First I thought it was a ghost, and all the fellows were flabbergasted. It was Skinny standing right near and clutching hold of a tree, and he was all trembling and I thought he was going to fall down. Honest, I never saw anything like the way he looked. His hair was all flying loose and it made him look wild, because it wasn’t cut. And his eyes were all like as if they were on fire.
“I got him,” he said, “I got him—he’s coming. He’s getting—out of—out of his automobile. I got him because I’m—I’m a swamp-rat!” That’s just the way he said it, and he hung onto the tree and his fingers were all thin like an old man’s and the spots were in his cheeks. “He’s coming!” he panted out.
Just then I could see Doctor Winters coming through the trees with a little black bag. He must have left his machine out on the road about a hundred yards away. And I guess Skinny must have jumped out and run in ahead to show him the way. And he just kept saying, “I got him, I got him. Because I’m a swamp-rat—everybody says so—and I know the short cut—now can I have a badge—maybe—sometime? Maybe am I a scout now?”
I just looked at him and it gave me the creeps. Because I knew what he had done. And I remembered now how people called him a dirty swamp-rat. Many a time I’d heard them call him that. _Just a dirty little swamp-rat_. And now, he was sort of proud of it.
First, I couldn’t move and I just couldn’t speak. Then I went up to him and I said—I didn’t care for the doctor or anybody—I said, “Skinny, there’s one fellow here who knows what the marshes are and that’s me. Because I came near getting swallowed up by them.”
“It’s—it’s—short—cut,” he just panted out. “All I want to tell you is,” I said, “there’s not another scout in the whole troop could do it—do you hear! You’re not a swamp-rat, you’re a swamp-_scout_,” I said.
Then I was going to say more, only Skinny seemed as if he was going to fall and the doctor kind of seemed to want me to move away. Anyway, I went over and got Skinny’s belt-axe to carry it home for him.
As soon as the fellows knew for sure that there was nothing much the matter with Westy, they scrambled out of the ditch and all stood around Skinny, praising him up and he was so excited that he didn’t talk straight, but sort of yelled at them. The only ones with Westy were the real doctor and Doc Carson, and Doc was helping him fix the bandages better.