“He’s Red Deer; he’s going with us.”
“And how do you manage to pack so many things in there?” said she, patting his thick, curly hair.
“Oh, there isn’t so much in it,” he answered; “a couple of apples, pair of heavy shoes, a shirt—”
“What?”
“Want to look inside?” he asked, laying the pile of books down and releasing his duffel bag from the end of his staff.
“Oh, no, I meant inside your head,” said she, laughing; “but here we are; I shall remember the things you have told me. Good-by, and I hope your kindness to me will not have made you late for the train.”
She stood on the school steps (it was the last day of the spring term) watching him as he walked gayly down the street, his khaki hat on the back of his round head, and his duffel bag on the end of his scout’s staff. She heard a man across the street call cheerily to him that he had only two minutes to catch the train, and she distinctly heard him answer, “That’s nothing,” and saw him start to run down the hill toward Oakwood station.
But it proved to be a great deal, despite the boy’s laconic comment. Indeed, it is to be seriously questioned whether missing a train ever before had such a variety of delectable consequences.
So there he sat where we first saw him, on the station bench, and thought of the two patrols in charge of Red Deer which were already on their way to the Adirondacks. They knew that he had had a bad headache the day before, and they would doubtless assume that to be the cause of his non-appearance. He pictured their gay trip up the shore of the lordly Hudson, their luncheon at Albany, their leaving the train at Ticonderoga and tramping forth in quest of a suitable camp. But whether they would settle north or south or west of Ticonderoga, he did not know. They would pitch their tents this very night somewhere along the shore of that watery serpent, Lake Champlain, but exactly where Red Deer would lead them would depend largely on information gathered en route.
He wondered what Arnold would think of him. Those had been fine plans that he and Arnold had made for hanging together and testing their new signal system, and tracking and stalking in each other’s company. It was Harry Arnold who had brought Gordon into the troop as a tenderfoot, and it had been a great discovery for the elder boy. It had also opened up a field for Master Gordon which belittled his fondest dreams. For even before the organization came into existence he was, in all essential particulars, a thorough, out-and-out Boy Scout. And indeed, it might reasonably have seemed to him that the local troop had been organized in order to afford a wider scope for the exploitation of his particular accomplishments.