Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Wild Goose Chase - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 4

Table of Contents

That’s where we like to sit and string each other up at Temple Camp. We all sit along the springboard when nobody is diving from it—especially my patrol, because we always stick together on account of being crazy, a lot we care. This season it’s all painted nice and new a kind of blackish white. Tom Slade painted it; it’s a two coat job; he wore two coats while he painted it.

Doc said, “Keep your feet up out of the lake; after the rain last night the water’s good and wet.” He’s our first-aid scout—he’s an M.D. That means many deaths. A.D. means after dinner. B.C. means before campfire—you learn that in History. This year I take Ancient History—not saying where I’d like to take it to. I take the economic course, you’re supposed to be economical, you don’t waste time studying. Next term I take geometry. The thing I like to take best is vacation.

So there we were, all sitting along the springboard with our feet just out of the water. Most always that’s the way we do when we first get to camp, before we get started doing regular things—you know what I mean, stalking and all scouting things like that. Anyway we’re nutty, my patrol. There was a troop up there last summer from Maine, they were all maniacs, but they had a lot of sense compared to us. To show you how crazy we are we started a hike in a revolving door of a drug store and we didn’t get back to camp for supper. That was named the Pinwheel Hike and you needn’t say you want to come and join it because it only holds four fellers. That’s a dandy kind of a hike, every scout has a compartment to himself.

Anyway, so there we were all sitting along the springboard while the rest of our troop were up in the cabin unpacking their stuff. Will Dawson and Warde Hollister and Doc Carson, those were the ones that were with me. Doc Carson is in the Elk Patrol, he’s more to be pitied than scolded. He’s a Life Scout but he’ll be a dead scout if he sticks with that bunch, Grove Bronson and all those fellers, you know them.

“Let’s hear the letter,” Warde said.

“What’s it all about?” Will wanted to know.

“I just got it in Administration Shack,” I told them. “It’s from a feller that lives in Crackerjack or someplace or other and——”

“Let’s see it,” Will Dawson said; gee, and he took it right from me.

“Claverack, that’s the name of the place,” he said. “Can’t you read English?”

I said, “What do I care? If I go there, it’s the place I’m going to, not the name. Read what he says, he broke his collar-bone. That’s what you get from wearing a collar.”

“Will you listen while he reads it or won’t you?” Doc said.

So then Will Dawson read the letter. I’ve got that same letter now and so I’m going to paste it on the page with my writing, so maybe the printer will make it so it looks just like the real letter. So now you’ll see a letter just like the ones I get about twice a minute.

“That sounds good about the refreshments,” Will Dawson said. “Maybe that way we can show him we’re alive.”

Doc Carson got up to go away and he said, very serious like, “That would be a blamed nice thing for you fellows to do—go and see a poor chap that’s laid up.”

“Listen to who’s making a noise like a scoutmaster,” Warde said—“‘a blamed nice thing for you fellows to do.’ How can we go if we’re not alive? Maybe that feller’s sister knows what she’s talking about, you can’t tell.”

“I never thought of that,” Will said. “I’d like to know what his father thinks. We may be dead and not know it—look at the Raven Patrol.”

Doc said, “Well I see you’re not losing any time getting down to nonsense. So long, I’m going to unpack my suitcase. See you at eats.”

So there were just the three of us, all triple-plated solid silver foxes broadcasting on a wave length of six gigglemeters.

“We ought to jolly Pee-wee along over the radio, then everybody’d be happy,” Warde said. “Some Friday evening between ten and ten A.M. Do you think we could get him to a studio?”

“Sure,” I told him; “just tell him studio is named after stew. I guess there’d be a riot, he’d throw the microphone at us.”

“No but, honest,” Will said, “a hike in one direction is just as good as a hike in another direction, isn’t it?”

“A hike in one direction is even better than one in another direction,” I said.

“Then why not hike to Crackerjack or whatever you call it?” Will asked. “It would be a kind of a good turn, wouldn’t it?”

“How do I know?” I said. “It might be a straight road. I think it’s across the Hudson River. If it isn’t on one side of it it’s on the other.”

“I know where Havercrack is,” Warde said. “You can see it on the map up in Administration Shack. It’s across the river just about east of Catskill. Maybe it’s just about fifteen miles from here—it’s a cinch.”

“All right,” I told them, “I don’t care what becomes of me. I just as soon hike to Bric-a-brac as anywhere else. Who’s going to go?”

“I am,” Will said.

“Same here,” Warde said.

“And how about the animal cracker?” I said. “If he knows what we want him to go for he won’t go.”

“We won’t mention that,” Warde said. “We’ll just tell him about the refreshments. We’ll tell him he’s doing a good turn to a poor boy that broke his collar button.”

“It’s a go,” I said.