“Go on into the house,” he said impatiently. “Who’s in there, your mother and father?”
“What are you going to do?” the wretched fellow asked desperately.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do, if you mean about you. I’ve got to consult my scoutmaster. Go on in and go to bed—How old is your mother?”
Harry surveyed him slowly, contemptuously, from head to foot. He did not understand dishonesty. “Well, go on in,” he repeated, “and don’t wake her up. I guess you’re about through for to-night.” He paused, looking steadily, curiously, at the other, as one might look at a strange animal. Then he wheeled about and went silently off across the field.
“Blamed if I know who Al Wilson is, or Walter, either, but if they buy a second-hand canoe in Ticonderoga they get stuck. Jiminy, but that Kid’s the greatest! I wonder what he’s been pushing into now.”
Gordon squatted before the dying signal-fire, an occasional gape of stupendous dimensions distorting his round face. Below him the camp slept peacefully. The dim light glimmered in the invalid’s tent, occasionally blurred by the shadow of the “First Aid” boy moving to and fro. Gordon knew now that his mind’s-eye picture of Arnold arriving like a conquering hero was an extravagant vision. He knew that the Albany scouts knew it, too.
“Al Wilson could _not_ have done it,” said he, “nor any of the rest of ’em. Nobody can do impossibilities. These fellows think it’s easy to bring a ca-a-a-a—” He was trying to say canoe and gape at the same time.
“Hello, Kid,” said a low, careless voice, almost in his ear. “What are you doing here?”
“Sure—who’d you think? Where’ve you been, anyway?”
The younger boy clutched his friend by the arm. “Harry—I—he’s a boy here—they—did you—why—”
“I’ve got forty dollars belonging to him. What’s the news, anyway?”
In the morning it began, bright and early. Harry lay alone in the tepee, dead to the world. Mr. Wade had been quietly roused by Gordon and had accorded Harry this resting-place with strict instructions to pay no attention to reveille. Gordon had crept back among the sleeping Hyenas.
It started when the two boys who had gone in search of Harry returned to camp a few minutes after reveille, passing the Hyenas’ tent.