Then Skinny started to read, and this is what the letter said, only it doesn't tell how Skinny's eyes shone, nor how he stopped every few lines to punch the enemy.
"To the Boy Scouts of Bob's Hill:
"I want to thank every boy in Raven Patrol, and especially Henry Bates, for the recovery of my property. But for you I should never have seen it again and the burglars would still be at large. I offered a reward for the capture of the thieves and it rightfully belongs to you, but the marshal has told me that, being Boy Scouts, you do not want to be rewarded for good deeds. What I wish to say is this: I like the Boy Scout idea and want to help it along. Not as a reward but just because I like boys, will you let me buy uniforms for your patrol?
"Sincerely your friend,
"Robert Green."
That is how we happen to have such fine uniforms that make folks turn around and look every time we pass.
On the day we first wore the uniforms we were made real Scouts; not First class ones but Second class. You see, there are three kinds. First you have to be a Tenderfoot. That doesn't mean that your feet are tender, but that you are new to the business. To get to be a Second Class Scout, you have to do all kinds of stunts and you have to be a Tenderfoot at least a month.
We knew how to build fires and cook things out in the woods and things like that, which Scouts have to do, and the way we tracked the burglars showed that we knew something about that.
The hardest things we had to do were to learn the Morse alphabet of dots and dashes for signaling and to learn what to do when folks get hurt, how to put on bandages and things like that and how to bring folks back to life when they are nearly drowned. We learned them all right, and it is a good thing we did.
Signaling was the most fun of all. We could do it with flags like they do in the army; by waving our arms like a semaphore, and by smoke from fires like the Indians do. We also could spell out things with smoke in the Morse alphabet, which was something the Indians couldn't do, by making the smoke go up in puffs like dots and dashes.
Part of us would go up on Bob's Hill and part on the hill opposite, beyond the Basin where we go swimming, build fires, and signal to each other. It was hard at first, but after a while we could spell out 'most anything and understand some of it.