“Well, good-bye, mister,” he said. “I’ve got to stay here ’cos I’m a sentry. Don’t forget to call for mother’s rabbit skins.”
“All right,” growled the man, and trudged on while Danny squatted down on the bank and watched him.
“I bet he’s not going to the village!” he said to himself. “He’s a stranger here, but he wants to make out he’s not. And I’m pretty sure he’s not a real tramp, ’cos he has hands like a gentleman. Oh, I do wish I could follow him! I wish it was a muddy day instead of this rotten dry weather—then I’d soon pick up his trail when this game’s over. I wonder if there’s not some way I could track him.”
He racked his brains for a moment and tried to remember what private detectives on the pictures do on such occasions. Suddenly, like a flash, he remembered a fairy story he had read in Hans Andersen. It was about a mother who wanted to know where her daughter went off to in the night, so she sewed a little bag full of flour on to the girl’s dress and cut a hole in the corner of it, so that, as she went along, the flour ran out, and the mother was able to track the girl all through the streets.
“Wish I had a little bag full of flour,” thought Danny. But a Wolf Cub is never at a loss how to do things, once he has got hold of the idea. In a minute he had drawn his notebook out of his pocket and torn a number of pages out. With quick fingers he tore these up into wee scraps and put them into his cap.
The man was already out of sight round the corner. Scrambling up the bank and through the hedge into a field, Danny sprinted along for all he was worth.
Before long he was up with the man, who still plodded along, head bent, his sack on his back. Creeping like a little green snake through the hedge, Danny stole softly up behind him.
He felt just as Cubs do in the Sheer Khan Dance, only this time it was real, not “pretend.” Holding his breath and treading as softly as a cat, he crept so close that he could have touched the tramp. Still the man trudged on. Danny’s heart was in his mouth.
Softly he straightened himself. Then he took a handful of the paper-scraps from his cap and slipped them into the torn pocket of the man’s ragged coat. Then he stood quite still and gradually crept sideways until he was under cover in the ditch. His heart was beating fast. As he watched the retreating figure of the man he saw a little scrap of paper fly out here and there.
“I’ve got you!” said Danny, hugging himself. It was all he could do not to give vent to a howl of joy that would have roused the very jungle!