"He's gone!" Bob and Betty stared at each other. For a moment the whole
thing seemed like a dream, and they hated to think of waking up.
"But it _was_ real!" Bob turned the magic button over and over in his
hand, glad to have something left to prove the reality of their new
friend, something they could still see and touch.
"We can't wear that button, though," Betty reminded him. "We've got to
earn it first. What shall we do with it?"
Bob stuck it into his deepest pocket. "I'll hang on to it till Sure Pop
comes back--if he does come back. Oh, hello, Joe!"
Joe Schmidt, a wiry boy of Bob's own age, but fully half a head shorter,
turned around and gazed up at the Daltons' porch.
"Why, hello, Bob! What are you doing?"
"Nothing." Bob ran down the steps and began talking with Joe. In fact,
the two lads were so busy talking that they did not see George Gibson
till he purposely bumped into Joe's back with a sudden "Hey, there! Get
off the walk!"
Joe bristled like a ruffled sparrow. "Let's see you throw me off!" When
George good-naturedly took him at his word, Joe clinched with him and
managed to get a half-Nelson hold on him. Joe always went at things in
dead earnest, anyway. Bob and Betty, laughing and shouting, hopped
gleefully around the swaying wrestlers, Bob yelling encouragement to
George, and Betty yelling just as hard for Joe.
Suddenly--was it just Bob's imagination?--something seemed to give a
wiggle in his pocket--then a warning flop. It must be that magic button!
Bob jumped, gave a snort of surprise, and jammed his hand into his
pocket. What had got into the button anyway?
Then an idea flashed across his mind--perhaps the Safety button was
trying to warn him. To be sure, if the wrestlers went down hard on the
cement sidewalk, it might mean a broken skull! In his hurry to get them
off the walk and over on the grass, Bob lost his head. He made the
mistake of trying to do it by force; he caught hold of George's elbow,
and got a sharp dig in the pit of his stomach for his pains.
"Hey, fellows--danger!" he yelled, when he could catch his breath. "Get
over on the grass--look out!"
His warnings came too late. George, much the bigger of the two, got a
hip-lock on Joe, and, forgetting everything else in his struggle to "lay
him out," gave a sudden heave that sent Joe sprawling on his back. His
head struck the sidewalk with a thud.
That was all. Joe lay like a lump of lead.
"He's _dead_!" screamed Betty wildly. She threw herself at the gasping
George. "You--you've _killed_ him!"
George, puffing and blowing from his struggle, held her at arm's length.
A big policeman suddenly came around the corner. "Here, what's all
this?" he asked sternly, bending over the fallen wrestler.
"He struck on the back of his head," spoke up Bob. "They were
wrestling--just in fun, you know--and Joe struck his head on the
sidewalk. Is--is he dead?"
"Small thanks to you young rascals if he isn't," growled the officer.
"Crazy Indians, wrestling on a cement walk! Where does he live?"
He lifted the limp body in his arms and hurried to the Widow Schmidt's
modest little cottage with the green blinds and the neatly scrubbed
doorstep. George and Bob, feeling very sick, trailed sadly along after
him; they hated to think of the look that would come into the Widow
Schmidt's motherly face. Joe was all she had in the world.
Betty, womanlike, was first to think of the doctor. Almost before the
policeman had reached Joe's side, she was running to the corner drug
store as fast as her feet would carry her. The druggist would know where
to reach a doctor with the least delay--she could telephone.
It seemed ages before the fluttering lids opened and Joe's black eyes
looked out on the world again. "No bones broken," said the doctor at
last. "Half an inch farther to the right or left, though--"
He stopped, but the twins understood. Silently they gripped Joe's hand
as it lay helpless on the bed, nodded to George, and the three tip-toed
out of the hushed little room.
That night, before Bob and Betty went to bed, Sure Pop came back. He
found the twins sitting with their heads together, studying Bob's
_Handbook of Scout-Craft_ as if their lives depended on learning it by
heart in one evening. Bob still lacked a few months of being old enough
to join the Boy Scouts; he had long looked forward to his coming
birthday, but it had never meant so much to him as now.
Sure Pop nodded and smiled as he saw the familiar handbook. "Good work!"
he said. "All true Scouts are brothers, you know. Well, how about the
'three keeps' of the Scout Law? Did you find them as easy as you
thought?"
Bob and Betty grew very red. They did not know what to say.
The Safety Scout saved them the trouble. "Joe's better tonight," he told
them, comfortingly. "I've just come from there, and the doctor says
he'll be up again in a day or so. What shall we do tomorrow,
friends--begin hunting for adventure and planting Safety First ideas?"
Bob looked at Betty and swallowed hard at a lump in his throat. Somehow
this wise little Sure Pop knew everything that happened!
"I think," said Bob, frankly, "we really planted one today!"
_All true Scouts are brothers._
--SURE POP
[Illustration]
[Illustration]