Tom Slade at Temple Camp

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

"You're a bully troop, you fellows. Gee, I envy you. Trouble with us," he continued, as they walked up the hill together, "is we haven't any scoutmaster. I'm scoutmaster and patrol leader rolled into one. We're going to get better organized this winter. There's only just the seven of us, you know, and we haven't got any money. You might think that because we live in a country village on the Hudson everything's fine and dandy. But there's blamed little money in our burg. Four of our troop have to work after school. One works all day and goes to night school down to Poughkeepsie. I saved up two years to buy that canoe I was in when I caught your message."

"Well, you caught it all right," said Tom, with a note of pride in his usually expressionless voice.

"We'll come out all right, though," said Garry, cheerily. "That's what I'm always telling them; only we're so gol-blamed poor."

"I know what it is," said Tom, after a pause. "Maybe that's what makes us such good friends, sort of. I lived in a tenement down in Bridgeboro. I've got to thank Roy for everything—Roy and Mr. Ellsworth. They all treat me fine and you'd never know most of them are rich fellows; but somehow—I don't just know how to tell you—- but you know how a scout is supposed to be a brother to every other scout. Well, it seems to me, kind of, as if a poor fellow is a brother to every other poor fellow—and—and—I understand."

"It's easy to see they all think a lot of you," said Garry. "Well, we've had a rattling good time up here and I don't suppose we'll feel any worse about going away than lots of others will. If you miss one thing you usually have another to make up. We're all good friends in our little troop—we have more fun than you could shake a stick at, joshing each other about different kinds of heroic stunts, to win an honor medal, and some of them have thought up the craziest things——"

"I wish you could stay," said Tom.

"Well, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, as some old duffer said."

The wooded hill sloped upward behind the camp for a distance of some hundred yards, where it was broken by a sheer precipice forming one side of a deep gully. This was the work of man, having once been a railroad cut, but it had been in disuse for many years and was now covered with vegetation. You could walk up the hill till you came to the brink of this almost vertical chasm, but you could no more scramble down it than you could scramble down a well. On the opposite side of the cut the hill continued upward and the bridging of the chasm by the scouts themselves had been a subject of much discussion; but up to the present time nothing had been done and there was no way to continue one's ascent of the hill except to follow along the edge of the cut to a point where the precipice was low enough to allow one to scramble down—a walk of several miles.

Right on the brink of this old overgrown cut was a shack which had probably once been used by the workmen. Although on the Camp property it was rather too far removed from the other buildings to be altogether convenient as a living place, but its isolated situation had attracted the boys, and the idea of calling it Hero Cabin was an inspiration of Roy's. Mr. Keller, one of the trustees, had fallen in with the notion and while deprecating the use of this remote shack for regular living quarters, had good-naturedly given his consent that it be used as the honored domicile of any troop a member of which had won an honor medal. Perhaps he thought that, honor medals being not so easily won, it would be quite safe to make this concession.

In any event, it was quite enough for the boys. A committee was formed with a member from each troop to make the shack a suitable abode for a hero and his court. Impulsive Roy was the moving spirit of the plan; Pee-wee was its megaphone, and in the early days of the Bridgeboro troop's stay a dozen or more scouts had worked like beavers making a path up through the woods, covering the shack with bark, and raising a flagpole near it. They had hiked into Leeds and bought material for a flag to fly above the shack showing the name, HERO CABIN, and they had fitted it with rustic bunks inside.