Gee whiz, I can be sober when I have to. I could see all right enough that we had a chance to do something big. I wasn’t going to start fooling about it. I knew if old Mr. Bagley’s last will was in that chasm and we could find it,oh boy, there would be some excitement. His son would get all that land that Temple Camp wanted and he would sell it to Mr. Temple. You can see wherewewould fit in—oh boy! Talk about good turns!
“There are only two things bothering me,” I said.
“There are six things bothering me,” Dub said, “and all of themwhen are we going to eat and if so, what?”
“Those are the same twenty things that are bothering me,” Sandy said.
I said, “Pee-wee can’t even speak, he’s starving to death.”
All of a sudden the kid piped up, “The reason I don’t speak is because I’m disgusted—”
“Good,” I said, “I hope you’ll be disgusted for the rest of your life.”
“If I kept on going around with you I’d be disgusted twice at the same time,” he said.
“Fancy that,” I said to him. “If you don’t like going around with us, you can go my way and I’ll go yours.”
“You start out in the morning,” he shouted, “without any lunch and look where we are now, with no village anywhere around and nothing to eat.”
“Do you expect me to get a village and bring it here?” I asked him. “Is it my fault there isn’t any village here? Did I make the map of the Catskill Mountains? I’ll leave it to Dub. We’re having a fine hike with detours. What are you kicking about?”
“I can’t eat detours!” the kid shouted.
“Well you couldn’t eat a village either,” I said; “so what are you talking about?”
“Will you fellows listen?” Dub said. “For just two seconds will you listen? We’ve got a big chance, haven’t we? We’ve got a chance to do something that will knock Temple Camp off its feet. Suppose we can find that will! First will somebody please tell me what one of those dispatch containers is like. I’d like to know whether one would last all this while—whether it would be preserved.”
“If you’re talking about preserves,” I said, “you’d better ask Pee-wee. He knows all about preserves.”
“Are you going to be serious when there’s a real mystery or not?” the kid yelled. “Now we’ve got a chance to do something, are you going to have some sense or not? Are we going to get something to eat I don’t know how, and are we going to try to find that oilskin cover or whatever you call it, or are we just going to stay here talking crazy and acting like fools—which?”
“We are going to plan our campaign at once, ain’t it,” I told him. “The answer is no we do,by an unanimous minority.”
“Listen,” said Sandy, kind of sober like. “It’s noon-time and we thought that by this time we’d be at a village or some place or other. We’ve got a chance to do something big. Are we just going to fool around or what? I’d like to hunt for that thing, only we’ve got to have something to eat, that’s sure.”
“It’s even more than sure, it’s absolutely positive,” Pee-wee piped up.
I said, “All right then, listen—”
“Are you going to be serious?” Pee-wee shouted.
“Now listen,” I said, “and no more fooling. Hunting for that thing means work. You don’t think we can go down there and just pick it up, do you? All right then. How about eats? There are a lot of things to be considered if we’re going to do this and what we need first of all is a leader—”
“I thought you were going to say that,” Pee-wee shouted.
“You wanted me to be serious, didn’t you?” I said. “All right then, listen. I’m willing to hunt for that oilskin container, only if we do we’re going to do it right. We’re going to start out like Columbus did, only different.”
“There you go,” Pee-wee shouted.
“All right,” I said. “We’re at Beaver Chasm, aren’t we. And it’s time for lunch. We’re about two miles from Bagley Center and we’re about five miles from camp. How long can we hold out without eats?”
“Maybe five minutes,” Dub said.
“Maybe three at a pinch,” Sandy said.
“I can’t hold out at all,” Pee-wee piped up; “not even at a pinch.”
“A fine lot of Scouts!” I said. “Now I’ll show you what a fine Scout I am. The brook down there in the chasm has run dry but there will be water standing in pools between the rocks and all places like that. Further along is a place they call the Giant’s Basin—all rock. There will be water in there, I bet you. And that’s just where all the fish go when the brook runs dry. I bet in places down there we’ll be able to scoop them up in our hands—please shut up till I finish.”
“This is what I say let’s do. Let’s go down in the chasm and find a hollow place where some fish are and let’s scoop some up and cook them—I’ve got some matches.”
“I can even get a light from the sun,” Pee-wee said, all excited.
“The sun is too far to go for a light,” I told him. “Even if you went scout pace you wouldn’t get back in time for lunch. After we’ve had something to eat—”
“That shows you how we’ve got resources,” Pee-wee said. He was talking for the benefit of Dub and Sandy because they were new fellows at camp.
“Sure,” I said, “and we can fry some resources or boil them in ice water. I say let’seatand after that let’s hike back to camp and get permission to start out again to-morrow and camp for a couple of days in the chasm. We can bring a tent and some provisions and everything and we won’t say anything to any one why we’re going to do it and if we find that oilskin container we’ll be the big noise at Temple Camp. Now that’s the way I say to do. We’ll go back this afternoon and get ready for to-morrow and you fellows can leave it to me about getting permission to come back and camp here.”
“Do you promise you won’t let any other Scouts in on it?” Pee-wee asked me, all excited. “Now’s our chance, if we only keep still!”
I had to laugh, Pee-wee talking about keeping still.
I guess you’re in a hurry for the next day to come, but anyway you’ll have to wait till after we’ve had our lunch because we were good and hungry. Mostly I have eats come between the chapters so as you won’t be interrupted. Oh boy, the things that happen between the chapters are even more than the things that happen in the chapters. Between chapters we have ice cream cones and everything, but they’re not a part of the story.
It was nice and dim down there in the chasm. We couldn’t go down the side, so we went to the end where it sloped down sort of and we went in the way the brook does—I mean the way it comes out. Only then there wasn’t any brook. It was all rocks in the chasm. I guess that chasm is about a half a mile long. Where it’s widest there is grass growing but everywhere else there are rocks. When there’s any water in there it kind of wriggles in and out among the rocks.
Just like I thought, there was water in the Giant’s Basin. That’s a deep pool made by rocks. It was full of killies, just like I knew it would be. Because when the brook dried up the fish would have to go where there was water. They were all crowded in it and we could scoop them up in our hands—jiminies it was easy. We found an old tin dipper that I guess used to be used to drink out of and we hammered it flat with a stone so it was kind of like a frying-pan. Then we started a fire and I fried killies and they were good. Sandy kept cleaning them with his knife while I kept frying them and Dub kept getting wood for the fire. I bet you can guess what Pee-wee was doing—honest that kid could cause a shortage in the Atlantic Ocean. You have to eat a lot of killies but that’s easy.
Afterward I took a long stick and felt around on the bottom of the pool. There were other places like that pool, only not so big. There were lots of crevices between rocks too. All of a sudden I began to think we did stand a pretty good chance of finding that lost will. Because I’ll tell you why. If the dispatch container fell out of the old man’s pocket into the water it would have been carried along and most likely get wedged in somewhere between rocks. Or else it might get into one of those pools. I didn’t bother my head thinking how the wallet or whatever you call it, got out of the old man’s pocket because I believed it fell out before his coat was taken off. And I didn’t worry about how his coat happened to be off, either.
I said, “To tell you the honest truth the only thing that makes me think we won’t find anything is because Pee-wee is mixed up in it. You fellows don’t know because you’ve never been up to camp before, but Pee-wee is the big hero of about three million things that never happened. I’m sorry it wasn’t him that tried to start the world war because then it never would have happened. You see how the wind died down when we started out on a windmeter hike. But if it wasn’t for Pee-wee I’d think we might find that oil-can or oil container or whatever you call it. It looks good to me. Only there’s no use hunting around. We ought to come and camp here a couple of days or so and work spasmodically—”
“You mean systematically!” Pee-wee yelled.
“What difference does it make what I mean?” I shot back at him. “It’s actions that count, not meanings—I’ll leave it to Dub. We’ve got to go to work under deficient leadership—or sufficient or inefficient, I don’t care.”
All of a sudden Pee-wee went up in the air. “Are you going to have some sense or not?” he shouted. “Now we’ve got a chance to find a paper that will fix it so Mr. Bagley can sell all that woods to Temple Camp and every newspaper in the United States will have pictures of us how we found a lost will and maybe I bet even that woods will be named after us even! And all you can do is to keep on fooling about it, you think it’s a joke to not get some property that you ought to get, you’re such a big fool always laughing and talking a lot of nonsensical nonsense! Do you think that’s the way to discover something serious?”
“I don’t want to discover anything serious,” I said.
“That’s because you’re a Silver Fox,” the kid yelled, “and they’re all the same only you’re worse than any of them and they ought to be named the Laughing Hyenas!”
By that time Dub and Sandy were laughing so hard they couldn’t speak. Dub was lying on his back kicking his legs.
I said, “This has gone far enough. We shall find that will, say no more.”
So then we all started for Temple Camp and on the way there we were good and serious about what we were going to do, because I could see we had a chance to do a pretty big stunt. We all said we wouldn’t tell anybody why we were going to camp in Beaver Chasm, so nobody would come there, because in Temple Camp,oh boy, they’re a snoopy bunch. After supper that night I went in Administration Shack and got permission for the four of us to camp in Beaver Chasm for three days—that’s the most you can get permission for unless a scoutmaster goes along. They give you an eats ticket; it’s a requisition slip, that’s what it really is, only we call it an eats ticket. Then you take that to the cooking shack and Chocolate Drop (he’s cook) gives you enough food to last for the time you’re going to be away. But he always gives more than you need. We had to come home late the third day so he gave us enough so we could cook eight meals—coffee and beans and egg powder and Indian meal (I make flapjacks out of that) and canned pineapple and salmon and crackers and, oh gee, all kinds of stuff. Chocolate too. And dandy bacon.
We got a tent from the commissary and four army cots. We could have made hemlock beds, that’s easy, only you can carry things in army cots by carrying them like stretchers. Two of them we carried rolled up and the other two open and full of things. Pee-wee was all dressed up like a Christmas tree or a hardware store or something, with his belt-axe and his aluminum frying-pan and his scout-knife and his compass all hanging from his belt. He didn’t bother about his windmeter. He sounded like a freight train when he walked.
We started out early in the morning—that’s two starts for this story. In most stories you get only one start. But in this story you get two starts and a lot of different endings. This time we didn’t go up through the woods because on account of all the things we had to carry. There’s too much brush in the woods and not even a trail in most places. So we went along the shore of the lake where there’s a path and all the Scouts thought we were going camping around the lake. That was one good thing to throw them off the scent. Then we turned north where the brook is, and you better look at the map. There’s a good path right beside the brook and we followed it till we came to the woods trail, the same way that old Mr. Bagley went home the day he didn’t get there. It was pretty easy walking along that trail to the chasm. So that’s how we got there.
We picked out a peach of a place in the chasm and put up our tent there and built a fireplace out of stones. Oh boy, it was nice where we camped. We put the tent right close to one side of the chasm where the wall was almost straight up and down. We were good and tired so we just sprawled around getting rested till lunch time, and after that we said we’d start hunting. Where the side of the chasm went up there was a kind of a shelf, all rocks, and Pee-wee sat on that. Dub and Sandy and I sat on rocks on the ground. It was so rocky around there that even there was a big flat rock inside the tent, we put the tent up around it and we used the rock for a dining table.
Sandy was feeling kind of silly, I guess we all were, and he said, “Did we put that flat rock in the tent, or didn’t we?”
Dub said, “If we did we can claim to be pretty strong to put a rock the size of that one inside the tent. Most fellows couldn’t even lift it.” Pee-wee almost fell off his royal throne. “That shows the two of you are getting to be as crazy as Roy,” he shouted.
I said, “Silence! Those are harsh words, Scout Harris. What Dub says is perfectly true. It’s an interesting question in natural science—”
“You make me sick with your natural silence, I mean science!” he shouted.
I said, “I accept your apology for using the wordsilence. I never thought you knew there was such a word. But you’re wrong as I usually never am. If that rock is in the tent, we are the ones who put it there—deny it if you can. If we didn’t put the rock in the tent, then how did the tent get outside the rock? It’s as clear as mud, I’ll leave it to Sandy.”
By that time Dub and Sandy were both laughing because they had Pee-wee and me started.
I said, very sober like, “We can claim that we lifted a rock weighing about a quarter of a ton because we put it in that tent andwe did not have a derrick. Therefore by the same line of reasoning we’re stronger than mustard. Am I right?”
“Sure you are,” Dub said.
“You couldn’t be righter,” Sandy said.
I said, “Now I have a peach of an idea and it will cause a great sensation in scout circles throughout the civilized world—”
“You think you’re smart using big words,” Pee-wee shouted.
I said, “As long as you have your camera with you, Dub, we’ll let Pee-wee take our pictures standing on the rock inside the tent and we’ll write underneath it,Picture shows three Boy Scouts standing on huge rock which they put inside camping tent without the aid of a derrick. Then we’ll send it toBoys’ Magazineand they’ll print it. What do you say?”
“It’s a fine idea,” Dub said.
“We ought to have our coats off showing our sinewy arms,” Sandy said.
“Maybe we can even get the Pathé Weekly to send and take pictures of us,” I said. “Where’s your camera anyway?”
“Do you think you can get me to take a picture of a lie?” Pee-wee started. “So you can get famous for what you didn’t do.No sireeeeee!”
“Do you claim we didn’t put that rock in the tent—without the aid of a derrick?” I asked him. “That shows how much you know about comparative logic.”
“It shows how much I know about not being a big fool and a big bluff,” he screamed.
“Oh I know a better idea,” I said, “and it’s absolutely, positively honorable—it’s even guaranteed for one year. We’ll stand Pee-wee on the rock with his coat off and his arms folded kind of like a gladiator and a fierce scowl on his face. Then we’ll take his picture and we’ll write on it,Boy Scout of superhuman strength! He is standing on the huge rock which he put inside the tent by his own tremendous scout prowess. Write and ask him how he did it.”
Oh boy!I’m sorry we ever did that crazy thing because we’ve been getting letters from Boy Scouts ever since. But jiminies, I had to laugh. We stripped Pee-wee to the waist and stood him on the rock inside the tent with his arms folded and a scowl all over his face. We made him look like a gladiator. Then we raised up one side of the tent so as to get plenty of light and we took a dandy picture of him standing on the flat rock. Afterward we got some printed in Catskill and I pasted one on a card and I typed some stuff on the card with the typewriter in Administration Shack. I’m so strong I can use a typewriter with one hand. It said:
YOUNG HERCULES HARRISBOY SCOUT.
YOUNG HERCULES HARRIS
BOY SCOUT.
WHO WITHOUT THE AID OF A DERRICK OR EVENA CROWBAR SUCCEEDED IN PLACING THE HUGEROCK INSIDE THE TENT. ASK HOW HE DID IT.ROY BLAKELEY—SCOUT SCRIBE OF1ST BRIDGEBORO, N. J. TROOP.CABIN L, TEMPLE CAMP.
WHO WITHOUT THE AID OF A DERRICK OR EVENA CROWBAR SUCCEEDED IN PLACING THE HUGEROCK INSIDE THE TENT. ASK HOW HE DID IT.ROY BLAKELEY—SCOUT SCRIBE OF1ST BRIDGEBORO, N. J. TROOP.CABIN L, TEMPLE CAMP.
WHO WITHOUT THE AID OF A DERRICK OR EVEN
A CROWBAR SUCCEEDED IN PLACING THE HUGE
ROCK INSIDE THE TENT. ASK HOW HE DID IT.
ROY BLAKELEY—SCOUT SCRIBE OF1ST BRIDGEBORO, N. J. TROOP.CABIN L, TEMPLE CAMP.
ROY BLAKELEY—SCOUT SCRIBE OF1ST BRIDGEBORO, N. J. TROOP.CABIN L, TEMPLE CAMP.
ROY BLAKELEY—SCOUT SCRIBE OF
1ST BRIDGEBORO, N. J. TROOP.
CABIN L, TEMPLE CAMP.
Dub and Sandy and I tacked that picture on the bulletin-board at Temple Camp and a Scout came and asked me how Pee-wee ever did it.
“That’s easy,” I said. “He put the tent up over the rock. No sooner said than stung.”
I think it was that fellow that sent the picture toBoys’ Magazine. Anyway, pretty soon letters began coming to me asking how any Boy Scout could lift such a rock and ever since then I’ve been sending postal cards to Scouts all over the country telling them and it’s getting to be no joke because, jiminy crinkums, don’t you suppose I’ve got anything to do with my money but buy postage stamps? I can’t even get a new tennis racket and I had to stop eating ice cream cones. So please stop writing to me because now you know how it is. Write to Pee-wee and address him care of the cooking shack—that’s where he usually hangs out. I’m through answering letters.
I made flipflops for lunch and Pee-wee ate eleven of them. Dub ate seven. Sandy said he could eat them as fast as I could make them, but I was four ahead of him when he stopped. So then we each took one. That made twelve for Pee-wee. He wanted one more but I said it would be bad luck.
We had bad luck anyway. We dug around all afternoon in all the crevices and places and we drained out that pool and poked all around between the rocks in the bottom of it. We couldn’t find any oilskin container. We turned over lots of rocks in the bed of the brook and looked underneath to see if anything might have got wedged there. Wherever two rocks were close together we pried them apart. We found lots of things that had got caught when they were floating down the stream, pieces of wood and things like that. And we felt all around at the roots of bushes that were under water when the brook was running. One place, in a crevice between two rocks, we found a whistle made out of willow wood. It was so dry the bark curled right off it. I said I guessed it came from Temple Camp. But Sandy saidno, because the brook flowed into Black Lake. Maybe some kid away up in the mountains made that whistle and lost it in the brook, hey?
We kept on hunting till suppertime and then I fried bacon and we roasted potatoes and Pee-wee’s face got all blackened up eating them. So I opened a can of soup so he could get the black off his face and that only made his face worse—honest he looked like a coal-bin. There was a spring and we got water from that. There was a cross cut in the rock over it and Pee-wee said it was an Indian sign. Dub said, “Maybe the last of the Mohegans are camping around here.”
“Sure,” I said, “maybe there’s a tribe of Indian motorcycles parked up the line. Wherever Pee-wee goes he sees Indian signs. Once he saw some Indian meal in the street and he thought a tribe of Indians had passed through. He thinks a hotel reservation is where Indians live. I can tell you what that cross means,” I said, “and you want to remember it wherever you hike around these parts. It means the water in that spring has been tested and it’s all right. That cross was put there by a savage tribe of doctors. Pee-wee knows all about signs. He went to night school and he can even read them in the dark.”
I had to laugh at the kid, he was sitting there with his face all blackened up, munching an apple. I said, “Are you sure you had enough to eat? Pretty soon it will be dark and then you won’t be able to find your mouth any more.”
“You think you’re smart showing off in front of new fellers,” the kid said. He could hardly speak, he was having such a mortal combat with a big bite of apple.
“If you took smaller bites they wouldn’t be so big,” I told him. “You ought to take your bites in two sections, then you’d think you were eating two apples—don’t answer till convenient.”
“Ythnkersmartdontyer,” Pee-wee munched at me.
“Explain all that,” I said. “Do you know Pee-wee’s favorite word?” I asked Dub and Sandy. “Troopbecause it rhymes withsoup. Look out now, he’s going to speak.”
“Do you mean to say Indians were never around here?” the kid shouted. “Didn’t Uncle Jeb even find an old arrow in the woods?”
“It was an old Pierce-Arrow,” I said. “Pee-wee is so dumb he thinks an especially fine ford across a stream is called a Lincoln—take your time and answer, pronouncing each word distinctly.”
“Do you know what he said?” Pee-wee screamed at Dub and Sandy. “He has to be so smart with new fellers at camp he told Harold Titus that a tomahawk is a male bird and Harold Titus wrote it down in his scout record book. I’m warning you to be careful because you’re new fellers and the first thing you know he’ll make fools of you like when he told even a little lame tenderfoot that Robin Hood is a bird’s hat, you can ask Westy Martin in his own patrol and even worse he told another little feller—”
“We’ll wait while you take a bite,” I said.
“I can eat and talk too!” the kid shouted. “Even he told another tenderfoot that the rule that says you have to hike one mile and back means that you have to come back backwards and that tenderfoot tried to do it and he slipped and hurt his kneecap—”
“That’s no place to wear a cap,” Dub said.
“Absolutely right,” I spoke up gallantly.
“He hurt himself in three places,” the kid yelled.
“He should keep out of such places,” Sandy said.
“Absolutely positively correct the first time,” I said. “A true Scout wouldn’t go to such places—I leave it to Dub.”
“What places are you talking about?” Pee-wee yelled.
“Any places,” I said. “What’s the difference? As for that tenderfoot or tender knee or whatever he was, his name was Piker, he was so mean that when the flag was raised he only gave two cheers. Anyway what’s that got to do with Indians? Whenever Pee-wee can’t answer an argument he takes a big bite of his apple—it’s a cinch.”
By that time it was dark and we were just getting ready to start a little camp-fire when all of a sudden the kid said, “Look!”
“Is it Indians?” I asked him.
“Shh—look!” he said. “There’s a light way down in the other end of the chasm.”
We all looked, and jiminy crinkums if he wasn’t right. Away far down at the other end we could see a little light shining. I guess maybe that was a half a mile away.
“That’s blamed funny,” I said. “I wonder what that is.”
“It’s human beings,” Pee-wee said in a kind of a scared whisper.
“I never heard of anybody camping in here,” I said. Dub and Sandy just looked. We were all good and surprised. It was just a teeny little light, away off, but it had us guessing.
Sandy said, “I don’t just like to turn in for the night without knowing who that is.”
“You’re right,” I said.
“What’s the difference?” Dub said.
“The difference is I’m going to find out who it is,” Pee-wee said. “I’m going to sneak up and find out. Do you think I’m going to sleep in this chasm with bandits, maybe? Maybe it’s those same bandits that robbed the post office in Warnerville the other night.”
I said, “It’s too bad you threw away the core of your apple, you might need it to throw at them.”
But Dub and Sandy didn’t laugh, they just kept gazing down through the dark chasm at that little light. Seeing it there kind of made the chasm seem even more dark and spooky. I wouldn’t have minded so much if there was some one else in the chasm only, gee whiz, I wanted to know who it was. A light isn’t always so cheerful—sometimes it’s kind of scary.
The fire was already started so I said I’d go with Pee-wee while Dub and Sandy stayed and tended to it. Because there’s a rule that you must never leave a fire, no matter where, without somebody to watch it.
When Pee-wee and I are alone we never have any mortal comebacks. That’s one thing I’ll say about him, he gets excited but he never stays mad. He’s the biggest enemy I’ve got among all my special friends. It was good and dark walking through the chasm. You have to go over rocks and through brush and you don’t get along very fast.
I said, “If it turns out to be somebody camping, remember don’t say anything about why we’re camping here—don’t say anything about the will or anything Mr. Bagley told us.”
“Yes but maybe he might have told somebody else too,” Pee-wee said.
I said no I didn’t think so, because he seemed to like us and he kind of gave us the job.
“Even if we make friends with them we’ll keep it a secret, hey?” the kid said. “Because I think we’re going to find that thing, hey?”
“Sure, we’ve got all to-morrow and most of the next day to hunt,” I said. “And don’t worry, because if Mr. Bagley told anybody else, they wouldn’t be camping down at the other end of the chasm.”
After a little while we came near enough to see that the light was in a funny kind of a tent, I suppose you’d call it. It was up against the side of the chasm—it was slanting from the side of the chasm to the ground. We stopped about two or three hundred feet away from it. As near as I could make out the cloth was fixed to the side of the chasm and went down over a couple of poles. It was like a lean-to shelter only there was so much canvas it went right down to the ground. A lean-to hasn’t got any sides but this had sides and you couldn’t see inside it. All we could see was a bright spot on the canvas where the light was inside.
scouts see at a bright spot on a tent wallALL WE COULD SEE WAS A BRIGHT SPOT ON THE CANVAS.
ALL WE COULD SEE WAS A BRIGHT SPOT ON THE CANVAS.
“They’re not Scouts anyway,” I said.
“What’s that on top of the thing?” Pee-wee whispered to me.
Honest, I couldn’t make out that crazy tent at all. We went a little closer and stopped short when I stepped on a twig. Gee williger, that twig sounded like a cannon when it broke, it was so dark and quiet all around.
“Shall we go on our hands and knees?” Pee-wee asked in my ear.
“No, just stand here a minute and don’t move your feet,” I said. “There are all dried leaves and brittle twigs under us. If I start to run you do the same.”
“And I won’t sneeze either, hey?” the kid said.
“You stay where you are,” I told him.
I went ahead a little bit, close enough so I could see that shelter better. It hadmeguessing. As near as I could make out there were branches laid all over the canvas—I mean on top. I didn’t know why any one would want to do that. The whole thing looked sort of like a thatch roof sticking out from the rocky wall, with canvas hanging down to the ground on the side where I was. It was a blamed crazy looking outfit, I’ll say that. Maybe it was meant to be camouflaged, that’s what I thought. I wasn’t going to go marching up to it, you bet.
Even I took off my sneaks before I went back to Pee-wee so I could feel the twigs with my bare feet and wouldn’t make a sound by breaking them. All of a sudden I heard a kind of a rustling sound but I guess it was only a bird.
“Come back a little,” I said to Pee-wee, “and be careful how you walk.”
“I’ve got my shoes off already,” the kid whispered, “and I tied the laces together and I’ve got the shoes hung around my neck—that’s the way Scouts used to do. And if you keep your mouth shut then you’ll be sure to keep from sneezing.” I had to laugh. “Well, you keep your mouth shut,” I said.
When we got a little further away from the place we stopped and I said, “That’s the darnedest, funniest thingIever saw. It looks like a pigpen with tent sides to it. The top is all covered with brush. That would never keep it from leaking. What do you suppose is the idea? Maybe it’s meant to be disguised—what do you say?”
Pee-wee grabbed hold of me and pushed his mouth tight against my ear and whispered, “I bet you it’s those bandits that robbed the post office, I bet you it is! And I’m going to find out.”
“You’re going to do nothing of the kind,” I said. “If it’s robbers, or even tramps, we better keep away. Come ahead back to our tent—we’ll find out to-morrow.”
“Do you think I’m a quitter?” Pee-wee said. “Do you think I can’t sneak up there without making any sound? Didn’t I stalk a rabbit and he never knew it till another rabbit told him? You wait here and hold my shoes. Now we’ve got a dandy mystery—it’s a good mysterious one.”
“All right,” I said, “but for the love of goodness be careful. When you come back, how can you tell where to find me in the dark? I tell you the way we’ll do. I’ll—shh—”
“What is it?” he said.
“I thought I heard a sound,” I told him. “This is the way I’ll do—shh—I’ll keep close in by the wall and you come along close to it, then you’ll be sure to find me. I know a place where we can scramble up if we have to and get out of the chasm. And look out you don’t make any sound. I don’t know who’s there, but the place has gotmeguessing.”
One thing I’ll say for Pee-wee, he can make the loudest noise with his mouth and the smallest noise with his feet of any Scout I ever knew. He’s sure one little fiend when it comes to stalking—grasshoppers, crickets, field-mice and everything he stalks. And believe me, you just try to stalk a field-mouse, you just try it. But just the same I felt kind of scary waiting for him. I picked my way along the rocky wall till I came to the place where we could make a short cut out if we had to. It was a kind of wide crevice where you could scramble up.
I kept waiting and waiting, and he didn’t come back. Then I began thinking what I would do if he didn’t come back at all. Gee whiz, bandits these days, they don’t care what they do. I was kind of sorry I let Pee-wee go. All of a sudden there he was. And even in the dark I could see he looked good and scared.
Pee-wee was so excited he could hardly speak. “We don’t have to hurry,” he said, “because nobody saw me—I didn’t make a sound. Listen, it’s bandits! I crept around to the other side of the place and there isn’t any canvas there at all. The top is all covered with brush like you said and underneath there’s a couple of blankets where people sleep.Listen—there are pistols—three of them—one great big one—Isawthem. And I saw a mask or something like bandits use—black. Even a shotgun I saw—listen—there’s nobody in there now, but you can bet I didn’t wait.”
“Are you sure you’re not dreaming?” I asked him.
“Do you think I don’t know a dream when I see one?” he said. “Do you call a shotgun and pistols and a burglar’s mask all things like that a dream? And you needn’t say that it’s somebody hunting because this isn’t the hunting season so you needn’t say it. And nobody ever goes camping like that—nosireeee. I know who’s hiding there all right. It’s those bandits that robbed the post office in Warnerville and we can get the reward and I’m the one that wanted to sneak up and you said no, so that shows how much you don’t know—it’s good I didn’t do like you said because now you got the proof I didn’t get killed. And I bet this cleft is where they came down, too. We’d better get away from here.”
“I guess you’re right,” I said.
“Oh boy, that’s some discovery!” he said. “It’s even almost better than finding that will. And anyway I’m elected leader now because I discovered them so I’m going to be the one to say what we’ll do.”
I said, “It was a very exciting election, I’ll say that. All right, kid, come ahead back. I guess you win to-night. What are we going to do about it?”
He said, all excited, “To-morrow morning early we’re going to go to Bagley Center and tell the police—that’s the nearest village. Oh boy, we’ll get the reward because I saw a bulletin in the Catskill Post Office and I think it’s a thousand dollars, anyway there were a lot of naughts—”
“Maybe the naughts were upside down,” I said. I had to laugh he was so excited.
“There was a five and a lot of naughts,” he said, “and now I’m sorry I didn’t count them. Then after we get the reward we’ll find the will and Mr. Bagley will get his land and he’ll sell it to Temple Camp—and do you know what let’s do?”
“Break it to me gently,” I said.
“We’ll have about a thousand dollars anyway and we’ll build a troop cabin in that new land, away off in the woods, and we won’t let anybody come there. We’ll be kind of different from everybody at camp, hey? Maybe we’ll let visitors come to see us—because I bet a lot of people will want to see us, hey, especially girls. Even we’ll bedoubleheroes.”
Then he came up for air and he didn’t say any more till we got to camp, only trudged along beside me very important. He was starting in being a hero already. When we got to camp he went marching up and started trampling out the little fire. I guess Dub and Sandy thought he was crazy.
“What’s the idea?” Sandy wanted to know.
“I’ll tell you as soon as the fire is out,” Pee-wee said, very mysterious like.
They looked at me and I just said, “Ask the kid, he’s the big hero to-night.”
“I found the place where those bandits are hiding,” Pee-wee said. “We have to be careful and not have any light. To-morrow morning we’re going up to Bagley Center to tell the police.”
I said, “Don’t look at me, you heard what he said.”
I guess none of us slept very much that night, I knowIdidn’t. I kept hearing sounds all the time and once I thought somebody was creeping up to our tent. I was sorry we didn’t go up to the village right away as soon as we found that camp but the other fellows thought every one would be in bed. I just lay there listening for sounds. Once I fell asleep and I had a dream that I found old Mr. Bagley’s last will and I was just going to go and give it to him when one of those bandits pointed a pistol at me and was just going to shoot me when Pee-wee threw a tomato at him and I started to run. Jiminies, when you travel with Pee-wee there’s something doing even when you’re asleep.
He got us up at about five o’clock in the morning, you’d have thought we were going to catch a train. I said, “I’d rather be a bandit, then I wouldn’t have to get up so early.”
He said, “We better have strong coffee on account of what we’re going to do.”
I was so sleepy I hardly knew what I was saying. I staggered up against Dub—he was as bad as I was.
“How much is it—ten thousand dollars?” he stammered.
“You mean the reward?” I said. I didn’t know what I was saying I was so sleepy. “Search me, all I know is it’s got a five and a lot of naughts. I don’t even know if the naughts are in front of the five or after it. It may be one five thousandth of a cent for all I know, we should worry, where’s the coffee-pot? We’re all mixed up with so much money and I haven’t got enough for an ice cream cone when we get to Bagley Center. That’s one thing I don’t like about robbers, they get you up so early in the morning.”
“Suppose the wind shouldn’t be blowing toward Bagley Center?” Sandy said. He was so dopey he couldn’t find the sugar and he handed me the bottle of iodine.
“Then we can’t go,” I said.
“Are you going to start your crazy nonsense?” the kid wanted to know. “Are you going to wake up and have some sense?”
After we had our coffee we got awake and we started being serious. Because I had to admit that robbers are no laughing matter. Anyway Pee-wee wasn’t any laughing matter.
“Do you think it’s a joke getting five thousand dollars maybe?” he said.
“That’s no joke,” I said. “Come on, I’m going to start in being serious. Who’s going to be serious?”
“I am,” Dub said.
“Same here,” Sandy said.
“I’ll even cry if you want me to,” I said to Pee-wee.
If you look at my specially made map you’ll see there’s a dotted line going from Beaver Chasm to Bagley Center, and it’s a dandy dotted line, too. I made it good and slow. But I like to make railroads and brooks better. All through there is woods. That dotted line is a trail. But, believe me, you wouldn’t care anything about Bagley Center. But there’s one good thing about it, I didn’t see any school there. The trail runs right into the village—it’s the only thing in the village that runs. I was wondering where Mr. Bagley lived.
“Maybe he’d be a good one to tell,” Pee-wee said, “because don’t you know how he said he was away a lot and had adventures before he came home to stay?”
I said, “No, I think we better go to the police because they’re the right ones to go to.”
There wasn’t anybody up in the village, anyway we didn’t see anybody. Only one man we saw and he was driving down the street in a wagon with milk cans. He turned around and kept staring at us. Pretty soon we came to a house where there was a girl sweeping off the porch. I guess maybe she was a Girl Scout or something like that because she had a khaki blouse on. She was busy, sweeping good and hard.
Pee-wee said, “Let’s ask her where the police station is, hey?”
“Sure,” I said, “I’ll ask her. Only maybe she’s sweeping in her sleep, it’s so early. I wouldn’t want to wake her up.”
“If she’s asleep she’ll tell you so,” Dub said.
“I never thought of that,” I told him.
“Are you thinking about getting the robbers arrested or are you thinking about being a fool?” Pee-wee wanted to know.
I went up to the girl and I said, “Hey, girl, are you awake because we’d like to ask you a question?”
“Don’t you pay any attention to him because he’s a fool,” Pee-wee said. “Will you please tell us where the police station is?”
She stopped sweeping and she looked kind of surprised and she said, “It’s on Main Street and it’s right next to the Fire House.”
I said, “Can you get any ice cream cones anywhere around there?”
“Don’t you pay any attention to him,” Pee-wee piped up, “because it’s serious business—so do you think the police are up yet?”
She said, “Goodness me, I don’t know, but if you’re hungryIcan give you something to eat. I shouldn’t think you’d want ice cream cones so early in the morning. I just bet you’re Boy Scouts and you’re lost. Do you know where you are?”
“We’re here,” I said.
“Oh I just bet you’re lost,” she said. “Because you don’t belong in this town. I bet you belong over at that big camp and I bet you’ve been out all night and don’t know where you are. Last summer two boys that belonged over at that camp, they were such smarties they got lost and they thought this was Snowden Hollow and they had to go to the police station and get something to eat and three girls showed them how to get back to their camp. Oh I just almostdiedlaughing! The whole village was laughing about it.”
“That would be only about five people anyway,” I said. “It wouldn’t be enough to make a good laugh. We’ve had as many as thirty or forty people laughing at us,” I said.
“Even fifty,” Pee-wee said, “and besides, you think you’re so smart, we’re not lost at all and if you knew what we came to this town for you’d even be scared. And besides sometimes Boy Scouts get lost on purpose—”
“And they get hungry on purpose, too,” Dub said.
“They get lost so they can find their way,” the kid shouted at her. “That shows how much prowess they’ve got.”
“We carry it around in our pockets,” I told her. “And resources, too, we have plenty of them. How can you find your way if you don’t get lost? Anybody that knows short division can do that.”
The girl just sat down on the steps and kept on laughing and laughing and laughing. She said, “That’s just too funny! They get lost so they can find their way!Oh dear!”
I said, “I know even funnier things than that.”
“That’s all girls can do—giggle,” the kid said. “When they get in a boat they scream, and when they see a mouse they scream, and when they see a spider they scream, and they’re scared of snakes and caterpillars, especially toads, and all they can do is giggle. Anyway just to show you how smart you’re not with your giggling and laughing at Scouts, now I’ll tell you what we came to this village for and it wasn’t to get something to eat—you’re so smart! It’s because we know where some robbers are camped, and if they’re the ones we think they are we’ll get a reward, I don’t know how much it is. But anyway did you ever hear of girls getting a reward for scouting, I mean doing big things? Stopping trains and finding lost people and saving lives and all that? So now you know why we want to go to the police station—you’re so crazy all you can do is to sit there and giggle! Sweep with brooms, that’s all girls can do.”
She stood up all of a sudden, very brave—you know how they throw their heads back—girls. She stamped her foot at Pee-wee and looked straight in his eyes as if she was trying to scare him and she put her face right close up in front of him.
I said, “Don’t you dare to kiss him.”
“I wouldn’t kiss such a dunce,” she said. “But I’ll tell you what my pal and I did yesterday afternoon. There’s a crazy man named Saul Bagley in this village and he escaped from his home and wandered away three days ago and there was a reward of a hundred dollars offered by his cousins where he lives to anybody that would find him. And we two girls traced him to Dale’s Corners and he was telling everybody there that Charlie Chaplin gave him a million dollars and the Boy Scouts got it away from him. And last night Miss Ella Bagley gave us a check for one hundred dollars. Sothere, Mr. Smarty.”
Dub and Sandy and Pee-wee and I all just stared at each other.
“Did—didn’t his—Mr. Bagley—didn’t his father leave him a lot of money and everything in a will?” the kid blurted out.
The girl said, “Oh goodness me, no. He’s been telling everybody that for years. Oh he’s perfectly harmless, only he wanders off.”
I said, “Will you please excuse me while I drop dead? We met him over at Bagley’s Green and he told us his father got killed in Beaver Chasm and that his last will got lost there.”
“That’s just like him,” the girl said. “His father did lose his life there but there wasn’t anywill. Oh goodness me, did he tell you that?”
“Haven’t we been hunting for the will?” Sandy blurted right out.
The girl just looked at us and then,goodnight, she started laughing. Boy, I never saw anybody laugh so hard. She said, “Oh it’s just tooexcruciating!”
“You think you’re big using hard words,” the kid said. “What do we care about wills? Do you say robbers aren’t more important than wills? If you saw what I saw last night you wouldn’t be standing there laughing like a—like a hyena.A regular robber’s den.”
The girl said, “Well, if that’s what you saw you’d better run and tell the police. But I bet all you saw was the camp of the moving picture people who have a regular robber’s cave over in the chasm and they’re making part of a picture there. We’ve been over there three or four times to watch them. And, oh I think you’re just too funny foranything!”
Oh boy, I wish you could have seen Pee-wee! He just stared at her.
She said, “Don’t tell me it was a little rush-covered lean-to that you saw! Why that’s the place where the kidnapped child is taken to—and kept there by the robbers. Mr. Hartley, he’s one of the robbers, and he’s a perfectly lovely man. He comes up here to town lots and lots.”
“I guess he was here last night,” I said.
Even still, Pee-wee just stared.
I said, “Well there’s only one thing for us to do now and that is to rescue that child from the moving picture robbers. Anyway I feel the need of an ice cream cone to keep me from laughing to death.”
Even after we started away the girl was sitting there on the porch steps laughing at us. I was glad when we got around the corner. Pee-wee didn’t say a single word.
“Two strikes out,” I said. “There goes the will, also the robbers. I blame it all to Pee-wee’s windmeter. Those were the two most thrilling adventures I ever didn’t have. But anyway I’ve got a new idea—”
“If it’s crazy we’re not going to do it,” the kid shouted.
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “Don’t ever mention the word crazy to me again. And the next time you wake me up at five o’clock in the morning I’ll kill you. What are we going to do now?”
“One thing, we’re not going to make any solemn pledge,” the kid said.
Sandy said, “The more we don’t make, the better I’ll like it. Anyway we can camp in the chasm to-night, can’t we? I say let’s go back and get acquainted with those movie people.”
Dub said, “Sure, maybe we can get them to take pictures of us hunting for old man Bagley’s will.”
“Well, anyway,” I said, “there’s one thing that’s real and that’s ice cream cones. What do you say we go and get some and then start back?”
Dub said, “Let’s not bother.”
“Do you call ice cream cones a bother?” the kid shouted.
“Maybe they’re a bother, but I don’t mind a little bother,” Sandy said. “If I was coaxed I might even eat two.”
“I don’t believe we’ll find any stores open yet,” Dub said.
“I can eat seven even without being coaxed,” Pee-wee said.
“You have to coax him to stop,” I told Sandy.
I had to laugh, we started out to hunt for a lost will, then we got started after a reward for finding some bandits, and there we were in Bagley Center on the trail of ice cream cones.
I said to them, “This is just the kind of a hike I like, it’s full of adventures that we don’t have—it’s safe and insane.”
The kid said, “That’s a good name for it. Why don’t you call itRoy Blakeley’s Safe and Insane Hike?”
“Wait till it’s finished,” I said. “Now if we could only save somebody’s life and then find that it wasn’t anybody after all.”
“Every hike you have you get crazier,” Pee-wee said.
“Life, liberty and the pursuit of snappiness,” I told him. “The most interesting things you do are the things you don’t do, I’ll leave it to Sandy. You take adventures; you don’t know what to do with them after you get them. If you could keep them it would be all right. I should worry about having adventures.I’mout for fun, that’s what I’m out for. Now you take young Scout Harris. It’s different with him.”
“I’ve got some sense,” Pee-wee said. “Do you mean to tell me that place didn’t look like a robber’s den?”
“I don’t know, I never saw a robber’s den,” I told him.
“But if there was a robber’s den it would look like that, wouldn’t it?” he shouted at me. “Didn’t we get all excited? Wasn’t that an adventure? It’s better than a lot of nonsense like you usually have in your crazy hike stories.”
All the time we were going down the main street of Bagley Center and Dub and Sandy were laughing at us. Pretty soon we came to a candy store and we went in and got some cones. Sandy said he would pay for them out of the reward we didn’t get. We all sat along the counter eating them. The man—gee, he was a nice man—he stood there talking to us. Dub asked him if he knew the moving picture people over at the chasm.
He said, “You mean the folks that was doing that Cumberland Mountain stuff? Yes, they often come over here. Guess they’re pretty near finished, ain’t they? I heard they was finishing up. That’s a pretty clever youngster they got with them, so I hear. You boys seen him? Dresses up like one of you Scout fellers. What’s his name—Bunko Bravado, is it? He’s only ’bout sixteen or so. He was in here after some candy one day. Yes, they’re a great lot. I see a picture down to Peekskill last winter had that kid in it. Why they threw him off a big cliff and the next you see he was swimming in the water. Gave me the shivers. He’s escaping from a band of kidnappers, or something or other like that, over in the chasm, so I hear.”
Dub said, “I bet it’s hard candy he eats.”
“Sure, rock candy,” Sandy said.
The man said, “I think it was marshmallows.”
Pee-wee didn’t bother saying anything till he finished his cone—he was too busy. Then, all of a sudden he opened up.
“That shows how much you don’t know,” he said to the man, “because boys in moving pictures are a lot of bluffs. That was just a dummy they threw off the cliff. They don’t do real things like Scouts do. Some of them do like Douglas Fairbanks, but most of them, I can do better things myself—thrilling and all that.”
“Douglas Fairbanks is terribly jealous of him,” I said to the man. “If you should see Douglas Fairbanks, don’t mention the name of Scout Harris, whatever you do—it only makes trouble.”
“They’re a lot of false alarms in the movies,” the kid said. “When it comes to running and trailing and stalking and jumping and showing resources and things Boy Scouts can beat them every time. Scouts, they know how to swim and dive—they don’t have to have rag dummies to do their stunts for them—geeeee whiz!”
“They can even do their own eating,” I said.
So then each of us had another cone and after that we started back to Beaver Chasm.
We took our time hiking back to the chasm. That’s the way we always do. We just ambled along kind of kidding each other—you know how. Because anyway we didn’t have to get back to Temple Camp till the next day. One reason we took our time was because Dub wanted to take some snapshots in the woods.
After a little while he said, “Now that we had our adventures with bandits and wills, can anybody tell me about the Gold Cross?”
“I can tell you all about it,” Pee-wee piped up. “You have to save a life by risking your own life. Then you’re a hero. It isn’t like winning the life-saving badge, like you have to do to get to be an Eagle. For that you only have to know how to save a life. But to get the Gold Cross you have to save one. See?”
“It’s the same, only different,” I said. “Some Scouts think that to win the taxidermy badge all you have to do is drive a taxi. Pee-wee thought he could get the plumbing badge by eating plums. But he was mistaken just the same as he was when he thought if he won the astronomy badge he’d be a Star Scout. He thinks a Life Scout is one that has saved a life.”
“Will you shut up while I give him information about scouting!” the kid screamed at me.
“Just the same as you can’t get the first aid badge till after you get the second aid badge,” I said to Dub. “That’s where a lot of Scouts fall down. Pee-wee thinks that pioneering means making pie, but you can’t get the badge that way because he tried. If you save a life by losing your own you get the Gold Cross. If you save two lives you get the double cross—I’ll leave it to Sandy.”
“That shows how much you don’t know about the rules!” Pee-wee yelled at me, “because they don’t have the Gold Cross any more, they have a round medal. They don’t have the Silver Cross or the Bronze Cross any more either.”
“But the double cross they have,” Sandy said.
“Absolutely, positively incorrect the first time,” I said. “If a Scout having won the first aid, second aid, and lemonade awards, gets double-crossed, that means he’s an Eagle Scout—I’ll leave it to Pee-wee. If you want to know all about scouting apply to Roy Blakeley, leader of the Silver Fox Patrol—”
“You mean the Silver Fool Patrol!” the kid said.
“Is there anything else you’d like to know?” I asked Dub.
He said, “Well, I was thinking that maybe if I saved a life, I’d get the life-saving badge and then I’d be an Eagle and I’d get the Gold Medal too.”
“You’ve got an appetite like Pee-wee,” I said.
“I thought I might kill two birds with one stone,” he said.
“A Scout is not supposed to kill birds,” I told him, “so there’s where you’re going to get in trouble. What do you want the Gold Medal for?”
“He’s crazy, don’t you listen to him!” Pee-wee shouted at Dub. “You win the life-saving badge by rules and you win the Gold Medal by being a hero. And if you get the Gold Medal, that doesn’t give you the life-saving badge.”
“Any more than if you’re chicken-hearted it gives you the poultry badge,” I told him. “That’s where lots of Scouts make mistakes. I never make any.”
“You have them ready made,” Pee-wee shouted.
Dub said—he was trying to be serious—he said, “Well it seems funny to me that if you save a life you don’t get the life-saving badge. If I could only do that, then I could finish my Eagle tests and get the Gold Medal too. You see I’ve got a towering ambition. What I’m thinking about is that Ellen Burnside award of a hundred dollars that goes with the Gold Medal. I thought I might save somebody’s life and get the medal and the hundred dollars, then get my Eagle badge on the strength of the life-saving stunt and then I could live up in Eagle Crag Cabin for the rest of the summer—”
“And have me visit you,” I said.
“Good-night, Napoleon didn’t have anything on you,” Sandy said.
“If you had a bean-shooter up at Eagle Crag Cabin you might conquer Temple Camp,” I said, “and you could send Pee-wee with a large detachment to demand the surrender of the cooking shack.”
Dub said, “Well I guess it can’t be did. First I was crazy enough to be counting on our getting some kind of a reward for finding that will, and then I was thinking maybe we’d get the reward for finding some bandits.”
“All you think about is money,” Sandy said.
“All I’m thinking about is staying till the end of the season with you fellows,” Dub said. “Just us four, I wish we could stick together till camp closes. We’ve had a lot of fun doing nothing. Gee, I like you fellows—” that’s just the way he said. He said, “That’s the way I am, I’d rather get in with just three or four fellows and bang around with them than be in with everybody. I’ve been here a week and I don’t know many Scouts at camp—only you fellows. Christopher, I wish I could stay with you. I’m kind of sorry I came up at all now, because it will be so hard to go back. Crinkums, you sure have kept me laughing.”
After he spoke like that we all just hiked along a little while and nobody said anything. Even Pee-wee didn’t say anything.
Pretty soon Sandy said to me, “How soon do you and Pee-wee have to go home?”
“Not till the camp closes up,” I told him.
“Oh boy!” Dub said.
“Me till August twenty,” Sandy said.
“Me till next Saturday,” Dub said. “Hard luck, hey? After I get home I’ll be thinking about you jollying Pee-wee.”
“Will you think about me answering him back?” Pee-wee piped up. “How I beat him in arguments?”
“Sure,” Dub said. And he just went along, kind of smiling and not saying anything. None of us said anything.
After a while the kid said, “Why do you have to go back?”
“Shut up,” I whispered to him. Sandy looked at the kid, too, and sort of frowned.
“Oh just because,” Dub said. “It’s like having one little sliver of pie—you only want more. I wasn’t thinking about it when we started out. Will you fellows be here next summer?”
Jiminies, but I felt sorry for him. I’ll tell you how it was with Dub, he was an in-and-outer. That’s a Scout that comes to camp alone without any troop or anything, and just stays a couple of weeks or so. Some of them only stay one week. Those fellows have to start home as soon as they get in with anybody. My troop goes up as soon as school closes and we stay till school opens. All of a sudden I could see how it was with Dub. Do you remember how even he kind of didn’t want to go get ice cream cones in Bagley Center? It was because he only had a little bit of money and he had to take care of it.
After the way he talked coming back then I knew that all the while he had really been counting on us getting some kind of a reward. Me, I should worry about those things. I’m out for fun, not money. And now I knew he was thinking of some way so he could stay at Temple Camp and go around with us. That fellow would be an Eagle Scout only for one badge, but that wouldn’t do him any good about staying at camp. If he saved some fellow’s life he’d get the Gold Medal, and besides he’d get a hundred dollars—that’s the Ellen Burnside award for anybody that gets the Gold Medal. But you don’t see fellows risking their lives every day in the week. It isn’t like trying for a badge. I felt sorry for him.
I was walking with him ahead of the others and he said, “I suppose you think I’m crazy. But do they give you that hundred dollars as soon as you win it?”
I said, “Listen Dub, I’ll tell you, no fooling, how it is. There are lots of different awards at camp—donations, sort of. But that’s the only one with money.”
“That’s why I’d like to win it, so I can stay,” he said. “I wonder if you get the money right away?”
I said, “That wouldn’t make any difference, Dub. I think it isn’t given out till later. But if a Scout wants to stay the camp will give him credit for it—that’s easy. Tom Slade—he’s chief scout assistant—he could fix that for you. But what’s the use counting on that, Dub?”
He said, “I know it.”
“Waiting for somebody to get his life in danger! You might be six months waiting.”
“And it isn’t such a good thing to be waiting for either; is it?” he said.
I said, “No it isn’t, if it comes to that—if you want to look at it that way. I never thought about that. Gee, I’d like to see you stay, Dub. I’d try to work you in on the hospitality award if I could. Any Scout that swims all around the lake without landing can ask another fellow to stay at camp all summer. But you see the trouble with all those awards is that they’re only given once in the season. Now there’s a Scout here named Wyne Corson and he won that award the first week he was here. You know Hervey Willetts, don’t you? That fellow with the funny little hat? Well, he’s the one that’s staying all summer with Corson. Now nobody else can win that award this season, or I’d try for it. If I had done it I’d get one of my patrol to do it. Only, you see, it’s only given out once in a season. The award is for just one fellow’s board at camp. It’s the same with the Ellen Burnside award. You’ve got to be the first one to save a life or you don’t get the hundred dollars. See? The money is only given to one Scout in a season. It’s a private award, not a B. S. A. award.
“Every season some fool, or maybe some tenderfoot, gets his life in danger at Temple Camp, and you’d get a chance to win the medal if you stayed long enough. That is, you would if you weren’t afraid of risking your own life. Only you want to win a hundred dollars inside the next week, and jiminy crinkums, if you did you’d be mighty lucky, that’s all I can say. If you got your Eagle award, even that wouldn’t do you any good. Because you couldn’t have Eagle Crag Cabin to stay in unless you were staying all summer. I mean you could have it to stay in as long as you’re here, but you’d only be here a week.”
“Heads or tails I lose, hey?” Dub said. “I guess there’s nothing for me to do but go home. Like you say,united we stand, divided we sprawl. Well anyway I’m glad I was here while you fellows were here. We had a good time while it lasted, hey?”
Jiminies, I felt awful sorry for him.