TOM GOES ON AN ERRAND
Tom had intended to go down into camp for a strip of bandage and to see Uncle Jeb, but since Barnard was so averse to having his mishap known and to having visitors, he thought it better not to go down that night. He did not like the idea of not mentioning his friend's accident to the old camp manager. Tom had not been able to rid himself of a feeling that Uncle Jeb did not wholly approve of the sprightly Barnard. He had no good reason for any such supposition, but the feeling persisted. It made him uncomfortable when occasionally the keen-eyed old plainsman had strolled up to look things over, and he was always relieved when Uncle Jeb went away. Tom could not for the life of him, tell why he had this feeling, but he had it just the same.
So now, in order not to rouse his friend, who seemed at last to have dozed off, he lingered by the dying embers of their fire. As the last flickerings of the blaze subsided and the yellow fragments turned to gray, then black, it seemed to Tom as if this fire symbolized the petering out of that pleasant comradeship, now so close at hand. In his heart, he longed to wait there and continue this friendship and be with Roy and the others, as he had so often been at the big camp.
He had grown to admire and to like Barnard immensely. It was the liking born of gratitude and close association, but it was the liking, also, which the steady, dull, stolid nature is apt to feel for one who is light and vivacious. Barnard's way of talking, particularly his own brand of slang, was very captivating to sober Tom, who could do big things but not little things. He had told himself many times that Barnard's scouts "must be crazy about him." And Barnard had laughed and said, "They must be crazy if they like me...."
"He says I'm queer," Tom mused, "but he's queer, too, in a way. I guess a lot of people don't understand him. It's because he's happy-go-lucky. It's funny he didn't know about shadow bridges, because it's in the handbook." Then Tom couldn't remember whether it was in the handbook or not.... "Anyway, he's got the right idea about good turns," he reflected. "I met lots of scouts that never read the handbook; I met scoutmasters, too...."
And indeed there were few scouts, or scoutmasters either, who had followed the trail through the handbook with the dogged patience of Tom Slade. He had mastered scouting the same as he had mastered this job.
Barnard was pretty restive that night, tossed on his bunk, and complained much of his head aching. "It feels like an egg being beaten by an egg beater," he said; "I'm off the shadow bridge stuff for good and all. It throbs to the tune of Over There."
Tom thought this must be pretty bad—to throb to the tune of Over There. He had never had a headache like that.
"If you could only fall asleep," Tom said.
"Well, I guess I will; I'm pretty good at falling," his friend observed. "I fell for you, hey Slady? O-h-h! My head!"
"It's the same with me," said Tom.
"You got one too? Good night!"
"I mean about what you were saying—about falling for me. It's the same with me."
"Same here, Slady; go to bed and get some sleep yourself."
It was two or three o'clock in the morning before the sufferer did get to sleep, and he slept correspondingly late. Tom knew that the headache must have stolen off and he felt sure that his companion would awaken refreshed. "I'll be glad because then I won't have to get the doctor," he said to himself. He wished to respect Bernard's smallest whim.
Tom did not sleep much himself, either, and he was up bright and early to anticipate his friend's waking. He tiptoed out of the cabin and quietly made himself a cup of coffee. It was one of those beautiful mornings, which are nowhere more beautiful than at Temple Camp. The soft breeze, wafting the pungent fragrance of pines, bore also up to that lonely hilltop the distant clatter of dishes and the voices of scouts from the camp below. The last patches of vapor were dissolving over the wood embowered lake, and one or two early canoes were already moving aimlessly upon its placid bosom. A shout and a laugh and a sudden splash, sounding faint in the distance, told him that some uninitiated new arrivals were diving from the springboard before breakfast. They would soon be checked in that pastime, Tom knew.
From the cooking shack where Chocolate Drop, the camp's famous cook, held autocratic sway and drove trespassing scouts away with a deadly frying pan, arose a graceful column of smoke which was carried away off over the wooded hills toward Leeds. Pretty soon Chocolate Drop would need two deadly frying pans, for Peewee Harris was coming.
Tom knew that nothing had been heard from the Bridgeboro scouts since Uncle Jeb had told him definitely that they were scheduled to arrive on the first, as usual. He knew that no other letter had come, because all the camp mail had passed through his hands. It had come to be the regular custom for Barnard to rise early and follow the secluded trail down to the state road where the mail wagon passed. He had early claimed it as his own job, and Tom, ever anxious to please him, had let him do this while he himself was gathering wood and preparing breakfast. "Always hike to work out west and can't get out of the habit," Barnard had said. "Like to hobnob with the early birds and first worms, and all that kind of stuff. Give me a lonesome trail and I'm happy—take one every morning before breakfast, and after retiring. How about that, old Doctor Slade?"
Old Doctor Slade had thought it was a good idea.
But this morning his friend was sleeping, and old Doctor Slade would not waken him. He tiptoed to the cabin and looked cautiously within. Barnard was sleeping the sleep of the righteous—to quote one of his own favorite terms. The bandage had slipped down from his forehead, and looked not unlike a scout scarf about his neck. A ray of early sunlight slanted through the crack between the logs and hit him plunk in the head, making his curly red hair shine like a red danger signal. He was sound asleep—dead to the wicked world—as he was himself fond of saying.
Early to bed and early to rise,
And you won't meet any regular guys.
As Tom paused, looking at him, he thought of that oft repeated admonition of his friend. He knew Barnard never meant that seriously. That was just the trouble—he was always saying things like that, and that was why people would never understand him and give him credit.... But Tom understood him, all right; that was what he told himself. "I got to laugh at him, that's sure," he said. Then he bethought him, and out of his simple, generous nature, he thought, "Didn't he say actions speak louder than words? That's what counts."
He tiptoed over to where that ray of sunlight came in, and hung his coat over the place. The shiny brightness of Barnard's hair faded, and the cabin was almost dark. Tom got his cap, and turning in the doorway to make sure his friend's sleep was undisturbed, picked his way carefully over the area of chips and twigs where most of the trimming had been done, and started down through the wooded hillside toward the trail which afforded a short-cut to the state road.
Once, and once only he paused, and that was to glance at a ragged hollow in the woods where a tree had been uprooted in some winter storm. It reminded him of the very day that Barnard had arrived, for it was after a discouraging afternoon with that stubborn old trunk that he had retraced his steps wearily to his lonesome camp and met the visitor who had assisted him and beguiled the lonesome days and nights for him ever since. Barnard, willing and ready, had sawed through that trunk the next morning. "Say nothing, but saw wood; that's the battle cry, Slady," he had cheerfully observed, mopping the perspiration from his brow.
And now, as Tom looked into that jagged hollow, his thoughts went even further back, and he thought how it was in some such earthen dungeon as this that he and Barnard had first seen each other—or rather, met. Barnard had thoughtfully refrained from talking of those things which were still so agitating and disturbing to poor Tom, but Tom thought of it now, because his stolid nature was pierced at last, and his heart was overflowing with gratitude to this new friend, who twice had come to his rescue—here on the isolated hillside on the edge of the beloved camp, and over there, in war torn France.
"You bet I understand him all right," said Tom. "Even if he talks a lot of crazy nonsense, he can't fool me. You bet I know what he is, all right. He can make believe, sort of, that he doesn't care much about anything. But he can't fool me—he can't."