CHAPTER XXII

NOT SO SLOW, AFTER ALL

“Hello! hello! Perk!” called the long-legged chum.

“Hi! there, Wee Willie! you’ve been an awful long time coming!” said a voice so close by that it thrilled them through and through.

They instinctively started on a gallop, broke past a screen of bushes that lay in a little opening of the timber, and there saw Perk, standing with outstretched hand, and a wide grin ornamenting his glowing face.

Elmer actually threw his arms about the boy, he was so wildly glad to see him once more safe and sound; Wee Willie, too, did not seem ashamed to follow suit; while Amos less familiar, seemed satisfied to pounce upon one of Perk’s chubby hands, which he started working up and down as methodically as though he had been a milkman, as the tall chum said, and was schooled in the method of adding to the daily output of the herd by means of the barn pump.

Perk was laughing, even while his eyes showed plain signs of being humid, so great was his emotion.

“Say, don’t squeeze me into a jelly, boys, please!” he breathlessly protested, in mock seriousness. “Why, you’d think I was the Prodigal Son come home to Dad’s house to help eat the fatted calf. And speaking of _eating_, oh! have any of you got a crumb, or something to stay the awful feeling of emptiness in the pit of my stomach?”

Amos thereupon dragged out the square of chocolate, possibly mentally lamenting that he had been so greedy as to devour every scrap of his own cake. Upon this fat Perk descended like a hawk, though the others were more or less surprised to see him scrupulously divide it in exact halves before consenting to put a particle of it in his mouth.

“Yum! yum! that _does_ go to the spot!” he hastened to mumble, rubbing his paunch with evident gratification; while the look in his eyes as much as said: “The only bad thing about is the limited supply.”

“How did you put in the time while that storm was booming, we all want to know, Perk?” Wee Willie was now saying.

At that the other grinned happily.

“Oh! I’ve had a wonderful time, all told, fellows,” he announced. “Since I left camp I’ve been through a heap of adventures, believe me. No use harping on a disagreeable subject, so you’ll just have to imagine how I got twisted up in my bearings, and finally had to admit that I was once more in the same old fix,—actually and truly lost.

“Then the storm caught me while I was sitting beside a little fire I’d managed to make, for these days you know I always keep a supply of matches on hand for just such emergencies. Well, it put my fire out in short order, and there I was, getting soaked to the skin, and picking my way along through the black woods, not knowing when I might run slap against a hungry wild cat, or else that bear we saw up in the tree.

“After I got so wet it didn’t matter, I just kept moving about till the storm let up. Then feeling chilly I began trying out the setting-up exercises that they use in the army, which soon made me comfy again.”

“No use talking, you are improving, Perk,” said Wee Willie, admiringly.

“Oh! I’m getting there, by degrees,” the other told him, with a queer look on his face that even Elmer could not understand; Perk seemed to be cherishing a secret of some sort, which he was loath to impart until he had piqued their curiosity to the utmost; that was all Elmer could settle in his mind.

“But you’re fairly dry right now, seems like,” said Amos; “how did you manage to do that, Perk, if it’s a fair question?”

“Fire, again,” chuckled the other; “nothing like it to dry you out; only it did make me feel homesick to see those flames playing so merrily, and me without a single scrap of grub to keep up my strength—that was really the worst part of the whole business, boys.”

“But with everything so soaking wet around, how did you manage to get a fire started?” demanded Wee Willie, incredulously.

“Huh! needn’t think you’ve got a foreclosure on all the woodcraft knowledge that’s lying around loose, Wee Willie,” snorted the fat chum, grimly. “Say, I’ve been taking lessons, and experimenting in some of the ways you have for making a fire. I haven’t so far been able to bring a blaze by means of a twirling stick with a bow to turn it; but shucks! it isn’t any great punkins to knock some dry wood out of an old log, and start it to going, if you’ve only got plenty of matches along; which was what I did!”

Wee Willie whistled, to indicate his surprise. Really it was next door to thrilling to know how the once dull Perk seemed to be picking up points in woodcraft; even though he did persist in still getting lost periodically.

“You’re sure a comer, Perk!” declared the tall chum. “Mebbe I’ll be glad to sit at your feet and soak in wisdom one of these days.”

“No blarney or soft soap, please, fellows,” continued the other, suspecting that they were only “joshing” him. “I hope I am improving, that’s all; and that some day I’ll even learn how to find my way back to camp on a bee-line. But whew! it was something fierce when that bolt shivered one of the big trees not so far away. I thought for sure my time had come, it sort of knocked me over, you see.”

“We had something of the same experience,” Elmer told him; “and can understand how uneasy you must have felt.”

“Only,” added Amos, quickly, “Elmer managed to pilot us to where there was a fine shelf of rock, under which we crept, so as to get out of the downpour. We didn’t dare stay under a tree, with all that lightning bursting around us.”

“I knew that too,” Perk hastened to explain, “and so I passed by a splendid hiding place in a hollow oak. It looked mighty tempting, though, when I first discovered it by a flash of lightning; and I had to take a grip on myself to keep from giving in.”

“You certainly deserve a heap of credit, Perk; we’re proud of you,” he was told by Elmer, which praise made the fat boy’s blue eyes gleam with supreme happiness; Perk evidently considered it the highest possible honor to be complimented by the one to whom he was accustomed to look as a leader.

“Of course, I tumbled around a good bit while making my way along in the dark,” the other frankly continued; “and I’m scratched up something fierce; but it’s all in the game, and you won’t hear me squealing any, boys. I’m only thankful it’s finished as well as it has; and mebbe I’ve picked up a few points for taking care of myself in the wilds. Anyhow I c’n make a fire, no matter how wet everything is around; and say, that’s something worth while—for Perk!”

Again and again did he look particularly at Amos, Elmer could not help noticing; and he found himself wondering why the new chum should engage so much of Perk’s attention. There was also something most mysterious in the way he kept grinning; Elmer knew Perk in and out, and could not understand what the other had concealed “up his sleeve.” Usually frankness itself, Perk must be practicing a new role to act in this fashion, Elmer concluded. He would certainly bear watching, for he acted as though hardly able to keep from springing some surprise on them.

“But you fellows are as dry as a bone!” Perk now exclaimed, as he put his hand caressingly on Elmer’s sleeve; “so I reckon you either didn’t get wet in the storm, or else have dried off since before a jolly blaze.”

“Oh! we had a fire, all right,” mentioned Wee Willie, “and got dry in almost no time. The blaze had a result, though, we didn’t figure on.”

“What was that?” demanded the other curiously, again grinning mysteriously.

“Oh! it was seen by some one, and we found we had an uninvited guest,” explained Wee Willie.

“Huh! you don’t tell me; now that’s some queer!” exploded Perk, round-eyed by this time. “Who was your visitor, Wee Willie?”

“A dapper-looking chap who told us he was Doctor Hitchens, from over at the State Asylum for the Insane,” said the tall chum. “He was a wonderful talker, you must know, and fairly got me under his spell. But fortunately Elmer here sized him up at his true worth. Whom do you think he turned out to be, Perk?”

“Not—the—tramp?” gasped the other, incredulously.

“Shucks! no,” retorted Wee Willie, disdainfully; “who but that cunning Felix Gould, the chap you may remember those uniformed guards were looking for when they knocked at our cabin door the other night.”

Perk was seemingly much impressed by this startling information.

“Gee whiz! tell me all about it, Wee Willie,” he hastened to cry. “How did Elmer know; what happened later on; and how did you manage to get rid of the crazy man without having trouble?”

This was just the opening wedge for Wee Willie. He took the center of the stage and proceeded to spin the whole exciting yarn; while Perk stood there, his face expressing alternate awe and then amusement. Several times when so far as Elmer could see there was no occasion for such a thing he seemed to be overwhelmed with a wild desire to laugh; which would end in a coughing fit, during which Wee Willie considerately “held up” his explanation.

“What can ail Perk?” Elmer was asking himself, unable to understand such unusual actions on the part of the chum who in times past had always been frankness itself. “He’s certainly keeping _something_ important back, meaning to give us all a surprise. I wonder what it is. He’ll bear watching, I reckon, Perk will.”

By degrees the story was told, down to the point where Elmer woke the other two up, to inform them his little trap had worked, and how Felix had taken himself off, unwilling to wait until those blue-coated guards from the big institution run by the State came along to renew acquaintance with “Doctor Hitchens.”

“Well, you did have a thrilling experience for a fact,” Perk blurted out in his customary breezy fashion, when Wee Willie finally subsided. “I should say it was a lucky thing he skipped out, and never tried to do you any harm. Ugh! I was always afraid of crazy people; they make me feel cold through and through. So I’m mighty glad he saw your blaze, and not my little fire. Fancy spending a night alone in the woods with a wild man, watching to see when you went to sleep, so he could mebbe throttle you!”

“It was an experience none of us is likely to forget, for a fact,” Elmer candidly admitted; “but we came through it all safe and sound, so we feel as if we had a lot to be thankful for.”

“Now,” remarked Perk, presently, “if a stranger came to my fire, and wanted to be taken in, I’d give him the glad hand; but all the same I’d ask him for his credentials. It isn’t safe to believe everybody a friend in these parts, Wee Willie. You think you’ve got a story to tell that’s going to make the fellows down Chester-way sit up and take notice. Well, I can match you, understand!”

“W-w-what’s that, Perk?” stammered Wee Willie; while Elmer nodded his head as much as to say: “it’s coming out now; go to it, Perk, old chum!”

“Why,” said Perk, “you’re not the only pebble on the beach; because I entertained a stranger at my fire last night, just the same as you did!”