CHAPTER II
RAVEN PATROL HITS THE TRAIL
WHEN Monday night came, the Band met at Skinny's and went from there to Mr. Norton's. He seemed glad to see us and started in for a good time without saying a word about the Scout business. I was just going to ask him about it when Mrs. Norton brought in the ice cream. After that we were too busy to ask anything.
When at last we had eaten all that we wanted and Bill had put away three dishes, Mr. Norton gathered us around him and said that he would tell us a story, if we wished to hear it.
We told him to go ahead, and, after thinking a moment, he began.
"You boys probably do not remember the Boer war in Africa. You were too young at the time. During that war the Boers surrounded a town called Mafeking. All the able-bodied men were needed for fighting in order to defend the city and could not be spared for the work of carrying despatches and things like that.
"They had some lively lads in that town. As soon as the boys found out the situation they made up their minds that they could do that kind of work just as well as the men could. They did, too. Back and forth they hurried on bicycles, through a rain of bullets, from fort to fort, carrying messages and scouting. I tell you, those English boys were heroes. I don't see how they escaped being killed. They must have dodged the bullets."
When Skinny heard Mr. Norton speak of their being English boys he looked troubled, because Skinny thinks a lot of the United States of America.
"Is this an English story, Mr. Norton?" he asked. "Because if it is I don't know about it. How about George Washington, Bunker Hill, seeing the whites of the enemy's eyes, and all those things? We named our boat out on Fox River in Illinois, the 'Paul Revere.'"
"Guess what!" put in Benny, laughing at something he was thinking. "Skinny couldn't dodge any bullets? 'Cause why? He's too fat. They couldn't miss him."
"Aw, what's the matter with you?" said Skinny. "I could dodge as many as you could, I guess. If a bullet hit you there wouldn't be anything left of you; that's what. Why, I——"
"A hero is a hero," said Mr. Norton, before Skinny had time to finish, "and a boy is a boy, I guess, no matter in what country he happens to live. I have heard all about the Band, and I know that if you had been in Mafeking that time you would have been among the first to volunteer for scout service, bullets or no bullets, and Washington or no Washington."
"Hurrah!" yelled Bill, forgetting where he was. "That's the stuff. Injun or no Injun, too. I knew an English boy once, and he was all right. Say, you ought to have seen him in a scrap."
Mr. Norton laughed and went on with his story.
"A few years later Gen. Robert Baden-Powell, who had been colonel in command of the English forces at Mafeking, got to thinking about those boys in South Africa and how manly it made them to help in the scouting. He liked boys and he made up his mind that if scouting had been good for those boys it would be good for any boys. Not the fighting part, I mean, but the outdoor life, learning to take care of themselves in the wilderness, make camps, build fires, find their way through the forest, follow a trail, and such things. So he called a meeting of a lot of boys and talked to them and showed them how to do it. They played at being Indians mostly."
"They don't have Injuns in England," said Bill, shaking his head, "unless it's in a Wild West show, and that doesn't count."
"You are stopping the story, Bill," Skinny told him. "What's the difference?"
"Well, they don't," grumbled Bill.
"Anyhow," Mr. Norton went on, "the boys enjoyed the play, and the idea spread like wildfire, until now there are Boy Scouts all over the world. In America here Ernest Thompson Seton had much the same idea. He was teaching the boys woodcraft, camp life, and such things by organizing the Seton Indians that you may have heard about. Then he went to England, where he and General Baden-Powell put their heads together and worked out the Boy Scout idea. In this country the boys are known as 'the Boy Scouts of America,' but nearly every civilized nation has its Boy Scouts under some name or other, and the movement is very popular among the boys.
"I invited you up here to-night to get acquainted with the Band. Skinny, I mean Gabriel, tells me that you are all live wires. I want to know if you will join the Scouts. You can have a patrol of your own, select your own patrol leader and your own patrol animal."
"What's a patrol animal?" we asked.
"Patrol animal? Why, each patrol is named after some animal, and the Scouts all have to be able to imitate its call, so that they can let each other know where they are hiding."
When Mr. Norton told us that you hardly could have heard yourself think for a minute. Mrs. Norton didn't know what had broken loose and came running in from the next room. Skinny was hissing like a snake; Bill croaked like a frog; Benny cawed like a crow; Hank barked like a dog, and the other boys did something else, and nobody could tell what they were doing.
"You seem to have the right idea," smiled Mr. Norton.
There was a lot more to it, uniforms and rules and signs and all that sort of thing, but that doesn't belong in this history. It didn't take us long to decide that we would go in. Bill Wilson was the craziest one in the bunch.
Mr. Norton thought that we ought to decide on a patrol leader before we went home. We told him that there was nothing to decide.
"Skinny is captain, all right," said Benny, "and the Band is the Band, I guess, whether we are Scouts or Injuns."
"Yes, I'm captain of the Band," Skinny told him, when Mr. Norton waited to see what he had to say about it, "but I don't know about this patrol business. It wouldn't do to vote on it here, anyway. The cave is where we meet. We ought to vote in the cave, seeing it is summer time. If it was winter we could meet in Pedro's barn."
We left it that way and were so busy during the closing days of school that we didn't have time to think much more about it until Friday. When we came in from afternoon recess, there was the Sign, as big as life, drawn with chalk on the blackboard.
I saw teacher looking at it, sort of puzzled, as if she was wondering what it all was about, and some of the girls were giggling at it. They seemed to think it was a joke of some kind, instead of something important. Anyhow, the Sign said for us to meet at the cave, Saturday, at ten o'clock.
Saturday morning, long before ten, every boy was at our house, that being nearest to the cave. Each one carried a lot of good things to eat, so we should not have to go home for dinner unless we wanted to.
Besides his dinner Hank had with him a little camera, which his folks had given to him on his birthday because he promised not to make any more awful smells with chemicals in the cellar. Hank was always mixing things to see what would happen and he pretty near blew his house up at one time. He is an inventor, too, and says that when he grows up he is going to make a flying machine. He nearly made one once. He made a kite that would pull us uphill on our sleds.
One time he made a spanking machine which worked with a crank, and when teacher wanted us to lick Bill we spanked him with it. Only we laid a horse hair across the seat of his pants to see what it would do and it broke the machine. Of course, he didn't make the camera, but he had a place down cellar where he developed and printed his pictures after the camera had taken them.
"Gee, fellers," said Skinny, "Hank is goin' to take our pictures. Everybody look pleasant."
"Not on your life," Hank told him. "You'd break the machine; that's what."
We went up through Blackinton's orchard and followed the road around to the top of the hill.
In a field, a little west of the top, the same field where we chased the high-school girls, stand what we call the "twin stones." They are big ones, six feet high and maybe more. One of these we use for a fireplace. It is near Plunkett's woods, where it is always easy to find dry sticks to burn. A piece of the rock has been split off in such a way that it makes a kind of hearth, with a place between for a fire.
"Let's come back here for dinner," I said. "When we build a fire in the cave the smoke makes our eyes smart. What do you say?"
So we went into the woods and hid our lunch and some potatoes, which we had carried in our pockets to cook, but Hank wouldn't leave his camera. He said it cost too much to let it lie around in the woods. His folks paid three dollars for it.
Then we hurried on to the cave.
"Open sesame!" said Skinny, pounding the outside of the cave with a club, like the robber did in "Arabian Nights."
"Is she open?" asked Bill, who was in a hurry to get in.
Skinny didn't answer. He was peering up and down the ravine to see if anybody was looking. When he found that no one was in sight he motioned for us to go in.
"Old Long Knife will guard the pass," said he.
And he did, for when I put my head out of the cave a little later to find out why he did not come, he was fighting like sixty. He swung his club and jumped around for a minute; then gave a fearful whack and drew himself up with his arms folded, like an Injun or a bandit.
"Lie there, villain!" he hissed. "Sick semper turn us, and don't you forget it."
After that he came in with his face all red, he had been working so hard. We already had the candle lighted and were ready to begin.
"Fellers," said Skinny, when we all had sat down on the floor in front of him and I had called the roll. "I don't know whether this is the Band or the patrol, or whether we are bandits, or Injuns, or Scouts, and I don't know that it makes much difference. I am captain of the Band, but what we want to find out is, who is leader of the patrol. We could fight for it, perhaps, only I hate to muss my clothes."
Some looked at Bill, for we knew that he kind of wanted to be leader. He would make a good one, too, only it seemed to belong to Skinny.
Nobody said a thing for 'most a minute. Then Benny stood up, bumped his head against the roof of the cave, and sat down again.
"Mighty chief," said he, when we were through laughing at him, "may I speak and live?"
He never had said that before and it surprised us.
"You may," said Skinny, looking fierce and swinging his club.
"Fellers," began Benny, "Skinny was a good enough leader when we went 'sploring out in Illinois last summer and I 'most got drowned in Fox River, and he was a good enough leader when we found a tramp in this 'ere cave and smoked him out. He lassoed the robber, that time, didn't he, when the guy was stealin' Hank's pearl, and—and—lots of things? I guess that anybody who could do that is good enough to be patrol leader."
That was a long speech for Benny to make, and we all patted him on the back except Bill, who sat thinking and getting ready to say something. All of a sudden he spoke up.
"Fellers," said he, "three cheers for Skinny Miller, who is always there with the goods."
"You're out of order," Skinny told him, but nobody could hear.
I shouldn't wonder if they heard us voting clear down in the village.
We also had to have an assistant patrol leader, called a corporal, and we elected Bill Wilson. Bill is great at such things. As corporal he would be in command whenever Skinny was away. That didn't count for much, though, for Skinny is almost always around when anything is going on.
The next thing to do was to decide upon our patrol animal, like the book said.
At first we couldn't agree very well on that. Nearly every one wanted a different animal. Skinny wanted us to choose a snake because he liked the hissing part and a picture of a snake would be easy to draw on our signs.
Hank and Bill thought a dog would be best.
"A dog," said Bill, "is man's best friend, and that is what Scouts are for."
Hank could bark like a dog. That was why he wanted it.
Benny thought a crow would be the thing, but it seemed to me that the American eagle would be better. We heard one once on Greylock and it was great.
Skinny liked the eagle pretty well, especially the American part, but when he found that Benny Wade wanted a crow he said he was for a crow, too. That was because Benny had made the speech.
"A snake is all right for some things," he said, "and you don't want to step on them or on us. Don't you remember that old flag which had a rattlesnake on it and the words, 'Don't tread on me'? The hissing is all right, too, when we are close together and can hear, but how about it when we are not? What if I was hiding in Plunkett's woods and you were on the way to the cave and I should be attacked by Injuns or something. I might hiss until I was black in the face and who'd hear me? You could hear me caw almost to Peck's Falls."
"Yes, that's so about snakes," I told them. "I don't think much of snakes myself. But I don't know about crows. The eagle is such a noble bird."
"Noble nothin'!" said he. "What did an eagle ever do that was noble any more than a crow? Besides a crow can talk if you split its tongue. I read it in a book. You can't draw an eagle. You'd have to write under it what it was."
"So you would under a crow," I told him.
"Anyhow," he went on, "I'll bet nobody here can make a noise like an eagle. Let's hear you do it, Pedro. Cawing is easy."
That ended the eagle business. Skinny was right. Not one of us could make a noise like an eagle.
"What makes you want it a crow, Benny?" asked Hank.
"I don't know how to tell it," said Benny, sort of bashful like. "I wasn't thinking about drawing it. A crow would be hard to draw, I guess, but we could make something that looked like a bird and we boys would know what bird was meant. I wasn't thinking either whether it was noble or not. Maybe a crow ain't exactly noble, but somehow when I see a big fellow soaring around in the Bellows Pipe, between the mountains, it makes me feel kind of noble myself and as if I ought to soar, too. And when I hear the cawing of a crow, no matter where I am, even in North Adams or Pittsfield, I can see Bob's Hill and old Greylock and the Bellows Pipe, and big crows flying around in the air as if they owned them all. We are Bob's Hill boys and Greylock boys. That's why I want it a crow. They sort of belong together."
We never had thought of that before, but when we came to talk it over it seemed that way to us, too. So we chose the crow for our patrol animal, only we didn't call ourselves "the crows" but "the ravens," because it sounded so much nobler. While we can't draw a very good one when we make our signs, it looks some like a bird and we all know what kind it is, as Benny said.
By that time we were getting hungry and so we made a bee-line for Plunkett's woods, sounding as if a whole flock of crows were starting south.
"Everybody scatter for wood," shouted Skinny, when we had come to the big stone where we build our fires. "I'll get the grub."
We ran to different parts of the woods where we knew there were dead branches lying on the ground, trying to see which would get a fire going first. Then, just as Bill and I met at the stone, with arms full of sticks, and the others close behind, we heard a terrible cawing over in the woods, only it didn't sound so much like a crow as it did like Skinny.
We looked at one another, wondering what it all meant, for the Scout business was new to us. Besides it sounded as if something had happened.
"'Tention, Scouts," said Bill, in a hurry to get in his work as corporal while Skinny was away. "Everybody caw!"
We made a great racket. In a moment there came an answering caw from the woods; then Skinny stepped out into the clearing in plain sight and motioned for us to come.
We knew something was the matter and started for the woods on a jump, the corporal in the lead.
"It's gone!" shouted Skinny, when we had come near. "Some guy has stolen our dinner."
"Great snakes!" groaned Bill. "And I'm starving to death."
We all gathered around the place where we had hidden the things under some bushes. Skinny was right; they were gone. I tell you he was mad.
"I don't know whether we are Scouts or bandits or Injuns," said he, "and I don't care, but I'd like to get hold of the critter that stole our dinner. We wouldn't do a thing to him. Oh, no. Maybe not."
"Everybody scatter," he shouted. "Look for signs and tracks. We'll follow him to the ends of the earth."