Tom went out of the gate, or, rather, over it, vaulting it with one hand. Joe’s mother came out on the porch and put one arm around the boy’s neck, and with the other hand felt his forehead.
“I don’t think you’ve got so much fever to-night,” she said.
“It’s ’cause the fellers have cut all the wood and hauled the coal, that used to make me so tired. Gee, they’re good scouts, aren’t they, ma—’specially old Spider.”
“Yes, Joe,” said she, “there are a lot of good people in the world.”
“You bet,” said Joe.
CHAPTER III—Spider Finds a Way to Get to the Rocky Mountains, to “Pump Joe’s Pipes Full of Ozone”
There are no doubt a lot of good people in the world, as Mrs. Clark said, but there is no doubt that a great many of them are forgetful. Tom Seymour found this out in the next few weeks. The scouts meant well, but every two or three days the one whose turn it was to look after the Clark wood and coal and do whatever heavy work there was to be done,—work too heavy for Joe’s little brother and sister—would forget the duty. Tom, however, never forgot, for he went there every day, to study his lessons with Joe so Joe could keep up in his school work, and when the kindlings had not been split or the coal brought up, he did it.
“I don’t know what I should do without you, Tom,” said Mrs. Clark. “I feel guilty, too, because I feel as if you ought to be at home doing it for your own mother.”
Tom laughed. “It’s a funny thing,” he said, “but having this on my mind has stopped my forgetting at home. I used to forget all the time, but now, when I go home, ma’s wood-box is the first thing I think of. I kind of got the habit, I guess!”
Meanwhile Tom was turning over and over in his mind plans for getting Joe out into the high, dry air of the Rocky Mountains as soon as school was over. The first thing to think about was how to raise the money to get there. In his own case, it would be easy, because he had over a hundred dollars in the savings bank, which he had earned in the past five years, or which had been given to him at Christmas, and which he had saved up. But Joe had never been able to save his earnings—he had needed them all for his clothes and to help his mother out. It was Bob Sawtelle who solved that problem.