Pluck on the Long Trail; Or, Boy Scouts in the Rockies

E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/c/)

'YOU GIT!' HE ORDERED. See page 123.
Copyright, 1912, by Thomas Y. Crowell Company
Scouts in America have a high honor to maintain, for the American scout has always been the best in the world. He is noted as being keen, quick, cautious, and brave. He teaches himself, and he is willing to be taught by others. He is known and respected. Even in the recent war in South Africa between Great Britain and the Boers, it was Major Frederick Russell Burnham, an American, once a boy in Iowa, who was the English Chief of Scouts. Major Burnham is said to be the greatest modern scout.
The information in this book is based upon thoroughly American scoutcraft as practiced by Indians, trappers, and soldiers of the old-time West, and by mountaineers, plainsmen, and woodsmen of to-day.
As the true-hearted scout should readily acknowledge favor and help, so I will say that for the diagram of the squaw hitch and of the diamond hitch I am indebted to an article by Mr. Stewart Edward White in Outing of 1907, and one by Mr. I. J. Bush in Recreation of 1911; for the medicine song and several of the star legends, to that Blackfeet epic, The Old North Trail, by Walter McClintock; for medical and surgical hints, to Dr. Charles Moody's Backwoods Surgery and Medicine and to the American Red Cross First Aid text-book; for some of the lore, to personal experiences; and for much of it, to various old army, hunting, and explorer scout-books, long out of print, written when good scouting meant not only daily food, travel, and shelter, but daily life itself.
E. L. S.
The Elk Patrol of Colorado:
First-class Scout Roger Franklin, or General William Ashley. First-class Scout Tom Scott, or Major Andrew Henry. First-class Scout Harry Leonard, or Kit Carson. First-class Scout Chris Anderson, or Thomas Fitzpatrick the Bad Hand. Second-class Scout Little Dick Smith, or Jedediah Smith. Second-class Scout Charley Brown, or Jim Bridger.