Tom Slade at Black Lake Read online

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  TOM HAULED THE LOGS BY MEANS OF A BLOCK AND FALL.Tom Slade at Black Lake--Frontispiece (Page 96)]

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  TOM SLADE AT BLACK LAKE

  ByPERCY KEESE FITZHUGH

  Author ofTHE TOM SLADE AND THE ROY BLAKELEY BOOKS

  Illustrated byHOWARD L. HASTINGS

  Published with the approval ofTHE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA

  GROSSET & DUNLAPPublishers--New York

  Made in the United States of America

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  Copyright, 1920, by GROSSET & DUNLAP

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  PREFACE.

  Several persons have asked me when Tom Slade was ever going to grow upand cease to be a Scout. The answer is that he is already grown up andthat he is never going to cease to be a Scout. Once a Scout, always aScout. To hear some people talk one would think that scouting is likethe measles; that you get over it and never have it any more.

  Scouting is not a thing to play with, like a tin steam-engine, and thento throw aside. If you once get caught in the net of scouting, you willnever disentangle yourself. A fellow may grow up and put on longtrousers and go and call on a girl and all that sort of thing, but if hewas a Scout, he will continue to be a Scout, and it will stick out allover him. You'll find him back in the troop as assistant or scoutmasteror something or other.

  I think Tom Slade is a very good example. He left the troop to go andwork on a transport; he got into the motorcycle messenger service; hebecame one of the greatest daredevils of the air; he came home quite"grown up" as you would say, and knuckled down to be a big business man.

  Then, when it came to a show down, what did he do? He found out that hewas just a plain Scout, shouldered his axe, and went off and did a bigscout job all alone. So there you are.

  I am sorry for those who would have him too old for scouting, and whoseem to think that a fellow can lay aside all he has learned in thewoods and in the handbook, the same as he can lay aside his shorttrousers. It isn't as easy as all that.

  Did you suppose that Tom Slade was going to get acquainted with nature,with the woods and streams and trees, and make them his friends, andthen repudiate these friends?

  Do you think that a Scout is a quitter?

  Tom Slade was always a queer sort of duck, and goodness only knows whathe will do next. He may go to the North Pole for all I know. But onething you may be sure of; he is still a Scout of the Scouts, and if youthink he is too old to be a Scout, then how about Buffalo Bill?

  The fact is that Tom is just beginning to reap the real harvest ofscouting. The best is yet to come, as Pee-wee Harris usually observes,just before dessert is served at dinner. If it is any satisfaction toyou to know it, Tom is more of a Scout than at any time in his career,and there is a better chance of his being struck by lightening than hisdrifting away from the troop whose adventures you have followed withhis.

  It is true that Tom has grown faster than his companions and found itnecessary to go to work while they are still at school. And this verycircumstance will enable us to see what scouting has done for him.

  Indeed if I could not show you that, then all of those eight stores ofhis adventures would have been told to little purpose. The chief matterof interest about a trail is where it leads to. It may be an easy trailor a hard trail, but the question is, where does it go to?

  It would be a fine piece of business, I think, to leave Tom sitting on arock near the end of the trail without giving you so much as a glimpseof what is at the end of it.

  So you may tell your parents and your teachers and your uncles and youraunts not to worry about Tom Slade never growing up. He is just a trifleover eighteen years old and very strong and husky. Confidentially, Ilook upon him as nothing but a kid. I keep tabs on his age and when hehas to go on crutches and is of no more interest to you, I shall be thefirst to know it. He is likely to have no end of adventures betweeneighteen and twenty.

  Meanwhile, don't worry about him. He's just a big overgrown kid and thebest Scout this side of Mars.

  P. K. F.

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  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE

  I. Tom Looks at the Map 1 II. He Sends a Letter 5 III. The New Struggle 10 IV. "Lucky Luke" 16 V. About Seeing a Thing Through 24 VI. "The Woods Property" 29 VII. Just Nonsense 35 VIII. Five, Six, and Seven 45 IX. Roy's Nature 52 X. Tom Receives a Surprise 55 XI. Tom and Roy 59 XII. The Long Trail 66 XIII. Roy's Trail 73 XIV. The Really Hard Part 76 XV. A Letter From Barnard 80 XVI. The Episode in France 86 XVII. On the Long Trail 94XVIII. Tom Lets the Cat Out of the Bag 101 XIX. The Spectre of Defeat 106 XX. The Friend in Need 110 XXI. Tom's Guest 117 XXII. An Accident 122 XXIII. Friends 132 XXIV. Tom Goes on an Errand 138 XXV. Two Letters 147 XXVI. Lucky Luke's Friend 152 XXVII. Thornton's Story 158XXVIII. Red Thornton Learns Something About Scouts 170 XXIX. Tom Starts for Home 176 XXX. The Troop Arrives 182 XXXI. Archer 193 XXXII. Tom Loses 197

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  TOM SLADE AT BLACK LAKE

  CHAPTER I

  TOM LOOKS AT THE MAP

  Tom Slade, bending over the office table, scrutinized the big map ofTemple Camp. It was the first time he had really looked at it since hisreturn from France, and it made him homesick to see, even in its coldoutlines, the familiar things and scenes which he had so loved as ascout. The hill trail was nothing but a dotted line, but Tom knew it formore than that, for it was along its winding way into the dark recessesof the mountains that he had qualified for the pathfinder's badge. BlackLake was just an irregular circle, but in his mind's eye he saw therethe moonlight glinting up the water, and canoes gliding silently, andheard the merry voices of scouts diving from the springboard at itsedge.

  He liked this map better than maps of billets and trenches, and to himthe hill trail was more suggestive of adventure than the HindenburgLine. He had been very close to the Hindenburg Line and it had meant nomore to him than the equator. He had found the war to be like athree-ringed circus--it was too big. Temple Camp was about the rightsize.

  Tom reached for a slip of paper and laying it upon the map just wherethe trail went over the hilltop and off the camp territory altogether,jotted down the numbers of three cabins which were indicated by littlesquares.

  "They're the only three together and kind of separate," he said tohimself.

  Then he went over to the window and gazed out upon the busy scene, whichthe city office of Temple Camp overlooked. He did this, not becausethere was anything there which he wished particu
larly to see, butbecause he contemplated doing something and was in some perplexityabout it. He was going to dictate a letter to Miss Margaret Ellison, thestenographer.

  Tom had seen cannons and machine guns and hand grenades and depth bombs,but the thing in all this world that he was most afraid of was the longsharply pointed pencil which Miss Margaret Ellison always held poisedabove her open note book, waiting to record his words. Tom had alwaysfallen down at the last minute and told her what he wanted to say;suggesting that she say it in her own sweet way. He did not say _sweet_way, though he may have thought it.

  So now he stood at the open window looking down upon Bridgeboro'ssurging thoroughfare, while the breath of Spring permeated the TempleCamp office. If he had been less susceptible of this gentle influence inthe very air, he would still have known it was Spring by the things inthe store windows across the way--straw hats and hammocks and tennisrackets. There were moving vans, too, with furniture bulging out behindthem, which are just as certain signs of merry May as the flowers thatbloom in the Spring. There was something too, in the way that the sunmoved down which bespoke Spring.

  But the surest sign of all was the flood of applications for cabinaccommodations at Temple Camp; that was just as sure and reliable as thefirst croaking of the frogs or the softening of the rich, thick mud inBarrel Alley, where Tom had spent his childhood.

  He moved over to where Miss Margaret Ellison sat at her machine. Mr.Burton, manager of the Temple Camp office, had told Tom that the onlyway to acquire confidence and readiness of speech was to formulate whathe wished to say and to say it, without depending on any one else, andto this good advice, Peewee Harris, mascot of Tom's Scout Troop had madethe additional suggestion, that it was good to say it whether you hadanything to say or not, on the theory, I suppose, that if you cannotshoot bullets, it is better to shoot blank cartridges than nothing atall.

  CHAPTER II

  HE SENDS A LETTER

  "Help him, but encourage him to be self-confident; let him takeresponsibilities. He understands everything well enough; all he needs isto get a grip on himself." That is what Mr. Burton had told MargaretEllison, and Margaret Ellison, being a girl, understood better than allthe army surgeons in the country.

  You see how it was; they had made a wreck of Tom Slade's nerves as atrifling incidental to making the world safe for democracy. He startedat every little noise, he broke down in the middle of his talk, hehesitated to cross the street alone, he shuddered at the report of abursting tire on some unlucky auto. He had never been at ease in thepresence of girls, and he was now less at ease than before he had goneaway.

  He had fought for nearly two years and Uncle Sam liked him so much thathe could not bring himself to part company with him, until by hook orcrook, Mr. Burton and Mr. Temple managed to get him discharged and puthim in the way of finding himself at his old job in Temple Camp office.It was a great relief to him not to have to salute lieutenants any more.The shot and shell he did not mind, but his arm was weary with salutinglieutenants. It was the dream of Tom Slade's life never to see anotherlieutenant as long as he lived.

  He leaned against the table near Miss Margaret Ellison and said, "I--Iwant--I have to send a letter to a troop that's in Ohio--in a placecalled--called Dansburg. Shall I dic--shall I say what I want to tellthem?"

  "Surely," she said cheerily.

  "Maybe if it isn't just right you can fix it up," he said.

  "You say it just the way you want to," she encouraged him.

  "It's to the Second Dansburg Troop and the name of the scoutmaster isWilliam Barnard," Tom said, "and this is what I want to say...."

  "Yes, say it in your own words," she reminded him.

  "We got--I mean received," he dictated hesitatingly, "your letter and wecan give you--can give you--three cabins--three cabins together and kindof separate like you say--numbers five, six, and seven. They are on thehill and separate, and we hope to hear from you--soon--because there arelots of troops asking for cabins, because now the season is beginning.Yours truly."

  "Is that all right?" he asked rather doubtfully.

  "Surely it is," she said; "and don't forget what Mr. Burton told youabout going home early and resting. Remember, Mr. Burton is yoursuperior officer now."

  "Are you going home soon?" he asked her.

  "Not till half-past five," she said.

  He hesitated as if he would like to say something more, then retreatingrather clumsily, he got his hat and said good-night, and left theoffice.

  The letter which he had dictated was not laid upon Mr. Burton's desk forsignature in exactly the phraseology which Tom had used, but Tom neverknew that. This is the way the letter read:

  MR. WILLIAM BARNARD, Scoutmaster, Second Dansburg Troop, Dansburg, Ohio.

  DEAR SIR:

  Replying to your letter asking for accommodations for your three patrols for month of August, we can assign you three cabins (Numbers, 5,6 and 7) covering that time. These are in an isolated spot, as you requested, being somewhat removed from the body of the camp.

  Circular of rates and particulars is enclosed. Kindly answer promptly, as applications are numerous.

  Yours truly,

  The letter went out that night, and as it happened, a very considerableseries of adventures resulted.

  Perhaps if Margaret Ellison had looked at the map or even stopped tothink, she would have consulted with Tom before typing that letter,which was the cause of such momentous consequences. As for Mr. Burton,he knew that Tom knew the camp like A. B. C. and he simply signed hisname to the letter and let it go at that.

  CHAPTER III

  THE NEW STRUGGLE

  Tom did as he had promised Mr. Burton he would do; he went home and laydown and rested. It was not much of a home, but it was better than adugout. That is, it was cleaner though not very much larger. But therewere no lieutenants.

  It was a tiny hall-room in a boarding house, and the single windowafforded a beautiful view of back fences. It was all the home that TomSlade knew. He had no family, no relations, nothing.

  He had been born in a tenement in Barrel Alley, where his mother haddied and from which his good-for-nothing father had disappeared. For awhile he had been a waif and a hoodlum, and by strict attention to thecode of Barrel Alley's gang, he had risen to be king of the hoodlums.No one, not even Blokey Mattenburg himself, could throw a rock into atrolley car with the precision of Tom Slade.

  Then, on an evil day, he was tempted to watch the scouts and it provedfatal. He was drawn head over ears into scouting, and became leader ofthe new Elk Patrol in the First Bridgeboro Troop. For three seasons hewas a familiar, if rather odd figure, at Temple Camp, which Mr. JohnTemple of Bridgeboro had founded in the Catskills, and when he was oldenough to work it seemed natural that these kindly gentlemen who had hiswelfare at heart, should put him into the city office of the camp, whichhe left to go to war, and to which he had but lately returned, sufferingfrom shell-shock.

  He was now eighteen years old, and though no longer a scout in theordinary sense, he retained his connection with the troop in capacity ofassistant to Mr. Ellsworth, the troop's scoutmaster.

  He had been rather older than the members of this troop when he made hisspectacular leap from hoodlumism to scouting, and hence while they werestill kicking their heels in the arena he had, as one might say, passedoutside it.

  But his love for the boys and their splendid scoutmaster who had givenhim a lift, was founded upon a rock. The camp and the troop room hadbeen his home, the scouts had been his brothers, and all the simpleassociations of his new life were bound up with these three patrols.

  Perhaps it was for this reason that among these boys, all younger thanhimself, and with whom he had always mingled on such familiar terms, heshowed but few, and those not often, of the distressing symptoms whichbespoke his shattered nerves. Among them he found refuge and was atpeace with himself.

  And the boys, i
ntent upon their own pursuits, knew nothing of the bravestruggle he was making at the office where his days were spent, and inthe poor little shabbily furnished room where he would lie down on hisiron bed and try to rest and forget the war and not hear the noisesoutside.

  How he longed for Friday nights when the troop met, and when he couldforget himself in those diverting games!

  Since the first few days of his return from France, he had seen butlittle of the troop, except upon those gala nights. The boys were inschool and he at the office, and it seemed as if their two ways hadparted, after all his hopes that his return might find them reunited andmore intimate than ever before. But after the first joyous welcome, ithad not been so. It could not be so.

  Of course, if they had known how he loved to just sit and listen to themjolly the life out of Peewee Harris, they would doubtless have arrangedto do this every night for his amusement, for it made no difference tothem how much they jollied Peewee. If they had had the slightest inklingthat it helped him just to listen to Roy Blakeley's nonsense, they wouldprobably have arranged with Roy for a continuous performance, for so faras Roy was concerned, there was no danger of a shortage of nonsense. Butyou see they did not think of these things.

  They did much for wounded soldiers, but Tom Slade was not a woundedsoldier. And so it befell that the very thing which he most needed wasthe thing he did not have, and that was just the riot of banter andabsurdity which they called their meetings. At all this he would justsit and smile and forget to interlace his fingers and jerk his head. Andsometimes he would even laugh outright.