And she, too, helped him. Here in the little cruiser, where Audry would not have dared to venture on such a night, surrounded by the dark water and enveloped by the solemn twilight, Tom Slade found himself. With the mighty mountains flanking him on either shore, the towering, rugged heights clothed in the dim silent forests that he loved, he thought—in his own simple, boyish way. These things, the water, the woods, the mountains, were his books....
“There is a law—capital punishment,” he mused. “But if a man, a citizen, doesn’t believe in that, they can’t make him serve on a jury. It—it isn’t just the same—maybe—but I won’t—I can’t do anything that makes me feel mean. They can’t make a man testify against his wife. Or a woman testify against her husband. That shows that love and all things like that are stronger than citizenship—that shows they admit it themselves. They make allowance for human nature. We didn’t send German Americans to the front—I know because I was there. They let people think they did, but they didn’t. Stern duty—yes. Talk is cheap. Goodfellow, that’s—that’s one good word—if—if anybody should ask you....”
Tom Slade could lift any small scout at Temple Camp by the collar and hold him out straight with one arm. And the squirming youngster would always wriggle his neck afterward from that iron clutch. The hand which was accustomed to doing this now tightened on the rail against which he leaned. And the power of a resolution which Audry Ferris dreamed not of, was in that brown hand. And his eyes, inscrutable and grim, looked straight at the name Goodfellow, on one of the life preservers before him. Half-closed, grimly determined, they looked.
And the frowning mountains on either side of the darkening river were no stronger nor more immovable than Tom Slade, scout. No maid (unless it were the Goodfellow) and no scout organization with all its fine program of character building and citizenship could feel the blame, or perchance take the credit, for his towering, defiant resolve.
It was just Tom Slade of Barrel Alley who once upon a time had knocked a city marshal flat with a quick right-handed violation of the law, because that dignitary had set a beer can on his mother’s picture. It was that same right hand which struck the railing now. Tom Slade of Barrel Alley.
“If anybody thinks,” said he, “that I’m going to squeal on a friend, they’ve got—one—more—good—long—think. Maybe I might give away the one that saved my life—some day—maybe I might. But not while I’m conscious!”
Thus this good fellow came through the storm, just as the gallant little Goodfellow, his first love, had braved so many storms out there in the wide river, neglected and alone.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE BOAT ROCKS
And now a quick exhilaration seized Tom; the tempest was over. It was a pity that Audry Ferris could not be there to feel the full force of his breezy air of emancipation. To see him come swaggering up out of the valley of the shadow. To take note of that careless, independent whistling of a song, which seemed to proclaim to the world, “I should worry.” But these things would keep. His spirit seemed likely to last a day or two—oh, goodness, yes.