Part 4 (1/2)

Bob jumped, gave a snort of surprise, and jammed his hand into his pocket. What had got into the b.u.t.ton anyway?

Then an idea flashed across his mind--perhaps the Safety b.u.t.ton was trying to warn him. To be sure, if the wrestlers went down hard on the cement sidewalk, it might mean a broken skull! In his hurry to get them off the walk and over on the gra.s.s, Bob lost his head. He made the mistake of trying to do it by force; he caught hold of George's elbow, and got a sharp dig in the pit of his stomach for his pains.

”Hey, fellows--danger!” he yelled, when he could catch his breath. ”Get over on the gra.s.s--look out!”

His warnings came too late. George, much the bigger of the two, got a hip-lock on Joe, and, forgetting everything else in his struggle to ”lay him out,” gave a sudden heave that sent Joe sprawling on his back. His head struck the sidewalk with a thud.

That was all. Joe lay like a lump of lead.

”He's _dead_!” screamed Betty wildly. She threw herself at the gasping George. ”You--you've _killed_ him!”

George, puffing and blowing from his struggle, held her at arm's length.

A big policeman suddenly came around the corner. ”Here, what's all this?” he asked sternly, bending over the fallen wrestler.

”He struck on the back of his head,” spoke up Bob. ”They were wrestling--just in fun, you know--and Joe struck his head on the sidewalk. Is--is he dead?”

”Small thanks to you young rascals if he isn't,” growled the officer.

”Crazy Indians, wrestling on a cement walk! Where does he live?”

He lifted the limp body in his arms and hurried to the Widow Schmidt's modest little cottage with the green blinds and the neatly scrubbed doorstep. George and Bob, feeling very sick, trailed sadly along after him; they hated to think of the look that would come into the Widow Schmidt's motherly face. Joe was all she had in the world.

Betty, womanlike, was first to think of the doctor. Almost before the policeman had reached Joe's side, she was running to the corner drug store as fast as her feet would carry her. The druggist would know where to reach a doctor with the least delay--she could telephone.

It seemed ages before the fluttering lids opened and Joe's black eyes looked out on the world again. ”No bones broken,” said the doctor at last. ”Half an inch farther to the right or left, though--”

He stopped, but the twins understood. Silently they gripped Joe's hand as it lay helpless on the bed, nodded to George, and the three tip-toed out of the hushed little room.

That night, before Bob and Betty went to bed, Sure Pop came back. He found the twins sitting with their heads together, studying Bob's _Handbook of Scout-Craft_ as if their lives depended on learning it by heart in one evening. Bob still lacked a few months of being old enough to join the Boy Scouts; he had long looked forward to his coming birthday, but it had never meant so much to him as now.

Sure Pop nodded and smiled as he saw the familiar handbook. ”Good work!”

he said. ”All true Scouts are brothers, you know. Well, how about the 'three keeps' of the Scout Law? Did you find them as easy as you thought?”

Bob and Betty grew very red. They did not know what to say.

The Safety Scout saved them the trouble. ”Joe's better tonight,” he told them, comfortingly. ”I've just come from there, and the doctor says he'll be up again in a day or so. What shall we do tomorrow, friends--begin hunting for adventure and planting Safety First ideas?”

Bob looked at Betty and swallowed hard at a lump in his throat. Somehow this wise little Sure Pop knew everything that happened!

”I think,” said Bob, frankly, ”we really planted one today!”

_All true Scouts are brothers._ --SURE POP

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