Hugh never beat around the bush when there was need of haste. He walked straight up to the boy and held out his hand.
“Cale, we scouts have made up our minds that we’ve just got to take hold of your case and help you break away from that man,” said Hugh, in his positive way that usually carried conviction with it. “If only you’ll say the word we’ll stand back of you, and get you out of this scrape. You don’t want to keep doing this sort of business any longer, do you?”
“I hate it worse than poison,” said the boy, almost fiercely; “but seems as if I couldn’t break loose from Doc Merritt nohow. I’ve made up my mind to run away as many as twenty times, but it only takes one look from those terrible eyes of his to change everything.”
“But you’ll let us try to get you off, won’t you, Cale?”
The boy sighed.
“Oh! if you only could!” he said, plaintively. “I’m willing enough to go, but you fellows will have to do it all, because I’m as weak as a kitten when he catches my eye. I have to sneeze when he takes snuff, as they say.”
Hugh remembered that later on, and took advantage of his knowledge, as will be seen when the time comes.
“Would you be willing to start home to your folks if we bought you a railroad ticket?” asked the scout master, as he linked an arm with that of the other, and started leading him away, making sure that he went in an opposite direction to the stand of the fakir.
The boy trembled on hearing this, and Hugh knew that his guess must have hit the mark. There was a story back of it, which might mean a waiting mother, a wayward boy, a yielding to temptation, and finally his getting into the grip of the fakir, who, for certain reasons of his own, seemed determined that Cale should not leave his employ, though he treated him as meanly as any slave.
“Y-e-s, I would be dreadfully glad to go home again if I only had the chance,” he faltered, almost breaking down when he said that one magical word “home.” Then, sighing heavily again, he continued: “I don’t know whether they’d want me to come back again after the awful thing I did. He keeps telling me they’ve disowned me for good. But sometimes at night, when I get to thinking it over, I can’t bring myself to believe my mother would do that, no matter how bad I was.”