Mr. Bagley put out his hand and shook hands with Pee-wee, like as if Pee-wee was a kind of a hero. I had to laugh.
I said, “You mustn’t mind our young hero. He’s the one that invented the Boy Scouts of America.”
Mr. Bagley said, “That was a very good invention.” Then he shook hands with Pee-wee again.
Jiminies, we knew all about the forest land east of Black Lake—anyway, Pee-wee and I did. Dub and Sandy were new fellows at camp, so maybe they didn’t. I’ll tell you how it was. Everybody at camp calls that the Bagley land—sometimes we call it Bagley woods. It’s east of Temple Camp. All the Scouts at camp knew about Mr. Temple wanting to buy it and give it to the camp. But anyway, he couldn’t buy it, because the Bagley estate wouldn’t sell it to him. But jiminy crinkums, I never bothered my head about it. Last summer it was fenced off with barbed-wire from Temple Camp and we couldn’t even go on it. A lot I should worry, they can take the land away altogether for all I care.
I asked Mr. Bagley, I said, “Are you one of the people that wouldn’t sell it to Temple Camp?”
He said, “Oh, goodness no!” just like that. He said those were the heirs and there were a lot of them. But he said anyway, he was the real heir. Jiminies, I felt sorry for him. He was mighty nice, just sitting there and talking to us like that. He said he liked boys, especially Scouts, and he said only for a tragedy that happened, Temple Camp would have all that land.
Oh boy, you should have seen Pee-wee’s eyes open—that’s his middle name, tragedies. He eats them alive. He said, “Was it a regular tragedy where somebody got killed—or maybe murdered or something?”
Mr. Bagley said, “My father, Ephraim Bagley was killed, and it was less than a mile from here. I have just visited the spot. I could hardly find it, it looked so different from when I was last there.”
Pee-wee said, “You ought to have blazed a trail, that’s the way Scouts do.” I guess Mr. Bagley must have thought he was very smart, because he just reached over and shook hands with him.
Mr. Bagley said, “My father was an old man and he had a very tragic end.” Then he kind of whispered to Dub and said, “And the Boy Scouts are the losers.”