I said, “I don’t believe I’ve got any sweethearts around the house just at present, but wait a minute and I’ll see.”
“Tell them to bring some handkerchiefs,” Westy said.
“And a couple of buckets of tears,” Hunt Manners piped up.
I went inside and called to my mother and my sister Marjorie and asked them if they could come out on the porch and weep. My mother said she was very busy but she’d come and weep for about a minute. When they came out they were crying—from laughing so hard.
Then I delivered a speech. I said to my mother and sister, “You’re supposed to keep on weeping and wringing your hands while I make a farewell speech. Don’t you know the way the wives and sweethearts did when the Pilgrim Fathers started away?”
Then I said:
“Scouts of the Silver Fox Patrol and also the raving Raven that we have wished on us, there must be no good turns on this hike. We’re going the same way the crow flies, only different. The first time we have to turn to right or left we will have to admit we’re beaten, and come home. We’ll have to turn back like somebody or other who started for some place once upon a time in the third grade history—an explorer. The battle cry is ‘ONWARD.’ If we do any good turns they’ll have to be up and down, not to right or left. Anybody that wants to stay home can do it. At five o’clock this afternoon we intend to plant the Silver Fox emblem under that big poplar tree on west ridge. We’ll start a fire there so all the world can see. That fire will mean triumph. It will mean we went in a bee-line. If we have to push Little Valley out of the way we’ll do it—it isn’t so big. We’ll cross the valley——”
My mother said, “You’d better wear your rubbers.”
I said, “Do you think Christopher Columbus and Henry Hudson wore rubbers? At five o’clock this afternoon you look over to west ridge and see what you see. We intend to go straight—it says in the handbook a scout lives straight—but we can beat that, we can go straight. We are going to go in a bee-line for that tree and take possession of it in the name of the Silver Fox Patrol B. S. A. This is the only real boy scout drive that ever happened—all others are imitations. This is the famous bee-line hike invented by Westy Martin. We’re off!”