Percy Keese Fitzhugh

“ In a kind of daze Roy saw the bright spot near the empty balsam couch, saw his companion’s quick, silent movements, saw the scouts lying asleep in the dim light. Then all was darkness within and he saw no more.
“Did you feel in the pockets?” Roy asked as they betook themselves through the darkness to a safe distance. He still whispered, though there was no need of it now. He was nervous, agitated.
“No, I’m not in that line of business,” said Warde.
“I guess he’s Claude Darrell all right,” said Roy. “What shall we do? Try to find him? There’s that voice again. Do you hear it? ”

“ Eight or ten of these prints, among many others which Roy did not pause to distinguish, brought them to the concrete road which runs through the old reservation, the Knickerbocker Road, as it is called. Here the leader of the Silver Foxes was baffled. There was no following footprints here.
They paused for a moment, considering. The white road stretched like a ribbon straight north and south. The temporary makeshift cross streets could be seen in black outline with their silent, ghostly, gloomy buildings, standing in more or less regular order. ”

“ Since Warde was in the troop it was a kind of disgrace to the troop and to his patrol that he should not be a first class scout. So he thought. The tests in the handbook he had found not difficult to pass. In the case of this final one it was just a question of appropriate opportunity. Until this day he had scorned to lay down his work. For that also was a test. You see that all the tests are not in the handbook, and that is the trouble. Wherever a scout goes he bumps into tests which the very wise men who made the handbook never dreamed of.
To pass a test is one thing. ”

“ Roy said. “That was when I was a second-hand scout.”
“They ought to be called the Nickel Foxes, that’s what all the scouts up at Temple Camp say,” Pee-wee shouted. “Because none of them ever have more than five cents.”
“The Raving Ravens haven’t got any sense,” Roy came back. “Five is twice as good as nothing.”
“That shows how much you know about arithmetic,” Pee-wee retorted.
“It’s good the boss isn’t here,” Warde said, “or he’d laugh himself to death.” The boss was what they always called Blythe. ”

“ Warde seemed almost converted by Pee-wee’s inspiring, unreasoning loyalty.
“Sometimes I agree with you, Kid,” he said. “And then again–”
“I agree with myself all the time,” Pee-wee said; “and I don’t care who agrees with me.”
“One thing I’m glad of,” Westy said, “and that is that somebody else gets the money; let them have all the credit, too. We had our fun while it lasted,” he added wistfully. “And I’m glad Warde didn’t count that trip for his first class badge. I’m glad we don’t have anything to do with the bad side of it. It seems now just as if a friend had died, that’s all.” ”

“ Roy said.
“Pee-wee can manage them,” Westy observed.
“Oh sure, all you have to do is to know how to manage them,” commented Connie. “They can’t come too savage for our young hero.”
“He can even tame wild flowers,” Roy said; “lions–dandelions and tiger-lilies and everything. He eats them alive.”
“Speaking of eating, how about the stew?” Artie Van Arlen asked.
“It has to stew for an hour,” Roy said. “Somebody get out the tin plates; be prepared, that’s our motto. All the comforts of home. Where’s your home?” he asked Blythe in a sudden impulse. ”

“ Roy said. “But it isn’t. They make funny noises but not like that. It’s off there and up high. It’s not any animal–or loose boards or anything like that. Come on.”
Suddenly out of the blackness arose a piercing scream. Its echo resounded from the dried boards of some building and re-echoed from another as if its terror-stricken owner had three voices. It mingled with that wailing voice, distant, aloof. Then they heard human words, sounding strange and unhuman. ”

“ As Pee-wee turned from the mail slot he saw Warde and Roy gazing at a very antiquated bulletin board such as one seldom sees elsewhere than in a country post office.
These ancient bulletin boards bespeak the country as eloquently as do the hayfields. They seem never to be new. Articles lost but long since restored to their owners are still advertised on faded brittle paper, fastened by rusted thumb tacks of a bygone age. Strawberry festivals, with strawberries that have gone the way of all strawberries, are here announced. ”

“ Westy warned.
“Never mind,” said Doc, “get to a ’phone, that’s all I care about. And hustle.”
Before he had finished speaking Artie was gone. Several of them watched his fleeting form, moving with steady, easy speed down the smooth white road. The patter of his shoes sounded farther and farther off until the sound died altogether, and the hurrying figure grew smaller and smaller as if it were going down the scale from patrol leader to tenderfoot. ”

“ Pee-wee asked.
“I mean it looks bad for him, Kid,” said Roy frankly. “If his brain wasn’t just right, then it wasn’t so bad. See? He’s the one that did it, you saw the pictures, Kid, and the label on 177 his coat. But if he didn’t know all about what he was doing then it wasn’t so bad. The grown people know best, Kid. But that isn’t saying we can’t be friends with him.”
“You go back on what you said?” Pee-wee demanded grimly.
“Oh, I don’t know, Kid,” Roy answered, nettled and annoyed; “let’s not talk about it. We’re going to see him anyway. Come on, let’s get Warde, that’s a good idea.” ”

“ And these fellows–your own patrol–they can prove what you say–”
Roy was almost sobbing. Pee-wee certainly held the floor–or the road.
“The men–Mr. Ferrett–they know better than we do, Kid. Blythe is the one whose picture–”
“You say yes or no,” Pee-wee demanded in a voice of thunder. “They lifted him off where you were caught and so now you’re alive and you can speak. Is he a murderer or isn’t he?”
Roy was going to pieces. The little scout whom he had always found it so easy to jolly, towered over him. The tiny Raven was become a giant. “I–no he–no he isn’t–he isn’t, Kid,” Roy stammered. ”

“ Pee-wee reminded him.
“The last home I was in was in New York,” Blythe said. “It wasn’t mine.”
“I guess you’re like we are,” Westy said, noticing perhaps a little embarrassment in their friend’s manner, “our home is outdoors.”
“And believe me, the sky has all the tin roofs I ever saw beaten twenty ways,” observed Warde Hollister. That was pretty good for a new scout.
“Roofs are all right to slide down,” Pee-wee observed. “They’re all right as long as you’re not under them.”
“Believe me, we wouldn’t have the sky over us if we didn’t have to,” said Roy. “It’s a blamed nuisance when it rains. ”

“ The birds were busy in the neighboring willow tree, and a fish flopped out of the glittering water as if to remind them that some of the pleasures of vacation time were left to them.
“Hello, old car!” said El Sawyer of the Ravens, as he tossed the duffel bag through a broken window. “I hope we have enough in the treasury to get that window put in.”
“We should worry,” said Roy.
“There’s a lot of fun not having any money,” said Pee-wee.
“We ought to have plenty of fun then,” said 166 Westy. “This old car has got the County Poorhouse turning green with envy.” ”

“ So suddenly did this happen that Blythe had scarcely braced himself over Roy’s body when both were buried under the fallen debris. Nor had the scouts at the edge of the roof wholly escaped; several who had not jumped quickly enough and far enough received slight cuts and bruises from the falling timbers. ”

“ Roy informed him.
“Like camping?”
“Camping is named after us,” Connie Bennett of the Elk Patrol said. “We’d rather camp than eat.”
“No we wouldn’t,” vociferated Pee-wee Harris.
“What kind of hours?” Doc Carson of the Ravens inquired.
“The usual kind,” Roy volunteered, and put it up to their new friend if this were not so. “The same kind we use in school, hey?” he added.
“Give him a chance to tell us what it is,” said Westy Martin of Roy’s patrol. “We all started saying we’d like to earn some money; talk is cheap.” ”

“ This is called a hunter’s stew because you have to hunt for the meat in it, but it’s got plenty of e-pluribus unions in it. The potatoes and dumplings go to the patrol leaders, carrots to first and second hand scouts; tenderfeet get nothing because the stew isn’t tender enough....”
It was pleasant sitting there in the bright area surrounded by darkness, chatting and planning the work for the morrow, and eating hunter’s stew, scout style, patent applied for. And notwithstanding the slurs which Roy had cast at the sky it was pleasant to see that vast bespangled blackness over head. ”

“ The afternoon sun flickered on the waters, the gentle slope across the lake was clad in the rich green of the midsummertime, not a boat was to be seen upon that clear forbidden expanse, and no sound was there in all the quiet country round about, save only the elated voice of an angler on the causeway as he pulled up his line with a fish wriggling on the end of it. ”

“ Roy said. “We’ve been fixing up our old railroad car for a meeting-place down by the river and we’re going to stay home and earn some money to buy a rowboat and a canoe and start a kind of a camp of our own down there.”
“We’re going to build a float,” Pee-wee said, digging with his spoon.
“Sure, and a sink,” Roy said, “so we can wash our hands of Bridgeboro. We’ll be dead to the world down there. We’re going to lead the simple life like a lot of simps. We’re going to catch salt fish in the salt marshes and everything. All we need is a treasury ”

“ Westy Martin insisted, “and we’re on that job, if we go there at all.”
“That’s a good argument,” Pee-wee ejaculated.
“Are you staying up there?” Connie asked.
The stranger seemed pleased, even relieved. That uncertain, diffident smile hovered for a moment about his mouth. “I’d treat you right, that’s sure,” he said. “It’s pretty hard for a fellow to get work. I just sort of stumbled into this–”
“Well, I’m glad you stumbled into us, too,” said Roy, a note of sympathy and sincerity in his voice that there was no mistaking. ”

“ Roy ejaculated, “we wouldn’t even steal a cent, that’s why we haven’t any sense; deny it if you dare.”
“We can sell papers at the station,” Westy said.
“Sure, the Saturday Evening Post,” Roy said. “We can do golden deeds and get gold that way. We should bother our young lives. What care us, quoth we? We’ll think of a way. All we need is fifty dollars to put tar-paper on the roof and a new cook stove in the car.”
“Money talks,” the kid shouted.
“Good night!” said Roy, “then we don’t want any of it. You do enough talking in this troop.” ”

“ Warde said. “I was reading in the old scout handbook [2] how you can tell where people come from by their talk. If a person belongs in Canada he’ll say Monreal instead of Montreal. He’ll say Tranto instead of Toronto.”
“Yes?” urged Roy, hopefully.
“That’s all,” Warde said. “He doesn’t talk as if he came from up that way. But the notice didn’t say he belonged there, it only said he was wanted there. The way he spoke about the robin was what got me. I can’t make him out at all.” ”

“ I don’t see how we’re going to take his measurement; we don’t want to make him suspicious.”
117“It’s funny how he never speaks about his past,” said Roy.
“Anybody can see there’s something funny about him,” Warde said. “What he said about the robin makes me think that if he committed a murder he was probably crazy when he did it. Maybe he doesn’t even remember that he did it.”
“You can’t say he’s crazy,” Roy protested.
“I know I like him,” Warde said; “I just can’t help it. I like him now. Maybe he isn’t smart, but he’s always thinking about us. He’s for the scouts good and strong. ”

“ Warde asked.
“In the lower field–where they’re making hay,” Blythe answered.
They tried no more at questioning him.
“We want you to come with us, Blythey,” Roy said. His voice was friendly, kindly, albeit he was himself disturbed and fearful. For neither of the boys knew what this pathetic, demon-haunted creature might do next.
“We’re your friends,” Warde added. “Can’t you get up and come with us–and go to bed. Don’t you remember all about camp-fire, and Pee-wee, and all the fun we had? There isn’t any voice now, it’s gone away.” ”

“ County Detective Ferrett, whose skill is responsible for the capture of Darrell where he was in hiding at Camp Merritt, thinks that the damage to his skull may very likely have been caused by a blow received in an altercation at the time he killed his victim.
And so a few days elapsed, and the poor helpless victim was surrounded by officials enough, both local and Canadian, to capture the whole hospital. But the victim, pale and swathed and bandaged, had the advantage of them, and they could only wait. Old Mother Nature cannot be hurried by the law. Much of the time Blythe slept. ”

“ Blythe was bunking in one of the shacks which he had secured the privilege of tearing down and it was apparent to the scouts that his knowledge of camping was primitive. But Pee-wee, out of the greatness of his scout heart, volunteered to be his guide, philosopher, and friend in these matters.
“We’ll show you how to do,” he said. “If there’s anything you don’t understand you just come to me. I’ve got the camping badge and the pathfinder’s badge, and the astronomer’s badge–”
“He’s an astronomer,” interrupted Roy; “he knows all the movie stars.” ”