Tom Slade at Temple Camp

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

There is no use retelling a tale that is told. Tom had such a summer in camp as he had never dreamed of when he used to lie in bed till noontime in Barrel Alley, and all that you shall find in its proper place, but you must know something of how Temple Camp came into being and how it came by its name.

John Temple was a wonderful man—oh, he was smart. He could take care of your property for you; if you had a thousand dollars he would turn it into two thousand for you—like a sleight-of-hand performer. He could tell you what kind of stocks to buy and when to sell them. He knew where to buy real estate. He could tell you when wheat was going up or down—just as if there were a scout sign to go by. He had everything that heart could wish—and the rheumatism besides.

But his dubious prophesy as to the future of Tom Slade, king of the hoodlums, came out all wrong. Tom was instrumental in getting back a pin which had been stolen from Mary Temple, and when her father saw the boy after six months or so of scouting he couldn't have been more surprised—not even if the Bridgeboro Bank had failed.

Then poor old John Temple (or rich old John Temple) showed that he had one good scout trait. He could be a good loser. He saw that he was all wrong and that Mr. Ellsworth was right and he straightway built a pavilion for the scouts in the beautiful woods where all the surprising episodes of the summer which had opened his eyes had taken place.

But you know as well as I do that a man like John Temple would never be satisfied with building a little one-troop camping pavilion; not he. So what should he do but buy a tract of land up in the Catskills close to a beautiful sheet of water which was called Black Lake; and here he put up a big open shack with a dozen or so log cabins about it and endowed the whole thing as a summer camp where troops from all over the country might come and find accommodations and recreation in the summer months.

That was not all. Temple Camp was to be a school where scouting might be taught (Oh, he was going to do the right thing, was old John Temple!), and to that end he communicated with somebody who communicated with somebody else, who got in touch with somebody else who went to some ranch or other a hundred miles from nowhere in the woolly west and asked old Jeb Rushmore if he wouldn't come east and look after this big scout camp. How in the world John Temple, in his big leather chair in the Bridgeboro Bank, had ever got wind of Jeb Rushmore no one was able to find out. John Temple was a genius for picking out men and in this case he touched high-water mark.

Jeb Rushmore was furnished with passes over all John Temple's railroads straight through from somewhere or other in Dakota to Catskill Landing, and a funny sight he must have been in his flannel shirt and slouch hat, sprawling his lanky limbs from the platforms of observation cars, drawling out his pithy observations about the civilization which he had never before seen.

There are only two more things necessary to mention in this "side trail" chapter. Tom's father bobbed up after the boy had become a scout. He was a mere shadow of his former self; drink and a wandering life had all but completed his ruin, and although Tom and his companions gave him a home in their pleasant camp it was too late to help him much and he died among them, having seen (if it were any satisfaction for him to see) that scouting had made a splendid boy of his once neglected son.

This brings us to the main trail again and explains why it was that Roy Blakeley had held mysterious conferences with Mary Temple, and suggested to all the three patrols that it would be a good idea to elect Tom to go to Temple Camp to assist in its preparation and management. They had all known that one of their number was to be chosen for this post and Roy had hit on Tom as the one to go because he still lived with Mrs. O'Connor down in Barrel Alley and had not the same pleasant home surroundings as the other boys.

A scout is thoughtful.