CHAPTER XIX

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.