Tom Slade at Bear Mountain

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

And the camp manager winked at Tom. I don’t know what he meant by it. But I do know that Spiffy Henshaw didn’t go home till school opened, and when he did he took the stalking badge and the pathfinder’s badge with him. I only hope his teachers in school understood him as well as Tom Slade did. But perhaps that would be too much to expect....

CHAPTER XXXVI—Christmas and Aunt Martha

It was several weeks after the fire when a half dozen or more Scouts from up around the lakes appeared at the cabin escorting a tottering old white-haired man, clustering about him and rather frightening him with vociferous and conflicting information. Boys are usually ready with information whether they have it or not, and they told this poor old native that Buck had died, that he hadn’t died, that he had gone away to New York, that he had a job as gate-tender somewhere on a railroad. Probably all these and other morsels of advice had a certain vague foundation in rumor. I doubt if any of the boys had ever really known old Buck. But they brought this returning Rip Van Winkle to his forest home, and so he fell into the hands of Tom and Brent.

No one at the lakes knew at what point old Mink Havers had entered the reservation. He must have been astonished at seeing the seething Scout life, for scouting was a thing undreamed of when he had wandered away. He said he had left the road at Ben Harlowe’s place and struck into the hills. But as no one of that name is known for miles around it may be inferred that Ben Harlowe, and perhaps his place, are things of the remote past.

The old man, his memory restored (or at least in process of restoration) had escaped from kindly confinement in Missouri and in the course of time made his way to within three miles of his old cabin in Rattlesnake Gulch. Here, at the lakes, the new life had startled and confused him. It seems odd that after his long and devious journey the old hunter had been forced to submit to the guidance of Boy Scouts. Thus the old pathfinder of that region was taken to his primitive cabin by the young pathfinders of this present time.

I think old Mink’s imperfectly restored memory was a blessing; a complete restoration of it would have wrung his old heart. As it was he took everything for granted (the discovered treasure included), and he did not seem to grieve over the death of his old partner. “Bucky, he went with the lung ail, huh?” was all he said. By which I suppose he meant pneumonia.

Actions speak louder than words, indeed, with an old man who has achieved a pilgrimage more by instinct than intelligence. So it was not necessary, nay, it was not even possible, to give him an account of the happenings which I have tried faithfully to record in these pages. He hesitated a little when Tom explained to him about June Sanderson’s just claim to half the money and declined to give up so much of the precious horde. “There weren’t no sech gal,” he said. “’Tain’t no claim o’ her’n ’cause they wern’t no sech gal,” he said.

The difficulty of explaining to him the rule about those who die intestate and the claims of unknown heirs was too much for poor Tom and even for Brent, so they sent for me (whom they had ridiculed because of my prosaic habits) to help them out of this rather puzzling sequel to their adventure. I drove up because I apprehended certain other difficulties as well. Here was an old, homeless man escaped from an institution and living, unknown to the authorities, with two young treasure-seekers at Rattlesnake Gulch. Clearly a mature intelligence was needed there, and I think I have that, even if I am not a seeker of wild adventure.

I left my car in Sandyfield, parked where I had parked it on that fateful first visit to the Gulch, and Tom met me and piloted me to the cabin. That part of the neighborhood which had not been burned was so thickly grown with brush that I hardly knew it for the same place I had visited in the spring. I think I never saw a spot so wild, so forbidding, so apparently remote; it was terrible. Old Mink seemed to fit well in those surroundings, but, of course, it was out of the question to leave him there.

We did, however, leave him in his beloved old cabin in the care of several Boy Scouts, while we pushed our way back through wood and jungle to Sandyfield and drove to Kingston. Heaven help the poor old man, he had questions enough to answer that day.