“It’s about thirty miles down to Newburgh,” I said; “you’ll have to bivouac twice anyway.”
He said, “I guess we’ve got eats enough.”
“We might as well all hike that far together,” I told him.
“Good idea,” he said, “if you don’t mind chumming up with a travelling poor-house.”
“We should worry about being poor,” I said; “I know a man that’s rich and he can’t hike at all. He goes on crutches. How would you like to be him? Anyway, don’t you fellows get discouraged.”
“Don’t worry,” he said; “first it was hard, but now we’ve come to like it. You can get a lot of fun out of hard luck. And all we need is time, I suppose. This winter we’re all going to work on Saturdays. Trouble is that isn’t going to help us give our scoutmaster a welcome home. We’ve done more crazy things this summer trying to get a little money together! I guess it would have been better if we’d all knuckled down to jobs. But I wanted these poor kids to get a taste of scouting. Too late now, anyway. Why if I told you why we hiked up to Elm Center, you’d just laugh in my face. You’d say we were crazy. But we’ve had a good time anyway.”
I said, “One thing sure, everything will come out all right and it’s better to go on a hike and camping and all that in the summer than to be working in the city. One of those fellows ahead of us is named Dorry Benton and he’s kind of—not exactly poor, but—Anyway, he’s crazy to get a motorcycle and he was going to stay home and work this summer, but Mr. Ellsworth (he’s our scoutmaster) told him no, that it was better for him to go up to Temple Camp. That big fellow with us isn’t our regular scoutmaster. Anyway, Dorry is crazy to have a motorcycle and you can bet he’ll have more fun with it if he has to wait for it, won’t he? Anyway, I wish you’d tell me what you came up this way for. I won’t tell any of the follows if you don’t want me to.”
“Oh,” he said, “they might as well all have a good laugh. And I don’t want you to think that I’m grouching about hard luck, either. We’ll land right side up—scouts mostly do. The woods are free, thank goodness. All that’s troubling us is that when Mr. Jennis went away he gave us a spread and presented each one of us with a scout knife and we’d like to return the compliment, that’s all. We’d like to show him how much we think of him. I had a crazy notion we’d all go down to New York and meet him and give him something or other when the transport arrives. Happy dreams. I guess all we’ll give him is the scout salute. But we’ll come out right side up yet, even if we have to sweep up the streets in Newburgh. Principal trouble with us is that we’re a lot of dreamers; I guess I’m the worst of the lot. Not much money in adventures. So now we’re up against it. You don’t make money scouting, you make it working.”
I said, “I wish you’d please tell me why you came up this way, will you?”
“Sure I will,” he said; “it’s a joke—it’s a peach of a joke. Only I tell you beforehand, we’re a band of wild adventurers. Here we are at our luxurious camp. Pretty big tent, hey?”