“Now, that’s the way you play tricks on travelers, is it? I’d just like to know who put that hat on my head so sly like! Mr. Scout-master, I wish you’d tell the fellows who love to play pranks to let me alone.”
“I’d be glad to, Step Hen, only in this case I happened to see you take your hat down, and clap it on your own head, though I reckon you did it without thinking what you were doing; so the sooner you forget it the better.”
A general laugh arose at this, and Step Hen, subsiding, continued to munch away at the sandwich he gripped in one hand. There were just eight lads, dressed in the khaki suits of Boy Scouts, some of which were new, and others rather seedy, as though they had seen many a campaign. But those who wore the brightest uniforms did so because their others had become almost disreputable, and fit only to be carried along for use in case of absolute necessity.
While they sit there, enjoying their midday meal, with two pretty good-sized paddling boats tied up, showing just how they managed to reach this lonely place on the border of one of the almost impenetrable swamps in Southern Louisiana, let us take advantage of the stop to say a few words concerning these lively lads.
Of course the boy reader who has had the pleasure of possessing any or all of the previous volumes in this series, will readily recognize these sturdy fellows as the full membership of the Silver Fox Patrol connected with Cranford Troop of Boy Scouts.
Under the leadership of Assistant Scout-master Thad Brewster they had been having some pretty lively outings for the last two years; at one time in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina; then up in Maine; afterwards finding a chance to pay a hunting and exploring trip to the far distant Rocky Mountains, and finally on the preceding summer cruising upon the vast stretches of Lake Superior.
Besides the patrol leader, Thad, there were Allan Hollister, who had seen much actual life in the woods, and was perfectly at home there; a tall lanky fellow, with such a long neck that his chums had long ago named him “Giraffe;” a dumpy, fat scout, whose jolly red face was almost the color of his hair, and who came when any one called “Bumpus;” a very neat and handsome boy who had been christened Edmund Maurice Travers Smith, but who did not object when all that was shortened to just plain, every-day “Smithy;” an acrobatic chap who loved to stand on his head, and play monkey, Davy Jones by name; Step Hen himself, otherwise Stephen Bingham; and last but not least one Robert Quail White, a native of the South, and whose rather odd name was soon happily changed among his mates to plain “Bob White,” which, as all boys know, is the popular way a quail is designated in the country.
It might as well be said right here in the start that Bumpus was also occasionally at school and at home addressed as Cornelius Hawtree; and that Giraffe would come to a meal if some one called softly “Conrad Stedman;” because he was very, very fond of responding to any sort of a summons that had something to eat along with it.
These eight boys did not constitute the whole of Cranford Troop, for there was another full patrol enlisted, and part of a third; but they were all boon companions; and chancing to have a snug amount of hard cash in the treasury of the patrol, separate from the troop amount, they were enabled to take advantage of a golden opportunity to visit the far South in the dead of winter.
It chanced that they were talking about this right then and there, so that by listening for a bit we may learn what unusual circumstances had arisen to give the scouts this wonderful chance to take a vacation, when they apparently should be industriously working at their books in the Cranford High School, to which all of them belonged.