“It’s—it’s requested,” said Pee-wee.
“What, that you do your own eating?” Beech asked.
“No, I mean it’s all by itself with nobody to bother you, sort of.”
“Oh, you mean sequestered,” said Beech.
“And Chocolate Drop—he’s the colored cook—he sends stuff up for two all through the season. You can cook it yourself if you want to. That’s the way I’m going to do, because it’s kind of more wild like. Wouldn’t it be dandy if I got a feller that’s an Eagle scout, hey? I’ve got a patrol, the Alligators, only I’m not going to stay with them this summer. I’m going up to-morrow in an auto with my patrol leader.”
“That isn’t very wild like, is it?” Beech asked innocently.
“In an old Ford it is,” Pee-wee said. “I wouldn’t ride in a Packard, because nothing ever happens to Packards—Cadillacs either. But it’s all right for a scout to go in a Ford, because things happen to Fords and it’s adventure. See? I’m going up to-morrow by the state road and when I get there, do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to have Chocolate Drop send up canned stuff for two, enough to last all summer, and besides I’m taking a lot of things with me, doughnuts and bacon and spaghetti and salmon and, oh, gee, a lot of things.”
“Well, I’ll start the ball rolling,” said Beech. “I’ll bang up to Spring Valley first thing in the morning and see if I can find Norton. I’ll get my first-class badge in the bargain, so don’t have any vain regrets about me. Kill two birds with one stone, hey? I dare say the last scout will come trotting in in a few days. So long, I’ll see you again some time, Bridgeboro. Hike up some Saturday in the fall, why don’t you? Ever play basket-ball?”
Pee-wee liked Alton Beech. He was attracted by the off-hand, friendly way in which Beech came over and sat on the fence with him, as if they had known each other for ages. Pee-wee was accustomed to hearing his schemes and enterprises treated with disrespectful mirth and it fired him with the wildest expectations of sensational triumph to know that his great relay race was in competent hands. It would have served his mother right if she could have seen Alton Beech fall at her son’s feet.
As he waited for the bus back to Bridgeboro, he pictured the lone, unknown scout who would cover the last stretch of country to Temple Camp. Perhaps this scout would arrive at midnight, out of the dark woods, like some Indian runner in days of yore. Who would he be? What would he look like? What exciting narratives passed from scout to scout in the long series, would he have to recount? He would bring tidings of the others and what they had done and what had happened along the way.