Tom Chapin was our first captain and he meets with us now, whenever he is in town.
The village where we live is in a long, narrow valley, with little Hoosac River flowing north through the center of it, until it gets beyond the mountain range. Then it turns west and hurries down into the Hudson.
Bob's Hill stands just west of the village and looks down upon the highest steeples. Over the brow of the hill and a little south are Plunkett's woods. West, straight back, a mile or more, begins the timbered slope of old Greylock, which, everybody knows, is the highest mountain in Massachusetts. And in the edge of the first woods, a little back from the road, is the prettiest place you ever sat eyes upon. Grown-up folks call it "the glen," but we boys just say "Peck's Falls." I don't know why, only there is a waterfall there, which begins in a brook, somewhere up on the mountainside, and plays and tumbles along, until finally it pours down from a high cliff into a pool a hundred feet below; then dashes off to join Hoosac River.
A queer-shaped rock, with a high back and narrow ledge, which we call the "pulpit," bridges the ravine in front of the falls, fifty feet and maybe more, above the rushing water. A little farther down the ravine, at the edge of the stream, is another rock. It will do no harm now to say that our cave is under that rock, because folks have found out about it, although not many know about there being two entrances.
All these things that I have told about belong to us boys. Mr. Plunkett thinks that he owns Plunkett's woods and Bob's Hill. I mean the very top of it. And somebody has been cutting trees off from Greylock, until it looks like a picked chicken in spots. But we call them all ours because we have more fun with them than anybody else does, and it seems to us that things belong to those who get the most out of them.
We knew from the way Skinny was acting that he had something on his mind, so we sat down and waited for him to tell us.
"Fellers," said he, after a while, "we've been Injuns and we've been bandits, and we have had fun, good and plenty. I ain't sayin' that Injuns and bandits are not all right sometimes but——"
"Guess what!" broke in Benny. "We've been 'splorers, too. Don't you remember 'sploring out in Illinois last summer? About LaSalle and that other guy and What's-her-name who fell over the cliff?"
"That was all right, too," said Skinny, "and I couldn't forget it in a thousand years, but I tell you those things are back numbers. They are out of date."
"Never mind about the date," said Hank, "but hurry and get it out of your system. We've got to be something, haven't we? If we ain't Injuns and we ain't bandits, what are we?"