Tom Slade on Mystery Trail | Page 5

mind reader?"
"Those are the only ones that have three tests," Tom said. "So if you
have twenty merits and two-thirds of a merit, why, you must be trying
for one of those. Maybe they've changed it since I looked at the
handbook."
Hervey Willetts stood just where he had stopped, looking at Tom with
admiration. In his astonishment he glanced at Tom's arm as if he
expected to see upon it the tangible evidences of his companion's feats
and accomplishments. But the only signs of scouting which he saw
there were the brown skin and the firm muscles.
"They change that book every now and then," Tom said.
Still Hervey continued to look. "What's that belt made out of?" he
asked.
"It's fiber from a string tree," 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