For a moment there was silence. It was exactly like Tom to blurt out his plans with a kind of stolid bluntness, and if he had contemplated a trip to the moon he would have announced it in the same dull way. He seldom asked advice and as seldom asked authority. He was a kind of law unto himself. If anyone knew how to take Tom it was Roy Blakeley, but Roy often threw up his hands in despair and said he gave it up—Tom was a puzzle. He stood there among them now, his face about as expressionless as an Indian’s—coarse gray flannel shirt open halfway down to his waist, a strap by way of a belt, and his shock of thick hair down on his forehead. Why he had eschewed the scout regalia while the others came resplendent in their new outfits was a mystery. What advantage over a belt the thin strap had, no one knew.
“Oh, I’ll go with you! I’ll go with you!” shouted the irrepressible Pee-wee. “I’ll——”
“You’ll just sit down and have some supper,” laughed Mr. Ellsworth.
It is to be feared that the scoutmaster had small hope of anything coming from Tom’s proposed expedition, but he was not the one to discourage his scouts nor obtrude his authority. So the little party was made up (for whatever slight prospect of success it might afford) of Tom, Doc Carson, Raven and First Aid Scout, Connie Bennet of Tom’s patrol, and Garry Everson who, though not a member of the troop, was asked because of his proficiency in signalling. Roy, who would naturally have gone, was asked by Mr. Ellsworth to remain at camp to help him get the troop’s baggage distributed in the several cabins that had been reserved for them.
So the four scouts, having taken a hasty bite of supper, set out in the darkness on their all but hopeless errand. Tom carried a lantern; across Doc Carson’s back was slung the folding stretcher; Connie Bennet carried the bandages and first-aid case, and all wore belt axes, for the hill which they meant to climb was covered with a dense thicket and even in the lower land between it and the camp there was no sign of path or trail after the first mile or so.
CHAPTER III
ROY’S CAMPFIRE YARN
“That’s what you get for being small,” sighed Pee-wee to Raymond Hollister, as they strolled about together while waiting for supper. “When you say you want to go with them or tell them about an idea you have, they just laugh at you, or don’t pay any attention. It just goes in one ear and out the other—because there’s nothing to stop it, as Roy says. Gee, you have to laugh at that feller. He makes me awful mad sometimes—when he gets to jollying—but you have to laugh at him.”
“Do you know what he told me last summer?” said Raymond; “he was telling me about the echoes and he said if I called Merry Christmas good and hard it would answer Happy New Year!”
“That’s just like him,” said Pee-wee, “you have to look out for him. When I first joined his patrol he told me a lot of stuff. He said if a feller had a malicious look it was a sign he belonged to the militia. He’ll be jollying you and me all the time we’re here—you see if he isn’t. He calls me a scoutlet. And it’ll be the same with you, only worse, because you’re even smaller than I am. What do you say we stick together?”
“I’ll do it,” said Raymond, “but I like Roy,” he added. “I like him better than any of your patrol—I like him better than Tom Slade—a good deal.”