"Patrol animal? Why, each patrol is named after some animal, and the Scouts all have to be able to imitate its call, so that they can let each other know where they are hiding."
When Mr. Norton told us that you hardly could have heard yourself think for a minute. Mrs. Norton didn't know what had broken loose and came running in from the next room. Skinny was hissing like a snake; Bill croaked like a frog; Benny cawed like a crow; Hank barked like a dog, and the other boys did something else, and nobody could tell what they were doing.
"You seem to have the right idea," smiled Mr. Norton.
There was a lot more to it, uniforms and rules and signs and all that sort of thing, but that doesn't belong in this history. It didn't take us long to decide that we would go in. Bill Wilson was the craziest one in the bunch.
Mr. Norton thought that we ought to decide on a patrol leader before we went home. We told him that there was nothing to decide.
"Skinny is captain, all right," said Benny, "and the Band is the Band, I guess, whether we are Scouts or Injuns."
"Yes, I'm captain of the Band," Skinny told him, when Mr. Norton waited to see what he had to say about it, "but I don't know about this patrol business. It wouldn't do to vote on it here, anyway. The cave is where we meet. We ought to vote in the cave, seeing it is summer time. If it was winter we could meet in Pedro's barn."
We left it that way and were so busy during the closing days of school that we didn't have time to think much more about it until Friday. When we came in from afternoon recess, there was the Sign, as big as life, drawn with chalk on the blackboard.
I saw teacher looking at it, sort of puzzled, as if she was wondering what it all was about, and some of the girls were giggling at it. They seemed to think it was a joke of some kind, instead of something important. Anyhow, the Sign said for us to meet at the cave, Saturday, at ten o'clock.
Saturday morning, long before ten, every boy was at our house, that being nearest to the cave. Each one carried a lot of good things to eat, so we should not have to go home for dinner unless we wanted to.