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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/19501-8.txt b/19501-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e7f985e --- /dev/null +++ b/19501-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1116 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Boy Scout, by Richard Harding Davis + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Boy Scout + + +Author: Richard Harding Davis + + + +Release Date: October 8, 2006 [eBook #19501] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY SCOUT*** + + +E-text prepared by Jacqueline Jeremy and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) from page images +generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustration. + See 19501-h.htm or 19501-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/5/0/19501/19501-h/19501-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/5/0/19501/19501-h.zip) + + + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/boyscoutthe00davirich + + + + + +THE BOY SCOUT + +by + +RICHARD HARDING DAVIS + + + + + + + +[Illustration: Jimmie dropped the valise, forced his cramped +fingers into straight lines, and saluted. [Page 10]] + + + +New York +Charles Scribner's Sons +1914 +Copyright, 1914, by Charles Scribner's Sons +Published May, 1914 + + +[Illustration] + + + + +THE BOY SCOUT + + +A rule of the Boy Scouts is every day to do some one a good turn. Not +because the copy-books tell you it deserves another, but in spite of +that pleasing possibility. If you are a true scout, until you have +performed your act of kindness your day is dark. You are as unhappy +as is the grown-up who has begun his day without shaving or reading +the New York _Sun_. But as soon as you have proved yourself you may, +with a clear conscience, look the world in the face and untie the +knot in your kerchief. + +Jimmie Reeder untied the accusing knot in his scarf at just ten +minutes past eight on a hot August morning after he had given one +dime to his sister Sadie. With that she could either witness the +first-run films at the Palace, or by dividing her fortune patronize +two of the nickel shows on Lenox Avenue. The choice Jimmie left to +her. He was setting out for the annual encampment of the Boy Scouts +at Hunter's Island, and in the excitement of that adventure even the +movies ceased to thrill. But Sadie also could be unselfish. With a +heroism of a camp-fire maiden she made a gesture which might have +been interpreted to mean she was returning the money. + +"I can't, Jimmie!" she gasped. "I can't take it off you. You saved it, +and you ought to get the fun of it." + +"I haven't saved it yet," said Jimmie. "I'm going to cut it out of the +railroad fare. I'm going to get off at City Island instead of at Pelham +Manor and walk the difference. That's ten cents cheaper." + +Sadie exclaimed with admiration: + +"An' you carryin' that heavy grip!" + +"Aw, that's nothin'," said the man of the family. + +"Good-by, mother. So long, Sadie." + +To ward off further expressions of gratitude he hurriedly advised Sadie +to take in "The Curse of Cain" rather than "The Mohawks' Last Stand," +and fled down the front steps. + +He wore his khaki uniform. On his shoulders was his knapsack, from +his hands swung his suitcase and between his heavy stockings and his +"shorts" his kneecaps, unkissed by the sun, as yet unscathed by +blackberry vines, showed as white and fragile as the wrists of a girl. +As he moved toward the "L" station at the corner, Sadie and his mother +waved to him; in the street, boys too small to be scouts hailed him +enviously; even the policeman glancing over the newspapers on the +news-stand nodded approval. + +"You a Scout, Jimmie?" he asked. + +"No," retorted Jimmie, for was not he also in uniform? "I'm Santa Claus +out filling Christmas stockings." + +The patrolman also possessed a ready wit. + +"Then get yourself a pair," he advised. "If a dog was to see your +legs----" + +Jimmie escaped the insult by fleeing up the steps of the Elevated. + + * * * * * + +An hour later, with his valise in one hand and staff in the other, he +was tramping up the Boston Post Road and breathing heavily. The day was +cruelly hot. Before his eyes, over an interminable stretch of asphalt, +the heat waves danced and flickered. Already the knapsack on his +shoulders pressed upon him like an Old Man of the Sea; the linen in the +valise had turned to pig iron, his pipe-stem legs were wabbling, his +eyes smarted with salt sweat, and the fingers supporting the valise +belonged to some other boy, and were giving that boy much pain. But as +the motor-cars flashed past with raucous warnings, or, that those who +rode might better see the boy with bare knees, passed at "half speed," +Jimmie stiffened his shoulders and stepped jauntily forward. Even when +the joy-riders mocked with "Oh, you Scout!" he smiled at them. He was +willing to admit to those who rode that the laugh was on the one who +walked. And he regretted--oh, so bitterly--having left the train. He was +indignant that for his "one good turn a day" he had not selected one +less strenuous. That, for instance, he had not assisted a frightened old +lady through the traffic. To refuse the dime she might have offered, as +all true scouts refuse all tips, would have been easier than to earn it +by walking five miles, with the sun at ninety-nine degrees, and carrying +excess baggage. Twenty times James shifted the valise to the other hand, +twenty times he let it drop and sat upon it. + +And then, as again he took up his burden, the Good Samaritan drew near. +He drew near in a low gray racing-car at the rate of forty miles an +hour, and within a hundred feet of Jimmie suddenly stopped and backed +toward him. The Good Samaritan was a young man with white hair. He wore +a suit of blue, a golf cap; the hands that held the wheel were disguised +in large yellow gloves. He brought the car to a halt and surveyed the +dripping figure in the road with tired and uncurious eyes. + +"You a Boy Scout?" he asked. + +With alacrity for the twenty-first time Jimmie dropped the valise, +forced his cramped fingers into straight lines, and saluted. + +The young man in the car nodded toward the seat beside him. + +"Get in," he commanded. + +When James sat panting happily at his elbow the old young man, to +Jimmie's disappointment, did not continue to shatter the speed limit. +Instead, he seemed inclined for conversation, and the car, growling +indignantly, crawled. + +"I never saw a Boy Scout before," announced the old young man. "Tell me +about it. First, tell me what you do when you're not scouting." + +Jimmie explained volubly. When not in uniform he was an office-boy and +from pedlers and beggars guarded the gates of Carroll and Hastings, +stockbrokers. He spoke the names of his employers with awe. It was a +firm distinguished, conservative, and long-established. The white-haired +young man seemed to nod in assent. + +"Do you know them?" demanded Jimmie suspiciously. "Are you a customer +of ours?" + +"I know them," said the young man. "They are customers of mine." + +Jimmie wondered in what way Carroll and Hastings were customers of the +white-haired young man. Judging him by his outer garments, Jimmie +guessed he was a Fifth Avenue tailor; he might be even a haberdasher. +Jimmie continued. He lived, he explained, with his mother at One Hundred +and Forty-sixth Street; Sadie, his sister, attended the public school; +he helped support them both, and he now was about to enjoy a well-earned +vacation camping out on Hunter's Island, where he would cook his own +meals and, if the mosquitoes permitted, sleep in a tent. + +"And you like that?" demanded the young man. "You call that fun?" + +"Sure!" protested Jimmie. "Don't _you_ go camping out?" + +"I go camping out," said the Good Samaritan, "whenever I leave New +York." + +Jimmie had not for three years lived in Wall Street not to understand +that the young man spoke in metaphor. + +"You don't look," objected the young man critically, "as though you were +built for the strenuous life." + +Jimmie glanced guiltily at his white knees. + +"You ought ter see me two weeks from now," he protested. "I get all +sunburnt and hard--hard as anything!" + +The young man was incredulous. + +"You were near getting sunstroke when I picked you up," he laughed. "If +you're going to Hunter's Island why didn't you take the Third Avenue to +Pelham Manor?" + +"That's right!" assented Jimmie eagerly. "But I wanted to save the ten +cents so's to send Sadie to the movies. So I walked." + +The young man looked his embarrassment. + +"I beg your pardon," he murmured. + +But Jimmie did not hear him. From the back of the car he was dragging +excitedly at the hated suitcase. + +"Stop!" he commanded. "I got ter get out. I got ter _walk_." + +The young man showed his surprise. + +"Walk!" he exclaimed. "What is it--a bet?" + +Jimmie dropped the valise and followed it into the roadway. It took some +time to explain to the young man. First, he had to be told about the +scout law and the one good turn a day, and that it must involve some +personal sacrifice. And, as Jimmie pointed out, changing from a slow +suburban train to a racing-car could not be listed as a sacrifice. He +had not earned the money, Jimmie argued; he had only avoided paying it +to the railroad. If he did not walk he would be obtaining the gratitude +of Sadie by a falsehood. Therefore, he must walk. + +"Not at all," protested the young man. "You've got it wrong. What good +will it do your sister to have you sunstruck? I think you _are_ +sunstruck. You're crazy with the heat. You get in here, and we'll talk +it over as we go along." + +Hastily Jimmie backed away. "I'd rather walk," he said. + +The young man shifted his legs irritably. + +"Then how'll this suit you?" he called. "We'll declare that first 'one +good turn' a failure and start afresh. Do _me_ a good turn." + +Jimmie halted in his tracks and looked back suspiciously. + +"I'm going to Hunter's Island Inn," called the young man, "and I've lost +my way. You get in here and guide me. That'll be doing me a good turn." + +On either side of the road, blotting out the landscape, giant hands +picked out in electric-light bulbs pointed the way to Hunter's Island +Inn. Jimmie grinned and nodded toward them. + +"Much obliged," he called, "I got ter walk." Turning his back upon +temptation, he wabbled forward into the flickering heat waves. + + * * * * * + +The young man did not attempt to pursue. At the side of the road, under +the shade of a giant elm, he had brought the car to a halt and with his +arms crossed upon the wheel sat motionless, following with frowning eyes +the retreating figure of Jimmie. But the narrow-chested and knock-kneed +boy staggering over the sun-baked asphalt no longer concerned him. It +was not Jimmie, but the code preached by Jimmie, and not only preached +but before his eyes put into practice, that interested him. The young +man with white hair had been running away from temptation. At forty +miles an hour he had been running away from the temptation to do a +fellow mortal "a good turn." That morning, to the appeal of a drowning +Cæsar to "Help me, Cassius, or I sink," he had answered, "Sink!" That +answer he had no wish to reconsider. That he might not reconsider he +had sought to escape. It was his experience that a sixty-horsepower +racing-machine is a jealous mistress. For retrospective, sentimental, or +philanthropic thoughts she grants no leave of absence. But he had not +escaped. Jimmie had halted him, tripped him by the heels and set him +again to thinking. Within the half-hour that followed those who rolled +past saw at the side of the road a car with her engine running, and +leaning upon the wheel, as unconscious of his surroundings as though he +sat at his own fireplace, a young man who frowned and stared at nothing. +The half-hour passed and the young man swung his car back toward the +city. But at the first roadhouse that showed a blue-and-white telephone +sign he left it, and into the iron box at the end of the bar dropped a +nickel. He wished to communicate with Mr. Carroll, of Carroll and +Hastings; and when he learned Mr. Carroll had just issued orders +that he must not be disturbed, the young man gave his name. + +The effect upon the barkeeper was instantaneous. With the aggrieved air +of one who feels he is the victim of a jest he laughed scornfully. + +"What are you putting over?" he demanded. + +The young man smiled reassuringly. He had begun to speak and, though +apparently engaged with the beer-glass he was polishing, the barkeeper +listened. + +Down in Wall Street the senior member of Carroll and Hastings also +listened. He was alone in the most private of all his private offices, +and when interrupted had been engaged in what, of all undertakings, is +the most momentous. On the desk before him lay letters to his lawyer, to +the coroner, to his wife; and hidden by a mass of papers, but within +reach of his hand, an automatic pistol. The promise it offered of swift +release had made the writing of the letters simple, had given him a +feeling of complete detachment, had released him, at least in thought, +from all responsibilities. And when at his elbow the telephone coughed +discreetly, it was as though some one had called him from a world from +which already he had made his exit. + +Mechanically, through mere habit, he lifted the receiver. + +The voice over the telephone came in brisk staccato sentences. + +"That letter I sent this morning? Forget it. Tear it up. I've been +thinking and I'm going to take a chance. I've decided to back you boys, +and I know you'll make good. I'm speaking from a roadhouse in the Bronx; +going straight from here to the bank. So you can begin to draw against +us within an hour. And--hello!--will three millions see you through?" + +From Wall Street there came no answer, but from the hands of the +barkeeper a glass crashed to the floor. + +The young man regarded the barkeeper with puzzled eyes. + +"He doesn't answer," he exclaimed. "He must have hung up." + +"He must have fainted!" said the barkeeper. + +The white-haired one pushed a bill across the counter. "To pay for +breakage," he said, and disappeared down Pelham Parkway. + +Throughout the day, with the bill, for evidence, pasted against the +mirror, the barkeeper told and retold the wondrous tale. + +"He stood just where you're standing now," he related, "blowing in +million-dollar bills like you'd blow suds off a beer. If I'd knowed it +was _him_, I'd have hit him once, and hid him in the cellar for the +reward. Who'd I think he was? I thought he was a wire-tapper, working a +con game!" + +Mr. Carroll had not "hung up," but when in the Bronx the beer-glass +crashed, in Wall Street the receiver had slipped from the hand of the +man who held it, and the man himself had fallen forward. His desk hit +him in the face and woke him--woke him to the wonderful fact that he +still lived; that at forty he had been born again; that before him +stretched many more years in which, as the young man with the white +hair had pointed out, he still could make good. + +The afternoon was far advanced when the staff of Carroll and Hastings +were allowed to depart, and, even late as was the hour, two of them were +asked to remain. Into the most private of the private offices Carroll +invited Gaskell, the head clerk; in the main office Hastings had asked +young Thorne, the bond clerk, to be seated. + +Until the senior partner has finished with Gaskell young Thorne must +remain seated. + +"Gaskell," said Mr. Carroll, "if we had listened to you, if we'd run +this place as it was when father was alive, this never would have +happened. It _hasn't_ happened, but we've had our lesson. And after +this we're going slow and going straight. And we don't need you to tell +us how to do that. We want you to go away--on a month's vacation. When I +thought we were going under I planned to send the children on a +sea-voyage with the governess--so they wouldn't see the newspapers. But +now that I can look them in the eye again, I need them, I can't let them +go. So, if you'd like to take your wife on an ocean trip to Nova Scotia +and Quebec, here are the cabins I reserved for the kids. They call it +the Royal Suite--whatever that is--and the trip lasts a month. The boat +sails to-morrow morning. Don't sleep too late or you may miss her." + + * * * * * + +The head clerk was secreting the tickets in the inside pocket of his +waistcoat. His fingers trembled, and when he laughed his voice trembled. + +"Miss the boat!" the head clerk exclaimed. "If she gets away from Millie +and me she's got to start now. We'll go on board to-night!" + +A half-hour later Millie was on her knees packing a trunk, and her +husband was telephoning to the drug-store for a sponge bag and a cure +for seasickness. + +Owing to the joy in her heart and to the fact that she was on her knees, +Millie was alternately weeping into the trunk-tray and offering up +incoherent prayers of thanksgiving. Suddenly she sank back upon the +floor. + +"John!" she cried, "doesn't it seem sinful to sail away in a 'royal +suite' and leave this beautiful flat empty?" + +Over the telephone John was having trouble with the drug clerk. + +"No!" he explained, "I'm not seasick _now_. The medicine I want is to be +taken later. I _know_ I'm speaking from the Pavonia; but the Pavonia +isn't a ship; it's an apartment-house." + +He turned to Millie. "We can't be in two places at the same time," he +suggested. + +"But, think," insisted Millie, "of all the poor people stifling to-night +in this heat, trying to sleep on the roofs and fire-escapes; and our +flat so cool and big and pretty--and no one in it." + +John nodded his head proudly. + +"I know it's big," he said, "but it isn't big enough to hold all the +people who are sleeping to-night on the roofs and in the parks." + +"I was thinking of your brother--and Grace," said Millie. "They've been +married only two weeks now, and they're in a stuffy hall bedroom and +eating with all the other boarders. Think what our flat would mean to +them; to be by themselves, with eight rooms and their own kitchen and +bath, and our new refrigerator and the gramophone! It would be Heaven! +It would be a real honeymoon!" + +Abandoning the drug clerk, John lifted Millie in his arms and kissed +her, for next to his wife nearest his heart was the younger brother. + + * * * * * + +The younger brother and Grace were sitting on the stoop of the +boardinghouse. On the upper steps, in their shirt-sleeves, were the +other boarders; so the bride and bridegroom spoke in whispers. The air +of the cross street was stale and stagnant; from it rose exhalations of +rotting fruit, the gases of an open subway, the smoke of passing +taxicabs. But between the street and the hall bedroom, with its odors of +a gas-stove and a kitchen, the choice was difficult. + +"We've got to cool off somehow," the young husband was saying, "or you +won't sleep. Shall we treat ourselves to ice-cream sodas or a trip on +the Weehawken ferry-boat?" + +"The ferry-boat!" begged the girl, "where we can get away from all these +people." + +A taxicab with a trunk in front whirled into the street, kicked itself +to a stop, and the head clerk and Millie spilled out upon the pavement. +They talked so fast, and the younger brother and Grace talked so fast, +that the boarders, although they listened intently, could make nothing +of it. + +They distinguished only the concluding sentences: + +"Why don't you drive down to the wharf with us," they heard the elder +brother ask, "and see our royal suite?" + +But the younger brother laughed him to scorn. + +"What's your royal suite," he mocked, "to our royal palace?" + +An hour later, had the boarders listened outside the flat of the head +clerk, they would have heard issuing from his bathroom the cooling +murmur of running water and from his gramophone the jubilant notes of +"Alexander's Ragtime Band." + +When in his private office Carroll was making a present of the royal +suite to the head clerk, in the main office Hastings, the junior +partner, was addressing "Champ" Thorne, the bond clerk. He addressed him +familiarly and affectionately as "Champ." This was due partly to the +fact that twenty-six years before Thorne had been christened Champneys +and to the coincidence that he had captained the football eleven of one +of the Big Three to the championship. + +"Champ," said Mr. Hastings, "last month, when you asked me to raise +your salary, the reason I didn't do it was not because you didn't +deserve it, but because I believed if we gave you a raise you'd +immediately get married." + +The shoulders of the ex-football captain rose aggressively; he snorted +with indignation. + +"And why should I _not_ get married?" he demanded. "You're a fine one to +talk! You're the most offensively happy married man I ever met." + +"Perhaps I know I am happy better than you do," reproved the junior +partner; "but I know also that it takes money to support a wife." + +"You raise me to a hundred a week," urged Champ, "and I'll make it +support a wife whether it supports me or not." + +"A month ago," continued Hastings, "we could have _promised_ you a +hundred, but we didn't know how long we could pay it. We didn't want +you to rush off and marry some fine girl----" + +"Some fine girl!" muttered Mr. Thorne. "The Finest Girl!" + +"The finer the girl," Hastings pointed out, "the harder it would have +been for you if we had failed and you had lost your job." + +The eyes of the young man opened with sympathy and concern. + +"Is it as bad as that?" he murmured. + +Hastings sighed happily. + +"It _was_," he said, "but this morning the Young Man of Wall Street did +us a good turn--saved us--saved our creditors, saved our homes, saved +our honor. We're going to start fresh and pay our debts, and we agreed +the first debt we paid would be the small one we owe you. You've brought +us more than we've given, and if you'll stay with us we're going to +'see' your fifty and raise it a hundred. What do you say?" + +Young Mr. Thorne leaped to his feet. What he said was: "Where'n hell's +my hat?" + +But by the time he had found the hat and the door he mended his manners. + +"I say, 'thank you a thousand times,'" he shouted over his shoulder. +"Excuse me, but I've got to go. I've got to break the news to----" + +He did not explain to whom he was going to break the news; but Hastings +must have guessed, for again he sighed happily and then, a little +hysterically, laughed aloud. Several months had passed since he had +laughed aloud. + +In his anxiety to break the news Champ Thorne almost broke his neck. In +his excitement he could not remember whether the red flash meant the +elevator was going down or coming up, and sooner than wait to find out +he started to race down eighteen flights of stairs when fortunately the +elevator-door swung open. + +"You get five dollars," he announced to the elevator man, "if you drop +to the street without a stop. Beat the speed limit! Act like the +building is on fire and you're trying to save me before the roof +falls." + +Senator Barnes and his entire family, which was his daughter Barbara, +were at the Ritz-Carlton. They were in town in August because there was +a meeting of the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba Rubber Company, of +which company Senator Barnes was president. It was a secret meeting. +Those directors who were keeping cool at the edge of the ocean had been +summoned by telegraph; those who were steaming across the ocean, by +wireless. + +Up from the equator had drifted the threat of a scandal, sickening, +grim, terrible. As yet it burned beneath the surface, giving out only +an odor, but an odor as rank as burning rubber itself. At any moment it +might break into flame. For the directors, was it the better wisdom to +let the scandal smoulder, and take a chance, or to be the first to give +the alarm, the first to lead the way to the horror and stamp it out? + +It was to decide this that, in the heat of August, the directors and the +president had foregathered. + +Champ Thorne knew nothing of this; he knew only that by a miracle +Barbara Barnes was in town; that at last he was in a position to ask +her to marry him; that she would certainly say she would. That was all +he cared to know. + +A year before he had issued his declaration of independence. Before he +could marry, he told her, he must be able to support a wife on what he +earned, without her having to accept money from her father, and until +he received "a minimum wage" of five thousand dollars they must wait. + +"What is the matter with my father's money?" Barbara had demanded. + +Thorne had evaded the direct question. + +"There is too much of it," he said. + +"Do you object to the way he makes it?" insisted Barbara. "Because +rubber is most useful. You put it in golf balls and auto tires and +galoches. There is nothing so perfectly respectable as galoches. And +what is there 'tainted' about a raincoat." + +Thorne shook his head unhappily. + +"It's not the finished product to which I refer," he stammered; "it's +the way they get the raw material." + +"They get it out of trees," said Barbara. Then she exclaimed with +enlightenment--"Oh!" she cried, "you are thinking of the Congo. There it +is terrible! _That_ is slavery. But there are no slaves on the Amazon. +The natives are free and the work is easy. They just tap the trees the +way the farmers gather sugar in Vermont. Father has told me about it +often." + +Thorne had made no comment. He could abuse a friend, if the friend were +among those present, but denouncing any one he disliked as heartily as +he disliked Senator Barnes was a public service he preferred to leave to +others. And he knew besides that, if the father she loved and the man +she loved distrusted each other, Barbara would not rest until she +learned the reason why. + +One day, in a newspaper, Barbara read of the Puju Mayo atrocities, of +the Indian slaves in the jungles and back waters of the Amazon, who are +offered up as sacrifices to "red rubber." She carried the paper to her +father. What it said, her father told her, was untrue, and if it were +true it was the first he had heard of it. + +Senator Barnes loved the good things of life, but the thing he loved +most was his daughter; the thing he valued the highest was her good +opinion. So when for the first time she looked at him in doubt, he +assured her he at once would order an investigation. + +"But, of course," he added, "it will be many months before our agents +can report. On the Amazon news travels very slowly." + +In the eyes of his daughter the doubt still lingered. + +"I am afraid," she said, "that that is true." + +That was six months before the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba Rubber +Company were summoned to meet their president at his rooms in the +Ritz-Carlton. They were due to arrive in half an hour, and while Senator +Barnes awaited their coming Barbara came to him. In her eyes was a light +that helped to tell the great news. It gave him a sharp, jealous pang. +He wanted at once to play a part in her happiness, to make her grateful +to him, not alone to this stranger who was taking her away. So fearful +was he that she would shut him out of her life that had she asked for +half his kingdom he would have parted with it. + +"And besides giving my consent," said the rubber king, "for which no one +seems to have asked, what can I give my little girl to make her remember +her old father? Some diamonds to put on her head, or pearls to hang +around her neck, or does she want a vacant lot on Fifth Avenue?" + +The lovely hands of Barbara rested upon his shoulders; her lovely face +was raised to his; her lovely eyes were appealing, and a little +frightened. + +"What would one of those things cost?" asked Barbara. + +The question was eminently practical. It came within the scope of the +senator's understanding. After all, he was not to be cast into outer +darkness. His smile was complacent. He answered airily: + +"Anything you like," he said; "a million dollars?" + +The fingers closed upon his shoulders. The eyes, still frightened, still +searched his in appeal. + +"Then for my wedding-present," said the girl, "I want you to take that +million dollars and send an expedition to the Amazon. And I will choose +the men. Men unafraid; men not afraid of fever or sudden death; not +afraid to tell the truth--even to _you_. And all the world will know. +And they--I mean _you_--will set those people free!" + +Senator Barnes received the directors with an embarrassment which he +concealed under a manner of just indignation. + +"My mind is made up," he told them. "Existing conditions cannot +continue. And to that end, at my own expense, I am sending an expedition +across South America. It will investigate, punish, and establish +reforms. I suggest, on account of this damned heat, we do now adjourn." + +That night, over on Long Island, Carroll told his wife all, or nearly +all. He did not tell her about the automatic pistol. And together on +tiptoe they crept to the nursery and looked down at their sleeping +children. When she rose from her knees the mother said, "But how can I +thank him?" + +By "him" she meant the Young Man of Wall Street. + +"You never can thank him," said Carroll; "that's the worst of it." + +But after a long silence the mother said: "I will send him a photograph +of the children. Do you think he will understand?" + +Down at Seabright, Hastings and his wife walked in the sunken garden. +The moon was so bright that the roses still held their color. + +"I would like to thank him," said the young wife. She meant the Young +Man of Wall Street. "But for him we would have lost _this_." + +Her eyes caressed the garden, the fruit-trees, the house with wide, +hospitable verandas. "To-morrow I will send him some of these roses," +said the young wife. "Will he understand that they mean our home?" + +At a scandalously late hour, in a scandalous spirit of independence, +Champ Thorne and Barbara were driving around Central Park in a taxicab. + +"How strangely the Lord moves, his wonders to perform," misquoted +Barbara. "Had not the Young Man of Wall Street saved Mr. Hastings, Mr. +Hastings could not have raised your salary; you would not have asked me +to marry you, and had you not asked me to marry you, father would not +have given me a wedding-present, and----" + +"And," said Champ, taking up the tale, "thousands of slaves would still +be buried in the jungles, hidden away from their wives and children, and +the light of the sun and their fellow men. They still would be dying of +fever, starvation, tortures." + +He took her hand in both of his and held her finger-tips against his +lips. + +"And they will never know," he whispered, "when their freedom comes, +that they owe it all to _you_." + + * * * * * + +On Hunter's Island Jimmie Reeder and his bunkie, Sam Sturges, each on +his canvas cot, tossed and twisted. The heat, the moonlight, and the +mosquitoes would not let them even think of sleep. + +"That was bully," said Jimmie, "what you did to-day about saving that +dog. If it hadn't been for you he'd ha' drownded." + +"He would _not_!" said Sammy with punctilious regard for the truth; "it +wasn't deep enough." + +"Well, the scout-master ought to know," argued Jimmie; "he said it was +the best 'one good turn' of the day!" + +Modestly Sam shifted the limelight so that it fell upon his bunkie. + +"I'll bet," he declared loyally, "_your_ 'one good turn' was a better +one!" + +Jimmie yawned, and then laughed scornfully. + +"Me," he scoffed, "I didn't do nothing. I sent my sister to the +movies." + + + + * * * * * + + + ++-------------------------------------------------------------+ +|Transcriber's note: | +| | +|Unusual spellings appearing in the original text have been | +|retained. | ++-------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY SCOUT*** + + +******* This file should be named 19501-8.txt or 19501-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/5/0/19501 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: The Boy Scout</p> +<p>Author: Richard Harding Davis</p> +<p>Release Date: October 8, 2006 [eBook #19501]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY SCOUT***</p> +<p> </p> +<h4>E-text prepared by Jacqueline Jeremy<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net/">http://www.pgdp.net/</a>)<br /> + from page images generously made available by<br /> + Internet Archive/American Libraries<br /> + (<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/americana">http://www.archive.org/details/americana</a>)</h4> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;" cellpadding="10"> + <tr> + <td valign="top"> + Note: + </td> + <td> + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/boyscoutthe00davirich"> + http://www.archive.org/details/boyscoutthe00davirich</a> + </td> + </tr> +</table> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h1>THE BOY SCOUT<br /><br /><br /></h1> + +<p class="figcenter"><a href="images/illustration_lrg.jpg" title="illustration"> +<img src="images/illustration.jpg" title="illustration" alt="illustration" height="267" width="400" /></a></p> +<h5>Jimmie dropped the valise, forced his cramped fingers into<br /> +straight lines, and saluted. <a href="#illustration"><i>Page 10</i></a></h5> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2><a name="THE_BOY_SCOUT" id="THE_BOY_SCOUT"></a>THE BOY SCOUT</h2> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h3>RICHARD HARDING DAVIS<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></h3> + + +<h5>NEW YORK<br /> +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS</h5> +<h6>1914<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></h6> + + +<p class="center"><i>Copyright, 1914, by Charles Scribner's Sons</i></p> + +<p class="center"><i>Published May, 1914</i></p> + +<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/logo.jpg" title="logo" alt="page_10" height="57" width="50" /></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE BOY SCOUT</h2> + + +<p>A rule of the Boy Scouts is every day to do some one a good turn. Not +because the copy-books tell you it deserves another, but in spite of +that pleasing possibility. If you are a true scout, until you have +performed your act of kindness your day is dark. You are as unhappy +as is the grown-up who has begun his day without shaving or reading +the New York <i>Sun</i>. But as soon as you have proved yourself you may, +with a clear conscience, look the world in the face and untie the +knot in your kerchief.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>Jimmie Reeder untied the accusing knot in his scarf at just ten +minutes past eight on a hot August morning after he had given one +dime to his sister Sadie. With that she could either witness the +first-run films at the Palace, or by dividing her fortune patronize +two of the nickel shows on Lenox Avenue. The choice Jimmie left to +her. He was setting out for the annual encampment of the Boy Scouts +at Hunter's Island, and in the excitement of that adventure even the +movies ceased to thrill. But Sadie also could be unselfish. With a +heroism of a camp-fire maiden she made a gesture which might have +been interpreted to mean she was returning the money.</p> + +<p>"I can't, Jimmie!" she gasped. "I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> can't take it off you. You saved it, +and you ought to get the fun of it."</p> + +<p>"I haven't saved it yet," said Jimmie. "I'm going to cut it out of the +railroad fare. I'm going to get off at City Island instead of at Pelham +Manor and walk the difference. That's ten cents cheaper."</p> + +<p>Sadie exclaimed with admiration:</p> + +<p>"An' you carryin' that heavy grip!"</p> + +<p>"Aw, that's nothin'," said the man of the family.</p> + +<p>"Good-by, mother. So long, Sadie."</p> + +<p>To ward off further expressions of gratitude he hurriedly advised Sadie +to take in "The Curse of Cain" rather than "The Mohawks' Last Stand," +and fled down the front steps.</p> + +<p>He wore his khaki uniform. On his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> shoulders was his knapsack, from +his hands swung his suitcase and between his heavy stockings and his +"shorts" his kneecaps, unkissed by the sun, as yet unscathed by +blackberry vines, showed as white and fragile as the wrists of a girl. +As he moved toward the "L" station at the corner, Sadie and his mother +waved to him; in the street, boys too small to be scouts hailed him +enviously; even the policeman glancing over the newspapers on the +news-stand nodded approval.</p> + +<p>"You a Scout, Jimmie?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"No," retorted Jimmie, for was not he also in uniform? "I'm Santa Claus +out filling Christmas stockings."</p> + +<p>The patrolman also possessed a ready wit.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>"Then get yourself a pair," he advised. "If a dog was to see your +legs——"</p> + +<p>Jimmie escaped the insult by fleeing up the steps of the Elevated.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>An hour later, with his valise in one hand and staff in the other, he +was tramping up the Boston Post Road and breathing heavily. The day was +cruelly hot. Before his eyes, over an interminable stretch of asphalt, +the heat waves danced and flickered. Already the knapsack on his +shoulders pressed upon him like an Old Man of the Sea; the linen in the +valise had turned to pig iron, his pipe-stem legs were wabbling, his +eyes smarted with salt sweat, and the fingers supporting the valise<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> +belonged to some other boy, and were giving that boy much pain. But as +the motor-cars flashed past with raucous warnings, or, that those who +rode might better see the boy with bare knees, passed at "half speed," +Jimmie stiffened his shoulders and stepped jauntily forward. Even when +the joy-riders mocked with "Oh, you Scout!" he smiled at them. He was +willing to admit to those who rode that the laugh was on the one who +walked. And he regretted—oh, so bitterly—having left the train. He was +indignant that for his "one good turn a day" he had not selected one +less strenuous. That, for instance, he had not assisted a frightened old +lady through the traffic. To refuse the dime she might have offered,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> as +all true scouts refuse all tips, would have been easier than to earn it +by walking five miles, with the sun at ninety-nine degrees, and carrying +excess baggage. Twenty times James shifted the valise to the other hand, +twenty times he let it drop and sat upon it.</p> + +<p>And then, as again he took up his burden, the Good Samaritan drew near. +He drew near in a low gray racing-car at the rate of forty miles an +hour, and within a hundred feet of Jimmie suddenly stopped and backed +toward him. The Good Samaritan was a young man with white hair. He wore +a suit of blue, a golf cap; the hands that held the wheel were disguised +in large yellow gloves. He brought the car to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> halt and surveyed the +dripping figure in the road with tired and uncurious eyes.</p> + +<p>"You a Boy Scout?" he asked.</p> + +<p>With alacrity for the twenty-first time <a name="illustration" id="illustration"></a>Jimmie dropped the valise, +forced his cramped fingers into straight lines, and saluted.</p> + +<p>The young man in the car nodded toward the seat beside him.</p> + +<p>"Get in," he commanded.</p> + +<p>When James sat panting happily at his elbow the old young man, to +Jimmie's disappointment, did not continue to shatter the speed limit. +Instead, he seemed inclined for conversation, and the car, growling +indignantly, crawled.</p> + +<p>"I never saw a Boy Scout before," announced the old young man. "Tell<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> me +about it. First, tell me what you do when you're not scouting."</p> + +<p>Jimmie explained volubly. When not in uniform he was an office-boy and +from pedlers and beggars guarded the gates of Carroll and Hastings, +stockbrokers. He spoke the names of his employers with awe. It was a +firm distinguished, conservative, and long-established. The white-haired +young man seemed to nod in assent.</p> + +<p>"Do you know them?" demanded Jimmie suspiciously. "Are you a customer of +ours?"</p> + +<p>"I know them," said the young man. "They are customers of mine."</p> + +<p>Jimmie wondered in what way Carroll and Hastings were customers of the +white-haired young man. Judging him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> by his outer garments, Jimmie +guessed he was a Fifth Avenue tailor; he might be even a haberdasher. +Jimmie continued. He lived, he explained, with his mother at One Hundred +and Forty-sixth Street; Sadie, his sister, attended the public school; +he helped support them both, and he now was about to enjoy a well-earned +vacation camping out on Hunter's Island, where he would cook his own +meals and, if the mosquitoes permitted, sleep in a tent.</p> + +<p>"And you like that?" demanded the young man. "You call that fun?"</p> + +<p>"Sure!" protested Jimmie. "Don't <i>you</i> go camping out?"</p> + +<p>"I go camping out," said the Good Samaritan, "whenever I leave New +York."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>Jimmie had not for three years lived in Wall Street not to understand +that the young man spoke in metaphor.</p> + +<p>"You don't look," objected the young man critically, "as though you were +built for the strenuous life."</p> + +<p>Jimmie glanced guiltily at his white knees.</p> + +<p>"You ought ter see me two weeks from now," he protested. "I get all +sunburnt and hard—hard as anything!"</p> + +<p>The young man was incredulous.</p> + +<p>"You were near getting sunstroke when I picked you up," he laughed. "If +you're going to Hunter's Island why didn't you take the Third Avenue to +Pelham Manor?"</p> + +<p>"That's right!" assented Jimmie ea<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>gerly. "But I wanted to save the ten +cents so's to send Sadie to the movies. So I walked."</p> + +<p>The young man looked his embarrassment.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," he murmured.</p> + +<p>But Jimmie did not hear him. From the back of the car he was dragging +excitedly at the hated suitcase.</p> + +<p>"Stop!" he commanded. "I got ter get out. I got ter <i>walk</i>."</p> + +<p>The young man showed his surprise.</p> + +<p>"Walk!" he exclaimed. "What is it—a bet?"</p> + +<p>Jimmie dropped the valise and followed it into the roadway. It took some +time to explain to the young man. First, he had to be told about the +scout law and the one good turn a day, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> that it must involve some +personal sacrifice. And, as Jimmie pointed out, changing from a slow +suburban train to a racing-car could not be listed as a sacrifice. He +had not earned the money, Jimmie argued; he had only avoided paying it +to the railroad. If he did not walk he would be obtaining the gratitude +of Sadie by a falsehood. Therefore, he must walk.</p> + +<p>"Not at all," protested the young man. "You've got it wrong. What good +will it do your sister to have you sunstruck? I think you <i>are</i> +sunstruck. You're crazy with the heat. You get in here, and we'll talk +it over as we go along."</p> + +<p>Hastily Jimmie backed away. "I'd rather walk," he said.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>The young man shifted his legs irritably.</p> + +<p>"Then how'll this suit you?" he called. "We'll declare that first 'one +good turn' a failure and start afresh. Do <i>me</i> a good turn."</p> + +<p>Jimmie halted in his tracks and looked back suspiciously.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to Hunter's Island Inn," called the young man, "and I've lost +my way. You get in here and guide me. That'll be doing me a good turn."</p> + +<p>On either side of the road, blotting out the landscape, giant hands +picked out in electric-light bulbs pointed the way to Hunter's Island +Inn. Jimmie grinned and nodded toward them.</p> + +<p>"Much obliged," he called, "I got ter walk." Turning his back upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> +temptation, he wabbled forward into the flickering heat waves.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The young man did not attempt to pursue. At the side of the road, under +the shade of a giant elm, he had brought the car to a halt and with his +arms crossed upon the wheel sat motionless, following with frowning eyes +the retreating figure of Jimmie. But the narrow-chested and knock-kneed +boy staggering over the sun-baked asphalt no longer concerned him. It +was not Jimmie, but the code preached by Jimmie, and not only preached +but before his eyes put into practice, that interested him. The young +man with white hair had been running away from temptation. At forty +miles an hour he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> been running away from the temptation to do a +fellow mortal "a good turn." That morning, to the appeal of a drowning +Cæsar to "Help me, Cassius, or I sink," he had answered, "Sink!" That +answer he had no wish to reconsider. That he might not reconsider he had +sought to escape. It was his experience that a sixty-horsepower +racing-machine is a jealous mistress. For retrospective, sentimental, or +philanthropic thoughts she grants no leave of absence. But he had not +escaped. Jimmie had halted him, tripped him by the heels and set him +again to thinking. Within the half-hour that followed those who rolled +past saw at the side of the road a car with her engine running, and +leaning upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> wheel, as unconscious of his surroundings as though he +sat at his own fireplace, a young man who frowned and stared at nothing. +The half-hour passed and the young man swung his car back toward the +city. But at the first roadhouse that showed a blue-and-white telephone +sign he left it, and into the iron box at the end of the bar dropped a +nickel. He wished to communicate with Mr. Carroll, of Carroll and +Hastings; and when he learned Mr. Carroll had just issued orders that he +must not be disturbed, the young man gave his name.</p> + +<p>The effect upon the barkeeper was instantaneous. With the aggrieved air +of one who feels he is the victim of a jest he laughed scornfully.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>"What are you putting over?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>The young man smiled reassuringly. He had begun to speak and, though +apparently engaged with the beer-glass he was polishing, the barkeeper +listened.</p> + +<p>Down in Wall Street the senior member of Carroll and Hastings also +listened. He was alone in the most private of all his private offices, +and when interrupted had been engaged in what, of all undertakings, is +the most momentous. On the desk before him lay letters to his lawyer, to +the coroner, to his wife; and hidden by a mass of papers, but within +reach of his hand, an automatic pistol. The promise it offered of swift +release had made the writing of the letters simple, had given him a +feeling of com<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>plete detachment, had released him, at least in thought, +from all responsibilities. And when at his elbow the telephone coughed +discreetly, it was as though some one had called him from a world from +which already he had made his exit.</p> + +<p>Mechanically, through mere habit, he lifted the receiver.</p> + +<p>The voice over the telephone came in brisk staccato sentences.</p> + +<p>"That letter I sent this morning? Forget it. Tear it up. I've been +thinking and I'm going to take a chance. I've decided to back you boys, +and I know you'll make good. I'm speaking from a roadhouse in the Bronx; +going straight from here to the bank. So you can begin to draw against +us within<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> an hour. And—hello!—will three millions see you through?"</p> + +<p>From Wall Street there came no answer, but from the hands of the +barkeeper a glass crashed to the floor.</p> + +<p>The young man regarded the barkeeper with puzzled eyes.</p> + +<p>"He doesn't answer," he exclaimed. "He must have hung up."</p> + +<p>"He must have fainted!" said the barkeeper.</p> + +<p>The white-haired one pushed a bill across the counter. "To pay for +breakage," he said, and disappeared down Pelham Parkway.</p> + +<p>Throughout the day, with the bill, for evidence, pasted against the +mirror, the barkeeper told and retold the wondrous tale.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>"He stood just where you're standing now," he related, "blowing in +million-dollar bills like you'd blow suds off a beer. If I'd knowed it +was <i>him</i>, I'd have hit him once, and hid him in the cellar for the +reward. Who'd I think he was? I thought he was a wire-tapper, working a +con game!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Carroll had not "hung up," but when in the Bronx the beer-glass +crashed, in Wall Street the receiver had slipped from the hand of the +man who held it, and the man himself had fallen forward. His desk hit +him in the face and woke him—woke him to the wonderful fact that he +still lived; that at forty he had been born again; that before him +stretched many more years in which, as the young man with the white<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> +hair had pointed out, he still could make good.</p> + +<p>The afternoon was far advanced when the staff of Carroll and Hastings +were allowed to depart, and, even late as was the hour, two of them were +asked to remain. Into the most private of the private offices Carroll +invited Gaskell, the head clerk; in the main office Hastings had asked +young Thorne, the bond clerk, to be seated.</p> + +<p>Until the senior partner has finished with Gaskell young Thorne must +remain seated.</p> + +<p>"Gaskell," said Mr. Carroll, "if we had listened to you, if we'd run +this place as it was when father was alive, this never would have +happened. It <i>hasn't</i> happened, but we've had our les<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>son. And after +this we're going slow and going straight. And we don't need you to tell +us how to do that. We want you to go away—on a month's vacation. When I +thought we were going under I planned to send the children on a +sea-voyage with the governess—so they wouldn't see the newspapers. But +now that I can look them in the eye again, I need them, I can't let them +go. So, if you'd like to take your wife on an ocean trip to Nova Scotia +and Quebec, here are the cabins I reserved for the kids. They call it +the Royal Suite—whatever that is—and the trip lasts a month. The boat +sails to-morrow morning. Don't sleep too late or you may miss her."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The head clerk was secreting the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> tickets in the inside pocket of his +waistcoat. His fingers trembled, and when he laughed his voice trembled.</p> + +<p>"Miss the boat!" the head clerk exclaimed. "If she gets away from Millie +and me she's got to start now. We'll go on board to-night!"</p> + +<p>A half-hour later Millie was on her knees packing a trunk, and her +husband was telephoning to the drug-store for a sponge bag and a cure +for seasickness.</p> + +<p>Owing to the joy in her heart and to the fact that she was on her knees, +Millie was alternately weeping into the trunk-tray and offering up +incoherent prayers of thanksgiving. Suddenly she sank back upon the +floor.</p> + +<p>"John!" she cried, "doesn't it seem<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> sinful to sail away in a 'royal +suite' and leave this beautiful flat empty?"</p> + +<p>Over the telephone John was having trouble with the drug clerk.</p> + +<p>"No!" he explained, "I'm not seasick <i>now</i>. The medicine I want is to be +taken later. I <i>know</i> I'm speaking from the Pavonia; but the Pavonia +isn't a ship; it's an apartment-house."</p> + +<p>He turned to Millie. "We can't be in two places at the same time," he +suggested.</p> + +<p>"But, think," insisted Millie, "of all the poor people stifling to-night +in this heat, trying to sleep on the roofs and fire-escapes; and our +flat so cool and big and pretty—and no one in it."</p> + +<p>John nodded his head proudly.</p> + +<p>"I know it's big," he said, "but it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> isn't big enough to hold all the +people who are sleeping to-night on the roofs and in the parks."</p> + +<p>"I was thinking of your brother—and Grace," said Millie. "They've been +married only two weeks now, and they're in a stuffy hall bedroom and +eating with all the other boarders. Think what our flat would mean to +them; to be by themselves, with eight rooms and their own kitchen and +bath, and our new refrigerator and the gramophone! It would be Heaven! +It would be a real honeymoon!"</p> + +<p>Abandoning the drug clerk, John lifted Millie in his arms and kissed +her, for next to his wife nearest his heart was the younger brother.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The younger brother and Grace were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> sitting on the stoop of the +boardinghouse. On the upper steps, in their shirt-sleeves, were the +other boarders; so the bride and bridegroom spoke in whispers. The air +of the cross street was stale and stagnant; from it rose exhalations of +rotting fruit, the gases of an open subway, the smoke of passing +taxicabs. But between the street and the hall bedroom, with its odors of +a gas-stove and a kitchen, the choice was difficult.</p> + +<p>"We've got to cool off somehow," the young husband was saying, "or you +won't sleep. Shall we treat ourselves to ice-cream sodas or a trip on +the Weehawken ferry-boat?"</p> + +<p>"The ferry-boat!" begged the girl, "where we can get away from all these +people."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>A taxicab with a trunk in front whirled into the street, kicked itself +to a stop, and the head clerk and Millie spilled out upon the pavement. +They talked so fast, and the younger brother and Grace talked so fast, +that the boarders, although they listened intently, could make nothing +of it.</p> + +<p>They distinguished only the concluding sentences:</p> + +<p>"Why don't you drive down to the wharf with us," they heard the elder +brother ask, "and see our royal suite?"</p> + +<p>But the younger brother laughed him to scorn.</p> + +<p>"What's your royal suite," he mocked, "to our royal palace?"</p> + +<p>An hour later, had the boarders listened outside the flat of the head +clerk,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> they would have heard issuing from his bathroom the cooling +murmur of running water and from his gramophone the jubilant notes of +"Alexander's Ragtime Band."</p> + +<p>When in his private office Carroll was making a present of the royal +suite to the head clerk, in the main office Hastings, the junior +partner, was addressing "Champ" Thorne, the bond clerk. He addressed him +familiarly and affectionately as "Champ." This was due partly to the +fact that twenty-six years before Thorne had been christened Champneys +and to the coincidence that he had captained the football eleven of one +of the Big Three to the championship.</p> + +<p>"Champ," said Mr. Hastings, "last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> month, when you asked me to raise +your salary, the reason I didn't do it was not because you didn't +deserve it, but because I believed if we gave you a raise you'd +immediately get married."</p> + +<p>The shoulders of the ex-football captain rose aggressively; he snorted +with indignation.</p> + +<p>"And why should I <i>not</i> get married?" he demanded. "You're a fine one to +talk! You're the most offensively happy married man I ever met."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I know I am happy better than you do," reproved the junior +partner; "but I know also that it takes money to support a wife."</p> + +<p>"You raise me to a hundred a week," urged Champ, "and I'll make it +support a wife whether it supports me or not."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>"A month ago," continued Hastings, "we could have <i>promised</i> you a +hundred, but we didn't know how long we could pay it. We didn't want you +to rush off and marry some fine girl——"</p> + +<p>"Some fine girl!" muttered Mr. Thorne. "The Finest Girl!"</p> + +<p>"The finer the girl," Hastings pointed out, "the harder it would have +been for you if we had failed and you had lost your job."</p> + +<p>The eyes of the young man opened with sympathy and concern.</p> + +<p>"Is it as bad as that?" he murmured.</p> + +<p>Hastings sighed happily.</p> + +<p>"It <i>was</i>," he said, "but this morning the Young Man of Wall Street did +us a good turn—saved us—saved our creditors, saved our homes, saved +our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> honor. We're going to start fresh and pay our debts, and we agreed +the first debt we paid would be the small one we owe you. You've brought +us more than we've given, and if you'll stay with us we're going to +'see' your fifty and raise it a hundred. What do you say?"</p> + +<p>Young Mr. Thorne leaped to his feet. What he said was: "Where'n hell's +my hat?"</p> + +<p>But by the time he had found the hat and the door he mended his manners.</p> + +<p>"I say, 'thank you a thousand times,'" he shouted over his shoulder. +"Excuse me, but I've got to go. I've got to break the news to——"</p> + +<p>He did not explain to whom he was going to break the news; but Hastings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> +must have guessed, for again he sighed happily and then, a little +hysterically, laughed aloud. Several months had passed since he had +laughed aloud.</p> + +<p>In his anxiety to break the news Champ Thorne almost broke his neck. In +his excitement he could not remember whether the red flash meant the +elevator was going down or coming up, and sooner than wait to find out +he started to race down eighteen flights of stairs when fortunately the +elevator-door swung open.</p> + +<p>"You get five dollars," he announced to the elevator man, "if you drop +to the street without a stop. Beat the speed limit! Act like the +building is on fire and you're trying to save me before the roof +falls."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>Senator Barnes and his entire family, which was his daughter Barbara, +were at the Ritz-Carlton. They were in town in August because there was +a meeting of the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba Rubber Company, of +which company Senator Barnes was president. It was a secret meeting. +Those directors who were keeping cool at the edge of the ocean had been +summoned by telegraph; those who were steaming across the ocean, by +wireless.</p> + +<p>Up from the equator had drifted the threat of a scandal, sickening, +grim, terrible. As yet it burned beneath the surface, giving out only +an odor, but an odor as rank as burning rubber itself. At any moment it +might break into flame. For the directors, was it the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> better wisdom to +let the scandal smoulder, and take a chance, or to be the first to give +the alarm, the first to lead the way to the horror and stamp it out?</p> + +<p>It was to decide this that, in the heat of August, the directors and the +president had foregathered.</p> + +<p>Champ Thorne knew nothing of this; he knew only that by a miracle +Barbara Barnes was in town; that at last he was in a position to ask +her to marry him; that she would certainly say she would. That was all +he cared to know.</p> + +<p>A year before he had issued his declaration of independence. Before he +could marry, he told her, he must be able to support a wife on what he +earned, without her having to accept<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> money from her father, and until +he received "a minimum wage" of five thousand dollars they must wait.</p> + +<p>"What is the matter with my father's money?" Barbara had demanded.</p> + +<p>Thorne had evaded the direct question.</p> + +<p>"There is too much of it," he said.</p> + +<p>"Do you object to the way he makes it?" insisted Barbara. "Because +rubber is most useful. You put it in golf balls and auto tires and +galoches. There is nothing so perfectly respectable as galoches. And +what is there 'tainted' about a raincoat."</p> + +<p>Thorne shook his head unhappily.</p> + +<p>"It's not the finished product to which I refer," he stammered; "it's +the way they get the raw material."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>"They get it out of trees," said Barbara. Then she exclaimed with +enlightenment—"Oh!" she cried, "you are thinking of the Congo. There it +is terrible! <i>That</i> is slavery. But there are no slaves on the Amazon. +The natives are free and the work is easy. They just tap the trees the +way the farmers gather sugar in Vermont. Father has told me about it +often."</p> + +<p>Thorne had made no comment. He could abuse a friend, if the friend were +among those present, but denouncing any one he disliked as heartily as +he disliked Senator Barnes was a public service he preferred to leave to +others. And he knew besides that, if the father she loved and the man +she loved distrusted each other, Barbara would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> not rest until she +learned the reason why.</p> + +<p>One day, in a newspaper, Barbara read of the Puju Mayo atrocities, of +the Indian slaves in the jungles and back waters of the Amazon, who are +offered up as sacrifices to "red rubber." She carried the paper to her +father. What it said, her father told her, was untrue, and if it were +true it was the first he had heard of it.</p> + +<p>Senator Barnes loved the good things of life, but the thing he loved +most was his daughter; the thing he valued the highest was her good +opinion. So when for the first time she looked at him in doubt, he +assured her he at once would order an investigation.</p> + +<p>"But, of course," he added, "it will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> be many months before our agents +can report. On the Amazon news travels very slowly."</p> + +<p>In the eyes of his daughter the doubt still lingered.</p> + +<p>"I am afraid," she said, "that that is true."</p> + +<p>That was six months before the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba Rubber +Company were summoned to meet their president at his rooms in the +Ritz-Carlton. They were due to arrive in half an hour, and while Senator +Barnes awaited their coming Barbara came to him. In her eyes was a light +that helped to tell the great news. It gave him a sharp, jealous pang. +He wanted at once to play a part in her happiness, to make her grateful +to him, not alone to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> this stranger who was taking her away. So fearful +was he that she would shut him out of her life that had she asked for +half his kingdom he would have parted with it.</p> + +<p>"And besides giving my consent," said the rubber king, "for which no one +seems to have asked, what can I give my little girl to make her remember +her old father? Some diamonds to put on her head, or pearls to hang +around her neck, or does she want a vacant lot on Fifth Avenue?"</p> + +<p>The lovely hands of Barbara rested upon his shoulders; her lovely face +was raised to his; her lovely eyes were appealing, and a little +frightened.</p> + +<p>"What would one of those things cost?" asked Barbara.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>The question was eminently practical. It came within the scope of the +senator's understanding. After all, he was not to be cast into outer +darkness. His smile was complacent. He answered airily:</p> + +<p>"Anything you like," he said; "a million dollars?"</p> + +<p>The fingers closed upon his shoulders. The eyes, still frightened, still +searched his in appeal.</p> + +<p>"Then for my wedding-present," said the girl, "I want you to take that +million dollars and send an expedition to the Amazon. And I will choose +the men. Men unafraid; men not afraid of fever or sudden death; not +afraid to tell the truth—even to <i>you</i>. And all the world will know. +And they—I mean <i>you</i>—will set those people free!"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>Senator Barnes received the directors with an embarrassment which he +concealed under a manner of just indignation.</p> + +<p>"My mind is made up," he told them. "Existing conditions cannot +continue. And to that end, at my own expense, I am sending an expedition +across South America. It will investigate, punish, and establish +reforms. I suggest, on account of this damned heat, we do now adjourn."</p> + +<p>That night, over on Long Island, Carroll told his wife all, or nearly +all. He did not tell her about the automatic pistol. And together on +tiptoe they crept to the nursery and looked down at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> their sleeping +children. When she rose from her knees the mother said, "But how can I +thank him?"</p> + +<p>By "him" she meant the Young Man of Wall Street.</p> + +<p>"You never can thank him," said Carroll; "that's the worst of it."</p> + +<p>But after a long silence the mother said: "I will send him a photograph +of the children. Do you think he will understand?"</p> + +<p>Down at Seabright, Hastings and his wife walked in the sunken garden. +The moon was so bright that the roses still held their color.</p> + +<p>"I would like to thank him," said the young wife. She meant the Young +Man of Wall Street. "But for him we would have lost <i>this</i>."</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>Her eyes caressed the garden, the fruit-trees, the house with wide, +hospitable verandas. "To-morrow I will send him some of these roses," +said the young wife. "Will he understand that they mean our home?"</p> + +<p>At a scandalously late hour, in a scandalous spirit of independence, +Champ Thorne and Barbara were driving around Central Park in a taxicab.</p> + +<p>"How strangely the Lord moves, his wonders to perform," misquoted +Barbara. "Had not the Young Man of Wall Street saved Mr. Hastings, Mr. +Hastings could not have raised your salary; you would not have asked me +to marry you, and had you not asked me to marry you, father would not +have given me a wedding-present, and——"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>"And," said Champ, taking up the tale, "thousands of slaves would still +be buried in the jungles, hidden away from their wives and children, and +the light of the sun and their fellow men. They still would be dying of +fever, starvation, tortures."</p> + +<p>He took her hand in both of his and held her finger-tips against his +lips.</p> + +<p>"And they will never know," he whispered, "when their freedom comes, +that they owe it all to <i>you</i>."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>On Hunter's Island Jimmie Reeder and his bunkie, Sam Sturges, each on +his canvas cot, tossed and twisted. The heat, the moonlight, and the +mosquitoes would not let them even think of sleep.</p> + +<p>"That was bully," said Jimmie, "what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> you did to-day about saving that +dog. If it hadn't been for you he'd ha' drownded."</p> + +<p>"He would <i>not</i>!" said Sammy with punctilious regard for the truth; "it +wasn't deep enough."</p> + +<p>"Well, the scout-master ought to know," argued Jimmie; "he said it was +the best 'one good turn' of the day!"</p> + +<p>Modestly Sam shifted the limelight so that it fell upon his bunkie.</p> + +<p>"I'll bet," he declared loyally, "<i>your</i> 'one good turn' was a better +one!"</p> + +<p>Jimmie yawned, and then laughed scornfully.</p> + +<p>"Me," he scoffed, "I didn't do nothing. I sent my sister to the +movies."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p class="bbox"><b>Transcriber's Note</b>:<br /><br /> +Unusual spellings appearing in the original text have been retained.</p> + +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY SCOUT***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 19501-h.txt or 19501-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/5/0/19501">http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/5/0/19501</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Boy Scout + + +Author: Richard Harding Davis + + + +Release Date: October 8, 2006 [eBook #19501] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY SCOUT*** + + +E-text prepared by Jacqueline Jeremy and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) from page images +generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustration. + See 19501-h.htm or 19501-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/5/0/19501/19501-h/19501-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/5/0/19501/19501-h.zip) + + + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/boyscoutthe00davirich + + + + + +THE BOY SCOUT + +by + +RICHARD HARDING DAVIS + + + + + + + +[Illustration: Jimmie dropped the valise, forced his cramped +fingers into straight lines, and saluted. [Page 10]] + + + +New York +Charles Scribner's Sons +1914 +Copyright, 1914, by Charles Scribner's Sons +Published May, 1914 + + +[Illustration] + + + + +THE BOY SCOUT + + +A rule of the Boy Scouts is every day to do some one a good turn. Not +because the copy-books tell you it deserves another, but in spite of +that pleasing possibility. If you are a true scout, until you have +performed your act of kindness your day is dark. You are as unhappy +as is the grown-up who has begun his day without shaving or reading +the New York _Sun_. But as soon as you have proved yourself you may, +with a clear conscience, look the world in the face and untie the +knot in your kerchief. + +Jimmie Reeder untied the accusing knot in his scarf at just ten +minutes past eight on a hot August morning after he had given one +dime to his sister Sadie. With that she could either witness the +first-run films at the Palace, or by dividing her fortune patronize +two of the nickel shows on Lenox Avenue. The choice Jimmie left to +her. He was setting out for the annual encampment of the Boy Scouts +at Hunter's Island, and in the excitement of that adventure even the +movies ceased to thrill. But Sadie also could be unselfish. With a +heroism of a camp-fire maiden she made a gesture which might have +been interpreted to mean she was returning the money. + +"I can't, Jimmie!" she gasped. "I can't take it off you. You saved it, +and you ought to get the fun of it." + +"I haven't saved it yet," said Jimmie. "I'm going to cut it out of the +railroad fare. I'm going to get off at City Island instead of at Pelham +Manor and walk the difference. That's ten cents cheaper." + +Sadie exclaimed with admiration: + +"An' you carryin' that heavy grip!" + +"Aw, that's nothin'," said the man of the family. + +"Good-by, mother. So long, Sadie." + +To ward off further expressions of gratitude he hurriedly advised Sadie +to take in "The Curse of Cain" rather than "The Mohawks' Last Stand," +and fled down the front steps. + +He wore his khaki uniform. On his shoulders was his knapsack, from +his hands swung his suitcase and between his heavy stockings and his +"shorts" his kneecaps, unkissed by the sun, as yet unscathed by +blackberry vines, showed as white and fragile as the wrists of a girl. +As he moved toward the "L" station at the corner, Sadie and his mother +waved to him; in the street, boys too small to be scouts hailed him +enviously; even the policeman glancing over the newspapers on the +news-stand nodded approval. + +"You a Scout, Jimmie?" he asked. + +"No," retorted Jimmie, for was not he also in uniform? "I'm Santa Claus +out filling Christmas stockings." + +The patrolman also possessed a ready wit. + +"Then get yourself a pair," he advised. "If a dog was to see your +legs----" + +Jimmie escaped the insult by fleeing up the steps of the Elevated. + + * * * * * + +An hour later, with his valise in one hand and staff in the other, he +was tramping up the Boston Post Road and breathing heavily. The day was +cruelly hot. Before his eyes, over an interminable stretch of asphalt, +the heat waves danced and flickered. Already the knapsack on his +shoulders pressed upon him like an Old Man of the Sea; the linen in the +valise had turned to pig iron, his pipe-stem legs were wabbling, his +eyes smarted with salt sweat, and the fingers supporting the valise +belonged to some other boy, and were giving that boy much pain. But as +the motor-cars flashed past with raucous warnings, or, that those who +rode might better see the boy with bare knees, passed at "half speed," +Jimmie stiffened his shoulders and stepped jauntily forward. Even when +the joy-riders mocked with "Oh, you Scout!" he smiled at them. He was +willing to admit to those who rode that the laugh was on the one who +walked. And he regretted--oh, so bitterly--having left the train. He was +indignant that for his "one good turn a day" he had not selected one +less strenuous. That, for instance, he had not assisted a frightened old +lady through the traffic. To refuse the dime she might have offered, as +all true scouts refuse all tips, would have been easier than to earn it +by walking five miles, with the sun at ninety-nine degrees, and carrying +excess baggage. Twenty times James shifted the valise to the other hand, +twenty times he let it drop and sat upon it. + +And then, as again he took up his burden, the Good Samaritan drew near. +He drew near in a low gray racing-car at the rate of forty miles an +hour, and within a hundred feet of Jimmie suddenly stopped and backed +toward him. The Good Samaritan was a young man with white hair. He wore +a suit of blue, a golf cap; the hands that held the wheel were disguised +in large yellow gloves. He brought the car to a halt and surveyed the +dripping figure in the road with tired and uncurious eyes. + +"You a Boy Scout?" he asked. + +With alacrity for the twenty-first time Jimmie dropped the valise, +forced his cramped fingers into straight lines, and saluted. + +The young man in the car nodded toward the seat beside him. + +"Get in," he commanded. + +When James sat panting happily at his elbow the old young man, to +Jimmie's disappointment, did not continue to shatter the speed limit. +Instead, he seemed inclined for conversation, and the car, growling +indignantly, crawled. + +"I never saw a Boy Scout before," announced the old young man. "Tell me +about it. First, tell me what you do when you're not scouting." + +Jimmie explained volubly. When not in uniform he was an office-boy and +from pedlers and beggars guarded the gates of Carroll and Hastings, +stockbrokers. He spoke the names of his employers with awe. It was a +firm distinguished, conservative, and long-established. The white-haired +young man seemed to nod in assent. + +"Do you know them?" demanded Jimmie suspiciously. "Are you a customer +of ours?" + +"I know them," said the young man. "They are customers of mine." + +Jimmie wondered in what way Carroll and Hastings were customers of the +white-haired young man. Judging him by his outer garments, Jimmie +guessed he was a Fifth Avenue tailor; he might be even a haberdasher. +Jimmie continued. He lived, he explained, with his mother at One Hundred +and Forty-sixth Street; Sadie, his sister, attended the public school; +he helped support them both, and he now was about to enjoy a well-earned +vacation camping out on Hunter's Island, where he would cook his own +meals and, if the mosquitoes permitted, sleep in a tent. + +"And you like that?" demanded the young man. "You call that fun?" + +"Sure!" protested Jimmie. "Don't _you_ go camping out?" + +"I go camping out," said the Good Samaritan, "whenever I leave New +York." + +Jimmie had not for three years lived in Wall Street not to understand +that the young man spoke in metaphor. + +"You don't look," objected the young man critically, "as though you were +built for the strenuous life." + +Jimmie glanced guiltily at his white knees. + +"You ought ter see me two weeks from now," he protested. "I get all +sunburnt and hard--hard as anything!" + +The young man was incredulous. + +"You were near getting sunstroke when I picked you up," he laughed. "If +you're going to Hunter's Island why didn't you take the Third Avenue to +Pelham Manor?" + +"That's right!" assented Jimmie eagerly. "But I wanted to save the ten +cents so's to send Sadie to the movies. So I walked." + +The young man looked his embarrassment. + +"I beg your pardon," he murmured. + +But Jimmie did not hear him. From the back of the car he was dragging +excitedly at the hated suitcase. + +"Stop!" he commanded. "I got ter get out. I got ter _walk_." + +The young man showed his surprise. + +"Walk!" he exclaimed. "What is it--a bet?" + +Jimmie dropped the valise and followed it into the roadway. It took some +time to explain to the young man. First, he had to be told about the +scout law and the one good turn a day, and that it must involve some +personal sacrifice. And, as Jimmie pointed out, changing from a slow +suburban train to a racing-car could not be listed as a sacrifice. He +had not earned the money, Jimmie argued; he had only avoided paying it +to the railroad. If he did not walk he would be obtaining the gratitude +of Sadie by a falsehood. Therefore, he must walk. + +"Not at all," protested the young man. "You've got it wrong. What good +will it do your sister to have you sunstruck? I think you _are_ +sunstruck. You're crazy with the heat. You get in here, and we'll talk +it over as we go along." + +Hastily Jimmie backed away. "I'd rather walk," he said. + +The young man shifted his legs irritably. + +"Then how'll this suit you?" he called. "We'll declare that first 'one +good turn' a failure and start afresh. Do _me_ a good turn." + +Jimmie halted in his tracks and looked back suspiciously. + +"I'm going to Hunter's Island Inn," called the young man, "and I've lost +my way. You get in here and guide me. That'll be doing me a good turn." + +On either side of the road, blotting out the landscape, giant hands +picked out in electric-light bulbs pointed the way to Hunter's Island +Inn. Jimmie grinned and nodded toward them. + +"Much obliged," he called, "I got ter walk." Turning his back upon +temptation, he wabbled forward into the flickering heat waves. + + * * * * * + +The young man did not attempt to pursue. At the side of the road, under +the shade of a giant elm, he had brought the car to a halt and with his +arms crossed upon the wheel sat motionless, following with frowning eyes +the retreating figure of Jimmie. But the narrow-chested and knock-kneed +boy staggering over the sun-baked asphalt no longer concerned him. It +was not Jimmie, but the code preached by Jimmie, and not only preached +but before his eyes put into practice, that interested him. The young +man with white hair had been running away from temptation. At forty +miles an hour he had been running away from the temptation to do a +fellow mortal "a good turn." That morning, to the appeal of a drowning +Caesar to "Help me, Cassius, or I sink," he had answered, "Sink!" That +answer he had no wish to reconsider. That he might not reconsider he +had sought to escape. It was his experience that a sixty-horsepower +racing-machine is a jealous mistress. For retrospective, sentimental, or +philanthropic thoughts she grants no leave of absence. But he had not +escaped. Jimmie had halted him, tripped him by the heels and set him +again to thinking. Within the half-hour that followed those who rolled +past saw at the side of the road a car with her engine running, and +leaning upon the wheel, as unconscious of his surroundings as though he +sat at his own fireplace, a young man who frowned and stared at nothing. +The half-hour passed and the young man swung his car back toward the +city. But at the first roadhouse that showed a blue-and-white telephone +sign he left it, and into the iron box at the end of the bar dropped a +nickel. He wished to communicate with Mr. Carroll, of Carroll and +Hastings; and when he learned Mr. Carroll had just issued orders +that he must not be disturbed, the young man gave his name. + +The effect upon the barkeeper was instantaneous. With the aggrieved air +of one who feels he is the victim of a jest he laughed scornfully. + +"What are you putting over?" he demanded. + +The young man smiled reassuringly. He had begun to speak and, though +apparently engaged with the beer-glass he was polishing, the barkeeper +listened. + +Down in Wall Street the senior member of Carroll and Hastings also +listened. He was alone in the most private of all his private offices, +and when interrupted had been engaged in what, of all undertakings, is +the most momentous. On the desk before him lay letters to his lawyer, to +the coroner, to his wife; and hidden by a mass of papers, but within +reach of his hand, an automatic pistol. The promise it offered of swift +release had made the writing of the letters simple, had given him a +feeling of complete detachment, had released him, at least in thought, +from all responsibilities. And when at his elbow the telephone coughed +discreetly, it was as though some one had called him from a world from +which already he had made his exit. + +Mechanically, through mere habit, he lifted the receiver. + +The voice over the telephone came in brisk staccato sentences. + +"That letter I sent this morning? Forget it. Tear it up. I've been +thinking and I'm going to take a chance. I've decided to back you boys, +and I know you'll make good. I'm speaking from a roadhouse in the Bronx; +going straight from here to the bank. So you can begin to draw against +us within an hour. And--hello!--will three millions see you through?" + +From Wall Street there came no answer, but from the hands of the +barkeeper a glass crashed to the floor. + +The young man regarded the barkeeper with puzzled eyes. + +"He doesn't answer," he exclaimed. "He must have hung up." + +"He must have fainted!" said the barkeeper. + +The white-haired one pushed a bill across the counter. "To pay for +breakage," he said, and disappeared down Pelham Parkway. + +Throughout the day, with the bill, for evidence, pasted against the +mirror, the barkeeper told and retold the wondrous tale. + +"He stood just where you're standing now," he related, "blowing in +million-dollar bills like you'd blow suds off a beer. If I'd knowed it +was _him_, I'd have hit him once, and hid him in the cellar for the +reward. Who'd I think he was? I thought he was a wire-tapper, working a +con game!" + +Mr. Carroll had not "hung up," but when in the Bronx the beer-glass +crashed, in Wall Street the receiver had slipped from the hand of the +man who held it, and the man himself had fallen forward. His desk hit +him in the face and woke him--woke him to the wonderful fact that he +still lived; that at forty he had been born again; that before him +stretched many more years in which, as the young man with the white +hair had pointed out, he still could make good. + +The afternoon was far advanced when the staff of Carroll and Hastings +were allowed to depart, and, even late as was the hour, two of them were +asked to remain. Into the most private of the private offices Carroll +invited Gaskell, the head clerk; in the main office Hastings had asked +young Thorne, the bond clerk, to be seated. + +Until the senior partner has finished with Gaskell young Thorne must +remain seated. + +"Gaskell," said Mr. Carroll, "if we had listened to you, if we'd run +this place as it was when father was alive, this never would have +happened. It _hasn't_ happened, but we've had our lesson. And after +this we're going slow and going straight. And we don't need you to tell +us how to do that. We want you to go away--on a month's vacation. When I +thought we were going under I planned to send the children on a +sea-voyage with the governess--so they wouldn't see the newspapers. But +now that I can look them in the eye again, I need them, I can't let them +go. So, if you'd like to take your wife on an ocean trip to Nova Scotia +and Quebec, here are the cabins I reserved for the kids. They call it +the Royal Suite--whatever that is--and the trip lasts a month. The boat +sails to-morrow morning. Don't sleep too late or you may miss her." + + * * * * * + +The head clerk was secreting the tickets in the inside pocket of his +waistcoat. His fingers trembled, and when he laughed his voice trembled. + +"Miss the boat!" the head clerk exclaimed. "If she gets away from Millie +and me she's got to start now. We'll go on board to-night!" + +A half-hour later Millie was on her knees packing a trunk, and her +husband was telephoning to the drug-store for a sponge bag and a cure +for seasickness. + +Owing to the joy in her heart and to the fact that she was on her knees, +Millie was alternately weeping into the trunk-tray and offering up +incoherent prayers of thanksgiving. Suddenly she sank back upon the +floor. + +"John!" she cried, "doesn't it seem sinful to sail away in a 'royal +suite' and leave this beautiful flat empty?" + +Over the telephone John was having trouble with the drug clerk. + +"No!" he explained, "I'm not seasick _now_. The medicine I want is to be +taken later. I _know_ I'm speaking from the Pavonia; but the Pavonia +isn't a ship; it's an apartment-house." + +He turned to Millie. "We can't be in two places at the same time," he +suggested. + +"But, think," insisted Millie, "of all the poor people stifling to-night +in this heat, trying to sleep on the roofs and fire-escapes; and our +flat so cool and big and pretty--and no one in it." + +John nodded his head proudly. + +"I know it's big," he said, "but it isn't big enough to hold all the +people who are sleeping to-night on the roofs and in the parks." + +"I was thinking of your brother--and Grace," said Millie. "They've been +married only two weeks now, and they're in a stuffy hall bedroom and +eating with all the other boarders. Think what our flat would mean to +them; to be by themselves, with eight rooms and their own kitchen and +bath, and our new refrigerator and the gramophone! It would be Heaven! +It would be a real honeymoon!" + +Abandoning the drug clerk, John lifted Millie in his arms and kissed +her, for next to his wife nearest his heart was the younger brother. + + * * * * * + +The younger brother and Grace were sitting on the stoop of the +boardinghouse. On the upper steps, in their shirt-sleeves, were the +other boarders; so the bride and bridegroom spoke in whispers. The air +of the cross street was stale and stagnant; from it rose exhalations of +rotting fruit, the gases of an open subway, the smoke of passing +taxicabs. But between the street and the hall bedroom, with its odors of +a gas-stove and a kitchen, the choice was difficult. + +"We've got to cool off somehow," the young husband was saying, "or you +won't sleep. Shall we treat ourselves to ice-cream sodas or a trip on +the Weehawken ferry-boat?" + +"The ferry-boat!" begged the girl, "where we can get away from all these +people." + +A taxicab with a trunk in front whirled into the street, kicked itself +to a stop, and the head clerk and Millie spilled out upon the pavement. +They talked so fast, and the younger brother and Grace talked so fast, +that the boarders, although they listened intently, could make nothing +of it. + +They distinguished only the concluding sentences: + +"Why don't you drive down to the wharf with us," they heard the elder +brother ask, "and see our royal suite?" + +But the younger brother laughed him to scorn. + +"What's your royal suite," he mocked, "to our royal palace?" + +An hour later, had the boarders listened outside the flat of the head +clerk, they would have heard issuing from his bathroom the cooling +murmur of running water and from his gramophone the jubilant notes of +"Alexander's Ragtime Band." + +When in his private office Carroll was making a present of the royal +suite to the head clerk, in the main office Hastings, the junior +partner, was addressing "Champ" Thorne, the bond clerk. He addressed him +familiarly and affectionately as "Champ." This was due partly to the +fact that twenty-six years before Thorne had been christened Champneys +and to the coincidence that he had captained the football eleven of one +of the Big Three to the championship. + +"Champ," said Mr. Hastings, "last month, when you asked me to raise +your salary, the reason I didn't do it was not because you didn't +deserve it, but because I believed if we gave you a raise you'd +immediately get married." + +The shoulders of the ex-football captain rose aggressively; he snorted +with indignation. + +"And why should I _not_ get married?" he demanded. "You're a fine one to +talk! You're the most offensively happy married man I ever met." + +"Perhaps I know I am happy better than you do," reproved the junior +partner; "but I know also that it takes money to support a wife." + +"You raise me to a hundred a week," urged Champ, "and I'll make it +support a wife whether it supports me or not." + +"A month ago," continued Hastings, "we could have _promised_ you a +hundred, but we didn't know how long we could pay it. We didn't want +you to rush off and marry some fine girl----" + +"Some fine girl!" muttered Mr. Thorne. "The Finest Girl!" + +"The finer the girl," Hastings pointed out, "the harder it would have +been for you if we had failed and you had lost your job." + +The eyes of the young man opened with sympathy and concern. + +"Is it as bad as that?" he murmured. + +Hastings sighed happily. + +"It _was_," he said, "but this morning the Young Man of Wall Street did +us a good turn--saved us--saved our creditors, saved our homes, saved +our honor. We're going to start fresh and pay our debts, and we agreed +the first debt we paid would be the small one we owe you. You've brought +us more than we've given, and if you'll stay with us we're going to +'see' your fifty and raise it a hundred. What do you say?" + +Young Mr. Thorne leaped to his feet. What he said was: "Where'n hell's +my hat?" + +But by the time he had found the hat and the door he mended his manners. + +"I say, 'thank you a thousand times,'" he shouted over his shoulder. +"Excuse me, but I've got to go. I've got to break the news to----" + +He did not explain to whom he was going to break the news; but Hastings +must have guessed, for again he sighed happily and then, a little +hysterically, laughed aloud. Several months had passed since he had +laughed aloud. + +In his anxiety to break the news Champ Thorne almost broke his neck. In +his excitement he could not remember whether the red flash meant the +elevator was going down or coming up, and sooner than wait to find out +he started to race down eighteen flights of stairs when fortunately the +elevator-door swung open. + +"You get five dollars," he announced to the elevator man, "if you drop +to the street without a stop. Beat the speed limit! Act like the +building is on fire and you're trying to save me before the roof +falls." + +Senator Barnes and his entire family, which was his daughter Barbara, +were at the Ritz-Carlton. They were in town in August because there was +a meeting of the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba Rubber Company, of +which company Senator Barnes was president. It was a secret meeting. +Those directors who were keeping cool at the edge of the ocean had been +summoned by telegraph; those who were steaming across the ocean, by +wireless. + +Up from the equator had drifted the threat of a scandal, sickening, +grim, terrible. As yet it burned beneath the surface, giving out only +an odor, but an odor as rank as burning rubber itself. At any moment it +might break into flame. For the directors, was it the better wisdom to +let the scandal smoulder, and take a chance, or to be the first to give +the alarm, the first to lead the way to the horror and stamp it out? + +It was to decide this that, in the heat of August, the directors and the +president had foregathered. + +Champ Thorne knew nothing of this; he knew only that by a miracle +Barbara Barnes was in town; that at last he was in a position to ask +her to marry him; that she would certainly say she would. That was all +he cared to know. + +A year before he had issued his declaration of independence. Before he +could marry, he told her, he must be able to support a wife on what he +earned, without her having to accept money from her father, and until +he received "a minimum wage" of five thousand dollars they must wait. + +"What is the matter with my father's money?" Barbara had demanded. + +Thorne had evaded the direct question. + +"There is too much of it," he said. + +"Do you object to the way he makes it?" insisted Barbara. "Because +rubber is most useful. You put it in golf balls and auto tires and +galoches. There is nothing so perfectly respectable as galoches. And +what is there 'tainted' about a raincoat." + +Thorne shook his head unhappily. + +"It's not the finished product to which I refer," he stammered; "it's +the way they get the raw material." + +"They get it out of trees," said Barbara. Then she exclaimed with +enlightenment--"Oh!" she cried, "you are thinking of the Congo. There it +is terrible! _That_ is slavery. But there are no slaves on the Amazon. +The natives are free and the work is easy. They just tap the trees the +way the farmers gather sugar in Vermont. Father has told me about it +often." + +Thorne had made no comment. He could abuse a friend, if the friend were +among those present, but denouncing any one he disliked as heartily as +he disliked Senator Barnes was a public service he preferred to leave to +others. And he knew besides that, if the father she loved and the man +she loved distrusted each other, Barbara would not rest until she +learned the reason why. + +One day, in a newspaper, Barbara read of the Puju Mayo atrocities, of +the Indian slaves in the jungles and back waters of the Amazon, who are +offered up as sacrifices to "red rubber." She carried the paper to her +father. What it said, her father told her, was untrue, and if it were +true it was the first he had heard of it. + +Senator Barnes loved the good things of life, but the thing he loved +most was his daughter; the thing he valued the highest was her good +opinion. So when for the first time she looked at him in doubt, he +assured her he at once would order an investigation. + +"But, of course," he added, "it will be many months before our agents +can report. On the Amazon news travels very slowly." + +In the eyes of his daughter the doubt still lingered. + +"I am afraid," she said, "that that is true." + +That was six months before the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba Rubber +Company were summoned to meet their president at his rooms in the +Ritz-Carlton. They were due to arrive in half an hour, and while Senator +Barnes awaited their coming Barbara came to him. In her eyes was a light +that helped to tell the great news. It gave him a sharp, jealous pang. +He wanted at once to play a part in her happiness, to make her grateful +to him, not alone to this stranger who was taking her away. So fearful +was he that she would shut him out of her life that had she asked for +half his kingdom he would have parted with it. + +"And besides giving my consent," said the rubber king, "for which no one +seems to have asked, what can I give my little girl to make her remember +her old father? Some diamonds to put on her head, or pearls to hang +around her neck, or does she want a vacant lot on Fifth Avenue?" + +The lovely hands of Barbara rested upon his shoulders; her lovely face +was raised to his; her lovely eyes were appealing, and a little +frightened. + +"What would one of those things cost?" asked Barbara. + +The question was eminently practical. It came within the scope of the +senator's understanding. After all, he was not to be cast into outer +darkness. His smile was complacent. He answered airily: + +"Anything you like," he said; "a million dollars?" + +The fingers closed upon his shoulders. The eyes, still frightened, still +searched his in appeal. + +"Then for my wedding-present," said the girl, "I want you to take that +million dollars and send an expedition to the Amazon. And I will choose +the men. Men unafraid; men not afraid of fever or sudden death; not +afraid to tell the truth--even to _you_. And all the world will know. +And they--I mean _you_--will set those people free!" + +Senator Barnes received the directors with an embarrassment which he +concealed under a manner of just indignation. + +"My mind is made up," he told them. "Existing conditions cannot +continue. And to that end, at my own expense, I am sending an expedition +across South America. It will investigate, punish, and establish +reforms. I suggest, on account of this damned heat, we do now adjourn." + +That night, over on Long Island, Carroll told his wife all, or nearly +all. He did not tell her about the automatic pistol. And together on +tiptoe they crept to the nursery and looked down at their sleeping +children. When she rose from her knees the mother said, "But how can I +thank him?" + +By "him" she meant the Young Man of Wall Street. + +"You never can thank him," said Carroll; "that's the worst of it." + +But after a long silence the mother said: "I will send him a photograph +of the children. Do you think he will understand?" + +Down at Seabright, Hastings and his wife walked in the sunken garden. +The moon was so bright that the roses still held their color. + +"I would like to thank him," said the young wife. She meant the Young +Man of Wall Street. "But for him we would have lost _this_." + +Her eyes caressed the garden, the fruit-trees, the house with wide, +hospitable verandas. "To-morrow I will send him some of these roses," +said the young wife. "Will he understand that they mean our home?" + +At a scandalously late hour, in a scandalous spirit of independence, +Champ Thorne and Barbara were driving around Central Park in a taxicab. + +"How strangely the Lord moves, his wonders to perform," misquoted +Barbara. "Had not the Young Man of Wall Street saved Mr. Hastings, Mr. +Hastings could not have raised your salary; you would not have asked me +to marry you, and had you not asked me to marry you, father would not +have given me a wedding-present, and----" + +"And," said Champ, taking up the tale, "thousands of slaves would still +be buried in the jungles, hidden away from their wives and children, and +the light of the sun and their fellow men. They still would be dying of +fever, starvation, tortures." + +He took her hand in both of his and held her finger-tips against his +lips. + +"And they will never know," he whispered, "when their freedom comes, +that they owe it all to _you_." + + * * * * * + +On Hunter's Island Jimmie Reeder and his bunkie, Sam Sturges, each on +his canvas cot, tossed and twisted. The heat, the moonlight, and the +mosquitoes would not let them even think of sleep. + +"That was bully," said Jimmie, "what you did to-day about saving that +dog. If it hadn't been for you he'd ha' drownded." + +"He would _not_!" said Sammy with punctilious regard for the truth; "it +wasn't deep enough." + +"Well, the scout-master ought to know," argued Jimmie; "he said it was +the best 'one good turn' of the day!" + +Modestly Sam shifted the limelight so that it fell upon his bunkie. + +"I'll bet," he declared loyally, "_your_ 'one good turn' was a better +one!" + +Jimmie yawned, and then laughed scornfully. + +"Me," he scoffed, "I didn't do nothing. I sent my sister to the +movies." + + + + * * * * * + + + ++-------------------------------------------------------------+ +|Transcriber's note: | +| | +|Unusual spellings appearing in the original text have been | +|retained. | ++-------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY SCOUT*** + + +******* This file should be named 19501.txt or 19501.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/5/0/19501 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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