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The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Scout of To-day, by Isabel Hornibrook
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<pre>
The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Scout of To-day, by Isabel Hornibrook
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Title: A Scout of To-day
Author: Isabel Hornibrook
Release Date: January 10, 2012 [EBook #38540]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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</pre>
<div class="center pt2"><img style="width:576px; height:700px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_Frontis" id="Page_Frontis">[Frontispiece]</a></span></p>
<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both;" summary="Illustration">
<tr><td class="figcenter"><img style="width:471px; height:700px" src="images/frontis.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="caption">“WHAT IS IT? WHAT IS IT?”</td></tr></table>
<hr class="short" />
<h1>A SCOUT OF TO-DAY</h1>
<p class="center">BY</p>
<p class="center f150">ISABEL HORNIBROOK</p>
<p class="center"><i>Author of “Camp and Trail,” “Lost in Maine Woods,”
“Captain Curly’s Boy,” etc., etc.</i></p>
<p class="center">WITH ILLUSTRATIONS</p>
<div class="center pt2"><img style="width:150px; height:208px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/frontis1.jpg" alt="" /></div>
<p class="center">BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br />
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY<br />
The Riverside Press Cambridge<br />
1913</p>
<hr class="short" />
<p class="center1 f80">COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY ISABEL HORNIBROOK</p>
<p class="center1 f80">ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</p>
<p class="center1 f80"><i>Published June 1913</i></p>
<hr class="short" />
<p class="center">AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO</p>
<p class="center">“NED”</p>
<hr class="short" />
<p class="center">The Author expresses her indebtedness to Edmund<br />
Richard Cummins for the song, “<span class="sc">The Scouts of<br />
the U.S.A.</span>”</p>
<hr class="art" />
<p class="center chap">CONTENTS</p>
<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
<tr><td class="tcr">I.</td> <td class="tcl sc">The Great Woods</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">II.</td> <td class="tcl sc">Only a Chip’</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">III.</td> <td class="tcl sc">Raccoon Junior</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">IV.</td> <td class="tcl sc">Varney’s Paintpot</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">V.</td> <td class="tcl sc">“You Must Look Out!”</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">VI.</td> <td class="tcl sc">The Friction Fire</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">VII.</td> <td class="tcl sc">Members of the Local Council</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_104">104</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">VIII.</td> <td class="tcl sc">The Bowline Knot</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">IX.</td> <td class="tcl sc">Godey Peck</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">X.</td> <td class="tcl sc">The Baldfaced House</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_159">159</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">XI.</td> <td class="tcl sc">Estu Preta!</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_178">178</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">XII.</td> <td class="tcl sc">The Christmas Brigade</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_196">196</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">XIII.</td> <td class="tcl sc">The Big Minute</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">XIV.</td> <td class="tcl sc">A River Duel</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_215">215</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">XV.</td> <td class="tcl sc">The Camp on the Dunes</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_230">230</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">XVI.</td> <td class="tcl sc">The Pup-Seal’s Creek</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_244">244</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">XVII.</td> <td class="tcl sc">The Signalman</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_262">262</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcr">XVIII.</td> <td class="tcl sc">The Log Shanty Again</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_271">271</a></td></tr>
</table>
<hr class="art" />
<p class="center chap">ILLUSTRATIONS</p>
<table class="ws" summary="Illustrations">
<tr><td class="tcl">“<span class="sc">What is it? What is it?</span>” <a href="#Page_99">(page 99)</a></td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_Frontis"><i>Colored Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcl">“<span class="sc">Help! <i>Help!</i></span>”</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcl">“<span class="sc">Mak’ you s-silent! W’at for you spik lak dat?”</span></td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcl"><span class="sc">In Camp</span></td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_238">238</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tcl">“<span class="sc">Can’t you see the tide is leaving you?”</span></td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></td></tr>
</table>
<p class="center1"><i>From drawings by J. Reading</i></p>
<hr class="art" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">A SCOUT OF TO-DAY</p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER I</p>
<p class="center chap2">THE GREAT WOODS</p>
<p>“Well! this would be the very day for a
long tramp up into the woods. Tooraloo! I feel
just in the humor for that.”</p>
<p>Colin Estey stretched his well-developed fourteen-year-old
body among the tall feathery grasses
of the broad salt-marsh whereon he lay, kicking
his heels in the September sunshine, and gazed
longingly off toward the grand expanse of New
England woodland that bordered the marshes
and, rising into tree-clad hills, stretched away
much farther than the eye could reach in apparently
illimitable majesty.</p>
<p>Those woods were the most imposing and mysterious
feature in Colin’s world. They bounded
it in a way. Beyond a certain shallow point in
them lay the Unknown, the Woodland Wonder,
whereof he had heard much, but which he had
never explored for himself. And this reminded
him unpleasantly that he was barely fourteen,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
in stature measuring five feet three <i>and</i> three
eighths, facts which never obtruded themselves
baldly upon his memory when he romped about the
salt-marshes, or rowed a boat—or if no boat was
forthcoming, paddled a washtub—on the broad
tidal river that wound in and out between the
marshes.</p>
<p>Yet though the unprobed mystery of the dense
woods vexed him with the feeling of being immature
and young—woodland distances look
vaster at fourteen than at eighteen—it fascinated
him, too, more than did any riddle of the salt-marshes
or lunar enigma of the ebb and flow of
tide in the silvery, brackish river formed by an
arm of sea that coursed inland for many a mile
to meet a freshwater stream near the town where
Colin was born.</p>
<p>Any daring boy above the age of ten could
learn pretty nearly all there was to know about
that tidal river: of the mammal and fish wherewith
it teemed, from the great harbor seal, once
the despot of the river, to the tiny brit that frolicked
in the eddies; and about the graceful bird-life
that soared above its brackish current.</p>
<p>He could bathe, shrieking with excitement, as
wild from delight as any young water-bird, in the
foam of the rocky bar where fresh stream and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
salt stream met with a great crowing of waters
and laughter of spray.</p>
<p>He could imitate the triple whistle, the shrill
“Wheu! Wheu! Wheu!” of the greater yellow-legs
so cleverly as to beguile that noisy bird,
which is said to warn every other feathered
thing within hearing, into forgetting its panic
and alighting near him.</p>
<p>He could give the drawn-out, plaintive “Ter-lee-ee!”
call of the black-breasted plover, and
find the crude nest of the spotted sandpiper
nestling beneath a tall clump of candle-grass.</p>
<p>All these secrets and many more were within
easy reach and could be studied in his unwritten
Nature Primer whose pages were traced in the
flight of each bird and the spawn of every fish.</p>
<p>But the Heart of the Woods was a closed book
to most fourteen-year-old boys born and brought
up in the little tidal town of Exmouth.</p>
<p>Colin had often longed to turn the pages of
that book—to penetrate farther into the woods
than he had dared to do yet. This longing was
fanned by the tales of men who had hunted,
trapped or felled trees in them, who could spell
out each syllable of the woodlore to be studied
in their golden twilight; and who, as they roved
and read, could put a finger on many a colored
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
illustration of Nature’s methods set against a
green background of branches or fluttering underbrush,
like the flitting foliage of moving
pictures.</p>
<p>To-day the wood-longing possessed Colin so
strongly that it actually stung him all over, from
his neck to his drumming, purposeless heels.</p>
<p>He glanced up into the brilliant September
sky arching the salt-marshes, questioning it as to
what might be going on in the woods at this
moment under its imperial canopy.</p>
<p>And the blue eye of the sky winked back at
him, hinting that it knew of forest secrets to
be discovered to-day—of fascinating woodland
creatures to be seen for a moment at their whisking
gambols.</p>
<p>The sunlight’s energy raced through him.
The briny ozone of the salt-marshes was a tickling
feather in his nostrils, teasing him with a
desire to find an outlet for that energy in some
new and unprecedented form of activity.</p>
<p>He sprang to his feet, spurning the plumy
grass.</p>
<p>“Gee whiz! I’m not going to lie here any
longer, smelling marsh-hay,” he cried half articulately,
his eye taking in the figures of two hay-makers
who were mowing the tall marsh-grass
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
and letting it lie in fragrant swathes to dry into
the salt hay that forms such juicy fodder for
cattle. “It’s me for the woods to-day! I want
to go farther into those old woods than I’ve ever
gone before—far enough to find Varney’s
Paintpot and the Bear’s Den—and the coon’s
hole that Toiney Leduc saw among the alders
an’ ledges near Big Swamp!”</p>
<p>He halted on the first footstep, whistling
blithely to a gray-winged yellow-legs that
skimmed above his head. The curly, boyish
whistle, ascending in spirals, carried the musical
challenge aloft: “I’m glad I’m alive and
athirst for adventure; aren’t you?”</p>
<p>To which the bird’s noisy three-syllabled cry
responded like three cheers!</p>
<p>“It’s me for the woods to-day!” Colin set off
at an easy lope across the marshes. “I’m going
to look up Coombsie and Starrie Chase—and
Kenjo Red! Us boys won’t have much more
time for fun before school reopens!” grammar
capsizing in the sudden, boisterous eddy within
him.</p>
<p>That eddy of excitement carried him like a
feather up an earthy embankment that ascended
from the low-lying marshes, over a fence, and
out onto the drab highroad which a little farther
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
on blossomed out into houses on either side and
became the quiet main street of Exmouth.</p>
<p>Colin turned his face westward toward the
home of “Coombsie,” otherwise Mark Coombs—also
shortened into “Marcoo” by nickname-loving
boydom.</p>
<p>He had not gone far when his loping speed
slackened abruptly to a contemplative trot. The
trot sobered down to a crestfallen walk. The
walk dwindled into a halt right in the middle of
the sunny road.</p>
<p>“Tooraloo! here comes Coombsie now,” he
ejaculated behind his twitching lips. “And some
one with him! Oh, I forgot all about that!”
Dismay stole over his face at the thought. “Of
course it’s the strange boy, Marcoo’s cousin,
who came from Philadelphia yesterday and is
going to stay here for ever so long—six months
or so—while his parents travel in Europe. This
spoils our fun. Probably <i>he</i> won’t want to start
off on a long hike through the woods,” rigidly
scanning the approaching stranger as a stiffened
terrier might size up a dog of a different breed.
“His folks are rich, so Marcoo said; I suppose
he’s been brought up in a city flowerpot—and
isn’t much of a fellow anyhow!” with a
disgruntled grin.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
<p>But as the oncoming pair drew within twenty
yards of the youthful critic the latter’s tense
face-muscles relaxed. Reassurance crept into his
expression.</p>
<p>“Gee! he looks all right, this city boy. He’s
not dolled-up much anyway! And he doesn’t
look ‘Willified’ either!” was Colin’s complacent
comment.</p>
<p>No, the stranger’s dress was certainly not
patterned after the fashion of the boy-doll
which Colin Estey had seen simpering in store-windows.
He wore a khaki shirt stained with
service, rough tweed knickerbockers and a soft
broad-brimmed hat. He carried his coat; the
ends of his blue necktie dangled outside his
shirt, one was looped up into a careless knot.
His gray eye was rather more than usually alert
and bright, his general appearance certainly not
suggestive of a flowerpot plant; his step, quick
and springy, embodied the saline breeze that
skipped over the salt-marshes.</p>
<p>So much Colin took in before criticism was
blown out of his mind by a shout from Coombsie.</p>
<p>“Hullo! Col,” exclaimed Marcoo. “Say, this
is fine! We were just starting off to hunt you
up—Nix and I! This is my cousin, Nixon
Warren, who popped up here from Philadelphia
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
late last night. Nix, this is my chum, Colin
Estey!”</p>
<p>The two boys acknowledged the introduction
with gruff shyness.</p>
<p>“Nixon and I settled on going down the river
to-day in Captain Andy’s power-boat, and Mother
put us up a corking good luncheon,” Marcoo
significantly swung a basket pendant from his
right hand. “But we’ve just been talking to
Captain Andy,” glancing backward over his
shoulder at the receding figure of an elderly man
who limped as he walked, “and he says he can’t
take us to-day. He won’t even loan us the Pill.”
Coombsie gesticulated with the basket toward
the broad tidal river gleaming in the sunshine,
on which rode a trim gasolene launch with a little
rowboat, so tubby that it was almost round
and aptly named the Pill, lying as tender beside
it.</p>
<p>“Pshaw! the Pill isn’t much of a boat. One
might as well put to sea in a shoebox!” Colin
chuckled.</p>
<p>“I know! Well, we can’t go on the river anyhow,
so we’ve determined to take the basket
along and spend the whole day in the woods.
Nix is—”</p>
<p>“Great O!” whooped Colin, breaking in.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
“That’s what I’ve been planning on doing too.
I want to go <i>far</i> into the woods to-day,”—his
hands doubled and opened excitedly, as if grasping
at something hitherto out of reach,—”farther
than I’ve ever been before,—far enough
to see Varney’s Paintpot and the old Bear’s Den—and
some of the other wonders that the men
tell about!”</p>
<p>“But there aren’t any bears in these Massachusetts
woods now?” It was the strange boy,
Nixon Warren, who eagerly spoke.</p>
<p>“Not that we know of!” Coombsie answered.
“If one should stray over the border from New
Hampshire he manages to lie low. Apparently
there’s nothing bigger than a deer traveling in
our woods to-day—together with foxes in plenty
and an occasional coon. The last bear seen in this
region, Nix, had his den in the cave of a great rock
in the thickest part o’ the woods. He was such
an everlasting nuisance, killing calves and lambs,
that a hunter tracked him into the cave and
killed him with his knife. Ever since it has been
called the Bear’s Den. I’ve never seen it; nor
you, Col!”</p>
<p>“No, but Starrie Chase has! I was going to
hunt him up too, and Kenjo Red: they’re a
team if you want to go into the woods; they
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
know more about them than any other boy in
Exmouth.”</p>
<p>“Kenjo has gone to Salem to-day. And Leon
Chase?” Coombsie’s expression was doubtful.
“I guess Leon makes a bluff of knowing the
woods better than he does. He’ll scare everything
away with his dog and shotgun. Captain
Andy is hunting for him now,” with another
backward glance to where the massive figure of
the old sea-captain was melting from view. “He’s
threatening to shake Starrie until his heels change
places with his head for fixing the Doctor’s doorbell
last night, wedging a pin into it so that it
kept on ringing until the electricity gave out—and
for teasing old Ma’am Baldwin again.”</p>
<p>“’Mom Baldwin,’ who lives in that old baldfaced
house ’way over on the salt-marshes!”
Colin hooted. “Pshaw! she ought to wash her
clothes at the Witch Rock, where Dark Tammy
was made to wash hers, over a hundred years ago.
I guess Leon knows the way to Varney’s Paintpot
anyhow,” he advanced clinchingly.</p>
<p>“What sort of queer Paintpot is that?” Nixon
Warren spoke; his stranger’s part in the conversation
was limited to putting excited questions.</p>
<p>“It’s a red-ochre swamp—a bed of moist red
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
clay—that’s hidden somewhere in the woods,”
Colin explained. “The Indians used it for making
paint. So did the farmers, hereabouts, until
a few years ago. I believe it’s mostly dried up
now.”</p>
<p>“Whoopee! if we could only find it, we might
paint ourselves to our waists, make believe we
were Indians and go yelling through the
woods!” Nixon’s eye sparkled like sun-touched
granite, and Colin parted with the last lingering
suspicion of his being a flowerpot fellow.</p>
<p>This suggestion settled it. Starrie Chase, otherwise
Leon, might let his boyish energy leak off
as waste steam in planting another thorn in the
side of the hard-worked doctor who bore the burdens
of half the community, and in persecuting
lonely old women, but—he was supposed to
know the way to Varney’s Paintpot!</p>
<p>And the three started along the road to find
him.</p>
<p>The quest did not lead them far. Rounding a
bend in the highroad, they came abruptly upon
Leon Starr Chase, familiarly called Starrie, almost
a fifteen-year-old boy, of Nixon’s age.</p>
<p>He was leaning against a low fence above the
marshes, holding a dead bird high above the
head of a very lively fox-terrier whose tan ears
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
gesticulated like tiny signal flags as he jumped
into the air to capture it, with a short one-syllabled
bark.</p>
<p>“Ha! <i>you</i> can’t catch it, Blink—and you
shan’t have it till you do,” teased his master,
lowering its limp yellow legs a little.</p>
<p>The dog’s nose touched them. The next instant
he had the bird in his mouth.</p>
<p>With equal swiftness he dropped it on the
sidewalk, growling and gagging at the warm
feathers which almost choked him. “Ugh-r-r!”
He spurned it with his black nose along the
ground, the tiny yellow claws raking up minute
spirals of dust.</p>
<p>“There! I knew you wouldn’t eat it,” remarked
his master indifferently. “You’re a
spoiled pup!” Simultaneously Leon caught sight
of the three boys making toward him and burst
into a complacent shout of recognition.</p>
<p>“Hullo, Colin! Hullo, Coombsie!” he cried.
“See what I’ve got! Six <i>yellow-legs</i>! I fired
into a flock; the first I’ve seen this year. They
were going from me and I dropped half a dozen
of them together, with this old ‘fuzzee’!” He
touched an ancient shotgun propped beside him.
“I’ve shot quite a number one at a time this
week.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>”</p>
<p>His left hand went out to a huddle of still
quivering feathers on top of the fence in which
five pairs of yellow spindle-legs were tangled like
slim twigs.</p>
<p>Colin, as was expected of him, burst into an
exclamation of wonder at this destructive skill.
Coombsie’s admiration was more forced.</p>
<p>Blink, the terrier, scornfully rolled over the
feathered thing in the dust. He snapped angrily
at the stranger, Nixon Warren, who tried to
pick it up and examine it.</p>
<p>“That bird won’t be fit to eat now, after the
dog has played with it,” suggested the latter, addressing
Leon without the benefit of an introduction.</p>
<p>“I don’t care. Probably I’ll give the whole
bunch of yellow-legs away, anyhow—Mother
doesn’t like their sedgy flavor. She’d rather
I’d let the birds alone, I guess!”</p>
<p>“Why do you shoot so many if you don’t
want them?”</p>
<p>“Oh! partly for the sport and partly because
these ‘Greater Yellow-legs’ are such telltales
that they warn every duck and other bird within
hearing by their noisy whistle.”</p>
<p>Impulsively Nixon put out a finger and touched
one slim leg with its limp claw that protruded
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
from the fence. At the same moment he glanced
upward.</p>
<p>Over the boys’ heads, having just risen from
the feathery marshes, skimmed a feathered telltale,
live counterpart of the one he touched, its
legs golden spindles in the sunshine, its shrill
joy-whistle: “Wheu! Wheu! <i>Whe-eu!</i>” proclaiming
the thanksgiving which had rioted
through Colin’s mind on the fragrant salt-marshes:
“Glad I’m alive! Glad I’m alive!
<i>Glad</i>—I’m alive!”</p>
<p>A smothered exclamation broke from Coombsie
as he followed the finger and the flight.</p>
<p>Leon snatched up the gun.</p>
<p>“One can’t have too much of a good thing:
I guess I could drop that ‘telltale,’ too!”</p>
<p>But Marcoo’s hand fastened upon his arm
with an impulsive cry.</p>
<p>“Eh! What’s the matter with you—Flutter-budget?”
Lowering the pointed shotgun, Leon
whisked round; his restless brown eyes had a
lightning trick of shutting and opening, as if
he were taking a photograph of the person
addressed, which was in general highly disconcerting
to the boy who differed from him. “No need
to make a fuss! I wouldn’t let her off here, anyhow,”
he added, fondling the gun. “Father
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
would be fined if I should fire a shot on the highroad.”</p>
<p>“<i>We’re</i> starting off on a hike—for a long
tramp into the woods, Leon,” began Coombsie
hurriedly, anxious to create a diversion. “We
want you to come with us, as leader; Colin says
that <i>you</i> know the way to Varney’s Paintpot!”</p>
<p>The other’s expression changed like a rocket:
Starrie Chase enjoyed leading other boys, even
more than he reveled in “popping yellow-legs”—for
the former Nature had intended him.</p>
<p>“All right!” he responded with swift eagerness.
“Just, you fellows, keep an eye on my gun
while I run home with the birds; I’ll be back
in a minute!”</p>
<p>“Oh! you’re not going to take your gun into
the woods?”</p>
<p>“Sure—I am! I might get a chance at a fox!”</p>
<p>“Won’t it be an awful nuisance carrying it all
the way through the thick undergrowth—we
want to go as far into the woods as the Bear’s
Den?” suggested Marcoo tactfully.</p>
<p>“Well, perhaps it would. I’ll just scoot home
then, and be back in no time!”</p>
<p>He snatched the dead birds from the fence,
raced away and reappeared in three minutes,
with the terrier barking at his heels.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p>
<p>“I’m going to let Blink come anyhow; he’ll
have a great time chasing things—eh, Blinkie?”
Leon made a hurdle of his outstretched arm for
the scampering dog to jump over it.</p>
<p>And the terrier replied in a volley of excited
barks, saying in doggy talk: “Fellows! if there’s
fun ahead, I’m in with you. The woods are a
grand old playground!”</p>
<p>He led the way, and the four boys followed,
jostling each other merrily, rubbing their high
spirits together and bringing sparks from the
contact—bound for that mysterious forest
Paintpot.</p>
<p>But the stranger, Nixon Warren, could not
forbear throwing one backward glance from under
his wide-brimmed hat at the poor dog-scorned
yellow-legs, its joy-whistle silenced, stiffening in
the dust.</p>
<hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER II</p>
<p class="center chap2">ONLY A CHIP’</p>
<p>“Oh! I wish I had worn my tramping togs,”
exclaimed Nixon Warren as the four boys, after
covering an easy mile along the highroad and
over the uplands that lay between marsh and
woodland, plunged, whooping, in amid the forest
shadows roofed by the meeting branches of pines,
hemlocks, oaks, and birches, with here and there
a maple already turning ruddy, that formed the
outposts of the dense woods.</p>
<p>A dwarf counterpart of the same trees laced
with vines and prickly brambles made an undergrowth
so thick that they parted with shreds of
their clothing as they went threshing through it,
in a fascinating gold-misted twilight, through
which the slender sunbeams flashed like fairy
knitting-needles weaving a scarf of light and
shade around each tall trunk.</p>
<p>“Why! you’re better ‘togged’ for the woods
than the rest of us are,” answered Leon Starr
Chase, looking askance at the new boy. “That’s
a dandy hat; must shade your eyes a whole lot
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
when you’re tramping on open ground! I guess
ours don’t need any shading!”</p>
<p>A wandering sunbeam kindled a brassy spark
in Leon’s brown eye which looked as if it could
face anything unabashed. In his mind lurked the
same suspicion that had hovered over Colin’s at
first sight of Nixon, that this newcomer from a
distant city might be somewhat of a flowerpot
fellow, delicately reared and coddled, not a hardy
plant that could revel and rough it in the wilderness
atmosphere of the thick woods.</p>
<p>Nothing about the boy-stranger supported
such an idea for a moment, except to Leon, as
the party progressed, the interest which he took
in the floral life of the woodland: in objects which
Starrie Chase who invariably “hit the woods”
as he phrased it, with destruction in the forefront
of his thoughts, generally overlooked, and therefore
did not consider worth a second glance.</p>
<p>He stood and gaped as Nixon, with a shout
of delight, pounced upon some rosy pepper-grass,
stooped to pick a wood aster or gentian, or
pointed out to Coombsie the green sarsaparilla
plant flaunting and prolific between the trees.</p>
<p>“What do you call this, Marcoo?” the strange
boy would exclaim delightedly, finding novel
treasure trove in the rare white blossoms of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
Labrador tea. “I don’t remember to have seen
this flower on any of our hikes through the Pennsylvania
woods!”</p>
<p>To which Coombsie would make answer:—</p>
<p>“Don’t ask me, Nix; I know a little about
birds, but when it comes to knowing anything
of flowers or plants—excepting those that are
under our feet every day—I ‘fall down flunk!’
Hullo! though, here are some devil’s pitchforks
—or stick-tight—I do know them!”</p>
<p>“So do I!” Nixon stooped over the tall bristly
flower-heads, rusty green in color, and gathered
a few of the two-pronged seed-vessels that cling
so readily to the fur of an animal or the clothing
of a boy. “It’s funny to think how they have
to depend upon some passing animal to propagate
the seeds. Say! but they do stick tight, don’t
they?” And he slyly slipped a few of the russet
pitchforks inside Leon’s collar—whereupon a
whooping scuffle ensued.</p>
<p>“It looks to me as if <i>some</i> lightfooted animal
were in the habit of passing here that might
carry the seeds along,” said the perpetrator of
the prank presently, dropping upon his hands
and knees to examine breathlessly the leaves and
brambles pressed down into a trail so light that
it seemed the mere shadow of a pathway leading
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
off into the woods at right angles from where
the boys stood.</p>
<p>“You’re right. It’s a fox-path!” Leon was
examining the shadow-tracks too. “A fox trots
along here to his hunting-ground where he
catches shrews an’ mice or grasshoppers even,
when he can’t get hold of a plump quail or partridge.
Whew! I wish I’d brought my gun.”</p>
<p>Dead silence for two minutes, while each ear
was intently strained to catch the sound of a sly
footfall and heard nothing but the noisy shrilling
of the cicada, or seventeen-year locust, with the
pipe of kindred insects.</p>
<p>“Look! there’s been a partridge at work here,”
cried Nixon by and by, when the still game was
over and the boys were forging ahead again.</p>
<p>He pointed to a decayed log whose flaky wood,
garnished here and there with a tiny buff feather,
was mostly pecked away and reduced to brown
powder by the busy bird which had wallowed
there.</p>
<p>“He’s been trying to get at some insects in
the wood. See how he has dusted it all up with
his claws an’ feathers!” went on the excited
speaker. “Oh—but I tell you what makes you
feel happy!” He drew a long breath, turning
suddenly, impulsively, to the boys behind him.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
“It’s when you’re out on a hike an’ a partridge
rises right in front of you—and you hear his
wings sing!”</p>
<p>Colin and Coombsie stared. The strange boy’s
look flashed with such frank gladness, doubled
and trebled by sharing sympathetically, in so far
as he could, each bounding thrill that animated
the wild, free life about him! They had often
been moved by the liquid notes from a songster’s
throat, but had not come enough into loving
touch with Nature to hear music in a bird’s wings.</p>
<p>If Leon had heard it, his one idea would have
been to silence it with a shot. He stood still in
his tracks, bristling like his dog.</p>
<p>“Ughr-r! ‘Singing wings’!” he sneered.
“Aw! take that talk home to Mamma.”</p>
<p>“Say that once again, and I’ll lick you!”
The stranger’s gaze became, now, very straight
and inviting from under his broad-brimmed hat.</p>
<p>The atmosphere felt highly charged—unpleasantly
so for the other two boys. But at that
critical moment an extraordinary sound of other
singing—human singing—was borne to them
in faint merriment upon the woodland breeze, so
primitive, so unlike anything modern, that it
might have been Robin Hood himself or one of
his green-coated Merry Men singing a roundelay
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
in the woods to the accompaniment of a woodchopper’s
axe.</p>
<div class="poemr"><span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“Rond! Rond! Rond! peti’ pie pon’ ton’!</span><br />
Rond! rond! rond! peti’ pie pon’ ton’!”
</div>
<p>“<i>What is it?</i> Who is—it?” Nixon’s stiffening
fists unclosed. His eye was bright with
bewilderment.</p>
<p>“Houp-la! it’s Toiney—Toiney Leduc.”
Colin broke into an exultant whoop. “Now we’ll
have fun! Toiney is a funny one, for sure!”</p>
<p>“He’s more fun than a circus,” corroborated
Coombsie. “We’re coming to a little farm-clearing
in the woods now, Nix,” he explained, falling
in by his cousin’s side as the four boys moved
hastily ahead, challenges forgotten. “There’s a
house on it, the last for miles. It’s owned by a
man called Greer, and Toiney Leduc works for
him during the summer an’ fall. Toiney is a
French-Canadian who came here about a year
ago; his brother is employed in one of the shipbuilding
yards on the river.”</p>
<p>The merry, oft-repeated strain came to them
more distinctly now, rolling among the trees:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“Rond, rond, rond, peti’ pie pon’ ton’!</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">C’éta’t une bonne femme,</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Qui garda’t sex moutons,</span><br />
Rond’, rond’, rond, peti’ pie pon’ ton’!”</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
<p>“He’s singing about the woman who was taking
care of her sheep and how the lamb got his
chin in the milk! He translated it for me,” said
Colin.</p>
<p>“’Translate!’ He doesn’t know enough English
to say ‘Boo!’ straight,” threw back Leon,
as he gained the edge of the clearing. “It is
Toiney!” he cried exultingly. “Toiney—and
the <i>Hare</i>!”</p>
<p>“The—what? My word! there are surprises
enough in these woods—what with forest paintpots—and
the rest.” Nixon, as he spoke, was
bounding out into the open too, thrilled by expectation:
a musical woodchopper attended by a
tame rodent would certainly be a unique item
upon the forest playbill which promised a variety
of attractions already.</p>
<p>But he saw no skipping hare upon the green
patch of clearing—nothing but a boy of twelve
whose full forehead and pointed face was very
slightly rodent-like in shape, but whose eyes,
which at this startled moment showed little save
their whites, were as shy and frightened as a
rabbit’s, while he shrank close to Toiney’s side.</p>
<p>“My brother says that whenever he sees that
boy he feels like offering him a bunch of clover
or a lettuce leaf!” laughed Leon, repeating the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
thoughtless speech of an adult. He stooped suddenly,
picked some of the shaded clover leaves
and a pink blossom: “Eh! want some clover,
‘Hare’?” he asked teasingly, thrusting the
green stuff close to the face of the abnormally
frightened boy.</p>
<p>The hapless, human Hare sought to efface
himself behind Toiney’s back. And the woodchopper
began to execute an excited war-dance,
flourishing the axe wherewith he had been musically
felling a young birch tree for fuel.</p>
<p>“Ha! you Leon, you <i>coquin</i>, <i>gamin</i>—rogue
—you’ll say dat one time more, den I go lick
you, me!” he cried in his imperfect English eked
out with indignant French.</p>
<p>“No, you won’t go lick me—you!” Nevertheless
Starrie Chase and his mocking face retreated
a little; he had no fancy for tackling
Toiney and the axe.</p>
<p>“That boy’s name is Harold Greer; it’s too
bad about him,” Coombsie was whispering in
Nix Warren’s ear. “The doctor says he’s ‘all
there,’ nothing wrong with him mentally. But
he was born frightened—abnormally timid—and
he seems to get worse instead o’ better. He’s
afraid of everything, of his own shadow, I think,
and more still of the shadows of others: I mean
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
he’s so shy that he won’t speak to anybody—if
he can help it—except his grandfather and Toiney
and the old woman who keeps house for them.”</p>
<p>Nixon looked pityingly at the boy who lived
thus in his own shadow—the shadow of a baseless
fear.</p>
<p>“Whew! it must be bad to be born scared!”
he gasped. “I wish we could get Toiney to sing
some more.”</p>
<p>At this moment there came a wild shout from
Colin who had been exploring the clearing and
stumbled upon something near the outhouses.</p>
<p>“Gracious! what is it—a wildcat?” he cried.
“It isn’t a fox—though it has a bushy tail!
It’s as big as half a dozen squirrels. Hulloo-oo!”
in yelling excitement, “it must be a coon—a
young coon.”</p>
<p>There was a general stampede for the hen-house,
amid the squawking cackle of its rightful
inhabitants.</p>
<p>Toiney followed, so did the human Hare, keeping
always behind his back and casting nervous
glances in Leon’s direction.</p>
<p>“Ha! <i>le petit raton</i>—de littal coon!” gasped
the woodchopper. “W’en I go on top of hen-house
dis morning w’at you t’ink I fin’ dere,
engh? I fin’ heem littal coon! I’ll t’ink he kill
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
two, t’ree poulets—littal chick!” gesticulating
fiercely at the dead marauder and at the bodies
of some slain chickens. “Dog he kill heem; but,
<i>sapré</i>! he fight lak <i>diable</i>! Engh?”</p>
<p>The last exclamation was a grunt of inquiry
as to whether the boys understood how that
young raccoon, about two-thirds grown, had
fought. Toiney shruggingly rubbed his hands
on his blue shirt-sleeves while he pointed to a
mongrel dog, the other participant in that early-morning
battle, with whom Leon’s terrier had
been exchanging canine courtesies.</p>
<p>Blink forsook his scarred brother now and
sniffed eagerly at the coon’s dead body as he
had sniffed at the poor yellow-legs in the dust.</p>
<p>“Where did he come from, Toiney? Do you
suppose he strayed from the coon’s hole that
you found in the woods, among some ledges near
Big Swamp?” Colin, together with the other
boys, was stooping down to examine the dead
body of the wild animal which measured nearly
a foot and a half from the tip of its sharp nose
to the beginning of the bushy tail that was handsomely
ringed with black and a shading buff-color.</p>
<p>“Yaas, he’ll com’ out f’om de forêt—f’om
among heem beeg tree.” Toiney Leduc, letting
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
his axe fall to the ground, waved an eloquent
right arm in its flannel shirt-sleeve toward the
woods beyond the clearing.</p>
<p>“Isn’t his fur long and thick—more like
coarse gray hair than fur?” Nixon stroked the
raccoon’s shaggy coat.</p>
<p>“Tell us how to find those ledges where the
hole is? There may be some live ones in it.
I’d give anything to see a live coon,” urged
Coombsie.</p>
<p>“Ah! la! la! You no fin’ dat ledge en dat
swamp. Eet’s littal black in dere, in gran’ forêt—in
dem big ole hood,” came the dissuading
answer.</p>
<p>“He always says ‘hood’ for ‘wood,’” explained
Marcoo <i>sotto voce</i>.</p>
<p>“Ciel! w’en you go for fin’ dat hole, dat’s de
time you get los’—engh?” urged Toiney, suddenly
very earnest. “You walkee, walkee—lak
wit’ eye shut—den you haf so tire’ en so lonesam’
you go—<i>deaded</i>.”</p>
<p>He flung out his hands with an eloquent gesture
of blind despair upon the last word, which
shot a warning thrill to the boys’ hearts. Three
of them looked rather apprehensively toward the
dense woods that stretched away interminably
beyond the clearing.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
<p>But the fourth, Leon, was not to be intimidated
by anything short of Toiney brandishing
the woodchopper’s axe.</p>
<p>He paused in his gesture of slyly offering more
clover to the boy with the frightened eyes.</p>
<p>“Oh! I know the woods pretty well, Toiney,”
he said. “I’ve been far into them with my father.
I can find the way to Big Swamp.”</p>
<p>“I’ll bet me you’ head you get los’—hein?”</p>
<p>“Why don’t you bet your own seal-head,
Toiney? You can’t say ‘Boo!’ straight.” Leon
scathingly pointed to the Canadian’s bare, closely
cropped head, dark and shiny as sealskin.</p>
<p>“<i>Sapré!</i> I’ll no bet yous head—you Leon—for
nobodee want heem, axcep’ for play ping-pong,”
screamed the enraged Toiney.</p>
<p>There was a general mirthful roar. Leon reddened.</p>
<p>“Oh, come; let’s ‘beat it’!” he cried. “We’ll
never find that coon’s burrow, or anything else,
if we stand here chattering with a Canuck. Look
at Blink! He’s after something on the edge of
the woods. A red squirrel, I think!”</p>
<p>He set off in the wake of the terrier, and his
companions followed, disregarding further protests
in Toiney’s ragged English.</p>
<p>Once more they were immersed in the woods
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
beyond the clearing. The terrier was barking
furiously up a pine tree, on whose lowest branch
sat the squirrel getting off an angry patter
of “Quek-Quik! Quek-quek-quek-quik!” punctuated
with shrill little cries.</p>
<p>“Hear him chittering an’ chattering! There’s
some fire to that conversation. See! the squirrel
looks all red mouth,” laughed Nixon.</p>
<p>The mouth of the little tree-climbing fury
yawned, indeed, like a tiny coral cave decorated
with minute ivories as he sat bolt upright on
the dry branch, scolding the dog.</p>
<p>“Oh! come on, Blink, you can’t get at him.
You can chase a woodchuck or something else
that isn’t quite so quick, and kill it!” cried his
master.</p>
<p>The “something else” was presently started
in the form of a little chipmunk, ground brother
to the squirrel, which had been holding solitary
revel with a sunbeam on a rock.</p>
<p>With a frightened flick of its gold-brown tail
it sought shelter in a cleft of a low, natural wall
where some large stones were piled one upon
another.</p>
<p>Instantly it discovered that this shallow refuge
offered no sure shelter from the dog following
hot upon its trail. Forth it popped again, with a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
plaintive, chirping “Chip! Chip! Chir-r-r!” of
extreme terror and fled, like a tuft of fur wafted
by the breeze, to its real fortress, the deep, narrow
hole which it had tunneled in under a rock,
and which it was so shy of revealing to strangers
that it would never have sought shelter there
save in dire extremity.</p>
<p>It was such a very small hole as regards the
round entrance through which the chipmunk had
squeezed, which did not measure three inches in
circumference—and such a touchingly neat little
hole, for there was no trace of the earth which
the little creature had scattered in burrowing it—that
it might well have moved any heart to
pity.</p>
<p>The terrier finding himself baffled, sat down
before it, and pointed his ears at his master, inquiring
about the prospects of a successful siege.</p>
<p>“He was too quick for you that time, Blinkie.
But you’ll get another chance at him, pup,”
guaranteed Leon, while his companions were endeavoring
to solve the riddle—one of the minor
charming mysteries of the woods—namely,
what the ground-squirrel does with the earth
which he scatters in tunneling his grass-fringed
hole.</p>
<p>No such marvel appealed to Leon Chase!
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
With lightning rapidity he was wrenching a
thin, rodlike stick from a near-by white birch,
and tearing the leaves off. Before one of the
other boys could stop him, he had inserted this
as a long probe in the hole, working the cruel
goad ruthlessly from side to side, scattering earth
enough now and torn grass on either side of the
spic-and-span entrance.</p>
<p>“Ha! you haven’t seen the last of him, Blink!”
he cried. “I’ll soon ‘podge’ him out of that!
This hole runs in under a rock; so there can’t
be a sharp turn in it, as is the case with the chip-squirrel’s
hole generally! I guess I can reach
him with the stick; then he’ll be so frightened
that he’ll pop out right in your face,” forming
a quick deduction that did credit to his powers
of observation and made it seem a bruising pity as
well for persecutor as persecuted that such boyish
ingenuity should be turned to miserable ends.</p>
<p>Leon’s eyes were beady with malicious triumph.
His breath came in short excited puffs.
So did the terrier’s. It boded ill for the tormented
chipmunk cowering at the farthest end of the
desecrated hole.</p>
<p>“Hullo! that’s two against one and it isn’t
fair play. <i>Quit it!</i>” suddenly burst forth a ringing
boyish voice. “The chip’ was faster than the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
dog—he ought to have an even chance for his
life, anyhow!”</p>
<p>Leon, crouching by the hole, looked up in
petrified amazement. It was Nixon Warren, the
stranger to these woods, who spoke. The tormentor
broke into an insulting laugh.</p>
<p>“Eh—what’s the matter with <i>you</i>, Chicken-heart?”
he sneered. “None o’ your business
whether it’s fair or not!”</p>
<p>A flash leaped from the gray eyes under Nixon’s
broad hat that defied the sneer applied to
him. His chest heaved under the Khaki shirt
with whose metal buttons a sunbeam played
winsomely, while with defiant vehemence Leon
worked his probing stick deeper, deeper into the
hole where the mite of a chipmunk shrank before
the cruel goad that would ultimately force it
forth to meet the whirlwind of the dog’s attack.</p>
<p>Colin and Coombsie held their breath, feeling
as if they could see the trembling “chipping”
fugitive pressed against the farthest wall of its
enlarged retreat.</p>
<p>Another minute, and out it must pop to
death.</p>
<p>But upon the dragging, prodding seconds of
that minute broke again the voice of the chipmunk’s
champion—hot and ringing.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
<p>“<i>Quit that!</i>” it exploded. “Stop wiggling
the stick in the hole—or I’ll make you!”</p>
<p>“You’ll make me, eh? Oh! run along home
to Mamma—that’s where your place is!” But
right upon the heels of the sneer a sharp question
rushed from Leon’s lips: “Who are you—anyhow
—to tell me to stop?”</p>
<p>And the tall trees bowed their noble heads,
the grasses ceased their whispering, even the
seventeen-year locust, shrilling in the distance,
seemed to suspend its piping note to listen to
the answer that rushed bravely forth:—</p>
<p>“I’m a Boy Scout! A Boy Scout of America!
I’ve promised to do a good turn to somebody—or
something—every day. I’m going to do it
to that chipmunk! Stop working that stick in
the hole!”</p>
<p>“Gee whiz! I thought there was something
queer about you from the first.”</p>
<p>The mouth of Starrie Chase yawned until it
rivaled the enlarged hole. Sitting on his heels,
his cruel probing momentarily suspended, he
gazed up, as at a newfangled sort of animal, at
this daring Boy Scout of America—this Scout
of the U.S.A.</p><hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER III</p>
<p class="center chap2">RACCOON JUNIOR</p>
<p>“Scout or no scout, you are not going to
boss me!”</p>
<p>Thus Starrie Chase broke the breathless silence
that reigned for half a minute in the woods, following
upon Nixon’s declaration that he was a
boy scout, bound by the scout law to protect the
weak among human beings and animals.</p>
<p>For the space of that half-minute the tormenting
stick had ceased to probe the hole. The
wretched chipmunk, cowering in the farthest
corner of its once neat retreat, had a respite.</p>
<p>But Leon—who was not inherently cruel so
much as thoughtlessly teasing and the victim of
a destructive habit of mind, now felt that should
he yield a point to this fifteen-year-old lad from
a distant city, the leadership which he so prized,
among the boys of Exmouth, would be endangered.
He was the recognized head of a certain
youthful male gang, of which Colin and Coombsie—though
the latter occasionally deplored
his methods—were leading representatives.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
<p>“Go ahead, scout, prevent my doing anything
I want to do—if you can!” he flung out, his
brown eyes winking upward with that snapshot
quickness as if he were photographing on their
retina the figure of that new species of animal,
the scout of the U.S.A. “I’ve heard of your kind
before; you know a lot of things that nobody
else knows—or wants to know either!”</p>
<p>The last words were to the accompaniment of
the goading stick which began to move vehemently
to and fro in the hole again. That neat
little hole, which had been one of the humbler
miracles of the woods, now gaped as an ugly,
torn fissure beneath its roof of rock.</p>
<p>Before it was a defacing débris of torn grass
and earth in which Blink scratched impatiently,
whining over the delay in the chip-squirrel’s
exit.</p>
<p>“Oh! give it up, Leon; I believe I can hear
him stirring in the hole!” pleaded Colin Estey.</p>
<p>Simultaneously the scout flung himself on his
knees before the chipmunk’s fortress, well-nigh
captured, and seized the cruel goad.</p>
<p>“Let go of this stick or I’ll lick you with it!
I can; I’m as old—older than you are!” Leon
was now a red-eyed savage.</p>
<p>“That would be like your notion of fair play!
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
Oh! drop the stick an’ come on with your fists!
I’m not afraid of you.”</p>
<p>The probable result of such a duel remains a
problem; any slight advantage in age was on
Leon’s side, but each alert movement of the boy
scout showed that he possessed eye, mind, and
muscle trained to the fullest to cope with any
situation that might arise. Whoever might prove
victor, the expedition to Varney’s Paintpot would
have been abruptly frustrated by a fight among
the exploring party, had not Marcoo the tactful
interfered.</p>
<p>“Oh! what’s the use of fighting about a
chip’?” he cried, thrusting a plump shoulder
between the bristling combatants. “It’s just this
way, Leon: Nix is right; it’s a mean business,
trying to force that chipmunk out of its hole for
the dog to catch it! You can withdraw the stick
right now, come with us an’ share our luncheon;
or you can go off on your own hook—and you
don’t get a crumb out of the basket—we’ll find
the Paintpot without you!”</p>
<p>Leon drew a long wavering breath, looking at
Colin for support.</p>
<p>But Public Opinion as represented by the two
younger boys, was by this time entirely with the
scout. For it is the genius among boys, as among
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
grown-ups, who voices what lies hidden and unexpressed,
in the hearts of others; we are always
moved by the bold utterance of that which we
have surreptitiously felt ourselves.</p>
<p>Both Colin Estey and Marcoo had known what
it was to feel their sense of pity and justice outraged
by Leon’s persecuting methods. But it
needed the trained boldness of the boy scout to
put the sentiment into words; to be ready to
fight for his knightly principles and win. For he
had won.</p>
<p>Leon Chase fairly writhed at the choice set
before him—at the necessity of yielding a point
to the stranger! But he felt that it would be
still more obnoxious to his feelings to be deserted
by his companions, left to beat a solitary retreat
homeward with his dog or wander—alone and
fasting—through the woods, a boy hermit!</p>
<p>“All right! Have your way! Come along,”
he cried crossly. “We’ll never get anywhere—that’s
sure—if we waste any more time on a
chipmunk!”</p>
<p>Withdrawing the stick from the enlarged aperture,
he flung it away and scrambled to his feet,
whistling to the dog.</p>
<p>It needed much moral suasion on the part of
all four boys to lure the terrier away from the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
raided hole with whose earth his slim white legs
were coated. But he presently consented to
explore the woods further in search of diversion.</p>
<p>And the incident ended without any torn fur
flying its flag of pain on the summer air.</p>
<p>The flag of feud between the two boys, Starrie
Chase and Nixon, was not, however, immediately
lowered. Coombsie—a studious, thoughtful lad—had
the unhappy feeling of having brought
two strange fires together which might at any
moment result in an explosion that would be
especially disastrous on this the first day of his
cousin’s visit to him.</p>
<p>But as one lad has remarked: “Two boys
cannot remain mad with each other long: there’s
always too much doing!”</p>
<p>And everybody knows that sawdust smothers
smouldering fire! It did in this instance. After
about ten minutes of “grouchy” but uneventful
tramping, the forest explorers came to a logging
camp, a rude shanty, flanked by a yellow mountain
of sawdust where a portable sawmill had
been set up during the preceding winter and
taken down in spring.</p>
<p>In spite of the fact that so much lay before
them to be seen in the woods—if haply they
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
might arrive at the various points of heart’s desire—it
was not in boy-nature to refrain from
scaling that unstable, shelving sawdust peak for
a better view onward into those shadowy woods.
And a lusty sham battle ensued, in the midst of
which Leon found occasion to repay the trick
played on him with the pitchfork seeds by slipping
a handful of sawdust inside the scout’s
khaki collar.</p>
<p>“Whew! that’s worse than the devil’s pitchforks,”
groaned the latter, writhing and squirming
in his tan shirt.</p>
<p>But does not a trifling discomfort under such
circumstances enhance while curbing the enjoyment
of a boy, tying him to earth, when his
young spirit like an aeroplane, winged with sheer
joy of life and youthful daring, feels as if it could
spurn that earth sphere as too limited, and, riding
on the breeze of heaven, seek adventure among
the clouds?</p>
<p>In such a mood the four boys, drinking in the
odor of the pine-trees as a fillip to delight, were
presently exploring the loggers’ shanty, with its
rude bunks, oilcloth-covered table, here an old
magazine, there a worn-out stocking, relics of
human habitation.</p>
<p>“Nobody occupies this camp during the summer,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>”
said Leon. “I think Toiney Leduc and another
man worked up here last winter.”</p>
<p>“I’m pretty sure that Toiney did! Look there!”
The scout was unfolding a piece of charred paper
pinioned in a corner by a tomato can; it was
a printed fragment of a French-Canadian <i>voyageur</i>
song, at sight of which the boys made the
shanty ring with:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“Rond! rond! rond! peti’ pie pon’ ton’!”</span>
</div>
<p>“But I’m not so sure that nobody is using
the shanty now,” remarked Nixon presently.
“See that tobacco ash and the stains on the
white oilcloth!” pointing to the dingy table.
“Both look fresh; the ash couldn’t possibly
have remained here since last winter; ’twould
have been blown away long ago by the wind
sweeping through the open shanty. There’s
some more of it on the mattress in this bunk,”
drawing himself up to look over the side of the
rude crib built into the wall. “I guess somebody
<i>does</i> occupy the camp now—at night anyway!”</p>
<p>“Oh! so you set up to be a sort of Sherlock
Holmes, do you?” jeered Leon.</p>
<p>“I don’t set up to be anything! But I can
tell that the men ground their axes right here.”
The scout was now kicking over a small wooden
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
trough that had reposed, bottom uppermost,
amid the long grass before the shanty.</p>
<p>“How can you make that out?” It was Colin
who spoke.</p>
<p>“Because, look! there’s rust on the inside of
the trough, showing that there are steely particles
mixed with the dust of the interior and that
water has dripped into it from the revolving
grindstone.”</p>
<p>“Pshaw! anybody could find that out who set
to work to think about it,” came in a chorus
from his three companions.</p>
<p>But that “thinking” was just the point: the
others would have passed by that topsy-turvy
wooden vessel, which might have been used for
sundry purposes, with its dusty interior exactly
the hue of the yellow sawdust, without stopping
to reason out the story of the patient axe-grinding
which had gone on there during winter’s
bitter days.</p>
<p>“But, I say, what good does it do you to find
out things like that?” questioned Starrie Chase,
kicking over the trough, his shrewd young face
a star of speculation. “If one should go about
poking his nose into everything that had happened,
why! he’d find stories in most things, I
guess! The woods would be full of them.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>”</p>
<p>“So they are!” replied the scout quickly.
“That’s just what we’re taught: that every bird
and animal, as well as everything which is done
by men, leaves its ‘sign!’ We must try to read
that ‘sign’ and store up in our minds what we
learn, as a squirrel stores his nuts for winter, so
that often we may find out things of importance
to ourselves or others. And I’ll tell you it makes
life a jolly lot more interesting than when one
goes about ‘lak wit’ eye shut’! as Toiney says.
I’ve never had such good times as since I’ve
been a scout:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
Then hurrah for the woods, hurrah for the fields,<br />
<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Hurrah for the life that’s free,</span><br />
With a heart and mind both clean and kind,<br />
<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The Scout’s is the life for me!</span></div>
<div class="poemr"> And we’ll shout, shout, shout,<br />
<span style="margin-left: 3em;">For the Scout, Scout, Scout,</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 4em;">For the Scouts of the U.S.A.!”</span><br />
</div>
<p>The speaker exploded suddenly in a burst of
song, throwing his broad hat into the air with a
yell on the refrain that woke the echoes of the
log shanty, while the breezy orchestra in the tree-tops,
like noisy reed instruments, came in on the
last line:—</p>
<div class="poemr"><br />
<span style="margin-left: 4em;">“For the Scouts of the U.S.A.!”</span><br />
</div>
<p>Colin and Coombsie were enthusiastically
shouting it too.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
<p>“Say! Col, that fellow suits me all right,”
whispered Marcoo, nudging his chum and pointing
toward the excited scout.</p>
<p>“Me, too!” returned Colin.</p>
<p>“Pshaw! he thinks he’s It, but I think the
opposite,” murmured Leon truculently.</p>
<p>“To what troop or patrol do you belong,
Nix?” questioned his cousin.</p>
<p>“Peewit Patrol, troop six, of Philadelphia! I
was a tenderfoot for six months; now I’m a
second-degree scout—with hope of becoming a
first-class one soon. Want to see my badge?”
pointing to his coat. “Each patrol is named after
a bird or animal. We use the peewit’s whistle for
signaling to each other: Tewitt! Tewitt!”</p>
<p>Again the woods rang with a fairly good imitation
of the peewit’s—or European lapwing’s—whistling
note.</p>
<p>“Oh! I’d put a patent on that whistle if I
were you,” snapped Leon sarcastically: “I’m
sure nothing like it was ever heard in these—or
any other—woods! We’d better be moving
on or the mosquitoes will eat us up,” he added
hastily. “There hasn’t been any frost to get rid
of them yet.”</p>
<p>But as the quartette of boys left the log-camp
behind and, with the terrier in erratic attendance,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
plunged again into the thick woods, it by and
by became apparent to each that, so far as a
knowledge of their exact whereabouts went or an
ability to locate any point of destination, they
were approaching the truth of Toiney’s words
and wandering “lak wit’ eye shut!”</p>
<p>For a time they kept to a logging-road that
branched off from the shanty, a mere grass-grown,
root-obstructed pathway, over which,
when that great white leveler, Winter, evened
things up with his mantle of snow, the felled
trees were drawn on a rough sled to some point
where stood the movable sawmill.</p>
<p>The dense woods were intersected at long intervals
by such half-obliterated paths; in their
remote recesses lurked other rough shanties where
a scout might read the “sign” that told of the
hard life of the lumbermen.</p>
<p>But neither vine-laced road nor shanty was
easy of discovery for the uninitiated.</p>
<p>“Whew! it kind o’ brings the gooseflesh to be
so far in the woods as this without having the
least idea whether we’re getting anywhere or
not.” Thus spoke Coombsie at the end of half
an hour’s steady tramping and plowing through
the underbrush. “Are you sure that you know
in which direction lies the cave called the Bear’s
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
Den, Leon? A logging-road runs past that, so
I’ve heard.”</p>
<p>“Oh, we’ll arrive there in time, I guess; Varney’s
Paintpot is somewhere in the same direction
as the cave,” replied the pseudo-leader evasively.
“They’re some distance apart, but we’ve
made a bee-line from one to the other when I’ve
been in the woods with my father or brother
Jim.”</p>
<p>But these woods were a different proposition
now, without an older head and more experienced
woodlore to rely upon: Leon, who had never before
posed as a guide through their mazes, secretly
acknowledged this.</p>
<p>He had not imagined that it would be so difficult
to find one’s way, unaided, in this wilderness
of endless trees and underbrush, through whose
changing aspects ran the same mystifying thread
as if the gold-brown gloom of a shadowy hill-slope,—where
only the sunbeams waltzing on
dry pine-needles seemed alive,—or the jeweled
twilight of a grassy alley bound a gossamer
handkerchief about one’s eyes, so that one groped
blindfold against a blank wall of uncertainty.</p>
<p>“Say! but I wish I had brought my pocket compass
with me,” groaned the scout. “Guess I didn’t
live up to our scout motto: <span class="sc">Be Prepared</span>!
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
But then—” he looked at his cousin—”we
started out with the intention of going down
the river and you objected to my trotting back
for it, Marcoo, when we determined on a hike
through the woods.”</p>
<p>“I was afraid that if the men knew what we
were planning, they’d have headed us off as
Toiney tried to do,” confessed Marcoo candidly.</p>
<p>“Well, I wish now that I had gone back; I
could have packed the luncheon into my knapsack;
it would have been much more easily carried
than in this basket. I miss my staff too!”
Nixon deposited the lunch-basket, with which he
was now impeded, on the ground in a green
woodland glade where the noble forest trees, red
oak, cedar, maple, interspersed with an occasional
pine, hemlock, or balsam fir, rose to a height of
from sixty to a hundred feet, bordering a patch
of open ground, starred with wildflowers, dotted
with berries.</p>
<p>Delicate queen’s lace, purple gentians, starry
wood-asters, waxen Indian pipes, made it seem
as if this must be the wood-fairies’ dancing-ground,
where at night they rode a moonbeam
from flower to flower, and sipped juice from the
milk-berries, bunch-berries or scarlet fox-berries
that strayed at intervals along the ground.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
<p>“I’d like to stay <i>here</i> forever.” Colin stretched
himself upon a bank of moss, his mind going
back to the explorer’s longing, to the wood-hunger
which had consumed him, as he lay upon
the fragrant marsh-grass some hours before. He
was getting his wish now—and not everybody
gets that without having to pay for it. “The
trees look kind o’ fatherly an’ protecting; don’t
they?” he murmured lazily.</p>
<p>Yes, here one felt admitted to the companionship
of those noble trees,—the greatest story-tellers
that ever were, when one listens and interprets
their conversations with the breeze. A
“Hurrah for the woods!” was on every tongue
as the boys chewed a berry or smoked a pearly
orchid pipe.</p>
<p>Moods changed a little as they took up their
wandering again and presently waded, single file,
through a jungle of bushes, scrub oak, dwarf
pine, pigmy cedar and birch, laced with brambles.
Here the trees overhead were of less magnitude
and the tall leafy undergrowth foamed
about their ears, giving them somewhat the distracted
feeling of being cast away on a trackless
sea—each sequestered in his own little boat—with
emerald billows shutting out all view of
port.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
<p>“Three cheers! We’re almost through with
this jungle. I guess we’re coming to more open
ground again—none too soon, either!” cried
Leon who led, with his dog. “Shouldn’t wonder
if we were approaching a swamp: it may be Big
Swamp, as the men call that great alder-swamp
that’s all spongy in parts and dotted with deep
bog-holes, where one might sink out of sight
quick!</p>
<p>“For goodness’ sake! look at the crows,” he
whooped three minutes later, as, leaving the
wavy undergrowth behind, he plunged out on
a mossy slope strewn with an occasional boulder.
“<i>The crows!</i> What do you suppose they’re
after? They’re teasing something! ‘Hollering’
at something!”</p>
<p>The same amazed exclamation broke from his
companions’ lips. Halfway down the slope was
an old and leafy chestnut tree. Around this
the crows were circling, now alighting on the
branches, now fluttering off again on sloping
sable wing, their yellow beaks gleaming.</p>
<p>A cawing din filled the air, with an occasional
loud “Quock!” of alarm or indignation.</p>
<p>“They’re teasing something—perhaps it’s a
squirrel! I’ve seen them do that before; they’re
regular pests!” exclaimed Leon, inconsistently
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
finding fault with the crows for being birds of the
same feather with himself.</p>
<p>“Whew! there’s something doing here. Let’s
see what it is!” Nixon was equally excited.</p>
<p>With the terrier scampering ahead, the four
boys set off at a run toward the crow-infested
tree.</p>
<p>“I believe there’s something—some animal—hidden
in the hollow between the branches!”
Leon gave vent to a low shout, his brown eyes
yellow with excitement. “It’s round that the
crows are hovering!”</p>
<p>“There is! There is! I see the end of a big,
bushy tail. It isn’t a squirrel’s tail either!” returned
the scout in a fever of mystification.
“Let’s go softly, so that we won’t frighten the
thing whatever it is—then we can have a good
look at it!”</p>
<p>“Suppose it should be a wildcat, then we’d
‘scat’!” gasped Colin, feeling his wildest hopes
and tremors fulfilled. “I see its nose—a black
nose—over the edge of the hollow! It’s like—Gee!
it can’t be another coon from the swamp—like
the dead one that Toiney found in the
hencoop?”</p>
<p>Simultaneously the terrier, Blink, was launching
himself like a white arrow toward the spreading
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
nut-tree, which stood upon a grassy knoll,
while the woods rang with his fusillade of barking.</p>
<p>And from the hollow in the tree came a shrill
whimpering cry, remarkably like that of a small
and frightened child.</p>
<p>Starrie Chase fairly gambolled with excitement:
“That’s where you’re right, Col,” he
panted. “If it isn’t a coon—another young coon—I’m
a Dutchman! I hunted one in the woods,
by night, with my brother, last year!”</p>
<p>“He keeps on singing,” breathed Coombsie.
“Isn’t his cry like a two-year-old child’s?”</p>
<p>“Oh! if we only had my brother’s coon dog
here—and could get him down from the tree—the
dog might finish him!” Leon seemed emitting
sparks of excitement from his pointed elbows
and other quivering joints. “Go for him,
Blink!” he raved, hardly knowing what he
said. “You’re not afraid of anything—you feel
like a mastiff! Oh! we <i>must</i> get him out of that
tree-hollow on to the ground.”</p>
<p>“Caw! Caw!... Caw!... Quock! Quock!”
At the approach of the boys and dog the crows
set up a wilder din, describing broader circles
round the tree or fluttering upward to its loftier
branches.</p>
<p>Again came that petulant whimpering cry from
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
the hollow of the chestnut, where a young raccoon
(probably brother to the intruder which had
made a short bee-line through the woods, guided
by instinct and its nose, to Toiney’s hencoop)
now wailed and quailed, finding himself between
two sets of enemies: the barking dog and excited
boys below, the pestering crows above.</p>
<p>Abandoning the wise nocturnal habits of his
forefathers, with the rashness of youth, he too
had strayed at sunrise from that secluded hole
among the ledges on the borders of Big Swamp,
filled with dreams of juicy cornfields and other
delicacies.</p>
<p>Not readily finding such a land of milk and
honey, he climbed into the hollow of this chestnut
tree, flanked by a young ash upon the knoll,
and there composed himself to sleep.</p>
<p>But thither the crows, flocking, found him;
and recognizing in him an hereditary enemy of
their eggs and nestlings, set to work to make his
life a burden.</p>
<p>Nevertheless Raccoon Junior preferred their
society to that of the boys and dog which instinct
warned him to dread above all other foes.</p>
<p>As the well-bred terrier—game enough to face
any foe, though it might prove a sorry day for
him if he should tackle that young raccoon—reared
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
on his hind legs, and clawed the bark of
the trunk in his excitement, the rash Junior
climbed swiftly out of the hollow and fled up
among the branches of the tall chestnut tree,
seeking to hide himself among the long thick
leaves amid a stormy “Quock!” and “Caw!
Caw! Caw!” from the crows.</p>
<p>“Oh! there—there he goes! See his stout
body and funny little legs!”</p>
<p>“And his long gray hair and the black patch
over his eyes—makes him look as if he wore
spectacles!”</p>
<p>“And his bushy tail! Huh! there’s some class
to that tail—all ringed with buff and black.”</p>
<p>Such cries broke from three wildly excited
throats. Leon spent no breath in admiration.
Like lightning, he had snatched up a stone and
sent it flying up the tree after the fugitive with
such good aim that it struck one of the short,
climbing legs.</p>
<p>Another whimpering cry—sharp and shrill
as that of a wounded child—rang down among
the thick leaves.</p>
<p>“What did you do that for? You’ve broken
one of his legs, I think!” exclaimed the scout.</p>
<p>“So much the better! If he should light down
from the tree, he can’t run so fast! I want that
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
dandy tail of his—and his skin!” Starrie Chase
was now beside himself with the greedy feeling,
that possessed him whenever he saw a wild animal,
that its own skin did not belong to it, but to him.</p>
<p>“Say, fellows!” he cried wildly, “if you’ll
stay right here by the tree and prevent his coming
down, I—I’ll run all the way back to that
farm-clearing—I guess I can find my way—and
bring back Toiney’s gun, and shoot him.
Say—will you?”</p>
<p>No such promise was forthcoming.</p>
<p>“Well, I know what I’ll do!” Leon tore off
his jacket. “I’ll tie the sleeves of my coat round
the trunk of the tree; that will prevent his coming
down, so I’ve heard my father say. Bother!
they won’t meet. I’ll have to use your coat too,
Nix!”</p>
<p>He snatched up the scout’s Norfolk jacket,
thrown down beside the basket at the foot of
the tree, and was knotting it to his own, when
there was a wild shriek from Colin:—</p>
<p>“Look! Look! He’s jumped over into the
other tree. Oh! he’s come down; he’s on the
ground now—there beyond the ash tree—rolling
over like a ball! Oh, he’s going—going
like a slate sliding downhill!”</p>
<p>While Leon had been so cleverly knotting the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
coats round the tree-trunk, and his terrier barking
up it, the young coon had outwitted them
and dropped like an acrobat to the ground, having
gained the odds of a dozen yards in his race
for safety.</p>
<p>Off went the terrier after him, now! Off went
the four boys, hot on the trail too, madly rushing
down the hill clear to the edge of the alder-swamp
toward which it sloped—yes! and into
its quagmire borders too, while the crows, raving
like a foghorn, supplied music for the chase.</p>
<p>But the speed of the limping wild animal enabled
it, having gained its short legs—despite the
injury of the stone—to reach the shelter of a
quivering clump of alders where Blink worried
in and out in vain, nose to the ground—sniffing
and baffled.</p>
<p>“Oh, we’ve lost sight of him now! He’s
given us the slip,” cried Colin, recklessly dashing
for the alders.</p>
<p>Suddenly the air cracked with his cry that
raved with terror like the crows: “Help! <i>Help!</i>
I’m into it now—into it plunk—into Big
Swamp! I’m sinking—s-sinking above my
waist! Help! Help!”</p><hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER IV</p>
<p class="center chap2">VARNEY’S PAINTPOT</p>
<p>“I’m ‘plunk’ into it! I’m sinking in the
swamp mud! I can’t—can’t get out! Oh—h-help—help!”</p>
<p>Colin’s wild cries as he found himself sinking
in the oozing, olive-green mud of the vast alder-swamp,
struck his comrades with a momentary
blind horror.</p>
<p>The half-immersed boy was indeed “plunk”
into it; he was submerged to his waist and
slowly sinking inch by inch farther, now fairly
gibbering in his frantic terror of being swallowed
bodily by one of the many sucking throats
of Big Swamp.</p>
<p>He writhed and struggled madly, snatching
at the rank grass whose slimy roots came away in
his hand—at the bushes—even at the brilliant
poison sumac, already ruddy as a swamp lamp—with
the clutch of a drowning man; Leon’s remembered
words stinging his ears like noisome
insects: “There are <i>live</i> spots in that swamp
where one might go out of sight—<i>quick</i>!
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>”</p>
<p>The hideous slimy life of the spongy bog, half
water, half mud!</p>
<p>Leon’s sharp-featured face at that moment
seemed to be carved out of pale wood as his
snapping eyes took in the swamp, with its groves
of whispering alders, its margin of scattered
birch-trees and swamp cedars, the lamplike sumac
burning maliciously—the sinking boyish
figure amid the moist green dreariness!</p>
<p>Now, Starrie Chase was by Nature’s gift more
quick-witted than his companions, even than the
trained boy scout.</p>
<p>“If we try to wade in toward him, we’ll sink
ourselves!” he cried. “I’ll try to haul him out
with that birch-tree.”</p>
<p>A leaping, plunging run, sinking to his ankles,
and with the long bound of a gray squirrel
he alighted upon the supple trunk of a tall white-birch
sapling that grew within the borders of
the swamp!</p>
<p>No squirrel ever climbed more rapidly than
did he to its middle branches.</p>
<p>And the yellow flame in his eyes, now, was
not a spark from persecution’s fire.</p>
<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both;" summary="Illustration">
<tr><td class="figcenter"><img style="width:387px; height:599px" src="images/illus069.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="caption">“HELP! <i>HELP!</i>”</td></tr></table>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
<p>“Hold on, Col! Keep up! The tree’ll pull
you out. I’ll bend it down to you. When it comes
within reach of your arms catch hold of the trunk!
Hang on for your life! I’ll shin down, and ’twill
hoist you up—you’re lighter than I am!”</p>
<p>He was bending the tall, supple trunk, with
its leafy crown, down—down—as he spoke. It
creaked beneath his fifteen-year-old weight. The
strained roots groaned in the swampy soil.</p>
<p>“Gee! if the roots should give way <i>I’ll</i> land
in the soup too,” was his piercing thought; and
a shudder ran down his spine as he saw the pools
of olive-green bog-soup beneath him—bottomless
pools—in which floated slimy, stagnant
things, leaves and dead insects.</p>
<p>Pools more horrible even than the patch of
liquidescent mud in which Colin was sinking!</p>
<p>But Starrie Chase would never have attained
to the leadership that was his among the boys
of Exmouth if there had been nothing in him
but the savage—the petty, not the primitive
savage—that persecuted chipmunks and old
women. Now the hero who slept in the shadow
of the savage was aroused and there was “something
doing”!</p>
<p>Lying flat upon the pliant sapling he forced
it down with his heaving chest, with every ounce
of will and weight in his strong body.</p>
<p>The silvery trunk bent to the sinking boy like
a white angel.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
<p>With a cry he flung his arms upward and
grasped it. At the same moment Leon slid down
and jumped to a comparatively firm spot of the
quagmire.</p>
<p>The flexible young tree rebounded slowly with
the weight lighter than his pendant from it—like
a stone attached to the boom of a derrick.</p>
<p>In a few seconds it was almost upright, with
Colin Estey, mud-plastered to his arm-pits, hanging
on like an olive-green bough, his dilated
eyes starting from his head, his face blanched to
the gray-white of the friendly trunk.</p>
<p>“Slide down now, Col, an’ jump—I’ll stand
by to give you a hand!” cried Leon, the daring
rescuer.</p>
<p>And in another minute the victim was safe on
<i>terra firma</i>—out of the slimy throat of Big
Swamp.</p>
<p>“Oh! I thought I was going—to sink down—out
of sight!” he gasped between lips that
did not seem to move, so tightly was the skin of
his face stretched by terror. “That I’d be swallowed
by the mud! I would have been—but for
Leon!”</p>
<p>“You surely were quick! Quick as a flash!”
The two boys who had been spectators gazed
open-mouthed at Starrie Chase as if they saw the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
hero who for three brief minutes had flashed out
into the open.</p>
<p>“Whew! I got such a fright that I’ll never
forget it; I declare I feel weak still,” mumbled
Coombsie.</p>
<p>“Pooh! your fright—was nothing to mine,”
Colin’s stiff lips began to tremble now with recovering
life. “And I’m plastered with mud
to my shoulder-blades—wet too! But I don’t
care, as I’m out of it!” He glanced nervously
toward Big Swamp, and at the clump of restless
alders which probably still sheltered Raccoon
Junior.</p>
<p>“The sun is quite hot here; let’s move back
up the hill and sit down!” Nixon pointed to
the grassy slope behind them where the crows
still flapped their wings around the chestnut-tree
with an occasional relieved “Caw!” “We’ll roll
you over there, Col, and hang you out to dry!”</p>
<p>“Well! suppose we eat our lunch during the
process, eh?” suggested Marcoo. “Goodness!
wouldn’t it be ‘one on us’ if a fox had sneaked
out of the woods and run off with the lunch-basket?
We left it under the chestnut-tree.”</p>
<p>They made their way back to that nut-tree,
whose hoary trunk was still swathed with Leon’s
coat and the scout’s Norfolk jacket, knotted
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
round it to prevent the young coon which had
signally outwitted them from “lighting down.”</p>
<p>“Whew! I feel as if ’twas low tide inside me.
A scare always makes me hungry,” remarked
Leon, not at all like a hero, but a very prosaic
boy. “I think eating in the woods is the best
part of the business!”</p>
<p>“I say! You’d make a jolly good scout; do
you know it?” put forth Nixon.</p>
<p>But the other only hunched his shoulders
with the grin of a contortionist as he bit into a
ham sandwich, richly flavored with peanut butter
and quince jelly from the shaking which the
basket had undergone on its passage through the
woods.</p>
<p>The troop of hungry crows which had pecked
unavailingly at the wicker cover, had retired to
some distance and watched the picnic in croaking
envy.</p>
<p>Colin lay out in the sun, being rolled over at
intervals by the scout, to dislodge the caking
mud from his clothes, and to knead up his
“soggy” spirits.</p>
<p>“Well! if we had carried out our first intention
this morning, Nix, if we had gone down the
river to the Sugarloaf Sand-Dunes near its mouth,
we might <i>all</i> have stuck high and dry, in the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
river mud, if the tide forsook us,” said Coombsie
by and by, as he dispensed a limited amount of
cold coffee from a pint bottle. “That’s a pleasure
in store, whenever we can get Captain Andy
to take us in his motor-boat. Say! he’s great;
he was skipper of a Gloucester fishing schooner
until a year ago, when he lost his vessel in a
fog; the main-boom fell on him and broke his
leg; he’s lame still. He stays in Exmouth with
his daughter most o’ the time now. He was one
o’ the Gloucester crackerjacks: he saved so many
lives at sea that he used to be called the Ocean
Patrol!”</p>
<p>“Why, he must be a regular sea-scout,” Nixon’s
eye watered; he had the bump of hero-worship
strongly developed.</p>
<p>“Captain Andy’s laying for you, Leon,” remarked
Coombsie, passing round some jelly-roll.</p>
<p>“Oh, I guess I know why!” came the nonchalant
answer. “It’s for tying a wooden shingle
to a long branch of the apple-tree near old
Ma’am Baldwin’s house, so that it would keep
tapping on her door through the night. If the
wind is in the right direction it works finely—keeps
her guessing all the time! I’ve lain low
among the marsh-grass and seen her come to the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
door, in the dark, a dozen times, gruntin’ like a
grizzly! I hate solitary cranks!”</p>
<p>“Captain Andy says that she was never peculiar
as she is now, until her youngest son ran
wild and was sent to a reformatory,” suggested
Marcoo gravely.</p>
<p>“I’d cut out that trick, if I were you!”
growled the scout.</p>
<p>“Oh! I don’t know; there are times when a
fellow must paint the town red—or something—or
‘he’d bust’! That reminds me, we were
going to daub ourselves with red from Varney’s
Paintpot. If we’re to find it to-day, we’d better
be moving on pretty soon. It must be after two
o’clock now.”</p>
<p>“I haven’t got my watch on, but it’s quite
that, or later,” the scout glanced upward at the
brilliant afternoon sun.</p>
<p>“Hadn’t we better give up all idea of visiting
the Paintpot or the Bear’s Den,” Marcoo
suggested rather nervously, “and begin tramping
homeward—if we can discover in which
direction home lies? I think we ought to try and
find some outlet from the woods.”</p>
<p>“So do I. Col will have a peck of swamp mud
to carry round with him. His clothes are heavy
and damp. If I only had my compass we could
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
steer a fairly straight course, for these woods lie
to the southeast of the town; don’t they? Anybody
got a watch on? I left mine at home.”
Nixon looked eagerly at his companions.</p>
<p>“Our boy-scout handbook tells us how to use
the watch as a compass by pointing the hour-hand
to the sun and reckoning back halfway to
noon, at which point the south would be.”</p>
<p>“My ‘timer’ is out of commission,” regretted
Marcoo.</p>
<p>Neither of the other two boys possessed a
watch.</p>
<p>“In that case we might trust to the dog to
lead us out of the woods. We’d better just tell
Blink to go home, and follow him; he’ll find his
way out some time; won’t you, pup?” Nix
stooped to fondle the tan ears of the terrier which
had taken to him from the first, having never
harbored the ghost of a suspicion of his being a
“flowerpot fellow.”</p>
<p>The little dog stretched his jaws in a tired
yawn. The pink pads of his paws were sore from
much running, following up rabbit trails, and
the rest. But the purple lights in his faithful
brown eyes said plainly: “Leave it to me, fellows!
Instinct can put it all over reason, just now!”</p>
<p>But Blink’s master started an opposition
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
movement. He had been invited to guide the
expedition; he was averse to resigning such leadership
to his terrier; in that case his supposed
knowledge of the woods, of which he had boasted
aforetime to the Exmouth boys, would henceforth
be regarded as a “windy joke.”</p>
<p>“Follow Blink!” Thus he flouted the idea.
“If we do, we won’t get out of these woods before
midnight! He’ll dodge round after every
live thing he sees, from a weasel to a grasshopper—like
a regular will-o’-the-wisp. The sensible
thing to do is to search for a logging-road—we’re
sure to come to one in time—and follow
that on. Or a stream—a stream would lead
out on to the salt-marshes, to join the river.”</p>
<p>“There don’t appear to be any streams in
these woods; they seem as dry as an attic!”
Nixon, the scout, knew that the proposal now
adopted by the majority was all wrong, contrary
to the advice derived through his book from the
great Chief Scout, Grand Master of Woodlore,
but he hated to raise another fuss or make a split
in the camp.</p>
<p>So the quartette of boys filed slowly up the
slope and back into the woods, Coombsie carrying
the almost empty basket, containing sparse
remnants of the feast: “We may be hungry
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
before we arrive home!” he remarked, with
involuntary foreboding in his tone.</p>
<p>That foreboding increased as they pressed on.
Each one now became depressingly sure that he
was wandering in the woods “lak wit’ eye shut”;
without any knowledge of his bearings, or of
how to retrace his steps to the log shanty flanked
by the mountain of sawdust, whence he might
be able to find his way back to the farm-clearing
where he had encountered the musical woodchopper,
frightened boy and dead raccoon.</p>
<p>The boy scout was silently reproaching himself
for having fallen short of the prudent standard
inculcated by his scout training. Carried
away by the novelty of these strange woods and
his equally strange companions, he had lowered
the foresail of prudence—just tramped along
blindly with the others—taking no note of
landmarks, nor leaving any trace behind him
that would serve to guide him back along the
course by which he had come.</p>
<p>But, then, he had trusted to Leon’s leadership;
and the latter’s boasted knowledge of the woods
proved, as Coombsie had suspected, to consist of
bluff as a chief ingredient!</p>
<p>“I wish I had kept my eyes open and noticed
things as I came along, or that I had thought of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
notching the trees at intervals with my penknife—blazing
a trail—which we could have followed
back,” lamented the scout. “I guess we’re
only wandering round in a circle now; we’re
not hitting a logging-road or trail of any kind.
Tck! puppie,”—emitting an inarticulate summons
between his tongue and palate,—”let’s
see what’s the matter with those forepaws of
yours! Blood, is it? Have you scratched them?”</p>
<p>He stooped to examine Blink’s slim white
forelegs.</p>
<p>“<i>Gee whiz!</i> it isn’t blood—it’s clay—red
clay: we must be on the trail of Varney’s Paintpot,
fellows!”</p>
<p>So they were! They presently found it, that
red-ochre bed, lying in obscurity among the
bushes, scrub oak, dwarf pine and cedar, together
with tall ferns, that stood guard over it
jealously, in a particularly dense portion of the
woods.</p>
<p>Once the clay had been vivid and valuable,
with wonderful painting properties. Many an
Indian had stained his arrow blood-red with it.
Many a white man, an early settler, had painted
the rude furniture of his home from that forest
paintpot—then a moist tank of Nature’s pigment.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
<p>Later on it had been used too, as civilization
progressed, and was claimed by the man whose
name it bore.</p>
<p>Now, it was for the most part caked and dried
up, its coloring power weakened; yet there
were still moist and vivid spots such as that
in which Blink, with the dog’s unerring instinct
for scenting out the unusual, had smeared
himself.</p>
<p>And those spots the boys promptly turned
into a rouge-pot. They painted their own faces
and each other’s, until more savage-looking red
men these woods had never seen.</p>
<p>They forbore from delaying to smear their
bodies, as Nixon had suggested, for one word
was now booming in each tired brain like a foghorn
through a mist: “Lost! Lost! <i>Lost!</i>”
And they could not quite escape from it in this
new diversion.</p>
<p>Still they tried to dye hope a fresh rose-color
at this forest paintpot too: to silence with whooping
yells and fantastic capers, and in flitting
war-dances in and out among the trees, the grim
raving of that word in their ears.</p>
<p>They painted Blink likewise in zebra-like
stripes across his back, whereupon he promptly
rolled on the ground, blurring his markings,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
until he was a mottled and grotesque red-and-white
object.</p>
<p>“He looks like a clown’s dog,” said Coombsie.
“If any one should meet us in the woods, they’d
think we were a troop of painted guys escaped
from a circus! We’ll create a sensation in the
town when we get home—if we ever do?”
<i>sotto voce</i>. “Hadn’t we better stop ‘training
on’ now, and try to get somewhere?”</p>
<p>So, controlling the training-on, capering savage
now rampant in each one corresponding to his
painted face, they toiled on again, while the
afternoon shadows lengthened in the woods—until
they stood transfixed, their war-whoops
silenced, before another surprise of the woods on
which they had tumbled, unprepared.</p>
<p>It was a lengthy gray cairn of stones with a
rude wooden marker at the top bearing the date
1790, and at the foot a modern granite slab inscribed
with the words: “Bishop’s Grave,” and
the date of the stone’s erection.</p>
<p>“<i>Bishop’s Grave!</i>” Coombsie ejaculated,
while the empty basket drooped heavily from his
hand as if “the grasshopper had suddenly become
a burden.” “I’ve heard of the grave, but
I’ve never seen it before. Bishop was lost in
these woods about a hundred and twenty-one
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
years ago; he couldn’t find his way out and
wandered round till he died. His body was discovered
months afterwards and they buried it
here.”</p>
<p>Awe fell upon the four boys. Their faces were
drawn under the smearing of paint. Their eyes
gleamed strangely, like sunken islands, from out
their ruddy setting. The mottled terrier, with
that sympathetic perception which dogs have of
their masters’ moods, pointed one ear sharply
and drooped the other, like a flag at half-mast,
while he stared at the rude cairn.</p>
<p>The scout impulsively lifted his broad-brimmed
hat as he was in the habit of doing if, when marching
with his troop, he encountered a funeral.</p>
<p>In the mind of each lad tolled like a slow bell
the menacing echo of Toiney’s words: “You
walkee—walkee—en you haf so tire’ en so
lonesam you <i>go deaded</i>!”</p><hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER V</p>
<p class="center chap2">“YOU MUST LOOK OUT!”</p>
<p>The four boys did not linger long before that
lonely grave; the fears it evoked were too unpleasant.
They pushed on again through the
woods, each one clearing his throat of a husky
tickling that was third cousin to a weary sob.</p>
<p>The scout was inwardly combating the depressing
memory of Toiney Leduc’s warning
with the advice of the Chief Scout that if he
should ever find himself lost in the woods, Fear,
not hunger or cold, would prove his worst enemy.</p>
<p>“I mustn’t lose my grip! I must keep my
head—not be fogged by fear! I’m a boy scout
of America,” he reminded himself.</p>
<p>Still the shadow of that gray cairn stalked
him as well as the others. Even Leon was subdued
by it. His manner had lost the last trace of
its shallow cocksureness. The mantle of bluff
had melted from him, leaving him a distracted,
temper-tried boy like his three companions.</p>
<p>“I know that the cave called the Bear’s Den
is not quite a mile from Bishop’s grave, but I
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
haven’t the least idea of how to go about reaching
it,” he admitted. “A logging-road passes
the cave; that might lead us somewhere. I wish
we could strike a stream.”</p>
<p>“So do I! My mouth is dry as dust; I’m
parched with thirst.” Nixon, as he spoke, stooped,
picked up a round pebble, inserted it between
his dry palate and tongue and began sucking on
it, as on a gum-drop.</p>
<p>“What on earth are you doing that for?”
questioned Leon sharply; the nerves in his tired
body were now jangling like an instrument out
of tune; together with his three companions he
was cross as a thorn—ready to quarrel with his
own shadow.</p>
<p>“’What am I doing it for?’ Why! to start the
saliva,” quavered the scout, sucking hard; “to
prevent me from feeling the thirst so much.”</p>
<p>“<i>Blamed</i> rubbish!” Starrie Chase snorted.
“As if sucking a stone like a baby would do
you any good!”</p>
<p>“Everything is ‘rubbish,’ except what you
know yourself; and <i>that’s</i> next to nothing!”
Nixon was now equally cross. “You don’t know
half as much about the woods as your dog does.
If it hadn’t been for you, we’d have been out of
this place long ago!
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>”</p>
<p>“Oh! you think you’re It, because you’re a
boy scout, but I think the opposite!”</p>
<p>“Shut up! Don’t give me any of your ‘jaw’!”</p>
<p>But there was a sudden, queer contortion of
the scout’s face on the last word.</p>
<p>Abruptly he stalked on, humming to himself—a
curious-looking being, with his painted face
and dazed eyes under the broad-brimmed hat.</p>
<p>“What’s that you’re singing, Nix?” Coombsie
was catching at a straw to divert thought
from Bishop’s grave.</p>
<p>“Oh! go on, let’s hear it. Sounds lively!”
urged Leon, whose temper had sunk beneath the
realization of their plight, a quenched flash.</p>
<p>The scout sidetracked his pebble between right
cheek and gums and began to sing with what
cheerfulness he could muster, as much for his
own encouragement as that of his companions,
a patrol song, the gift of a poet to the boy scouts
of the world:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“Look out when your temper goes</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">At the end of a losing game;</span><br />
And your boots are too tight for your toes,<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And you answer and argue and blame!</span><br />
It’s the hardest part of the law,<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But it’s got to be learned by the scout,</span><br />
For whining and shirking and ‘jaw,’<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All patrols look out!</span><br /></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p>
<div class="poemr">These are our regulations,<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">There’s just one law for the scout,</span><br />
And the first and the last, and the present and the past,<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the future and the perfect is look out!”</span><br />
</div>
<p>Before Nixon had finished the chorus his three
companions were shouting it with him as a spur
to their jaded spirits.</p>
<p>“Ours is a losing game in earnest—all because
we didn’t look out and take proper precautions
so that we might have some chance of
returning by the way that we came,” remarked
the soloist with a grim laugh. “Now, we ‘jolly
well must look out!’ as the song says. I’m going
to climb the next tree that’s good an’ tall,
and see whether I can discover any faraway
smoke that would show us where a house might
be,—or a gap in the woods,—or anything.”</p>
<p>“Good idea! I’ll climb too,” seconded Leon.
“You choose one tree; I’ll take another, and
see what we can make out!”</p>
<p>But they were toiling through a comparatively
insignificant part of the fine woods now, where
the foamy undergrowth billowed about their ears.
Here the birch-trees, hickories, and maples, with
an occasional pine and hemlock, only averaged
from thirty-five to forty feet in stature. Not for
another half-mile or so did Nixon sight a tall
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
stately trunk towering above its forest brethren,
its many-pointed leaves proclaiming it to be a
fine red oak.</p>
<p>“Whoo’! Whoo’! It’s me for that oak-tree!”
he cried. “I’ll shin up that, right to the top and
scour the horizon. ’Twill be easily climbed too!”</p>
<p>“See that freak pine with the divided trunk
a little farther on? I’m going to climb that,”
announced Leon Chase. “It’s a fine tree, if it is
a freak—like the Siamese Twins.”</p>
<p>In another minute with the agility of a cat he
had climbed to the crotch of the freak tree where
its twin trunks divided.</p>
<p>“Look out! those lower branches are brown
an’ rotten, Starrie. I wouldn’t trust to them if
I were you!” shouted Colin, indicating the
drooping pine-boughs about ten feet from the
ground; he kicked a similar large drab branch,
as he spoke, which had fallen and lay decaying
at the foot of the freak tree.</p>
<p>“Right you are! I won’t.” Leon was a wonderful
climber; twining his arms and legs round
one olive-green trunk of the divided pine he
managed to reach the firm boughs above through
whose needles the late afternoon breeze crooned
a sonorous warning.</p>
<p>The scout, meanwhile, had clambered like a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
squirrel nearly to the top of the splendid oak-tree.
Presently the two boys upon the ground
heard a shrill “Tewitt! Tewitt!” the signal-whistle
of his peewit patrol, fully sixty feet
above their heads, followed by Nixon’s voice
shouting: “Can’t see smoke anywhere, fellows—or
any sign of a real break in the woods. But
there seems to be some sort of little clearing
about two hundred yards from here, I should
say!” He was carefully scanning the space over
intervening tree-tops with his eye, knowing that
if he could judge this distance in the woods
with approximate accuracy it would count as a
point in his favor toward realizing the height of
his ambition and graduating into a first-class
scout.</p>
<p>Leon, a moment later, was singing out blithely
from the pine-tree’s top: “I see that gap between
the trees too, just a little way farther on. I guess
it’s a logging-road at last—probably a shanty
as well—the road will lead somewhere anyhow.
Hurrah! We’ll be out o’ the misery in time.
Race you down, Nix?” he challenged exuberantly
at the top of his voice.</p>
<p>Then began a swift, racing descent, marked
on Leon’s part by the touch of recklessness that
often characterized his movements; he was determined
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
that though the boy scout might excel
him in certain points of knowledge, he should
not outdo him in athletic activity.</p>
<p>“There! I knew I could ‘trim’ you anywhere—in
a tree or on the ground,” he cried all in one
gasping breath as—caution to the winds—he
stepped on one of the lower dead boughs which
he had avoided going up.</p>
<p>It snapped under his hundred and twenty-five
pounds of sturdy weight, like a breaking twig.
He crashed to the ground, alighting in a huddle
upon the decayed branch, the crumbling wind-fall,
at the foot of the tree.</p>
<p>“Gracious! are you hurt, Starrie?” Coombsie
and Colin rushed to him.</p>
<p>“I—think—not! I guess I’m all here.”
Leon made a desperate attempt to rise, and instantly
sank back, clutching at the grass around
him with such a sound as nobody had ever heard
before from the lips of Leon Starr Chase—the
moan of a maimed creature.</p>
<p>“My ankle! My right ankle!” he groaned. “I
twisted it, coming down on that rotten branch.
It feels as if every tree in the woods had fallen
on it together! Ouch! I—can’t—stand.” Drops
of agony stole out upon his forehead.</p>
<p>“You’ve sprained it, I guess!” Nixon was
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
now bending over the victim. “Here, let me
take your shoe off, before the foot swells! Perhaps,
with Col and me helping you, you can limp
along to that clearing?”</p>
<p>Leon made another attempt, with the leather
pressure removed, but sank down again and
began to relieve himself of his stocking too, in
order to examine the injury.</p>
<p>“Ou-ouch!” he groaned savagely. “My ankle
is as black as a thundercloud already. It feels
just like a thunderstorm, too—all heavy throbs
an’ lightning shoots of pain!”</p>
<p>The trail of those fiery darts could be traced
in the livid blue and yellow streaks that were
turning the rapidly swelling ankle, in which the
ligaments were badly torn, to as many hues as
Joseph’s coat, against a background of sullen
black.</p>
<p>“Well! this is the—limit!” Coombsie dropped
the lunch-basket, to which he had clung faithfully,
into a nest of underbrush: with a probable
logging-road within reach that might serve as
a clue to lead them somewhere, here was one of
their number with a thunderstorm in his ankle!</p>
<p>And then the hero that dwelt in the shadow
of the savage in that contradictory breast of
Leon Chase flashed awake again in a moment, as
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
at Big Swamp; the real plucky boyhood in him
shone out like a star!</p>
<p>“’Twill be dark—in the woods—before
very long,” he said, his voice sprained too by
pain, while his clammy face, still coated with the
red-ochre pigment of Varney’s Paintpot, smeared
by the drops of agony and his coat-sleeve, was a
lurid sight. “You fellows will have to hustle if
you want to reach that road—if it is a logging-road—and
get out of the woods before night!
I can hardly—hobble. I’d better stay here:
Blink will stay with me; won’t you, pup? When
you boys get home—let my father know—he
and Jim will come out an’ find me; they know
every inch of the woods.”</p>
<p>“And leave you alone in the woods for hours?
Not I, for one!” The scout’s answer was decisive,
so were the loyal protests of the other two
lads.</p>
<p>Blink, with a shrewd comprehension that something
was wrong with his master, had been alternately
licking Leon’s ear and the inflamed
pads of his own paws. At the mention of his
name he pressed so close to the victim’s side,
sitting bolt upright on his haunches, that their
two bodies might have been joined at one point
like the trunks of the freak tree. And the purple
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
fidelity lights in his brown eyes said plainly
that not hunger, thirst, or lonely death itself,
could separate him from the being who was a
greater fellow in his eyes than any scout of the
U.S.A.</p>
<p>The other three boys were at that stage of
fatigue and discomfiture when the well of emotion
is easily pumped; their eyes grew moist at
the dog’s steadfast look.</p>
<p>But the scout shook himself brusquely as if
trying to awake something within.</p>
<p>“We ought to be able to fix you up so that you
can get along to that little clearing, anyhow!”
he said, his mind busy with the sixth point of
the scout law and how under these circumstances
he could best live up to it and help an
injured comrade. “We might form a chair-carry,
Col and I, but the undergrowth ahead is
too thick; we couldn’t wrestle through—three
abreast. Ha! we’d better make a crutch for you;
that’s the idea! There’s a birch sapling, neat
an’ handy, as an Irishman would say!”</p>
<p>And the ubiquitous white birch, the wood-man’s
friend, came into play again. Its slim
trunk, being wrenched from the ground, roots
and all, and trimmed off with Nixon’s knife,
formed a fair prop.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p>
<p>“Chuck me your handkerchiefs!” said the
crutch-maker to the other two uninjured boys.
“We’ll pad the top of it, so that it won’t dig
into his armpit. Now then, Leon! get this under
your right arm and put your left one round my
neck—that will fix you up to hobble a short
distance.”</p>
<p>A half-reluctant grin, distorted by agony, convulsed
Leon’s face as, leaning hard upon the white-birch
prop, he arose and limped a few steps; he
recollected how at odd moments in the woods—whenever
there wasn’t too much doing—he
had believed that he held a grudge against the
scout for making him yield one sharply contested
point and that about such an infinitesimal thing
in his eyes as the brief life of a chipmunk.</p>
<p>“Oh! I guess I can limp along with the
crutch,” he said, smearing the dew of pain over
his bedaubed face, now ghastly under the paint.</p>
<p>“Go on; you’re only wasting time!” Nixon
drew the other’s left arm with its moist cold hand
around his neck—all the heat in Leon’s body
had gone to swell the thunderstorm in his ankle.</p>
<p>And thus plowing, stumbling through the undergrowth,
the scout’s right hand keeping the
impudent twigs from poking his companion’s
eyes out, they reached the narrow clearing along
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
which the ambient light of a September sunset
flowed like a golden river.</p>
<p>No coveted log shanty, where at least they
could encamp for the night, decorated it.</p>
<p>But on its opposite side there loomed before
the boys’ eyes as they issued from the woods a
great, lichen-covered rock, over twenty feet high,
with a deep cavernous opening that yawned like
a sleepy mouth at sunset as it swallowed the rays
streaming into it.</p>
<p>“Glory halleluiah! it’s the Bear’s Den—at
last,” ejaculated Leon, pain momentarily eclipsed.
“Thanks, Nix: you’re a horse!” as he withdrew
his arm from his comrade’s shoulders. “But
that cave is about five miles from anywhere—from
any opening in the woods! What on earth
are we going to do now?”</p>
<p>“Why! light a fire the first thing, I guess,”
returned the boy scout practically.</p><hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER VI</p>
<p class="center chap2">THE FRICTION FIRE</p>
<p>“We haven’t got any matches to start a fire
with!” Coombsie sat down in a pool of gold
with the well-nigh empty basket beside him, and
turned baffled eyes upon the others.</p>
<p>“I have a few in a safety box in my pocket.
Thank goodness! I didn’t go back on our scout
motto: ‘Be Prepared!’ so far as matches are
concerned, anyway.” Nixon felt in each pocket
of his Norfolk jacket with a face that lengthened
dismally under the smears of Varney’s Paintpot.
“<i>Gone!</i>” he ejaculated despairingly. “I must
have lost the box!”</p>
<p>“It probably dropped out of your pocket into
the grass when I tied our coats round the chest-nut-tree,
to prevent that young coon from ‘lighting
down,’” suggested Leon, and <i>his</i> face grew
pinched; it was not a refreshing memory that
conjured up a picture of Raccoon Junior limping
back to the hole among the ledges near Big
Swamp, with a leg broken by his stone, at the
moment when a fellow had a whole thunderstorm
in his ankle.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>“Well! we’re up against it now,” gasped the
scout. “We can’t get out of the woods to-night;
that’s sure! We could sleep in the cave and be
jolly comfortable too”—he stooped down and
examined its wide interior—”if we only had a
fire. But, without a camp-fire or a single blanket,
we’ll be uncomfortable enough when it comes
on dark; these September nights are chilly.”</p>
<p>He threw his hat on the ground, drew his
coat-sleeve across his ruddy forehead, rendering
his bedaubed countenance slightly more grotesque
than before. He had forgotten that it
was smeared, forgotten paint and frolic. An old
look descended upon his face.</p>
<p>He was desperately tired. Every muscle of his
body ached. His head was confused too from
long wandering among the trees; his thoughts
seemed to skip back into the woods away from
him; he felt himself stalking them as Blink
would stalk a rabbit. But there was one thing
more alive in him at that moment than ever before,
a sense of protective responsibility.</p>
<p>With Leon disabled and the two younger
boys completely worn out, it rested with him
alone to turn a night in the Bear’s Den into a
mere “corking” adventure, or to let it drag by
as a dark age of discomfort with certainly bad
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
results for two of the party. Nixon had felt
Leon’s hand as it slipped from his neck at the
edge of the clearing, it was clammy as ice; his
first-aid training as a scout told him that the injured
lad would feel the cold bitterly during the
night.</p>
<p>Starrie Chase would probably “stick it out
without squealing,” as in such circumstances he
would try to do himself. But it would be a hard
experience. And young Colin’s clothing was
still sodden from his partial immersion in Big
Swamp. It was one of those moments for the
Scout of the U.S.A. when the potential father in
the boy is awake.</p>
<p>“I’ve <i>got</i> to fix things up for the night,
somehow,” he wearily told himself aloud. “I
wonder—I wonder if I could manage to start
a fire without matches—with ‘rubbing-sticks’?
I did it once when we were camping out with
our scoutmaster. But he helped me. If I could
only get the fire, now, ’twould be a—great—stunt!”</p>
<p>“’Start a fire without matches!’ You’re
crazy!” Colin and Coombsie looked sideways at
him; they had heard of people being “turned
round” in their heads by much woodland wandering.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
<p>“Shut up, you two!” commanded Leon,
suddenly imperious. “He knows what he’s
about. He did a good stunt in helping me along
here.”</p>
<p>“If I could only find the right kinds of wood
to start a friction fire—balsam fir for the fireboard
and drill, and a little chunk of cedarwood
to be shredded into tinder!” The boy scout was
eagerly scanning the trees on either side of the
grass-grown logging-road, trees which at this
moment seemed to have their roots in the forest
soil and their heads in Heaven’s own glory.</p>
<p>“<i>There’s</i> a fir-tree! Among those pines—a
little way along the road!” Leon spoke in that
slow, stiff voice, sprained by pain. “Perhaps I
can help you—Nix?”</p>
<p>“No, you lie still, but chuck me your knife,
it’s stronger than mine! I ought to have two
tools for preparing the ‘rubbing-sticks,’ so the
Chief Scout tells us in our book, but I’ll have to
get along somehow with our pocketknives.”</p>
<p>Nix Warren was off up the road as he spoke;
hope, responsibility, and ambition toward the performance
of a “great stunt,” forming a fighting
trio to get the better of weariness.</p>
<p>The glory was waning from the tree-tops when
he returned, bearing with him one sizeable chunk
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
of balsamic fir-wood and a long stick from the
same tree.</p>
<p>“Any sort of stick will do for the bent bow
which is attached to the drill and works it; that’s
what our book says,” he murmured, as if conning
over a lesson. “Who’s got a leather shoe-lace?
You have—cowhide laces—in those high
boots of yours, Colin! Mind letting me have
one?”</p>
<p>The speaker was excitedly setting to work,
now, fashioning the flat fireboard from the chunk
of fir-wood, carving a deep notch in its side,
and scooping out a shallow hole at the inner
end of the notch into which the point of the
upright drill would fit.</p>
<p>In feeling, he was the primitive man again, this
modern boy scout: he was that grand old savage
ancestor of prehistoric times into whose ear God
whispered the secret, unknown to beast or bird,
of creating light and warmth for himself and
those dependent on him, when the sun forsook
them.</p>
<p>“Say! can’t you fellows get busy and collect
some materials for a fire, dry chips and pine-splinters—fat
pine-splinters—and dead branches?
There’s plenty of good fuel around! You wood-finders’ll
have a cinch!
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>”</p>
<p>It certainly was a signal act of faith in Colin
and Coombsie when they bestirred their weary
limbs to obey this command from the wizard who
was to try and evoke the mysterious fire-element
latent in the combustible wood he handled, but
hard to get at without the aids which civilization
places at man’s disposal.</p>
<p>They each kept a corner of their inquisitive
eyes upon him while they collected the fuel,
watching the shaping of the notched fireboard,
of the upright pointed drill, over a dozen inches
in length, and the construction of a rude bow
out of a supple stick found on the clearing, with
Colin’s cowhide shoe-lace made fast to each end
as the cord or strap that bent the bow.</p>
<p>This cord was twisted once round the upper
part of the drill whose lower point fitted into
the shallow hole in the fireboard.</p>
<p>“Whew! I must find a piece of pine-wood
with a knot in it and scoop that knot out, so that
it will form a disc for the top of the drill in which
it will turn easily,” said the perspiring scout.
“Oh, sugarloons! I’ve forgotten all about the
<i>tinder</i>; we may have to trot a long way into the
woods to find a cedar-tree.”</p>
<p>“I’ll go with you, Nix,” proffered Marcoo,
while Leon, lying on the ground near the cave,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
with his dog pressing close to him, undertook
the task of scooping that soft knot out of the
pine-disk.</p>
<p>“All right; bring along the tin mug out of
your basket; perhaps we may find water!”</p>
<p>And they did! Oh, blessed find! Wearily they
trudged back about sixty yards into the woods,
in an opposite direction from that in which they
had traveled before—Nixon taking the precaution
of breaking off a twig from every second
or third tree so as to mark the trail—before they
lit on a grove of young cedars through which
ran a sound, now a purling sob, now a tinkling
laugh; softer, more angel-like, than the wind’s
mirth!</p>
<p>“<i>Water!</i> A spring! Oh—tooraloo!” And
they drank their fill, bringing back, along with
the cedar-wood for tinder—water, as much as
their tin vessel would hold, for the two boys and
dog keeping watch over the fire-sticks on the
old bear’s camping-ground.</p>
<p>The soft cedar was shredded into tinder between
two stones. The drill was set up with its
lower point resting in the notched hole of the
fire-board, its upper point fitting into the pine-disk
which Nixon steadied with his hand.</p>
<p>Then the boy scout began to work the bent
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
bow which passed through a hole in the upper
part of the drill, steadily to and fro, slowly turning
that drill, grinding its lower point into the
punky wood of the fireboard.</p>
<p>In the eye of each of the four boys the coveted
spark already glowed, drilled by excitement out
of the dead wood of his fatigue.</p>
<p>Even the dog, his jaws gaping, his tongue
lolling out, lay stretched at attention, his gaze
intent upon the central figure of the boy scout
working the strapped bow backward and forward,
turning the pointed drill that bored into the
fireboard.</p>
<p>Ground-up wood began to fall through the
notch in the fireboard adjacent to the hole upon
another slab of wood which Nixon had placed as
a tray beneath it.</p>
<p>This powdered wood was brown. Slowly it
turned black. Was that smoke?</p>
<p>It was a strange tableau, the four disheveled
boys with their red-smeared faces, the painted
clown’s dog, all holding their breath intent upon
the primitive miracle of the fire-birth.</p>
<p>Smoke it was! <i>Increasing smoke!</i> And in its
tiny cloud suddenly appeared the miracle—a
dull red spark at the heart of the black wood
dust.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
<p>“What do you know about that?” Marcoo’s
voice was thick.</p>
<p>“Gee! that’s a—wonderful—stunt. I guess
you could light a fire with a piece of damp bark
and a snowball!” Leon looked up at the panting
scout.</p>
<p>Colin’s mind was telegraphing back to the
moment when he lay on the salt-marshes that
morning, hungry for the woods. If any one
had told him that, before night, he would assist
at a forest drama like this!</p>
<p>“Hush! Don’t speak for fear you’d hoodoo
it! We haven’t got it yet—the fire! Perhaps—perhaps—I
can’t make it burn.” It was the
most wonderful moment of his life for the boy
scout as he now took a pinch of the cedar-wood
tinder, half-enclosed in a piece of paper-like
birch-bark and held it down upon the red fire-germ—in
all following the teaching of the great
Chief Scout.</p>
<p>Then he lifted the slab of wood that served as
tray, bearing the ruddy fire-embryo and tinder,
and blew upon it evenly, gently. It blazed. The
miracle was complete.</p>
<p>“<i>Wonderful stunt!</i>” murmured Starrie Chase
again. His hand in its restless uneasiness had been
plucking large flakes of moss from the gray rock
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
behind him and turning them over, revealing
the medicinal gold thread that embroidered the
earthy underside of the sod; he was sucking that
bitter fibre—supposed to be good for a sore
mouth, but no panacea for a sprained ankle—while
a like gold thread of fascinated speculation
embroidered the ruddy mask of his face.</p>
<p>“Hurrah! we’ll have a fire right away now,
that will talk to us all night long.” The triumphant
scout lowered the flame-bud to the ground,
piled over it some of the resinous pine-splinters
and strips of inflammatory bark, fanning it
steadily with his hat. In a few minutes a rollicking
camp-fire was roaring in front of the old
Bear’s Den.</p>
<p>“Now! we must gather some big chunks, dry
roots and stumps, to keep the fire going through
the night, cut sods to put round it and prevent
its spreading into the woods, and break up some
pine-tips to strew in the cave for a bed. There’s
lots of work ahead still, fellows, before we can
be snug for the night!”</p>
<p>The scout, having got his second breath with
his great achievement, was working hard as he
spoke; Marcoo and Colin followed his example in
renewed spirits. Leon, chafing at his own inactivity,
tried to stand and sank down with a groan.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
<p>“How’s the thunderstorm sprain?” they asked
him.</p>
<p>“Worse—ugh-h! And I’m parched with
thirst—still!”</p>
<p>“Well, we’ll lope off into the woods and
bring you back some more water. If you’ll leave
a little in the bottom of the mug I’ll soak our
handkerchiefs in it and wrap them round your
ankle; cold applications may relieve the pain;”
the scout was recalling what he had learned
about first aid to the injured.</p>
<p>Darkness descended upon the old bear’s stamping-ground.
But the camp-fire burned gloriously,
throwing off now and again a foam of flame whose
rosy clots lit in the crevices of the tall rock and
bloomed there for an instant like scarlet flowers.</p>
<p>The work necessary in making camp for the
night done, the four boys gathered round it,
dividing their scanty rations, the scraps of food
left in Coombsie’s basket, and speculating as to
how early in the morning a search-party would
come out and find them.</p>
<p>“Toiney Leduc will certainly be one of the
party. Toiney is a regular scout; he’s only been
here a year, but he knows the woods well,” remarked
Leon, then was silent a minute, gazing
wistfully into the heart of the flames which
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
filled the pause with snappy conversational fire-works.</p>
<p>“Tell us something about this boy scout business,
bo’!” he spoke again in the slow, sprained
voice, his feverish eyes burning into the fire, his
tone making the slangy little abbreviation stand
for brother, as he addressed Nixon. “It seems as
if it might be The Thing—starting that fire was
a great stunt—and if it’s The Thing—every
fellow wants to be in it!”</p>
<p>“Oh! you don’t know what good times we
have,” began the scout.</p>
<p>And briefly skimming from one point to another,
he told of the origin of the Boy Scout
Movement far away in Africa during the defense
of a besieged city, and of the great English general,
the friend of boys, who had fathered that
movement.</p>
<p>Leon’s eyes narrowed as he still gazed into the
camp-fire: it was a long descent from the defense
of a beleaguered city to the championship of a
besieged chipmunk, but his quick mind grasped
the principle of fiery chivalry underlying both—one
and the same.</p>
<p>“Can you sing some more of that U.S.A. song
which you were shouting in the woods near the
log camp?” Marcoo broke in, as the narrator
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
dwelt on those good times spent in hiking, trailing,
camping with the scoutmaster.</p>
<p>“Perhaps I can—a verse or two! That’s the
latest for the Boy Scouts of America—the
Scouts of the old U.S. Don’t know whether I
have a pinch of breath left, though!”</p>
<p>And the flagging voice began, gathering gusto
from the camp-fire, glee from the stars now winking
through the pine-tops:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“Mile after mile in rank or file,</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We tramp through field and wood:</span><br />
Or off we hike down path or pike,<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">One glorious brotherhood.</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Hurrah for the woods, hurrah for the fields,</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Hurrah for the life that’s free!</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With a body and mind both clean and kind,</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The Scout’s is the life for me!”</span><br />
</div>
<p>“Chorus, fellows!” he cried:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">We will fight, fight, fight, for the right, right, right,</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Be prepared” both night and day;<br />
and we’ll shout, shout, shout, for the Scout, Scout, Scout,</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">for the Scouts of the U.S.A.</span><br />
</div>
<div class="center pt2"><img style="width:400px; height:208px" src="images/illus108.jpg" alt="" /></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
<div class="center"><img style="width:400px; height:441px" src="images/illus109.jpg" alt="" /></div>
<div class="center"><a href="music/scoutsong.mp3">Chorus - listen to the music</a></div>
<p class="pt2">The rolling music in the pine-trees, the reedy
whistle of the breeze among beeches and birches,
soft cluck of rocking branches, the bagpipe skirling
of the flames leaping high, fluted and green-edged,
all came in on that chorus; together with
the four boyish voices and the bark of the dog
as he bayed the blaze: the night woods rang for
the Scouts of the U.S.A.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“If when night comes down we are far from town,</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Both tired and happy too,</span><br />
Camp-fires we light and by embers bright<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We sleep the whole night through.</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Hurrah for the sun, hurrah for the storm,</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Hurrah for the stars above!</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">We feel secure, safe, sane and sure,</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 3em;">For we know that God is Love.”</span><br />
</div>
<p>“Why have you that knot in your tie?” asked
Leon after the last note had died away in forest-echo,
while the scout was wetting the bandages
round his inflamed ankle before they crept into
the cave to sleep.</p>
<p>“To remind me to do one good turn to somebody
every day.”</p>
<p>“Well, you can untie it now; I guess you’ve
done good turns by the bunch to-day!”</p>
<p>Lying presently upon the fragrant pine-tips
with which they had strewn the interior of the
cave, the scout’s tired fingers fumbled for that
knot and drowsily undid it. He had lost both
way and temper in the woods. But he had tried,
at least, to obey the scout law of kindness.</p>
<p>As he lay on guard, nearest to the cave’s entrance,
winking back at the stars, this brought
him a happy sense of that wide brotherhood
whose cradle is God’s Everlasting Arms.</p>
<p>From the well of his sleepy excitement two
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
words bubbled up: “Our Father!” Rolling
over until his nose burrowed among the fragrant
evergreens, he repeated the Lord’s Prayer, adding—because
this had been an eventful day—a
brief petition which had been put into his lips by
his scoutmaster and was uttered under unusual
stress of feeling, or when he remembered it:
That in helpfulness to others and loyalty to good
he might be a follower of the Lord of Chivalry,
Jesus Christ, and continue his faithful soldier and
servant “until the scout’s last trail is done!”</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>It was almost morning when he awoke for the
second time, having stirred his tired limbs once
already to replenish the camp-fire.</p>
<p>Now that hard-won fire had waned to a dull red
shading on the undersides of velvety logs, the
remainder of whose surface was of a chilly gray
from which each passing breeze flicked the white
flakes of ash like half-shriveled moths.</p>
<p>“Whew! I must punch up the fire again—but
it’s hard to get the kinks out o’ my backbone;”
he straightened his curled-up spine with
difficulty and stumbled out on the camping-ground.</p>
<p>It was that darkest hour before dawn. The stars
were waning as well as the fire. The trees which
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
had been friends in the daytime were spectators
now. Each wrapped in its dark mantle, they
seemed to stand curiously aloof, watching him.</p>
<p>He attacked the logs with a stick, poking
them together and thrusting a dry branch into
the ruddy nest where the fire still hatched.</p>
<p>Snip! Snap! Crackle! the flames awoke.
Mingling with their reviving laughter, came a
low, strange cluck that was not the voice of the
fire, immediately followed by a long shrill cry with
a wavering trill in it, not unlike human mirth.</p>
<p>It hailed from some point in the scout’s rear.</p>
<p>“For heaven’s sake!” The stick shook in his
fingers. “Can it be a wildcat—or another
coon?”</p>
<p>Stiffly he wheeled round. His eyes traveled up
the great rock—in whose cave his companions
lay sleeping; as they gained the top of that old
grayback, they were confronted by two other
eyes—mere twinkling points of flame!</p>
<p>The scout’s scalp seemed to lift like a blown-off
roof. His throat grew very dry.</p>
<p>At the same moment there was a noiseless
flitting as of a shadow from the rock’s crest to
a near-by tree whence came the weird cry again.</p>
<p>“<i>An owl!</i> Well, forevermore! And my hair
is standing straight still!
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>”</p>
<p>“<i>What is it?</i> <i>What is it, Nix?</i>” came in
muffled cries from the cave.</p>
<p>“Only a screech owl; it’s unusual to find one
so far in the woods as this!”</p>
<p>As it happened two ruddy screech owls, faithful
lovers and monogamists, which had dwelt together
as Darby and Joan in the hollow of an
old apple-tree in a distant orchard, being persecuted
both by boys and blue jays, had eschewed
civilization, isolating themselves, at least from
the former, in the woods.</p>
<p>As dawn broke between the tall pines and a
pale river of daylight flowed along the logging-road,
they were seen, both together, upon a low
bough, with the dawn breeze fluffing their thick,
rufous plumage, making them look larger than
they really were, and their heads slowly turning
from side to side, trying to discover the meaning
of a camp-fire and other strange doings in this
their retreat.</p>
<p>“Oo-oo! look at them,” hooted Colin softly,
creeping out of the cave and stealthily approaching
their birch-tree. “They have yellow eyes
and faces like kittens. Huh! they’re more comical
than a basket of monkeys. Oh, there they
go.”</p>
<p>For even as his hand was put forth to touch
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
them, they vanished silently as the ebbing
shadows in the train of night.</p>
<p>“This must be a great place for owls,” said
Leon, blinking like one—not until far on in
the night had he slept owing to the wrenching
pain in his ankle. “Listen! there goes the big
old hooter—the great horned owl—the Grand
Duke we call him. Hear him ’way off: ‘Whoo-whoo-hoo-doo-whoo!’
Sounds almost like a wolf
howling! <i>Ou-ouch!</i>”</p>
<p>“Is your ankle hurting badly, Starrie?”</p>
<p>“It’s—fierce.”</p>
<p>“Daylight is coming fast now; I’ll be able to
find the spring and wet those bandages again—and
bring you a drink too”; this from the scout.</p>
<p>“Thanks. You’re the boy, Nix!”</p>
<p>The brotherly act accomplished, there was
silence in the cave where the four boys had again
stretched themselves while young Day crept up
over the woods.</p>
<p>Suddenly Leon’s voice was heard ambiguously
muttering in the cave’s recess: “If it’s The
Thing, every fellow wants to be in it!”</p>
<p>“Say! fellows, I’ve got an idea,” he put
forth aloud.</p>
<p>“Out with it, if it’s worth anything!” from
Colin.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
<p>“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Leon! get it out
quick, and let us go to sleep again!” pleaded
Coombsie, who knew that if Starrie Chase was
oppressed by an idea, other boys would hear it
in his time, not in theirs.</p>
<p>“I propose that after we get home—when
my ankle is better—we start a boy scout patrol
in our town and call it the Owl Patrol! I guess
we’ve heard the owls—different kinds—often
enough to-night, to be able to imitate one or
other of them.”</p>
<p>“Good enough! The Scout’s is the life for
me!” sang out Colin.</p>
<p>“The motion is seconded and carried—now
let’s go to sleep!” from Marcoo.</p>
<p>“As I expect to stay in these parts for six
months, or longer, I’ll get transferred from the
Philadelphia Peewits to the new patrol!” decided
Nixon.</p>
<p>“Bully for you! We’ll ask Kenjo Red and
Sweetsie to come in; they’re dandy fellows—and
who else?” Leon hesitated.</p>
<p>“Why don’t you get hold of that frightened
boy who was with Toiney on the edge of the
woods? We had a boy like him in our Philadelphia
troop,” went on Nixon hurriedly, ignoring
a surge of protest. “Scared of his own shadow
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
he was! Abnormal timidity—with a long Latin
name—due to pre-natal influences, according to
the doctors! Well, our scoutmaster managed
somehow to enlist him as a tenderfoot. When
he got out into the woods with us and found
that every other scout was trying to help him to
become a ‘fellow,’ why! he began to crawl out
of his shell. He’s getting to be quite a boy
now!”</p>
<p>“But the ‘<i>Hare</i>’! he’d spoil—<i>Ouch!</i>” A
sudden wrench of agony as Leon moved restlessly
put the pointed question as to whether the
mental pain which Harold Greer suffered might
not be as hard to drag round as a thunderstorm
ankle.</p>
<p>“All right, Nix! Enlist him if you can! I
guess you’ll have to pass on who comes into the
new patrol.”</p>
<p>Colin dug his nose into the pine-tips with a
skeptical chuckle: that new patrol would have
a big contract on hand, he thought, if it was to
gather up the wild, waste energy of Leon,—that
element in him which parents and teachers sought
to eradicate,—turn it to good account, and take
the fright out of the Hare.</p>
<p>But from the woods came a deep bass whoop
that sounded encouraging: the Whoo-whoo-hoo-doo-whoo!
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
of the Grand Duke bidding the world
good-morning ere he went into retreat for the
day.</p>
<p>It was answered by the Whoo-whoo-whooah-whoo!
of a brother owl, also lifting up his voice
before sunrise.</p>
<p>“Listen, fellows!” cried Leon excitedly. “<i>Listen!</i>
The feathered owls themselves are cheering
the Owl Patrol.”</p><hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER VII</p>
<p class="center chap2">MEMBERS OF THE LOCAL COUNCIL</p>
<p>And thus the new patrol was started.</p>
<p>Three weeks after the September morning
when an anxious search-party led by Asa Chase,
Leon’s father, and by that clever woodsman
Toiney Leduc, had started out at dawn to search
the dense woods for four missing boys, and found
a grotesque-looking quartette with faces piebald
from the half-effaced smears of Varney’s Paintpot,
breakfasting on blueberries and water by a
still ruddy camp-fire,—three weeks after those
morning woods had rung with Toiney’s shrill
“Hôlà!” the first meeting for the formation
of the Owl Patrol was held.</p>
<p>In virtue of his being already a boy scout with
a year’s training behind him, Nixon Warren was
elected patrol leader; and Leon Starr Chase who
still limped as a result of his reckless descent of
that freak pine-tree, was made second in rank
with the title of corporal—or assistant patrol
leader.</p>
<p>Among the half-dozen spectators, leading men
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
of the small town, who had assembled to witness
the inaugural doings at this first meeting and to
lend their approval to the new movement for the
boys, there appeared one who was lamer than
Leon, his halting step being due to a year-old
injury which condemned him to limp somewhat
for the remainder of his life.</p>
<p>This was Captain Andrew Davis, popularly
known as Captain Andy, who had been for thirty
years a Gloucester fishing-skipper, one of the
present-day Vikings who sail forth from the
Queen Fishing City at the head of its blue
harbor.</p>
<p>He had commanded one fine fishing-vessel after
another, was known along the water-front and
among the fishing-fleet as a “crackerjack” and
“driver,” with other more complimentary titles.
He had got the better of the sea in a hundred
raging battles on behalf of himself and others.
But it partially worsted him at last by wrecking
his vessel in what he mildly termed a “November
breeze”—in reality a howling hurricane—and
by laming him for life when at the height of the
storm the schooner’s main-boom fell on him.</p>
<p>He was dragged forth from under it, half-dead,
but, “game to the last,” refused to be carried
below. Lashed to the weather main-bitt—one
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
of the sawed-off posts rising from the vessel’s
deck to which the main-sheet was made fast—in
order to prevent his being swept overboard by
the great seas washing over that deck, he had
kept barking out orders and fighting for the lives
of his crew so long as he could command a
breath.</p>
<p>“And I didn’t lose a man, Doc!” he said
long afterwards to his friend and admirer, the
Exmouth doctor, the hard-working physician
with whose long-suffering bell Leon had mischievously
tampered. “I didn’t lose a man—only
the vessel. When the gale blew down we
had to take to the dories, for she was just washing
to pieces under us. Too bad: she was an
able vessel too! But I guess I’ll have to ‘take
my medicine’ for the rest of my life—an’ take
it limping!”—with a rueful smile.</p>
<p>But the many waters through which he had
passed had not quenched in Captain Andy the
chivalrous love for his human brothers. Rather
did they baptize and freshen it until it sprouted
anew, after he took up his residence ashore, in a
paternal love for boys which kept his great heart
youthful in his massive, sixty-year-old body; and
which kept him hopefully dreaming, too, of deeds
that shall be done by the sons now being reared
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
for Uncle Sam, that shall rival or outshine the
knightly feats of their fathers both on land and
sea.</p>
<p>So he smiled happily, this grand old sea-scout,
as, on the occasion of the first meeting for the
inauguration of the Boy Scout Movement, he
heaved his powerful frame into a seat beside his
friend the doctor who was equally interested in
the new doings.</p>
<p>“Hi there, Doc!” said Captain Andy joyously,
laying his hand, big and warm as a tea-kettle,
on the doctor’s arm, “we’re launching a
new boat for the boys to-night, eh? Seems to me
that it’s an able craft too—this new movement—intended
to keep the lads goin’ ahead under
all the sail they can carry, and on a course where
they’ll get the benefit of the best breezes, too.”</p>
<p>“That’s how it strikes me,” returned the doctor.
“If it will only keep Starrie Chase, as they
call him, sailing in an opposite direction to my
doorbell, I’m sure I shall bless it! D’you know,
Andy,” the gray-bearded physician addressed
the weatherbeaten sea-fighter beside him as he
had done when they were schoolboys together,
“when I heard how that boy Leon had sprained
his ankle badly in the woods and that the family
had sent for me, I said: ‘Serve him right! <i>Let</i>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
him be tied by the leg for a while and meditate
on the mischief of his ways; I’m not going to
see him!’ Of course, before the words were well
out, I had picked up my bag and was on my way
to the Chase homestead!”</p>
<p>“Of course you were!” Captain Andy beamed
upon his friend until his large face with its coating
of ruddy tan flamed like an aurora borealis
under the electric lights of the little town hall in
which the first boy scout meeting was held. “Trust
you, Doc!”</p>
<p>The ex-skipper knew that no man of his acquaintance
lived up to the twelve points of the
scout law in more thorough fashion than did
this country doctor, who never by day or night
closed his ears against the call of distress.</p>
<p>“I’ll say this much for the young rascal, he
was ashamed to see me bring out my bandages”;
the doctor now nodded humorously in the direction
of Leon Chase, who made one of a semicircle
composed of Nixon, himself and six other boys,
at present seated round the young scoutmaster
whom they had chosen to be leader of the new
movement in their town.</p>
<p>“But by and by his tongue loosened somewhat,”
went on the grizzled medical man, “and
he began to take me into his confidence about
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
the formation of this boy scout patrol; he seemed
more taken up with that than with what he called
‘the thunderstorm in his ankle.’ Leon isn’t one
to knuckle under much to pain, anyhow! Somehow,
as he talked, I began to feel as if we hadn’t
been properly facing the problem of our boys in
and about this town, Andy.”</p>
<p>“I see what you mean!” Captain Andrew
nodded. “Leon is as full of tricks as a tide rip
in a gale o’ wind. An’ that’s the most mischievous
thing I know!” with a reminiscent chuckle.
“But what can you do? If a boy is chockfull o’
bubbling energy that’s going round an’ round
in a whirl inside him, like the rip, it’s bound to
boil over in mischief, if there ain’t a deep channel
to draw it off.”</p>
<p>“That’s just it! Ours is a slow little town—not
much doing for the boys! Not even a male
teacher in our graded schools to organize hikes
and athletics for them! I am afraid that more
than one lad with no natural criminal tendency,
has got into trouble, been ultimately sent to a
reformatory, owing to a lack in the beginning
of some outlet safe and exciting for that surplus
energy of which you speak. Take the case of
Dave Baldwin, for instance, son of that old
Ma’am Baldwin who lives over on the salt-marshes!
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>”
The doctor’s face took on a sorry
expression. “There was nothing really bad in
him, I think! Just too much tide rip! He was
the counterpart of this boy Leon, with a craving
for excitement, a wild energy in him that boiled
over at times in irregular pranks—like the rip—as
you say.”</p>
<p>“And you know what makes <i>that</i> so dangerous?”
Captain Andy’s sigh was heaved from the
depths of past experience. “Well! with certain
shoals an’ ledges in the ocean there’s too much
water crowded onto ’em at low tide, so it just
boils chock up from the bottom like a pot, goes
round and round in a whirl, strings out, foamy
an’ irregular, for miles. It’s ‘day, day!’ to the
vessel that once gets well into it, for you never
know where ’twill strike you.</p>
<p>“And it’s pretty much the same with a lively
boy, Doc: at low tide, when there’s nothing
doing, too much o’ something is crowded onto
the ledges in him, an’ when it froths over, it
gets himself and others into trouble. Keep him
interested—swinging ahead on a high tide of
activity under all the sail he can carry, and
there’s no danger of the rip forming. That’s
what this Boy Scout Movement aims at, I guess!
It looks to me—my word! it <i>does</i> look to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
me—as if Leon was already ‘deepening the water
some,’ to-night,” wound up Captain Andy with
a gratified smile, scrutinizing the face of Starrie
Chase, which was at this moment marked by a
new and purposeful eagerness as he discussed
the various requirements of the tenderfoot test,
the elementary knowledge to be mastered before
the next meeting, ere he could take the scout
oath, be invested with the tenderfoot scout
badge and be enrolled among the Boy Scouts
of America.</p>
<p>“A movement such as this might have been
the saving of Dave Baldwin,” sighed the Doctor.
“He was always playing such wild tricks. People
kept warning him to ‘cut it out’ or he would
surely get into trouble. But the ‘tide rip’ within
seemed too much for him. No foghorn warnings
made any impression. I’ve been thinking lately
of the saying of one wise man: ‘Hitherto there
has been too much foghorn and too little bugle
in our treatment of the boys!’ Too much croaking
at them: too little challenge to advance! So I
said to the new scoutmaster, Harry Estey, Colin’s
brother,” nodding toward a tall young man who
was the centre of the eager ring of boys, “I
said, ‘give Leon the <i>bugle</i>: give it to him literally
and figuratively: you’ll need a bugler in
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
your boy scout camp and I’ll pay for the lessons;
it will be a better pastime for him than fixing my
doorbell.’”</p>
<p>“I hope ’twill keep him from tormenting that
lonely old woman over on the marshes; the boys
of this town have made her life a burden to
her,” said Captain Andy, thinking of that female
recluse “Ma’am Baldwin,” to whom allusion had
been made by Colin and Coombsie on the memorable
day which witnessed their headstrong expedition
into the woods. “She has been regarded
as fair game by them because she’s a grain cranky
an’ peculiar, owing to the trouble she’s had about
her son. He was the youngest, born when she was
middle-aged—perhaps she spoiled him a little.
Come to think of it, Doc, I saw the young scape-grace
a few days ago when I was down the river
in my power-boat! He was skulking like a fox
round those Sugar-loaf Sand-Dunes near the bay.”</p>
<p>“How did he look?”</p>
<p>“Oh, shrunken an’ dirty, like a winter’s day!”
Captain Andy was accustomed to the rough murkiness
of a winter day on mid-ocean fishing-grounds.
“He made off when he saw me heading
for him. He’s nothing but an idle vagrant
now, who spends his time loafing between those
white dunes and the woods on t’ other side o
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>’
the river. He got work on a farm after he was
discharged from the reformatory, but didn’t
stick to it. Other fellows shunned him, I guess!
Folks say that he’s been mixed up in some petty
thefts of lumber from the shipyards lately, others
that he keeps a row-boat stowed away in the pocket
of a little creek near the dunes, and occasionally
does smuggling in a small way from a vessel
lying out in the bay. But that’s only a yarn!
He couldn’t dodge the revenue officers. Anyhow,
it’s too bad that Dave should have gone
the way he has! He’s only ‘a boy of a man’
yet, not more’n twenty-three. When I was about
that age I shipped on the same vessel with Dave’s
father—she was a trawler bound for Gran’ Banks—we
made more than one trip together on her.
He was a white man; and—”</p>
<p>“<i>Captain Andy!</i>” A voice ringing and eager,
the voice of the scoutmaster of the new patrol
who had just received his certificate from headquarters,
interrupted the captain’s recollections
of Dave Baldwin’s father. “Captain Andy, will
you undertake to instruct these boys in knot-tying,
before our next meeting, so that they may
be able to tie the four knots which form part of
the tenderfoot test, and be enrolled as scouts two
weeks from now?
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>”</p>
<p>“Sakes! yes; I’ll teach ’em. And if any one
of ’em is such a lubber that he won’t set himself
to learn, why, I’ll spank him with a dried
codfish as if I had him aboard a fishing-vessel.
Belay that!”</p>
<p>And the ex-skipper’s eye roved challengingly
toward the scout recruits from under the heavy
lid and short bristling eyelashes which overhung
its blue like a fringed cloud-bank.</p>
<p>The threat was welcomed with an outburst of
laughter.</p>
<p>“And, Doctor, will you give us some talks on
first-aid to the injured, after we get the new patrol
fairly started?” Scoutmaster Estey, Colin’s
elder brother, looked now at the busy physician,
who, with Captain Andy and other prominent
townsmen, including the clergymen of diverse
creeds, was a member of the local council of the
Boy Scouts of America which had been recently
formed in the little town.</p>
<p>“Yes; you may rely on me for that. But”—here
the doctor turned questioningly toward the
weather beaten sea-captain, his neighbor—”I
thought the new patrol, the Owl Patrol as they
have named it, was to consist of eight boys, and
I see only seven present to-night. There’s that
tall boy, Nixon Warren, who’s visiting here, and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
Mark Coombs, his cousin; then there’s Leon
Chase, Colin Estey, Kenjo Red, otherwise Kenneth
Jordan,” the doctor smiled at the red head
of a sturdy-looking lad of fourteen, “Joe Sweet,
commonly called Sweetsie, and Evan Macduff.
But where’s the eighth Owl, Andy? Isn’t he
fledged yet?”</p>
<p>“I guess not! I think they’ll have to tackle
him in private before they can enlist him.” The
narrow rift of blue which represented Captain
Andy’s eye under the cloud-bank glistened.
“You’ll never guess who they have fixed upon
for the eighth Owl, Doc. Why! that frightened
boy, Ben Greer’s son, who lives on the little
farm-clearing in the woods with his gran’father
and a Canadian farmhand whom Old Man Greer
hires for the summer an’ fall.”</p>
<p>“Not Harold Greer? You don’t mean that
abnormally shy an’ timid boy whom the children
nickname the ‘Hare’? Why! I had to supply
a certificate for him so that he could be kept out
of school. It made him worse to go, because the
other boys teased him so cruelly.”</p>
<p>“Jus’ so! But that brand o’ teasing is ruled
out under the scout law. A scout is a brother to
every other scout. I guess the idea of trying to
get Harold enlisted in the Boy Scouts and thereby
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
waking him up a little an’ gradually showing him
what ‘bugaboos’ his fears are, originated with
that lad from Philadelphia, Nix Warren, who, as
I understand, showed himself to be quite a fellow
in the woods, starting a friction fire with
rubbing-sticks an’ doing other stunts which
caused his companions to become head over heels
interested in this new movement.”</p>
<p>“But how did <i>he</i> get interested in Harold
Greer?” inquired the doctor.</p>
<p>“Well, as they trudged through the woods on
that day when they made circus guys of themselves
at Varney’s Paintpot, and subsequently
got lost, they passed the Greer farm and saw
Harold who hid behind that French-Canadian,
Toiney, when he saw them coming. Apparently it
struck Nix, seeing him for the first time, what a
miserable thing it must be for the boy himself to
be afraid of everything an’ nothing. So he set his
heart on enlisting Harold in the new patrol. He,
Nix, wants to pass the test for becoming a first-class
scout: to do this he must enlist a recruit
trained by himself in the requirements of a tenderfoot;
and he is going to try an’ get near to Harold
an’ train him—Nixon’s cousin, Mark Coombs,
Marcoo, as they call him, told me all about it.”</p>
<p>“Well, I like that!” The doctor’s face glowed.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
“Though I’m afraid they’ll have difficulty in
getting the eighth Owl sufficiently fledged to
show any plumage but the white feather!” with
a sorry smile. “I pity that boy Harold,” went
on the medical man, “because he has been hampered
by heredity and in a way by environment
too. His mother was a very delicate, nervous
creature, Andy. She was a prey to certain fears,
the worst of which was one which we doctors
call ‘cloister fobia,’ which means that she had a
strange dread of a crowd, or even of mingling
with a small group of individuals. As you know,
her husband, like Dave Baldwin’s father, was a
Gloucester fisherman, whose home was in these
parts. During his long absences at sea, she lived
alone with her father-in-law, her little boy Harold
and one old woman in that little farmhouse on
the clearing. And I suppose every time that the
wind howled through the woods she had a fresh
fit of the quakes, thinking of her husband away
on the foggy fishing-grounds.”</p>
<p>“Yes! I guess at such times the women suffer
more than we do,” muttered Captain Andy,
thinking of his dead wife.</p>
<p>“Well!” the doctor cleared his throat, “after
Harold’s mother received the news that her husband’s
vessel was lost with all hands, on Quero
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
Bank, when her little boy was about five years
old, she became more unbalanced; she wouldn’t
see any of her relatives even, if she could avoid
it, save those who lived in the house with her. I
attended her when she was ill and begged her
to try and get the better of her foolishness for
her boy’s sake—or to let me send him away to
a school of some kind. Both Harold’s grandfather
and she opposed the latter idea. She lived
until her son was nine years old; by that time
she had communicated all her queer dread of
people—and a hundred other scares as well—to
him. But in my opinion there’s nothing to
prevent his becoming in time a normal boy
under favorable conditions where his companions
would help him to fight his fears, instead of fastening
them on him—conditions under which
what we call his ‘inhibitory power of self-control’
would be strengthened, so that he could command
his terrified impulses. And if the Boy Scout
Movement can, under God, do this, Andy, why
then I’ll say—I’ll say that knighthood has
surely in our day come again—that Scout Nixon
Warren has sallied forth into the woods and
slain a dragon more truly, perhaps, than ever
did Knight of the Round Table by whose rules
the boy scouts of to-day are governed!
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>”</p>
<p>The doctor’s last words were more to himself
than to his companion, and full of the ardor of
one who was a dragon-fighter “from way back”:
day by day, for years, he had grappled with the
many-clawed dragons of pain and disease, often
taking no reward for his labors.</p>
<p>As his glance studied one and another of the
seven boyish faces now forming an eager ring
round the tall scoutmaster, while the date of the
next meeting—the great meeting at which eight
new recruits were to take the scout oath—was
being discussed, he was beset by the same feeling
which had possessed Colin Estey on that
September morning in the Bear’s Den. Namely,
that the Owl Patrol would have a big contract
on hand if it was to get the better of that mischievous
“tide rip” in Leon and prove to the
handicapped “Hare” what imaginary bugaboos
were his fears!</p>
<p>But Leon’s face in its purposeful interest
plainly showed that, according to Captain Andy’s
breezy metaphor, to-night he was really deepening
the water in which his boyish bark floated,
drawing out from the shoals among which he
had drifted after a manner too trifling for his
age and endowment.</p>
<p>And so the doctor felt that there <i>might</i> be
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
hope for the eighth Owl chosen, and not present,
being still a scared fledgling on that little farm-clearing
in the woods, having never yet shaken
a free wing, but only the craven white feather.</p><hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER VIII</p>
<p class="center chap2">THE BOWLINE KNOT</p>
<p>Scout Nixon Warren, henceforth to be
known as the patrol leader of the Owls, was himself
possessed by the excited feeling that he was
faring forth, into the October woods to tackle
a dragon—the obstinate Hobgoblin of confirmed
Fear—when on the day following that
first boy scout meeting in Exmouth he took his
way, accompanied by Coombsie, over the heaving
uplands that lay between the salt-marshes
and the woodland.</p>
<p>Thence, through thick grove and undergrowth,
they tramped to the little farm-clearing,
where they had come upon Toiney and the dead
raccoon.</p>
<p>Nixon had arrayed himself in the full bravery
of his scout uniform to-day, hoping that it might
attract the attention of the frightened boy whose
interest he wished to capture.</p>
<p>The October sun burnished his metal buttons,
with the oxidized silver badge upon his left arm
beneath the white bars of the patrol leader, and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
the white stripe at his wrist recording his one
year’s service as a scout.</p>
<p>Because of the impression they hoped to produce,
Marcoo too had donned the uniform, minus
stripes and badge—the latter he would not be
entitled to wear until after the all-important next
meeting when, on his passing the tenderfoot test,
the scoutmaster would pin it on his shirt, but reversed
until he should have proved his right to
wear that badge of chivalry by the doing of
some initial good turn.</p>
<p>But Marcoo, like his companion, carried the
long scout staff and was loud in his appreciation
of its usefulness on a woodland hike.</p>
<p>And thus, a knightly-looking pair of pilgrims,
they issued forth into the forest clearing, bathed
in the early afternoon sun.</p>
<p>As before, their ears were tickled afar off by
the sound of a tuneful voice alternately whistling
and singing, though to-day it was unaccompanied
by the woodchopper’s axe.</p>
<p>“That’s Toiney!” said Marcoo. “Listen to
him! He’s just ‘full of it’; isn’t he?”</p>
<p>Toiney was indeed full to the brim and bubbling
over with the primitive, zestful joy of life
as he toiled upon the little woodland farm, cutting
off withered cornstalks from a patch which
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
earlier in the season had been golden with fine
yellow maize of his planting. His lithe, energetic
figure focused the sun rays which loved to play
over his knitted cap of dingy red, with a bobbing
tassel, over the rough blue shirt of homespun
flannel, and upon the queer heelless high boots
of rough unfinished leather, with puckered moccasin-like
feet, in which he could steal through
the woods well-nigh as noiselessly as the dog-fox
himself.</p>
<p>As the two scouts emerged into the open he
was singing to the sunbeams and to the timid
human “Hare” who basked in his brightness, a
funny little fragment of song which he illustrated
as though he had a sling in his hand and were
letting fly a missile:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“Gaston Guè, si j’avais ma fron-de,</span><br />
Gaston Guè, je te l’aurais fron-dé!”<br />
</div>
<p>This he translated for Harold’s benefit:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“Gaston Guè, if I haf ma sling,</span><br />
Gaston Guè, at you I vould fling!”<br />
</div>
<p>“Well! you needn’t ‘fling’ at us, Toiney,”
laughed Nixon, stepping forward with a bold
front. “Hullo! Harold!” he added in what he
meant to be a most winning tone.</p>
<p>“Hullo, Harold! How are <i>you</i>?” supplemented
Marcoo in accents equally sugared.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p>
<p>But the abnormally timid boy, with the pointed
chin and slightly rodent-like face, only made an
indistinguishable sound in his throat and slunk
behind some bushes on the edge of the corn-patch.</p>
<p>Toiney, on the other hand, was never backward
in responding vivaciously to a friendly
greeting.</p>
<p>“Houp-e-là!” he explained in bantering astonishment
as he surveyed the two scouts in the
uniform which was strange to him. “<i>Houp-e-là!</i>
We arre de boy! We arre de stuff, I guess,
engh?” He pointed an earthy forefinger at the
figures in khaki, his black eyes sparkling with
whimsical flattery. “But, <i>comment</i>, you’ll no
come for go in gran’ forêt agen, dat’s de tam’
you’ll get los’ agen—hein?”</p>
<p>“No, we’re not going any farther into the
woods to-day. We came to see <i>him</i>.” Nixon
nodded in the direction of Harold skulking timidly
behind the berry bushes. “We want to
speak to him about something.”</p>
<p>“Ah—miséricorde—he’ll no speak on you;
he’s a <i>poltron</i>, a scaree: some tam’ I’ll be so
shame for heem I’ll feel lak’ cry!” returned
Toiney, moved to voluble frankness, his eye
glistening like a moist bead, now, with mortified
pity. “Son gran’père—hees gran’fader—he’s
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
go on town dis day: he’s try ver’ hard for get
heem to go also—for to see! Mais, <i>non</i>! He’s
too scaree!” And the speaker, glancing toward
the screen of bushes, shrugged his shoulders despairingly,
as if asking what could possibly be
done for such a craven.</p>
<p>Scout Nixon was not baffled. Persistent by
nature, he had worked well into the fibre of his
being the tenth point of the scout law: that defeat,
or the semblance thereof, must not down
the true scout.</p>
<p>“Then I’ll talk to you first, Toiney,” he said,
“and tell you about something that we think
might help him.”</p>
<p>And in the simplest English that he could
choose, eked out at intervals with freshman
French, he made clear to Toiney’s quick understanding
the aim and methods of the Boy Scout
Movement.</p>
<p>The Canadian, a born son of the woods,
was quick to grasp and commend the return to
Nature.</p>
<p>“<i>Ça c’est b’en!</i>” he murmured with an approving
nod. “I’ll t’ink dat iss good for boy to
go in gran’ forêt—w’en he know how fin’ de
way—for see heem beeg tree en de littal
wil’ an-ni-mal, engh? Mais, miséri-corde,”—his
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
shrugging shoulders pumped up a huge sigh as
he turned toward Harold,—”mis-éri-corde! <i>he’ll</i>
no marche as <i>éclaireur</i>—w’at-you-call-eet—scoutee—hein?
He’ll no go on meetin’ or on
school, engh?”</p>
<p>And Toiney set to work cutting down cornstalks
again as if the subject were unhappily
disposed of.</p>
<p>Such was not the case, however. At one word
which he, the blue-shirted woodsman, had used in
his harangue, Nixon started, and a strange look
shot across his face. He knew enough of French
to translate literally that word <i>éclaireur</i>, the
French military term for scout. He knew that
it meant figuratively a light-spreader: one who
marches ahead of his comrades to enlighten the
others.</p>
<p>Could any term be more applicable to the peace
scout of to-day who is striving to bring in an advanced
era of progress and good will?</p>
<p>Somehow, it stimulated in Scout Warren the
desire to be an <i>éclaireur</i> in earnest to the darkened
boy overshadowed by his bugbear fears,
now skulking behind the berry-bushes.</p>
<p>“I guess it’s no use our trying to get hold of
him,” Coombsie was saying meanwhile in his
cousin’s ear. “See that old dame over there,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
Nix?” he pointed to a portly, elderly woman
with an immense straw hat tied down, sunbonnet
fashion, over her head. “Well! she took care of
Harold’s mother before she died; now she keeps
house for his grandfather, and she, that old
woman, told my mother that up to the time
Harold was seven years old he would often run
and hide his head in her lap of an evening as it
was coming on dark. And when she asked what
frightened him he said that he was ‘afraid of
the stars’! Just fancy! Afraid of the stars as
they came out above the clearing here!”</p>
<p>“Gee whiz! What do you know about that?”
exclaimed Nixon with a rueful whistle: that dark
hobgoblin, Fear, was more absurdly entrenched
than he had thought possible.</p>
<p>Yet Harold’s seemed more than ever a case in
which the scout who could once break down the
wall of shyness round him might prove a true
<i>éclaireur</i>: so he advanced upon the timid boy and
addressed him with a honeyed mildness which
made Coombsie chuckle and gasp, “Oh, sugar!”
under his breath; though Marcoo set himself to
second his patrol leader’s efforts to the best of
his ability.</p>
<p>Together they sought to decoy Harold into a
conversation, asking him questions about his life,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
whether he ever went into the woods with Toiney
or played solitary games on the clearing. They
intimated that they knew he was “quite a boy”
if he’d only make friends with them and not be so
stand-offish; and they tried to inveigle him into
a simple game of tag or hide-and-seek among the
bushes as a prelude to some more exciting sport
such as duck-on-a-rock or prisoner’s base.</p>
<p>But the hapless “<i>poltron</i>” only answered
them in jerky monosyllables, cowering against
the bushes, and finally slunk back to the side of
the blue-shirted farmhand with whom he had become
familiar—whose merry songs could charm
away the dark spirit of fear—and there remained,
hovering under Toiney’s wing.</p>
<p>“I knew that it would be hard to get round
him,” said Marcoo thoughtfully. “Until now all
the boys whom he has met have picked on an’
teased him. Suppose you turn your attention to
<i>me</i> for a while, Nix! Suppose you were to make
a bluff of teaching me some of the things that a
fellow must learn before he can enlist as a tenderfoot
scout! Perhaps, then, he’d begin to listen an’
take notice. I’ve got a toy flag in my pocket;
let’s start off with that!”</p>
<p>“Good idea! You do use your head for something
more than a hat-rack, Marcoo!” The patrol
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
leader relapsed with a relieved sigh into his natural
manner. “I brought an end of rope with
me; I thought we might have got along to teaching
him how to tie one or other of the four
knots which form part of the tenderfoot test.
You take charge of the rope-end. And don’t
lose it if you want to live!”</p>
<p>He passed the little brown coil to his cousin
and receiving in return the miniature Stars and
Stripes, went through a formal flag-raising ceremony
there on the sunny clearing. Tying the
toy flag-staff to the top of his tall scout’s staff,
he planted the latter in some soft earth; then
both scouts stood at attention and saluted Old
Glory, after which they passed and repassed it at
marching pace, each time removing their broad-brimmed
hats with much respect and an eye on
Harold to see if he was taking notice.</p>
<p>Subsequently the patrol leader stationed himself
by the impromptu flagstaff, and delivered a
simple lecture to Coombsie upon the history and
composition of the National Flag; a knowledge
of which, together with the proper forms of respect
due to that starry banner, would enter into
his examination for tenderfoot scout.</p>
<p>Both were hoping that some crumbs of information—some
ray of patriotic enthusiasm—might
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
be absorbed by Harold, the boy who had never
been to school, and who had scantily profited by
some elementary and intermittent lessons in reading
and writing from his grandfather. His brown
eyes, shy as any rodent’s, watched this parade
curiously. But though Toiney tried to encourage
him by precept and gesticulation to follow
the boy scouts’ example and salute the Flag,
plucking off his own tasseled cap and going
through a dumb pantomime of respect to it, the
“scaree” could not be moved from his shuffling
stolidity.</p>
<p>The starry flaglet waving from the scout’s
planted staff, might have been a gorgeous, drifting
leaf from the surrounding woods for all the
attention he paid to it!</p>
<p>“Say! but it’s hard to land him, isn’t it?”
Nixon suspended the parade with a sigh almost of
despair. “Well, here goes, for one more attempt
to get him interested! Chuck me that rope-end,
Marcoo! I’ll show you how to tie a bowline
knot; perhaps, as his father was a sailor—a
deep-sea fisherman—knot-tying may be more in
his line than flag-raising.”</p>
<p>The next minute Coombsie’s fingers were fumbling
with the rope rather blunderingly, for
Marcoo was by nature a bookworm and more
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
efficient along lines of abstract study than at
anything requiring manual skill.</p>
<p>“Pass the end up through the bight,” directed
Scout Warren when the bight or loop had been
formed upon the standing part of the rope. “I
said <i>up</i>, not down, jackass! Now, pass it round
the ‘standing part’; don’t you know what that
means? Why! the long end of the rope on which
you’re working. Oh! you’re a dear donkey,”
nodding with good-humored scorn.</p>
<p>Now both the donkey recruit and the instructing
scout had become for the moment genuinely
absorbed in the intricacies of that bowline knot,
and forgot that this was not intended as a <i>bona-fide</i>
lesson, but as mere “show off” to awaken
the interest of a third person.</p>
<p>Their tail-end glances were no longer directed
furtively at Harold to see whether or not he was
beginning to “take notice.”</p>
<p>So they missed the first quiver of a peculiar
change in him; they did not see that his sagging
chin was suddenly reared a little as if by the
application of an invisible bearing-rein.</p>
<p>They missed the twitching face-muscles, the
slowly dilating eye, the breath beginning to
come in quick puffs through his spreading nostrils,
like the smoke issuing from the punky
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
wood, heralding the advent of the ruddy spark,
when in the woods they started a fire with rubbing-sticks.
And just as suddenly and mysteriously
as that triumphant spark appeared—evolved
by Nixon’s fire-drill, from the dormant
possibilities in the dull wood—did the first
glitter of fascinated light appear and grow in
the eye of Harold Greer, the prisoner of Fear,
disparagingly nicknamed the “Hare”!</p>
<p>“I—I can do that! I c-can do it—b-better
than he can!” Stuttering and trembling in a
strange paroxysm of eagerness, the <i>poltron</i> addressed,
in a nervous squawk, not the absorbed
scouts, but Toiney, his friend and protector.</p>
<p>“I can t-tie it better ’n <i>he</i> does! I know—I
know I can!” The shrill boyish voice which
seemed suddenly to dominate every other sound
on the clearing was hoarse with derision as the
abnormally shy and timid boy pointed a trembling
finger at Marcoo still, like a “dear donkey,”
blundering with the rope-end.</p>
<p>Had the gray rabbit, which suddenly at that
moment whisked out of the woods and across a
distant corner, opened its mouth and addressed
them, the surprise to the two scouts could scarcely
have been greater.</p>
<p>“Oh! <i>you can</i>, can you?” said Nixon thickly.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
“Let’s see you try!” He placed the rope-end
in Harold’s hand, which received it with a fondling
touch.</p>
<p>“Here you make a small loop on this part of
the rope, leaving a good long end,” he began
coolly, while his heart bounded, for the spark in
the furtive eye of the twelve-year-old “scaree”
was rapidly becoming a scintillation: the scouts
had struck fire from him at last.</p>
<p>A triumph beside which the signal achievement
of their friction fire in the woods paled!</p>
<p>The intangible dragon which held their brother
boy a captive on this lonely clearing, not permitting
him to mingle freely with his fellows for
study or play, was weakening before them.</p>
<p>“That’s right, Harold! Go ahead: now pass
the end up through the loop! Bravo, you’re the
boy! Now, around the standing part—the rope
itself—and down again! Good: you have it.
You can beat <i>him</i> every time at tying a knot:
he’s just a blockhead, isn’t he?”</p>
<p>And Scout Warren pointed with much show of
scorn at Marcoo, the normal recruit, who looked
on delightedly. Never before did boy rejoice
so unselfishly over being beaten at a test as
Coombsie then! For right here on the little farm-clearing
a strange thing had happened.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
<p>In the gloom of every beclouded mind there is
one chink by which light, more or less, may enter;
and a skillful teacher can work an improvement
by enlarging that chink.</p>
<p>Harold’s brain was not darkened in the sense
of being defective. And the gray tent of fear in
which he dwelt had its chink too; the scouts had
found it in the frayed rope-end and knot.</p>
<p>For while the timid boy watched Coombsie’s
bungling fingers, that drab knot, upon which they
blundered, suddenly beckoned to him like a star.</p>
<p>And, all in a moment, it was no longer his
fear-stricken mother who lived in him, but his daring
fisherman-father whose horny fingers could
tie every sailor’s knot that was ever heard of,
and who had used that bowline noose in many an
emergency at sea to save a ship-wrecked fellow-creature.</p>
<p>The bowline was the means of saving the
fisherman’s son now from mental shipwreck, or
something nearly as bad. Harold’s eager thoughts
became entangled in it, while his fingers worked
under Nixon’s directions; he forgot, for once,
to be afraid.</p>
<p>Presently the noose was complete, and Nixon
was showing him how to tighten it by pulling
on the standing part of the rope.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
<p>This achieved, the timid human “Hare” raised
his brown eyes from the rope in his hand and
looked from one to another of his three companions
as in a dream, a bright one.</p>
<p>For half a minute a rainbowed—almost awed—silence
held the three upon the clearing.
Toiney was the first to break it. He flung his
arms rapturously round the hitherto fear-bound
boy.</p>
<p>“Bravo! mo’ fin,” he cried, embracing Harold
as his “cute one.” “Bravo! mo’ smarty. Grace
à bon Dieu, you ain’ so scare anny longere! You
go for be de boy—de brave boy—you go for
be de scout—engh?” His eyes were wet and
winking as if, now indeed, he felt “lak’ cry”!</p>
<p>“Certainly, you’re going to be a scout, Harold,”
corroborated Nixon, equally if not so eloquently
moved. “Now! don’t you want to learn
how to tie another knot, the fisherman’s bend?
You ought to be able to tie that, you know, because
your father was a great fisherman.”</p>
<p>Harold was nothing loath. More and more his
father’s spirit flashed awake in him. Through the
rest of that afternoon, which marked a new era
in his life, he seemed to work with his father’s fingers,
while the October sky glowed in radiant
tints of saffron and blue, and a light breeze
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
skipped through the pine-trees and the brilliant
maples that flamed at intervals like lamps around
the clearing.</p>
<p>“We’ll come again to-morrow or the day after,
Harold, and teach you more ‘stunts’; I mean
some other things, besides knot-tying, that a boy
ought to know how to do,” said Nixon as a filmy
haze hovering over the edges of the woods warned
them that it bore evening on its dull blue wings.</p>
<p>“Aw right!” docilely agreed Harold; and
though he shuffled his feet timidly, like the “poltron”
or craven, which Toiney had in sorrow
called him, there was a shy longing in his face
which said that he was sorry the afternoon was
over, that he would look for the return of his
new friends, the only boys who had ever racked
their brains to help and not to hurt him.</p>
<p>Before their departure he had learned how to
tie three knots, square or reef, bowline and the
fisherman’s bend. He had likewise admitted two
more persons within the narrow enclosure of his
confidence—the two who were to liberate him,
the <i>éclaireurs</i>, the peace scouts of to-day.</p>
<p>And, for the first time in his life, he had awkwardly
lifted his cap and saluted the flag of his
country as it waved in miniature from the planted
staff.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
<p>That afternoon was the first of several spent
by Scout Warren and his aide-de-camp, Coombsie,
on the little farm-clearing in the woods, trying
to foster a boyish spirit in Harold, to overcome
his dread of mingling with other boys, to awaken
in him the desire to become a boy scout and share
the latter’s good times at indoor meeting, on hike,
or in camp.</p>
<p>When the date of the second meeting drew
near at which seven new recruits were to take
the scout oath and be formally organized into
the Owl Patrol, they had obtained the promise
of this timid fledgling to be present under
Toiney’s wing, and enlist, too.</p>
<p>“I wonder whether he’ll keep his word or if
he’ll fight shy of coming at the last minute?”
whispered Nixon to Coombsie on the all-important
evening when the other recruits led by their
scoutmaster marched into the modest town hall,
a neutral ground where all of diverse creeds
might meet, and where the members of the local
council, including the doctor and Captain Andy,
had already assembled.</p>
<p>“If he doesn’t show up, Nix, you won’t be
able to pass the twelfth point of test for becoming
a first-class scout by producing a recruit
trained by yourself in the requirements of a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
tenderfoot,” suggested Marcoo. “You’ve passed
all the active tests, haven’t you?”</p>
<p>Scout Warren nodded, keeping an anxious eye
on the door. Having been duly transferred from
his Philadelphia troop to the new patrol which
had just been organized in this tide-lapped corner
of Massachusetts—where it seemed probable
now that he would spend a year at least, as his
parents contemplated a longer stay in Europe—he
had already passed the major part of his
examination for first-class scout before the Scout
Commissioner of the district.</p>
<p>He was an expert in first-aid and primitive
cooking. He had prepared a fair map of a certain
section of the marshy country near the tidal
river. He could state upon his honor that he had
accurately judged with his eye a certain distance
in the woods—namely, from the top of that
towering red-oak-tree which, when lost, he had
chosen as a lookout point, to the cave called the
Bear’s Den—on the never-to-be-forgotten day
when four painted boys and a dog finally took
refuge in that rocky cavern; the boy scout’s
judgment of the distance being subsequently confirmed
by lumbermen who knew every important
tree in that section of the woods.</p>
<p>He had passed tests in swimming, tree-felling,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
map-reading, and so forth! But he would not
be entitled to wear, instead of the second-class
scout badge, the badge of the first-class rank,
beneath the two white bars of the patrol leader
upon his left arm, until he produced the tenderfoot
whom he had trained.</p>
<p>But would that timid recruit from the little
woodland clearing—that half-fledged Owlet—appear?</p>
<p>“Suppose he should ‘funk it’ at the last minute?”
whispered Marcoo tragically to the patrol
leader. “No! No! As I’m alive! here they come—Toiney,
with Harold in tow. Blessings on that
Canuck!” he added fervently.</p>
<p>It was a strange-looking pair who now entered
the little town hall: Toiney, in a rough gray
sweater and those heelless high boots, removing
his tasseled cap and depositing in a corner the
lantern which had guided him with his charge
through the woods, as facile to him by night
as by day; and Harold, timidly clinging to his
arm.</p>
<p>The brown eyes of the latter rolled up in panic
as he beheld the big lighted room wherein the
boy scouts and those interested in them were
assembled. All his mother’s unbalanced fear of
a crowd returning upon him in full force, he
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
would have fled, but for Toiney’s firm imprisonment
of his trembling arm, and for Toiney’s
voice encouraging him gutturally with:—</p>
<p>“Tiens! mo’ beau. <i>Courage!</i> Gard’ donc de
scout wit’ de flag on she’s hand! V’là! V’là!”
pointing to Nixon, the patrol leader, supporting
the Stars and Stripes. “Bon courage! you go
for be de scout too—engh?”</p>
<p>His country’s flag, blooming into magnificence
under the electric light, had, to-night, a smile for
Harold, as he saw it the centre of saluting boys.</p>
<p>Something of his brave father’s love for that
National Ensign, the “Color” as the fisherman
called it, which had presided over so many crises
of that father’s life, as when on a gala day in
harbor he ran it to the masthead, or twined it
in the rigging, at sea, to speak another vessel, or
sorrowfully hoisted it at half-mast for a shipmate
drowned,—something of that loving reverence
now began to blossom in Harold’s heart like a
many-tinted flower!</p>
<p>“Well! here you are, Harold.” Coombsie was
promptly taking charge of the new arrival, piloting
him, with Toiney, to a seat. “I knew you’d
come; you’ve got the right stuff in you; eh?”</p>
<p>It was feeble “stuff” at the moment, and in
danger of melting into an open attempt at flight;
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
for Harold’s eyes had turned from the benignant
flag to the figure of Leon Chase.</p>
<p>But Leon had little opportunity, and less desire,
to harass him to-night.</p>
<p>For, as the kernel of the initiatory proceedings
was reached, the first of the seven new recruits
to hold up the three fingers of his right
hand and take the scout oath was Starrie Chase:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“On my honor I will do my best, to do my duty</span><br />
to God and my country, and to obey the scout law:<br />
To help other people at all times, to keep myself physically<br />
strong, mentally awake and morally straight.”</div>
<p>Captain Andy cleared his throat as he listened,
and the doctor wiped his glasses.</p>
<p>Then, as corporal or second in command of
the new patrol, Leon stood holding aloft the
brand-new flag of that patrol—a great, horned
hoot-owl, the Grand Duke of the neighboring
woods, embroidered on a blue ground by Colin’s
mother—while his brother recruits, having
each passed the tenderfoot test, took the oath
and were enrolled as duly fledged Owls.</p>
<p>Harold, the timid fledgling, came last. Supported
on either side by his sponsors, Nixon and
Coombsie, he distinguished himself by tying the
four knots which formed part of the test with
swiftness and skill, and by “muddling” through
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
the rest of the examination, consent having been
obtained from headquarters that some leniency
in the matter of answers might be shown to this
handicapped boy who had never been to school
and for whom—as for Leon—the Boy Scout
Movement might prove The Thing.</p>
<p>Captain Andy declared it to be “The Thing”
when later that night he was called upon for a
speech.</p>
<p>“Boys!” he said, heaving his massive figure
erect, the sky-blue rift of his eye twinkling under
the cloudy lid. “Boys! it’s an able craft, this
new movement, if you’ll only buckle to an’ work
it well. And it’s a hearty motto you have: <span class="sc">Be
Prepared</span>. Prepared to help yourselves, so that
you can stand by to help others! Lads,”—the
voice of the old sea-fighter boomed blustrously,—”there
comes a time to ’most every one who
isn’t a poor-hearted lubber, when he wants to
help somebody else more than he ever wanted to
help himself; and if he hasn’t made the most o’
what powers he has, why! when that Big Minute
comes he won’t be ‘in it.’ Belay that! Make it
fast here!” tapping his forehead. “Live up to
your able motto an’ pretty soon you’ll find yourselves
going ahead under all the sail you can
carry; an’ you won’t be trying to get a corner
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
on the breeze either, or to blanket any other fellow’s
sails! Rather, you’ll show him the road
an’ give him a tow when he needs it. God bless
you! So long!”</p>
<p>And when the wisdom of the grand old sea-scout
had been cheered to the echo, the eight
members of the new patrol, rallying round their
Owl flag, broke into the first verse of their song,
a part of which Nixon had sung to them by the
camp-fire in the woods:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“No loyal Scout gives place to doubt,</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But action quick he shows!</span><br />
Like a knight of old he is brave and bold,<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And chivalry he knows.</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Then hurrah for the brave, hurrah for the good!</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Hurrah for the pure in heart!</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">At duty’s call, with a smile for all,</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The Scout will do his part!”</span><br />
</div>
<p>“Sing! Harold. Do your part, and sing!”
urged Nixon, the patrol leader. “Oh, go on:
that isn’t a scout’s mouth, Harold!” looking at
the weak brother’s fear-tightened lips. “A scout’s
mouth turns up at the corners. Smile, Harold!
Smile and sing.”</p>
<p>A minute later Scout Warren’s own features
were wreathed by a smile, humorous, moved,
glad—more glad than any which had illumined
his face hitherto—for by his side the boy who
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
had once feared the stars as they stole out above
the clearing, was singing after him:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“Hurrah for the sun, hurrah for the storm!</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hurrah for the stars above!”</span><br />
</div>
<p>“He’s going to make a good scout, some
time; don’t you think so, Cap?” Nixon, glancing
down at the timid “poltron,” nudged Captain
Andy’s arm.</p>
<p>“Aye, aye! lad, I guess he will, when you’ve
put some more backbone into him,” came the
optimistic answer.</p>
<p>But Captain Andy’s gaze did not linger on
Harold. The keen search-light of his glance was
trained upon Leon—upon Corporal Chase, who,
judging by the new and lively purpose in his
face, had to-night, indeed, through the channel
of his scout oath, “deepened the water in which
he floated,” as he stood holding high the royal-blue
banner of the Owl Patrol.</p><hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER IX</p>
<p class="center chap2">GODEY PECK</p>
<p>That stirring initiation meeting was the forerunner
of others thereafter held weekly in the
small town hall, when the members of the new
patrol had their bodies developed, stiffened into
manly erectness by a good drill and various
rousing indoor games, while their minds were
expanded by the practice of various new and exciting
“stunts” as Leon called them.</p>
<p>To Starrie Chase the most interesting of these
in which he soon became surprisingly proficient
was the flag-signaling, transmitting or receiving
a message to or from a brother scout stationed
at the other end of the long hall. Spelling out
such a message swiftly, letter by letter, with the
two little red and white flags, according to either
the semaphore or American Morse code, had a
splendid fascination for him.</p>
<p>More exciting still was it when on some dark
fall evening, at the end of the Saturday afternoon
hike, he gathered with his brother scouts
around a blazing camp-fire on the uplands, with
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
the pale gray ribbon of the tidal river dimly unrolling
itself beyond the low-lying marshes, and
the scoutmaster would suggest that he should
try some outdoor signaling to another scout stationed
on a distant hillock, using torches, two
red brands from the fire, one in each hand, instead
of the regulation flags.</p>
<p>“Oh! but this is in-ter-est-ing; makes a fellow
feel as if he were ‘going some’!” Starrie would
declare to himself in an ecstatic drawl, as, first
his right arm, then his left, manipulated the rosy
firebrands, while his keen eyes could barely discern
the black silhouette of his brother Owl’s
figure on its distant mound, as he spelled out a
brief message.</p>
<p>It certainly was “going.” There was progress
here: exciting progress. Growth which made the
excitement squeezed out of his former pranks
seem tame and childish!</p>
<p>And more than one resident of the neighborhood—including
Dave Baldwin’s old mother,
who lived alone in her shallow, baldfaced house,
almost denuded of paint by the elements, at a
bleak point where upland and salt-marsh met—drew
a free breath and thanked God for a
respite.</p>
<p>In addition to the indoor signaling there were
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
talks on first-aid to the injured by the busy doctor
and on seamanship by Captain Andy whose
big voice had a storm-burr clinging to it in which,
at exciting moments, an intent ear could almost
catch the echo of the gale’s roar, of raging seas,
shrieking rigging and slatting sails—all the
wild orchestra of the storm-king.</p>
<p>Then there were the Saturday hikes, and once
in a while the week-end camping-out in the
woods from Friday evening to Saturday night,
whenever Scoutmaster Estey, Colin’s much-admired
brother, could obtain a forenoon holiday,
in addition to the customary Saturday afternoon,
from the office where he worked as naval
architect, or expert designer of fishing-vessels,
in connection with a shipbuilding yard on the
river.</p>
<p>A notable figure in relation to the scouts’ outdoor
life was Toiney Leduc, the French-Canadian
farmhand. As time progressed he became an inseparable
part of it.</p>
<p>For Harold, the abnormally timid boy, for
whom it was hoped that the new movement would
do much, was inseparable from him: Harold
would not come to scout meeting or march on
hike without Toiney, although with his brother
Owls and their scoutmaster he was already
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
beginning to emerge from his shadowy fears like
a beetle from the grub.</p>
<p>In time he would no doubt fully realize what
impotent bugaboos were his vague terrors, and
would be reconciled to the world at large through
the medium of the Owl Patrol.</p>
<p>Already there was such an improvement in his
health and spirits that his grandfather raised
Toiney’s wages on condition that he would consent
to work all the year round on the little
farm-clearing, and no longer spend his winters
at some loggers’ camp, tree-felling, in the
woods.</p>
<p>Moreover Old Man Greer, to whom the abnormal
condition of his only grandson had been
a sore trial, was willing and glad to spare Toiney’s
services as woodland guide to the boy scouts,
including Harold, whenever they were required
for a week-end excursion.</p>
<p>And so much did those eight scouts learn from
this primitive woodsman, who could not command
enough English to say “Boo!” straight, according
to Leon, but who understood the language
and track-prints of bird and animal as if they
the shy ones had taught him, that by general
petition of all members of the new patrol, Toiney
was elected assistant scoutmaster, and duly
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
received his emblazoned certificate from headquarters.</p>
<p>His presence and songs lent a primitive charm
to many a camp-fire gathering; no normal boy
could feel temporarily dull in his company, for
Toiney, besides being an expert in woodlore and
a good trailer, was essentially a <i>bon enfant</i>, or
jolly child, at heart, meeting every experience
with the blithe faith that, somehow—somewhere—he
would come out on top.</p>
<p>In the woods his songs were generally inaudible,
locked up in his heart or throat, though occasionally
they escaped to his lips which would
move silently in a preliminary canter, then part
to emit a gay bar or two, a joyous “Tra la
la ... la!” or:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“Rond’, Rond’, Rond’, peti’ pie pon’ ton’!”</span>
</div>
<p>But on these occasions the strain rarely soared
above a whisper and was promptly suspended lest
it should startle any wild thing within hearing,
while he led his boy scouts through the denser
woods with the skill and stealth of the Indian
whose wary blood mingled very slightly with the
current in his veins.</p>
<p>Those were mighty moments for the young
scoutmaster and members of the Owl Patrol
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
when they “lay low,” crouching breathlessly in
some thicket, with Toiney, prostrate on his face
and hands, a little in advance of them, his black
eyes intent upon a fox-path, a mere shadow-track
such as four of their number had seen on that
first memorable day in the woods, where only the
lightly trampled weeds or an occasional depression
in some little bush told their assistant scoutmaster,
whom nothing escaped, that some airy-footed
animal was in the habit of passing there
from burrow to hunting-ground.</p>
<p>The waiting was sometimes long and the enforced
silence irksome to youthful scouts; there
were times when it oppressed one or other of the
boys like a steel cage against the bars of which
his voice, like a rebellious bird, dashed itself in
some irrepressible sound, a pinched-off cry or
smothered whistle.</p>
<p>But that always drew a backward hiss of
“Mak’ you s-silent! W’at for you spik lak
dat?” from the advance scout, Toiney, or a
clipped, sarcastic “<i>T’as pas besoin</i> to shoutee—engh?”</p>
<p>And the needless semi-shout was repressed next
time by the reprimanded one, many a lesson in
self-control being learned thereby.</p>
<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both;" summary="Illustration">
<tr><td class="figcenter"><img style="width:392px; height:603px" src="images/illus165.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="caption">“MAK’ YOU S-SILENT! W’AT FOR YOU SPIK LAK DAT?”</td></tr></table>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
<p>More than once patience was at last rewarded
by a glimpse of the trotting traveler, the sly red
fox, maker of that shadow-path: of its sandy
coat, white throat, large black ears, and the bushy,
reddish tail, with milk-white tip, the “flag” as
woodsmen call it.</p>
<p>Instinctively on such occasions Leon at first
yearned for his gun, his old “fuzzee,” with which
he had worked havoc—often purposeless and
excessive—among shore birds, and from which
he had to part when he enlisted in the Boy
Scouts of America, and adopted principles tending
toward the conservation of all wild life rather
than to destruction.</p>
<p>Gradually, however, Starrie Chase, like his
brother scouts, came under the glamour of this
peaceful trailing. He began to discover a subtler
excitement, more spicy fun—the spicier for
Toiney’s presence—in the brief contemplation
of that dog-fox at home, trotting along, unmolested,
to his hunting-ground, than in past fevered
glimpses of him when all interest in his wiles and
habits was merged into greed for his skin and
tail.</p>
<p>Many were the opportunities, too, for a glimpse
at the white flag of the shy deer as it bounded
off into some deeper woodland glade, and for
being thrilled by the swift drumming of the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
partridge’s wings when it rose from its dusting-place
on the ground or on some old log whose
brown, flaky wood could be reduced to powder;
or from feasting on the brilliant and lowly partridge-berries
which, nestling amid their evergreen
leaves, challenged November’s sereness.</p>
<p>Each woodland hike brought its own revelation—its
special discovery—insignificant, perhaps—but
which thereafter stood out as a beauty
spot upon the face of the day.</p>
<p>The hikes were generally conducted after this
manner: seven of the Owls with their tall scoutmaster
would leave the town bright and early on
a Saturday morning, a goodly spectacle in their
khaki uniforms, and, staff in hand, take their
way through the woods to the little farm-clearing
where they were reinforced by the assistant scoutmaster
in his rough garb—Toiney would not
don the scout uniform—and by Harold, the still
weak brother.</p>
<p>Their coming was generally heralded by modified
shouting. And the impulsive Toiney would
suspend some farm task and stand erect with an
explosive “<i>Houp-là!</i>” tickling his throat, to witness
that most exhilarating of present-day sights,
a party of boy scouts emerging from the woods
into a clearing, with Mother Nature in the guise
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
of the early sunshine rushing, open-armed, to meet
them, as if welcoming her stray children back to
her heart.</p>
<p>Then Toiney, as forest guide, would assume
the leadership of the party, and not only was his
thorough acquaintance with “de bird en de littal
wil’ an-ni-mal” valuable; but his fund of
knowledge about “heem beeg tree,” and the uses
to which the different kinds of wood could be
put, seemed broad and unfailing, too.</p>
<p>The most exciting discovery of that season to
the boys was when he pointed out to them one
day the small hole or den amid some rocky ledges
near Big Swamp where the Mother Coon—as
sometimes happens, though she generally prefers
a hollow tree—had brought forth her intrepid
offspring; both the one which had raided Toiney’s
hencoop, and Raccoon Junior who had come to a
warlike issue with the crows.</p>
<p>Toiney, as he explained, had investigated that
deep hole amid the ledges when the woods were
green with spring, and had discovered some wild
animal which by its size and general outline
he knew to be a coon, crouching at the inner
end of it, with her young “littal as small cat.”
He had beaten a hasty retreat, not willing to
provoke a possible attack from the mother
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
rendered bold by maternity, or to disturb the infant
family.</p>
<p>He was radiant at finding the coon’s rocky
home again, though tenantless, now.</p>
<p>“Ha! I’ll know we fin’ heem den”; he beamed
upon his comrades with primitive conceit. “We
arre de boy—engh? We arre de bes’ scout ev’ry
tam!”</p>
<p>And that was the aim of each member of the
Owl Patrol, with the exception, perhaps, of Harold,
not indeed to be the “best scout,” but to
figure as the equal in scoutcraft of any lad of his
age and a corresponding period of service, in the
United States. To this end he drilled, explored
and studied, somewhat to the mystification of boys
who still held aloof from the scout movement!</p>
<p>“Where are ye off to, Starrie?” inquired
Godey Peck, a youth of this type, one fair November
afternoon, intercepting Leon about an
hour after school had closed. “Don’t you want
to come along with me? I’m going down to
Stanway’s shipyard to have a look at the new
vessel that they’re going to launch at daybreak
to-morrow. She’s all wedged up on the ways,
ready to go. Say!” Godey edged slyly nearer
to Leon, “us boys—Choc Latour, Benjie Lane
an’ me—have hit on a plan for being launched
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
in her. You know they won’t allow boys to be
aboard, if they know it, when she shoots off the
launching ways. But those ship carpenters’ll
have to rise bright and early if they want to get
ahead of us! See?”</p>
<p>Godey laid a forefinger against the left side
of his nose, to emphasize a high opinion of his
own subtlety.</p>
<p>“How are you going to work it?” Leon
asked briefly.</p>
<p>“Why! there’s a vessel ’most built on the
stocks right ’longside the finished hull. Us boys
are going to wake very early, trot down to the
shipyard before any of the workmen are around;
then we’ll shin up the staging an’ over the half-built
vessel right onto the white deck o’ the new
one that’s waiting to be launched. ’Twill be
easy to drop below into the cabin an’ hide under
the bunks until the time comes for launching
her. When we hear ’em knocking out the last
block from under her keel—when she’s just
beginning to crawl—then we’ll pop up an’ be
on deck when she’s launched; see?”</p>
<p>“Ho! So you’re going to do the stowaway
act, eh?” Starrie Chase, with that characteristic
snap of his brown eyes, seemed to be taking
a mental photograph of the plan.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
<p>“Only for an hour or two. You want to be in
this too; don’t you, Starrie?”</p>
<p>Leon was silent, considering. The underhand
scheme ran counter to the aboveboard principles
of the scout law which he had sworn to obey;
of that he felt sure. “On my honor I will do my
best ... to keep myself morally straight!”
Voluntarily and enthusiastically he had taken
the chivalrous oath, and he was “too much of a
fellow” to go back on it deliberately.</p>
<p>“No! I don’t want to play stowaway,” he
answered after a minute. “It’s a crazy plan anyhow!
Give it up, Gode! Likely enough you’ll
scratch up the paint of the new cabin with your
boots, skulking there all three of you—then
there’ll be a big row; and ’twould seem a pity,
too, after all the months it has taken to build
an’ paint that dandy new hull.”</p>
<p>Such a view would scarcely have presented
itself to Leon two months ago; he certainly was
“deepening the water” in which he floated.</p>
<p>“Well, let’s pop down to the shipyard anyhow,
an’ see her!” urged Godey, hoping that a
contemplation of the new vessel, airily wedged
high on the launching ways, with her bridal
deck white as a hound’s tooth, would weaken the
other’s resolution.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
<p>“No, I’ll be down there to-morrow morning,
on the river-slip, to see her go. But I want to do
something else this afternoon. I’m going home
to study.”</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“Flag-signaling in the Boy Scout Handbook.
I can send a message by semaphore now, twenty
letters per minute; I must get it down to sixteen
before I can pass the examination for first-class
scout!” Starrie threw this out impetuously, his
face glowing. “We’re going to have an outdoor
test in some other things this evening—if I
pass it I’ll be a second-class scout. I don’t want
to be a tenderfoot for ever! Say! but the signaling
gets me; it’s so interesting: I’m beginning
to study the Morse code now.”</p>
<p>“Pshaw! You boy scouts jus’ make me tired.”
Godey leaned against the parapet of the broad
bridge above the tidal river whereon the boys
stood, as if the contemplation of so much energy
ambitiously directed was too much for him.
“Here comes another of your kind now!”</p>
<p>He pointed to Colin Estey who came swinging
along out of the distance, his quick springy step
and upright carriage doing credit to the scouts’
drill.</p>
<p>Colin halted ere crossing the bridge to hail a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
street-car for an old gentleman who was making
futile attempts to stop it, and then courteously
helped him to the platform.</p>
<p>Godey shook his head over the action. “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”
he crowed scornfully. “Ain’t we
acting hifalutin?”</p>
<p>Yet there was nothing at all bombastic about
the simple good turn or in Colin’s bright face as
he joined the other scout upon the bridge and
marched off homeward with him, their rhythmic
step and erect carriage attracting the attention
of more than one adult pedestrian.</p>
<p>Godey lolled on the parapet, looking after
them, racking his brain for some derisive epithet
to hurl at their backs; he longed to shout,
“Sissies!” and “Spongecakes!” But such belittling
terms clearly didn’t apply.</p>
<p>The only mocking shaft in his quiver that
would come anywhere near hitting the mark of
those well-drilled backs—straight as a rod—was
one which even he felt to be feeble:—</p>
<p>“Oh! you Tin Scouts,” he shouted maliciously.
“Tin Soldiers! <i>Tin Scouts!</i>” sustaining the cry
until the two figures disappeared from view in
the direction of the Chase homestead.</p><hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER X</p>
<p class="center chap2">THE BALDFACED HOUSE</p>
<p>But Leon did not study signaling and the
Morse alphabet that afternoon. He was presently
dispatched by his father, who owned a pleasant
home on the outskirts of the town, on an errand
to a farm some two miles distant on the uplands
that skirted the woods.</p>
<p>The afternoon had all the spicy beauty of
early November, with a slight frost in the air.
The fresh breeze laughed like a tomboy as it
romped over the salt-marshes. Each eddying
dimple in the tidal river shone like a star sapphire,
while the broad, brackish channel wound
in and out between the marshes with as many
wriggles as a lively trout.</p>
<p>“Those little creeks look like runaways,”
thought Leon as he paused upon the uplands
and beamed down upon the wide panorama of
golden marsh-land and winding water. “They’re
for all the world like schoolboys that have cut
school, giggling an’ running to hide!” His eye
dreamily followed the course of many a truant
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
creek that half-turned its head, looking under
the tickling sunbeams as if it were glancing back
over its shoulder, while it burrowed into the
marshes vainly trying to hide where the relentless
schoolmaster, called, for want of a better
name, Solar Attraction, might not find it and
compel its return to the ocean.</p>
<p>“And the Sugarloaf Sand-Dunes; don’t they
look fine?” reflected the boy scout further, his
eye traveling off downstream to where the curving
tidal channel broadened into pearly plains of
water, bounded at one distant point, near the
juncture of river and sea, by a dazzlingly white
beach.</p>
<p>There the fine colorless sand, which when
viewed closely had very much the hue of skim
milk, the white being shot with a faint gray-blue
tinge, had been piled by the winds of ages into
tall sand-hills, into pyramids and columns: one
dazzling pillar, in especial, being named the
Sugarloaf from its crystalline whiteness, had
given its name to the whole expanse of dune and
beach.</p>
<p>The tall Sugarloaf gleamed in the distance
now like a snowy lighthouse whose lamps are
sleeping, presiding over the mouth of the tidal
river; its brother sand-hills capped by vegetation
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
might have been the pure bright cliffs of some
fairy shore.</p>
<p>The boy scout stood for many minutes upon
the uplands, gazing afar, his mouth open as if he
were physically drinking in that distant beauty.</p>
<p>“Gee whiz! this is gr-reat; isn’t it, Blinkie?”
he murmured to the squatting dog by his side.
“I never before saw that old Sugarloaf look as
it does to-day; did you, Mr. Dog?”</p>
<p>It had appeared just as radiantly beautiful,
off and on, during all the seasons of Leon’s life.
But his powers of observation had not been
trained as was the case of late. In the years prior
to his becoming a scout, when his inseparable
companion on uplands and marsh had been a
shotgun—from the time he was permitted free
use of one—and the all-absorbing idea in his
mind how to contrive a successful shot at shore
bird or animal, he had gone about “lak wit’ eye
shut,” so far as many things just now beginning
to fill him with a wonderful, speechless gladness
were concerned.</p>
<p>“Well, we’re not heading for that farmhouse,
are we, pup?” he said at length, turning from
the contemplation of runaway creeks and radiant
dunes to the completion of his father’s errand.</p>
<p>But the sunlit beauty at which he had been
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
gazing coursed through his every vein, finding
vent in a curly, ecstatic whistle that ascended in
spirals until it touched the high keynote of exultation
and there hung suspended; while the
rest of the trip to that upland farmhouse was
accomplished in a series of broad jumps, the
terrier being as wild with delight as his master.</p>
<p>The errand performed and the boy scout having
put in half an hour condescendingly amusing
the farmer’s two small children, while Blink exchanged
compliments with his kind, master and
dog started upon the return walk.</p>
<p>“Oh! it’s early yet; don’t you want to come
a little way into the woods, doggie?” said Leon,
doubling backward after they had taken a few
steps. “We haven’t had many runs together
lately. Your nose has been out of joint; poor
pup!” stooping to caress the terrier. “Toiney
says we can’t take you on our scout hikes, because
you’d scare every ‘littal wil’ an-ni-mal’
within a mile. You would, too; wouldn’t you?
But there’s an outdoor scout meeting to-night
to be held over in Sparrow Hollow, each fellow
lighting his own camp-fire—using not more
than two matches—and cooking his own supper.
And you may come. Yes, I said you might
come!” as the dog, gyrating like a feather,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
seized his coat-sleeve between strong white teeth
in his eagerness not to be excluded from any
more fun that might be afoot.</p>
<p>They were soon on the sere skirts of the woodland,
prancing through leafy drifts.</p>
<p>“We can’t go far,” said Leon. “We must
get back to the town and buy our half-pound of
beefsteak that we’re to cook without the use of
any ordinary cooking-utensil, and so pass one of
the tests for becoming a second-class scout. I’ll
divvy up with you, pup! But whew! isn’t this
just fine?... The woods in November can put
it all over the September woods to my mind.”</p>
<p>He added the last words to himself. There
was something about the rugged strength of the
stripped trees, with the stealing blue haze of
evening softening their bareness, about the evergreen
grandeur of pine and hemlock lording it
over their robbed brethren, about the drab,
parchment-like leaves clinging with eerie murmur
to the oak-tree, and the ruddy twigs of bare
berry-bushes, that appealed to the element of
rugged daring in the boy himself.</p>
<p>He could not so soon break away from the
woods as he had intended, though he only explored
their outskirts.</p>
<p>Dusk was already falling when he found himself
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
on the open uplands again, bound back toward
the distant town.</p>
<p>“The scouts are to start for Sparrow Hollow
at six o’clock: we must hustle, if we want to
start with them,” he said to the dog. “The only
way we can make it is by taking a short cut
across the marshes and wading through the
river; that would be a quick way of reaching
the town and the butcher’s shop, to buy our
beefsteak,” muttering rapidly, partly to himself,
partly to his impatient companion. “The tide is
full out now, the water will be shallow; I can
take off my shoes and stockings and carry you,
pup. Who cares if it’s cold?”</p>
<p>The boy scout, with an anticipatory glow all
over him, felt impervious to any extreme of temperature
as he bounded down the uplands, with
the breeze—the freshening, freakish breeze—driving
across the salt-marshes directly in his
face, racing through every vein in him, stirring
up a whirligig within, presently bringing waste
things to the top even as it stirred up dust and
refuse in the roadway.</p>
<p>“Hullo! there’s the old <i>baldfaced house</i>,”
he cried suddenly to the dog. “Here we are on
our old stamping-ground, Blink! Wonder if
‘Mom Baldwin’ is doing her witch stunts still?
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
We haven’t said ‘Howdy!’ to her for a long
time; have we, pup?”</p>
<p>Slackening pace, for that fickle breeze was
blowing away many things that he ought to
have remembered, among them the lateness of
the hour, he turned aside a few steps to where a
lonely old house stood at the foot of the slope as
the uplands melted into the salt-marshes.</p>
<p>It was a shallow shell of a dwelling—all face
and no rear apparently—and that face was bald,
almost stripped of paint by the elements. Just
as storm-stripped was the heart of the one old
woman who lived in it, and whom Leon had been
wont to call a “solitary crank!”</p>
<p>To the neighborhood generally she was known
as Ma’am Baldwin, mother of the young scape-grace,
Dave Baldwin, who had so troubled the
peaceful town by his pranks that he had finally
been shut up in a reformatory, and who was
now, a year after his release, a useless vagrant,
spending, according to report, most of his time
loafing between the white sand-dunes on one side
of the river and the woods on the other—incidentally
breaking his mother’s heart at the same
time.</p>
<p>She had lived here in the old baldfaced house,
with him, her youngest boy, the child of her middle
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
age, until his wild doings brought the law’s
hand upon him. After his imprisonment shame
prevented her leaving the isolated dwelling and
going to live with her married daughter near the
town, though that daughter’s one child, her little
grandson Jack, possessed all the love-spots
still green in her withered heart.</p>
<p>In her humiliation and loneliness “Mom Baldwin,”
as the boys called her, had become rather
eccentric.</p>
<p>She had more than once been seen by those
town boys—Leon and his gang—stationed behind
the smeared glass of her paintless window,
doing strange signaling “stunts” with a lighted
lantern, whose pale rays described a circle, dipped
and then shot up as, held aloft in her bony old
hand, it sent an amber gleam over the salt-marshes.</p>
<p>“She’s a witch—a witch like Dark Tammy,
who lived on the edge of the woods over a hundred
years ago and who washed her clothes at
the Witch Rock,” whispered Starrie Chase and his
companions one to another as they lay low among
the rank grass of the dark marshes, spying upon
her. “She’s a witch, working spells with that
lantern!”</p>
<p>Older people surmised that she was signaling
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
to her vagabond son, who might be haunting the
distant marshes, trying to lure him home; shame
and grief on his account had half-unbalanced her,
they said.</p>
<p>But the boys pretended to stick to their own
superstitious belief, because, to them, it offered
some shabby excuse for tormenting her.</p>
<p>Leon Chase in particular made her rank little
garden his nightly stamping-ground, and was the
most ingenious in his persecuting attentions.</p>
<p>He it was who devised the plan of anchoring
a shingle or other light piece of wood by a short
string to the longest branch of the apple-tree
that grew near her door.</p>
<p>When the wind blew directly across the marshes,
as it did this evening, and drove against that
paintless door, it operated the impromptu knocker;
the wooden shingle would keep up an intermittent
tapping, playing ticktack upon the painted
panels all night.</p>
<p>Sometimes Ma’am Baldwin had come to the
door a dozen times and peered forth over the
dark salt-marshes, believing that it was her vagrant
son who demanded entrance, while the perpetrators
of the trick, Leon Chase, Godey Peck
and others of their gang—tickled in the meanest
part of them by the fact that they “kept
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
her guessing”—hid among the marsh-grass and
watched.</p>
<p>Hardly any prank could have been more senseless,
childish, and unfeeling. Yet Starrie Chase
had actually believed that he got some sham
excitement out of it.</p>
<p>And to-night as his feet pressed his old stamping-ground
beneath that apple-tree beside the
house, while the wind raked the marshes and
whipped his thoughts into dusty confusion, the
old waste impulses which prompted the trick
were mysteriously whirled uppermost again.</p>
<p>The mischievous tide rip boiled in him once
more.</p>
<p>Just as he became conscious of its yeasty bubbling,
his foot touched something on the ground—a
hard winter apple. He picked it up and
threw it against the house, imposing silence on
his dog by dictatorial gesture and word.</p>
<p>There was a stir within the paintless dwelling.
Through the blurred window-panes he caught
sight of a shrunken form moving.</p>
<p>“Ha! there’s the old ‘witch’ herself. She
looks like a withered corn-stalk with all those
odds and ends of shawls dangling about her.
Ssh-ssh! Blinkie. Down, doggie! <i>Quiet, sir!</i>”</p>
<p>Leon’s fingers groped upon the ground, where
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
twilight shadows were merging into darkness,
for another apple. Since he enlisted as a boy
scout mischief had been sentenced and shut up
in a dark little cell inside him. But Malign Habit,
though a captive, dies hard.</p>
<p>Those seeking fingers touched something else,
a worm-eaten shingle blown from the old roof.
He picked it up and considered it in the darkness,
while his left hand felt in his pocket for
some twine.</p>
<p>“Gee! it would be a great night for that trick
to work,” he muttered with a low chuckle that
had less depth to it than a parrot’s. “The wind is
just in the right direction—driving straight
through the house. Eh, Blink! Shall we ‘get her
on a string’ again?”</p>
<p>The dog whined softly with impatience. Of
late, in his short excursions with his master, he
had not been used to such stealthy doings. With
the exception of the trailing expeditions through
the woods from which canines were debarred,
movements had been open, manly, and aboveboard
since the master became a boy scout.</p>
<p>But Leon had forgotten that he was a scout,
had momentarily forgotten even the outdoor test
in Sparrow Hollow, and the necessary preparations
therefor.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p>
<p>His fingers trifled with the shingle and string.
His brain going ahead of those fingers was
already attaching the one to the other when—the
paintless door opened and Ma’am Baldwin
stepped out.</p>
<p>She did look like a wind-torn corn-stalk, short
and withered, with the breeze catching at the
many-colored strips of shawls that hung around
her, uniting to protect her somewhat against
that marsh-wind driving straight from the river
through her home.</p>
<p>From her left hand drooped a pale lantern,
the one with which boyish imagination had accused
her of working spells.</p>
<p>It made an island of yellow light about her as
she stepped slowly forth into the dusk. And
Leon saw her raise her right arm to her breast
with that timid, pathetic movement characteristic
of old people—especially of those whom life has
treated harshly—as if she was afraid of what
might spring upon her out of the gusty darkness.</p>
<p>Not for nothing had Starrie Chase been for
two months a boy scout! Prior to those eight
weeks of training that feebly defensive arm would
have meant naught to him; hardly would he have
noticed it. But just as his eyes had been opened
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
to consider at length, with a dazzled thrill, that
distant Sugarloaf Sand-Pillar and other of Nature’s
beauties as he had seldom or never contemplated
them before; so those scout’s eyes were
being trained to remark each significant gesture
of another person and to read its meaning.</p>
<p>Somehow, that right arm laid across an old
woman’s breast told a tale of loneliness and lack
of defenders which made the boy wince. The
distance widened between his two hands holding
respectively the shingle and string.</p>
<p>There was a wood-pile within a few yards of
him. Ma’am Baldwin stepped toward it, breathing
heavily and ejaculating: “My sen-ses! How
it do blow!” While Leon restrained the terrier
with a “<i>Quiet</i>, Blink! Don’t go for her!”</p>
<p>Ma’am Baldwin, intent on holding fast to her
shawls and procuring some chunks from the
wood-pile—nearsighted as she was, to boot—did
not notice the boy and dog standing in the
blackness beneath the bare apple-tree.</p>
<p>She set the lantern atop of the pile. As she
bent forward, groping for a hatchet, its yellow
rays kindled two other lanterns in her eyes by
whose light the lurking boy gazed through into
her heart and saw for a brief moment how tired,
lonely, and baffled it was.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
<p>At the glimpse he straightened up very stiffly.
There was a gurgle in his throat, a stirring as of
panic at the roots of his hair.</p>
<p>But not scare produced the rigidity! It was
caused by a sudden great throe within which
scraped his throat and sent a dimness to his eyes.
The captive, Malign Habit, imprisoned before,
was dying now in the grasp of the Scout.</p>
<p>To put it otherwise,—at sight of an old
woman’s arm pathetically shielding her breast,
at a startled peep into her heart, the tight little
bud of chivalry in Leon, watered of late by his
scout training, fostered by the good turn to
somebody every day, burst suddenly, impetuously
into flower!</p>
<p>With a low snarl at himself, he thrust the coil
of string deep into his pocket, and flung the
shingle as far as he could into the night.</p>
<p>“Ughr-r-r! Guess I was meaner’n you’d be,
Blink!” he muttered, swallowing the discovery
that sometimes of yore, in his dealings with his
own kind, he had been less of a gentleman than
his dog.</p>
<p>To which Blink, freed from restraint, returned
a sharp, glad “Wouf!” that said: “I’m glad
you’ve come to your senses, old man!”</p>
<p>“Hullo! ‘Mom Baldwin,’” Leon stepped forward
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
as the bowed woman started at the monosyllabic
bark, and peered fearfully into the darkness.
“Don’t you want me to split those chunks
for you? You can’t manage the hatchet.”</p>
<p>Ma’am Baldwin’s experience had taught her to
distrust boys—Leon especially! As her peering
eyes recognized him, she backed away, raising
her right arm to her breast again with that helpless
gesture of defense.</p>
<p>Starrie Chase blenched in turn. That pathetic
old arm warding him off hurt him more at the
core than a knockdown blow from a stronger
limb.</p>
<p>But remembering all at once that he was a
scout, trained to prompt action, he picked up
the hatchet where she had dropped it, and set
to work vigorously, chopping wood.</p>
<p>“Now! I’ll carry these chunks into the house
for you,” he said presently. “Aw! let me. I’d
just as soon do it!”</p>
<p>Ma’am Baldwin had no alternative. Leon
pushed the paintless door open and carried the
wood inside, while she hobbled after him, well-nigh
as much astonished as if Gabriel’s trump
had suddenly awoke the echoes of the gusty
marshland.</p>
<p>The scout went to and fro for another ten
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
minutes, splitting more chunks, piling them ready
to her hand within.</p>
<p>Meanwhile his beneficiary, the old woman,
seemed to have got a little light on the surprising
situation. Grunting inarticulately, chewing
her bewilderment between her teeth, she disappeared
into a room off the kitchen and returned
holding forth a ten-cent piece to her knight.</p>
<p>“No, thanks! I’m a boy scout. We don’t
take money for doing a good turn.” Leon shook
his head. “Say! this old house is so draughty;
you burn all the wood you want to-night; I’ll
run over to-morrow or next day an’ split some
more. Is there anything else I can do for you
before I go? You’ve got enough water in from
the well,” he peered into the water-pail, which
winked satisfactorily.</p>
<p>Ma’am Baldwin had sunk upon a chair, alternately
looking in perplexity at the energetic boy,
and listening to the frisky gusts: “My sen-ses!
Whatever’s come over you, Leon?” she gasped;
and then wailingly: “Deary me! if it should
blow up a gale to-night, some things in this
house’ll ride out.”</p>
<p>“No, it isn’t going to blow up a storm,”
Leon reassured her. “The wind’s not really
high, only it gets such a rake over the marshes.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
Here, I’ll tie these old shutters together for you,
the fastening is broken,” and the coil of string
was produced from his pocket for a new purpose.
“But it must be <i>awful</i> lonely for you, living
here by yourself, Ma’am Baldwin. You’ll be
snowed in later on; we’ll have to come and dig
you out.”</p>
<p>Still chewing the cud of her bewilderment,
she stared at him, mumbling, nodding, and
stroking the gray hair from her forehead with
nervous fingers. But there was a humid light in
the old eyes that spilled over on the boy as he
worked.</p>
<p>“Why don’t you go to live with your daughter
an’ your grandson in the town?” went on Leon
as he tied together the last pair of flapping shutters.
“And you’re so fond of little Jack too;
he’s a nice kid!”</p>
<p>“So he is!” nodded the grandmother; a
change overspread her entire face now, she
looked tender, grandmotherly, half-hopeful, as
if for the moment trouble on behalf of her
ne’er-do-well son was forgotten. “Well! perhaps
I will move there before the winter sets in
hard, Leon. I’m not so smart as I was. I’m sure
I don’t know how to thank you! Good-night!”</p>
<p>“Good-night!” returned the scout. “You
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
can untie those shutters easily enough in the
morning.”</p>
<p>And he found himself outside again upon the
dark marshland, with the obedient terrier who
had trotted at his heels during the late proceedings,
waltzing excitedly at his side.</p>
<p>“Ah, la! la! as Toiney says, it’s too late
now, Blink, for us to put back to the town to
buy our supper—half a pound of beefsteak and
two potatoes, to be cooked over each one’s special
fire,” muttered the boy, momentarily irresolute.
“Well! we’ll have to let the grub go, and
race back across the uplands, over to the Hollow.
Stir your trotters, Mr. Dog!”</p>
<p>As the two regained the crest of the hilly uplands,
Leon paused for breath. On his left hand
stretched the dark, solemn woods, where the
breeze hooted weirdly among leafless boughs.
On his right, beyond upland and broad salt-marsh,
wound the silver-spot river in whose now
shallow ripples bathed a rising moon.</p>
<p>Quarter of a mile ahead of him a rosy flush
upon the cheek of darkness told that in the sheltered
hollow, between a clump of pines that
served as a windbreak and the woods, the Owls’
camp-fires were already blazing.</p>
<p>“Tooraloo! I feel as if I could start my fire
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
to-night without using a match at all—just by
snapping my fingers at it, or with a piece of
damp bark and a snowball, as the woodsmen say,”
he confided half-audibly to the dog.</p>
<p>Whence this feeling of prowess, of being a
firebrand—a genial one—capable of kindling
other and better lights in the world than a camp-fire?</p>
<p>Starrie Chase did not analyze his sensations
of magnificence, which bloomed from a discovery
back there on the marshes of the secret which is
at the root of the Boy Scout Movement, at the
base of all Christian Chivalry, at the foundation
of golden labor for mankind in every age:
namely, that the excitement of helping people is
vastly, vitally, and blissfully greater than the
spurious excitement of hurting them!</p><hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER XI</p>
<p class="center chap2">ESTU PRETA!</p>
<p>“Hullo! here’s Starrie. Well! it’s about
time you turned up. We waited quarter of an
hour for you before leaving town.—Hey! Starrie,
we’ve got our six cook-fires all going. I only
used two matches in lighting mine; I’ve passed
one half of to-night’s test.—So’ve I! Whoopee!
<i>I</i> ‘went the jolly test one better’: I lit my fire
with a single, solitary match.”</p>
<p>Starrie Chase, bounding down the grassy side
of Sparrow Hollow, with these lusty cries of his
brother Owls greeting him, stood for a moment
in the brilliant glare of a belt of fires, as if dazed
by the ruddy carnival, while his dog, making a
wild circuit of the ring, bayed each bouquet of
flames in turn.</p>
<p>“Yaas; we’ll get heem littal fire light lak’
wink—sure! We ar-re de boy! We ar-re de
scout, you’ll bet!” supplemented the merry voice
of Toiney, the assistant scoutmaster, who, with
the tassel of his red cap bobbing, and the flame-light
flickering on his blue homespun shirt, was
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
on his knees before Harold’s cook-fire, using his
lungs as a pair of bellows.</p>
<p>“Hurrah! I’m in this: I’ll light my fire with
one match, too. Kenjo Red shan’t get ahead of
me: no, sir!” Corporal Leon Chase was now
working like lightning, piling dry leaves, pine
splinters, dead twigs into a carefully arranged
heap in a gap which had been left for him in the
ring of half a dozen fires kindled by six tenderfoot
scouts, ambitious of being admitted to a
second-class degree.</p>
<p>But he, the behind-time tenderfoot, was abruptly
held up in his tardy labors by the voice
of the tall scoutmaster, who with Scout Warren,
the patrol leader of the Owls, was superintending
the tests.</p>
<p>“I want to speak to you for a minute, Leon,”
said Scoutmaster Estey, with a gravity that
dropped like a weighty pebble into the midst of
the fun.</p>
<p>And Corporal Chase, otherwise Scout 2, of
the Owls, obediently suspended fire-building,
approached his superior officer and saluted.</p>
<p>“I’d like to know where you have been for
the last hour,” began the scoutmaster with the
dignity of a brigadier-general holding an investigation,
while his keen eyes from under the drab
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
broad-brimmed hat searched Leon’s face in the
sixfold firelight. “Jimmy Sweet,” nodding toward
a squatting Owl, “said he caught a distant
glimpse of you nearly an hour ago over on the
edge of the salt-marshes near Ma’am Baldwin’s
old house. I hope you haven’t been plaguing
her again?”</p>
<p>The voice of the superior officer was all ready
to be stern, as if he had visions of a corporal
being requested to hand over his scout-badge
of chivalry until such time as he should prove
himself worthy of wearing it.</p>
<p>“Have you?”</p>
<p>“No!” Leon cleared his throat hesitatingly.
“No,”—he suddenly lifted steady eyes to the
scoutmaster’s face,—”I have been chopping
wood and doing a few other little things for her;
that made me late!”</p>
<p>A moment’s breathless silence enveloped the
six cook-fires. The face of the scoutmaster himself
was set in lines of amazement: genially it
relaxed.</p>
<p>“Good for you, Corporal!” He clapped the
late-comer approvingly on the shoulder, and in
his voice was a moved ring.</p>
<p>For, as he scanned the boy’s face in the sixfold
glow, he read from it that, to-night, Leon had
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
really become a scout: that, back there on the
salt-marshes, the inner and chivalrous grace of
knighthood, of which his oath was the outward
and heralding sign, had been consciously born
within him.</p>
<p>The scoutmaster was feeling round in his broad
approval for other words of commendation, when
Toiney’s sprightly tones broke the momentary
tension.</p>
<p>“Ha! dis poor ole oomans,” he grunted,
vivaciously pitying Ma’am Baldwin. “She’s lif’
all alone en she’s burst she’s heart for she haf
such a <i>bad boy</i>, engh? She’s boy, Dave, heem
<i>canaille</i>, <i>vaurien</i>—w’at-you-call, good-for-nodings—engh?”</p>
<p>“I’m afraid he is,” agreed the scoutmaster
regretfully. “Yet I pity Dave too. His elder
brother went West when he was a little fellow;
his father, who was a deep-sea fisherman, like Harold’s
father, was away nearly all the year round.
Dave grew up without any strong man’s hand
over him; out of school-hours he had to work
hard on a farm, and I suppose in his craving for
fun of some kind he played all sorts of foolish
pranks. After he left school and was old enough
to know better, he kept them up—ran a locomotive
out of the little railway station one night,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
came near killing a man and was sent to a reformatory!”</p>
<p>“Bah! heem jus’ vagabond—<i>errant</i>—how-you-say-eet—tramp-sonne-of-a-gun—<i>vaurien</i>,
engh?” declared Toiney, gutturally contemptuous,
while he poked Harold’s fire with a dry
stick.</p>
<p>“Yes, he’s a mere vagrant now, loafing about
the Sugarloaf Sand-Dunes and the woods; and
likely to get into trouble again through petty
thefts, so people say. When he had served his
sentence he seemed to think there wasn’t much
of a future before him, and didn’t stick to the
job he got. I pity his old mother! I think that
every boy scout should make it a point to do a
good turn for her when he can.”</p>
<p>“Ah! <i>oui</i>; shes break in pieces, engh?”
murmured Toiney, the irrepressible, still punching
up the fire, to prepare it for the cooking
tests.</p>
<p>Somehow, his eloquent sympathy sent a stab
through Leon—whom everybody was at the
moment regarding with admiration—for it
brought a sharp recollection of an old woman
backing away from him in fear, with her right
arm laid across her breast in piteous self-defense.</p>
<p>“Gee! I wish I could do something more for
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
her than chopping wood—something that would
make up for being mean to her,” thought Corporal
Chase, as he returned to his fire-building,
arranging the fuel methodically so as to allow
plenty of draught, and then triumphantly rivaling
Kenjo’s feat by lighting his cook-fire with
one match.</p>
<p>The tiny, snappy laughter of that matchhead,
seeming to rejoice that another baby light was
born into the world, as he drew it along a dry
stick, restored his towering good spirits.</p>
<p>“And now for the cooking test!” cried the
scoutmaster. “Each scout to put his two potatoes
to roast in the embers of his fire, and make a
contrivance for broiling his beefsteak! And look
out that you don’t ‘cook the black ox,’ boys, as
Captain Andy would say!”</p>
<p>“What do you mean by ‘cooking the black
ox’?” from two or three excited and perspiring
scouts.</p>
<p>“Why! that’s what the sailors say when their
beef is burnt to the color of a black-haired ox,”
laughed the superior officer. “Scout Chase,
haven’t you brought any beefsteak and
potatoes?”</p>
<p>“No, I meant to go back to the town for them
an’ meet you there. Blink an’ I don’t want any
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
supper; we’ll get it when we go home,” returned
Leon nonchalantly, swallowing his mortification
at not being able to complete the outdoor test,
this evening.</p>
<p>“Oh! I’ll share my rations with you, Starrie,”
volunteered Colin Estey. “I shan’t ‘cook the
black ox’: I’m too nifty a cook for that; trust
me!” Colin was concocting a handsome gridiron
of peeled twigs as he spoke.</p>
<p>“Don’t mind him, Starrie: I could cook better
when I was born than Col can now! I’ll
divide my beefsteak and ‘taters’ with you,” came
from another primitive chef, the offer being repeated
more or less alluringly by every boy scout.</p>
<p>“Well! you’re a generous-hearted bunch,”
put in Nixon, the patrol leader, from his over-seer’s
post. “But the scout-master and I have
more than a pound of raw beefsteak here which
we brought along for our supper. As I’m not
in these tests” (Nixon was now a full-fledged
first-class scout) “I’ll cut off a piece for Leon
so that he can cook it himself; I guess we can
spare him a couple of potatoes too; then he can
pass the test, with the others.”</p>
<p>During the supper which followed while each
scout, sitting cross-legged by his own cook-fire,
partook of the meal in primitive fashion and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
Toiney made coffee for the “crowd,” more than
one Owl shared in the opinion once enunciated
by Leon that eating in the woods—or in a
woodsy hollow such as sheltered them now from
the breeze that drove keenly across the marshes—was
the “best part of the business.”</p>
<p>They modified that opinion later when the
seven small fires, which had sputtered merrily
under the cooking, were reinforced by logs and
branches, and stimulated into a belt of vivacious
camp-fires, each rearing high its topknot of
crested flame, and throwing wonderful reflections
through the stony hollow.</p>
<p>“I always wanted to be a savage. To-night,
I feel nearer to it than ever before,” said Colin,
listening with an ecstatic shiver to the wind as
it chanted among the pines that formed their
windbreak, capered round the hollow, flinging
them a gust or two that made the camp-fires roar
with laughter, and then, as if unwilling to disturb
such a jolly party, rushed wildly on to take
it out of the trees in the woods. “And now for
the powwow, Mr. Scoutmaster!” he suggested,
looking across the ring of fires at his tall brother
and superior officer.</p>
<p>“Hark! that’s an owl hooting somewhere,”
broke in Coombsie. “It’s the Grand Duke, I
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
think—the big old horned owl! One doesn’t
hear him often at this time of year. He wants to
be present at the Owl Powwow.”</p>
<p>“Ah, la! la! I’ll t’ink he soun’ lak’ hongree
ole wolf, me,” murmured Toiney dreamily.</p>
<p>But the distant hoot, the deep “Whoo-hoo-hoodoo
hoo,” or “Whoo-hoo-whoo-whah-hoo!”
as some of the boys interpreted it, from the far
recesses of the woods, added a final touch of
mystic wildness to the sevenfold radiance of the
firelit scene which was reflected in the sevenfold
rapture of boyish hearts.</p>
<p>And now the heads of human Owls were
bent nearer to the golden flames as notebooks
were drawn out containing rough pencil jottings,
and scouts compared their observations of man,
beast, bird, fish, or inanimate object, encountered
in the woods, on the uplands or marshes, or upon
the river during the past few days!</p>
<p>Kenjo Red offered the most important contribution.</p>
<p>“I went to Ipswich yesterday to spend the
day with my uncle,” he began, as he lay, breast
downward, gazing reflectively into his fire. “In
the afternoon we walked over to the Sugarloaf
Sand-Dunes and lounged about there on the
white beach, watching the tide go out. We didn’t
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
see many birds, only a few herring gulls. But
I’ll tell you what we did see: two big harbor
seals and a young one, lying out on a sand-spit
which the tide had just left bare. They were
sunning themselves an’ having a dandy time!
One was a monster, a male, or big old dog-seal,
my uncle said; he must have been nearly six
feet long, and weighed about half a ton.”</p>
<p>“More or less?” threw in the scoutmaster,
laughing at Kenjo’s jesting imagination. “Generally
a big male weighs almost two hundred
pounds, occasionally something over. Hereabouts,
he is indifferently called the ‘dog-seal’
or ‘bull-seal,’ according to the speaker’s taste;
his head is shaped rather like a setter dog’s, with
the ears laid flat back,—for the seal has no ears
to speak of,—but the eyes are bovine,” he explained
to Nixon, who knew less about this sea
mammal than did his brother scouts, and who
had never seen him at close quarters.</p>
<p>“Isn’t it unusual to find seals high and dry
at this time of year?” asked Coombsie. “In the
spring and summer one sees plenty of them down
near the mouth of the river, sprawling in the sun
on a reef or sandbar. But in the late fall and
winter they mostly stay in the water.”</p>
<p>“Not when the river is frozen over—or
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
partially frozen,” threw in Leon. “They love to
take a ride on a drifting ice-cake, so Captain
Andy says! Is there any bounty on their heads
now, Mr. Scoutmaster?” he addressed the troop
commander.</p>
<p>“No, that has been removed. The marbled
harbor seal, so called because of his spots, was
being wiped out, as he was wiping out the fish
many years ago, before the Government put a
price on his head. Now that he is no longer
severely persecuted the mottled dotard, as he is
sometimes called,—I’m sure I don’t know why,
for I see no signs of senility about him,—is
becoming tamer and more prevalent again. Still,
he’s wilder and shyer than he used to be.”</p>
<p>“Yes, there’s an old fisherman’s shack on one
corner of the Sugarloaf Dunes, where a clam-digger
keeps his pails and a boat,” said Kenjo.
“He let my uncle take the boat and we rowed
across to the sand-spit. The seals let us come
within thirty yards of them: then they stirred
themselves lazily, with that funny wabble they
have—just like a person whose hands are tied
together, and his feet tied more tightly still—lifting
the head and short fore-flippers first and
swinging them to one side, then the back part
of the body and long hind-flippers, giving them
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
a swing to the other side. Say! but it was funny.
So they flopped off into the water.”</p>
<p>“Goodness! I wish that I’d been with you,
Kenjo,” exclaimed Scout Warren. “I haven’t
seen a harbor seal yet, except just his head as
he swam round in the water, when Captain Andy
took me down the river in his power-boat, the
Aviator. We rowed ashore in the Aviator’s Pill,”
laughingly, “in that funny little tub of a rowboat
which dances attendance on the gasolene
launch, but though we landed on the white sand-dunes
and stayed round there for quite a while,
not a seal did we see sprawling out on any
reef.”</p>
<p>“I’ll see heem <i>gros seal</i> on reever,” broke in
Toiney gutturally. “I’ll see heem six mont’ past
on reever <i>au printemps</i>—in spring—w’en, he
go for kill todder gros seal; he’ll hit heem en
mak’ heem go deaded—engh?”</p>
<p>“Yes, the males have bad duels between themselves
occasionally. But they’re mild enough
toward human beings. However, my father had
a strange experience with them once,” said the
scoutmaster, pushing back his broad hat, so that
the sevenfold glow from the fires danced upon
his strong face. “He’s told me about it ever
since I was a little boy, and Colin too. When
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
he was a very young man he rowed down to the
mouth of the river one day with some sportsmen
who went off to shoot ducks, leaving him to
dig clams and get a clambake ready for them on
the white dunes. Well, sir! left alone, he pulled
off to the clam-flats, drew up his boat, stepped
out, and the tide being at a low ebb, set to work
to dig up the clams which were here and there
thrusting their long necks up from the wet sand,
to feed on the infusoria—their favorite feeding-time
being when it is nearly, but not quite,
low water.</p>
<p>“The tide had receded altogether from the
other side of the sand-flats, so that they joined
the marshy mainland, and as my father landed
he saw that there was a big herd of twenty or
thirty seals lying out on those flats. It was before
a bounty was set upon their heads, when
they were very plentiful and tame. My father
was not in the least afraid of them and was
proceeding to dig his clams peacefully, when he
suddenly saw that the whole herd was thrown
into a wild panic by the discovery that <i>he</i> was
between them and the water. They broke into a
floundering stampede and came straight for him—or
rather for the water behind him—at a
fast clip, half sliding, half throwing themselves
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
along. A funny sight they must have been!
Father says one big fellow came at him with his
mouth wide open: the four sharp white teeth in
front, two upper and two lower, shining. So Dad
just turned tail and ran for the water as he
had never run before; not waiting to jump into
his boat, he plunged into the channel up to his
waist!”</p>
<p>“But the seals wouldn’t have attacked him,
would they?” incredulously from Nixon.</p>
<p>“No; I think not. But he might not have
been able to keep his feet. They would, perhaps,
have struck him with their heavy bodies and
knocked him down. And to feel a dozen or so
of damp seals sliding over a fellow, their weights
ranging anywhere from a hundred to two hundred
and fifty pounds, wouldn’t be a pleasant
sensation, to say the least!”</p>
<p>“I guess not!” chuckled the Owls.</p>
<p>“I’d like to catch a creamy pup-seal—isn’t
that what you call the only child, the young
one? ’Twould be fun to tame it,” said Nixon.
“Perhaps I’ll get a chance to do so when we
camp out on the Sugarloaf Dunes next summer.
Aren’t we going to have a camp there for two
weeks during the end of August and beginning
of September, Mr. Scoutmaster?
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>”</p>
<p>“I hope so, if I can get permission from the
landlord who owns the dunes.”</p>
<p>“Maybe we’ll run across Dave Baldwin too—the
<i>vaurien</i>, as Toiney calls him—if he stays
round there a part of the time?” This from
Leon.</p>
<p>“That wouldn’t be a desirable encounter,
I’m afraid. Now! has any scout a suggestion
to make that would be useful in planning our
work for this winter?” Scoutmaster Estey
looked round at the ring of boyish faces, reflecting
the sevenfold glow, at Harold, lying on
his face and hands, blinking dreamily under
Toiney’s wing, while the firelight burnished the
latter’s swarthy features beneath the tasseled
cap.</p>
<p>“Mr. Scoutmaster!” Nixon Warren sprang to
his feet impulsively, “Marcoo and I have a suggestion
to offer,”—Nixon glanced at his cousin
Coombsie,—”it hasn’t any direct relation to our
work, but we humbly submit it as an idea that
might be useful, not only to our boy scout organization
here, but to the movement everywhere
all over the world.”</p>
<p>“Ho! Ho! What do you know about that?
Out with it, Nix, if it’s worth anything,” came
the dubious encouragement of his brother Owls.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
<p>“I must tell a little yarn first. The day before
yesterday Marcoo and I were in Boston. We
lunched at a fine restaurant. At a table near us
was a gentleman—he looked like a Mexican or
Spaniard—who couldn’t speak any English and
addressed the waiter by signs. There was a boy
with him, a classy-looking fellow of about fourteen,
his son, I guess. ‘I’ll wager that boy is a
scout!’ I whispered to Marcoo. ‘His eyes take
in everything, without seeming to stare about
him much—and see the way he carries himself—straight
as a string!’”</p>
<p>“So I suggested that we should try the scout
salute on him as we passed out,” struck in Marcoo.
“We did! And fellows, he was on his feet
like a flash, holding up his right hand, thumb
resting on the little finger-nail, and the other
three fingers upright, saluting back! We guessed
then that he was a Mexican boy scout, traveling
with his father.”</p>
<p>“He seemed jolly glad to see us,” Nixon
again took up the anecdote; “just beamed! But
he didn’t apparently understand a word of
English except ‘Good-day!’ not even when we
passed the scout motto to him as a watchword:
‘Be Prepared!’ We might all three have been
mutes saluting each other.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
<p>“We talked it over, coming home, Marcoo
and I,” went on the patrol leader. “And we arrived
at the conclusion that it would be a great
thing if our hearty motto, as Captain Andy calls it,
could be taught to boy scouts all over the world,
in some common form understood by all, as well
as in their mother tongue. So that when scout
meets scout of another country he could pass it
on as a kind of bond and inspiration—together
with the Scout Sign which is understood in almost
every land to-day.”</p>
<p>“So we looked it up in Esperanto—the only
attempt at a world-language of which we know,
and in which my father is interested.” Marcoo
leaped to his feet, too, as he excitedly spoke.
“And it sounded fine! Give it to them, Nix!”</p>
<p>“<i>Estu preta!</i>”</p>
<p>“Estu preta! Estu preta! <span class="sc">Be Prepared</span>!”
One and all these present-day scouts took it
up, shouting it to the seven fires, and to the
wind which caught it from their lips like a
silver feather to bear it away beyond the hollow,
as if it would girdle the world with that hearty
motto, in some universal form, as Nixon had
suggested.</p>
<p>“Estu preta!” it was still on their tongues
when, camp-fires extinguished, they marched
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
home. They flung it at each other in joyous
challenge as they said good-night.</p>
<p>It entwined itself with the drowsy thoughts of
the patrol leader from whom it emanated when
he lay down to sleep, eclipsing his interest in the
future summer camp, in marbled seals and cooing
pup-seals—though such might not have been
the case could he have foreseen how exciting
would be his first glimpse of the “gros seal” at
close quarters.</p>
<p>It mingled with Leon’s dreamy reminiscences
too, as the first ripple of slumber, like the inflowing
tide, invaded his consciousness.</p>
<p>“Whew! this certainly has been a great day,”
he murmured, after repeating the Lord’s Prayer
with an elated fervor which he had never put
into it before.</p>
<p>Yet there was one smirch upon the day’s
golden face in the sudden memory of an old woman
shrinking away from him with uplifted arm.</p>
<p>“Gee! I wish I could do something for her
beyond a few good turns.” His drowsy tongue
half-formed the words.</p>
<p>And like a silver echo, stealing through his
confused consciousness came the automatic answer:
“<i>Estu preta!</i> Live up to your able motto!
Be Prepared!”</p><hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER XII</p>
<p class="center chap2">THE CHRISTMAS BRIGADE</p>
<p>“Estu preta!” During the days that followed,
while the fall season was merged in winter, the
Owls who had passed their outdoor tests in Sparrow
Hollow, six of whom were tenderfeet no
longer, but second-class scouts, did try to live up
to their hearty motto. And this not only in the
development of their strong young bodies by exercise
and drill, so that every expanding muscle
was under control, not only in the training of
their mental faculties toward keen observation
and alert action, but also in the chivalrous practice
of the little every-day kindness to man or
beast—almost too trivial to be noticed, perhaps,
yet preparing the heart for the rendering of a
supreme good turn!</p>
<p>Thus the Owl Patrol presently began to be
recognized as a patriotic and progressive force.
The Improvement Society of the little town
sought its coöperation, and it soon became “lots
more fun” to the boy scouts to lend a hand in
making that too staid town a more beautiful
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
and lively place to live in than to pile—as had
often been the case formerly—destruction on its
dullness.</p>
<p>Under the direction of their energetic young
scoutmaster they engaged in other crusades too,
besides that against things ugly and retarding,
in crusades for the rescue of many a needless and
undue sufferer of the animal kingdom, their most
noted enterprise along these lines being an attack
upon the use of the steel trap among boys, especially
those of the woodland farms, whereby
many a little fur-bearing animal met its slow end
in suffering unspeakable.</p>
<p>The use of this steel-jawed atrocity was bad
enough in the hands of the one or two adult
professional trappers of the neighborhood who
visited their traps regularly. (And it is to be
hoped that the Boy Scouts of America, who
champion the cause of their timid little brothers
of the woods, will some day sweep this barbarous
contrivance altogether from the earth!) But
its use by irresponsible boys who set the traps
in copse or thicket, and, in the multitudinous
interests of boydom, frequently forgot all about
them for days—leaving the little animal luckless
enough to be caught to suffer indefinitely—is
a cruelty too heinous to flourish upon the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
same free soil that yields such a fair growth of
chivalry as that embodied in the Scouts of the
U.S.A.</p>
<p>One or two of the Owls, who shall remain incognito,
had possessed such traps in the past:
now, they took them out into a back yard, shattered
them with a hammer, relegated the fragments
to a refuse heap, and instituted a zealous
crusade against the use of the steel trap by non-scouts
of the neighboring farms, such as Godey
Peck and his gang.</p>
<p>There was a hand-to-hand skirmish over this
matter before the Owl Patrol had its way; and
the result thereof gave Godey cause for reflection.</p>
<p>“It hasn’t made ‘softies’ of ’em anyhow, this
scout movement,” he soliloquized. “They got
the better <i>of us</i>. And they seem to have such
ripping good times, hiking an’ trailing! But—”</p>
<p>The demurring “but” in this boy’s mind
sprang from the proviso that if he enlisted in
the Boy Scouts of America, he would be obliged,
like Leon, to part with his gun. Also, from a
feeling that he would be debarred in future from
the planning of such lawless escapades as playing
stowaway aboard an unlaunched vessel; a scheme,
it may be said, which was never carried through,
being nipped in the bud by watchful shipwrights!</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p>
<p>Godey Peck was on the fence with regard to
the new movement. And he did not yet know on
which side he would drop down. Meanwhile from
his wavering point of indecision, beset with discomfort,
he soothed his feelings by renewed and
vehement shouts of “Tin Scouts! Tin Soldiers!”
whenever a khaki uniform and broad drab hat
hove in view.</p>
<p>He had ample opportunity to air his feeble-shafted
malice during the week preceding Christmas,
for scouts, in uniform and out of it, were
constantly to be seen engaged in “hifalutin
stunts,” according to Godey, which meant that
they had been organized into a brigade by the
scoutmaster for the doing of sundry and many
good turns befitting the season.</p>
<p>It might be only the carrying of parcels, for a
heavy-laden woman, who had visited a distant
city on a shopping expedition, from the little railway
station on the edge of the yellow wintry
salt-marshes to her home! Or the bearing of
gifts from a benevolent individual or society to
some poor or solitary human brother or sister
who otherwise might forget the meaning of
Christmas.</p>
<p>It was on behalf of one such person that Corporal
Leon Chase—detailed for duty on this
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
brigade—took counsel with his mother on the
afternoon of Christmas Eve.</p>
<p>“You don’t suppose that <i>she’ll</i> stay alone in
that old baldfaced house to-day and to-morrow, do
you, mother?” he said, rather ambiguously. “The
town authorities ought to forbid her living on
there all by herself; she’ll be snowed in pretty
soon if this cold snap continues. Why! the river
is all frozen over—ice fairly firm too. I’m going
skating by an’ by.”</p>
<p>“I’d wait until it is a little more solid, if I
were you,” returned the mother anxiously. “You
know our brackish ice is apt to be treacherous;
the salt in the water softens it, so your father
says, renders it more porous and unsafe. I suppose
you were speaking of old Ma’am Baldwin.
I don’t see what the authorities can do. They
can’t force her into an institution; she owns that
old house. And I don’t know that her daughter’s
husband—little Jack’s father—wants her in his
home. It’s too bad that her son Dave should
have turned out such a good-for-nothing! Trouble
about him has aged her, I guess; she’s not as old
as she seems.”</p>
<p>Then Starrie Chase inveigled his dimpling
mother into a pantry and, while she made passes
at him with a rolling-pin, proceeded to whisper
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
in her ear—with a measure of embarrassment,
for he was not accustomed to himself in the rôle
of alms-bearer. But in a shadowy corner within
him, once tenanted by Malign Habit, there still
lurked a vision which sprang out on him at times,
of an old woman raising her feeble arm to ward
him off: it caused him to grit his teeth and mutter:
“I wish I could do something more than to
chop her wood occasionally!” And vaguely the
mental answer would come: “<i>Estu preta!</i> At
a time when you least expect it, you may find
yourself up against the Big Minute!”</p>
<p>And in the mean time Starrie cornered his
mother in the pantry—floury shrine of Christmas
culinary rites!—and presently listened, well-pleased,
to her answer:—</p>
<p>“Yes! I’m glad that you put it into my head,
son. I’ll pack some things into a basket for her,
and you can take it across the marshes now. It
must be bitterly lonely for her, poor old woman!
And oh! Leon, as you’ll be in that direction,
could you go on into the woods and get me some
red berries for Christmas decorations?”</p>
<p>“Sure, mum!” And Leon stepped forth to
speak to Colin Estey, who was awaiting him at the
rear of the Chase homestead, exercising in a preliminary
canter a new pedalomotor which Santa
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
Claus, masquerading as the expressman, had
dropped at his home a little too soon.</p>
<p>“Take care you don’t run into a tree, smash
it up, and drive a splinter through your nose, as
Marcoo did when he got his, last year!” admonished
Starrie. “Say! Col, I can’t go skating for
a little while: I’m bound for the woods first to
get some alder-berries for decorations. Want to
come?”</p>
<p>“Guess so!”</p>
<p>“You can leave that ‘pedalmobile’ here. Wait
a minute! Mother’s just putting some Christmas
‘grub,’ mince-pies an’ things, into a basket
for old Ma’am Baldwin; we’ll deposit it at her
door as we go along!”</p>
<p>“How’d it be to write on it, ‘Merry Christmas
from the Owls’?” suggested young Colin
whimsically: “that would keep her guessing;
she’d maybe think birds had come out o’ the
woods to feed her as they did Elijah or Elisha
of old.”</p>
<p>So a card was tacked to the basket, on which
was traced with a stub-end of colored chalk the
outline of a perching owl, highly rufous as to
plumage, with the proposed salutation beneath it.</p>
<p>But the two Owls who placed the gift did not
find the recipient at home. That baldfaced house
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
beyond the frost-spiked marshes was empty, its
paintless door, half screened by the icy boughs
of the wind-beaten apple-tree, fast locked.</p>
<p>“I guess she’s gone over to the town to spend
Christmas Eve with her daughter,” suggested
Colin. “She dotes on her gran’son, little Jack
Barry; he’s quite a boy for nine years old! What
shall we do with the basket?”</p>
<p>“Raise that kitchen window an’ slip it inside—the
fastening’s broken!”</p>
<p>“Say! but you’re as barefaced as the house.”
Colin hugged himself with a sense of having got
off a good joke as he watched Leon boldly raise
the loose window and deposit the present within.
“Let’s put for the woods now!” he added, the
deed accomplished.</p>
<p>And the two scouts climbed the uplands toward
those midwinter woods that crowned the heights
in dismantled majesty.</p>
<p>But they were not robbed of beauty, the December
woods: the frosty sunshine knew that as
it picked out the berry-laden black alders displaying
their coral branches against the velvet
background of a pine, and embraced the regiment
of hemlock bushes, green dwarfs which,
together with their full-sized brothers, held the
fort for spring against all the hosts of winter.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
<p>“Whee-ew! I think the woods are just dandy
at this time o’ year!” Leon led a whistling onslaught
upon the vividly laden black alder bushes,
while the white gusts of the boys’ breath floated
like incense through the coral and evergreen
sanctuary of beauty, guarded by the silvery pillars
of white birch-trees, where, in the bare forest,
Nature had not left herself without a witness to
joy and color.</p>
<p>“These berries are as red as Varney’s Paintpot,”
laughed Colin by and by, as the two scouts
retraced their steps across the salt-marshes, crunching
underfoot the frozen spikes of yellow marsh-grass.
“Well, we had a great time on that day
when we found the old Paintpot—though we
succeeded in getting lost!”</p>
<p>“We surely did! I wonder if the frost will
hold, so that we’ll have some good skating after
Christmas? It’s freezing now.” Leon’s gaze
strayed ahead to the solid white surface of the
tidal river, stained with amber by the setting
sun.</p>
<p>They were within a hundred yards of it by
this time, and caught the shrill cries and yells
of boyish laughter from youthful skaters who
careered and pirouetted at a short, safe distance
from the bank. But a clear view of what was
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
going on was shut off from the two berry-laden
scouts, crossing the saffron marshes at a leisurely
pace, by some tumble-down sheds that intervened
between them and the river.</p>
<p>“Well, the kids seem to be having a good
time on the ice anyhow—though I don’t think
it can be very firm yet. Whew! what’s that?”
exclaimed Colin suddenly, as a piercing cry came
ringing from the river-bank whereon each blade
of the coarse beach-grass glittered like a jeweled
spike under the waning sunlight.</p>
<p>“Oh! <i>somebody</i> is blowing off the smoke of
his troubles,” laughed Leon unconcernedly.</p>
<p>The afternoon was so sharply delectable, with
the sky all pale gold in the west, flinging them
a remote, lukewarm smile like a Christmas greeting
from some half-reminiscent friend, the hearts
of the two scouts reflecting the beauty of the
Christmas woods were so elated that they could
not all in a moment slide down from Mount
Happiness into the valley where danger and
pain become realities.</p>
<p>But <i>now</i> a volley of cries, frenzied and appealing,
rang out over the salt-marshes. Mingling with
them—outshrilling them—came a call which
made each scout jump as if an arrow had struck
him.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p>
<p>It was the weird hoot of an owl uttered by a
human throat, shrill with desperation, the signal
call of the Owl Patrol—but with a violent note
of distress in it such as to their ears had never
sharpened it before.</p>
<p>“<i>Gee whiz!</i> Something’s wrong—something’s
up! I’ll wager ’twas Nix Warren who hooted
that time!”</p>
<p>Starrie Chase dropped his coral-laden branches
upon the frozen ground.</p>
<p>“The Owls to the rescue!” he cried, and
dashed toward the frozen river-bank.</p><hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER XIII</p>
<p class="center chap2">THE BIG MINUTE</p>
<p>When Scouts Chase and Estey reached that
frosty bank a confused scene met their eyes.</p>
<p>Before the tumble-down sheds some wildly terrified
small boys were stumbling to and fro on
the pale brink of the ice, floundering like river
seals in their attempts to walk upon the skates
which they were too distracted to remove, and
shrieking at intervals:—</p>
<p>“He’s drown-dr-rowning! Oh! he’s <i>drowning</i>.
Jack Barry’s drowning in the river!”</p>
<p>“Who’s drowning? What’s the matter,
Marcoo? Has anybody gone through the ice?”
questioned Leon sharply of the one older boy
upon the bank, who turned upon him over a
heaving shoulder the pleasant, ruddy face, empurpled
by shock, of Coombsie.</p>
<p>“Yes, the ice gave way out there.” Marcoo
pointed to a wide hole thirty yards from the
bank, where the dark, imprisoned water bubbled
like a whirlpool. “Little Jack Barry has fallen
through. Ice rotten there! Couldn’t reach him
without a rope! Nix gone for it!” Coombsie
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
flung the words from him like broken twigs.
“Here he comes now!”</p>
<p>Bareheaded, breathless, the patrol leader of
the Owls tore toward the bank, in his hand a
coil of rope. Behind him ran two distracted women
from a near-by house; the drowning boy’s mother
and his grandmother—whose one unshattered
idol he was—old Ma’am Baldwin.</p>
<p>She looked more like a ragged cornstalk than
ever, that little old woman, thought Leon—in
the way that trivial reflections have of being
whirled to the surface upon the tempest of a
moment like this—with all her odds and ends
of shawls streaming on the icy breeze that skated
mockingly to meet her. With her long wisps of
gray hair outstreaming too!</p>
<p>And as she came she raised her right arm to
her breast with that pathetic gesture familiar to
Starrie Chase, as though to shield her half-broken
old heart from the last blow that Fate might deal
to it: as if she would defend the image it held
of the drowning child, and therewith little Jack
himself, from the robber Death.</p>
<p>Starrie’s brown eyes took one rapid snapshot
of the old woman in her quaking anguish, and
his mind passed two resolutions: that the Big
Minute had come: and that there wasn’t water
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
or ice enough in the tidal river to keep him
from saving Ma’am Baldwin’s grandson.</p>
<p>“Tie this rope round me! <i>Quick!</i> Bowline
knot! I’ll try an’ crawl out to him!” Nixon was
shrieking in his ear.</p>
<p>“You can’t alone! The ice is too rotten. You’d
break through—and we mightn’t be able to
pull you out that way. Must make a chain! I’ll
go first. Crawl after me, Nix, and hang on tight
to my feet!”</p>
<p>Corporal Chase was already lying flat on his
stomach, working himself out over the infirm ice
where, here and there, within the white map of
lines and circles traced by the skates of the small
boys, were small holes through which the captive
water heaved like Ma’am Baldwin’s breast, under
a thin, glassy fretwork.</p>
<p>After him crawled Nixon, grasping his ankles
in a strong grip. And, performing a like service
for the patrol leader, came Coombsie, and after
Coombsie Colin; the four forming a human
chain, trusting their lives to the unstable, saline
ice, and to the grip of each other.</p>
<p>“Hold on tight, Nix! I see his head. We’ll
land him—yet!” Leon flung the last challenge
between his set teeth at the white, porous ice and
the little dark wells of bubbling water.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p>
<p>Worming his body in and out between those
fretting holes, he reached the glassy skirts of the
larger fissure which imprisoned little Jack. There
the nine-year-old victim’s hands clutched frantically
at the jagged edges of the encircling ice,
while his screams for help grew weaker. To Jack
himself they seemed not to rise above the cold,
pale ring that hemmed him in.</p>
<p>“<i>Hold—tight!</i>” The clenched word was
passed along the chain as Leon at its head, hearing
the tidal current beneath him sobbing, straining
to be free, flung his hands out and grasped
the victim’s collar and shoulder, trying to lift
him out of the hole.</p>
<p>But with a groan the brittle ice surrounding
it gave way: the foremost rescuer’s body was
plunged too into the freezing, brackish water.</p>
<p>“We’ll both go now—Jack an’ I—unless
Nix hangs on to me like a bulldog!” was the
thought that stabbed him as an ice-spear while
the dark tidal current, shot with glints of light
like cruel eyes, engulfed his shoulders.</p>
<p>But Nixon held on to his ankles, like grim
death fighting grim Death himself. Not a link
in that human chain parted, though the ice
cracked ominously beneath it!</p>
<p>And Leon, half submerged, battling for breath,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
clung steadfastly to Jack, as if indeed there was
not water enough in the seven miles of tidal river
to sunder them.</p>
<p>Presently, while his comrades backed cautiously,
dragging upon the lower part of his
body, his head and arms reappeared, the latter
clasping Ma’am Baldwin’s grandson.</p>
<p>A sob, half hysterical, burst from the gathering
spectators on the bank.</p>
<p>“If—if the Lord hadn’t been with him, he
couldn’t have hung on to him that time!” muttered
Captain Andy, the old life-saver, who had
limped to the scene.</p>
<p>And, indeed, it did seem as if the Lord was
with Leon Chase and made his strength in this
desperate minute—like that of one of the famous
knights of the Round Table—as the
strength of ten because his heart was pure!—Purified
of all but the desire to help and save!</p>
<p>“Starrie’s got him! Starrie’s holding on to
him!” came in an exultant cry from a group of
boys rigid upon the river-brink; in their midst
gleamed the face, pale and fixed as the ice itself,
of Godey Peck; and from Godey’s eyes streamed
the first ray of ardent hero-worship those rather
dull eyes had ever known—leveled at the Tin
Scouts.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
<p>“Keep cool, boys! Take it easy an’ you’ll
land him now!” shouted Captain Andy.</p>
<p>Afraid, for their sakes, to burden farther the
ice with his massive body, he, too, stretched
himself, breast downward, on the more solid
crust near the bank, and seizing Colin’s ankles
directly they came within reach added another
link to that human chain by means of which
Jack’s half-conscious body was finally drawn
ashore and placed in his mother’s arms.</p>
<p>“You saved him, Leon. I’ll thank you as
well—as well as I can—Leon!” quavered the
grandmother’s broken voice.</p>
<p>“Aw! that’s all right,” came in an embarrassed
shiver from between the chattering teeth
of the foremost rescuer, from whom the water
ran in rivulets that would freeze in another
minute.</p>
<p>“I’ll forward the names of you four boys to
National Headquarters, to receive the scout medal
for life-saving!” proudly cried Scoutmaster Estey,
who at this minute appeared upon the river-bank,
while he plucked Jack’s numbed body from his
mother’s shaking arms and set off at a run with
it toward the nearest house.</p>
<p>Leon was hustled in the same direction by an
admiring crowd.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p>
<p>But whence came that shrill challenge waking
the echoes of the Christmas Eve? Did Godey’s
lips utter the cry: “What’s the matter with the
Boy Scouts? They’re all right!”</p>
<p>And a score of throats gave back the answer:—</p>
<p>“Three cheers for the Boy Scouts of America!
Three cheers—an’ a tiger—for the Owl
Patrol.”</p>
<p>“Say, Mister!” Half an hour later, as Scoutmaster
Estey issued from the cottage where, with
the help of Kenjo Red and another scout, he
had been turning his first-aid knowledge to account
in the resuscitation of little Jack, he heard
himself thus addressed and felt a hand pluck at
his sleeve. Looking down, in the twilight, he
saw Godey Peck.</p>
<p>“Say! it hasn’t made ‘softies’ of ’em, this
scout business,” declared Godey oracularly. “I
want to be a scout too. Us boys all want to come
in!” He glanced behind him at his gang who
had constituted him their spokesman.</p>
<p>“Really? Do you <i>all</i> want to enlist in the
Boy Scouts of America?”</p>
<p>“Sure! We want to come in now at the
rate of sixty miles an hour, you bet!” Godey
chuckled.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p>
<p>“Oh! well, if you’re in such a hurry as that,
come round to my house to-night; we’re going
to have a Christmas celebration there.” And the
tall scoutmaster walked off, laughing.</p>
<p>Thus on Christmas Eve did Godey drop off
the fence on the side of the boy scouts, whose
code of chivalry is only an elaboration of the
first Christmas message: “Peace on earth, good
will to men!”</p>
<hr class="art" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER XIV</p>
<p class="center chap2">A RIVER DUEL</p>
<p>With the enlisting of Godey and his gang,
who mainly represented whatever tendency there
might be to youthful rowdyism in the demure
little town, the whole vicinity of the tidal river
was won over to the Boy Scout Movement.</p>
<p>The new recruits, those who gave in their
names on Christmas Eve as would-be scouts, together
with one or two later additions, were
formed into a second patrol, of which Godey became
patrol leader, called the Foxes in honor of
the commonest animal of moderate size to be
found in their woods; the red fox being prevalent,
too, among the white sand-hills, the Sugarloaf
Dunes, that formed part of the wild coast
near the mouth of the Exmouth River.</p>
<p>Those milky dunes, formed of pale sand which
was popularly supposed to have drifted down
from New Hampshire to the sea and to have
been swept in here by the winds and tides of
ages, were a sort of El Dorado to the boys of
the little town far up the tidal river.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
<p>Pirates’ treasure was confidently believed to be
buried there; each lad who made the trip by
steam launch, motor-boat, or plodding rowboat
downstream for several miles to the dunes, was
certain that if he could only hit upon the right
sand-hill and dig deep enough, he would find its
whiteness richly inlaid with gold.</p>
<p>Other wild tales centred about the romantic
dunes, of smugglers and their lawless doings in
earlier and less law-enforcing times than the
beginning of the twentieth century.</p>
<p>It was even hinted that within recent years
there had been unlawful importations at rare
intervals of certain dutiable commodities, such
as intoxicating liquors and cigars, by means of a
rowboat that would lie up during the day in the
sandy pocket of some little creek that intersected
the marshes near the white dunes, stealing forth
at night into the bay to meet a mysterious
vessel.</p>
<p>The latest report connected the name of Dave
Baldwin, the <i>vaurien</i>, as Toiney contemptuously
called him, with this species of petty smuggling.</p>
<p>Wiseacres, such as Captain Andy and the doctor,
were of opinion that no such lawless work
could be carried on to-day under the Argus eyes
of revenue officers. But it was known that Dave
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
spent most of his vagrant days hanging round
the milky dunes and their neighborhood, sleeping
on winter nights in some empty camp or deserted
summer cottage, and occasionally varying
the pale monotony of the dunes by sojourning
in the woods at the opposite side of the river.</p>
<p>The possibility of running across him during
a visit to the Sugarloaf Sand-Hills, or of seeing
his “pocketed” boat reposing in some little
creek where the mottled mother-seal secreted her
solitary young one, had little interest for the
boy scouts.</p>
<p>Toiney’s contempt for the skulking vagrant
who had caused his mother’s heart to “break in
pieces,” had communicated itself to them. They
were much more interested in the prospect of
pursuing acquaintance with the spotted harbor
seal, once the floundering despot of the tidal
river, now scarcer and more shy.</p>
<p>As winter merged into spring a third patrol
of boy scouts was formed, composed of boys
from farms down the river, who had recourse to
this harbor mammal for a name and called themselves
the Seals.</p>
<p>Thus when April swelled the buds upon the
trees, and the salt-marshes were all feathery with
new green, there were three patrols of boy scouts
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
who met in the little town hall of Exmouth, forming
a complete scout troop, to plan for hikes and
summer camps; and to go on their cheery way
out of meeting, ofttimes creating spring in the
heart of winter by doing the regulation good
turn for somebody.</p>
<p>In especial, good turns toward the sorrow-bowed
old woman, Ma’am Baldwin, were in vogue
that season, because a first-rate recipe for sympathy
is to perform a service for its object. The
greater and more risky the service, the broader
the stream of good will that flows from it!</p>
<p>So it was with the four members of the Owl
Patrol who had received the boy scout medal
for life-saving—the silver cross suspended from
a blue ribbon, awarded to the scout who saves
life with considerable risk to himself—for their
gallant work in rescuing the old woman’s grandson
from the frozen waters of the tidal river.
Their own moved feelings at that the finest
moment of their young lives were thereafter
as a shining mantle veiling the peculiarities of
her who, solitary and defenseless, had once been
regarded as fair game for their most merciless
teasing.</p>
<p>She was not so solitary now. Much shaken by
the accident to her grandchild, she was in no fit
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
state to return to her baldfaced house on Christmas
Eve or for many days after; so Public Opinion
at length took the matter into its own hands
and decreed that henceforth she must find a
home with her daughter.</p>
<p>There, in a little dwelling on the outskirts of
the town, she often watched the khaki-clad scouts
march by. Invariably they saluted her. And Jack,
the rescued nine-year-old, would strut and stretch
and stamp in a vain attempt to hasten the
advent of his twelfth birthday when he might
enlist as a tenderfoot.</p>
<p>The Saturday spring hikes were varied by trips
down the river when each patrol in turn was
taken on an excursion in Captain Andy’s motor-boat.
It was on such an occasion that Nixon
Warren, who had begun his scout service as a
member of the Peewit Patrol of Philadelphia,
obtained his coveted chance of seeing Spotty
Seal at close quarters.</p>
<p>“You stay round Exmouth during the spring
an’ summer, Nix, and I’ll take you where you’ll
see a seal close enough for you to shake his flipper,”
promised the sea-captain; and he kept his
word, though the pledge was fulfilled after a
fashion not in accordance with his intentions.</p>
<p>It was a glorious day, when the power-boat
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
Aviator, owned by Captain Andy, left the town
wharf with six of the Owls aboard in charge of
the assistant scoutmaster, Toiney Leduc, and with
the absurd little rowboat that danced attendance
upon the Aviator, and which was jocosely named
the Pill, bobbing behind them on the tidal ripples
at the end of a six-foot towrope.</p>
<p>Spring was on the river to-day. Spring was in
the clear call of the greater yellow-legs as it
skimmed over the marshes, in the lightning dart
of the kingfisher, in the wave of the tall black
grass fringing each marshy bank, showered with
diamonds by the advance and retreat of a very
high tide tickled into laughter by the April
breeze.</p>
<p>And spring was in the scouts’ hearts, focusing
all Nature’s joy-thrills, as they glided down the
river.</p>
<p>“<i>Houp-e-là!</i> I’ll t’ink heem prett’ good day
for go on reever, me,” announced Assistant Scoutmaster
Toiney, his black eyes dancing.</p>
<p>And he presently woke the echoes, while they
wound in and out between the feathery marshes,
with a gay “Tra-la!” or “Rond’! Rond’!
Rond’!” that seemed the very voice of Spring
herself bursting into song.</p>
<p>“Goodness! I can hardly wait for the end of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
August when our scoutmaster will get his vacation
and we’re to camp out on the Sugarloaf
Dunes,” said Leon Chase. “You can see the
white dunes from here, Nix. It’s a great old
Sugarloaf, isn’t it?” pointing across broad,
pearly plains of water which at high tide spread
out on either side of the central tidal channel, at
the crystalline sand-pillar, guarding the mouth of
the tidal river.</p>
<p>“The other sand-hills look like a row of tall,
snowy breakers at this distance. Whew! aren’t
they splendid—with that bright blue sky-line
behind them? I expect we’ll just have the ‘time
of our lives’ when we camp out there!” came in
blissful accents from the patrol leader.</p>
<p>“Well! we’re not going to land on the dunes
to-day,” said Captain Andy, who was standing
up forward, steering the gasolene launch, his
keen eyes scanning the plains of water from
under his visored cap, in search of Spotty Seal’s
sleek dog-like head cleaving the ripples as he
swam, with his strong hind-flippers propelling
him along.</p>
<p>“Whoo’! Whoo’! she threw the water a bit
that time; didn’t she, lads?” alluding to his
motor-boat, as the April breeze plucked a crisp
sheet of spray from the breast of the high tide,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
like a white leaf from a book, and laughingly
threw it at the occupants of the launch. “But
that’s nothing!” went on the old skipper.
“Bless ye, boys, I’ve been down this river in a
rowboat when the seas would come tumbling in
on me from the bay, each looking big as a house
as it shoved its white comb along! ’Twould
rear itself like a glassy roof over the boat and
I’d think it meant ‘day, day!’ to me, but I’d
crawl out somehow. An’ I’ve lived to tell the
tale.</p>
<p>“But I’m gettin’ too old for such scrapes
now,” went on the old sea-fighter. “I’m going
to turn ‘Hayseed!’ You mayn’t believe it, but
I am!” glowering at the laughing, incredulous
scouts. “I’m about buying a piece o’ land that’s
only half cleared o’ timber yet, up Exmouth way;
going to start a farm. But, great sailor! how’ll
I ever get along with a cow. That’s what stumps
me.”</p>
<p>“We’ll come out an’ milk her for you, Captain
Andy,” volunteered with one breath the boy
scouts, their merry voices ringing out over the
mother-of-pearl plains of water, bounded on one
side by the headlands of a bold shore, on the
other by green peninsulas of salt-marsh, insulated
at high water by the winding creeks that burrowed
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
among them, and farther on by the radiant
dunes.</p>
<p>“I’ll t’ink he no lak’ for be tie to cow, me!”
Toiney nodded mischievously at the sea-captain.
Then, all of a sudden, his voice exploded gutturally
like a bomb: “<i>Gard’ donc!</i> <i>Gard’ donc</i>,
de gros seal! <i>Sapré tonnere!</i> <i>deux</i> gros seal.
Two beeg seal! <i>V’là V’là!</i> shes jomp right
out o’ reever—engh!”</p>
<p>The excited Canadian’s gesticulating hands
drew every eye in the direction he indicated,
which was a little to the left of the central tidal
channel, between them and the straying creeks.</p>
<p>And the scouts’ excitement fairly fizzed like
a burning fuse as, mingled with Toiney’s cry,
sounded a hoarse bark, wafted across the plains
of water, the harsh “Beow!” or “Weow!” according
as the semi-distant ear might translate it,
of an angry bull-seal.</p>
<p>Each boy’s heart leaped into his distended
throat at the sound, but not so high as leaped
the bull-seal, to whom the other term significant
of his male gender—that of dog-seal—hardly
applied, for he outweighed half a dozen good-sized
dogs.</p>
<p>Breathlessly gazing, the scouts saw him jump
clear out of the water not quarter of a mile from
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
them, his sleek, dark bulk sheathed in crystal
armor, wrought of brine and sunbeams—his
flippers dripping rainbows! Down he came again
with a wrathful splash that sent the foam flying,
and struck his companion, an apparently smaller
animal whose head alone was visible, a furious
blow on that sleek head with one of his clawed
flippers.</p>
<p>“<i>Gard’ donc!</i> <i>Gard’ donc</i>, les gros seal <i>qui
se battent</i>! De beeg seal dat fights—dat strike
heem oder, engh?” exploded Toiney again.</p>
<p>“So they are—fighting! Goodness! that big
fellow is pitching into the one in the water.
Going for him like fury, for some reason!”
broke from the excited boys, as they stared,
open-mouthed, while this belligerent performance
was repeated, accompanied once or twice by the
grunting bark of the larger seal.</p>
<p>“Great guns! he’s a snorter, isn’t he? You
could hear that battle-cry of his nearly a mile
off, at night, when the weather is decently calm
as to-day,” came from Captain Andy while he
slowed down the panting motor-boat in order
that the scouts might have a good view of the
angry sea-calf—another name for the harbor
seal—which Nixon yearned to see, and which
was so absorbed in wreaking vengeance on a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
flippered rival that it paid no attention at all to
the approaching launch.</p>
<p>“Gee whiz! isn’t he a monster?”—”Must
be five or six feet long!”—”Can’t he make the
foam fly, though?”—”You’d think he owned
the river!” came at intervals from the gasping
spectators.</p>
<p>“<i>Nom-de-tonnerre!</i> she’s <i>gros</i> seal: shes mak
de watere go lak’ scramble de egg—engh?”
gurgled Toiney, mixing up his pronouns in guttural
excitement over this river duel, such as he had
witnessed once before, when two male seals contested
for the favor of some marbled sweetheart.</p>
<p>In this case the duelists were evidently unevenly
matched, for presently a wild cry came
from Scout Nixon:—</p>
<p>“See! See! he has him by the throat now.
That big fellow has his fangs in the other seal’s
throat! Must have! For he’s dragging him
along to that little creek! He’s going to kill
him.”</p>
<p>“<i>Mille tonnerres!</i> I’ll t’ink shes go for choke
heem, me: dat’s de tam he’ll go deaded sure—engh?”
Thus Toiney came gutturally in on the
excited duet, as seven strained faces peered over
the motor-boat’s side at the one-sided battle.</p>
<p>“<i>Mille tonnerres</i>”—”a thousand thunders”—were
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
being launched, indeed, upon the spotted
head of the weaker animal, half stunned by the
furious blows rained on him by the clawed hind-flippers
of his adversary, and now finding himself
dragged, willy-nilly, through the water into
the secluded creek, like a prisoner to the block.</p>
<p>He tried diving, to loosen those cruel fangs,
but was mercilessly forced to the surface again
by his big rival.</p>
<p>“Well! I think this fight has gone on long
enough; I’m going to separate them,” cried
Captain Andy. “I guess the tide is high enough
for us to overhaul them in that little creek,
without danger of being pocketed, or hung
up aground, there!”</p>
<p>And with a warning <i>chug! chug!</i> the power-boat
Aviator made straight for the bubbling
mouth of the creek, across the foamy wake left
by the fighting seals, and dashed in after them.</p>
<p>Not until it was almost upon them did the
triumphant male tear his four fangs from his
rival’s throat. Then, startled at last, he swam
off a few strokes in a wild flurry, and dove,
while Captain Andy drove his throbbing boat in
between the combatants.</p>
<p>For a thrilling minute the scouts found themselves
at the centre of a grand old mix-up that
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
churned the waters of the creek; the weaker
seal, now half dead, was right beneath the boat.
Presently his head appeared upon the surface a
few yards ahead of it. Swimming feebly a short
distance, he crawled out of the water a little
higher up the creek and lay upon the marshy
bank entirely played out.</p>
<p>His merciless rival reappeared too, to the rear
of the boat, strong as ever, swimming rapidly
for the creek’s mouth and the open water beyond
it.</p>
<p>“That seal is ‘all in’;” Nixon pointed to the
victim. “If we could go on to the head of the
creek, we might step out on the bank and have
a good look at him.”</p>
<p>“I can’t land you from the power-boat, but
you can get into the little Pill if you like, an’
row up ’longside him.” Captain Andy pointed
to the tubby rowboat bobbing astern. “No!
only three of you may go, more might capsize
her; she ain’t much of a boat, though she’s a
slick bit o’ wood for her size! Easy there now!
Steady!”</p>
<p>The sturdy Pill was drawn alongside. Scouts
Warren and Chase, with one brother Owl, stepped
into her, and rowed to the head of the creek,
whence they had a near view of the half-throttled
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
creature as he lay, mouth open, stretched out
upon the marshy bank, his strong hind-flippers
extended behind him, their brown claws glistening
with brine.</p>
<p>“Whew! he’s spotted like a sandpiper’s egg,”
said Nixon, looking at the head and back of the
marbled seal. “Seems to me he’s of a lighter
color than the big fellow who nearly did for
him; <i>he</i> looked almost black out of water—but
then he was all wet. And what a funny little tail
this one has, not bigger than a pair of spectacles!”</p>
<p>“See his black nose an’ short fore-flippers!”
whispered Leon. “Don’t his eyes stick out?
They’re a kind o’ blue-black an’ glazy. There!
he’s noticing us now. He’s trying to flounder
off—with that funny, teetering kind o’ wabble
they have! Say! hadn’t we better row back to
Captain Andy, and leave him to recover? He’s
all used up; that big one gave him an awful
licking.”</p>
<p>And this merciful consideration from Starrie
Chase, who, prior to his scout days, would have
had no thought save how to finish the cruel
work of the big bully and put an end to the
beaten rival!</p>
<p>“Well! you did see a harbor seal, Nix, ’most
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
near enough to shake his flipper, eh?” challenged
Captain Andy as the three scrambled
back aboard the motor-boat, and made the little
Pill fast astern by its short towrope, while the
Aviator bore out of the blue creek, to head upstream
toward the town again.</p>
<p>“Yes! I’d have tried to do it too, if he
hadn’t been so completely ‘all in,’” laughed the
scout. “I suppose we’ll have plenty of opportunities
to see seals and listen to their barking
when we camp out on the white dunes during
the last days of August and the beginning of
September. They say the young ones make a
kind of cooing noise, much like a turtle-dove,
only stronger; I’m bent on capturing a pup-seal,
to tame him!”</p>
<p>“Oh! you’d have no trouble about the taming,
only you couldn’t feed him! But you’ll see seals
a-plenty an’ hear ’em, too, next summer. They
just love to lie out on a reef o’ rocks in the sun,
when the tide’s low, especially if the wind’s a
little from the no’thwest,” said the ex-skipper.
“A lonely reef, a warm sun, and light no’thwesterly
breeze make up the harbor-seal’s heaven,
I guess!”</p><hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER XV</p>
<p class="center chap2">THE CAMP ON THE DUNES</p>
<p>And when those fervently anticipated last
days of August did in due time dawn, they
brought with them many opportunities to Nixon
and his brother scouts of watching Spotty Seal
and his kindred in the enjoyment of their mundane
paradise, whose pavement of gold was a
wave-washed reef and its harpings the mild
bluster of a northwesterly breeze.</p>
<p>During the final week of August and the first
of September their scoutmaster, a rising young
naval architect, had a respite from designing
wooden vessels, from considering how he could
best combine speed and seaworthiness in an up-to-date
model; and he arranged to devote the
whole of that holiday to camping out with his
boy scout troop upon the milky Sugarloaf Dunes.</p>
<p>A more ideal camping-ground could scarcely
have been found than among the white sand-hills,
capped with plumy vegetation which formed the
background for an equally dazzling line of beach,
where the gray-and-white gulls strutted in feathered
rendezvous, and were hardly to be scared
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
away by the landing in their midst of the first
patrol of scouts, put ashore from Captain Andy’s
motor-boat in a light skiff, a more capacious rowboat
than the Pill.</p>
<p>But they had brought the tubby Pill down
the river too, in tow of the launch; and Captain
Andy, who was partial to scouts, had arranged
to leave that rotund little rowboat with them,
so that, two or three at a time, they might explore
the tidal river with the creeks that intersected
the marshes in the neighborhood of the
white dunes.</p>
<p>“Just look at that gray gull, will you?”
laughed Patrol Leader Nixon, as he landed from
the skiff. “He’s made up his mind that we
Owls have no rights here: that this white beach
is his stamping-ground, and he won’t be frightened
away!”</p>
<p>Other gulls had reluctantly taken wing and
wheeled off during the prolonged process of
landing the eight members of the Owl Patrol,
with their scoutmasters and camp outfit, in various
detachments from the launch, which was too
large to run right in to the beach.</p>
<p>But this one youthful sea-gull, a mere boy in
plumage gray, held his ground, parading the
lonely beach with head turning alertly from side
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
to side, as if he were admonishing his wheeling
brothers with: “These are boy scouts! Look at
me: I tell you, you have nothing to fear!”</p>
<p>So bold was his mien, so peaceful the attitude
of the human invaders, that presently the regiment
of sea-gulls fluttered back to a point of
rendezvous only a little removed from their
former one.</p>
<p>“We won’t have much company beyond ourselves
and the birds, I guess!” remarked Nixon
presently. “There are no houses in sight except
those three fine bungalows about quarter of a
mile off on the edge of the dunes. And the fisherman’s
shack on the beach below them!”</p>
<p>“Yes, that belongs to an old clam-digger,”
said Kenjo Red. “He keeps his pails there.
Don’t you remember my telling you about his
letting us—my uncle an’ me—have his boat
one day last November, so’s we could row over
to the sand-spit opposite, and take a look at some
seals that were sunning themselves there?”</p>
<p>“Oh! yes, <i>we</i> remember, Kenjo; you’ve told
about that at half a dozen camp-fire powwows,
at least.” Starrie Chase plucked off Kenjo’s cap
and combed his ruddy locks with a teasing forefinger.
“They say Dave Baldwin, the <i>vaurien</i>,”
with guttural mimicry of Toiney’s accents,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
“hangs out among the dunes here, when he
isn’t loafing in the woods up the river,” added
Corporal Chase, peering off among the white
sand-hills, capped with biscuit-colored plumes
of dry beach-grass, and the more verdant beach-pea,
as if he expected to see young Baldwin’s head
pop up among them.</p>
<p>“I wonder if we’ll run across him?” said
Nixon. “He can’t ‘make camp’ among the
dunes. Nobody is allowed to camp out here, without
special permission. Boy scouts are privileged
persons; they know we won’t set fire to the
brush.”</p>
<p>“Oh! when he needs a fire—when he knocks
a woodchuck on the head and wants to cook it—I
suppose he rows over to one of those little
islands there; they say he has an old rowboat
here.” Leon pointed to two small islets rising from
the plains of water a little higher up the river.</p>
<p>“Well, I don’t envy him!” Marcoo shrugged
his shoulders. “He must have a bitter time of it
in winter, when the river is frozen over down to
the bay, an’ you don’t hear a sound here beyond
the occasional pop of a sportsman’s gun, or the
barking of the seals—and even they’re pretty
quiet in midwinter. Hey! Look at that spotted
sandpiper. ‘Teeter-tail’ we call him: see his tail
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
bob up and down!” exclaimed Coombsie, who was
an enthusiast about birds.</p>
<p>In watching the sandpiper rise from the white
beach and dart across the water, in listening to
his sweet, whistling “peet-weet!” note, speculations
about the habits of the <i>vaurien</i>, the good-for-nothing
young vagrant, were forgotten.</p>
<p>He, Dave Baldwin, faded completely from the
campers’ thoughts as the narrow skiff grounded
its sharp nose for the fourth time on the beach,
landing the remainder of their camp dunnage
and commissariat; and the work began of selecting
a site for the camp amid the milky sand-hills,
interspersed with a few trees, slender and short
of stature.</p>
<p>Those gray birches and ash-trees formed pleasant
spots of shade amid the dazzling whiteness
of the dunes. But there was other and more
unique vegetable growth to be considered.</p>
<p>“Say! but will you just look at the cranberry
patch, growing out of the white beach?” shrieked
young Colin after an ecstatic interval, addressing
no one scout in particular.</p>
<p>“Cranberries there near the tide!”—”Growing
out of the sand!”—”Tooraloo!”—”Nonsense!”
came from his brother Owls who were
already getting busy, erecting tents.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p>
<p>But cranberries there were, in ripening beauty—as
the workers presently saw for themselves—cranberries
whose roots underran the dazzling
beach, whose crimson creepers trailed delicately
over its whiteness, whose berries nestled their rosy
cheeks daintily, each upon its snowy pillow.</p>
<p>“<i>Gee!</i>” The one united ejaculation—the
little nondescript, uncouth monosyllable which
expresses so many emotions of the boyish heart,
from panic to panegyric—was all that the scouts
could find voice for in presence of this red-and-white
loveliness secreted by Nature upon a lonely
shore.</p>
<p>“Hey! fellows, Captain Andy is going,” the
voice of the busy scoutmaster broke in upon their
bliss. “He’s to bring the Foxes down to-morrow
in his motor-boat,” alluding to the Fox Patrol,
of which Godey was leader. “The Seals will row
over, to-morrow forenoon, from the other side of
the river; so our scout troop will be complete.
We owe a lot to Captain Andy. Don’t you want
to show him that you can make a noise: don’t
you want to give your yell, with his name at the
end? Now, all in line, and together!”</p>
<p>And each scout with his arm around a comrade
upon either side—Leon’s clasping the back
of Harold Greer who, a year ago, had cowered
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
at sight of him—all in a welded line, swaying
together where the ripples broke upon the milky
beach, they proved their prowess as chief noise-makers
and made the welkin ring with:—</p>
<div class="poemr"><br />
<span style="margin-left: 3em;">AMERICA</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Boy Scouts! Boy Scouts!</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Rah! Rah! Rah!</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Exmouth! Exmouth! Exmouth!</span><br />
Captain Andy! Captain Andy! <i>Cap-tain An-dy!</i>
</div>
<p>The weatherbeaten ex-skipper, standing “up
for’ard” in his launch, which was just beginning
its panting trip up the river, waved his hand in
acknowledgment, while the Aviator’s whistle returned
a triple salute to that linked line upon
the water’s edge.</p>
<p>“They’re fine lads!” A little moisture gathered
in the captain’s narrowed blue eye as he
gazed back at the beach—moisture which did
not come in over the Aviator’s rail. “Some one
has spoken of this Boy Scout Movement as the
‘Salvation of England’—as I’ve heard! So
here’s to it again as the Future of America!”
And he sounded three more whistles—and yet
another three—giving the scouts three times
three, until it seemed as if his power-boat would
burst its steel throat.</p>
<p>Then comparative silence reigned again upon
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
the sands and certain startled birds resumed their
feeding avocations, notably that white-breasted
busybody, the sanderling or surf-snipe, called by
river-men the “whitey.”</p>
<p>“See! the ‘whitey’ doesn’t believe that ‘two
is company, three none’: they’re chasing after
their dinner in triplets! They run out into the
ripples and back again, pecking in the sand, so
quickly that the larger waves can’t catch them:
don’t they, Greerie?” said Leon Chase, pointing
them out to Harold in the overflowing brotherliness
established by that yell.</p>
<p>Harold was no longer the “Hare.” That nickname
had been forbidden by the patrol leader of
the Owls under pain of dire penalties. The “poltron,”
or coward, as Toiney had once in pity
called him, was “Greerie” now; and was gradually
learning what mere bugaboos were the fears
which had separated him from his kind and from
boyhood’s activities—something which might
never have come home to him thoroughly, save
in the stimulating society of other boys who
aimed earnestly at helping him.</p>
<p>“We’re going to have a splendid time here
for the next two weeks, Greerie, camping among
the dunes,” Leon assured him. “To-morrow
Nix an’ you and I will go out in the little rowboat,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
the Pill, and hunt up a creamy pup-seal
and bring him back to camp for a pet. Now!
you must come and do your share of the work—help
to set up the other tents among the sand-hills.”</p>
<p>One was already erected, a large canvas shelter,
to contain four boys, another went up like unto
it for the other four members of the patrol, then a
smaller tent for the scoutmaster, and the cook-tent
which sheltered the “commissariat,” stocked
with cans of preserved meats, vegetables, and all
that went to make up the scouts’ daily rations.</p>
<p>“Where are <i>you</i> going to sleep, Toiney?”
asked Patrol Leader Nixon.</p>
<p>“Me—I’ll lak’ for sleep out in de air, me—wit’
de littal star on top o’ me!” Toiney
shrugged his shoulders complacently at the summer
sky, now taking on the hues of evening, as
if the firmament were a blanket woven for his
comfort.</p>
<p>“Oh! I’ll sleep out with you.—And I!—Me,
too!” Each and every member of the patrol,
from the leader downward, longed to feel the
white sand beneath him as a mattress, to have
the stars for canopy, to hear the night-tide as
it broke upon the near-by beach crooning his
lullaby.</p>
<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both;" summary="Illustration">
<tr><td class="figcenter"><img style="width:387px; height:608px" src="images/illus255.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="caption">IN CAMP</td></tr></table>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
<p>“You may take it in turns, fellows—each
sleep out with him one night, when the weather
is fine,” decided the scoutmaster. “Now! I’m going
to appoint Scouts Warren and Chase cooks
for to-night.”</p>
<p>A first-rate supper did those cooks turn out,
of flapjacks and scrambled eggs, the latter
stirred with a peeled stick, while the great coffee-pot,
brooding upon its rosy nest of birch-logs,
grinned facetiously when a stray flame wreathed
its spout, then broke into bubbling laughter.</p>
<p>Night fell upon the pale dunes that turned to
silver monuments under the smile of a moon in
its third quarter. A gentle, lowing sound came
to the scouts’ ears from the tide at far ebb upon
the silvery beach, as, the cook-fire abandoned, they
gathered round a blazing camp-fire that cast weird
reflections upon the surrounding white hillocks.</p>
<p>The holding of a calm powwow on this first
night in camp, when each heart was thrilling
tumultuously to the novelty of the surroundings,
was impossible. Toiney sang wild fragments of
songs that found a suitable accompaniment in
the distant, hoarse barking of the harbor seal,
and in the plaintive “Oo-oo-ooo!”—the dove-like
call of the creamy pup-seal to its marbled
mother in some lonely tidal creek.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p>
<p>Once and again from the shore side of the
scouts’ camp-fire, from among the shimmering
sand-hills, came the weaker, more snappy bark of
the little dog-fox, as he prowled the dunes.</p>
<p>The dazzling Sugarloaf Pillar near the mouth
of the river was wrapped in night’s mantle. But
lights flickered out in two of the handsome summer
bungalows which the boys had noticed, standing
at some distance from their camping-ground,
looming high above the beach, erected upon
stilt-like props driven into the sandy soil.</p>
<p>“Those houses were only built last spring;
they’re occupied for the first time this summer,”
said Kenjo Red, who was more familiar with this
region than the others. “Say! let’s chant our
African war-song, fellows. This is just the night
for it.” And the barbaric chant rang weirdly
among the sand-hills, the leader shouting the first
line, his companions answering with the other
three, to the accompaniment of the flames’
crackle and the night calls of bird and beast:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“Een gonyâma—gonyâma.</span><br />
Invoboo!<br />
Yah bô! Yah bô<br />
Invoboo!”
</div>
<p>Presently the bark of the dog-fox was heard
farther off. <i>He</i> knew, the stealthy slyboots, that
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
he was not the only lone prowler among the
pale dunes that night who listened intently to the
boisterous revelry round the scouts’ camp-fire.</p>
<p>His keen sense of smell informed him that
behind one plumed sand-hill, between his own
trotting form and the noisy company in the firelight,
there lurked a solitary man-figure.</p>
<p>But he, the sandy-coated little trotter from
burrow to burrow, could neither hear nor interpret
the sound, half groan, half oath, savagely
envious, that escaped from the other night-prowler’s
lips as he listened to the boys’ voices.</p>
<p>Silence, broken only by ringing snatches of
laughter, reigned temporarily over the dunes.
Then once again it blossomed into song:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“Hurrah for the brave, hurrah for the good,</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hurrah for the pure in heart!</span><br />
At duty’s call, with a smile for all,<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Scout will do his part!”</span><br />
</div>
<p>And the soft purr of the low tide, with the
breeze skipping among pallid dunes that looked
like capped haystacks in the darkness, flung
back the cheer for the “Scouts of the U.S.A.”</p>
<p>“<i>Aghrr-r!</i>” snarled the testy dog-fox, his
distant petulant growl much resembling that of
Leon’s terrier, who, unfortunately, was not
present upon the dunes to-night. Blink had
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
already added the word “Scout” to his limited
human vocabulary, but the wild fox had no
such linguistic powers. The foreign music upon
the lonely dunes was irritating, alarming to him.</p>
<p>It seemed to have something of the same
effect upon his brother-prowler, upon the man
who skulked among the sand-hills within hearing
of the song: at any rate, the semi-articulate
sound which from time to time he uttered, deepened
into an unmixed groan that escaped from
his lips again later when the clear notes of a
bugle rang over the Sugarloaf Dunes, warning
the scouts by the “first call” that fun was at
an end for to-night, and sleep would be next
upon the programme.</p>
<p>Then when lights were out, came the sweet
sound of “Taps,” the wind-up of the first day in
camp, the expert bugler being Corporal Chase.</p>
<p>For the Exmouth doctor had kept his word:
Leon had been given the “bugle” literally and
figuratively since he enlisted as a scout, symbol
of the challenge to all the energy in him to advance
along new lines, instead of the “foghorn”
reproofs and warnings that had been showered
on him prior to his scouting days.</p>
<p>Then, at last, stillness reigned, indeed, upon
the moonlit dunes.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
<p>The bark of the dog-fox melted into distance,
becoming indistinguishable from the voice of the
returning tide.</p>
<p>The man-prowler among the sand-hills slipped
away to some lair as lonely as the fox’s.</p>
<p>And Toiney, with Scout Nixon Warren
wrapped in his camper’s blanket beside him,
slept out upon the white sands “wit’ de littal
star on top o’ them!”</p><hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER XVI</p>
<p class="center chap2">THE PUP-SEAL’S CREEK</p>
<p>The music of “Taps” was eclipsed by the
blither music of “Reveille,” the morning blast
blown by Leon standing in front of the white
tents, the sands beneath his feet jeweled by the
early sunshine, the blue ribbon attached to his
bugle flirting with the breeze that capered among
the plumy hillocks.</p>
<p>The tide which had ebbed and flowed again
since midnight—when the last excited scout had
fallen asleep lulled by its full purr—broke high
upon the beach, where the white sands gleamed
through its translucent flood like milk in a crystal
vase.</p>
<p>Far away in dim distance, higher up the tidal
river upon its other side, beyond the plains of
water, the woods which enclosed Varney’s Paintpot
and the cave called the Bear’s Den smiled
remotely through a pearly veil of haze.</p>
<p>And all the waking glee of tide, dunes,
and woods was personified in the boy bugler’s
face.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
<p>The sight of him as he stood there, face to the
tents where his comrades scrambled up from cot
or ground, his brown eyes snapping and flashing
under the scout’s broad hat, with the delight of
having found an absorbing interest which stimulated
and turned to good account every budding
activity within him—that sight would have
made the veriest old Seek-sorrow among men
take heart and feel that a new era of chivalry
was in flower among the Scouts of the U.S.A.</p>
<p>And the old religious reverence, that fortifying
kernel of knighthood, was not neglected by this
boy scout patrol.</p>
<p>Bareheaded, and in line with their scoutmasters
presently, while their eyes gazed off over the
sparkling dunes and crystal tide-stretches, they
repeated in unison the Lord’s Prayer, offering
morning homage to the Power, dimly discerned,
of whom and through whom and to whom are
all things. Of his, the Father’s, presence chamber,
gladness and beauty stand at the threshold!</p>
<p>“<i>Now</i>, for our early swim! The tide’s just
right. Come along, Harold; I’m going to give <i>you</i>
your first swimming-lesson; and I expect you’ll
be a star pupil!” cried Nixon, the patrol leader,
when the brief adoration was over. “What! you
don’t want to learn to swim? Nonsense! You <i>are</i>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
going into that dandy water. Oh! that’s not a
scout’s mouth, Harold.”</p>
<p>And the corners of Harold’s mouth, which had
drooped with fear of this new experience, curled
up in a yielding grin.</p>
<p>Once he was in the invigorating salt water,
feeling the boisterous tidal ripples, fresh and not
too cold, rise about his body, the timid lad underwent
another lightning change, just as at the
moment of his tying the bowline knot, the spirit
of his fisherman father became uppermost in him,
and he learned to swim almost as easily and naturally
as a pup-seal.</p>
<p>The improvement in his condition was such
that his brother Owls had won his promise to enter
school when it should reopen after this jolly
camping period was over. “And if any boy picks
on you or teases you, Harold, mind you’re to let
us know at once, because we’re your brother
scouts—and he won’t try it a second time!”
So they admonished him.</p>
<p>Thus Harold, under the Owls’ sheltering wing,
was gradually losing his inherited and imbibed
dread of a crowd, of any gathering of his own
kind.</p>
<p>Although this bugbear fear returned upon him
a little when, later on that morning, the Fox
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
Patrol, with Godey Peck as its leader, was landed
upon the Sugarloaf Dunes from Captain Andy’s
motor-launch, and still later in the day the Seals
rowed across in two large rowboats from certain
farms or fishermen’s houses upon the opposite
side of the river, to join the other two patrols.
So that the boy scout troop was complete, and
Harold found himself one of twenty-four boisterous,
though good-natured, boys upon this
strange white beach.</p>
<p>A little homesickness beset him for the farm-clearing
in the woods and his grandfather’s staid
presence, to cure which Scouts Warren and
Chase took him off with them in the little rowboat,
the Pill, lent by Captain Andy, to explore
the tidal river and the little truant creeks
that escaped from it to burrow among the salt-marshes.</p>
<p>“We’re going to try and hunt up a creamy
pup-seal, Harold, and bring it back to camp,” said
Nixon; and in the excitement of this quest the
still shy boy forgot his nervous qualms.</p>
<p>Fortune favored the expedition. It was now
between one and two o’clock in the afternoon.
The tide, which had been high at six in the
morning and again at twelve, was once more on
the ebb, as the two elder scouts rowing in leisurely
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
fashion, turned the Pill’s snub nose into a
pearly creek whose shallow water was clear and
pellucid, over its sandy bed.</p>
<p>Hardly half a dozen strokes had they taken between
bold marshy banks when, from some half-submerged
rocks near the head of the creek, they
heard a prolonged and dulcet “Oo-oo-oo-ooo”
that might have been the call of a dove, save
that it was louder.</p>
<p>“<i>Hear him?</i>” cried Leon, shipping his oar in
blinking excitement. “That’s our pup-seal, Nix!
We’ve got him cornered in this little creek; if
he dives, the water is so shallow that we can pick
him up from the bottom; and he can’t swim fast
enough to get away from us—though as likely
as not he won’t want to!”</p>
<p>The last conjecture proved true. The young
seal, little more than two months old, which lay
sprawled out, a creamy splotch, upon the low
reef which the tide was forsaking, with his baby
flippers clinging to the wet rock and his little
eyes staring unwinkingly into the sunlight, had
not the least objection to human company. He
welcomed it.</p>
<p>When the scouts rowed up alongside the ledge
he suffered Nixon to lift his moist fat body into
the boat, where he stretched himself upon the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
bottom planks in perfect contentment, and took
all the caresses which the three boys lavished
upon him like any other lazy puppy.</p>
<p>“Isn’t he ‘cunning’, though?” gasped Harold,
trying to lift the youthful mammal into his arms,
an attempt which failed because he, the weak
one of the Owls, was not strong enough to do
so without capsizing the Pill—not because the
pup-seal objected. “I thought he’d be a kind of
whitish color, eh?” appealing diffidently to Leon.</p>
<p>“So he was, when born; his hair is turning
darker now, to a dull yellow; by and by it will
be a brownish drab. See, Greerie! his spots are
beginning to appear!” Leon ran his finger down
the seal’s dog-like head and back, already faintly
dotted with those round markings which gain
for his family the name of the “marbled seal.”</p>
<p>“Isn’t he a ‘sprawly’ pup, and so friendly?
The other scouts will be ‘tickled to death’ with
him—” Nixon was beginning, when a shadow
suddenly fell across the boat and its three occupants,
whose attention was entirely upon the
young seal.</p>
<p>“Hi, there! You’ll get pocketed in this little
creek, you fellows—hung up aground here—if
you don’t look out! Can’t you see that the water
is leaving you?” cried a harsh voice from the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
bold marsh-bank which overhung the creek to
the right of them, so suddenly that the three
jumped.</p>
<p>Looking up, they saw the unkempt figure of
a young man, short of stature and showing a
hungry leanness about the neck and face. This
sudden apparition which had approached noiselessly
over the soft marshes, was plainly outlined
against the surrounding wildness of salt-marsh
and tideway.</p>
<p>Had the little dog-fox which prowled among
the moonlit dunes been near, he might have
recognized in the shabby figure his brother-prowler
of the night before.</p>
<p>Recognition was springing from another source.
Starrie Chase caught his breath with such a wild
gasp that he rocked the Pill as if a gust had
struck it. Something about that stocky figure
and in the expression of the face, half wistful,
half savage, reminded him overwhelmingly of an
old woman whom he had seen issuing, lantern in
hand, from her paintless home, and who had
raised her trembling arm to her breast at sight
of him, Leon.</p>
<p>“Forevermore! it’s <i>Dave Baldwin</i>,” he ejaculated
in a whisper audible only to Nixon.
“That’s who it is—Nix!
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>”</p>
<p>“Don’t you see that the tide is leaving you?”
snapped the stranger again. “There won’t be a
teaspoonful of water in this creek presently.”</p>
<p>He was looking down at the Pill and its occupants,
with a gleam in his eyes fugitive and
phosphorescent as a marsh-light, which revealed
a new expression upon his mud-smeared face,
one of passionate envy—envy of the boy
scouts healthily rejoicing over their captive pup-seal.</p>
<p>“Tide leaving us! S-so it is!” Nixon seized
an oar as if awakening from a dream. “Thank
you for warning us! We don’t want to be hung
up in the pocket of this little creek—until it
rises again!”</p>
<p>“Then pull for all you’re worth! Your boat—she’s
a funny one,” broke off the stranger with
the ghost of a boyish twinkle in his eye; “she
looks as if she was made from a flat-bottomed
dory that had been cut in two!”</p>
<p>“So she was, I guess!” Leon too found his
voice suddenly.</p>
<p>“Well! luckily for you, she doesn’t draw much
water; you may scrape by an’ get out into the
open channel while there’s tide enough left to
float her!” And with an inarticulate grunt that
might have been construed into some sort of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
farewell, the stranger disappeared over the
marshes abruptly as he had come.</p>
<p>Their own plight now engrossed the boys. It
was clear that if they did not want to be pocketed
in this out-of-the-way creek with their amphibious
prize, grounded in the sand for the next five
or six hours, without a hope of getting back to
their camp on the dunes until the tide should
rise again, they certainly must row for all they
were worth!</p>
<p>Even as it was, the two older scouts, divesting
themselves of shoes and stockings, rolling up
their khaki trousers, had to “get out and shove”
ere they could propel the flat-bottomed Pill
through the mouth of the creek.</p>
<p>“If that fellow hadn’t warned us just in time,
we’d have been in a bad scrape,” said Scout
Chase. “We’re not out of the misery yet, Nix!
See the old mud-shadow poking its nose up on
either side of the main channel!”</p>
<p>“Yes, the water on those shallows looks
like the inside of an oyster-shell,—thick and iridescent.
‘Shove’ is the word again, Starrie!”
returned his toiling companion, arduously putting
that watchword in practice, pushing the
little boat containing Harold and the pup-seal
(the latter being the only member of the party
placidly unmoved by the situation) through the
iridescent opaqueness of the ebbing ripples that
now barely covered vast silvery stretches of tidal
mud.</p>
<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both;" summary="Illustration">
<tr><td class="figcenter"><img style="width:394px; height:610px" src="images/illus271.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="caption">“CAN’T YOU SEE THE TIDE IS LEAVING YOU?”</td></tr></table>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p>
<p>“Look at that old clam-digger, who has his
shack on the white beach, about quarter of a
mile from our camp! He’s left his boat behind
and is wading out to the clam-flats.” Nixon
paused, with his breast to the boat’s stern, in the
act of propelling it. “Goody! I’d like to stop
and dig clams with him. But we’d never get back
to camp! What ho! she sticks again. There!
that brings her.”</p>
<p>By dint of alternately propelling and rowing
the three scouts, with their prize, finally reached
the white beach of the dunes before the tide
completely deserted them. They brought a full
cargo of excitement into camp in their tale of
the stranger who had warned them; who, with
worthless vagrancy stamped all over him, they
felt must be the <i>vaurien</i>, Dave Baldwin; and in
their engaging prize, the flippered pup-seal.</p>
<p>The latter quite eclipsed the interest felt in
the former. Never was there a more docile, fatter,
or more amiable puppy. He enjoyed being
fondled in a scout’s arms, under difficulties, as,
for a pup, he was quite a heavy-weight and slippery
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
too, on account of the amount of blubber
secreted under his creamy skin. His oily brown
eyes were softly trustful.</p>
<p>But the tug-of-war came with feeding-time.
Vainly did the boy scouts offer him of their
best, vainly did Marcoo and Colin tramp a mile
over the dunes to bring back a quart of new
milk for him from the nearest farm, and try to
pour it gently down his infant throat!</p>
<p>He set up a dove-like moaning that was plainly
a call for his mother as he lay sprawled out on
the white sands. And, at nightfall, by order of
the scoutmaster, Scouts Warren and Chase rowed
out into the channel and returned him to the
water in which he was quite at home.</p>
<p>But he was possessed of a contradictory spirit,
for he swam after the Pill, crying to be taken
aboard again. They could hear his dulcet “Oo-oo-ooo!”
as they gathered round their camp-fire
in the white hollow among the sand-hills.</p>
<p>At the powwow to-night the encounter with
Dave Baldwin, if the vagrant of the marshes was
really he, came in for its share of discussion.
Guesses were rife as to the probability of the
scouts running across him again, and as to how
he might occupy his time in the lazy vagabond
life which he was leading.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
<p>It was here that Harold broke through the
semi-shy reserve which still encrusted him and
contributed a remark, the first as a result of his
observations, to the powwow.</p>
<p>“Well! he had an <i>awful</i> sorry face on him,”
he said impulsively, alluding to the vagrant. “It
just made me feel badly for a while!”</p>
<p>“You’re right, Greerie, he had!” corroborated
Leon. “Whatever he’s doing, it isn’t
agreeing with him. We’ll probably come on him
again some time on the marshes or among the
dunes.”</p>
<p>But eleven days went by, eleven full days for
the scout campers, golden with congenial activity,
wherein each hour brought its own interesting
“stunt,” as they called it; and they saw no more
of the <i>vaurien</i>, the worthless one, who had caused
his mother’s heart to “break in pieces.”</p>
<p>And they gave little thought to him. For
those breezy days, the last of August and the first
of September, were spent in observation tours
over marsh and dune or on the heaving river, in
playing their exciting scout games among the
sandhills, in clam-bakes, in practising signaling
with the little red-and-white flags according to
the semaphore or wig-wag code—one scout
transmitting a message to another posted on a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
distant hill—and in the various duties assigned
to them in pairs, of cooking, and keeping the
camp generally in order.</p>
<p>The more fully one lives, the more joyously
one adventures, the more quickly flutters the present
into the past, like a sunny landscape flitting
by a train! It had come to be the last night but
one in camp. Within another two days the Sugarloaf
Dunes would be deserted so far as campers
were concerned.</p>
<p>School would presently reopen. And at the end
of the month the Owls would lose their brother
and patrol leader: during the first days of October
Scout Nixon Warren’s parents were expected
home from Europe, and he would rejoin his former
troop in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>To-night, every one was bent upon making
the end of the camping trip a season of befitting
jollity. They sang their scout songs as they gathered
round the camp-fire. They retailed the last
good joke from their magazine. They challenged
the darkness with their hearty motto,—both in
the strong sweet mother tongue wherein it had
been given to the world, and in the pretty <i>Estu
preta!</i> form, which two of their number thought
might serve as a universal link.</p>
<p>But the night refused to rejoice with them.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
It was chilly, colder than on the same date one
year ago when four lost boys camped out in the
Bear’s Den. The inflowing tide broke on the
beach with sobbing clamor. There was no moon,
few stars. The white sand-hills were wild-looking
sable mounds waving blood-red plumes of
beach-grass or beach-pea wherever the light of
camp-fire or camp-lantern struck them.</p>
<p>The clusters of gray birches and ash-trees scattered
here and there among the dunes cowered
like ebony shadows fearful of the rising wind.</p>
<p>“Bah! De night she’s as black as one black
crow,” declared Toiney with a shrug as he threw
another birch log on the camp-fire and set one of
the two bright oil-lanterns on a sand-hill where
it spied upon the gusty, secretive darkness like a
watchful eye.</p>
<p>With the exception of a few small carbide
lamps attached to tent-posts, those lanterns were
the only luminaries in camp.</p>
<p>“An’ de win’ she commence for mak’ noise
lak’ mad cat! Saint Ba’tiste! I’ll t’ink dis iss
night for de come-backs—me.” And Toiney
glanced half-fearfully behind him at the sable
mounds so milky in daylight.</p>
<p>“He means it’s a night for spooks—ghosts!
He doesn’t believe much in ‘come-backs,’ though:
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
look at his face!” Leon pointed at the assistant
scoutmaster’s black eyes dancing in the firelight,
at the tassel of his red cap capering in the breeze.
“By the way, Nix and I saw one ‘come-back,’
about an hour ago—a human one!” went on
Corporal Chase suddenly, after a minute’s pause:
“that rough customer, Dave Baldwin, as we suppose
him to be, turned up again this evening
near the summer bungalows away over on the
beach. He was acting rather queerly, too!”</p>
<p>“He certainly was!” chimed in Nixon, looking
thoughtfully at a little topknot of flame that
sprouted upon the blazing log nearest to him as
he lay, with his brother Owls, prone upon his
face and hands, gazing into the fire.</p>
<p>“What was he doing?” asked Jesse Taber,
a member of the Seal Patrol.</p>
<p>“Why, he was up on the high piazza of the
largest bungalow—that house built just on the
edge of the dunes which looks as if it was standing
on stilts, and getting ready to walk off! He
seemed to be trying one of the windows when we
came along as if attempting to get in.”</p>
<p>“The summer people who own that house left
there this morning; we saw them going,” broke
in Godey Peck of the Fox Patrol. “I guess all
the three houses are empty now; those dandified
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
‘summer birds’ don’t like staying round here
when the wind ‘makes noise like mad cat’!”
Godey hugged himself and beamed over the wild
noises of the night, and at the voice of the tidal
river calling lustily.</p>
<p>“Well! did he get into the house?” asked
Jemmie Ahern of the Seals.</p>
<p>“No, as we came along over the dunes he saw
us and scooted off!” Thus Corporal Leon Chase
again took up the thread of the story. “But Nix
an’ I looked back as we walked along the beach;
it was getting dusk then, but we made out his
figure disappearing into a large shed belonging
to that bungalow.”</p>
<p>“I hope he wasn’t up to any mischief,” said
the scoutmaster gravely. “Now! let’s forget
about him. Haven’t any of you other scouts
some contribution to make to to-night’s powwow
about things you’ve observed during the day?”</p>
<p>“Mr. Scoutmaster, I have!” Marcoo lifted his
head upon the opposite side of the camp-fire
where he lay, breast downward, on the sand.
“Colin and I and two members of the Seal Patrol,
Howsie and Jemmie Ahern, saw an <i>awfully</i>
big heap of clam-shells between two sand-hills on
the shore-edge of the beach. They were partly
covered with sand; but we dug them out; and—somehow—they
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
looked as if they had been
there for ages.”</p>
<p>“Likely enough, they had! The Indians used
to hold clam-bakes here.” The firelight danced
upon the scoutmaster’s white teeth; he greatly
enjoyed the camp-fire powwow. “You see, fellows,
this fine, white sand is something like snow—but
snow which doesn’t harden—the wind
blows it into a drift; then, perhaps, another big
gale comes along, picks up the drift and deposits
it somewhere else. That’s what uncovered your
clam-shells.”</p>
<p>“Then how is it these white dunes aren’t
traveling round the country?” Colin waved his
arm toward the neighboring sand-hills with a
laugh.</p>
<p>“Because they are held in place by the vegetation
that quickly sprang up on and between
them. That beach-grass has very coarse strong
roots which interlace under the surface. Now!
let’s listen to Toiney singing; we must be merry,
seeing it’s our second last night in camp.”
Scoutmaster Estey waved his hand toward his
assistant in the blue shirt and tasseled cap.</p>
<p>Toiney, tiring of the conversation which it
was an effort for him to follow, was crooning
softly an old French ditty wherewith he had
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
been sung to sleep by his grandfather when he
was a black-eyed babe in a saffron-hued night-cap
and gown:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“À la clair-e fontain-e</span><br />
M’en allant promener,<br />
J’ai trouvé l’eau si belle,<br />
Que je m’y suis baigné!”</div>
<p>“Oh! you took a walk near the fountain and
found the water so fine that you went in bathing!”
cried one and another of the scouts who
were in their first year in high school. “Must
have been a pretty big fountain! Go ahead:
what did you do next, Toiney?”</p>
<p>But the singer had suddenly sprung to his feet
and stood, an alert, tense figure, in the flickering
twilight.</p>
<p>“<i>Gard’ donc!</i>” he cried gutturally, while the
cat-like breeze capered round him, flicking his
short red tassel, catching at his legs in their
queer high boots. “<i>Gard’ donc!</i> de littal light
in de sky—engh? <i>Sapré tonnerre!</i> I’ll t’ink
shee’s fire, me. No camp-fire, <i>non</i>! Beeg fire—engh?
<i>V’là! V’là!</i>”</p>
<p>He glanced round sharply at his scout comrades,
and pointed, with excited gesticulations,
across the sable dunes in the direction of those
recently erected summer residences.</p><hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER XVII</p>
<p class="center chap2">THE SIGNALMAN</p>
<p>“Patrol leaders and corporals, muster your
men!” The voice of the young scoutmaster rang
sharply out upon the night.</p>
<p>The three boy patrols, Owls, Seals, and Foxes,
who fell quickly into line at his order, were no
longer surrounding their camp-fire amid the
dusky sand-hills. That had been deserted even
while Toiney was speaking, while he was pointing
out the claims of a larger fire on their attention.</p>
<p>From the glare in the sky this was evidently
a threatening blaze; its fierce reflection overhung
like an intangible flaming sword the trio
of recently erected summer residences about
quarter of a mile from the scouts’ camp—those
handsome bungalows from which the summer
birds had flown.</p>
<p>“That’s no brush fire,” Scoutmaster Estey had
exclaimed directly he sighted the glare. “It’s
a building of some kind. Come on, fellows;
there’s work for us here!” And snatching one
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
of the two camp-lanterns from its sandy pedestal
he led the way across the dark wilderness of
the dunes.</p>
<p>Nixon caught up the second luminary and
followed his chief. In their wake raced the three
patrols, down in a sandy hollow one moment,
climbing wildly the next, tearing their way
through the plumed tangle of beach-grass and
other vegetation that capped each pale mound
now swathed in blackness, Toiney keeping Harold
by his side.</p>
<p>“It isn’t one of the houses, thank goodness!
Only a big shed!” cried the scoutmaster as
they neared the scene of the fire, where golden
flames tore in two the darkness that cowered on
either side of them, having gained complete mastery
of an outbuilding which had been used as a
modest garage during the summer.</p>
<p>“<i>Whee-ew!</i> Gracious!” Nixon vented a prolonged
whistle of consternation. “Why! ’twas
into that very shed that we saw Dave Baldwin—or
the man whom we took for him—disappear
a couple of hours ago.”</p>
<p>But the demands of the moment were such,
if the three houses were to be saved, that the
remark, tossed at random into the darkness, was
lost there amid the reign of fiery motes and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
rampant sparks that strove to carry the destruction
farther.</p>
<p>“Luckily, the wind isn’t setting toward the
house—it’s mostly in another direction!” The
scoutmaster by a breathless wave of his blinking
lantern indicated the largest of the three bungalows
to which the blazing outbuilding belonged.
“No hope of saving that shed! But if the little
wood-shed near-by catches, the house will go too.
We may head the fire off!”</p>
<p>It was then that he issued the ringing order
to patrol leaders and those second in command
to muster their men.</p>
<p>And as the boy scouts fell into line, while
Toiney was muttering, aghast: “Ah, <i>quel gros
feu</i>! She’s beeg fire! How we put shes out—engh?”
the alert brain of the American scoutmaster
had outlined his plan of campaign; and
the air cracked with his orders:—</p>
<p>“Toiney, take the Owls and break into that
clam-digger’s shack on the beach: get his pails!
Foxes and Seals form a line to the beach; fill
the pails as you get them an’ pass ’em along to
me! Tide’s high; you need only wade in a little
way! Hey! Leon,”—to Corporal Chase, who
was obeying the first order with the rest of his
patrol,—”you’re good at signaling: take these
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
lanterns, get up on the tallest sand-hill an’ signal
Annisquam Lighthouse; tell them to get help!
Men there can probably read semaphore!”</p>
<p>“<i>We</i> may not be able to prevent the fire’s
spreading. And if it attacks that bungalow, the
others will go too—the whole colony! Lighthouse
men may take the glare in the sky to mean
only a brush-fire,” added the scoutmaster, <i>sotto
voce</i>, as he stationed himself upon the crest of
the sandy slope that led from the burning shed
to the dim lapping water.</p>
<p>That doomed shed was now blazing like a
mammoth bonfire. The flames flung their gleeful
arms out, seizing a solemn gray birch-tree for a
partner in their wild dance, scattering their rosy
fire-petals broadcast until they lodged in the
roof of the wood-shed adjacent to the house, and
upon the piazza of the bungalow itself.</p>
<p>But they had a trained force to reckon with
in the boy scouts. In the clam-digger’s shack
were found more than a dozen pails which their
owner had cleaned and set in order before he
went home that evening. And among the excited
raiders who seized upon them with wild eagerness
was Harold Greer—Harold who a year ago
was called “poltron” and “scaree” even by the
friend who protected him—Harold, with the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
last wisp of bugbear fear that trammeled him
burned off by the contagious excitement of the
moment—acquitting himself sturdily as a Scout
of the U.S.A!</p>
<p>Under his patrol leader’s direction he took his
place in the chain of boys that formed from the
conflagration to the wave-edge of the beach,
where half a dozen of his comrades rushed bare-legged
into the howling tide, filled the pails and
passed them along, up the line, to their scoutmaster
on the hill.</p>
<p>And he held to his place and to his duty
stanchly, did the one-time “poltron,” even when
Toiney, his mainstay, was summoned to the hill-top,
to aid the commander-in-chief in his direct onslaughts
upon the fire. Seeing which, Scout Warren
touched his shoulder once proudly, in passing,
and said in a voice huskily triumphant: “Well
done, Harold! I always knew you were a boy!”</p>
<p>The dragon which had held sway upon that
woodland clearing was slain at last, and the
scars which he had left upon his victim were
being cauterized by the fire.</p>
<p>“Go to it, boys! Good work! That’s fine!”
rang out the commanding shout of the scoutmaster
above the sullen roar of semi-defeated flames
and the hiss of contending elements.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p>
<p>“<i>Houp-là!</i> <i>Ça c’est bien!</i> Dat’s ver’ good!”
screamed Toiney airily from his perch atop
of a ladder which he had found in the wood-shed.</p>
<p>From this vantage-point he was deluging with
salt water the roof of the smaller shed and also
the walls of the bungalow wherever a fire-seed
lodged, ready to take root. Like a huge monkey
he looked, swarming up there, with the flame-light
dancing deliriously upon his dingy red
cap! But his voice would put merriment into
any exigency.</p>
<p>“<i>Houp-e-là!</i> We arre de boy! We arre de
bes’ scout ev’ry tam’!” he carolled gayly, as he
launched his hissing pailfuls at each threatened
spot. “<i>Continue cette affaire d’eau</i>—go on wit’
dis watere bizness. We done good work—engh?”</p>
<p>So they were, doing very good work! But
the issue was still exceedingly doubtful as to
whether, without any proper fire-fighting apparatus,
they could hold the flames in check, restricting
their destruction to the large shed whose
roof toppled in with a resounding crash, and a
volcano-like eruption of sparks.</p>
<p>And what of Leon? What of Corporal Chase,
alone upon the tallest sand-hill he could pick
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
out, a solitary scout figure remote from his comrades
with the dune breeze shrieking round
him?</p>
<p>What were his feelings as he shook his two
bright signaling lanterns aloft at arm’s length,
to attract the attention of the men who kept the
distant lighthouse beyond the dunes at the mouth
of another tidal river, and then spelled out his
message with those flashing luminaries, instead
of the ordinary signal-flags: “Fire! Get help!
House afire! Get help!” calling assistance out
of the black night?</p>
<p>Well! Starrie Chase was conscious of a monster
thrill shooting through him to his feet which
firmly pressed the sandy soil: breaking up into
a hundred little thrills, it made most of the
sensations which he had misnamed excitement a
year ago seem tame, thin, and unboyish.</p>
<p>He stood there, an isolated, sixteen-year-old
boy. But he knew himself a trained force
stronger than the “mad-cat” wind that clawed
at him, than the tide which moaned behind him,
even than the fire he combated; stronger always
in the long run than these, for he was growing
into a man who could get the better of them
ninety-nine times out of a hundred.</p>
<p>He was a scout, in line with the world’s progress,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
allied with rescue, not ruin, with healing,
not harm, with a chivalry that crowned all.</p>
<p>“Fire! Get help!” Thus he kept on signaling
at intervals, his left arm extending one flashing
lantern at arm’s length, while the companion
light was lowered to his knees for the formation
of the first letter of the message. And so on, the
twin lights held at various angles illumining the
youthful signalman until he stood out like a
black statue on a pedestal among the lonely
dunes.</p>
<p>To Starrie Chase that sand-peak pedestal
seemed to grow into a mountain and his uniformed
figure to tower with it—become colossal—in
the excitement of the moment!</p>
<p>While, not twenty yards distant, behind a
smaller sand-hillock, crouched another figure
whose half-liberated groan the wind caught and
tossed away like a feather as he gazed between
clumps of beach-grass at the gesturing form of
the scout.</p>
<p>It was the same figure which had haunted the
dunes, listening to the camp-fire revelry upon
the boy scouts’ first night in camp, the same
which had so suddenly appeared upon the marshes
near the pup-seal’s creek.</p>
<p>But distress seemed now to lie heavier upon
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
that vagrant figure, instead of diminishing. For,
as he still studied the light-girdled form of the
signalman, Dave Baldwin vented a groan full
and unmistakable, and blew upon a pair of
burned hands.</p><hr class="art" /><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p>
<p class="center chap">CHAPTER XVIII</p>
<p class="center chap2">THE LOG SHANTY AGAIN</p>
<p>“This fire has been the work of some incendiary—that’s
what I think!” was the opinion
delivered later that night by the captain of the
nearest fire-brigade, who, with his company, had
been summoned by Leon’s signaled message,
passed on via telephone wires by the lighthouse
men.</p>
<p>“Of course, it may have been a case of accident
or spontaneous combustion, but the former
seems out of the question, seeing that the houses
were empty, and the latter not probable,” went
on the grizzled chief. “Anyhow, I congratulate
you on your boys, Mr. Scoutmaster! Under your
leadership they certainly did good work in saving
this whole summer colony.”</p>
<p>“So they did; I’m proud of them!” returned
the scoutmaster impulsively, which made the
three patrol leaders within hearing, Scout Warren
of the Owls, Godey Peck of the Foxes, and
Jesse Taber of the Seals, straighten their tired
bodies, feeling repaid.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p>
<p>“Well! I expect you’ll see one or two officers
landing upon these Sugarloaf Dunes to-morrow,
to try and get at the cause of the fire,”
said the chief again. “It started in that shed
where, so far as we know, there was nothing inflammable.”</p>
<p>“I ought to tell you,” Scoutmaster Estey
looked very grave, “that two of my scouts saw
a man entering the shed,” pointing to what was
now a mere smouldering heap of ashes, “just
about an hour, or a little over, before the fire
broke out. When they first caught sight of him
he was on the piazza of the bungalow itself, and
seemed trying to get into the house.”</p>
<p>“Ho! Ho! I thought so. This is a case for
the district police, I guess!” muttered the grizzled
fire-chief.</p>
<p>That was the opinion also of the police representatives
who landed upon the white dunes from
a motor-boat early the next morning. And when
the sharp questioning of one of the officers
brought out the fact that the individual who
had lurked about the scene of the fire was believed
to be a youthful ne’er-do-weel, Dave Baldwin,
with a prison record behind him, whose
name was known to the two policemen, though
his person was not, suspicion fastened upon that
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
vagrant as possibly the malicious author of the
fire.</p>
<p>“That fellow first got into trouble through a
morbid craving for excitement,” said one of the
officers. “The same craving <i>may</i> have led him
on from one thing to another until he hasn’t
stopped at arson—especially if he had a spiteful
motive for it, which is likely with a tramp. That
may have been his purpose in trying to enter the
house.”</p>
<p>“I can scarcely imagine Dave’s having become
such an utter degenerate,” answered the scoutmaster
sadly. “I went to school with him long
ago. And Captain Andy Davis knew his father
well; they were shipmates on more than one
trawling trip to the Grand Banks. Captain Andy
speaks of the elder David Baldwin as a brave
man and a big fisherman. Even if the son did
start this fire, it may have been accidental in
some way.”</p>
<p>“Well! we must get our hands on him, anyhow,”
decided the officer. “I wonder if he’s
skulking round among the dunes still; that’s
not probable? I’d like to know whether any one
of these observant boy scouts of yours saw a
boat leave this shore since daybreak?”</p>
<p>It transpired that Coombsie had: after a night
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
of unprecedented excitement—like his tossing
brother scouts who sought the shelter of their
tents about one o’clock in the morning—he had
been unable to sleep, had crept out of his tent at
daybreak and climbed a white sand-hill, to watch
the sun rise over the river.</p>
<p>“I saw a rowboat shoot out of a little creek farther
up the river, I should say about half a mile
from the dunes,” said Marcoo. “There was only
one person in it; seemed to me he was acting
rather queerly; he’d row for a while, then
stand up in the stern and scull a bit, then row
again.”</p>
<p>“Could you see for what point he was heading?”</p>
<p>“For the salt-marshes high up on the other
side of the river, I guess! I think he landed
there.”</p>
<p>“Then, he’s probably hiding in the woods beyond
the marshes. We must search them. That
French-Canadian, Toiney Leduc, who’s camping
with you, has worked as a lumberman in those
woods; he knows them well, and is a good trailer.
I’d like to have him for a guide this morning.”
Here the officer turned to the scoutmaster.
“And if you have no objection I think it would
be well that those two boys should come with
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
us,” he nodded toward Scouts Warren and Chase.
“They can identify the man whom they saw
trying to enter that bungalow last night.”</p>
<p>There is nothing at all inspiriting about a
man-hunt; so Nixon and Leon decided when,
within an hour, they landed from the police boat
on the familiar salt-marshes high up the river,
and silently took their way across them, in company
with Toiney and the policemen, over the
uplands into the woods.</p>
<p>They had come upon the fugitive’s boat,
hidden among a clump of bushes near the river.
Using that as a starting-point, Toiney followed
Dave Baldwin’s trail into the maze of woodland;
though how he did so was to the boy scouts a
problem, for to them it seemed blind work.</p>
<p>But the guide in the tasseled cap, blue shirt,
and heelless high boots, would stop now and
again at a soft spot on the marshes or uplands,
or when they came to a swampy patch in the
woods; at such times he would generally drop on
all fours with a muttered: “Ha! <i>V’là ses pis!</i>”
in his queer patois. “Dere’s heem step!” And
anon: “Dere me fin his feets again!”</p>
<p>When there was no footprint to guide him
Toiney would stoop down and read the story of
the dry pine-needles, just faintly disturbed by
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
the toe of a rough boot which had kicked them
aside a little in passing.</p>
<p>Or he would carefully examine a broken twig,
the wood of which, being whitish and not discolored,
showed that it had been recently snapped
by a tread heavier than that of a fox; and again
they would hear him mutter in his quaint dialect:
“<i>Tiens! le tzit ramille cassé</i>: de littal
stick broke! I’ll t’ink hees step jus’ here—engh?”</p>
<p>It was a lesson in trailing which the two boy
scouts never forgot as they took their way through
the thick woods, fairly well known to them now,
past Varney’s Paintpot, Rattlesnake Brook, and
other points of interest.</p>
<p>Ere they reached the Bear’s Den, however, the
trail which Toiney had been following seemed to
turn off at an angle and then double backward
through the woods, in an opposite direction to
that in which they had been pursuing it.</p>
<p>“Mebbe she’s no’ de same trail?” pondered
the guide aloud. “Mebbe dere’s oder man’s
feets, engh?”</p>
<p>It was now that a sudden idea, a swift memory,
struck Scout Warren.</p>
<p>“Say! Starrie,” he exclaimed in a low tone to
his brother scout. “Do you remember our looking
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
all over that loggers’ camp last year, the
shanty back there in the woods, with the rusty
grindstone trough and mountain of sawdust beside
it? We found some fresh tobacco ash on
the table and in one of the bunks which showed
that, though the shanty was deserted in summer,
somebody was using it for a shelter at night.
That somebody may have been Dave Baldwin.”</p>
<p>“Yes, they say he has spent his time—or
most of it—loafing among the dunes or in the
woods,” returned Leon, well recalling the incident
and how, too, he had scoffed at the boy
scout for taking the trouble to read the sign
story told by every article in and about the
rough shanty, including the overturned trough.</p>
<p>“Eh! what’s that, boys?” asked one of the
two policemen, catching part of the conversation.</p>
<p>As in duty bound they told him; and the
search party turned in the direction of the log
shanty.</p>
<p>As they surmised it was not empty. On the
discolored mattress in the lower bunk left there
by the lumbermen who once occupied it, was
stretched the figure of a man, fast asleep. One
foot emerging from a charred, torn trouser-leg
which looked as if it had come into contact with
fire, hung over the edge of the deal crib.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p>
<p>When the party filed into the shanty the
sleeper started up and rubbed his eyes. At sight
of the two policemen his smudged face took on
a pinched pallor.</p>
<p>“I didn’t do it on purpose!” he cried in the
bewilderment of this sudden awakening, without
time to collect his senses. “So help me! I never
meant to set that shed on fire!”</p>
<p>“You were seen hanging round there an hour
before the blaze broke out, and trying to get
into the house too,” challenged the elder of the
policemen.</p>
<p>Dave Baldwin slipped from the bunk to the
ground; he saw that his best course lay in making
a clean breast of last night’s proceedings.</p>
<p>“So I was!” he said. “And these two fellows,”
he pointed to the boy scouts, “saw me up on the
piazza of the house, trying a window. I was
hungry; I’d had nothing to eat all day but the
last leg of a woodchuck that I knocked on the
head day before yesterday. I thought the summer
people who had just gone away might have left
some canned stuff or remnants o’ food behind
’em. I didn’t want to steal anything else, or to
do mischief!” he went on with that same passionate
frankness of a man abruptly startled out of
sleep, while the policemen listened patiently. “I
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
didn’t, I tell ye! I’d been hangin’ round those
Sugarloaf Dunes for nigh on two weeks, watching
the boys who were camping there, having a
ripping good time—doing a lot o’ stunts that
I knew nothing about—wishing I’d had the
chanst they have now!”</p>
<p>“How came you to go into the shed that was
burned down?” asked one of the officers.</p>
<p>“I was hungry, as I tell you, an’ I couldn’t
get into the house, so I thought I’d lie down
under the nearest cover, that shed, go to sleep
an’ forget it. I guess I knocked the ashes out o’
my pipe an’ dozed. Smoke an’ the smell o’ wood
burning woke me. I found one side o’ the shed
was on fire. Maybe, some one had left an oily
rag, or one with turpentine on it, around, and
the spark from my pipe caught it. I don’t know!
I tried to stamp out the fire—to beat it out
with my hands!” He extended blistered palms
and knuckles. “I’ve made a mess o’ my life I
know! But I ain’t a crazy fire-bug!”</p>
<p>“Why didn’t you try and get help to fight
it?”</p>
<p>“I was too scared. I thought, likely as not,
nobody would believe me, seeing I had a ‘reformatory
record,’” the youthful vagrant’s face
twitched. “I was afraid o’ being ‘sent up
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>’
again, so I hid among the dunes and crossed to
the woods this morning.”</p>
<p>“Well, you can tell all that to the judge; you
must come with me now,” said the older policeman
inflexibly, not unkindly; he knew that men
when suddenly aroused from sleep usually speak
the truth; he was impressed by the argument of
those blistered palms; on the other hand, the
youthful vagrant’s past record was very much
against him.</p>
<p>But those charred palms were evidence enough
for Toiney; though they might leave the officers
of the law unconvinced.</p>
<p>“Ha! <i>courage</i>, Dave,” he cried, feeling an
emotion of pity mingle with the contempt which
he, honest Antoine, had felt for the <i>vaurien</i>
who had caused his old mother’s heart to burst.
“<i>Bon courage</i>, Dave! I’ll no t’ink you do dat,
for sure, me. Mebbe littal fire fly f’om you’ pipe.
I’ll no t’ink you do dat for de fun!”</p>
<p>“We don’t think you did it on purpose, Dave,”
struck in the two boy scouts, seconding their
guide.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Dave Baldwin passed that night
in a prison cell and appeared before the judge
next morning with the certainty confronting him
that he would be remanded to appear before the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
higher court on the grave charge of being an
incendiary.</p>
<p>And it seemed improbable that bail would be
offered for the prisoner, so that he would be allowed
out of jail in the mean time.</p>
<p>Yet bail was forthcoming. A massive, weatherbeaten
figure, well known in this part of Essex
County, stood up in court declaring that he was
ready and willing to sign the prisoner’s bail
bonds. It was Captain Andy Davis.</p>
<p>And when all formalities had been gone
through, when the prisoner was liberated until
such time as his case should come up for trial,
Captain Andy took him in tow.</p>
<p>“You come along home with me, Dave!” he
commanded. “I’m going to put it up to you
straight whether you want to live a man’s life, or
not.”</p>
<p>And so he did that evening.</p>
<p>“I’ve been wanting to get hold of you for
some time, Dave Baldwin,” said the sea-captain.
“Your father an’ I were shipmates together on
more’n one trip. He was a white man, brave an’
hard-working; it’s hard for me to believe that
there isn’t some o’ the same stuff in his son.”</p>
<p>The youthful ne’er-do-weel was silent. Captain
Andy slowly went on:
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>—</p>
<p>“As for the matter of this fire, I don’t believe
you started it on purpose. I doubt if the policemen
who arrested you do! It’s your past record
that’s against you. Now! if I see the district attorney,
Dave Baldwin,” Captain Andy’s eyes narrowed
meditatively under the heavy lids, “and
succeed in getting this case against you <i>nol
prossed</i>—I guess that’s the term the lawyer
used—it means squashed, anyhow, do you want
to start over again an’ head for some port worth
while?”</p>
<p>“Nobody would give me the chance,” muttered
the younger man huskily.</p>
<p>“I will. I’ve bought a piece of land over there
on the edge of the woods, lad; it ain’t more’n
half cleared yet. I’m intending to start a farm.
But I don’t know much about farming; that’s
the truth!” The grand old Viking looked almost
pathetically helpless. “But you’ve worked on a
farm, Dave, when you were a boy and since: if
you want to take hold an’ help me—if you want
to stick to work an’ make good—this is your
chance!”</p>
<p>An inarticulate sound from the <i>vaurien</i>; it
sounded like a sob bitten in two by clenched
teeth!</p>
<p>“The two boys who were with the officers who
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
arrested you told me that you declared you’d
been hangin’ round the Sugarloaf Dunes lately,
watching those scouts at their signaling stunts
an’ the like, an’ wishing that you’d had the
chance they have now, when you were a boy.
Well! <i>theirs</i> is a splendid chance—better than
boys ever had before, it seems to me—of joining
the learning o’ useful things with fun.”
Captain Andy planted an elbow emphatically
upon a little table near him. “Now! Dave, you
don’t want to let those boy scouts be the ones to
do the good turns for your old mother that you
should do? If you ain’t set on breaking her
heart altogether—if you want to be a decent
citizen of the country that raises boys like these
scouts—if you want to see your own sons scouts
some day—well, give us your fin, lad!”</p>
<p>The captain’s voice dropped upon the last
words, the semi-comical wind-up of a peroration
broken and blustering in its earnestness.</p>
<p>There was a repetition of the hysterical sound
in Dave Baldwin’s throat which failed to pass
his gritting teeth. He did not extend his hand
at Captain Andy’s invitation. But his shoulders
heaved as he turned his head away; and the
would-be benefactor was satisfied.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>
<p>“And so Captain Andy is going to stand back
of Dave Baldwin and give him another chance to
make good in life!” said the Exmouth doctor,
member of the Local Council of Boy Scouts,
when he heard what had come of the vagrant’s
arrest. “That’s like Andy! And I don’t think
he’ll have much difficulty with the district attorney;
nobody really believes that Baldwin started
that fire maliciously, and the district attorney
will be very ready to listen to anything Captain
Andy has to say!”</p>
<p>Here the doctor’s eye watered. He was recalling
an incident which had occurred some
years before at sea, when the son of that district
attorney, who did not then occupy his present
distinguished position, and the doctor’s own son,
with one or two other young men of Dave Baldwin’s
age, had been wrecked while yachting upon
certain ragged rocks of Newfoundland, owing to
their foolhardiness in putting to sea when a
storm was brewing.</p>
<p>At daybreak upon an October morning their
buffeted figures were sighted, clinging to the
rocks, by the lookout on the able fishing vessel,
Constellation, of which Captain Andrew Davis
was then in command.</p>
<p>The furious gale had subsided. But as Captain
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
Andy knew, the greatest danger to his own
vessel lay in the sullen and terrible swell of the
“old sea” which it had stirred up.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the Constellation bore down upon
the shipwrecked men, getting as near to them as
possible, without being swept on to the rocks
herself.</p>
<p>Then Captain Andy gave the order to put
over a dory, stepped into it, and called for a
volunteer. Twice, to and fro through the towering
swell of the old sea, went that gallant little
dory. She was smashed to kindling wood on her
second trip, but not before the men in her could
be hauled aboard the Constellation with ropes—not
before every member of the yachting party
was saved!</p>
<p>“And I guess if Captain Andy wants a chance
to haul Dave Baldwin off the rocks where the
old sea stirred up by the gusts of his own waywardness
and wrongdoing have stranded him,
the district attorney won’t stand in the way!”
said the doctor to himself.</p>
<p>His surmise proved correct.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>It was just one month after the fire upon the
dunes that the three patrols of boy scouts, Owls,
Foxes, and Seals, assembled at a point of rendezvous
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
upon the outskirts of the town, bound off
upon a long Saturday hike through the October
woods.</p>
<p>But some hearts in the troop were at bottom
heavy to-day, though on the surface they rose
above the feeling.</p>
<p>For it was the last woodland hike, for the
present, that Scout Warren of the Owls would
take with his patrol. The return of his parents
from Europe was expected during the coming
week; and he—now with two white stripes
upon his arm, signifying his two years of service
in the Boy Scouts of America, wearing also the
patrol leader’s bars and first-class scout badge—would
rejoin his Peewit Patrol in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>However, his comrades’ regrets were softened
by Nixon’s promise that he would frequently
visit the Massachusetts troop with which he had
spent an exciting year, and which, unintentionally,
he had been instrumental in forming.</p>
<p>And on this brilliant October Saturday Assistant
Scoutmaster Toiney Leduc, perceiving
that the coming parting was casting a faint
shadow before, exerted himself to banish that
cloudlet as the troop started on its hike.</p>
<p>“<i>Houp-e-là!</i> We arre de boy! We arre de
stuff! We arre de bes’ scout ev’ry tam’!” he
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
shouted with an <i>esprit de corps</i> which found its
echo in one breast at least—that of the terrier,
Blink, who to-day capered with the troop as its
mascot. “We arre de bes’ scout; <i>n’est-ce pas</i>,
mo’ smarty?” And Toiney embraced Harold,
marching at his side—Harold, whose lips
turned up to-day and every day now in the
scout’s smile, for since the night of the dune
fire had not each of his comrades and the scoutmasters
too, kept impressing on him that he had
“behaved like a little man and a good scout”
at duty’s call!</p>
<p>There were individuals among the onlookers,
too, watching the three patrols march out of the
town that morning, who shared Toiney’s primitive
conceit that they were the “best scouts”;
or at least fairly on the way to being a model
troop.</p>
<p>Little Jack Baldwin, gazing at his rescuers,
Scouts Warren and Chase, Marcoo and Colin
Estey, marching two and two at the head of the
leading patrol, clapped his hands and almost
burst his heart in wishing that he could be
twelve years old to-morrow so that he might
enlist as a tenderfoot scout.</p>
<p>Whereupon his old grandmother smilingly
bade him “take patience,” for the two years
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
which now separated him from his heart’s desire
would not be long in passing.</p>
<p>And the boy scouts, as they raised their broad-brimmed
hats to old Ma’am Baldwin, saw a happier
look upon her face than it had ever worn
before, to their knowledge.</p>
<p>Farther on they came upon the explanation of
this! They were taking a different route to-day
from that which they usually followed in entering
the woods. About a mile from the town they
struck a partial clearing, where the land, not yet
entirely relieved of timber, was evidently being
gradually converted into a farm.</p>
<p>As the scouts approached they heard the ringing
strokes of a woodsman’s axe, and presently
came upon a perspiring young man, putting all
his strength into felling a stubborn oak-tree.</p>
<p>“Hullo, Dave; how goes it?” cried the scoutmaster,
halting with his troop.</p>
<p>“Fine!” came back the panting answer from
the individual engaged in this scouting or pioneering
work, who was the former <i>vaurien</i>,
Dave Baldwin.</p>
<p>“Find this better than loafing about the
dunes, eh?”</p>
<p>“Well! I should say so,” came the answer
with an honest smile.</p><p>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p>
<p>But the boy scouts were hardly noticing Dave
Baldwin: Owls, Foxes, and Seals, they were
gazing in transfixed amusement at their hero-in-chief,
Captain Andy, owner of this half-cleared
land.</p>
<p>He, who in his seagoing days had been known
by such flattering titles as the Grand Bank
Horse, the Ocean Patrol, and the like, was seated
in the midst of a half-acre of pasture land, holding
on like grim death to one end of a twenty-foot
rope coiled round his hand, the hemp’s other
extremity being hitched to the leg of a very
lively red cow which presently dragged him the
entire length of the pasture and then across and
across it, in obedience to her feminine whims.</p>
<p>“She’ll be the death o’ me, boys!” he shouted
comically to the convulsed scouts. “Great Neptune!
I’d rather take a vessel through the
breakers on Sable Island Bar than to be tied to
her heels for one day.”</p>
<p>“For pity’s sake! Hold on to her, Cap!”
Dave Baldwin paused in his energetic tree-felling.
“Yesterday, she got into that little plowed field
that I’d just seeded down with winter rye, and
thrashed about there!”</p>
<p>“Ha! I’ll t’ink you go for be good <i>habitant</i>—farmer—Dave,”
broke in Toiney suddenly
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>
and genially. “I’ll t’ink you get dere after de
w’ile, engh?”</p>
<p>It was plain to each member of the troop
that so far as Dave himself was concerned he was
already “getting there,”—reaching the goal of
an honest, industrious manhood.</p>
<p>The triple responsibility of starting a farm,
directing the energies of his benefactor, and
combating the cow, was rapidly making a man
of him.</p>
<p>They heard the virile blows of his axe against
the tree-trunk as they marched on their woodland
way. And their song floated back to him:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“At duty’s call, with a smile for all,</span><br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Scout will do his part!”</span><br /></div>
<p>Dave Baldwin paused for a minute to listen;
then, as he swung his axe in a tremendous, final
blow against the tottering oak, he too broke
triumphantly into the refrain:—</p>
<div class="poemr">
<span style="margin-left: -0.4em;">“And we’ll shout, shout, shout,</span><br />
For the Scout, Scout, Scout,<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For the Scouts of the U.S.A!”</span></div>
<h3>THE END</h3>
<hr />
<p class="center1">Transcriber's note: <br /> Both ‘Ne’er-do-weel’ and
‘Ne’er-do-well’ are used, so both spellings have been
preserved.</p>
<pre>
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