“But you got the ball,” said Tom conclusively. They were driving up to Temple Camp in the official flivver which the young camp assistant always kept in Bridgeboro during the winter season. It was a familiar sight in this home town of so many of the camp’s devotees and the lettering on it served as a reminder to many a boy of that secluded haunt in the Catskills. “Yes, and I got a nickname too.”
“You should worry; they’ll forget all about that up at camp.”
“Till they see me,” said Wilfred.
“Some of them won’t be there at all,” said Tom. “It’s only for scouts, you know. Of course all the local troop boys will be there—Blakeley and Hollister and Martin and Pee-wee Harris——”
“Is he a scout?”
“Is he? He’s about eighteen scouts; he’s the scream of the party. You won’t see Madden; that chap’s a false alarm anyway. I’m half sorry you didn’t slap his wrist while you had the chance.”
“He’s got them all hypnotized, just the same,” laughed Wilfred.
“They’ll come out of it.”
“Didn’t any of them want to come in the flivver?” Wilfred asked.
Here was his sensitiveness that was always cropping out. He was afraid they had eschewed this preferable way of travel because they did not want to go in his company.
“No, they go all kinds of ways. Some of them hike part way, some of them go by boat, some of them go by train. Wig Weigand wanted to go along with us but I told him no. I want to have a chance to talk things over with you, Billy; two’s a company, huh?”
“He knew I was going?” Wilfred asked.
“Sure, he did; that’s why he wanted to go along.”
“That’s the fellow that wears a book-strap for a belt?”
“That’s him; he’s a shark on signaling. You got a radio?”
Wilfred was glad that there was one of the Bridgeboro sojourners who seemed favorably disposed to him.
“No, I haven’t got much of anything,” he said, feeling a bit more comfortable on account of this trifling knowledge concerning Wig-wag Weigand. “I wanted to go to work when we moved here; I thought as long as I was leaving one school I might as well not start in another. We’ve had some job getting along as far back as I can remember; my dad didn’t leave much. As long as Sis is going to business school I thought I might as well get a start. I don’t know, I think I’d rather have a bicycle than a radio. Guess I’ll never have either.”
“They pass out some pretty nifty prizes in camp along about Labor Day,” Tom said. “You never can tell.”
“August first is my big day,” Wilfred laughed ruefully.
“Go-to-the-doctor day, huh?” Tom chuckled. “We have mother’s day, and go-to-church day, and clean-up day, and safety-first day, and watch your-step day— Well, you’ll have the whole of August to make a stab for honors and things.”
“Guess I won’t need a freight car to send home the prizes,” said Wilfred. “The best thing that’s happened to me so far is the way you call me Billy; Sis says she likes to hear you, you’re so fresh.”
“Yes?” laughed Tom. “Well, you and I and the doc beat your mother to it, didn’t we? Leave it to us. You went after something and got it. And I went after something and got it. We’re a couple of go-getters. Didn’t you mix in much with the fellows up in Connecticut?”
“There weren’t any fellows near us,” Wilfred said. “We lived a hundred miles from nowhere. I suppose that’s why Sis and I are such good friends.”
“You look enough alike,” said Tom. “Well, you are going where there are fellows enough now, I’ll hope to tell you.”
“I wanted to go in for scouting a year ago,” Wilfred said, “but there weren’t any scouts to join. Now I feel kind of—I feel sort of—funny—sort of as if it was just before promotion or something.”
Tom glanced at his protege sideways, captivated by the boy’s sensitiveness and guileless honesty.
“I’m glad it’s a long ride there,” Wilfred added.
“Any one would think you were on your way to the electric chair,” laughed Tom. And Wilfred laughed too.
“Will they all be at the entrance?” the boy asked, visibly amused at his own diffidence.
“No, they’ll all be in the grub shack,” said Tom. “That’s where they hang out; they’re a hungry bunch.”
“Maybe I won’t see so much of you, hey?” Wilfred asked.
“Oh, I’m here and there and all over—helping old Uncle Jeb. He’s manager—used to be a trapper out west. You must get on the right side of Uncle Jeb—go and talk to him. He can tell you stories that’ll make your hair stand on end; says ‘reckon’ and ‘critter’ and all that. Don’t fail to go and talk to him.”
“Will you introduce me to him?” Wilfred asked guilelessly.
“Will I? Certainly I won’t. Just go and talk to him when he’s sitting on the steps of Administration Shack smoking his pipe. Tell him I said for him to spin you that yarn about killing four grizzlies.”
“What’s his last name?” Wilfred asked.
“His last name is Uncle Jeb and if you call him Mr. Rushmore he’ll shoot you,” said Tom, a little impatiently.
“What patrol are you going to put me in?”
“Well, that’s what I want to talk to you about,” Tom said. “I think I’ll slip you into the Raven outfit—they’re all Bridgeboro boys, of course. Punkin Odell is in Europe and when he comes back in the fall, the troop’s going to start a new patrol. Wig-wag Weigand is in that bunch——”
“The one that wanted to come with us?”
“Eh huh, and you’ll like them all. As it happens, there’s a vacancy in each one of the three patrols—Ravens, Silver Foxes and Elks. But I think you’ll fit in best with the Ravens. Pee-wee Harris is easy to get acquainted with and when you know him you’re all set because he’s a fixer. So I think I’ll slip you in with Pee-wee and Wig and that crowd. Now this is what I want to say to you while I have the chance. Don’t you think you’d better let the crowd know that you’re up there under a kind of a handicap?”
“No, I don’t,” said Wilfred definitely.
“Well, I’m just asking you,” Tom said apologetically.
“That place isn’t a hospital,” said Wilfred. “I’m not going to have all those fellows saying I have heart disease——”
“You haven’t,” said Tom.
“All right then, I’m not going to have anybody thinking I have. I’m not sick any more than you are—or any of them. And I don’t want you to tell them either. Do you think I want all those—those outdoor scouts thinking I’m weak?”
Again there blazed in Wilfred’s brown eyes that light which had given Lorrie Madden his sober second thought; the same light bespeaking pride and high spirit which Tom had seen in the eyes of Arden Cowell while she was championing her stricken brother. It was a something—pride if you will—that shone through the boy’s diffidence like the sun through a thin cloud.
“If you tell them, I won’t stay there,” he said, shaking his head so that his lock of wavy hair fell over his forehead and he brushed it up again with a fine defiance.
“All righto,” said Tom.
“Remember!”
“Yes, but you remember to keep your promise to your mother and the doctor,” Tom warned. “Because you know, Billy, I’m sort of responsible.”
“I’ll keep my promise as long as you don’t tell,” said the boy in a kind of spirited impulse. “But don’t you tell them I’m—I’ve—got heart failure—don’t you tell them that and I’ll keep my promise. Do you promise—do you?”
“I think I can keep a promise as well as you can,” Tom laughed, a little uneasy to observe this odd phase of his young friend’s character. He hardly knew how to take Wilfred. It occurred to him that the boy was going to have a pretty hard time of it with this odd mixture of sensitiveness and high spirit. He was afraid that his new recruit, so charmingly delicate and elusive in nature, was going to bunk his pride in one place while trying to save it in another. But all he said was, “All right, Billy, you’re the doctor.”