“Sure I will,” the kid piped up. “Do you think I don’t know heroes when I see them? I know more about them than you do. Didn’t I say how I’m going to show Dub how he can be one—didn’t I?”
“Sure, all right, come on,” I said.
They were all standing around that fellow—he was sitting up kind of feeling around his shoulder. Dub was wiping the blood off his face and we could see then it was only a bad scratch he had.
Pee-wee marched up very brave and honorable like and he said, “No matter who you are, I got to admit you’re a hero and you saved my life and you might even have got killed doing it and you can bet I’m glad you didn’t. And anyway, besides, I take back what I said to you, gee whiz, that’s only fair. If you were a Scout you’d get the Gold Medal, that’s one thing sure.”
The fellow just looked at him and he said, “I am a Scout. Who says I’m not? I never said I was anything else. I’m a Scout from Temple Camp just like you are.”
Pee-wee nearly went down for the second time. One of those men came with some iodine and he kneeled down and wiped the boy’s cheek and he put his arm around him and said, “Yes siree, he’s the greatest Roman of them all. Do you want to know his name? It’s Bobby Easton—hey Bobby? He’s a Scout—yep. All wool and thirty-six inches wide. They don’t make ’em like him every day. Do you want to shake hands with him?”
“That ain’t the way you do,” Pee-wee shouted. “You give the full scout salute—that shows how much you all don’t know about scouting.” So then he gave him the full salute, standing up there like a little tin soldier. I said, “Look, he’s posing for animal crackers.”
The man said, “Yes, I think the movie people went away late last night and we got here this morning and moved in. We’re surveyors working for Uncle Sam and we’re going to make a map of all this region. We were doing old Overlook Mountain last week and they told us up there that if we wanted a wide-awake helper to help out in the local field as a stake boy, we could probably get one at Temple Camp. Well, they picked a winner for us, that’s all I can say. Hanged if I wouldn’t like to take him up to Alaska with us next summer. What do you say, Mac?”
“I could swing it for him,” one of the others said.
All of a sudden I spoke up. I said, “As long as one of them was saved and then the other one was saved, will you please excuse me while I drop dead? I could even drop as dead as Bunko Bravado is. And please send word to my fond parents that I died laughing. The fixer has fixed it. Scout Bobby Easton, he gets the Gold Medal for saving life by risking his own, and he gets a hundred dollars besides—that’s a private award—and that proves that if Dub sticks to Pee-wee he can stay at Temple Camp as long as he wants—not—and get a hundred dollars, only watch him get it!