Yet, strangely enough, the only eagle that Hervey Willetts thought of now was the eagle which he had driven off—­the bird of prey.  To have killed little Skinny’s hope and dispelled his almost insane joy would have made Hervey Willetts feel just like that eagle which had aroused his wrath and reckless courage.  “Not for mine,” he muttered to himself.  “Slady was right when he said he wasn’t so stuck on eagles.  He’s a queer kind of a duck, Slady is; a kind of a mind reader.  You never know just what he means or what he’s thinking about.  I can’t make that fellow out at all....  I wonder what he meant when he said that a trail sometimes doesn’t come out where you think it’s going to come out....”

Hervey had greatly admired Tom Slade, but he stood in awe of him now.  “Well, anyway,” said he to himself, “he said I’d win the award and I didn’t; so I put one over on him.”  To put one over on Tom Slade was of itself something of a triumph.  “He’s not always right, anyway,” Hervey reflected.

He was aroused from his reflections by little Skinny.  “I followed them from camp,” he said.  “They’re real tracks, ain’t they?  And they’re mine, ain’t they?  Because I found them?  Ain’t they?”

“Bet your life.  I tell you what you do, Alf, old boy.  You just follow them up a little way further toward the mountain and I’ll wait for you here.  Then we can say you did it all by yourself, see?  The handbook says a quarter of a mile or a half a mile, I don’t know what, but you might as well give them good measure.  I can’t remember what’s in the handbook half of the time.”

“You know about good turns, don’t you?”

“’Fraid not, except when somebody reminds me.”

“I’m going to keep you for my friend even if I am a second-class scout, I am,” Skinny assured him.

“That’s right, don’t forget your old friends when you get up in the world.”

“Maybe you’ll get that canoe some day, hey?”

“What canoe is that, Alf?”

“The one for the highest honor; it’s on exhibition in Council Shack.  All the fellows go in to look at it.  A big fellow let me go in with him, ’cause I’m scared to go in there alone.”

“I haven’t been inside Council Shack in three weeks,” Hervey said.  “I don’t know what it looks like inside that shanty.  I’m not strong on exhibitions.  I’ll take a squint at it when we go down.”

“The highest honor, that’s the Eagle award, isn’t it?” Skinny asked.

“I suppose so,” Hervey said; “a fellow can’t get any higher than the top unless he has an airplane.”

“Can he get higher than the top if he has a balloon?” Skinny wanted to know.

“Never you mind about balloons.  What we’re after now is the second-class scout badge, and we’re going to get it if we have to kill a couple of councilmen.”

“Did you ever kill a councilman?”

“No, but I will, if Alf McCord, second-class scout, doesn’t get his badge.  I feel just in the humor.  Go on now, chase yourself up the line a ways and then come back.  I’ll be waiting at the garden gate.”