Tom Slade's Double Dare

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

"He reached the bus, but he doesn't know how. The last he remembered is that he fell because his foot was caught in a hole. I don't know, nobody knows how he did that thing. Here's a man who was in the woods that night and saw him. He met him about half way and says he was so exhausted and excited he couldn't speak. He told this man that he had to hurry on to save some people's lives. He meant the people in the bus. How he got from the place where he fell to the bus is a mystery. When he did get there he couldn't speak, so he grabbed one of the horses. His foot was wrenched and he was unconscious.

"When they got him in the bus he muttered something and they thought he was talking about his foot. It was the bridge he was talking about. But what he said prompted Mr. Carroll to send another scout forward, and he stopped the bus. That's all there is to it. He got there and it nearly killed him. Darby Curren, who is here to tell you, thought he was a spook.

"Now these three people, Mr. Hood, Darby Curren and Mr. Carroll, can tell you what they know about it. It's one of those cases where the real facts didn't come out. Hervey Willetts saved the lives of twenty-two people at grave danger to his own. That satisfies the handbook. He doesn't care four cents about the Gold Cross, but right is right, and I'm here to see that he gets it. Stand up, Hervey. Stand out in the aisle." Suddenly Tom was seated.

So there stood the wandering minstrel, alone. Even his champion was not in evidence. Nor was his troop there to share the glory with him. His scoutmaster was there, but he seemed too dazed to speak. And so the stormy petrel stood alone, as he would always stand alone. Because there was no one like him.

"Willetts is the name? Hervey Willetts?"

"I got a middle name, but I don't bother with it."

"What troop?"

And so the cut and dried business, so strange and unattractive to Hervey, of filling in the blank, went on. He did not greatly care for indoor sports. There was a lull in the general interest. Scouts began lounging and whispering again.

In that interval of restlessness, an observant person might have noticed, sitting in the back part of the room, the rather ungainly figure of the tall fellow, Brent Gaylong, organizer of the Church Mice of Newburgh. He seemed to be the center of a clamoring, interested, little group.

Roy Blakeley's brown, crinkly hair could be seen through the gaps made by other heads. Gaylong's knees were up against the back of the seat in front of him, thus forming a sort of slanting desk, on which he held a writing tablet. His head was cocked sideways as if in humorous but stern criticism of his own work. On somebody's suggestion he wrote something then crossed it out. There were evidently too many cooks at the broth, but he was ludicrously patient and considerate, being no doubt chief cook himself. There was something very funny about his calm, preoccupied demeanor amid that clamoring throng. The proceedings in the room interested him not.