Read Ebook: Roy Blakeley's Tangled Trail by Fitzhugh Percy Keese Barbour Harold S Illustrator

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Ebook has 1105 lines and 40883 words, and 23 pages

ROY BLAKELEY'S TANGLED TRAIL

GREETINGS

Hello, everybody, this is the first story I wrote in a long time, only I haven't written it yet. I mean when it's all written it will be the first one I wrote in a long time.

That's because my fountain pen got broken on account of stirring coffee with it in camp. Pee-wee Harris said that needn't make any difference because a scout is supposed to be able to write with a charred stick whittled to a point.

He says that's the way pioneers wrote. He thinks the word pioneer comes from the word pie. He says that's the way he writes. No wonder his stories are such black mysteries, that's what my sister says. He says scouts are supposed to write on birch bark. But believe me, paper is good enough, I tried birch bark. But anyway I like birch beer. I'm crazy about root beer too, only it reminds me of cube root and that reminds me of arithmetic.

Maybe you don't know what cube root is; you're lucky. Cube root is the number which taken three times as a factor produces a given number called its cube. I should worry. Because anyway this story isn't about cubes, it's about rubes and boobs and a lot of things and some roots but no cubes. You get those in school and school is closed up or I wouldn't be writing this story.

Anyway I began this story twice. Gee whiz, I thought I was going to strike out. The first time I started with a long description of Temple Camp, and my father said it made him sleepy. Then after I went camping over Sunday I started again, and coffee came out of my fountain pen, and my sister said that a story like that would keep everybody awake, and I told her that's more than some stories do.

So then I cleaned my fountain pen out and started again, and this is my third start, and my pen's working fine. Only I've got to go downstairs to supper now so I have to end this chapter.

My sister says the place to end chapters is just when something very exciting is happening. But my mother says the place to end them is just when the dinner gong sounds. Anyway to-night we're going to have chocolate pudding and that's exciting so you'll be in suspense while I'm eating chocolate pudding and after that I bet you don't know who you're going to meet.

ON THE SHELF

When I went up to Temple Camp this summer about the first scout I saw was Hervey Willetts. I guess you know that fellow all right. He comes from Massachusetts--as often as he can. That's the place he goes away from.

I'll tell you just where he was sitting. You know how the cooking shack is--it's right at the edge of the lake. Chocolate Drop, he's cook. He's a kind of a whitish black. He's the color of the middle of the night. There's a big window facing the lake and it's got a kind of a big board shutter with hinges on top. The first thing in the morning, Chocolate Drop opens that and props it open with a stick so it sticks out like a kind of a shelf.

Hervey Willetts was sitting on that board shelf. If Chocolate Drop had taken the prop away Hervey Willetts would have gone into the lake. But that was just what he wanted. He was just sitting there waiting for Chocolate Drop to let down that shutter. Then he could say that he didn't go into the lake after five o'clock because that's against the rule. He could say he was sitting on shore and Chocolate Drop dumped him into the lake. That way he could get a swim in the evening. He didn't say so, but I know that fellow. He would get a swim accidentally on purpose.

He was sitting there with nothing on but an old pair of khaki trousers and a khaki shirt and that crazy hat he always wears with the brim all gone and the crown all full of holes and campaign buttons and things. Gee whiz, you can always tell him by that hat. I could see him sitting there as we rowed across the lake from the trail side--that's the way we always go.

I shouted, "Look who's here."

He called back, "I'm looking; it's just as unpleasant for me as it is for you."

"The pleasure is mine," I told him. "I suppose you think you're going to get a swim after hours without getting called for it."

"That shows your evil mind," he said. "I was watching the sun go down."

"Yes, and waiting to go down yourself," I told him. "I'm waiting to see the scout go down. I always hated geography but there's one thing I like about Massachusetts and that is that you're away from there. I suppose you've got some new stunts this summer."

"Hurry up and land," he said, "and get through with your suppers. Supper was over an hour ago."

All of a sudden there was a voice from the Mammoth Cave in the other rowboat. "Let's foil him," said Pee-wee. "Just for fun let's keep on eating for a couple of hours till he's called to camp-fire. That'll keep Chocolate Drop in the shack."

"Listen to the famine talking," I said.

"He can even hold a heavy shutter up an hour or so with a half a dozen pieces of pie," said Warde Hollister.

"Maybe even we'll eat four desserts," Pee-wee shouted.

"We've got to unpack our baggage first," I called, "and then wash up and go and say hello to Uncle Jeb and in about half an hour we'll get around to eating."

"After that we don't know how long we'll take," Pee-wee yelled.

"Sure, a scout is thorough," shouted Westy from my boat.

"What's that got to do with me?" Hervey asked.

"Exterior motives," shouted Pee-wee.

"Ulterior motives," I said. "Only I'm just telling you that maybe it will be a large collection of hours before the window of the cooking shack is closed up for the night. So don't worry about falling into the water--yet. We'll tell you in time."

"What do you mean, you'll tell me in time?" said Hervey, very innocent like.

Jiminy, he looked awful funny sitting up there on that window board with his knees drawn up, staring at us just as if he was puzzled to know what we were driving at. Insulted, kind of. That was him all over. Sort of careless like. You'd never think he had any plans at all. He never broke any rules on purpose--oh, far be it from it!

"Got any new songs this summer?" Warde Hollister shouted at him. Because he always had a lot of crazy stuff that he was always singing and that's why everybody called him the wandering minstrel. None of us ever knew where he got all the stuff he sang.

He'd come wandering into camp late for supper twirling that funny cap of his on the end of a stick and singing, and the trustees or Uncle Jeb or maybe his scoutmaster who would be all ready with a good calling-down would just kind of smile and say nothing. The stormy petrel, they called him that too. Gee whiz, nobody could help liking that fellow. He was an odd number, I'll say that.

"All right, Hervey," Westy called kind of good-natured like. Westy never breaks any camp rules, but just the same he likes Hervey. "Go on, give us a song."

So then Hervey started singing that crazy song that got us into so much trouble that summer. We couldn't hear the end of it, because pretty soon we were at the landing and everybody was crowding there to meet us. Anyhow this is the way it started:

"When you go on a hike just you mind what I say, The right way to go is the opposite way.

Don't bother with sign boards but follow this song, If you start on the right road you're sure to go wrong.

You can go on your feet, you can go on a bike, But the right way is wrong when you start on a hike."

HERVEY AND THE CAMP

I don't know, it seemed kind of natural, sort of, for us to see Hervey Willetts like that, away from all the other scouts at camp. I said to Westy I was kind of glad we saw him first just the way we did and that he wasn't in the crowd at the landing.

Westy said the same thing. I don't know why he said that, but it seemed as if Hervey was different from everybody else; I guess that's what we were thinking. Most always he was alone.

He had lots and lots of friends, but they weren't scouts at camp. He knew all the farmers around the country, and sometimes he stayed at their homes all night. He got acquainted with peddlers and tramps and stayed away and, gee whiz, you couldn't blame the trustees for getting mad. He was funny in some ways.

He could do most anything, but yet he never bothered his head about merit badges. Mr. Ellsworth said Hervey was an adventurer, not a scout. He said he could do stunts, but he could never do tests. Mr. Ellsworth said scouting is a kind of a harness, and Hervey couldn't wear a harness. Anyway, just the same he liked Hervey because he just couldn't help it.

I had to laugh to myself when I thought how he was sitting on that shutter just waiting for it to be let down so he could have a swim after hours. He could say he fell in and had to swim to the landing. If anybody would be to blame it would be Chocolate Drop, who always let the shutter down from the inside.

I was wondering how Hervey got out there on that shutter. He must have climbed over the roof of the cooking shack and let himself down on the side over the lake. I had to laugh when I thought how funny it would look when the shutter was let down to see him go sprawling accidentally on purpose into the lake, which would be just what he wanted. I knew he intended to beat the rule, but gee, I couldn't help seeing the funny side of it.

But anyway, soon we forgot all about it on account of the scouts all being at the landing to meet us. I guess every scout I ever saw at Temple Camp was there. Bert Winton was there and Brent Gaylong. He was just as lanky as ever, and his spectacles were half-way down his nose like a schoolmaster, and he had that same slow, drawly, funny way about him.

There's always a big fuss when our troop gets to camp, because Mr. Temple, who started the camp, lives in our town. Pee-wee says Mr. Temple donated the camp, and he thinks that means he supplied it with doughnuts. The reason why Mr. Temple doughnutted the camp is because he was interested in Tom Slade when Tom was a hoodlum in our town.

Tom Slade used to be in our troop, but now he stays at Temple Camp all the time, and he's assistant manager under Uncle Jeb Rushmore, and Uncle Jeb used to be a trapper, and he fought with General Custer, and Pee-wee thinks that General Custer was named after cup custards, and General Custer fought the Indians, and if it wasn't for the Indians we wouldn't have any Indian pudding, and that's my favorite dessert.

So that brings me to the part where we were all eating dessert that first night we got to Temple Camp. Everybody was through supper and we had the eats pavilion all to ourselves on account of it being too dark to eat at the big mess-board out under the trees.

I guess you know all about the troop I'm in. It's the first Bridgeboro troop of Bridgeboro, New Jersey. If you want to know where New Jersey is, it's on page twenty-seven of the geography.

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