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WESTY MARTIN IN THE YELLOWSTONE
[Illustration: HOW CHEERING IT WAS—LIKE A FRIEND FROM HOME.]
WESTY MARTIN IN THE YELLOWSTONE
by
PERCY KEESE FITZHUGH
Author of
the Tom Slade Books
the Roy Blakeley Books
the Pee-Wee Harris Books
Illustrated
Published with the approval of
The Boy Scouts Of America
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers :: New York
Made in the United States of America
Copyright, 1924, by
Grosset & Dunlap
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
THE ROTARY CLUB OF AMERICA
WHOSE MEMBERS HAVE SHOWN THEIR VITAL INTEREST
IN THE FUTURE CITIZENSHIP OF OUR COUNTRY BY
THEIR SPLENDID WORK AMONG THE BOYS OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
I Mr. Wilde and the Three Scouts
II Mr. Wilde Holds Forth
III The Knockout Blow
IV The Chance Comes
V The Shadow of Mr. Wilde
VI Stranded
VII Hopes and Plans
VIII On the Way
IX The Rocky Hill
X The Camping Site
XI Alone
XII In the Twilight
XIII Warde and Ed
XIV The Master
XV The Haunting Spirit of Shining Sun
XVI A Desperate Predicament
XVII Sounds!
XVIII Westy’s Job
XIX The Way of the Scout
XX A Fatal Move
XXI In the Darkness
XXII The Friendly Brook
XXIII The Cut Trail
XXIV Downstream
XXV Little Dabs of Gray
XXVI Movie Stuff
XXVII The Advance Guard
XXVIII The Garb of the Scout
XXIX The Polish of Shining Sun
XXX Visitors
XXXI No Escape
XXXII Off to Pelican Cone
XXXIII Hermitage Rest
XXXIV Vulture Cliff
XXXV Disappointment
XXXVI Off the Cliff
XXXVII Ed Carlyle, Scout
XXXVIII The Wounded Stranger
XXXIX Westy’s Descent
XL Warde Meets a Grizzly
XLI A Scout Mascot
WESTY MARTIN IN THE YELLOWSTONE
CHAPTER I
MR. WILDE AND THE THREE SCOUTS
When Westy Martin and his two companions, Warde Hollister and Ed
Carlyle, were on their long journey to the Yellowstone National Park,
they derived much amusement from talking with a man whose acquaintance
they made on the train.
This entertaining and rather puzzling stranger caused the boys much
perplexity and they tried among themselves to determine what business he
was engaged in.
For a while they did not even know his name. Then they learned it was
Madison C. Wilde. And because he kept a cigar tilted up in the extreme
corner of his mouth and showed a propensity for “jollying” them they
decided (and it was a likely sort of guess) that he was a traveling
salesman.
Mr. Wilde had the time of his life laughing at the good scouts, and,
moreover, he humorously belittled scouting, seeming to see it as a sort
of pretty game for boys, like marbles or hide-and-seek.
He had his little laugh, and then afterward the three boys had their
little laugh. And he who laughs last is said to have somewhat the
advantage in laughing.
Mr. Wilde told the three scouts that Yellowstone Park was full of
grizzlies. “Oh, hundreds of them,” he said. “But they’re not as savage
as the wallerpagoes. The skehinkums are pretty wild too,” he added.
“Is that so?” laughed Westy.
“You didn’t happen to see any killy loo birds while you were there, did
you?”
Mr. Madison C. Wilde worked his cigar over to the corner of his mouth,
contemplating the boys with an expression of cynical good humor. “Do
they let you use popguns in the Boy Scouts?” he asked. “Because it isn’t
safe to go in the woods without a popgun.”
“Oh, yes,” said Warde Hollister, “and we carry cap pistols too to be on
the safe side. Scouts are supposed to be prepared, you know.”
“Some warriors,” laughed Mr. Wilde. “You’ll see the real thing out here,
you kids,” he added seriously. “No running around and getting lost in
back yards. If you get lost out here you’ll come pretty near knowing
you’re lost.”
“What could be sweeter?” Ed Carlyle asked.
The foregoing is a fair sample of the kind of banter that had passed
back and forth between Mr. Wilde and the boys ever since they had struck
up an acquaintance. They had told him all about scouting, tracking,
signaling and such things, and he had derived much idle entertainment in
poking fun at them about their flaunted skill and resourcefulness.
“I’d like to see some boy scouts up against the real thing,” he said.
“I’d like to see you get really lost in the mountains out west here.
You’d all starve to death, that’s what would happen to you—unless you
could eat that wonderful handbook manual, or whatever you call it, that
you get your stunts out of.”
“We eat everything,” said Westy.
“Yes?” laughed Mr. Wilde. “Well, I’m pretty good at eating myself, but
there’s one thing I can’t swallow and that’s the stories I hear about
scouts saving drowning people and finding kidnapped children and all
that kind of stuff. You kids seem to have the newspapers hypnotized. I
read about a kid that put out a forest fire and saved a lot of lives at
the risk of his own life. How much do you suppose the scout people pay
to get that kind of stuff into the papers?”
“Oh, vast sums,” said Warde.
Mr. Wilde contemplated the three of them where they sat crowded on the
Pullman seat opposite him. There was great amusement twinkling in his
eyes, but approval too. He did not take them too seriously as scouts,
_real scouts_, but just the same he liked them immensely.
“I bet you’ve been to the Yellowstone a lot of times,” said Ed Carlyle.
“Oh, a few,” said Mr. Wilde. “I’ve been up in woods off the trails where
little boys don’t go—without their nurse girls.”
“I’ve heard there are bandits in the park,” said Westy.
“Millions of them,” said Mr. Wilde. “But don’t be afraid, they don’t
hang out at the hotels where you’ll be.”
“Is it true there are train robbers out this way?” Westy asked.
“Getting scared? Why, I thought boy scouts could handle train robbers.”
“We can’t even handle you,” Warde said.