"You see it was this way," said Roscoe after hie had scrambled with amazing agility up to his "perch" in a tree several hundred feet distant but in full view of the stream. Tom had climbed up after him and was looking with curious pleasure at the little kit of rations and other personal paraphernalia which hung from neighboring branches. "How do you like my private camp? Got Temple Camp beat, hey?" he broke off in that erratic way of his. "All the comforts of home. Come on, get into your camouflage."
"You don't seem the same as when you used to come up to our office from the bank downstairs—that's one sure thing," said Tom, pulling the leaves about him.
"You thought all I was good for was to jolly Margaret Ellison, huh?"
"I see now that you didn't only save my life but lots of other fellers', too," said Tom. "Go on, you started to tell me about it."
It was very pleasant and cosy up there in the sniper's perch where Roscoe had gathered the thinner branches about him, forming a little leafy lair, in which his agile figure and his quick glances about reminded Tom for all the world of a squirrel. He could hardly believe that this watchful, dexterous creature, peering cautiously out of his romantic retreat, was the same Roscoe Bent who used to make fun of the scouts and sneak upstairs to smoke cigarettes in the Temple Camp office; who thought as much of his spotless high collar then as he seemed to think of his rifle now.
"I got to thank you because you named it after me," said Tom.
"And I got to thank you that you gave me the chance to get it to name after you, Tommy. Well, you see it was this way," Roscoe went on in a half whisper; "there were half a dozen of us over here in the woods and we'd just cleaned out a machine gun nest when we saw this miniature forest moving along. I thought it was a decorated moving van."
"That's the trouble with them," agreed Tom; "they're no good in the woods; they're clumsy. They're punk scouts."
"Scouts!" Roscoe chuckled. "If we had to fight this gang of cut-throats and murderers in the woods where old What's-his-name—Custer—had to fight the Indians, take it from me, we'd have them wiped up in a month. That fellow's idea of camouflaging was to bury himself under a couple of tons of green stuff and then move the whole business along like a clumsy old Zeppelin. I can camouflage myself with a branch with ten leaves on it by studying the light."
"Anybody can see you've learned something about scouting—that's one sure thing," said Tom proudly.