“Yes, what is it?” asked the Utway twins together.
“Well, it’s this way,” began the Mandarin Magician; “Wild Willie can announce a big display of old Chinese hocus-pocus. We fix up a place on the stage where I sit, and a crowd of you guys come around and want to see some tricks. Then Fat Crampton comes along, and then I do a few easy ones, just to show my stuff, and then——” He lowered his voice as his comrades gathered about to hear the plan. Lefkowitz was sent over to Tent Eight to bring in the other participants, who listened and agreed to the scheme for a combined stunt that would make a most amusing addition to the vaudeville program that night. As soon as Recall sounded, the two groups of actors made for the Council Ring, where they rehearsed excitedly most of the afternoon.
Sherlock Jones did not join in the preparations for Stunt Night. He retired alone to the dark-room, where he stared at a photograph and pondered plans of his own. The announcement that a reward had been offered for the capture of the escaped criminal had set his mind working furiously on the problem of the Tattooed Arm. Indeed, the Chief’s startling news was a leading topic of conversation in Lenape that afternoon; but when supper-time brought no further information, the subject was temporarily forgotten in anticipation of the evening’s entertainment.
No sooner had the dessert dishes been cleared away than the space in front of the blackened fireplace was transformed into a stage. Benches were ranged in rows for the seating of the camper audience, and a makeshift curtain of bed-sheets strung on a wire was hung across that end of the lodge. Darkness had just fallen when a boisterous crowd of leaders and boys took their seats, awaiting the drawing of the curtain on the opening act, announced by Sax McNulty, master of ceremonies, as “Captain Colby’s Army,” a Tent Fifteen Feature Production.
Joey Fellowes, who with his brother Ted made up the Lenape bugle corps, sounded Reveille on his muted instrument. The curtains parted to reveal a morning scene in Tent Fifteen. A great fuss was made by Ollie Steffins, dressed in a scout uniform with many medals and much gold braid, who in the person of Mr. Colby himself, went about getting the snoring sleepers to waken for morning drill. The drowsy boys were finally put on their feet and each armed with a broom-stick gun, with which they went through a series of clumsy maneuvers, knocking each other over the head, facing the wrong way, and otherwise tangling themselves in a travesty of a squad of rookies at drill. The concluding evolution brought them into line facing the audience, singing off key their rallying song:
“We are Mr. Colby’s army,
Mr. Colby’s army we,
We cannot shoot, we won’t salute,
What earthly good are we?”
The curtains closed amid cheers, boos, and stamping of feet, during which Mr. Colby sat with a self-conscious smile on his disciplinarian’s face.