Tom Slade used to be in our troop, but now he stays at Temple Camp all the time, and he’s assistant manager under Uncle Jeb Rushmore, and Uncle Jeb used to be a trapper, and he fought with General Custer, and Pee-wee thinks that General Custer was named after cup custards, and General Custer fought the Indians, and if it wasn’t for the Indians we wouldn’t have any Indian pudding, and that’s my favorite dessert.
So that brings me to the part where we were all eating dessert that first night we got to Temple Camp. Everybody was through supper and we had the eats pavilion all to ourselves on account of it being too dark to eat at the big mess-board out under the trees.
I guess you know all about the troop I’m in. It’s the first Bridgeboro troop of Bridgeboro, New Jersey. If you want to know where New Jersey is, it’s on page twenty-seven of the geography.
These are the three patrols in our troop, and about twice a minute Pee-wee starts another one. But don’t pay any attention to the patrols he starts, because they don’t amount to anything. The only warranted, genuine patrols in our troop are the raving Ravens (he’s one of them, I mean he’s about six of them) and the Elks and the Silver Foxes. I’m patrol leader of the Silver Foxes.
The best thing about the Ravens is that they’re not Elks. And the best thing about the Elks is that they’re not Ravens. And the worst thing about the Silver Foxes is that they’re in the same troop with the Elks and the Ravens—they’re more to be pitied than blamed. Temple Camp is at Black Lake and Black Lake is in the Catskills, and the Catskills are somewhere or other, I should worry, you reach them in the second grade, that’s all I know.
So now you know about Hervey Willetts and my troop and Temple Camp, and if you want to know all the rest about them you’ll find it in a lot of stories I wrote that have my picture on the cover of them. All those stories are crazier than each other. But if you want to read the craziest one of all you want to read this one. Even the laughing brook at Temple Camp died laughing.
It’s such a lot of nonsense that it’s dedicated to a crazy quilt. Every bit of it is taken from life, and my sister says life ought to be thankful to get rid of it. Many thanks, I told her. Anyway, I don’t care what you say, this story is all about real happenings—real adventures and real estate. Oh, boy, wait till you see the real estate that’s in it.
CHAPTER IV
TRACKS
While we were finishing our supper Chocolate Drop came in and talked to us and told us all the news. We kept him there talking just to make Hervey wait. Pee-wee kept on eating.
“I’m doing it just for the fun of it,” he said with his mouth full of pie.