So I said, “We should worry. I’ve been to Temple Camp every summer for several years and it’s always stayed in the same place. It’s not like we are. All we’ve lost are our bearings and one potato. That roof is in a bee-line with Temple Camp. When we get to the road where the house is I know the way to camp all right without any smoke beacons. There’s a trail through the farther woods. Let the smoke die. What do we care? The boy scouts will live forever. Let’s take a good rest and sort of get sobered up so we’re not seeing things and then let’s make a bee-line for that house. If Hervey will lead us to that house I’ll lead the party to camp from there.”
“Come on, follow your leader,” Hervey said. And with that he rolled over and laid his head on his arm. All the rest of us did the same and pretty soon we were fast asleep. No wonder.
CHAPTER XXVIII
WE ARE DEAD TO THE WORLD
Now in this chapter we are all asleep so nothing happens. If anything happened I don’t know about it. Anyway I’m not to blame for what the landscape does. I never had any use for geography, anyway; I never trusted it. And I’ll never trust it again as long as it lives.
So that’s why this chapter is so short, because we’re all asleep.
CHAPTER XXIX
WE WAKE UP
Now there’s going to be something doing again because we woke up. While we were asleep the smoke from the cooking shack died. I guess they were all through cooking supper at camp. The sun had gone down too. The part of the sky where it had gone down was all bright—red kind of. So we knew that was the west.
The roof we had seen wasn’t in line with it, but you can’t exactly say a thing is in line with a bright part of the sky. The column of smoke had been right behind that little roof, maybe two miles from it, so we decided to use that roof for a beacon. That would take us to the road and from there I knew the trail through the other woods.
I have to admit we were all about ready to go home by then. We were all pretty tired after that crazy day. If they would have to send a new troop away on account of there not being accommodations, that would mean the bus would go down to Catskill again and I wanted to get to camp in time to send a letter home. I didn’t like to think about a troop being sent away but it served them right for not writing beforehand. Every tent and every cabin was crowded that summer.
I said to Hervey, “If you want to be the leader all right, but from now on we’re going straight for camp. I admit you’re too much for the rest of us. You ought to live in a volcano or a cyclone or something like that. I’m good and tired. See if you can make a bee-line to that little roof and then we’ll know we’re going straight for camp.”