He sat there moodily, pondering the plan in his mind. It was easy enough to decide to run away—but where should he go? If he went back to the city, he would have to face his mother with a tale of disgrace, and the boys of the camp would soon discover that their punishment had driven him home like a whipped dog. If he slipped away and went east, toward Elmville and the railroad, Wally would soon discover that he was missing; a hunt would start, he would be easily traced and found before he could get far, and he would be brought back to camp again, baffled and more of an object of reproach than ever. But if he could manage to get too far away to be traced, and stay hidden somewhere for three or four days, they would think him dead, and when he finally did return they would be so glad they would forget all about his crime, would be sorry they had caused him to run off alone. The open road, that was the thing! He would be a hobo for a while, might even bum his way to some city miles off, having an adventurous time on the road while the Lenape kids did their smart little tricks and acted like Sunday-school babies and thought they were having a good time!
After some thought he decided not to leave immediately, but to wait until supper-time. He was watched too closely now; every boy in camp knew of his sentence and was covertly watching to see how he would take it. But if he slipped away when the camp was assembled in the mess hall, it was not likely that he would be seen. Wally might wonder what had become of him, but would not take steps to find out until after the meal; and by that time Blackie hoped to be several miles away in a direction they would not expect him to take. He had seen the county map which hung in the lodge, and knew that Newmiln Center, on Flatstone Creek, was about ten miles as the crow flies northwest over the mountains, in a rich farming region that was separated from camp by miles of wilderness into which nobody ever penetrated. They would not look for him on top of the ridges; they would never suspect that he dared go there. Why, given a fair start and three hours of daylight, he might even make Newmiln Center before dark closed in!
“I’ll do it!” Blackie muttered darkly to himself. “I’ll show them I won’t knuckle under, no matter what they do!”
He would take his blankets, he decided, and also his flash-lantern, ax, and compass. The next problem was food. That would have to be taken—“hooked”—out of the kitchen somehow. But unless there was one of the kitchen crew at work, the place was always kept locked. He would have to manage, somehow.
He thought over his plans during the two hours before Retreat and the evening flag-lowering ceremony. He did not appear for swim, but spent the time making a neat roll of his blankets, which he hid along with his flash-lamp, compass and ax in the bushes beside the road behind camp. He knew that if his absence at the swimming dock was noted, the boys would put it down to wanting to escape their silent contempt.
He was in his place when Retreat Call trumpeted out over the lake; but when the usual evening rush to tables began and the files clattered up the steps, he slipped around to the back door of the kitchen. He found himself in the pantry; shelves of canned goods lined the walls, under which were bins of vegetables, and the mirrored doors of the huge ice-box took up one side of the room. During the hush that preceded the saying of grace in the mess hall, he could hear Ellick whispering directions to Leggy and his other dusky assistants, who were busied dishing up the meal. This is what Blackie had counted upon, having the kitchen crew so busy at this time that they would not see him. Hastily he slipped a few potatoes and a can of peas into his shirt, and ran to the ice-box. A cool, humid breath of air came out to him as he opened the door and peered inside; it was dark within, and he felt about hoping to locate something he could take. His hand touched a plate of cheese, and he drew forth a good-sized chunk. There was a rattle of dishes from the kitchen. Ellick’s voice came to his ears.
“Leggy, you just hurry up now and bring in de butter from de ice-box!”
Leggy’s dragging footsteps sounded across the floor. With frenzied haste Blackie grabbed at whatever happened to be under his hand. It proved to be a slice of ham. Slamming the ice-box door, he clattered across to the exit and ran out of the skinny kitchen-helper’s sight. That had been a close squeak! Pausing only to stuff the ham and cheese into the pockets of his sweater, he darted around behind the wooden building that was used for an ice-house and gained the rutted road that led toward the mountains. Here he found his blanket roll and accouterments, slipped the roll over his head and hooked the ax and lantern on his belt, and trotted westward through the woods.
CHAPTER XII
THE HUT ON BLACK POND
Half a mile up the road, where it turned at right angles to climb the mountainside, Blackie paused and took his first compass observation. His course was northwest; but he remembered that if he looked at the compass only now and then, he might go wide of his goal; the thing to do was to take an observation, note a landmark ahead in line with the NW on the compass, make straight for that place, and from there make a new observation on another landmark. The little shifting needle showed him that his first leg of the journey should take him diagonally up the wooded mountain to a grayish, scarred slide of stones that showed ahead in the dropping sun. He knew what that was, although he had never been there. It was the terminal moraine Gil Shelton had pointed out to him the day he had first landed in camp—the Devil’s Potato Patch, the campers called it—a heap of blotched, round boulders known as a favorite resort for rattlesnakes.