“I am Weetonka, the famous Indian chief!” I shouted, “and I haven’t had anything to eat since eight o’clock. Give me that sandwich or I’ll scalp you!”
CHAPTER VIII
RESOPEKITWAFTENLY
This chapter and the next one are mostly about Wigley Weigand, but we usually call him Wig-Wag Weigand, because he’s a cracker-jack on wig-wag signalling. He’s good on all the different kinds of signalling. He’s a Raven, but he can’t help that, because there wasn’t any Silver Fox Patrol when the Raving Ravens started.
The Ravens were the—what do you call it—you know what I mean—nucleus of the troop. That’s how it started. There are about half a million scouts in America and all of them can’t be Silver Foxes, even if they’d like to.
Wig has the crossed flags—that’s the signalling badge; and the fellows say he can make the sky talk. Believe me, he can make it shout. He isn’t so bad considering that he’s a Raven and there’s one good thing about him anyway—and that’s that his mother always gives us cookies and things when we go on a hike. I got a dandy mother, too, and maybe you’ll see how much I think about her, kind of, in the next chapter. Anyway I have to thank Wig Weigand, that’s one sure thing.
Now maybe you think I did a good stunt in that marsh, but a scout doesn’t get credit unless he uses his brains and does everything all right. And that’s where I fell down, and it came near making a lot of trouble, believe me.
Many’s the time Tom Slade (he’s in the war now) told me never to leave a scout sign after it wasn’t any more use. “Scratch ’em out,” he said, “because even if it means something now, it might not mean anything six months from now.” Jiminy, that fellow has some brains. He said, “Never forget to take down a sign when it’s no use any more.”
Well, when I found I wasn’t going to die a terrible death (that’s what Pee-wee called it) I didn’t have sense enough to take away that note that I stuck on the reeds. When I stuck it there I reached up as high as I could, so even when the tide was high up there, I guess it didn’t reach it. I was so excited to find I could get away that I never thought anything about it. And when I sailed into Little Valley in my Indian canoe, gee, I had forgotten all about it.
I found that the troop had done a good day’s work caulking the hull up and slapping a couple of coats of copper paint on it, while the tide was out. So then we decided that as long as the tide was going down, we’d float her down with it to the Bridgeboro River and then wait for the up tide to float her upstream to Bridgeboro. We decided that we’d rather fix her up in Bridgeboro. So you see that this chapter is about the tide, too. Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Donnelle both told me that I must have plenty of movement in my story, so I guess the tide’s a good character for a story, because it’s always moving.
Well, you ought to have seen those fellows when I sailed in shouting that I was Weetonka, the famous Indian chief. Doc Carson dropped his paint brush on Connie Bennett and he was splashed all over with copper paint—good night!