Chapter 10

THE FALL OF SCOUT HARRIS

As a camping place, perhaps the old reservation would not have proved a spot to the heart of the woods lover, but it was sequestered and had about it that romance which attaches to deserted habitations that are not tainted by the sordid environments of city life. The old buildings had never been beautiful and it was only the atmosphere of a place deserted which gave them a sort of romantic character.

But Nature had not been forced to evacuate the camp area; trees and tiny patches of woodland had remained, and the things which scouts love and seek had reasserted their supremacy there after the last of the soldiers, and later the army of clerical workers, had gone away.

The result was a kind of jumble of man's hurried handiwork and Nature's persistence, and the place, for a while, was a novel, nay even a delightful, spot in which to camp.

In conference with Blythe, who seemed cheerfully agreeable to any plan, the troop decided that each patrol should have the task of demolishing a building, and should work under the supervision of its leader, with Blythe as a sort of general overseer.

The whole troop, however, bunked in a small fourth building because this would not be in process of razing. From the appearance of this little building it had been a sort of club or meeting place. The window glass was quite gone, as indeed was all the window glass in the camp. Near by was a good place for their camp and cook fire. The little shack had shelves on which the scouts kept their stores. They made beds of balsam, scout fashion, and slept both in and out-of-doors, as the weather dictated.

Roy was cook, as he always was on their troop enterprises. In his forages against the stronghold of Chocolate Drop, the professional cook at Temple Camp, he had learned much of the beloved art in which that grinning negro excelled. The unruly flipflop tossed in air, fluttered down into his greasy pan like a tamed bird. In Pee-wee's experiments it had a perverse habit of alighting on his head.

Roy's spirit, indeed, seemed to pass into his cookery and give it a flavor all its own. His bacon sizzled with joy. His coffee bubbled over with mirth. His turnovers wore a scout smile. His baked potatoes had his own twinkle in their eyes. His dumplings were indented with merry dimples like those in his own cheeks.

The morning after their arrival they set to work in real earnest. They had not a complete equipment of axes and saws, excepting their belt-axes, but as much of the work consisted of gathering and piling the lumber, and removing nails from it, there were implements enough for all. Some of the scouts worked above, loosening the boards from the roofs, while others on the ground pulled the tar-paper and nails from these and made an orderly pile of them.

Such was the nature of their work during the first two or three days and they found it strenuous but neither too difficult nor heavy. And work was relieved somewhat by the comedy element furnished by Pee-wee who rolled off a roof on one occasion while eating a sandwich.

"Take the nails out of him, pull the sandwich out of his hands, and pile him up with the boards," Roy called from a neighboring roof. "He's docked thirty cents for the time lost in rolling down."

"He ought to have an emergency brake," Westy suggested, as the young Raven clambered up to his place again, sandwich and all, and proceeded working with the sandwich in one hand and a hammer in the other.

"Didn't you say that's all roofs are good for?" Pee-wee vociferously demanded. "To roll off of?"

"To roll _down_, I said," Roy answered from his own perch among the beams of the next shack.

"Did you ever hear of anybody rolling up?" the young hero demanded.

"Sure," said Roy; "didn't you ever roll up and go to sleep? You never rolled _down_, and went to sleep, did you? That shows what you know about geometry."

"That's not geometry," Pee-wee shouted. "I took geometry last year."

"It's about time you put it back," Roy called.

"Look out or you'll take another tumble," Westy added.

"He didn't put the last one back yet," Roy observed.

"There goes your sandwich," another one of the Silver Foxes called with glee, as that precious remnant of Pee-wee's lunch went tumbling and separating down the slanting roof.

"Now you see what you made me do!" he fairly screamed.

"Food is coming down," Roy laughed.

This is a fair sample of the fun and banter which accompanied their work and helped to make it easy and pleasant. Occasionally a harmless missile, perchance a luscious fragment of some honorably discharged tomato, would float gracefully from roof to roof bathing the face of some unsuspecting toiler with the crimson hue of twilight. And once again the weather-stained old shacks would seem alive with merriment and laughter.

As for Blythe he witnessed this merry progress with simple, grateful pleasure. He had expected to see the work done, but he had not expected to see it conjured by scout magic into a kind of play, nor the neighborhood of their joyous labor transformed into a scene of rustic comfort.

By the merest chance the scouts had come and seen and conquered, and presently the scene had that wholesome air of scout life about it. It seemed to poor Blythe as if he had awakened and found himself in fairyland, with a score or more of small brown gnomes climbing and scrambling about his domain, singing, jollying, planning, laughing, working, cooking, eating, kindling big camp-fires with odds and ends of wood, and telling such nonsensical yarns as he had never heard before. Pee-wee and Roy in particular amused him greatly. "Go on, make fun of him," he would say to Roy. And then he would deliberately take sides with Pee-wee against the whole troop. But he was more prone to listen than to talk.

"Haven't you got any adventures to tell?" Pee-wee asked him around camp-fire one night.

"Sure," said Roy, "look in your pockets and see if you can't find a couple."

"I guess I'm not much of a hand for adventures," Blythe laughed. "I like to hear about them though."

"I'll tell you some," Pee-wee said. "I'll tell you how I found a wallet--"

"And a dime," Westy interrupted.

"Tell how you saved a fish from drowning at Temple Camp," Roy said.

"Sure, that's a fish story," Connie piped up.

So Pee-wee launched forth recounting instances from his career of glory at Temple Camp, the boys prompting and jollying him, all to the simple delight of their new friend. His enjoyment seemed always an incentive to banter and nonsense....