A SCORE IS PAID
Garrity’s cry for help was purely instinctive. He had no hope at all
that it would be answered, and his surprise was very great when the
bushes on the bank above him were thrust aside and a slim figure
appeared, to stare down in astonishment.
“Help!” he cried again. “I’m drowning! Help!”
There was a swift scurry on the bank—the opposite bank from the one from
whence Red had come. A coat flew off; shoes were tossed aside. Garrity’s
heart sank as he realized that it was only a boy smaller than himself,
but in spite of everything he could not help admiring the clean,
graceful, unhesitating dive with which the fellow took the water. Then
suddenly he lost his hold on the rock and the current caught him again.
A moment later a dripping head rose beside him. Red caught at it wildly,
but a foot struck him in the stomach and drove him sickeningly back.
“Stop that!” the voice beat on his dazed brain. “Don’t touch me and I’ll
get you out.”
The head vanished, but something slid across his neck and he felt a tug
at his straggling hair. The impulse was irresistible to try and grab the
arm which held him up, and he started to squirm around.
“Cut that out!” ordered the voice sharply. “If you don’t, I’ll let go.”
There was grit in Garrity’s make-up, and fortunately he was not quite
too far gone to reason. He had little faith in the boy’s ability to save
him, but at least his face was partly out of the water and he could
breathe. His teeth dug into his under lip until it bled. Cold fear was
tugging at his heart, but he made the effort, and let his muscles lax.
For a space nothing happened save that he did not sink under the water
again. Then all at once he saw the bank closer than it had been before.
It was lower, too, and shelving. A wild hope sprang up, followed swiftly
by wilder panic. For though they still moved, it was more slowly, and
gasping sounds of distress came from his rescuer.
Strainingly Red’s eyes watched the bank. Would they ever gain it? It was
scarcely two feet above his head and little more than that away.
Suddenly he felt a little push. An instant later his clawing fingers
caught at a thrusting root, his feet struck bottom, and with a strangled
sob he half pulled himself, half crawled onto a slippery shelf of rock.
For a moment or two he lay motionless, drawing in the air in great
gulps. He felt chilled to the bone and every muscle ached, but nothing
really mattered now. Finally he struggled up and turned his head. A
white-faced, panting boy in dripping khaki lay beside him, a strange
expression in his great gray eyes. Garrity’s own grew wider, his jaw
dropped. Somehow he felt choked and speechless.
“You!” he gasped at length in a strangled voice. “_You!_”
Bill McBride merely nodded. He was too busy getting his breath to speak.
At length he sat up and presently got on his feet.
“Come on,” he said curtly.
Garrity followed him without question. His mind was a turmoil of dazed
thoughts. In silence they climbed the bank and pushed through the
undergrowth. Presently they reached a little clearing amongst the pines.
A scout axe, a hat and an open haversack lay there, and close to them a
neat pile of twigs and small sticks.
McBride knelt down and with fingers that shook a little drew a box of
matches from the haversack. With one of these he lit the pile of sticks
and when the fire was well going, he stood up.
“Take off your clothes and dry ’em out,” he told Garrity briefly.
As one in a dream, Red obeyed. When he had wrung out his soaking
garments, he followed the scout’s example and made a little frame of
sticks to hang them on before the fire. And all the time he was doing
this he watched his companion with furtive, curious glances. He did not
seem at all like the boy he had knocked about on the street that day.
There was an air of quiet competence about his every movement which
roused in Red’s heart an odd, unexpected admiration. Though he would
never have admitted it, he knew he couldn’t have made that fire so
quickly and so skillfully. Even his frame of sticks was crude and wobbly
compared with McBride’s. And as for the horrible experience in the
water—
“Well?” said Micky suddenly, straightening his slim, white body. “Are
you through?”
Garrity nodded and thrust one upright stick more firmly into the pine
needles. It was cool here in the shade and he shivered slightly.
“All right,” said McBride. “Come out here in the open, then. I’m going
to give you a lesson.”
Garrity’s jaw gaped. “A—what?” he repeated. “Whatcher mean?”
“We’re going to fight. Is that plain?”
Red’s wide eyes mirrored his amazement.
“Aw, say!” he mumbled. “I ain’t going to fight—_you_!”
“Aren’t you, though?” McBride’s lips tightened. “You weren’t so
particular a few weeks ago. You didn’t mind hitting me foul and then
knocking me around before I could get up. You big stiff!” His tone
brought the blood tingling into Garrity’s freckled face. “I don’t
believe you ever fought fair in all your life. Do you want me to slap
your face again?”
He took a quick step forward, his eyes blazing. Garrity, dazed, yet
furiously angry, flung up one hand—and the fight was on.
As usual, Red lunged forward to get into a clinch. To his amazement he
got an upper cut which drove him backward half a dozen feet where he
scraped painfully against a pine trunk. Wild with pain and rage, he
plunged at his opponent again, to find that this was an altogether
different McBride from the one he thought he knew.
Quick on his feet, cool, competent, the scout seemed to slide out of the
bear-like embrace with ease, landing a smart blow on Red’s chest as he
did so. With a savage growl Garrity pulled up and whirled around. This
time he would surely get him. He came forward more cautiously, muscular
arms outspread. The next thing he knew he struck the ground with a
jarring force which was only partly tempered by the thick bed of pine
needles. Dazed a little, but undeterred, he scrambled up and leaped
forward again.
But somehow Red’s moment never came. Ducking, dodging, feinting,
countering, the smaller fellow simply played with his clumsy opponent.
Not for a moment did he let him rest. Now and then he got in a smashing
blow with all the force of his weight and muscle behind it, which
brought a gasp from Garrity’s wide lips. Constantly he lured the other
on to frantic rushes which took the fellow’s strength and got his wind,
while McBride, with the skill he had gained in these past weeks of work,
expended not even an unnecessary ounce of effort.
At last there came the moment Micky had hoped for. Sweat streaming down
his face and chest, breath coming in loud gasps, Garrity staggered back
from where he had been flung amongst some bushes. As he came slowly, he
swayed a little, and McBride, watching his face narrowly, stiffened. A
little feinting, and then a blow on the jaw with all his strength back
of it, would settle things—would pay for that humiliating experience the
thought of which had rankled in his memory all these weeks.
He took a quick step forward and then he paused. Something in that
strained, white, dogged face before him brought to the scout a sudden
strange sense of repugnance in his task. The fellow was game, all right.
He would not turn tail as long as he could keep his feet and senses. But
that dazed look of bewildered pain in his eyes told its own story of a
suffering which was more than physical. Micky was conscious of a sudden
sense of shame at the purpose in his mind; his arms fell abruptly to his
sides.
“Had enough?” he asked gruffly.
There was a pause. Garrity’s head drooped wearily. “Y—yes,” he mumbled.
In silence they went back to the fire and began to put on their dried
clothing. Not a word was spoken until they were nearly dressed. Then it
was Garrity who broke the silence.
“I—I didn’t say nothing—about your—pulling me out,” he muttered, eyes
fixed on a refractory shoelace.
“You needn’t,” returned McBride briefly, reaching for the haversack
which held the grub he had brought on this solitary hike. “Any scout
would have done the same.”
Red’s glance shifted from the fire to the empty rack of sticks and then
back to McBride’s mussed and wrinkled shirt and breeches. A poignant
memory of those horrible moments in the river made him shiver. He picked
up a narrow strip of bark and began to twist it about his fingers.
“I—I want to tell you—I’m sorry for—for what I’ve said about
the—scouts,” he said presently in a low, embarrassed voice. His head was
lowered and his face flushed. “I—I didn’t understand, I guess. They’re
not—like what I thought they was—”
“I don’t suppose you did,” cut in Micky suddenly. “Why should you?” He
had accomplished what he had set out to do, and with the responsibility
of it gone, he was more like his old easy going, friendly self than he
had been for weeks. And as he looked at Garrity’s downcast, embarrassed
face he realized all at once that the fellow wasn’t wholly bad. In fact
at the moment he found something almost appealing about him. “Nobody
ever does really understand scouts unless they travel around with them
or see a troop working,” he went on impulsively. “You’d better come down
some Friday night and look us over.”
Garrity’s head went up and he stared.
“You—you don’t mean that?”
McBride smiled.
“Why not? Your old friend Conners is in the troop now. He’s going to
join the boxing class next week. Why don’t you come down and see how he
makes out?”
Red’s eyes drooped again. He felt a curious warmth stealing over him.
“Mebbe—I might,” he mumbled.