SCOUT GAMES
EXHIBITIONS OF
SCOUT SKILL AND RESOURCE
and so forth, and so forth:
ONE OF OUR OWN BOYS FROM CAMP
DIX, PRIVATE ROSCOE BENT,
WILL TELL OF SOLDIER LIFE.
COME AND GIVE HIM A WELCOME
There was more, but that was all Roscoe saw. It sickened him to read it. He went on, heavy hearted, trying to comfort himself with the reflection that he really did not know where Tom was or what he was doing. But it did not afford him much comfort.
As he walked along, his head down, certain phrases ran continually through his mind. They came out of the past, like things dead, out of another life which Roscoe Bent knew no more: Do you think I'd let them get you? Do you think because you made fun of me ... I wouldn't be a friend to you? I got the strength to strangle you! I know the trail—I'm a scout—and I got here first. They'd have to kill me to make me tell....
Roscoe Bent looked behind him, as if he expected to see some one there. But there was nothing but the straight, long street, in narrowing perspective.
Under a lamp post on the next corner he took out of his alligator-skin wallet a folded paper, very much worn on the creases, and holding it so that the light caught it he skimmed hurriedly the few half-legible sentences:
"... glad you didn't tell. If you had told it would have spoiled it all—so I'm going to help the government in a way I can do without lying to anybody.... can see I'm not the kind that tells lies. The thing ... most glad about ... that you got registered. ... like you and I always did, even when you made fun of me."
"I made fun——" he mumbled, crumpling the letter and sticking it into the capacious pocket of Uncle Sam's big coat. "I—Christopher! If I only had your nerve now—Tommy. It doesn't—it doesn't count for so much to be able to strangle a fellow—though I ought to be strangled.—It's just like Margaret said—the other kind of strength. If I could only make up my mind to do a thing, like he could, and then do it!"