Westy Martin in the Rockies

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

“There he is, third from the end, eating a waffle!” thundered the uproarious voice of Pee-wee Harris, “and I’ll be the one to go with him!”

So you see how it was. Uncle Jeb was seven years older than when he had come to cast the glow of pioneer and western romance over Temple Camp. But his eye was just as keen and his aim was just as true as in the days when he had hunted grizzlies and struck terror to Indians in his beloved Rockies. For those keen gray eyes had seen Westy Martin and picked him out and knocked him clean off his feet, in a way of speaking....

CHAPTER II—THE SPIRIT OF THE CAMP

When Mr. John Temple conceived the big scout community which came to be known the country over as Temple Camp, he had an inspiration that showed his fine understanding of the scout idea.

He decided to introduce into the camp something which neither the solemn woods nor the tranquil lake could give it; something which all the projected rustic architecture could not supply. And that was an atmosphere.

He was resolved that the scouts who flocked to the sequestered lakeside resort should live in proximity to a real scout, one who had lived the sort of life that is commemorated by scouting.

He would bring the prairies and the Rockies and the long, winding trails, and all the associations which cluster about Indians and grizzlies and buffaloes to Temple Camp in the romantic person of an old western scout and guide whom he had met while in the Far West on railroad business. Old Jeb Rushmore had guided Mr. Temple and a party of surveyors to a pass in the mountains following what he called a trail which was about as discernible to Mr. Temple as a trail left by an airplane. The founder of the camp had spent a night in Rushmore’s lonely cabin in Montana and had heard the voice of a grizzly in the distance.

A year later when land had been bought for the big camp in the Catskills, Mr. Temple recalled that his old guide had told him that he expected soon to give up his cabin in the Rockies and end his days at Fort Benton in his beloved Montana. “Reckon I’m gettin’ old,” he had told Mr. Temple. “That’s one thing yer can’t shoot,” he had added. Indeed old age was the only foe that had a ghost of a chance of stealing up on him.

So Mr. Temple invited Jeb Rushmore to come and live at Temple Camp and the old scout, after some hesitation, agreed to do so. He spent one night at the magnificent Temple residence in Bridgeboro where he seemed not the least bit embarrassed by the gorgeous surroundings. He smoked his pipe in Mr. Temple’s library and when that gentleman related how he had gone to Washington once to seek an audience with President Roosevelt, Jeb Rushmore casually remarked that he and Roosevelt had hunted together in the Rockies. It developed that Mr. Temple had tried to see Roosevelt and failed and that Roosevelt had gone a couple of hundred miles out of his way to get in touch with Jeb. It was not likely that Uncle Jeb would be dazzled by the formality of Mr. Temple’s household.

Uncle Jeb, as he came to be known at camp, was given the title of manager. But he had no executive duties. He was more than the camp’s manager, he was its spirit. I have seen a scout camp with a statue of an old pioneer on the camp grounds to convey the idea of scouting and outdoor life. But Uncle Jeb was the living embodiment of all these things; he wore a halo of tradition. It was a fine inspiration of Mr. Temple’s, bringing this old scout to camp.