"D'you think just 'cause you jollied me and made a fool out of me in front of Miss Ellison that I wouldn't be a friend to you? Do you think"--he shouted, losing all control of himself--"that because I didn't know how to talk to you and--and--answer you--like--that I was a-scared of you? Did you think I couldn't find you easy enough? Maybe I'm--maybe I'm thick--but when I get on a trail--there's--there's nothin' can stop me. I got the strength ter strangle _you_--if I wanted to!" he fairly shrieked. Then he subsided from sheer exhaustion. Roscoe Bent had stood watching him as a man might watch a thunderstorm. "You hurt yourself," he said irrelevantly. "It says in a paper," panted Tom, "that--that a man that's afraid to die ain't--fit to live. D'you think I'd leave--I'd let you--stay away and have people callin' you a coward and a--a slacker--and then somebody--those secret service fellows--come and get you? I wouldn't let them get you," he shouted, clutching the tree to steady himself, "'cause I know the trail, I do--I'm a scout--and _I got here first_--I----" His hand slipped from the tree, he reeled and fell to the ground too quick for Roscoe to catch him. "It's--it's all right," he muttered, as Roscoe bent over him. "I ain't hurt.... Roll your coat up tight--you'd know, if you was a scout--and put it under my neck. I--want a drink--of water.... You got to begin right now to-night, Rossie, with the Colors; you got to begin--by--by bein' a Red Cross nurse.... I'm goin' to call you Rossie now--like the fellers in the bank," he ended weakly, "'cause we're friends to each other--kind of." CHAPTER X TOM AND ROSCOE COME TO KNOW EACH OTHER "I don't know what I said," said Tom; "I was kind of crazy, I guess." "I guess I'm the one that was crazy," said Roscoe. "Does your head hurt now?" "Nope. It's a good thick head, that's one sure thing. Once Roy Blakeley dropped his belt-axe on it around camp-fire, and he thought he must have killed me. But it didn't hurt much. Look out the coffee don't boil over." Roscoe Bent looked at him curiously for a few seconds. It was early the next morning, and Tom, after sleeping fairly well in the one rough bunk in the shack, was sitting up and directing Roscoe, who was preparing breakfast out of the stores which he had brought. "I guess that's why I didn't get wise when you first asked me about this place--'cause my head's so thick. Roy claimed he got a splinter from my head. He's awful funny, Roy is.... If I'd 'a' known in time," he added impassively, "I could 'a' started earlier and headed you off. I wouldn't 'a' had to stop to chop down trees." "Why didn't you swim across the brook?" Roscoe asked. "All scouts swim, don't they?" "Sure, but that's where Temple Camp gets its drinking water--from that brook; and every scout promised he wouldn't ever swim in it. It wasn't hard, chopping down the tree." Roscoe gazed into Tom's almost expressionless face with a kind of puzzled look.