FACE TO FACE
For a few moments the stranger scrutinized the figure. It moved, and
he seemed relieved.
"That you, Tiny?" he ventured hesitatingly.
"It's--it's _Danny_!" said the other, aghast.
"_Hsh_, not so loud. Yes, it's Danny. I'm in luck."
He stepped across the circle and put his arm around the younger boy.
"What are you doing here--this time of night?" he whispered.
"I was hunting for my compass. They were making fun of me so I came
back alone to hunt for it. Did they--Danny, did they let you out?"
"_Shh_--ut up. No, I gave them the slip. I hiked it all the way
here to see you. I'm on my way--now don't get excited and don't talk
loud."
"You mean--you--mean you _escaped_?"
"Yep, and you're going to pay me back for licking Dick Kinney. Don't
you know how you said you would?"
"Yes, only I'm scared."
"I'm the one to be scared--only I'm not."
"Yes, but Danny," Skinny pleaded as he nervously gripped the other's
shirt with both hands, "listen--Danny--" (he almost pulled the shirt
up over the other's belt in his nervous excitement) "you, you stepped
right in the ashes and now you'll make tracks."
"You little devil of a boy scout," laughed the taller boy in a
good-humored whisper. "Come on, where can we go and talk? This
blamed place sleeps with its ears open."
"Are they--Danny, are they coming after you?" Skinny asked in panic
fright. "Are they coming here, Danny?"
"Not to-night, kid."
"But to-morrow--Danny?"
"I'll be gone before to-morrow."
"Yes, but they'll get you, Danny," Skinny said, jerking in a panic of
fear at the shirt he still gripped. "I know how you licked Dick
Kinney, but----"
"Come ahead, where can we talk, kid?"
"Maybe they don't know you've got a brother here, hey?" Skinny said
hopefully.
"Naah, they don't know that. They're a bunch of yimps."
"Yes, but--all right, come on up this way."
You would never have supposed that the diffident, bashfully smiling
little fellow who had blushed scarlet at the rumpus he had caused at
camp-fire was the same as he who now hurried silently up the wooded
hillside away from the main body of camp, expressing nervous
excitement in every look and move. Little did his scout comrades
know of the fire that burned in the soul of this forlorn little scout
whose quaint discomfiture they so much enjoyed.
"Come on up here," he breathed excitedly, looking fearfully back
toward the area of peril. "Now I'm glad they jollied me--you bet;
I'm glad I went back there. Come on up this way and don't speak when
we go past that cabin. There's a scout in there that's got the one
eye cup. That's for sleeping with one eye open. It don't mean that
exactly--shhh. He's the one makes fun of me, because I didn't have a
scout suit----"
"He'd sleep with both eyes black if I was here," said Danny. This
was quite a boast, but I dare say he would have made it good.
"Hsh, we have to be good and scared of that feller."
It was no wonder that this dubious brother treated Skinny with a kind
of protective kindness. Such an odd, likable, temperamental little
bundle of nerves he seemed, when aroused. It was his fate never to
be at his best in public; his sadder fate to be at his very best with
this fugitive adventurer when secrecy was imperative. A queer little
hobgoblin of a boy he seemed without one single evidence of the scout
in his appearance.
He led the way up the hill till their progress was interrupted by an
old railroad cut, which at that point was so overgrown that it seemed
a natural hollow. Clambering down the side with the aid of trees and
brush, Skinny stood triumphantly beside a tiny shanty which had once
been a shelter for a switchman. It was now quite fallen to pieces,
but its board roof had been propped up, and the dense brush that
tumbled over it effectually concealed it and kept it from leaking too
freely. As a romantic retreat there was much to be said for it.
Skinny had discovered it and made it his own; it was his private
retreat.
Within there was nothing but a shelf and an old red lantern hanging
on a rusty nail. But there was oil inside the lantern which Skinny
had once fetched thither in a tomato can. The smell of this lantern
when lighted was like unto no stench that ever assailed human
nostrils. To this remote refuge Skinny was wont to repair when he
wanted to pretend that he was a pioneer, and when the banter at camp
was too vociferous for him.
The very sight of this place was a relief to Danny, and he perched on
the shelf while Skinny lighted the lantern. "Listen here, Tiny,"
said he. "Do you remember when you was just a little bit of a shaver
and you said I was half a brother----"
"I didn't mean it that way--honest----"
"I know you didn't, you thick little dub. Do you remember how pop
told you I was _half-brother_, not half a brother! Then when Dick
Kinney said you were only about a quarter of a brother and he took
your ball away, do you remember how I landed him one? Knocked him
goofy? And you said you'd pay me back?"
"Sure, I do, Danny, only----"
"Naah, there's no _only_ about it kid. I got a letter from pop and
he said how he sent you fifteen dollars--I got it at Blythedale. He
says when I get out next year he hopes I'll work. Get a picture of
me sticking around a reformatory till next year! Listen, kid, they
had me out fixing a grape-vine over an arbor, tying it up. They even
give me a ball of cord, the poor simps! So listen to what I did. I
picked out a nice long stem of grape-vine--_a nice long one_. Nice
and long--and thick. And that one I didn't wind around the new
arbor; I only laid it nice and easy on top. You'd think it was all
wound up like the other branches and things but it wasn't.
Camouflage! About--oh thirty or forty feet, maybe, of the cord I
rolled up and put in my pocket. Of course those wise guys had to
have their ball of cord back.
"Well--don't get scared. Any one would think it was _you_ doing
this. Well, as----"
"I'm not _scared_, only----"
"Wait till you hear, kid; it's good. It was so easy I'm sorry now I
didn't go and say good-by to Punkhead; he's got charge of my floor."
Skinny's expression seemed to say that he thought it just as well his
half-brother had not done that.
"After supper I did my little job carrying ice in from the ice-house
and dumping it in the box in the outside pantry. Then I went
upstairs with the ice-tongs--don't laugh at them, kid, they're simps.
At Blythedale Home all those managers need is a mother's care."
Skinny was far from laughing at this dreadful recital.
"So I put the ice-tongs under my mattress. Then I stayed awake till
I heard the church clock in Blythedale ring two. Then I tied the
ice-tongs to the cord and dropped it down out of the window and
pulled up the grape-vine and tied it good and fast to the shutter
hinge. Zip goes the fillum. I wrote on a piece of paper, _Get two
hunks of ice to-morrow so you can cool down. So long_. Then I slid
down the grape-vine.
"I had some stuff I kept from my supper and I got as far as Tonley's
Corners before it got light. Then I hid under a lunch wagon that was
all boarded up till last night and then I started hiking again. I
grubbed some eats and got a hitch with a wop in a flivver--he can't
even speak English. So here I am and it's just exactly fifty-one
miles from Blythedale Home to Temple Camp and you're looking great,
kid.
"All I want is that fifteen bucks so I can get a good start. I was
thinking I'd bang down to New York and get a job on a ship. But I
can't chase around in these blamed calico things, I'll get pinched
_sure_. Say, kid, how about that lake; what's on the other side!
Could I get through to Catskill that way without going on a road?
Hsh--_listen_."
"That's only a bird house that kinder creaks in a tree when the wind
blows. Collie Edwards put it there; he's a Star Scout."
"Didn't you hear voices--men?"
"No, it wasn't voices, Danny. Now I'm sorry I bought a scout suit
and some things, because I haven't got that money. I only got eleven
cents of it now--that's all I got."
"You got a suit and things?" Danny asked, aghast.
"Yes, because I never had any and they kept saying how I have to have
one, because I'm a scout. Honest Danny, I'm sorry."
The elder boy sat on the shelf dangling his legs and contemplating
his half-brother in a daze.
"If you're mad I don't blame you, but it isn't my fault," said Skinny.
"Now what am I going to do? _Now_ what in blazes am I going to do?"
was all that Danny could say.
"Could--maybe you could wear the suit," Skinny ventured. "Then
people wouldn't know you got out of a reform school. You can have it
if you want it; anyway, it's too big for me. Curry had to laugh at
me in it. They don't make them like the shape I am."
Something in this last wistful remark touched the brother. Even in
his troubled preoccupation he reached out and ruffled the younger
boy's hair. "Who's Curry? Did you tell him what I did to Kinney for
making fun of you?"
"No, because he's a nice fellow; he's an assistant scoutmaster. They
all kinder laugh at me, but just the same I'm good friends with them."
"I couldn't pay railroad fares with a scout suit, kid."
"Maybe you could hook a ride, you're so smart. I guess you could do
it if you wanted to like the way you do 'most everything. I never
told them about you 'cause I couldn't."
Danny only gazed at him in a kind of blank abstraction. Sometimes
great anxiety finds relief in a trifling, irrelevant act. "Here,"
said he impulsively, "here's a letter I picked up. You better chuck
it on the counter or somewhere. Who's Danville Bently; did you ever
hear of him?"
"There's lots of fellers come here I never heard of," said Skinny.
"Anyway, most of them don't bother with me; even my own patrol
doesn't."
"Well that's a guy that isn't coming," said Danny. "He's giving them
a stall till August. Maybe I might be him, huh?" He laughed at the
absurdity of the idea. "Hide inside of somebody else. Ever hear of
that? Go ahead, read it, it's open."
It was then that Skinny, all in innocence, made a remark much deeper
than his wit had intended. He was great for blundering remarks. His
sober and literal answers were one of the jokes of camp. "You can't
hide inside of a scout if you're not a scout; you can't do that," he
said, looking wide eyed at his half-brother.
Danny reached forward and ruffled his hair again. Skinny was
accustomed to that. It was done to him twenty times a day.