Tom Slade on Mystery Trail | Page 5

Tom said; "they grow in Lorraine in France."
"Were you in France?"
"Two years," Tom said.
"How many merit badges have you got, anyway, Mr.--Slady?"
"Oh, I don't know," Tom said; "about thirty or thirty-five, I guess."
"You guess? I bet you've got the Gold Cross. Where is it?" Hervey made a quick inspection of Tom's pongee shirt, but all he saw there was the front with buttons gone and the brown chest showing.
"I couldn't pin it on there very well, could I?" Tom said, lured by his companion's eagerness into a little show of amusement.
"Where is it?" Hervey demanded.
"I'm letting a girl wear it," Tom said.
"Oh, what I know about you!" Hervey said, teasingly. "You can bet if I ever get the Gold Cross or the Eagle Badge (which I won't this trip) no girl will ever wear them."
"You can't be so sure about that," said Tom, out of his larger worldly experience, "sometimes they take them away from you."
"You're a funny fellow," Hervey said, while his gaze still expressed his generous impulse of hero-worship. "I guess I seem like just a sort of kid to you with my twenty merits--twenty and two-thirds. Maybe some girl is wearing your Distinguished Service Cross, for all I know. But we fellows are crazy to have the Eagle award in our troop. I suppose of course you're an Eagle Scout?"
"I guess that was about three or four years ago," Tom said.
"Once a scout, always a scout, hey?"
"That's it," Tom said.
They strolled along in silence for a few minutes, Hervey occasionally stealing a side glimpse at his elder, who ambled on, apparently unconscious of these admiring glances. Now and again Tom paused to examine a patch of moss or some little tell-tale mark upon the ground, as if he had no knowledge of his companion's presence. But Hervey appeared quite satisfied.
"I'll tell you how it is," he finally said, selecting what seemed an appropriate moment to speak; "I was elected as the one in our troop to go after the Eagle award. We want an Eagle Scout in our troop. We haven't even got one in the city where I live."
"Hear that?" Tom said. "That's a thrush."
"A thrush?"
"Yop; go on," Tom said.
"So they elected me to win the Eagle award. Some choice, hey? I had seven badges to begin with; maybe that's why they wished it onto me. I had camping, cooking, athletics, pioneering, angling, that's a cinch, that's easy, and, let's see--carpentry and bugling. That's the easiest one of the lot, just blow through the cornet and claim the badge. It's a shame to take it."
"You mean you've won thirteen more since you've been here?" Tom asked.
"That's it," said Hervey. "First I got my fists on the eleven that have got to be included in the twenty-one, and then I made up a list of ten others and went to it. I chose easy ones, but some of them didn't turn out to be so easy. Music--oh, boy! And when I started to play the piano, they said I wasn't playing at all, but that I really meant it. Can you beat that?"
Tom could not help smiling.
"So you see I've been pretty busy since I've been here, too busy to talk to interviewers, hey? I've piled up thirteen since I've been here; that's a little over six weeks. That isn't so bad, is it?"
"It's good," Tom said, by no means carried away by enthusiasm.
"I thought you'd say so. So now I've got twenty and I know them all by heart. Want to hear me stand up in front of the class and say them?"
"All right," Tom said.
"No sooner said than stung," Hervey flung back at him. "Well, I've got first aid, physical development, life saving, personal health, public health, cooking, camping, bird study----"
"That's a good one," Tom said.
"You said it; and I've got pioneering, pathfinding, athletics, and then come the ten that I selected myself; angling, bugling, carpentry, conservation or whatever you call it, and cycling and firemanship and music hath charms, not, and seamanship and signaling. And two-thirds of the stalking badge. I bet you'll say that's a good one."
"There's one good one that you left out," Tom said. "I thought you'd think of it on account of that last one."
"You mean stalking?"
"I mean another that has something to do with that?"
"Now you've got me guessing," Hervey said.
"Well, how do you want me to help you?" Tom asked, thus stifling his companion's inquisitiveness.
"Well," said Hervey, ready, even eager to adapt himself to Tom's mood, "all I've got to do is to track an animal for a half a mile or so----"
"A quarter of a mile," Tom said.
"And then I'm an Eagle Scout," Hervey concluded. "But if I want to be in on the hand-outs Saturday night, I've got to do it between now and Saturday, and