Tom Slade

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He was very much engrossed now; he forgot everything. He was a scout of
the scouts, and he screwed up his face and studied the ground as a
scholar pores over his books.

"Huh," said he, "his shoes need soling, that's one sure thing."

He examined with care a little thin crooked indentation in the soil, as
if a petrified angleworm had been pushed into the hard earth.

"Huh," said he, "I hope he kicked into it hard enough so it stays
there."

He was satisfied that the fugitive's shoe was worn in the sole so that
the outer layer, worn thin and flopping loose, had slid onto one of the
little malleable leaden bars used in the cathedral-glass windows. This
had evidently pushed its way into the tattered sole, bent a little from
the impact, and lodged securely. Either the fugitive did not feel it,
or did not care to pause and remove it. It made a mark as plain as
Tom's patrol sign.

He cast one apprehensive look at the open windows of the upper floor
and, taking a chance, made a bold dash across the rear lawn, where he
thought he could discern footprints in the newly-sprouting grass.
Several hundred feet away was the boundary fence and here the
correctness of his direction was confirmed by a painty smooch on the
top rail where the fugitive had climbed over.

Tom leaped across the fence and, as usual, after any vigorous move, he
felt instinctively to see if his precious five-dollar bill was safe. He
lived in continual dread of losing it. He paused a minute scrutinizing
the small crooked marks left by the leaden bar. Then he thought of
something which added fresh zest to his thus far successful search. It
was provision four of the Second Class Scout tests:

Track half a mile in twenty-five minutes, or,...

"If I do that," said he, looking at his dollar watch, "it'll land me in
the Second Class with a rush, and if I should get the pin for her that
would knock the Commissioner off his feet, all right. Here's my
tracking stunt mapped out for me. I never claimed I could cook. Oh,
cracky, here's my chance!"

He got the word "Cracky" from Roy.

As he turned and cast a last look toward the house someone (a woman, he
thought) seemed to be waving her arm from one of the upper casements.
He could not make up his mind whether she was beckoning to him or only
scrubbing the window. Then he entered the woods where the ground was
sparsely covered with pine-needles.

He had to stoop and search for the guiding mark and there were places
where for thirty or forty feet at a stretch it was not visible, but the
tumbled appearance of the pine-needle carpet showed where someone had
recently passed. Then the marks took him into a beaten way and he
jogged along with hope mounting high.

He had tracked for more than twenty-five minutes and a very skillful
tracking it had been, entirely independent of its possible result. So
far as the tracking requirement was concerned he had fulfilled that in
good measure, and the possible danger in connection with it would
commend it strongly to the Scout Commissioner. Moreover, the deductive
work which preceded the tracking and the chivalrous motive would surely
make up for any lack in first aid and cooking. "One thing has to make
up for another," he thought, recalling Mr. Ellsworth's words.

He was breathing hard, partly from a nervous fear as to what he should
do if he succeeded in overtaking the robber, and his little celluloid
membership booklet with the precious bill in it, flapped against his
chest as he hurried on. "I'll be in the Second Class before Pee-wee,"
he thought.

Suddenly he came to a dead stop as he saw a figure sitting against the
trunk of a tree a couple of hundred feet away. The tree trunk was
between himself and the man and about all he could see was two knees
drawn up.

Now was the time for discretion. Tom was a husky enough boy; he seemed
much larger since he had acquired the scout habit of standing straight,
but he was not armed and he felt certain that the stranger was.

"I wish I had Roy's moccasins," he thought.

He retreated behind a tree himself and quietly removed his shoes. The
position of the stranger was favorable for a stealthy approach and Tom
advanced cautiously. A flask lay beside the man and he was just taking
a measure of encouragement in the prospect of the man's being asleep
when the drawn-up knees went down with a sudden start and the figure
rose spasmodically, reeled slightly and clutched the tree.

Tom stepped back a pace, staring, for it was the face of Bill Slade
which was leering, half stupidly, at him.

"Stay--stay where you are," said Tom, his voice tense with fear and
astonishment, as his father made a step toward him. "I--I tracked you-stay
where you are--I--didn' know who I wuz trackin'--I didn'. Don't
you come no nearer. I--I wouldn' do yer no hurt--I wouldn'."

It was curious how in his dismay and agitation he fell into the old
hoodlum phraseology and spoke to his father just as he used to do when
the greasy, rickety dining-table was between them.

The elder Slade was a pathetic spectacle. He had gone down quite as
fast as his son had gone up. He leered at the boy with red and heavy
eyes out of a face which had not been shaved in many a day. His cheek
bones protruded conspicuously. The coat which at the time of Mrs.
Slade's funeral had been black and which Tom remembered as a sort of
grayish brown, was now the color of newly rusted iron. His shoe, which
had turned traitor to him and whispered the direction of his flight to
the trailing scout, was tied with a piece of cord. He was thin, even
emaciated, and there was a little twitch in his eye which grotesquely
counterfeited a wink, and which jarred Tom strangely. He did not know
whether it was his lately-acquired habit of observation which made him
notice this or whether it was a new warning from Mother Nature to his
father. But Tom was not afraid of a man whose eye twitched like that.
He stood as firm as Roy Blakeley had stood that night of his first
meeting with him. That is what it means to be a scout for two months.

"Yer--a--a one o' them soldier lads, hey, Tommy?" said his father
unsteadily.

"You stay there," said Tom. "Yer seen what I d-did ter de marshal. I'm
stronger now than I wuz then, but I'm--I'm gon'er be loyal."

"Yer one o' them soldier fellers, hey?"

"I'm a scout of the Second Class," said Tom with a tremor in his voice:
"or I would be if 'twasn't for you. I--I can't tell 'em the trackin' I
done now. I gotter obey the law."

"Yer wouldn' squeal on yer father, would yer, Tommy?" said Slade,
advancing with a suggestion of menace. "I wouldn' want ter choke yer."

Tom received this half-sneeringly, half-pityingly. He felt that he
could have stuck out his finger and pushed his father over with it, so
strong was he.

"Gimme the pin yer took," he said. "I don't care about nothin' else-but
gimme the pin yer took."

"What pin?" grumbled Slade.

"You know what pin."

"Yer think I'd steal?" his father menaced.

"I know yer did an' I want that pin."

For a minute the elder Slade glared at his son with a look of fury. He
made a start toward him and Tom stood just as Roy had stood, without a
stir.

"Yer'd call me a thief, would yer--yer--"

"I was as bad myself once," said Tom, pitying him. "I swiped her ball.
Gimme the pin."

"'Taint wuth nothin'," he said.

"Gimme it."

Slade made an exploration of his pockets as if he could not imagine
where such a thing could be. Then he looked at Tom as if reconsidering
the wisdom of an assault; then off through the woods as if to determine
the chance for a quick "get away."

"Yer wouldn' tell nobuddy yer met me," he whined.

"No, I'll never tell--gimme the pin."

"I didn' hev nothin' to eat fer two days, Tommy, an' I've got me cramps
bad."

The same old cramps which had furnished the excuse for many an idle
day! Tom knew those cramps too well to be affected by them, but he saw,
too, that his father was a spent man; and he thought of what Mr.
Ellsworth had said, "There wasn't any First Bridgeboro Troop when he
was a boy, Tom."

"I wouldn' never tell I seen yer," he said. "I wouldn' never-ever
tell. It's my blame that we wuz put out o' Barrel Alley. It
was you--it was you took me--to the--circus."

He remembered that one happy afternoon which he had once, long ago,
enjoyed at his father's hands.

"An' I know yer wuz hungry or you wouldn' go in there in the daytime-'cause
you'd be a fool to do it. I'm not cryin' 'cause I'm--a-scared--I
don't get scared so easy--now."

Fumbling at his brown scout shirt he brought forth on its string the
folding membership card of the Boy Scouts of America, attached to which
was Tom's precious crisp five-dollar bill in a little bag.

"Gimme the pin," said he. "Yer kin say yer sold it fer five dollars-like,"
he choked.

"Is this it?" asked Slade, bringing it forth as if by accident, and
knowing perfectly well that it was.

"Here," said Tom, handing him the bill. "It ain't only becuz yer give
me the pin, but becuz yer hungry and becuz--yer took me ter the
circus."

It was strange how that one thing his father had done for him kept
recurring to the boy now.

"Yer better get away," he warned. "Old John sent automobiles out and
telephoned a lot. Don't--don't lose it," he added, realizing the large
amount of the money. "If yer tied it 'round yer neck it 'ud be safer."

He stood just where he was as his father reeled away, watching him a
little wistfully and doubtful as to whether he was sufficiently
impressed with the sum he was carrying to be careful of it.

"It 'ud be safer if you tied it 'round yer neck," he repeated as his
father passed among the trees with that sideways gait and half-limp
which bespeaks a prideless and broken character.

"I'll never tell 'em of the tracking I do--did," he said, "so I won't
pass on that; but even if I did I couldn't pass, 'cause I haven't got
the money to put in the bank--now."

He had lost his great fortune and his cherished dream in one fell
swoop.

And this was the triumph of his tracking

CHAPTER XI

R-R-R-EVENGE

Tom Slade had not the moral courage to crown his splendid triumph by
going straightway and giving the pin to Mary Temple. He could not
overcome his fear of John Temple and the awe of the palatial residence.
You see, he had not the legacy of refined breeding to draw upon. The
Scout movement had taken a big contract in the making of Tom Slade, but
Mr. Ellsworth (good sport that he was) was never daunted. Tom did not
know how to go alone up to the luxurious veranda at Five Oaks, ring the
bell, face that stoical Japanese, ask to see the pretty, beautifullydressed
girl, and restore her pin to her. He could have done it without
revealing the identity of the fugitive, but he did not know how to do
it; he would not ask Roy to come to his assistance, and he missed the
best fruits of his triumph.

So he went back to camp (scout pace, for it was getting late), his
empty membership booklet flapping against his chest as he ran.

It was fortunate for his disturbed and rather sullen state of mind that
an unusual diversion was on the boards at camp. The Ravens' tent was
quite deserted; Mr. Ellsworth was in his own tent, busily writing, and
he called out cordially, "Hello, Tommy," as Tom passed on to the Silver
Foxes' tent.

Within Roy was standing on a box holding forth to the entire patrol,
and he was in that mood which never failed to fascinate Tom.

"Sit down; you get two slaps on the wrist for being late," said he.
This was the only reference he or any of them made to Tom's
disappearance at Five Oaks. A scout is tactful. "I don't see any
seat," Tom said.

"Get up and give Tom a seat," ordered Roy.

"I wouldn't get up and give President Wilson a seat," announced
Eddie Ingram.

"Not me," laughed Dorry Benton, "I stalked for six miles to-day."

"Get up and give Mr. Thomas Slade a seat, somebody," shouted Roy.

"Keep still, you'll wake the baby," said Westy.

"You wouldn't catch me getting up to give George Washington a seat,"
said Bert Collins, "not after that hike."

"I'll make them get up," said Roy, fumbling in his pocket.

"Yes, you will--not," said Westy.

"Look at Eddie, he's half asleep," said Dorry.

"Wake up, Ed," shouted Roy. "It's time to take your sleeping powder.

"I wouldn't get up if you set a firecracker off under me, that's how
tired I am," mumbled Eddie.

"I'll make them get up," Roy whispered, winking at Tom.

He pulled out his trusty harmonica and began to play the national air.
Tom could not help laughing to see how they all rose.

"Now's your chance, sit down, Tom," said Roy. "The Pied Piper of
What's-his-name hasn't got anything on me! The object of the puzzle,
ladies and gentlemen," he continued.

"Hear! Hear!"

"Go to it. You're doing fine!"

"The object of the puzzle," said Roy, rolling up his sleeves as if he
intended to do the puzzle then and there, "the object of the puzzle is
to get inside the Ravens' tent without entering it. Will some gentleman
in the audience kindly loan me a high hat and a ten-dollar gold piece?
No? Evidently no gentleman in the audience."

"Cut it out," said Westy. "They'll be back in an hour. What are we
going to do?"

"We are not going to do anything until the silent hour of midnight,"
said Roy. "Then we are going to make reprisals."

"How do you make those?" called Westy.

"That's some word, all right," said Ed.

"I tracked that all the way through the Standard Dictionary," said Roy.

"How about Mr. Ellsworth?"

"He has announced his policy of strict neutrality," said Roy. "The
field is ours! The obnoxious post-card will be ours if you, brave
scouts, will do your part! For one month now has that obnoxious post-card
hung in the Ravens' tent. For one month has Pee-wee Harris smiled
his smile and gone unshaved--I mean unscathed. Shall this go on?"

"No! No!"

"Shall it be said that the Silver Foxes are not Sterling silver but
only German silver?"

"Never!"

"Shall the silver of the Silver Foxes be tarnished by that slanderous
card?"

"Never!"

"They have called us the 'Follow Afters'--they have said that we are
nothing but 'Silver Polish'"!

"We'll rub it into them," shouted Westy.

"They have taken cowardly refuge in the troop rule that no Silver Fox
shall enter their tent except on invitation, and this insertion--"

"You mean aspersion."

"Glares forth from the upright of their sordid lair--"

"'Sordid lair' is good!"

"No extra charge," said Roy; "until now the worm has turned. If we
cannot enter their tent then we must take down their tent, remove the
card, and put the tent up again."

"Oh, joy!" said Ed.

"And it must not be done sneakingly in their absence, but to the soft
music of their snoring. The enterprise is beset with many dangers.
Those who are not willing to venture (as What-do-you-call-him said when
he stormed Fort Something-or-other) may stay behind!"

Before camp-fire yarns, an elaborate card was prepared in the privacy
of the Silver Foxes' tent in Roy's characteristically glaring style, on
which appeared the single word, STUNG!

The night for this bold deed had been well chosen. The Ravens had been
stalking all day and at camp fire Tom listened wistfully to the account
of the day's most notable stunt which was Pee-wee's tracking of a
muskrat more than half a mile within the required twenty-five minutes
of the Second Class provision.

"Pee-wee'll be the first to jump out of the Tenderfoot Class this
summer," said Mr. Ellsworth, as he poked the crackling fire. "You
Silver Foxes will have to get busy." He looked pleasantly at Tom. "Hey,
Tommy?"

"I was wondering," said Roy, as he stretched himself on the ground
close to the cheerful blaze, "if we couldn't work in something special
for next Wednesday--it's troop birthday. We'll be two years old."

"That's right, so it is," said Artie Van Arlen, Raven. "I'm a charter
member; the Silver Foxes weren't even heard of or thought of at that
time."

"No, they're a lot of upstarts," said Doc. Carson, the first-aid boy.
"You'd think to hear them talk that they started before National
Headquarters did. I remember when this troop was a one-ring circus:
just us Ravens, and we had some good times too. I had my first-aid
badge before those triple-plated Silver Foxes were born!"

"They have no traditions," said the Ravens' patrol leader.

"They're an up-to-date patrol, though," said Roy. "The Ravens are
passe--like the old Handbook. That kind of patrol was all right when
the thing first started; the Silver Foxes are a last year's model."

"Well," laughed Mr. Ellsworth, raking up the fire and drawing his
grocery-box seat closer, "maybe the Silver Foxes will be ancient
history soon. I'm thinking of a new pack of upstarts for you foxes to
make fun of."

"You haven't made another flank move on Connie Bennett, have you?"
laughed Roy. They were all familiar with Mr. Ellsworth's dream of
another patrol.

"Connie rests his head on a pine cushion and imagines he's a Boy
Scout," said Artie.

"He blows the dust off a Dan Dreadnought book and imagines it's
the wind howling through the forest," said Westy.

"He runs the tennis-marker over the lawn and thinks he's tracking,"
said Pee-wee.

"No, not as bad as that, boys," laughed the scoutmaster. "Between you
and me and the camp fire, I suspect Connie's got the bug."

"Haven't given up hope yet?" said Roy.

"Never say die," answered Mr. Ellsworth, good-naturedly.

Once, twice, thrice had he made a daring assault on the Bennett
stronghold and once, twice, thrice had he been gallantly repulsed by
the Bennett right wing, which was Mrs. Bennett. He had planted the
Bennett veranda with mines in the form of Boys' Life and
Scouting, but all to no avail. Yet his hopeful spirit in regard
to the visionary Elk Patrol was almost pathetic.

The tent of the venerable Raven patrol was pitched under a spreading
tree and they retired with their proud and ancient traditions,
blissfully unaware of the startling liberty which was to be taken with
their historic dignity by those upstart Silver Foxes. Mr. Ellsworth,
with a commendable application of his policy of strict neutrality,
retired to his own tent to dream of the new patrol.

Never in the history of the troop had a Silver Fox trespassed unknown
into the ancient privacy of the Ravens, and never had a Raven
condescended to enter the Silver Fox stronghold save honorably and by
invitation. They knew the Silver Foxes for a sportive crew pervaded by
the inventive spirit of Roy Blakeley, but they had no fear of any
violation of scout honor and the obnoxious card hung ostentatiously on
the central upright of their tent.

In the still hour of midnight the enterprising Silver Foxes emerged in
spectral silence from their lair and the battle-cry (or rather,
whisper) was "Revenge," pronounced by Roy as if it had a dozen rattling
R's at the beginning of it. Every boy was keyed to the highest pitch of
excitement.

The Ravens' tent was a makeshift affair of their own manufacture and
when its sides were not up it was more of a pavilion than a tent: the
Ravens believed in fresh air. There were two forked uprights and across
these was laid the ridgepole. The canvas was spread over this and drawn
diagonally toward the ground on either side. There were front and back
and sides for stormy weather but they were seldom in requisition.

The program, discussed and settled beforehand, was carried out in scout
silence, which is about thirty-three and one-third per cent greater
than the regular market silence. Tom and Eddie Ingram, being the
tallest of the foxes, stationed themselves at either upright, the other
members of the patrol lining up along the sides where they loosened the
ropes from the pegs. Then Tom and Ed lifted the ridgepole, the scouts
along the sides held the canvas high, and the entire patrol moved
uniformly and in absolute silence. The tent, intact, was moved from
over the sleeping Ravens as the magic carpet of the Arabian
Nights was moved. It was a very neat little piece of work and
showed with what precision the patrol could act in concert. Thanks
partly to their strenuous day of stalking, never a Raven stirred except
Doc. Carson, who startled them by turning over.

In the centre of the Ravens' tent a sapling had been planted, its
branches cut away to within several inches of its trunk, so that it
made a very passable clothes-tree. This still stood, like a ghostly
sentinel, among the slumbering Ravens, laden with their clothes and
paraphernalia. The sudden and radical transformation of the scene was
quite grotesque and the unsheltered household gods of the Ravens looked
ludicrous enough as they lay about in homelike disposition with nothing
above them but the stars.

"Great!" whispered Roy, gleefully.

Eddie Ingram laid his end of the ridgepole on the ground and stealing
cautiously over among the sleeping Ravens, removed the post card from
the sapling and put the other card in its place. Then, stealing back to
where the others were waiting, he resumed his end of the pole. This was
restored to its place in the forked uprights, the ropes were fastened
to the pegs along either side and the Silver Foxes bore Esther
Blakeley's memento of their own disgrace triumphantly to their
stronghold.

"Can you beat it?" said Roy, releasing himself with a sense of
refreshment from the imposition of silence.

"A scout is stealthy," remarked Westy.

In the morning Pee-wee sauntered over and paused outside the Silver
Foxes' tent, not saying a word, though.

"Well," said Roy, "what can we do for you?"

"I see you've got the card," said Pee-wee.

"Yes," said Westy, pulling on his blouse. "We're going to frame it and
send it to National Headquarters, too, for an exhibition of scout
stealth and silence."

"I suppose you think we walked in and took it," said Roy, adjusting his
belt. "We didn't. We never entered your tent. A scout is honorable."

"No," said Pee-wee, "you took the tent down and put it up wrong end to.
A scout is observant. Are we going fishing to-day?"

CHAPTER XII

"UP AGAINST IT FOR FAIR"

When the telegraph and the telephone and the speeding autos and the
bullying of the hapless village constable failed to reveal any clue to
the burglar at Five Oaks, John Temple proceeded to pooh-pooh the whole
business and say that there had never been any burglar, but that in all
probability the maid had been exploring Mary's trinkets just as Mrs.
Temple returned and that the "frightful-looking man" whom she had met
on the stairs was a myth.

It was then that the maid, groping for any straw in her extremity, said
that a boy in khaki had darted out from the pantry and across the
private rear lawn into the woods beyond while she stood at the window.

If she had stuck to the plain truth and not permitted Mr. Temple to
beat her down as to the man she actually did see on the stairs, a great
deal of suffering might have been saved. But the loss of only one
trinket, and that one of small intrinsic value, seemed to lend color to
the theory that it was the work of a boy rather than of a professional
adult burglar, and the master of Five Oaks, thinking this matter worth
inquiring into, called up the constable and laid the thing before him
in this new light.

Mr. John Temple had no particular grudge against the Boy Scouts. He was
a rational, hard-headed business man, decisive and practical and
without much imagination. His lack of imagination was, indeed, his main
trouble. He was not silly enough and he was extremely too busy to bear
any active malice toward an organization having to do with boys, and
except when the scouts were mentioned to him he never gave them a
thought one way or the other. He was not the archenemy of the movement
(as some of the boys themselves thought): he simply had no use for it.

So far as the scout idea had been explained to him by the Bridgeboro
Local Council (to whom he had granted five minutes of his time) he
thought it consisted of a sort of poetical theory and that money put
into it was simply thrown away. He believed, and he told the Council
so, that ample provision had been made for boys in the form of circuses
and movie plays and baseball games for good ones and reformatories and
prisons for bad ones, and he referred, as the successful man is so apt
to do, to his own poor boyhood and how he had attended to business and
done what was right and so on, and so on, and so on.

Nor had this king of finance cherished any particular resentment toward
the poor creature who had thrown a stone at him. John Temple was a big
man and he was not petty, but he was intensely practical, and he had no
patience with Mr. Ellsworth's notions for the making of good citizens.
He had known two generations of Slades; he had never known any of them
to amount to anything, and he believed that the proper place for a
hoodlum and a truant and an orphan was in an institution. He paid his
taxes for the support of these institutions regularly and he believed
they ought to be used for what they were intended for. He thought it
was little less than criminal that the son of Bill Slade should be
wandering over the face of the earth when he might be legally placed in
a dormitory, eating his three meals a day in a white-washed corridor.

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