"But you said it had probably been buried and to look for freshly turned dirt. And if you hadn't stuck to me when I hurt my ankle we'd been captured sure. And when the Eagles were trailing us you threw them off the scent—"
"Aw!" said Tim, "you deserve all the credit for limping along on that bum foot."
A light of satisfaction leaped into Mr. Wall's eyes. There was little that went on in Chester troop of which he was in ignorance. He had known what that trip into the woods meant, and he had wondered many times that morning what would come of it. From the look of Don's lip and from a lumpy look above one of Tim's eyes, he would say there had been a fight. He proposed, though, to ask no questions. Whatever had happened, the atmosphere was clear. The Tim who had come out was a vastly different boy from the Tim who had gone in, and that was all that mattered.
He slipped off Don's shoe and examined the foot. "Nothing much," he said. "A couple of days' rest and you'll be as good as new." As he stood up his hand rested in the old familiar way on Tim's shoulder.
"I told you it would happen some day, Tim."
Tim looked up timidly. "What, sir?"
"That we'd be proud of you."
Tim's eyes dropped. A thrill ran through his veins. Not because he had been praised—paugh! that didn't mean so much—but because Mr. Wall seemed to speak to him as man scout to boy scout. He was accepted without question as worthy. He could see it in the eyes of Andy Ford and of every scout there. Gee! what a difference it made.
The scouts had been shrilling a succession of short, sharp blasts, the rallying signal. Now Larkins and Rood burst out of the woods. When they saw Don and Tim their faces lengthened, but they came forward and offered their congratulations.
The whole story had to be told. Don related how they had followed the trail, he told of finding the treasure, of getting away and learning of pursuit, of cutting away from their trail, and of his tumble at the ravine, and of how Tim had refused to leave him.