[1]A. W. O. L.–Absent without leave.
A. W. O. L.–Absent without leave.
Pressing about Pee-wee, the scouts read eagerly the contents of that old musty oilskin memento of the days when Camp Merritt was a seething community of boys in khaki. The big spiders lurked in their webs; the repulsive little slugs, made homeless by the lifting of a damp, rotten board, hurried frantically about on the floor; a single ray of sunlight penetrated through a crevice, a slanting, dusty line, and lit up a little area of the dim, musty place. But there was no sound, not even from the scouts, save only the voice of Westy Martin as he read that old, creased, damp, all but undecipherable letter:
Dear Old Mother:I was hoping I might get down to Hicksville before we sail, but I guess I can’t. They don’t tell us much here but it seems to be in the air that we’ll sail in a day or two. Feeling prettydisappointed because I wanted to see you again and say good-bye and have just one good home-cooked meal. I’m sick of beans and black coffee. Don’t worry, you’ll hear from me in France. I don’t suppose you’ll be able to get the end of the porch fixed up, but try to get the window put in before winter. I meant to do that myself. Put a pail under the drain so the water won’t flood under the woodshed. Tell Don to be a good watch dog and be sure to tie him outside at night.I don’t suppose you’ll hear from me again till we get across. Don’t worry, pretty soon it will all be over and I’ll come marching home and you’ll be telling people it was me that won the war and I’ll be glad to get a good squint at my old N. C. hills. It will be over before you know it. Now you have to be brave, see? Just like you were when dad died. Remember what you said then? Now don’t think this is good-bye because I’m sailing but remember the Atlantic Ocean isn’t a one way street. Just chalk that up on the wall, and speaking about oceans don’t forget about the water by the woodshed and do what I told you. So now good-bye dear old Mum and don’t worry, and I won’t go nearParis like you said. Hicksville is good enough for me.
Dear Old Mother:
I was hoping I might get down to Hicksville before we sail, but I guess I can’t. They don’t tell us much here but it seems to be in the air that we’ll sail in a day or two. Feeling prettydisappointed because I wanted to see you again and say good-bye and have just one good home-cooked meal. I’m sick of beans and black coffee. Don’t worry, you’ll hear from me in France. I don’t suppose you’ll be able to get the end of the porch fixed up, but try to get the window put in before winter. I meant to do that myself. Put a pail under the drain so the water won’t flood under the woodshed. Tell Don to be a good watch dog and be sure to tie him outside at night.
I don’t suppose you’ll hear from me again till we get across. Don’t worry, pretty soon it will all be over and I’ll come marching home and you’ll be telling people it was me that won the war and I’ll be glad to get a good squint at my old N. C. hills. It will be over before you know it. Now you have to be brave, see? Just like you were when dad died. Remember what you said then? Now don’t think this is good-bye because I’m sailing but remember the Atlantic Ocean isn’t a one way street. Just chalk that up on the wall, and speaking about oceans don’t forget about the water by the woodshed and do what I told you. So now good-bye dear old Mum and don’t worry, and I won’t go nearParis like you said. Hicksville is good enough for me.
Your loving son.
There was something about this old missive which sobered the bantering troop of scouts and made even Pee-wee quiet and thoughtful.
“It’s a letter he was going to send,” Artie Van Arlen finally said.
“Who?” Doc Carson asked.
Artie shrugged his shoulders. “Somebody or other, that’s allweknow,” he said. “We don’t even know who he was going to send it to; there are a whole lot of dear old mothers.”
“You said it,” commented Roy.
“Let’s see the other papers,” one of the scouts said.
The only other contents of the wallet were a small paper with blanks filled in, and an engraved calling card. The paper with the blanks filled in was so smeared from long moisture that the written parts were undecipherable. The paper was evidently a leave of absence from camp. The name was utterly blurred out, but by studying the smeared writing in the space where the datehad been written the scouts thought they could determine the date, or at least part of it.Sun–1918was all they could be sure of.
But fortunately the calling card appeared to confirm this date. It was a card of fine quality and beautifully engraved with the name of Helen Shirley Bates. In the lower left hand corner was engraved Woodcliff, New Jersey. On the back of the card was written in a free feminine handFor dinner Sunday April 14th, 1918. One o’clock.
“What do you make out of it? What does it mean? Who was he anyway?” the scouts, interrupting each other, asked, as these memorials of an unknown soldier boy were passed around from hand to hand and eagerly read.
Of all the scouts Westy Martin, of Roy’s Patrol, was the soberest and most thoughtful. He had the most balance. Not that Roy did not have balance, but he never had much on hand because he was continually losing it.
“Whoever he was,” Westy said, “it looks as if he got a leave of absence to go to the girl’s house for dinner. Going this way would be ashortcut to Woodcliff. Maybe he was going to take the train up from New Milford.”
“I guess he was going to mail the letter to his mother in New Milford, hey?” Hunt Ward of the Elks suggested.
“Yes, but why didn’t he?” Doc Carson asked.
“It’s a mystery,” said Pee-wee. “Do you know what I’m going to do?”
“Break it to us gently,” Roy said.
“Some day soon I’m going to hike to Woodcliff and see that girl and find out what that soldier’s name is and I’m going to send the letter to his mother.”
“What’s the use of doing that?” Vic Norris asked. “The soldier has probably been home two years by now.”
“I don’t care,” Pee-wee insisted; “the letter is to his mother and I’m going to see that she gets it.”
“Are you going to get a soda while you’re up at Woodcliff?” Roy asked him.
“That’s all right,” Pee-wee said with great vehemence; “if you got a letter that went astray you’d want it, wouldn’t you?”
“You’re talking in chunks,” Roy said. “Goahead and see the girl if you want to. I bet she’ll think you’re sweet. Only come ahead and let’s get to camp.”
“Unanimously carried by a large majority,” Dorry Benton said. “Mysteries aren’t going to buy tar-paper for our old car.”
“There might have been a thousand dollars in this wallet,” Pee-wee reminded them.
“Except for one thing,” Roy said.
“And what’s that?” Pee-wee asked.
“That there wasn’t,” Roy said. “Put it in your pocket and come on.”
Though they treated Pee-wee’s find as something of a joke and attached no significance to it, still the discovery of these old papers which had now no meaning for anybody kept recurring to them as they made their way to the old camp. But the consensus of opinion was that these old mildewed remnants of another time were unimportant.
“What good is a letter when the fellow who sent it is already home?” Doc Carson asked.
“What use is a leave of absence that expired two or three years ago?” Connie Bennett added.
“If that fellow’s away yet, he’s overstaying his leave, that’s sure,” said Roy.
“What good is a Sunday dinner that somebody ate a couple of years ago?” Doc queried.
“Maybe he’s up there eating it yet,” Will Dawson suggested.
“That’s the way our young hero would do,” said Roy.
“Do you mean to say it isn’t important–that dinner?” Pee-wee demanded.
“Sure, all dinners are important,” Roy said. “But one two years old isn’t much good. If it was only six months old I wouldn’t say anything, buttwo years–”
“You’re crazy!” vociferated Pee-wee.
“Sure,” said Roy, “one dinner is as important as another if not more so. Deny it if you can.”
“Anyway I’m going to see that girl,” Pee-wee said.
“At dinnertime?” Roy asked slyly.
“I’m going to find out who that fellow is, I’ve got his finger prints here, too, on this card–”
“G-o-o-d night,” laughed Roy. “The boy scout Sherlock Home Sweet Holmes. I supposeyou’ll have that poor girl in Atlanta Penitentiary before you get through.”
“Let’s see the finger prints?” Westy asked.
Pee-wee showed him the card and there, sure enough, was a finger print on the face of it and two on the back. It looked as if someone with greasy hands had taken the card up as one usually holds a card....
Within ten or fifteen minutes more they were in the old camp. They entered the reservation territory at its western edge and cutting across soon came to the concrete road which runs north and south through the middle of the camp. This is the Knickerbocker Road which traversed the reservation territory before ever Camp Merritt was heard of, and bears its scanty traffic now through that pathetic scene of ruin and desolation. It is the one feature of the camp that was not of its temporary character.
Up this road through Dumont to the south, there once passed a never ceasing procession of autos, encountering guards and sentinels for a mile south of the camp. The atmosphere of military officialdom permeated the public approaches for miles in both directions.
If one were so fortunate as to have a pass, hecould by dint of many stops and absurd inquiries and parleys, succeed in reaching the large gate posts on which was printed UNITED STATES RESERVATION. Through this the Knickerbocker Road, being especially privileged, passed without challenge, straight through the middle of the camp and out of its northern extremity, then through the pleasant little town of Haworth.
On either side of this road, within the confines of the camp, were board shacks of every size and variety. They were for every purpose conceivable and, large and small, they were all alike in this, that they had a makeshift, temporary look, and were a delight to the eye of the tried and true camper. They were all alike in this, too, that civilian patriots had charged twenty dollars a day to put them up. This was in odd contrast to the one poor, hapless soul who was to receive three hundred dollars for the work of tearing several of them down.
As the scouts, his one hope now, came up onto the central road and hiked southward toward the main entrance, they scrutinized the weather-beaten and windowless structures on either side for a sign of their friend. But no hint of anyhuman presence was there, no suggestion of life of any kind, save a companionable windmill nearby, the moving wheel of which creaked cheerfully as if to assure these scout pilgrims that the scene of their destination was not altogether deserted. It seemed a kind of living, friendly thing, in that forlorn surrounding. What surging life it had witnessed, what hearty, reckless, resolute departures! One might fancy it saying as it revolved, “I have seen all, seen the boys come and go, and I alone am left in all this hollow desolation.”
The boys paused a moment to watch this lonely sentinel and listen to its creaking.
“That sound would give me the shudders at night, if I didn’t know what caused it,” one of them said.
“Shut your eyes, then listen,” said Westy. “It sounds kind of spooky, huh?”
“Gee whiz, but this is a lonely place,” Roy said. “It reminds you of Broadway, it’s so different. It’s a peach of a place to camp.”
“I bet there are ghosts up here,” Pee-wee said darkly.
“Sure, you’d better look around for finger prints,” Roy said.
“Maybe that old windmill is haunted, hey?” our young hero suggested.
“It needs oil anyway,” Roy said.
“You make me tired,” said Pee-wee contemptuously. “A ghost can squeak, can’t it?”
“Sure,” said Roy, “if it’s rusty.”
But for all their banter the old windmill, perhaps because it was the only thing stirring, held them and sobered their thoughts as it would not have done elsewhere. Perhaps they felt a sort of consciousness of its lonely position and fancied it to be something human. It overlooked the obscure path along which they had come; how many forms in khaki had it seen stealing to or from the camp? A. W. O. L. How many truckloads of uproarious boys had it seen driven away? How many maimed and suffering brought back? Surely it had seen much that the most loyal citizens had not been permitted to see. A whimsical thought, perhaps, but what good fun it would be to climb up there and learn some dark and tragic secrets from this lonely old derelict, the only thing with any sign of lifethat Uncle Sam had left in that forlorn, deserted spot.
Had it any tragic secret? That seemed quite absurd. A creaky old windmill revolving to no purpose in that waste, because it had nothing else to do.
“Listen!” said Pee-wee. “Sh-h-h! I heard a noise–up there.”
Captivated for the moment by their own mood, they all paused, listening. Then, not far off, a friendly voice accosted them. It was young Mr. Blythe coming to greet them. His face wore that uncertain, hovering smile, which had the effect of arousing pity. His eyes had an eager, startled look, like those of a frightened animal. He seemed backward, almost bashful, but his joy at seeing them was unmistakable and sincere.
“Better late than never,” laughed Roy. “Here we are bag and baggage; we thought you were a spook or something....”
Blythe was bunking in one of the shacks which he had secured the privilege of tearing down and it was apparent to the scouts that his knowledge of camping was primitive. But Pee-wee, out of the greatness of his scout heart, volunteered to be his guide, philosopher, and friend in these matters.
“We’ll show you how to do,” he said. “If there’s anything you don’t understand you just come to me. I’ve got the camping badge and the pathfinder’s badge, and the astronomer’s badge–”
“He’s an astronomer,” interrupted Roy; “he knows all the movie stars.”
“He sees everything in the sky,” Hunt Ward added; “he’s the one that put the see in sea-scout.”
“Sure, and put the pie in pioneer scout too,” Roy said. “He studied first aid and last aid and lemonade and everything. He’s a scout in very high standing only he doesn’t stand very high. You stick to him and you can’t go wrong.”
“Do you mean to say I haven’t the badge for camping?” the diminutive Raven demanded as he unburdened himself of his various paraphernalia. “Do you mean to say I didn’t study the heavens when I was a tenderfoot?”
“No wonder the stars went out,” Roy said. “Here, take this bag of flour and put it over in the corner. You’re in Camp Merritt now, you have to obey your superior officer. Here, take the spools of thread out of this coffee-pot and kick that big can over here, the one marked dynamite. I’m going to put the sugar in that. Anyone who takes any sugar without permission will be blown up by his patrol leader.Look what you’re doing!Don’t set the pickles on the chocolate. Hand me that bottle of ink before you spill it in the egg powder.”
It was good to see Blythe laughing at Pee-wee’s heroic effort to dispose of the commissary stores which his companions loaded upon him.It was a laugh of simple, genuine pleasure, almost childlike.
“Don’t drop the fly-paper in the flour,” Roy shouted to Pee-wee in frantic warning, as Pee-wee wrestled valiantly under the load of boxes, packages and cans. “Put the cork back in the molasses jug before it spills into the Indian meal.”
“We’ll have home brew,” Westy said.
“You mean home glue,” Roy answered. “Look at him!He’s got the powdered cocoanut all over the bacon!”
“Keep those things off me!” the victim shouted as the boxes and cans piled up on him. “Do you think I’m a freight car?”
“As he stooped to pick up a box a can went rolling under Blythe’s makeshift bed. As he reached for the can a bag of beans burst like a sky-rocket, pouring a shower down his neck and into his pockets and over the floor.
“Now you see!” he yelled. “The eggs are sliding down!”
“Help, help!” called several scouts.
Pee-wee picked up two cans of sardines and sacrificed a bag of rice. He gathered up rice and beans together, and a jar of jam went rollingon a career of foreign travel. All was confusion.
“Time!” he screamed.
“He asks for an armistice,” Roy shouted.
“You mean a couple of dozen arms,” Westy shrieked.
“If you put another thing on me I’ll drop the eggs,” Pee-wee screamed. “I’ll drop them so that they–they–bounce, too.”
This threat of frightfulness cowered his assailants.
“That’s against international law,” Roy shouted.
“I don’t care, I’ll do it!” Pee-wee yelled. “You pile one more thing on me and I’ll–”
“Start an eggmarine campaign,” Westy said.
“That’s the first time I ever knew food to get the best of Pee-wee,” Artie Van Arlen observed.
The diminutive mascot of the Raven Patrol having valiantly protected the eggs in one extended hand gradually divested himself of the mountain under which he had labored, and by a fine strategic move took a tactical position behind these defenses with the pasteboard box ofeggs upraised in heroic and threatening defiance. The war had come to an end suddenly, like the World War.
“Unconditional surrender,” Roy shouted.
“Do I get three helpings of stew for supper?” demanded the victor, by way of imposing an indemnity before he proceeded with disarmament.
“Sure, eggs won the war,” Roy conceded.
As for Blythe, he was sitting on a grocery box in No Man’s Land, laughing so hard that his sides ached. Their banter seemed a kind of tonic to him. And it was when he laughed and seemed so simple and childlike and so much one of them, that they found him so likable.
After this decisive conflict the period of reconstruction or rather the period of demolition, began auspiciously. It began with a grand feast cooked out-of-doors in the brass kettle which was the pride of Roy’s life. That brass kettle stood upon a scout fireplace of stones, and from its interior a hunter’s stew diffused its luscious fragrance to those who sat about, feeding the companionable fire. The scouts were quite masters of the situation, their coming must have been like a freshening breeze to the lonely visitant at the old deserted camp, and their fun and brisk efficiency and readiness seemed to give him a new life and afford him amusement which was expressed in that silent, likeable, yet haunting smile. It was not often that he laughed aloud and he talked but little, and then with a kind of diffidence that seemed odd in one so much their senior.
“I’m going to leave that kettle to my ancestorswhen I die,” Roy said. “It’s been all over and I’ve cooked everything in it except Cook’s tours; it’s travelled more than they have, anyway. It’s been to Temple Camp and we fished it up from the bottom of the lake once and I guess as many as ten thousand wheat cakes have come out of that kettle. Hey, Pee-wee?”
“Nine thousand eight hundred is all Pee-wee can say for sure about,” Westy said.
“Are you used to camping?” Doc Carson asked Blythe. “I thought maybe you liked this kind of thing because you came here.”
“It was just that I was out of a job,” Blythe said frankly. “Anything’s better than nothing. I happened to wander in here and met a man with an auto. He works for the concern that’s going to tear the camp down; a salvage concern. He got me this job. I don’t suppose you’d call it a job, it’s an assignment. I picked out the three buildings and they sent me a paper with the numbers on. I’ve only been here a couple of days. Yesterday was the only time I was in Bridgeboro. I was going to give it up. I didn’t have any supplies and I didn’t know who to get to help me–I was mighty glad that friend ofyours came up yesterday and said he’d tell you fellows it was all right.”
“He’s our scoutmaster,” said Pee-wee. “He’s all right, only you’ve got to know how to manage him. We’ll start in to-morrow morning and we’ll show that savage concern all right. We’ll show them what we can do.”
“Maybe they won’t be so savage,” Roy said.
“Pee-wee can manage them,” Westy observed.
“Oh sure, all you have to do is to know how to manage them,” commented Connie. “They can’t come too savage for our young hero.”
“He can even tame wild flowers,” Roy said; “lions–dandelions and tiger-lilies and everything. He eats them alive.”
“Speaking of eating, how about the stew?” Artie Van Arlen asked.
“It has to stew for an hour,” Roy said. “Somebody get out the tin plates; be prepared, that’s our motto. All the comforts of home. Where’syourhome?” he asked Blythe in a sudden impulse.
“Oh I’m just a kind of a tramp,” Blythe said uneasily. “I guess I must have left home before I had my eyes open.”
“That was before you could walk,” Pee-wee reminded him.
“The last home I was in was in New York,” Blythe said. “It wasn’t mine.”
“I guess you’re like we are,” Westy said, noticing perhaps a little embarrassment in their friend’s manner, “our home is outdoors.”
“And believe me, the sky has all the tin roofs I ever saw beaten twenty ways,” observed Warde Hollister. That was pretty good for a new scout.
“Roofs are all right to slide down,” Pee-wee observed. “They’re all right as long as you’re not under them.”
“Believe me, we wouldn’t have the sky over us if we didn’t have to,” said Roy. “It’s a blamed nuisance when it rains. The trouble with the solar system is there are too many stars and planets and things in it. You can’t get out into the open.”
“What are you talking about?” Pee-wee retorted contemptuously.
“I’d get rid of all the stars, stationary stars, movie stars and all,” Roy said.
“Scouts are supposed to like the stars,” Pee-wee informed Blythe.
“Sure, if he had his own way he’d eat hunter’s stew out of the Big Dipper,” said Roy. “A lot he knows about the stars; he doesn’t even know that Mercury is named after a thermometer.”
“This bunch is crazy,” Pee-wee informed Blythe.
“That’s because we sleep under crazy quilts,” Roy said.
Blythe just sat there laughing, the silent, diffident pleasure in his countenance shown by the crackling, cheery blaze.
“What would you do if you didn’t have the North Star, I’d like to know?” Pee-wee demanded. “We’d be all roaming around lost in the woods, dead maybe.”
“I should worry about roaming around dead,” said Roy. “Do you think I’ve got the North Star?”
With a look of pitying contempt, Pee-wee turned from Roy to the more congenial bowl, now sizzling and bubbling on the fire. “It’s ready,” he said.
“Be prepared,” said Roy; “each one arm himself with a tin plate and after that every scout for himself. This is called a hunter’s stew because you have to hunt for the meat in it, but it’s got plenty of e-pluribus unions in it. The potatoes and dumplings go to the patrol leaders, carrots to first and second hand scouts; tenderfeet get nothing because the stew isn’t tender enough....”
It was pleasant sitting there in the bright area surrounded by darkness, chatting and planning the work for the morrow, and eating hunter’s stew, scout style, patent applied for. And notwithstanding the slurs which Roy had cast at the sky it was pleasant to see that vast bespangled blackness over head. In the solemn night the neighboring shacks were divested of their tawdry cheapness, the loose and flapping strips of tar-paper and the broken windows were not visible, and the buildings seemed clothed in a kind of sombre dignity–silent memorials of the boys who had made those old boards and rafters ring with their shouts and laughter. Not a sound was there now from all those barnlike remains of a life that was gone. Only the noise of the sawand the hammer would resound where once the stirring revelry echoed.
“You hear some funny sounds here at night, when the wind blows,” Blythe remarked.
“Shh, listen; I hear something now,” one of the scouts said.
“I heard that last night,” said Blythe uneasily; “or else I dreamed it.”
Westy, who had been poking up the fire, paused, his stick poised, listening. “It’s over there,” he said, pointing to the tall dark outline of the windmill.
“There isn’t breeze enough to turn the fan,” Doc Carson said.
“It sounds like someone groaning,” said another.
From the neighborhood of that old tower, though perhaps farther off, they could not tell, came a sound almost human, a kind of moaning intermingled with a plaintive wail, pitched in a higher key.
“Spooky,” Westy said.
“This is the kind of a place I like,” said Connie.
“Only it’s nice to have somebody here,” Blythe admitted.
“That’s all right,we’rehere,” Pee-wee said.
They did not hear the sound again. If one were superstitious he might have conjured that sound into a crying of the ghost of some dead soldier haunting the old forsaken camp. But these scouts did not believe in ghosts.
They did, however, believe in hunter’s stew and they forgot all else as they sat around their camp-fire in the quiet darkness, telling yarns, and amusing their new friend by jollying....
As a camping place, perhaps the old reservation would not have proved a spot to the heart of the woods lover, but it was sequestered and had about it that romance which attaches to deserted habitations that are not tainted by the sordid environments of city life. The old buildings had never been beautiful and it was only the atmosphere of a place deserted which gave them a sort of romantic character.
But Nature had not been forced to evacuate the camp area; trees and tiny patches of woodland had remained, and the things which scouts love and seek had reasserted their supremacy there after the last of the soldiers, and later the army of clerical workers, had gone away.
The result was a kind of jumble of man’s hurried handiwork and Nature’s persistence, and the place, for a while, was a novel, nay even a delightful, spot in which to camp.
In conference with Blythe, who seemed cheerfullyagreeable to any plan, the troop decided that each patrol should have the task of demolishing a building, and should work under the supervision of its leader, with Blythe as a sort of general overseer.
The whole troop, however, bunked in a small fourth building because this would not be in process of razing. From the appearance of this little building it had been a sort of club or meeting place. The window glass was quite gone, as indeed was all the window glass in the camp. Near by was a good place for their camp and cook fire. The little shack had shelves on which the scouts kept their stores. They made beds of balsam, scout fashion, and slept both in and out-of-doors, as the weather dictated.
Roy was cook, as he always was on their troop enterprises. In his forages against the stronghold of Chocolate Drop, the professional cook at Temple Camp, he had learned much of the beloved art in which that grinning negro excelled. The unruly flipflop tossed in air, fluttered down into his greasy pan like a tamed bird. In Pee-wee’s experiments it had a perverse habit of alighting on his head.
Roy’s spirit, indeed, seemed to pass into his cookery and give it a flavor all its own. His bacon sizzled with joy. His coffee bubbled over with mirth. His turnovers wore a scout smile. His baked potatoes had his own twinkle in their eyes. His dumplings were indented with merry dimples like those in his own cheeks.
The morning after their arrival they set to work in real earnest. They had not a complete equipment of axes and saws, excepting their belt-axes, but as much of the work consisted of gathering and piling the lumber, and removing nails from it, there were implements enough for all. Some of the scouts worked above, loosening the boards from the roofs, while others on the ground pulled the tar-paper and nails from these and made an orderly pile of them.
Such was the nature of their work during the first two or three days and they found it strenuous but neither too difficult nor heavy. And work was relieved somewhat by the comedy element furnished by Pee-wee who rolled off a roof on one occasion while eating a sandwich.
“Take the nails out of him, pull the sandwich out of his hands, and pile him up with theboards,” Roy called from a neighboring roof. “He’s docked thirty cents for the time lost in rolling down.”
“He ought to have an emergency brake,” Westy suggested, as the young Raven clambered up to his place again, sandwich and all, and proceeded working with the sandwich in one hand and a hammer in the other.
“Didn’t you say that’s all roofs are good for?” Pee-wee vociferously demanded. “To roll off of?”
“To rolldown, I said,” Roy answered from his own perch among the beams of the next shack.
“Did you ever hear of anybody rolling up?” the young hero demanded.
“Sure,” said Roy; “didn’t you ever roll up and go to sleep? You never rolleddown, and went to sleep, did you? That shows what you know about geometry.”
“That’s not geometry,” Pee-wee shouted. “I took geometry last year.”
“It’s about time you put it back,” Roy called.
“Look out or you’ll take another tumble,” Westy added.
“He didn’t put the last one back yet,” Roy observed.
“There goes your sandwich,” another one of the Silver Foxes called with glee, as that precious remnant of Pee-wee’s lunch went tumbling and separating down the slanting roof.
“Now you see what you made me do!” he fairly screamed.
“Food is coming down,” Roy laughed.
This is a fair sample of the fun and banter which accompanied their work and helped to make it easy and pleasant. Occasionally a harmless missile, perchance a luscious fragment of some honorably discharged tomato, would float gracefully from roof to roof bathing the face of some unsuspecting toiler with the crimson hue of twilight. And once again the weather-stained old shacks would seem alive with merriment and laughter.
As for Blythe he witnessed this merry progress with simple, grateful pleasure. He had expected to see the work done, but he had not expected to see it conjured by scout magic into a kind of play, nor the neighborhood of their joyous labor transformed into a scene of rustic comfort.
By the merest chance the scouts had come and seen and conquered, and presently the scene had that wholesome air of scout life about it. It seemed to poor Blythe as if he had awakened and found himself in fairyland, with a score or more of small brown gnomes climbing and scrambling about his domain, singing, jollying, planning, laughing, working, cooking, eating, kindling big camp-fires with odds and ends of wood, and telling such nonsensical yarns as he had never heard before. Pee-wee and Roy in particular amused him greatly. “Go on, make fun of him,” he would say to Roy. And then he would deliberately take sides with Pee-wee against the whole troop. But he was more prone to listen than to talk.
“Haven’t you got any adventures to tell?” Pee-wee asked him around camp-fire one night.
“Sure,” said Roy, “look in your pockets and see if you can’t find a couple.”
“I guess I’m not much of a hand for adventures,” Blythe laughed. “I like to hear about them though.”
“I’ll tell you some,” Pee-wee said. “I’ll tell you how I found a wallet–”
“And a dime,” Westy interrupted.
“Tell how you saved a fish from drowning at Temple Camp,” Roy said.
“Sure, that’s a fish story,” Connie piped up.
So Pee-wee launched forth recounting instances from his career of glory at Temple Camp, the boys prompting and jollying him, all to the simple delight of their new friend. His enjoyment seemed always an incentive to banter and nonsense....
It was soon apparent to the scouts that their coming had saved the enterprise for Blythe. He would not have been able to superintend the job with other helpers and even with the scouts he was rather their companion than their leader.
His attempts at sustained labor were pitiful. Yet he was never idle. But he moved from one unfinished task to another, never realizing apparently that each job he started was left undone. He was quite unequal to the harder part of the work, and the scouts, both kind and observant, could see that, and were content to let him gather and pile the fallen lumber and sometimes to rake up the smaller pieces for their evening fire, which he looked forward to with keen delight. What was the matter with him, they did not know. But this they did know, that he was their friend and that he took a kind of childish delight in their camping. He became excitedeasily and would sometimes seem almost at the point of crying. He would throw down his saw or hammer in a kind of despair.
But these traits were not noticeable except in the working hours and not always then. The boys kept up the fiction of his leadership, conferring with him and consulting him about everything. And with open hearts they took him into their scout life and liked him immensely.
The nearest they could get to a solution of his peculiarities was that he was not well and that a long course of unemployment and privation had resulted in his losing his grip. They took him as they found him, like the good scouts that they were, and their enterprise to earn a little money for improving their picturesque meeting-place at home seemed transformed into a collective, splendid good turn in which their scout loyalty shone like a light.
And so the days of strenuous, cheerful toil, and the nights around the companionable blaze, passed, and Blythe who seemed always fearful and apprehensive of something appeared to be haunted with a kind of dread that this remote and pleasant rustic life would come to an end.
“We won’t be finished next week?” he would say with a kind of simple air of wishing to put off that evil time. “You don’t think so, do you?” And Pee-wee would answer, “That’s all right, you leave it to me. I’ll fix it.”
And evidently he did succeed in fixing it, for it rained steadily for three days.
And now, since the sun had reappeared and they had decided to take things a little easier, Pee-wee announced his intentions of going on a pilgrimage to Woodcliff to hunt up the mysterious Helen Shirley Bates, and to ascertain from her the address of her soldier friend whom she had entertained at dinner during the war. For it was on Pee-wee’s conscience that the soldier who had lost his wallet had written a letter to his mother somewhere or other and that this had never reached its destination.
“Are you going to wear your Sunday uniform?” Roy asked. For Pee-wee kept a special suit of scout khaki for ceremonial occasions. Upon the sleeve of this were his merit badges.
On this notable pilgrimage, knowing the weakness of young ladies for official regalia, he wore also his canteen (empty), his scout axe–to hew his way into her presence perhaps–a coil of ropedangling from his belt, his scout scarf tied in the celebrated “raven knot” and his hat inside out as a reminder that he had not yet performed his daily good turn. Upon mailing the letter to its proper address, and not until then, would Scout Harris, R.P. F.B.T. B.S.A., put his hat on right side out. He also took some fudge which he had made as a tribute to his unknown Woodcliff friend. He was prepared to chop her to pieces or to give her candy, whichever the occasion required.
He was indeed a human quartermaster’s department and in addition to this equipment he carried also somewhere in the depths of one of his pockets a scout note book wherein the good scout rule of “jotting down things seen by the way” was scrupulously obeyed. There were few wayside trifles that escaped Scout Harris’ observant eye. A sample page from this record of his travels will give an idea of his thoroughness:
August 10th. From Temple Camp to Catskill. Passed a worm also a piece of a ginger snap. Passed a smell like a kitchen. Found a rubber heel in the road. A deadbug was upside down in a puddle. Met a fence. Saw something that looked like a snake but it was a shoe-lace. Had a soda in Catskill. Had another–raspberry. Saw a flat tire as flat as a pancake and it started me thinking about pancakes.
August 10th. From Temple Camp to Catskill. Passed a worm also a piece of a ginger snap. Passed a smell like a kitchen. Found a rubber heel in the road. A deadbug was upside down in a puddle. Met a fence. Saw something that looked like a snake but it was a shoe-lace. Had a soda in Catskill. Had another–raspberry. Saw a flat tire as flat as a pancake and it started me thinking about pancakes.
And so on, and so on.
It was Roy whom Pee-wee chose to accompany him on his important mission. They had reached a point about fifty yards from the shacks, two of which were well-nigh demolished, when they heard a voice and turning saw Warde Hollister drop from a rafter and come running toward them.
“How far is Woodcliff?” he asked, out of breath, and as if caught by a sudden idea.
“’Bout six or seven miles,” Roy said. “We don’t know just exactly where we’re going except that it’s somewhere around Woodcliff Lake.”
“I might make my last test,” Warde panted. “I just happened to think of it.” He looked rather appealingly at Roy who was his patrol leader.
“Come ahead,” said Roy, “I’m glad you thought of it.”
“Have you got your note book?” Pee-wee vociferously demanded. “You’ve got to jot down everything you see and write a satisfactory description of it.”
“Only the test saysalone or with another scout.” Warde said doubtfully. “What do you think? It would be a peach of a chance and I’m crazy to get my first class badge.”
“The question is, are we to consider Pee-wee a scout?” Roy said, winking at Warde. “Is he a scout or a sprout?”
“It’s just as you say, you’re patrol leader,” Warde laughed.
“Sure, it’s all right,” laughed Roy, “come ahead. I’d have asked you only I never thought about it.”
“Have you got your note book?” Pee-wee again demanded.
“Yep,” Warde laughed.
“Then you’re all right,” Pee-wee assured him. “It doesn’t make any difference whether one scout goes with you or two.”
With such high legal authority as this, Warde’s mind was at rest. He was the newest scout in the troop and a member of Roy’s patrol, theSilver Foxes. He had made a great hit in the troop and was immensely liked.
He had not been long enough a member of the Silver Fox patrol to have imbibed the spirit of freedom with its sprightly leader which the others so hilariously exhibited. The Silver Fox patrol was an institution altogether unique in scouting. One had to be half crazy (as the Ravens and Elks said) before one became a tried and true Silverplated Fox–warranted. The Silver Foxes had a spirit all their own–and they were welcome to it.
Warde had shown his mettle by his tests, and also he had shown his fine breeding and spirit by not pushing too aggressively into troop familiarity. If he was not yet a full-fledged scout, he was at least a fine type for a scout, and the uproarious Silver Foxes and their irrepressible leader were proud of him.
He had now, as he had said, but one test to take before becoming a first class scout. This meant more to him than it might have meant to another for he had obtrusively prepared himself to claim several merit badges of the more easily won sort, as soon as his first class rankshould enable him to properly lay claim to these.
He was ahead of the game in fact, and hence the anxiety of his tone and manner when he ran after Pee-wee and Roy, hoping that here might be the chance of fulfilling the final requirement before the coveted first class badge should be his. None fully knew how much he had dreamed of the first class badge. His fine loyalty had kept him at work among them, but he had not been able to see those two fare forth without jumping at the chance.
The test on which his achievement hung is on the same page of the handbook with the picture of the badge he longed for: