CHAPTER XXVIII—BRENT AND PEE-WEE
The unexpected return of the Hop-toad Patrol and its almost immediate dissolution had some very far-reaching consequences at Temple Camp.
Howard Delekson had to go home and Willie Rivers’ parents stopped at camp with their auto and took him for an extended tour of the Catskills. So Pee-wee became in fact a free lance. This did not trouble Artie Van Arlen because he knew that once back in Bridgeboro Pee-wee would start a new patrol of permanent residents, and probably make a success of it. It would be a joke patrol, but that would be better than a lifeless patrol of which there are many. You can’t keep a good scout down.
But there was one at Temple Camp whose amusement at Pee-wee turned to sympathy as he saw the sturdy little scout going about by himself, always busy, yet sometimes lingering wistfully around the Ravens’ cabin. This quiet, keen observer was Brent Gaylong.
Pee-wee was so much a camp institution, and had been so thoroughly a raven of the Ravens that it seemed grotesque to observe him now, emerging from the wreck of his own disbanded enterprise without any troop home. He seemed to be flopping around like a fish out of water. Probably he was in need of no sympathy or assistance, being a host in himself. But the sight of him and the thought of him impressed good old Brent so much that he stopped the Lone Star, as Pee-wee was now called, and had a little chat with him. It was on the veranda of the main pavilion where Brent liked to sit tilted back with his long legs against the railing.
“Anything new?”
“Sure, everything’s new, I got a lot of new ideas. I’m going to get a snapshot of Connie Bennett when he’s racing and I’m going to give a print to each member of the Elks. I can get a dandy snapshot because I’m going to sit in the canoe with him, because I did last summer.”
“If he wins,” laughed Brent.
“Sure he’ll win, because we’ve got to keep that cup in our troop—I mean his troop. Gee whiz, I keep forgetting. I bet they’ll be glad to get those snapshots, hey?”
“If he wins,” laughed Brent.