Thus hastily equipped with a “walking lunch” they sallied forth and, after rambling about the neighboring village, decided to hike down to the Hudson which their map showed to be about two miles distant.
“Let’s hire a boat and go for a row, hey?” said Pee-wee, munching his lunch as he trudged along at Townsend’s side.
“What, with five cents?” laughed Townsend. “What’s the use hiring one? Let’s buy one? We’ve got resources.”
“You think you’re smart, don’t you?” Pee-wee said. “Resources mean kind of in your brain, sort of. Like if I was starving in the woods—hunters, they can’t starve. They can eat herbs,—even bark off trees, they can. Gee whiz, you’re a patrol leader and you don’t know about those things. In the handbook it says how you don’t have to starve—ever—because there was a famous guide and he got lost and all his food was eaten by a—”
“A goat—”
“A bear.”
“His license and everything?”
“And he couldn’t find his way,” Pee-wee panted, eating a banana and trying to keep up with Townsend, “and he saw the bear sneaking off and then he knew which was the north, because mostly bears go south like in the night when they’re after food and so he was sneaking north—”
“He must have swallowed the man’s compass,” said Townsend. “That’s why he turned to the north.”
“And do you—you’re crazy—do you know what that man did? He ate wintergreen and sassafras and so he didn’t starve. He dug up roots, that’s what he did, and chewed them and some men that started for the North Pole ate leather, even. So you can’t starve—scouts can’t. Because nature is your slave, see?”