THE LONG TRAIL
"You can tell them whatever you want to. You can tell them that I didn't know anything about them if you want to. I don't care what you tell them." These were the words that rang in Roy Blakeley's mind as he went down in the elevator, and they made him sick at heart. That Tom had so much forgotten about the troop, his troop, as to assign their three cabins to strangers—that Roy could overlook. He could not understand it, but in his fondness for Tom, he could overlook it, as his talk with Tom had proved.
But that Tom should lie to him and make him a party to that lie by authorizing him to repeat it, that he could not forget or forgive. "You can tell them that I did not know anything about them if you want to." And all the while he, Tom, had known this Barnard, or whatever his name was, and had fixed things so that he and Barnard might be together at Temple Camp. Barnard was a grown-up fellow, Roy told himself, and a soldier, and he didn't exactly blame Tom, but....
And then their trails crossed again, right there at the foot of the elevator shaft, where Tom was waiting to go up.
Roy's first impulse was to brush past his friend saying nothing, but when he had all but reached the door he wheeled about and said, "If you want to hand out any lies to the troop, you'd better do it yourself; I'm not going to do it for you."
"What?" said Tom, a little startled out of his usual stolid manner.
"Oh, you know what, all right," Roy answered sneeringly. "You thought I'd never find out, didn't you? You didn't think I'd go up to the office. You thought you'd get away with it and have me lying to the troop—the fellows that used to be your friends before you met Barnyard or whatever you call him. I know who he is, all right. If you wanted to give him our cabins, him and his troop, why didn't you come and say so? Gee whiz, we would have been willing to do them a good turn. We've camped in tents before, if it comes to that."
Tom stood perfectly motionless, with no more expression, either of anger or sorrow or surprise, than he usually showed. His big, tight set, resolute mouth was very conspicuous, but Roy did not notice that. The elevator came down, and the metallic sound of its door opening was emphasized in the tense silence which followed Roy's tirade.
"Going up," the colored boy said.
The door rolled shut and still Tom Slade stood there, stolid and without any show of emotion, looking straight at Roy. "I didn't ever tell a lie—not since I got in with the scouts," he said simply.
"Well, that makes two," said Roy mercilessly; "do you mean to tell me you don't know what's-his-name—Barnard? Will you stand there and say you don't know him?"
"I do know him," Tom said; "he saved my life in France."
"And didn't you tell me only ten minutes ago that I could tell the fellows that you didn't know anything about—about that troop—about him and his troop? Didn't you? Do you deny that you did? You told me I could go back and lie to the fellows—you did! If you think I'll do that you've got another guess, I can tell you that much!"
"I never told you you should lie," said Tom with straightforward simplicity, "and I admit I forgot about the cabins. I was away two summers. I had a lot of different things to think about. I got shell-shocked the very same night I met that fellow, and that's got something to do with it, maybe. But I wouldn't stand here, I wouldn't, and try to prove that I didn't tell a lie. If you want to think I did, go ahead and think so. And if the rest of the troop want to think so, let them do it. If anybody says I forgot about the scouts, he lies. And you can tell them they won't lose anything, either; you can tell them I said so. I ain't changed. Didn't I—didn't I ride my motorcycle all the way from Paris to the coast—through the floods—didn't I? Do you think it's going to be hard to make everything right? I—I can do anything—I can. And I didn't lie, either. You go up to Temple Camp on the first of August like you—like we—always did; that's all I say."
He was excited now, and his hand trembled, and Roy looked at him a bit puzzled, but he was neither softened nor convinced. "Didn't you as much as say you didn't know anything about who made that application—didn't you?" Roy demanded.
"I said it good and plain and you can go and tell them so, too," Tom said.
"And you do know this fellow named Barnard, don't you?"
"I know him and he saved my life," Tom said, "and if you——"
"Going up," the colored boy called again.
And the young fellow, scout and soldier, who would not bother to prove his truthfulness to his old companion and friend, was gone. He had hit his own trail in his own way, as he usually did; a long devious, difficult, lonesome trail. The clearly defined trail of the sidewalk leading to the troop room, where a few words of explanation might have straightened everything out, was not the trail for Tom Slade, scout. He would straighten things out another way. He would face this thing, not run away from it, just as he had set his big resolute mouth and faced Pete Connigan. They would lose nothing, these boys. Let them think what they might, they would lose nothing. To be falsely accused, what was that, provided these boys lost nothing? That was all that counted. What difference did it make if they thought he had lied and deceived them, so long as he knew that he had not?
And what a lot of fuss about three cabins! Had he not the power to straighten out his own mistake in the best possible way—the scout way? And how was that? By going to Mr. Burton and taking the matter up and perhaps causing disappointment to those boys out in Ohio, for the sake of these boys in Bridgeboro? Robbing Peter to pay Paul?
Perhaps Mr. Burton would have done that, under all the circumstances. Perhaps Mr. John Temple, head of the whole shebang, would have approved this—under the circumstances. Perhaps the average clerk would have proposed this; would have suggested hitting this convenient little trail, about as short and prosy as a back alley. All you need on that trail is a typewriter machine. Perhaps Tom Slade was not a good clerk. His way out of the difficulty was a longer and more circuitous way. But it was the scout way. He was a scout and he hit the long trail.