But I'm going to tell you straight just what happened.
Well, I decided that I'd rather have another fellow with me, because that's a good rule in tracking and anyway two fellows are better than one.

And anyway, I knew he could hold a track longer than I could.

He got the pathfinder's badge for one of the best tracking stunts that was ever done up at Temple Camp and he's done enough tracking stunts to win it two or three times over.

He's a fiend on tracking.
By now I knew that the fellows would all be coming down to the boat club landing to work on the houseboat, because we had it fixed that they would all be there by nine o'clock.

I wasn't going to flunk on that, you can bet, but I thought if I told them about the footprint they'd let Westy and me off for a little while, because if a scout is after a merit badge he can usually get leave all right.