Dub said, “I guess he’ll get it all right.”
“He will or I’ll jump down his throat,” I told him. “Believe me, you’ve got something to be thankful for that you’re not leader of the Silver Foxes. That’s the only way you can get them together—with a corn-roast. They haven’t got any discipline and it’s good they haven’t, because if they did have, they’d all be trying to get it away from each other. Councilor Trent says we’re more than a patrol, we’re an institution, but, gee, who wants to be in an institution?”
All of a sudden I looked behind me and Dub wasn’t there. He was standing still maybe about twenty feet in back of me. I could just see him beckoning to me. I asked him what was the matter but he only beckoned.
I went back to where he was and he said, “Did you hear a sound?”
“A kind of a rustling up in the trees?” I asked him. “Maybe it was an eagle—you ought to be ashamed to look him in the face.”
“No—listen,” he said. “Doesn’t it sound like oar-locks?”
“Jiminies, it does,” I said. “It’s over there, about where the shore turns. Wait a second—listen—let’s make sure.”
“Somebody breaking the rule?” Dub said.
“Sure, that’s likely,” I said. “You know what Hervey Willetts said. ‘What’s the good of having rules if you don’t break them.’ Boy oh boy, I’d just like to know who it is. Shall we shout and tell him the outside of his boat is all wet?”
“No, don’t call,” Dub said.