CHAPTER VIII
SMOKE SIGNALS ON THE MOUNTAIN
BEFORE Bill started on his trip he made up his mind that he would walk farther and do a bigger stunt than any of us. When Bill Wilson is for anything, he is for it. There is no halfway doings with him. He didn't take to the Scout business very well at first because he didn't know much about it and thought that Indians or bandits would be better. But as soon as he had joined he cared more than anybody.
Trying to do more than the other Scouts did was what got him into trouble. He started for North Adams, the same as Wallie, Benny, and myself, and he took with him a message for Mr. Jenks, as I have said. But a seven-mile walk and back again the next day was not good enough for Bill. He made up his mind that he would deliver the message first and then go on as far as Williamstown and stay all night there.
Williamstown is five or six miles west of North Adams. There is a big college there, called Williams College. I guess it was the name that made Bill think of going there.
Our valley runs north and south until it gets to North Adams and then turns west. Hoosac River turns with it. After flowing north all the time, which everybody knows is no way for a river to flow, it turns west, and so finally reaches the Hudson. Then, of course, its waters flow south in the Hudson and at last reach the Atlantic Ocean at New York.
After Bill had left Wallie the first morning of his trip, he walked along lively, knowing that he had a long way to go to Williamstown, and he did a lot of cawing on the road, just as Skinny thought. Nothing happened to him at all until he found himself almost to the Gingham Ground. Then he saw five or six members of the Gang playing ball near where he would pass.
That made him stop. Bill is brave, all right, but what is the good of being brave when they are six to your one, and the whole six have it in for you?
That is what Bill thought, anyhow, and he started to leave the road and try to work around out of sight through the woods and fields. Then he thought of something to do, which scared him at first, but the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to do it.
Hoosac Valley, as I have said, swings off toward the west at North Adams. That brings Williamstown on the opposite side of Greylock from where we live.
We found that out once when we went up on the mountain and came near getting lost, which you know if you have read about the doings of the Band. Almost straight down in front of us, on the east, was our village, with Bob's Hill back of it, looking flat and not like a hill at all. We could tell that it was Bob's Hill because we could see the twin stones, standing there like tiny thimbles on a table. Looking north, we could see North Adams; looking south, Cheshire, and on the west side of the mountain and a little north, was Williamstown.
Bill thought of that when he was wondering how he could pass the Gingham Ground without the Gang's seeing him.
"What's the use of going that way at all?" he said to himself. "What's the matter with going straight back over the hills, climbing Greylock, and then, after seeing exactly where Williamstown is, making a bee line for it? I can deliver the message on the way back."
Say, that would be a great stunt! We are going to do it some time, when we get bigger and our folks get over being scared.
He wanted to prove to us that he had done it; so made signs at different places on the way, beginning where he turned off the road. We struck the trail at the second sign.
Bill can beat us all climbing and he went along fast, having a lot of fun all by himself. There is a path which leads up on Greylock from the Gingham Ground; he followed that.
Before he had gone far he found a couple of bottles, which some one had thrown away, and he hung those around his neck with a string. He took them both so that one would balance the other. You see, he knew that there was no water on Greylock. It has to be carried there from some spring part way up. The day was hot, and he was thirsty, already.
When the sun grew hotter he took it easy along, picking berries and lying around in the shade. He didn't get to the spring, where he was going to fill his bottles, until almost noon. After that there was a hard climb to get to the top, as steep as Bob's Hill, maybe steeper in places.
He stopped at the spring to rest and eat his lunch; also to fix some signs.
At last he stood on the very top of Greylock, which, as you probably know, is the highest mountain in the State of Massachusetts, and it has all kinds of mountains. Our geography says that it is 3,505 feet high. Those last five feet seemed a mile to Bill, and they would to you, if you were climbing the mountain on a hot day, with a pack on your back and two bottles of water hanging from your neck.
I guess there never had been so much cawing on the top of Greylock as when Bill stood there, after his hard climb, looking down on the hills, which did not seem like hills, he was so much higher.
The air was so clear that Williamstown seemed close. So, after resting a few minutes and drawing the sign on a flat rock to show which way he had gone, he started down the west side of the mountain on a run, whooping and yelling like an Indian at every jump.
Then, just as he was thinking how easy it was and what fun he would have bragging to us boys about what he had done, he caught his foot in a root or something, fell headlong, rolled down until he struck a tree; then lay still.
How long he had lain there, when he finally came to life again, he couldn't tell. At first he didn't know where he was or what had happened. Then he remembered and tried to get on his feet and go on.
With a cry of pain, he sank back again. He had sprained his ankle and hardly could move it without yelling.
When Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked on an island he wrote on a piece of paper the good things and the bad things that had happened to him. To start with, he wrote on one side, "I am shipwrecked on an island," or something like that, and on the other, "but I am alive."
Bill did the same, only he didn't write it. He thought it.
"I've busted my ankle," he said to himself, "but I didn't break my bottles or spill my water.
"I can't walk a step, but I can yell to beat the band.
"I can't get to Williamstown and I can't get home, but I have something to eat in my pack and plenty of matches in my pocket.
"Nobody knows where I am, but——"
That last "but" was to much for Bill. He couldn't find anything to go with it, for he began to think of what Pa had told us, that if a person should get hurt on the mountain he might die there and not be found for weeks or years. His ankle was aching fearfully, too.
He tried yelling for a while and Bill is the best yeller that I ever saw or heard.
"Help! Help!" he cried. "HELP!"
He might as well have saved his breath for all the good it did.
Then he lay still for a long time, trying to think what to do. That was what Mr. Norton had told us.
"If anything happens," said he, "don't lose your heads. Think it over calmly. Decide what is best to do and then do it."
"I'm a Scout," said Bill to himself, "and, bet your life, I ain't a going to stay here and die on no mountain."
He took off his shoe and stocking and bathed his ankle in water from one of the bottles—not much water because he couldn't spare it, and he took a little sip himself. Then he thought of his "first aid to the injured" package.
"What's the matter with bandaging myself?" said he. "It will be good practice."
When he had finished and had rested a few minutes, he found that his ankle did not hurt him quite so much and that he could move around a little, if he didn't bear any weight on it.
He thought at first that he would crawl on his hands and knees to Williamstown, or until he came to some house, but when he tried he found that he couldn't do it.
"I'll tell you what I can do," he said at last, because he liked to hear somebody talking, even if it was only himself. "Maybe I can crawl back to the top of Greylock. Nobody ever would find me here and folks sometimes go up there."
The Boy Scouts of Raven Patrol think that it took grit to crawl up the steep and rough mountainside, with his ankle hurting at every move so badly that it made him feel faint.
It wasn't far to the top, but Bill thought he never would get there, he had to stop so many times to rest and wait for the pain to go away. An hour or more passed before he finally crawled out into the clearing, with nothing but the blue sky above him.
It was then getting late in the afternoon. Skinny was at Pumpkin Hook by that time, probably surrounding the enemy. Wallie was somewhere in North Adams or beyond. I was hoeing the garden at the very foot of Greylock, little thinking that Bill was in so much trouble on top.
The summit of Greylock is almost level and is not very large. On the east side Bill saw a lot of brush which somebody had cut and piled up, probably to make a big fire; then for some reason had not lighted it.
He crawled over to that after the sun went down, built a little fire, and cooked a small piece of bacon for his supper, which he ate with a piece of bread and butter. It tasted good, but it made him thirsty and he didn't dare drink much water.
Then, being tired out and more comfortable, he said his prayer and repeated all of the Scout laws, from being loyal to being reverent, wondering what good it was doing him to have two dollars in the bank down in the village, and went to sleep.
When he awoke it was broad daylight. Benny and I were just starting on our hikes, down in Park Street, but he couldn't see us, Bob's Hill being in the way. By standing upon his one good foot, he could see the village down below, and thought he could make out the very house he lived in. He was as hungry as a bear and his ankle seemed a little better, although it was still swollen so much that he couldn't get his shoe on and he couldn't step on the foot.
He had plenty of food for breakfast, but he didn't know how many meals he would need before he could get away; so he ate only a little and waited, hoping every minute that somebody would come up on the mountain and find him.
When the day at last dragged around and the sun was going down again in Hudson River, Bill knew that he would have to spend another night on the mountain and he felt pretty bad.
There were only a few mouthfuls of food left. One bottle of water was all gone and the other nearly so. He knew that by that time his folks would feel sure that something had happened and would begin to look for him. That was some comfort.
Far down below, lights shone out from the houses, one by one. Down there was his home. One of those lights was shining out of his window, shining for him, while his mother sat and waited—waited for her boy who never would come back again.
He sobbed aloud and stretched out his hands into the darkness.
"Mother, mother," he whispered, "I wish I hadn't come."
When he awoke in the morning he was frightened to find that the little food which he had saved for his breakfast was gone. Some animal had stolen it in the night.
His ankle was still badly swollen but it did not pain him so much except when he tried to stand on it.
He was hungry and looked around for something that he could eat. A little below the edge of the mountain stood a birch tree. He dragged himself down to it and cut off long strips of the bark. This he chewed for his breakfast, washing it down with a few sips of water, which seemed hardly to wet his parched throat.
"I'll crawl down to the spring, if I can, and die there," he thought. "Maybe they will find me sometime."
Then, as he was starting, something came to him.
Smoke signals! Perhaps one of the Scouts would see them and know what they meant.
He was too weak and lame to spell out a message, like we did on Bob's Hill. Instead, he built two fires, throwing on grass and leaves to make a thick smoke. There was no wind and the smoke went straight up. That was one of the signals, which Mr. Norton had taught us. It meant:
"I have lost the camp. Help."
He hadn't lost any camp, of course, but he didn't know what else to send. He hoped it would let us know where he was and that something had happened.
All day long he tended his fires, his ankle aching horribly because he had to move around so much. Between times he sat on the mountain, looking down at Bob's Hill and Plunkett's woods and the village beyond, chewing birch bark and moistening his lips with the few drops of warm water that were left.
Late that afternoon he gave up and made up his mind that he would crawl down to the spring before dark and die there, he was so thirsty. He turned to look down at his home, perhaps for the last time, and to see Bob's Hill once more.
There were Plunkett's woods, and there, the twin stones, like thimbles, they were so far away. And there—what was that?
From the ground close to one of the stones, the one where we build our fires, a great column of smoke went up and he saw some things moving around it, like flies or ants, they looked so small. Then the column of smoke broke into long and short puffs. It was a signal.
Slowly he spelled the words:
"I-S, Is; I-T, it; Y-O-U, you; B-I-L-L, Bill?"
Jumping to his feet, although he almost screamed with pain, Bill grabbed his blanket and held it down over one of the fires, which was still sending out a big smoke; then pulled it off. Again and again he sent up the puffs of smoke. His blanket was blazing; his hands were burned to a blister; he was almost strangled with the smoke; but Bill kept on, until he had spelled out something which could be seen from the top of Bob's Hill, far below:
| .... | H |
| . | E |
| — | L |
| ..... | P |
Then he fainted away.