“Why, I may be all right, and able to sprint in another half hour,” smiled Dick.

“Yes, you will!” jeered Greg.  “Dick, you won’t run for a few days to come, anyway.”

“A nice lot we are, to set out to aid the law’s officers,” remarked Dave disgustedly.  “Dick can take only a half a step per minute.  Mr. Valden can use only one hand.  Greg’s head looks gory.  The lot of us couldn’t scare a baby now!”

“I can still say, boo!” Prescott laughed.

“Is it wise to try to do so much walking?” questioned Darry, as Greg went back to the creek to wash the blood from the shallow cut on his forehead.

“Yes; for I don’t want to grow stiff until I’m where I can take care of myself,” Dick answered, taking a few more steps.  “No; don’t help me.  I want to move alone, and I’m strong enough for that.”

So Dave threw himself on the grass to rest until he bethought himself that, wet as they all were, it might be a good idea to build a fire for drying purposes.

He busied himself in that way, while Dick started slowly, very painfully, down the road.  Only a step at a time could he go.  Greg, returning, ran after him, but Prescott sent him back, so Holmes stretched himself on the ground near the fire.

At times Dick found he could move about very easily.  Then the hip would stiffen and he would be obliged to lean against a tree for a few moments.

For ten minutes or longer he moved thus down the road.

“I’d better be getting back soon, I guess,” he mused, “or I may find it too much of a job.”

Looking back, as he turned, he could just make out the glow of the fire, very dim, indeed, from where he stood.

“I’ve got a beacon,” smiled Dick, as he rested against a tree trunk just off the road.  He was about to take a step when a figure glided stealthily by.

“By all that’s astonishing, it’s Tag Mosher!” Prescott gasped.  He clutched at the tree trunk again, watching, for Tag had halted and appeared to be peering hard through the foliage at the fire some distance away.

“I wouldn’t want him to find me, now!” thought Dick, a cold chill running over him at the thought of Tag’s desperate savagery.

But at that moment Prescott accidentally made a sound, which, slight though it was, caught young Mosher’s ear.

In a twinkling Tag wheeled about, listening, peering.  Then, straight toward Prescott he came.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” demanded young Mosher harshly.

“Yes,” Prescott admitted, speaking as steadily as he could, though his heart sank for the moment.  He knew that Tag would have time to give him a beating that would be doubly severe in his present condition of weakness and pain.  That beating could be given in a few swift seconds, and the help within reach of Dick’s voice could not arrive until young Mosher had had time to slip away among the trees of the forest that he knew so well.  “What do you want with me?” demanded Tag, bringing his leering face closer to Prescott’s.