CHAPTER I.

OAKVALE’S ONE WISE MAN.

“Don’t believe in it, I tell you! All a humbug! No boy of mine will ever fool away his time strutting around and wearing soldiers’ clothes when he ought to be doing his chores at home! Take that from me, young fellow!”

“But Mr. Prentice, if you care to ask any one of the best citizens of Oakvale——”

“Foolish of them to be so blind, I tell you, boy!”

“There’s Mr. Hayward, the minister, sir!”

“A good man, but an easy mark all the same!”

“And Judge Marshall!”

“Surprised to hear that a long-headed man like the judge should allow his name to be used in connection with such utter foolishness. If he had boys of his own instead of three girls he might see things in a different light.”

“There’s Dr. Kane, and—well, the father of every one of the thirty boys in the troop. In fact, Mr. Prentice, I think you’re almost the only prominent man in or around Oakvale who hasn’t enthusiastically endorsed the local scout troop, which they believe has made good.”

Perhaps this little shaft of flattery told. At any rate the man called Mr. Prentice allowed a glimmer of a grim smile to flit across his stern face as he observed:

“All I can say then, Hugh, is that the prominent men of this section are a short-sighted lot when they allow themselves to be so easily led by the nose, and humbugged by a parcel of prank-loving boys!”

Billy Worth nudged the leader of the Wolf Patrol, Hugh Hardin, in the side. He acted as though it might be on the tip of his tongue to say something saucy; but for fear he might thus injure the cause Hugh was so manfully representing, Billy managed to remain silent.

Hugh made a final appeal, as he saw the man was about to leave them.

“But surely, Mr. Prentice, you must have heard _some_ good things said about the scouts, haven’t you?” he asked, with one of his most persuasive smiles; which, however, in this case, seemed to be wasted on the one-idea man.

“Oh! yes,” carelessly replied the other, gathering up his lines preparatory to starting his horse, “a lot of _won_derful stories have come floating over to my house, but I set most of them down as exaggerations. When I was a boy I read the ‘Arabian Nights,’ ‘Baron Munchausen,’ ‘Sindbad the Sailor,’ and ‘Gulliver’s Travels.’ I know how proud fathers like to boast of their smart sons. I’ve had my eye-teeth cut, Hugh. You’re a clever lad, I know, but if you talked until doomsday you couldn’t change _my_ mind about the folly of this Boy Scout game.”

He spoke to his horse, and the two boys saw him go down the road in a cloud of dust, for it was the driest fall ever known about Oakvale.

Billy Worth—who was a pretty ample sort of a boy—a good-natured expression on his face most of the time, doubled up like a hinge, so far as his girth allowed, and seemed to be quivering with mirth.

Hugh Hardin was shaking his head as though he fancied he had run across about the hardest _nut_ to crack of all his experience.

“What is there so funny about it, Billy?” he asked, for he was thinking how sorry he would be to report an utter failure to poor Addison Prentice, who was really wild to join the scouts, and had begged Hugh to intercede with his parent for him.

“I’ll tell you,” gasped Billy, trying hard to catch his breath. “When you said he was the only _prominent_ man around here who didn’t think the scouts worth their salt, he had _nerve_ to say he pitied them all for disagreeing with him. He made me think of a story I heard long ago.”

“Well, go on and tell it,” said Hugh, “for I know you’ll not be in shape to talk straight again until you get it out of your system.”

“Oh! it was only that chestnut about an Irishman who was on a jury that had to be discharged because they could not come to any agreement after being out ever so long. When some one asked him what was the matter he vowed he had never run across eleven such pig-headed men in his life; and that he was the only sensible member of the whole jury. Hugh, that stubborn Irishman is Mr. Prentice.”

“I guess you’re pretty nearly right, Billy; but don’t think I’ve given up trying to influence him on that account. Opposition only makes the game more worth playing. Something seems to tell me that we’ll make Mr. Prentice see a great light one of these days.”

“That’s the ticket, Hugh! ‘Never give up the ship!’ is our motto. We’ll try and get up some scheme to prove to Addison’s dad that he’s barking up the wrong tree when he thinks the scouts are a shiftless lot, who’ve got a reputation that hasn’t any foundation in fact.”

The boys were some little distance outside of the town of Oakvale when they had this conversation with Mr. Prentice, who owned the big quarry toward which he was heading when stopped on the dusty road by the chums.

Oakvale was proud of its troop of Boy Scouts, and justly so. If you do not know why this should be, it may pay you to secure a few of the previous volumes in this series and read what some of those boys had done to gain such an enviable reputation among the thinking people of the neighborhood.

Even a glance over the titles of these books will show the extent of their activities in the time that had elapsed since the troop was first organized. As Hugh and his comrades went steadily on their way as the weeks and months crept by, they were constantly finding numerous opportunities to add to the esteem in which they were held by the community.

Well had they proved the vast advantages which scouts have over ordinary, unattached boys in a country town. Organization had done wonders for many of the members of the troop. There was really not a single family in Oakvale a member of which wore the khaki of the troop but stood ready to openly declare that a most radical change for the better had followed since “Tommy joined the scouts.”

Hugh had received the proper credentials from Headquarters to be an assistant scout master; and sometimes during the temporary absence of Lieutenant Denmead, a genial, retired army officer who had willingly assumed that office because of his love for boys, Hugh filled his place acceptably.

If Mr. Prentice had not been one of the most stubborn men alive, and if he had been open to conviction, he certainly would never have closed his ears to the stories that were told of the doings of these Oakvale scouts, and proven to be absolutely true.

Why, only on the preceding spring several of them chancing to visit Lawrence, a town many miles away, during the great freshet which culminated in a disastrous flood, had aroused the dormant local scout troop, almost dead from lack of appreciation, and performed prodigies in the way of saving distressed families caught in their homes by the rising waters.

Then Hugh, on that same visit, had actually saved the life of a reckless boy who ventured onto a bridge threatened by the flood, snatching him off after he had fallen and become senseless just before a floating tree carried the structure down amidst the boiling waters of the torrent.

Later on when they were in camp near a large cement works it happened that there was a strike by the hundreds of foreign workmen, and the guards who had been brought from the city to defend the strikebreakers fired upon them.

As a result a dozen and more men, yes—and women, too—among the ignorant foreigners received serious gunshot wounds. Hugh and some of his chums hurried to the spot, organized a rude field hospital, and looked after the injuries of the wounded in a manner that called for high praise from the Red Cross surgeon coming on the field later on at the summons of Hugh Hardin.

For this great service, and for saving lives at the same time, every scout who had taken a part in that work now proudly displayed the coveted bronze medal which is sent from Scout Headquarters in New York City to any boy wearing the khaki who saves a life. Hugh was also the possessor of a gold medal, because he had saved that lad from the doomed bridge at the extreme risk of his own life.

Then, to come down to a period only a short time back, in the early days of the present dry autumn, the scouts had served as guides at the yearly County Fair in the vicinity of Oakvale. They had met trains, directed visitors to boarding places, answered innumerable questions, run errands, taken telegrams, and last but far from least, rendered first aid to the injured to a considerable number of persons who came to grief among the jostling throngs that visited the Exposition grounds.

(What else Hugh and some of his nearest and dearest chums managed to do during that time will be found narrated in the pages of the preceding volumes; and they should afford interesting reading to all who are concerned with the education of boys along other lines than those connected with ordinary school life.)

Hugh and Billy walked slowly on after their meeting with Mr. Prentice, which had been an accidental one. They saw that he had stopped his horse a little further along the road, and appeared to be examining some part of the hillside, since his extensive quarry ran for a quarter of a mile along the road.

The boys had climbed up the slope and were standing by the little narrow-gauge track down which cars loaded with stone were allowed to drop, checked by a brake, to the base of the hill, where wagons came and went.

This track crossed the county road at a certain place below where the two boys were standing. In reality it was a dangerous thing to allow, but during working hours the quarry company always kept a signal man there to see that vehicles were warned to keep back, whenever a car came down the almost level incline. An overhead trolley drew the empty car back up the rise again.

“Why, isn’t that a queer thing how that wagonload of children has gone and stopped right on the track of the stone chute!” exclaimed Billy, suddenly. “My stars! they must have got a wheel caught in the track somehow, for the horses don’t seem able to drag it off worth a cent. It would give the children a bad scare now if one of those stone cars started down the hill, eh, Hugh?”

“It’s to be hoped nothing of the kind happens,” said Hugh, “though with the brake set the man on the car could stop it easily enough. I was just wondering who those children are, and I’ve guessed it. They come from the orphan asylum.”

“Yes, that’s Sim Reeves’ rig, of the town livery stable, and he’s a good-hearted man, so I guess he loaned the wagon and driver just to give the poor kids a little outing on this fine Saturday afternoon. But I wish they’d hurry and get that wagon moving, for as sure as you live there’s a car loaded with stone starting slowly down the incline now.”

“Yes, you’re right,” said Hugh, thrilled by the thought of a catastrophe overtaking those innocents below.

“The man on it can’t see that there’s anything wrong down at the crossing,” cried Billy in great excitement. “He will soon, and put on the brakes.”

While Billy continued to keep his eyes glued on the coming car, Hugh on the other hand allowed his gaze to roam around. He even took several steps over to one side as though measuring the distance separating him from the track at a certain place.

All at once Billy gave a shriek.

“Hugh! look! look! the brake’s given way! There goes the man jumping for his life, and listen to the children screaming, will you? Hugh, can’t we do something? It’ll get going faster and faster, and—oh! Hugh, the poor, poor kids!”