“Tails for me!”
The coin fell to the ground, and numerous heads were craned in the effort to see what the result would turn out to be.
“You win, Hugh,” remarked Alec, laughingly. “Tails it is, face up. I’m only sorry I’ve got so little to tell, because our work wasn’t so fast and furious as you had come your way, if signs count for anything,” and as he said this Alec pointed to numerous small holes burned in the clothes of Hugh and some of those who had fought the flames with him.
“All the same,” Hugh told him directly, “we know mighty well it was only the want of a chance that kept you from showing your mettle. We happened to be lucky that way. So long as you did your part the best you knew how, what odds does it make how much of a result followed?”
That was characteristic of Hugh. He tried to minimize his own acts, while at the same time eager to enlarge upon anything a fellow scout had been able to accomplish. It was this brotherly trait that had made him the best-liked fellow in or around Oakvale. Selfishness and Hugh Hardin had little in common, as every boy understood who knew the young scout master.
“Well,” began Alec, “it isn’t going to take me long to cover the ground of our activities. We got to the squab and chicken farm, and found Old Zeke pretty nearly out of his seven senses, because he expected he was going to be caught by the fire, and lose his whole plant, which you know would about kill the poor chap, for he’s got every cent he owns in the wide world invested there.”
“And I’ve heard,” interrupted Billy Worth, “that it’s the apple of Zeke Ballinger’s eye, that squab plant. He ships a box of plucked baby blue-rock pigeons to a big hotel in the city every week, and gets cracking good prices for them.”
“Yes,” added Ralph Kenyon; “I’ve been up at his place, and he nearly gave me the squab fever, too. I could see good money in the game; but it takes a lot of time to look after things; and what with school duties, as well as scout matters, I couldn’t see my way clear to make the start. But go on, Alec, please.”
“You can be sure,” continued the narrator of the story, “he was pleased when we broke in on him. I never saw a man so happy. I guess Old Zeke has heard a heap about what the scouts of Oakvale have done in times gone by, for he just up and said he knew now his place wasn’t going to be burned to flinders.”
Somehow every fellow looked proud when Alec said that. It seemed to them worth while to have worked so hard in the past, if by so doing a reputation for accomplishing things had been earned among the people of their native town and the surrounding country.