His father had hardly gone before Roy was curled up on the porch swinging seat with two or three books in his lap, his smiling mother by his side.
“The Camper’s Manual or How to Camp Out and What to Do,” had long been Roy’s companion. The little dog-eared, paper bound volume had been thumbed and read until Mrs. Osborne had more than once threatened to destroy the book.
“What’s the sense of it all, Roy?” she was accustomed to say. “Why are you so interested in camp outfits, camp rations, tents and guns and cooking and packing?”
“Why?” Roy would answer with the teasing smile he always used in arguing with his mother. “I don’t really know except that I am. Some boys I reckon like one thing and some another. I just happen to like to fuss around a camp and then move and set up a new one.”
“But,” his mother would answer, “you were never out camping in your life.”
“That’s where you’re mistaken,” Roy would answer. “I’ve had many a fine trip—up here.” And he would tap his head, with a laugh. “Some day I’ll use it all, never fear.”
This morning he had a chance to recall to his mother what he had said.
“Now, you see, mother. It has come when I least expected it. The time is right here when I’m going to take advantage of what I’ve been learning out of the books. I know right now everything I want to take out west with me. And, least of all, will I need Sunday clothes.”
His mother sidled up close to the boy as he began to set down the items of his outfit, and at the very first article, she entered a renewed and vigorous protest. If ever a boy, who knew nothing of the woods or the wilderness from actual experience, had longed for and dreamed of the day when he might own and carry a modern firearm, that boy was Roy Osborne.
Had he been starting out on a yawling cruise down the New Jersey bays, he would have been tempted to carry a revolver. Since he was going into a land where such a weapon was an actual necessity, it was with positive joy that he checked off first on his list one of the new self-loading combination pistol and carbine weapons.