All of a sudden I had an idea and I turned around and said, “Hey, Scout Harris, you know so much about scouting, is the Rotary Club award for one hundred dollars?”
He said, “Yes, but it doesn’t come till the end of the season in the canoe races.”
I said, “Well, then, that settles it, we’re out of luck. United we stand, divided one of us goes home.”
Dub said, “Never mind, let’s go back to the chasm and see those movie people. We can camp in the chasm to-night and when we go back to camp to-morrow, anyway we can say we had a good time. I don’t have to go home till next Saturday.”
“You make me tired!” Pee-wee shouted. “You don’t have to go home at all. That’s what Roy Blakeley’s all the time saying, united we stand, and it hasn’t got any sense to it. All you have to do is to save somebody’s life—”
“Just like that,” I said.
“Save two or three, then you’ll be sure,” Sandy said.
“Don’t you pay any attention to them,” the kid shouted. “Just because they don’t keep their eyes open that doesn’t mean you can’t find a chance to save life and be a hero and get a hundred dollars. You stay with me and I bet you inside of a week you’ll see somebody that needs to get his life saved. On the lake, that’s where you want to stay. You stick with me and I’ll show you. Gee whiz, if you want to stay at Temple Camp and be kind of partners with us you can do it, that’s easy.”
“Sure,” I said, “Scouts risk their lives every evening with matinees on Saturdays and holidays. Just say what kind of a life you’d like to save and the fixer will fix it for you. Did you ever hear the poetry Brent Gaylong made about him?” I said. I guess you fellows that are reading this story never heard it either. Everybody at Temple Camp knows it.
His middle name is Hunter’s Stew,He mixes it.In mixing he can sure outdo,All other Scouts he ever knew,And when a thing goes all askew,He fixes it.
His middle name is Hunter’s Stew,He mixes it.In mixing he can sure outdo,All other Scouts he ever knew,And when a thing goes all askew,He fixes it.
Pee-wee shouted, “Do you bet I can’t show you how to save a life? Do you bet I can’t fix it so you can stay here—do you bet? Even I know some rattlesnakes, where they live—”
“You can’t get the reward for saving a rattlesnake’s life,” I said.
“Will you shut up!” he hollered at me. “I know where they live—a whole nest of them.”
“Why did you never tell me this?” I asked him.
“Because you’re a big fool and will you keep still while I’m talking, doing a good turn to help a brother Scout like it says you’ve got to do a lot you know about it making fun of the handbook—will you shut up!”
“I can’t shut up twice at the same time, can I?” I said.
“Will youkeepshut up till I get through talking to Dub?” he shouted. Oh boy, he was sure started. When he gets started he shouts right along without ever stopping and that’s why there aren’t any punctuation marks when he talks. “Will you not be a big fool for one minute!” he yelled at me.
“Go ahead,” Dub said. “I’m with you.”
“You stick with me and I’ll fix it for you—”
“Now that we’ve found the bandits,” I said.
“And old man Bagley’s will,” Sandy said.
“I know where there are rattlesnakes,” the kid shouted, “and I know some tenderfoots that are going stalking to-morrow right near that tree and—and—you can—you know how to grab a rattlesnake, don’t you?”
“Sure I do,” Dub said.
“And if that doesn’t work—”
“Then the rattlesnakes will stay all summer and Dub won’t. It’s the same only different,” I said.
“You take the lake,” Pee-wee started up again.
“Take it yourself, I don’t want it,” I said.
“Will you listen to me?” he shouted at Dub.
“Let’s have a large chunk of silence and a very little of that,” Sandy said. “Pee-wee has the floor.”
“I think he has the blind staggers,” I said. “He’s so highly strung from everybody stringing him. Go on, turn on the loud speaker.”
Pee-wee said, “All right, you can laugh—”
“I’m not laughing,” Dub said.
“But anyway,” Pee-wee went on, “if you really want to stay at Temple Camp I’ll find out a way for you to save a life—”
“First you go to the saving bank,” Sandy said.
I said, “Absolutely correct the first time. Then you pick out a Scout that’s dying—”
“Do you deny I did a lot of things?” Pee-wee screeched at the top of his voice. “Didn’t I tell MacElton a branch was rotten on a willow tree that sticks out over the lake,didn’t I? And didn’t I tell him that tenderfoots were always up in that tree—didn’t I? And didn’t that branch break just like I said it would? He hung around that in a boat and he saved little Skinny Bonner from drowning and he got the Gold Medal. So now, you think you’re so fresh with all your crazy Silver Fox nonsensical nonsense! You ought to be named the Jackass Patrol, that’s what Councilor Stone said. If Dub sticks to me next week I’ll show him how he can win the Gold Medal by saving a life and get the Burnside hundred dollars too, because I know a way, already I know a way, and he can stay till the end of the season and even he’ll have some money left for sodas and cones and things.”
“Sothat’sthe idea,” I said.
“No it isn’t the idea,” he screamed at me. “But I know a feller that’s going to be reckless, and I know where he’s going to do it, and when he’s going to do it, and I know how you can save him. Only if you’re going to follow Roy Blakeley around for the rest of the season I pity you.”
“Those are harsh words, Sprout Harris,” I said.
“You stick with me,” Pee-wee said to Dub, “and I’ll show you how. You just leave it to me. Always I do things when I say I will.”
“Even when he fails he succeeds,” I said.
Jiminies, it looked as if the kid had Dub started. He put his arm around Pee-wee’s shoulder and said, “All right, don’t get excited, kid, I’m going to stick to you. I have a nunch things are going to break right for us.”
“If I say I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it,” Pee-wee said.
“What’s the use laughing? Maybe he can,” Dub said. “Anyway I believe something’s going to happen, I just have a feeling.”
“Oh sure,” I said, “something always happens when Pee-wee is on the scene.”
The kid just hiked along, very mad, and very important looking. He didn’t say a word.
“Heroes made while you wait,” I said. Sandy was laughing. I was winking at him. “Harris the hero maker,” I said.
Just the same I could see that Dub was kind of in with Pee-wee. That’s the way it is with Pee-wee, he shouts so loud and says what he can do, and fellows believe him, especially new fellows. Poor Dub, I felt sorry for him.
We were glad when we got back to the chasm; anyway I was, I know that. Our little tent looked good, standing there. Dub said he wished we could camp there all summer, just us four. “Yes, and what would I be doing?” I said. “Cooking meals for the four of us. Do you think all I came up to Temple Camp for was to cook flapjacks for a human famine?”
“What are we going to have for lunch?” Pee-wee wanted to know.
“I’d make some angel cake if I only had some angels,” I told him. “How about spaghetti and rice pudding? Only we haven’t got any cream.”
Oh boy, it was nice sitting around eating lunch. I know how to make dandy spaghetti. You have to have a can of tomatoes and you pour them over it. Once I flavored it with chocolate but it wasn’t any good, but licorice isn’t so bad. Once I used a lot of long strings of licorice that they call shoe strings—you get them three for a cent—I used them instead of spaghetti. Only tomato sauce doesn’t go good with it. Black spaghetti, that’s what we called it. It was only just an experiment—experiments are all right as long as you don’t eat them.
“I can eat experiments or anything,” Pee-wee said.
Sandy said he’d like to be in Italy where the spaghetti grows. You could just go out in the fields and pick it, that’s what he said.
“Do they plant it in grated cheese or just in the earth?” I asked him.
He said, “They plant it in the earth and they call it wop-weed over there.”
I said, “Well, that’s news to me, I never knew where spaghetti came from.”
“Well, anyway, we know where it goes to,” Dub said.
“Sure,” I told him, “but I never knew it grows just the same as macaroni.”
“You’re crazy!” Pee-wee shouted. He was trying to keep some spaghetti from wriggling away from his mouth.
“Hold your mouth up in the air and eat it by the attraction of gravitation,” I told him.
“Spaghettidoesngrow,” he said.
“Explain all that,” I told him. “Here, have some more.”
“Are we going down to the other end of the chasm to see those movie people this afternoon?” Sandy wanted to know.
I said, “Sure, we positively are, and I’ve got an idea. It’s an inspiration, accent on the third syllable.Look at Pee-wee!” all of a sudden I said. “He should use sandpaper to hold spaghetti—this is terrible.”
Honest, I wish you could have seen that kid. He was trying to shovel spaghetti into his mouth and it was slipping every which way.
“Take some salt in your hand so it won’t skid,” I told him.
“Whatsthinspiration?” he managed to get out.
“Go into second and don’t jam your brakes on too hard and you’ll make it,” Sandy told him.
I was laughing so hard I couldn’t speak for a couple of minutes—seeing Pee-wee eat spaghetti. I said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t get any rough spaghetti but it’s very expensive.”
“How about the inspiration?” Dub wanted to know. “This expedition is getting worse and worse.”
“Yes, and even he’ll write it up in a book and expect fellers to read it,” Pee-wee said.
“It will sound all right as long as they don’t read too hard,” I said. “You read a book too hard and you spoil it—I’ll leave it to Sandy. That’s what knocks the back covers off most books.”
“This one will be the worst of any of them,” the kid said.
“Just the same,” I told him, “I’m always getting letters from Scouts who want to join my hikes. I have to refuse them because they’re not crazy enough. One fellow that lives in Nutley, New Jersey, said he could prove he was a nut. Even I wouldn’t let that fellow in.”
“What’s the inspiration?” Dub wanted to know.
I said, “Oh yes, listen. What’s the name of that movie hero up the chasm? Don’t you know, the man in the candy store told us?”
“Bunko Bravado,” Sandy said.
“We’ll go and see him,” I told them, “and we’ll dare him to do something dangerous. And if he does, Pee-wee will save his life. There you are. What could be nicer? Nothing whatever, said our young hero preparing to jump from the cliff.”
So in the afternoon when we were all good and rested, we took a hike to the other end of the chasm to see the movie people. Sandy said if they were using rag dummies we might throw one down from the top of the chasm and have Dub jump down after it and we’d take a picture of him and he’d get the Gold Medal and the Burnside award.
“Is that the way you talk to new fellers at camp?” the kid shouted. “Telling them to be crooked—gee whiz!”
“Didn’t you say that movie actors were crooked?” I said. “Did you say they don’t really do things? Didn’t you say they were not regular heroes?”
“I didn’t say they were crooked,” Pee-wee said, all excited. “I said they’re not real heroes like Scouts, because they double and they use dummies and it’s just kind of acting, the things they do. Do you think they really walk up buildings and drop from telegraph wires and all that?”
“You’d better look out how you talk to them,” Dub said.
“Do you think I’m afraid of them?” the kid asked him. “Gee whiz, they’re only just actors. When they have to do things where you have to have prowesses and things like that—and reckless daring—”
“Goodness me,” I said.
“I bet there isn’t one of them can dive like Hervey Willetts does,” Pee-wee said. “They just do things that kind of make itlookas if they’re brave. Scouts are real heroes because they no fooling take their lives in their hands—”
“Like spaghetti,” Sandy said.
“Geeeeeee whiz,” the kid went on, “didn’t I see Freddie Fearless in theLeap of Loveand he gave a good big jump into the ocean where it was all rocks and a lady next to me nearly fainted and people were giving sighs and everything but I didn’t because I had a wild cherry jaw-breaker in my mouth—”
“That shows how really wild he is,” I said.
“Will you shut up!” he yelled at me.
“He wouldn’t eat tame cherries—”
“I wouldn’t eat tame cherries—I mean—will youshut up!” the kid just screeched.
“He eats wild animal crackers,” I said. “Yes, yes, go on with your story.”
“He went kerplunk into the water,” the kid said, “and I could see it was only a dummy and they zipped the film quick. Then when he was climbing into a boat it was that feller—Freddie Fearless. Geeee whiz, he gets thousands and thousands of dollars for bein a ’fraid cat. Do you think I’d be afraid to jump that?”
“What became of the wild cherry jaw-breaker?” Sandy asked him.
“It wasn’t rescued,” I said. “It was never heard of again.”
That time we went, we could see just how the camp was on account of it being daytime. That lean-to thing looked just like I thought it would. But there wasn’t any other tent. There was a place where I thought one had been. I said to the other fellows that I guessed some of the movie people had gone away.
Sandy said, “Well, there’s four of them here anyway.”
Those four were sitting outside the lean-to. There were three kind of young men and a fellow about like us. They were just sitting there like as if they were resting. The three big fellows sat in a row on a board that was laid across a couple of stumps. The boy was sprawled on the ground in front of them. Right near them was a high three-legged thing—you know, like a camera stands on. Jiminies, I’ll say that lean-to did look like a robber’s den all right. The canvas sides of it weren’t there. All the lean-to was that second time we saw it was just a roof sticking out from the side of the chasm, all covered with brush and with brush hanging part way down the three sides of it. As we came near we saw a box standing on a rock—it had pieces of red chalk in it.
Pee-wee whispered to me, he said, “That’s what they use to mark their faces with.”
I said, “Pee-wee is scared of them, now that we’re here.”
“I’ll show you if I am,” the kid said.
With that he marched right up ahead of us and he said, “I bet I know who you are. You’re the moving picture people that areon locationhere, and I know what on location means. You’re making that play about the Cumberland Mountains.”
One of the grown-up fellows said, “That’s a pretty good bet. Who wins?”
“Because in Bagley Center they told us about you,” the kid said.
“Wellnow!” one of the men said.
“And I bet I know who that boy is too,” Pee-wee said. “That’s Bunko Bravado only I bet it isn’t his real name—I bet you. And if that’s a scout shirt he’s got he has no right to wear it because there’s a law that says so—even President Coolidge says so—you can’t wear a regular official scout shirt unless you’re a Scout.”
The men all looked at each other and they started laughing. One of them winked at the boy and he started laughing too. Jiminy, even Dub and Sandy and I started laughing.
“Can we see you do some acting?” Pee-wee asked them. “I bet one of you is the director, hey?”
“Every time he hits the mark,” one of the young men said. “Now which one of us is Harold Lloyd? See if you can tell him when he hasn’t got his glasses on.”
First off, Pee-wee was kind of shocked. Then he looked at them very hard and he said, “None of you is Harold Lloyd.”
“Isn’t it wonderful?” one of the men said. “Again he is right.”
“And anyway Harold Lloyd isn’t so smart,” Pee-wee said. “Because anyway he doesn’t really do those things. Do you think I’d be scared of him if he was here? Even Douglas Fairbanks says Scouts are the smartest. But anyway I’d like to see you—how you do things.”
The boy on the ground said, “Go on, talk some more.”
“Sure thing, talk some more,” one of the men said. “We’re taking a rest this afternoon. We got all tired out this morning stopping a bear from jumping on one of our horses.”
“Where’s the bear?” Pee-wee said.
“He’s taking his afternoon nap,” the man said.
“Talk low so you won’t wake him,” the boy said. “The horse has gone to a meeting of the Paramount directors.”
“Yes and you dope bears, that’s the way you do it,” Pee-wee said.
“But don’t tell anybody, will you?” the boy said.
“Will you tell me your real no fooling name?” Pee-wee asked him. “I bet it isn’t Bunko Bravado.”
“It’s Timothy Timid,” one of the young men said. “Only you mustn’t ever let it leak out. We had him swallow a spiral spring so he could make big leaps. Now he goes by leaps and bounds.”
“Did he have to jump across this chasm anywhere?” Pee-wee asked them. “Down there where it’s narrow, I mean.”
One of the men said to him, “You just wait for the sixteen reel picture to be released next fall,The Daredevil of the Cumberland Hills. Do you see that place up there? Where there’s a rock sticking out? He leaps with sublime abandon across that—”
“Is she the heroine?” Pee-wee piped up.
“Good night!” I said. “Excuse me while I faint.” Dub and Sandy both started laughing. And Bunk what’s-his-name started rolling on the ground, laughing too.Sublime abandon.Oh boy!
“You think you’re so smart laughing,” Pee-wee said to the boy hero. “Just because you get a lot of money and have your picture in the papers and all that and you think you can jolly Boy Scouts that find kidnapped children I can prove it by a scoutmaster—”
“Zip goes the fillum,” one of the young men said.
“I bet if you really did jump across there in the picture it was only a rag dummy—I bet it only looked as if you did. Because anyway William S. Hart is so smart with pistols, a bandit took five hundred dollars away from him. And I know a Scout that doubled for a feller like you that has a crazy name and gets a lot of money because people are fools.”
One of the young men kind of winked at young Bravado or whatever his name was, and he said, “Will you take that from a Boy Scout, Dan Daraway? Call his bluff! Show him what’s what in the movies. Don’t let him get away with it that you ever had anybody double for you. Why remember in theDemon of the Deephow you dived to the bottom of the ocean? These Scouts are a bunch of false alarms. Give him a call, for the honor of our profession—the second biggest industry in the United States!”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or not. Even Pee-wee was kind of flabbergasted.
One of those young men said, “We’ve had enough knocks about the movies. Now the Boy Scouts are jumping down our throats. Well here’s a good chance to test it out between the Boy Bluffs of America and the second largest industry in the United States. What do you say, Reckless?”
The boy wonder—gee he seemed to have all kinds of names—he got up slowly and brushed some grass off him and he said, “Come ahead, Boy Scout. Put up or shut up. I’ll give you one that will make your hair curl.”
And there we stood gaping at him while he walked off kind of careless like across the chasm.
“Well,” I said, “that’s that.”
“He’s bluffing,” Sandy whispered to me.
“He’s just jollying the kid,” Dub whispered.
“There he goes,” one of the young men said.
And the next thing we knew Pee-wee was running after him.
“Looks like we’ll have a nice day for finishing to-morrow,” one of those young men said.
“What time is Gloria Swanson going to be here?” another one asked.
The other one said, “Why she’s coming with Milton Sills. I suppose they’ll drive up to the Center.”
“They bringing the Indians with them?” one of the fellows asked.
“That’s the wayIunderstand it,” another one said.
“Jiminies,” I said to Dub, “I’d like to see those Indians if they’re real, wouldn’t you?”
“Look,” he said.
We all looked where the boy movie hero was going, with Pee-wee alongside him. The three young men just sat where they were, in a row—they didn’t seem so much interested. As long as they didn’t follow those two, we didn’t either. I guess maybe we were afraid they would think it wasn’t fair. Maybe we were so surprised that we didn’t, I don’t know. Anyway we just stood there watching. Dub sat down on a rock, then Sandy and I did, too. The three young men were talking to each other. Jiminies, I didn’t know what to make of it all. But anyway I wasn’t worrying because I knew Pee-wee could do anything that Daredevil Daraway Bravado of the Demon Deep, or whatever his name was, could do. “Don’t worry,” I said to Dub and Sandy. “They’re not going to do anything so very wonderful, he’s just kidding Pee-wee.”
I’ll tell you how it was in that end of the chasm. It was wide where that camp was. But just beyond that it was very narrow with the sides straight up and down. If you’ll look at the map you’ll see how it was. At the east end of the chasm, that’s where you should look. Where the brook comes in do you see where it goes to a point? Well that’s where I mean. Near that point it’s very narrow and high. If you go up on top there and drop a stone it makes a funny sound, a kind of an echo. That’s where they went, those two. It’s easy to go up where the chasm is wide.
We could see the two of them standing up on top right near the edge. I don’t know how wide it is up there—maybe it’s about seven or eight feet wide. Maybe ten, I don’t know. Tom Slade says the higher up you are the narrower a place like that seems. He says you have to be careful with your calculations when you’re high up. I should worry, I guess he knows. Anyway about maybe ten feet below the top of that place, there’s a crazy tree growing out from one side—it’s all crooked like. It looks all bushy. I guess brush and stuff like that fell down on it from the top, maybe. Way up there, even, we could hear Pee-wee shouting away. When he gets excited it always seems as if he’s mad. I heard him say something about Silver-plated Foxes (that’s my patrol) and Sandy thought he was telling that other fellow he was only a silver-plated hero, because that’s the way he talks.
All of a sudden I noticed those three grown up fellows—they were talking excited together. Just then a couple of them jumped up and came out in the middle of the chasm and one shouted, but the fellows up on the top didn’t pay any attention. Pee-wee was waving his hands and talking as loud as he could and all the while the grown up fellow down in the chasm was shouting trying to make the two of them listen. Then the other one jumped up and started running for all he was worth. He ran up where it was wide and not so steep and all the while he was shouting, “Cut it out, don’t let him do that.”
Anyway it was too late. All of a sudden Pee-wee backed away so he could get a head start andgood night, if he didn’t go running to the edge! It seemed to me as if he tripped. Anyway he jumped and he just missed the other side of the precipice. I felt kind of hollow—sort of cold like when you’re in an elevator and it stops short. Then the three of us went running pell-mell into the narrow part of the chasm. The two grown up fellows ran there too. But Pee-wee wasn’t on the ground there. I almost stepped on a little bird without any feathers on it that was sprawling around on the rocks. Then I saw another one flopping around.
“Look,” Sandy said. He was holding a little branch of a tree with a nest on it. And then I knew that the whole business had broken off from the tree that stuck out away up above us. I could hear a voice up there callinghelp, help, but it didn’t sound like Pee-wee. All of a sudden a rotten piece of a branch fell on my head and we heard a crackling sound up there.
One of those big fellows shouted, “Hang on up there. Get hold of two limbs so if one breaks you’ll have the other. Hang on and don’t get excited.”
I knew Pee-wee had caught in the tree, lucky for him, but I knew it was rotten and might break with him any minute.
I said, “Where’s that canvas that was around your lean-to last night?”
One of the men said, “What canvas?”
“Don’t you know there was a canvas?” I said.
I went running for all I was worth to the lean-to, but I couldn’t find any canvas anywhere. Dub came running after me and we pulled all the brush from the roof of the robber’s den or whatever it was, and dragged it into the narrow place right under the tree.
“There’s a coat of mine in there—hurry up,” one of the men said.
Sandy ran and got the coat and came back dragging some more brush. We spread the brush right about under the tree, covering up the rocks and making the ground as soft as we could. Then the two grown up fellows held the coat stretched out between them ready to try and catch Pee-wee if he fell. Dub and Sandy got hold of the other two sides of it. It was a pretty good way and that’s what I wanted the canvas for. Only an overcoat isn’t big enough. I was wondering what became of the canvas. Because with just an overcoat if Pee-wee should fall all of a sudden it would be too quick for them to get in just the right place to catch him. Even while they were holding the coat spread out there was a sound like wood splitting up above. Then a kind of a forked shape piece of wood came down, but it didn’t land in the coat.
“Let’s stand just where that fell,” Dub said.
All of a sudden there was a loud crackling sound and I heard a scream. But only some leaves and twigs came down. A couple of them landed in the coat.
“Clinch your fingers and hang on hard,” one of those men said. “Double your fists tight. Something is starting to bust up there.”
Just then there were more loud screams and Pee-wee yelled, “Help, help!” But kind of it didn’t sound like Pee-wee.
One of the men said, “I’m afraid the whole blamed rotten tree is coming down.”
Just then,oh boy wasn’t I scared, I heard a voice shouting, “I’m coming down.”
They stretched the coat out tight and kept looking up so they could get into the right spot quick. But nothing happened, only a twig or something fell down on Sandy’s face. It hit him plunk in the face because he was looking up.
One of the men said, “Never mind that, keep your eyes peeled up there and when you move, whatever you do don’t trip on these blamed rocks.” He kicked some of the brush we had laid there out of the way so his feet wouldn’t catch in it.
It made me feel kind of cold and kind of funny in my throat, the way the four of them stood there waiting and just looking up.
I couldn’t just stand there not doing anything so I ran into the wide part and up the side where it was easy to go up. I guess maybe I was kind of kidding myself that I could do something up there. I guess I didn’t want to see Pee-wee come falling down. If I could have helped I would have stayed there. But as long as I wasn’t doing anything I couldn’t keep still.
Up on the edge of the precipice there was only just that one grown up fellow kneeling down and looking over. I had never been up to that place before. Up there it didn’t look like a chasm, it was just a wide gap—you’d call it a cleft I guess.
I said kind of frightened like, “Did he say he was going to fall—the kid? Did he say that?” I guess I was trembling all over. “I heard him call he was coming down,” I said.
“That wasn’t him,” the man said. “Keep back.”
But a lot I cared what he told me to do. He waved his hand for me to keep back but I didn’t pay any attention.Geee whiz, he didn’t own the place and wasn’t Pee-wee my friend. Maybe you’d never think so, the way we were always at it, but just the same he was. I kneeled down and crept up to the edge and looked over. The tree was sticking out maybe about ten feet down. It was all rocky there and the tree was growing out from between rocks.
I called out and said, “Hey kid, they’re ready to catch you down there, so don’t be scared.” But all the while I knew they’d be mighty lucky if they could just catch him.
Just then I saw a head down there in the tree and then that fellow, Daraway Bravado or whatever they called him, crawled out from all that bunch of leaves and branches. There was blood trickling down his face. He was right close in by the precipice—I guess he was standing on the trunk of the tree.
“Is it solid?” the man called down to him.
“Yep, guess so,” he answered back.
I asked something but they didn’t pay any attention to me. I had to look way over to see that boy. I was lying down flat looking way over. I could hear the fellows down on the bottom calling but the young man up near me didn’t seem to hear them—anyway he didn’t bother with them. That moving picture boy, the way it seemed to me, he was standing on the trunk close in and his two arms were tight around a crooked rock that stuck out. I didn’t see how he could hold on to it, that’s the way it looked to me. But anyway he did. I heard him say, “Come on, and be careful.”
Then I saw Pee-wee—jiminies, he looked terrible! He was all blood and his clothes were torn and his face was white.
two boys climbing in a canyonTHEN I SAW PEE-WEE—JIMINIES, HE LOOKED TERRIBLE!
THEN I SAW PEE-WEE—JIMINIES, HE LOOKED TERRIBLE!
“Get hold of my leg,” the other boy said, and he stuck one leg out.
I didn’t say a word. It seemed to me that if I spoke even, Pee-wee might fall. I didn’t want him to look up at me, I was afraid he’d tumble if he did. He was crawling so careful, and he was so scared, that it seemed as if anything might topple him over. I just held my breath while I was waiting. He grabbed hold of the boy’s leg, then he got hold of him round the waist. I just looked at that fellow’s hands, the way they were clutching hold of the rock. Oh,did I hopehe wouldn’t let go! Pee-wee climbed up on his shoulders and got hold of another rock and then the man who was reaching over was just able to get hold of one of the kid’s arms. Oh, that was risky work! Then that boy let go one of his hands—gee it gave me thecreeps—and he reached up and held Pee-wee’s foot on his shoulder. Then he sort of guided the kid’s foot up to a smaller chunk of rock that stuck out. All the while the man had hold of Pee-wee’s arm. The next I knew the poor kid came scrambling up over the edge—he didn’t even see me. Even when I spoke he didn’t notice me. He just fell down flat on the ground—I thought he fainted but he didn’t.
I was just going to shout down that Pee-wee was safe all right when I heard a noise and somebody called, “Righto.” I looked over the edge and that other boy wasn’t there.
Somebody called up, “Where’s the kid? Is he all right?”
“Tell ’em yes only my leg’s cut and I had a hair-breadth escape,” the kid said. I had to laugh the way he said it.
“That movie boy fell down I think,” I said to the man.
He went to the edge and shouted, “How about it down there?”
Sandy—I think it was Sandy—called back, “He’s all right—this one’s all right. How about the kid?”
“Did you tell ’em I had a hair-breadth escape from death?” Pee-wee asked me.
I just mussed up his hair with my hand—gee it was bad enough already—and I had to laugh, I just couldn’t help it. “You crazy little rascal,” I said to him. “Don’t ever talk about the Silver Foxes being crazy again. Do you think you can walk?”
“Anyway I showed him Boy Scouts are all right,” the kid said. “Actions speak louder than words, hey?”
“Your words are always loud enough,” I said. “You don’t need to bother about actions. After this stick to words. Come on, see if you can get up and I’ll help you down into the chasm.”
Already the man had gone down in a hurry.
Pee-wee had a lot of scratches on him—he looked as if he had crawled through a nutmeg grater. He was kind of lame too. But he was all right. He said it was a mortal peril he was in.
“It wasn’t so terribly mortal,” he said, “because I didn’t get killed, but I almost did so it was kind of mortal.”
“After this when you go out with me I’m going to have you on a leash,” I told him.
When we got down in the chasm things were not so good. That boy had held on up there as long as he could—just till Pee-wee was safe—then he had gone crashing down and lucky for him they caught him in the coat. He was lying on the coat when Pee-wee and I got there, and he smiled at us. He wasn’t hurt bad but I guess he had a good shock. His face was bloody and his hands were cut—I guess from clutching that piece of rock. He was moving his head from one side to the other.
I pulled the kid aside and I spoke good and serious to him. Don’t you think I can’t be serious when I want to. I said, “You listen here Mister Scout Harris. That fellow saved your life. Dub and Sandy and those other two fellows were holding that coat foryou. If they hadn’t been holding it foryou, that fellow would be lying there dead—on account of you. I don’t care what he is, movie actor or anything else, you go over and tell him you’ve got to hand it to him for what he did. You tell him he’sone—real—honest to goodness—hero! Come on now.”
“Sure I will,” the kid piped up. “Do you think I don’t know heroes when I see them? I know more about them than you do. Didn’t I say how I’m going to show Dub how he can be one—didn’t I?”
“Sure, all right, come on,” I said.
They were all standing around that fellow—he was sitting up kind of feeling around his shoulder. Dub was wiping the blood off his face and we could see then it was only a bad scratch he had.
Pee-wee marched up very brave and honorable like and he said, “No matter who you are, I got to admit you’re a hero and you saved my life and you might even have got killed doing it and you can bet I’m glad you didn’t. And anyway, besides, I take back what I said to you, gee whiz, that’s only fair. If you were a Scout you’d get the Gold Medal, that’s one thing sure.”
The fellow just looked at him and he said, “I am a Scout. Who says I’m not? I never said I was anything else. I’m a Scout from Temple Camp just like you are.”
Pee-wee nearly went down for the second time. One of those men came with some iodine and he kneeled down and wiped the boy’s cheek and he put his arm around him and said, “Yes siree, he’s the greatest Roman of them all. Do you want to know his name? It’s Bobby Easton—hey Bobby? He’s a Scout—yep. All wool and thirty-six inches wide. They don’t make ’em like him every day. Do you want to shake hands with him?”
“That ain’t the way you do,” Pee-wee shouted. “You give the full scout salute—that shows how much you all don’t know about scouting.” So then he gave him the full salute, standing up there like a little tin soldier. I said, “Look, he’s posing for animal crackers.”
The man said, “Yes, I think the movie people went away late last night and we got here this morning and moved in. We’re surveyors working for Uncle Sam and we’re going to make a map of all this region. We were doing old Overlook Mountain last week and they told us up there that if we wanted a wide-awake helper to help out in the local field as a stake boy, we could probably get one at Temple Camp. Well, they picked a winner for us, that’s all I can say. Hanged if I wouldn’t like to take him up to Alaska with us next summer. What do you say, Mac?”
“I could swing it for him,” one of the others said.
All of a sudden I spoke up. I said, “As long as one of them was saved and then the other one was saved, will you please excuse me while I drop dead? I could even drop as dead as Bunko Bravado is. And please send word to my fond parents that I died laughing.The fixer has fixed it.Scout Bobby Easton, he gets the Gold Medal for saving life by risking his own, and he gets a hundred dollars besides—that’s a private award—and that proves that if Dub sticks to Pee-wee he can stay at Temple Camp as long as he wants—not—and get a hundred dollars, only watch him get it!
“His middle name is Hunter’s Stew,He mixes it.In mixing he can sure outdo,All other Scouts he ever knew,And when a thing goes all askew,He fixes it.
“His middle name is Hunter’s Stew,He mixes it.In mixing he can sure outdo,All other Scouts he ever knew,And when a thing goes all askew,He fixes it.
“Good night,” I said, “please let me die in peace. And don’t let Scout Harris come to my funeral because he’ll spoil it all.”
As soon as I dropped down dead, Sandy he dropped down dead too—I could see him with my dying gaze. Dub just stood where he was. He couldn’t die because he was petrified. Everybody started laughing. They even woke me up out of my peaceful death, laughing so hard. I said, “There’s only one thing I have against scouting and that is that there isn’t any fixer’s badge.”
We were all laughing, and all the while Sandy was telling Bobby Easton and those three government surveyors about how Pee-wee was going to fix it for Dub so he’d get the life-saving medal and enough money to stay at camp. Oh boy, didn’t they laugh!
Bobby Easton said, “Then I don’t take it.”
I said, “That’s where you’re positively absolutely wrong the first time, Bunko Daraway Reckless Bravado, because you have to take it whether you want it or not—you’re a hero. You can’t help being one any more than Pee-wee can help being a fixer and doing such good turns to his Scout comrades—accent on the good turns. Do you think it worries us not to get a medal? Didn’t wenotfind a will? And didn’t wenotfind some bandits? If we got what we were after when Pee-wee was along we’d all drop dead from shock and so Dub Smedley couldn’t stay anyway, so what do we care? Do you think that was the first time young Harris leaped before he looked?”
“You’re the Scouts that started out camping on a three days’ leave, aren’t you?” Bobby Easton asked me. “I was going to come and ask you if I could go but a Scout told me not to because you fellows were crazy. Now that I know you I think I’d like to stick to you.”
“Why not?” Dub said. “I’ll be starting home next week.”
“Don’t be so sure,” I told him. “Maybe we’ll be able to fix it yet—we should worry.”
That afternoon we stayed and helped those surveyors to get their own tent up, and we built them a scout fireplace out of stones. They were going to cook with an oil-stove—jiminy, nix on that. That Bobby Easton was a nice fellow all right. He said he remembered seeing us at camp but he didn’t get acquainted with us because he was new at camp. He was helping those surveyors on field assignment, that’s what they call it. Lots of Scouts at camp do like that. A couple of fellows I knew went for a week with some men who were stocking the lakes and streams with fishes.
Bobby Easton was going to stay with those surveyors for a week—as long as they camped in the chasm. A stake boy is the one that holds the cord and drives stakes and all like that. Pee-wee thought it was a fellow that ate a lot of steak. At night we all had supper together and those surveyors told us.
The next day we took down our tent and went back to Temple Camp. If you stay over your time you don’t get camping leave again, so if you ever go there you better be careful. Those surveyors went back to camp with us—they were telling us how they were going to do surveying for levees down on the Mississippi. Boy, wouldn’t I like to go with them! At camp they made up a statement about how Bobby Easton saved Pee-wee’s life—it was an affidavit like you have to have—and all of us had to sign it. Then Bobby had to answer a lot of questions by the camp council—that’s the same as local council. Then after a while he got the Gold Medal for life-saving from the National Court of Honor. He showed it to me after he got it. He got the Burnside award, too, after about a week, and he bought a canoe to keep on the lake. So I guess he’s coming up there every summer. He treated us all to ice cream too, down in Catskill. But all that wasn’t until after he got through helping the surveyors over in the chasm.
So then poor Dub only had about a week to stay because Pee-wee didn’t find anybody who was dying to have his life saved. I said that maybe there might possibly be an earthquake or something and a lot of people would almost get killed. But there wasn’t any earthquake—jiminies there never is at Temple Camp. Pee-wee said over in Japan they have dandy tidal waves. But what good do they do us—that’s what I asked him.
Two or three nights before the day Dub had to go home, he said to me, “Are you going to be at camp-fire to-night?”
“Sure, there’s nothing else to do,” I said.
He said, “Let’s take a hike, just us two.”
“Sure,” I told him, “but watch out for Pee-wee.”
“Are you game to walk around the lake?” he asked me. He said he had never done that and he wanted to do it. He wanted to see how it was on the other side of the lake.
“It’s all woods,” I told him. “The shore comes down steep and those hills are all covered with woods—you can see from camp how it is. There’s a trail goes all the way around.”
He asked me did I care so much about camp-fire.
“Sure not,” I said. “Haven’t I got all summer to sprawl around camp-fire?” Then right away I was sorry I said that. Because in a couple of days he had to go home. “Come on in the office,” I said, “and I’ll get permission.”
Dub waited, reading the bulletin-board while I told the councilor that I was going for a hike with another fellow. The councilor (that was Saunders, he’s a nice councilor all right) he said, “These night hikes are being discouraged but you boys come home early and I guess it will be all right.”
I said, “Believe me, I’ll get back by ten because I’ll want to get a piece of pie before cooking shack closes up. Chocolate Drop, he’s cook, and he goes to bed about ten o’clock.”
Dub was waiting for me, looking around Administration Shack. He was looking at the Indian canoe and the elk’s head and the stuffed beaver—there are a lot of things like that in Administration Shack. I guess he had never been in there except when he was being registered. He was looking at the big bulletin-board when I went back to him and he said, “We might row across if it wasn’t for that.” He was pointing at a notice that said—here’s just what it said because I copied it:
Attention is called to the rule recently announced forbidding the use of boats or canoes after dark. The mishap of Wednesday evening last emphasizes the importance of a rigorous enforcement of this new regulation. Boats and canoes must not be taken from their mooring places after supper except by special permission. Disregard of this rule will be followed by summary dismissal from the camp community.
Attention is called to the rule recently announced forbidding the use of boats or canoes after dark. The mishap of Wednesday evening last emphasizes the importance of a rigorous enforcement of this new regulation. Boats and canoes must not be taken from their mooring places after supper except by special permission. Disregard of this rule will be followed by summary dismissal from the camp community.
“That’s on account of tenderfoots,” I told Dub. “Some of the Scouts that are up here this season ought to have their nurse girls with them. Anyway I’d rather walk around, wouldn’t you?”
“Sure, anything suits me,” Dub said. “I’m going home in a couple of days anyway.”
I said, “You don’t mean you’d take a boat for that reason, do you? If you’re going home you might as well go right.”
He said, “No, I only meant I have to go home in a couple of days. Come ahead, I didn’t mean anything, let’s hike around.”
I felt sorry for him because he had to go right when the season was getting started, but how could I help it? You can bet I wouldn’t want to be leaving when the Scouts are coming every day. “You might as well go merrily, merrily,” I said. “You’ll be up next summer.”
“I’ll be going to work next summer,” he said.
“Forget about it,” I told him.
We started walking around the lake, going toward the brook—that’s west. If you look at the map you’ll see how we went. It’s about three and a half miles around the lake. If you want to see Pee-wee jump up in the air just tell him it’s longer one way around the lake than it is the other way. Just tell him that with a sober face if you want to see some fireworks. When you get past the brook it’s all woods, but there’s a trail. It’s hard to follow it in the dark unless you’ve been over it in the daytime. I bet I’ve been over it a hundred times. If you ever come to Temple Camp I’ll take you around.
While we were hiking around through the woods I asked Dub how he made out with those pictures he took that day we were on our way from Bagley Center to the chasm. He said they came out pretty good.
I said, “Then all you’ve got to do to be an Eagle is to take the life saving tests? I should think you would have done that before this.”
“What’s the use?” he said.
“Awh, come out of it, Dub,” I told him. “Just because you can’t stay all summer, is that any reason for not caring about your tests?Boy, if I had only one test more to be an Eagle you can bet I’d hop over the top all right. There are lots of Scouts here that would change places with you, you can bet.”
“Yes—they wouldn’t,” he said. “And go back to a flat up over a bakery store? I bet you and all your patrol, and Pee-wee, live in nice big houses.”
“Believe me,” I told him. “Pee-wee would change places with you to live over a bakery store. If he lived over a bakery store you’d never see him up here. Look out where you’re stepping, it’s marshy near the shore.”
He said, “Look at the luck that Easton fellow had—the Gold Medal and a hundred bucks. And he doesn’t need it either, his folks are rich.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” I said. “You win a prize or you don’t. Being rich hasn’t got anything to do with it.”
“Yes, but he would have stayed all summer anyway,” Dub said.
“Oh gollies, is that all you’re thinking about?” I said. “Gee, you weren’t like that when we were at Beaver Chasm.”
“I didn’t have to go so soon then,” he said.
“It wasn’t until after Bobby Easton won the Gold Medal that you started grouching,” I said to him.
He said, “What do I care about the Gold Medal—or being an Eagle Scout either? They don’t get me anything.”
“Good night!Don’t get you anything?” I said.
“Sitting home minding the baby while my mother’s out working,” he said. “What good is it being an Eagle Scout when you have to do that? Or the Gold Medal either—what good is it? Now I’m sorry my mother let me come up here at all. Gee, all she could scrape together was two weeks’ board and that isn’t enough up here even just for two weeks. Fellows buy cones and hot dogs and everything and go to the movies over in Catskill. I couldn’t even chip in for the closing events.”
I said, “Well, what of it? You won’t be here anyway.”
“Don’t rub it in,” he said.
“I don’t mean it that way,” I told him. “Only why should you be putting up a half a dollar for something you won’t have anything to do with? Anyway that’s against the rule in this camp, taking up collections like that. Gee, I should think you’d be glad your mother did that—sending you up here like that.”
He said, “Do you live in a big house?”
“Sure,” I told him, “but what’s the difference? They’re all the same size when you get on the outside of them—the outside of every house is the same size. You go outside your house and you’ve got just as much room as I have when I go outside of my house. Let’s hear you deny it.”
“Tell that to Pee-wee,” he said, kind of laughing.
“Look out, you’ll crack your face laughing,” I told him.
He said, “When I go outside my house I just have to sit in the gutter. There used to be a lot but they’re building on it.”
“When I go outside of my house there’s a big lawn I have to mow,” I told him. “Jiminies, you’re lucky—you don’t have to cut the sidewalk.”
He said, “You crazy Indian, you make me laugh.”
“Sure, why not?” I said to him.
He was talking like that all the way round to the other side of the lake. Over there the woods are thick. We stood looking across the water at the camp—all we could see were the lights and the camp-fire blazing. We could see it upside down in the water.
I said, “That big light is the cooking shack. Now you just look to the left of that. Do you see a little bit of a light? That’s outside my patrol cabin. The three cabins of our troop are there. They’re just a little way up the hill from the camp. They’re just outside the inside. You never came up there like we asked you to.”
Dub said, “You fellows are lucky all right. Those cabins belong to your troop, don’t they?”
“Sure they do,” I said, “and there’s a tent there too, because we have four patrols now. Pee-wee used to be a Raven but he started a declaration of independence and now we’ve got the Chipmunks. We’re more to be pitied than blamed. We keep a lantern out so on very dark nights we can find our way. They’re all at camp-fire to-night, my troop.”
“I bet you wish you were there,” Dub said.
“Believe me, I’m glad to get rid of them,” I told him. “There’s an old Scout there to-night who’s telling yarns about the Northern Pacific Trail. The Atlantic and Pacific Trail is good enough for me—gee, I’m always chasing to that store when I’m home. You thinkwe’relucky! Good night, I wish we had an Eagle Scout in my patrol.”
Dub said, “You’re all right coming away with me alone to-night. I don’t know, I just wanted to get away from the crowd.”
“The pleasure is mine,” I told him. “I should worry about the crowd. But you’re a funny kind of a gazzink. You want to get away from the crowd and all the while you want to stay at camp.”
He said, “I guess that’s just it, it makes me sore to be there and think how I can’t stay.”
I said, “Well, if I were you, Dub, I’d take that one last test and go home an Eagle Scout. That’s what I’d do if you’re asking me. I know that wouldn’t fix it for you so you could stay, and even the Gold Medal wouldn’t, but just the same an Eagle Scout is an Eagle Scout, I don’t care where he is. Gee,I’msorry you didn’t get the Burnside money. But what’s the good crying over spilled milk—there’s water enough in it already.Boy, if you were in my patrol you’d be an Eagle in one day. Twenty badges and then you flop!Good night!”
“I think I’ll flop out of the Scouts altogether,” he said, kind of gloomy.
“Sure, and be a quitter,” I told him. “Why, look at Will Dawson in my patrol—you know, that tall fellow? He’s got eight merit badges—first aid, athletics, both health badges, and pioneering. Those are the five you have to have for Star Scout. You know you don’t have to have the life-saving badge on that. He’s got the other five picked out—I have to laugh, he picked out easy ones. Angling! Jiminies, he was always doing that—all the fishes call him by his first name. Archery, that’s a cinch. Andbugling! Oh boy, all you have to do is blow on a trumpet. Carpentry and bird study, those are the only ones he has to get. I had to laugh when he was practising hammering a nail. He got a blood blister and he put some iodine on it and he wanted the first aid badge. First aid to himself. Bird study isn’t so easy. By the time we have the closing events he’ll be a Star Scout and we’re going to make a big fuss about it and have a corn-roast and everything. And, gee whiz, that’s only half as good as an Eagle Scout.”
Dub said, “Yes, but where will he be? And where will I be?”
“Awh, come out of it,” I told him.
He didn’t say anything, only just walked behind me along through the woods close to the lake. On that opposite side from camp the trail is good and plain because it’s a little way up a hill kind of. There aren’t any swampy places over there. But you have to go single file till you get where the woods are thinner.
Dub said, “I’d like to be at that corn-roast.”
“Maybe you’re lucky not to,” I said. “Maybe there won’t be any. Maybe it will be like old man Bagley’s will and the reward for the bandits. Gee, will you ever forget that?”
“Don’t be talking about it,” he said.
“Maybe Will Dawson won’t even get by with bird study—believe me, the birds have got something to say about it.”
Dub said, “I guess he’ll get it all right.”
“He will or I’ll jump down his throat,” I told him. “Believe me, you’ve got something to be thankful for that you’re not leader of the Silver Foxes. That’s the only way you can get them together—with a corn-roast. They haven’t got any discipline and it’s good they haven’t, because if they did have, they’d all be trying to get it away from each other. Councilor Trent says we’re more than a patrol, we’re an institution, but,gee, who wants to be in an institution?”
All of a sudden I looked behind me and Dub wasn’t there. He was standing still maybe about twenty feet in back of me. I could just see him beckoning to me. I asked him what was the matter but he only beckoned.
I went back to where he was and he said, “Did you hear a sound?”
“A kind of a rustling up in the trees?” I asked him. “Maybe it was an eagle—you ought to be ashamed to look him in the face.”
“No—listen,” he said. “Doesn’t it sound like oar-locks?”
“Jiminies, it does,” I said. “It’s over there, about where the shore turns. Wait a second—listen—let’s make sure.”
“Somebody breaking the rule?” Dub said.
“Sure, that’s likely,” I said. “You know what Hervey Willetts said. ‘What’s the good of having rules if you don’t break them.’ Boy oh boy, I’d just like to know who it is. Shall we shout and tell him the outside of his boat is all wet?”
“No, don’t call,” Dub said.
“It’s oar-locks all right,” I said. “Listen—shh. Did you hear a kind of a splash? I’d like to make my voice kind of deep like Councilor Trent and call out and ask what they’re doing here, hey?”
Dub said, “No, don’t. We don’t have to tell on them, do we?”
“Nope,” I said. “That’s one thing Scouts up here are never asked to do. But I’d like to have some fun with them.”
He said, “Shhh—listen.”
“I bet it’s that Hervey Willetts,” I said in a whisper. “If it is, bye-bye, Hervey. There’ll be somebody waiting at the float all right.”
Dub grabbed me by the shoulder so I wouldn’t speak too loud. Then he said, “I don’t see why any one goes out like that if they know there’ll be somebody waiting at the float. The management sure knows if there’s a boat out. Why don’t they lock the boats?”
“They don’t believe in that,” I whispered. “They go by rule one—a Scout’s honor is to be trusted—this time it’s going to be busted. Maybe not, at that. Some scoutmasters up here are sheiks—leave it to them. It’s all right for them to take girls out rowing, yes, yes, yes. I bet it’s that one from Ohio with that girl that’s staying at Sunset Farm. Just for the fun of it I’ll stump you to shoutI’m a bear, woof, woof! and then run.”
“No, wait a second,” Dub said. “If it’s a couple of Scouts it’s just as well for us to not know anything about it.”
I said, “I don’t hear any voices, do you?”
All of a sudden there was a sound like something dropping on wood—like something heavy.
“Would it be robbers, maybe?” Dub asked me.
“Now you’re making a noise like Pee-wee,” I said. “Sure, it’s pirates grappling for buried treasure.”
“Well what was that sound?” Dub asked me.
“Sounded to me like an anchor,” I told him. “Maybe they heard us and pulled it up. It sounded as if they dropped it on the floor of the boat. There are only two boats that have anchors—that’s that big red one, and the one that’s named Mary Temple. Listen for the oar-locks. I bet they row away.”
Just then we heard a splash, then in a few seconds a louder splash. I just grabbed Dub’s arm and we stood there, neither of us speaking. In about ten seconds there was more splashing and a voice called, “Help!” There was another word, too, but I didn’t know what it was. It sounded likehopeorrope. There was a voice from way up the hill, too, and it called, “Hel-ope, hlope!”
It was the echo from up in those woods.