Roy Blakeley's Tangled Trail

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

I guess everybody knew what it meant. Mr. Whittaker (he’s a trustee) called through the big megaphone, but there wasn’t any answer from across the lake.

Then several men started around by the trail—Tom Slade and Mr. Whittaker and Uncle Jeb Rushmore, he’s manager. Some scouts started after them, but they were chased back. We stood on the porch of the commissary shack (you can see where that is) watching. Every now and then we could see the light from Tom Slade’s lantern as they picked their way along the trail through the woods.

I guess it was about two hours before they came back. We just stood around waiting for them. When they came, Uncle Jeb and another man were carrying something on a canvas stretcher. That was Mr. Carson, and he was unconscious. Mr. Kennekott, the man who had gone with him, was drowned. He had got underneath the boat when it turned over and one of his legs had been caught underneath the seat. Even when Mr. Carson was better he didn’t know how he’d got to shore.

After what happened the boat was blown out into the middle of the lake, and some of them went out in another boat and towed it to the landing. They found Mr. Kennekott caught underneath it. His leg was between the middle seat and the floor. That seat was very low. The tin box with the money must have gone down where the boat upset.

There wasn’t much fun at Temple Camp after that. It was a kind of an off summer anyway on account of the camp being sort of rebuilt. Mr. Kennekott’s troop went away, and they have never come back to Temple Camp. Jiminies, you can’t blame them. They were a nice troop, those fellows. One of them had the bronze medal—he sat next to me at eats.

The camp officials dragged the lake over on the other side, but they never found the box. Mr. Temple, who founded the camp, he said they shouldn’t worry. So that was the end of it except after a while scouts began fishing for the box. Lots of them did that. They kidded themselves that they were treasure hunters, I guess. I never did because it always reminded me of what happened.

Of course, it was too deep to dive over there, and there was a strict rule against that. Because I’ll tell you why. There used to be houses where Black Lake is and in some places old chimneys and things like that stood on the bottom. And there’s a rule that we can only dive near the landing. After a while the trustees made a rule that we shouldn’t even go over there and grapple for the box. That was after little Skinny McCord nearly got drowned. So that was the end of the whole thing.

Most of the scouts that were at camp that year don’t come now and, gee whiz, you hardly hear anybody speak about it any more. It just happened to pop out of my head when we were talking with those girls.

Now there’s one thing more I’ll tell you. You remember how one of the scouts said the boat was near a light? When he was pointing it out to me? That was only the reflection of a light away up on the mountain.

There were two grown-up fellows who had a camp up in the mountain across the lake from Temple Camp. Often we saw their camp-fire at night. They had it burning that afternoon way, way up there. And it made a spot of light down on the lake. It was right close to that spot of light that the boat upset. That was what the fellow meant. It wasn’t really a light, it was only a reflection. That summer those big fellows up in the mountain went away, and they never came back again. Gee whiz, you can’t exactly say that the reflection of a light is a scout sign. Because when the light goes away the reflection goes away, too.