would not have him different than he was—no, not by a hair. He thought how Skinny’s beginning at the wrong end was like his pinning of the badge on the wrong side of his breast. Poor little Skinny....
And he thought of that other scout coming down through those woods, tracking that mysterious animal indeed, and stopping short, and sitting down on a log and throwing away his triumph like chaff before the wind. Then there arose in his mind the picture of that bright-eyed, irresponsible youngster with his hat cocked sideways on his head, off upon some new adventure or bent on some new stunt. Not a very good scout delegate perhaps, but the bulliest scout that ever tore a gaping hole in his stocking....
Tom was aroused from his meditation by Skinny’s eager voice. “Here’s the log where he talked to me,” he said; “here’s just the very same place we sat down and he said he’d be my witness. He said I was old top, that’s what he called me.”
“Old top, hey?” said Tom, smiling.
Before reaching the log, Tom’s interest had been chiefly in his queer little companion. The tracks puzzled him somewhat, but since they had already served their purpose and were in process of obliteration he paid little attention to them. In his more ambitious rambles during late fall and winter, he had run across too many tracks of deer and bear and wildcat to become excited by these signs of some humbler creature of the woods.