THE STRANGER
That man kept coming straight toward us across the green.
“Maybe we’re trespassing, hey?” Pee-wee said, kind of scared. “Now maybe
we’re going to get into trouble.”
Pretty soon I saw the man was smiling and I knew everything was all
right. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead and I saw he had a
bald head--he didn’t have one hair on his head even. It looked like an
egg. But anyway, he was smiling.
Dub said, “It’s all right, the face with a smile, grins.”
I said, “Hey mister, will you please tell us how to get off this field?
We were hiking whichever way the wind blew and it stopped blowing, so
now we can’t move.”
“You better look out how you talk,” Pee-wee said in a whisper.
By that time the man was right there. He was an awful nice man. He said,
“There isn’t the slightest thing to worry about.”
I said, “We thought maybe we were going to get arrested.”
He said, “Oh dear me, no. I wouldn’t _think_ of arresting Boy Scouts.”
“You might do it without thinking,” Dub said.
The man said, “I always look before I leap.” Then he said, “May I sit
down and make myself at home?”
He sat down on the grass with his knees up and his arms around them.
Gee, he was nice and friendly like. He said, “I’m tired myself. I’ve had
a long walk.” When I told him we were Scouts from Temple Camp, he was a
lot interested. He said he knew all about Temple Camp.
I asked him, “Do you live around here?”
“Not just here,” he said; “I live in Bagley Center. This is Bagley’s
Green. I’m Saul Bagley. My people settled all this country around here.
My father was Ephraim Bagley. This was all the old Bagley farm through
here. Where that station is, used to be an apple orchard. You know if I
had my way that whole strip of forest land east of Black Lake would
belong to Temple Camp now. No one was sorrier than I was, when the camp
didn’t get it; it was a pretty mean business all through. I told Mr.
John Temple so myself. He’s a very fine man, Mr. John Temple.”
“Even I’ve been to his house,” Pee-wee piped up. “Even I had supper at
his house--he’s a magnet. He owns so many railroads, he has a kind of a
collection of them. Didn’t I make him a willow whistle to blow in case
he gets held up by bandits--I leave it to Roy if I didn’t.”
Mr. Bagley put out his hand and shook hands with Pee-wee, like as if
Pee-wee was a kind of a hero. I had to laugh.
I said, “You mustn’t mind our young hero. He’s the one that invented the
Boy Scouts of America.”
Mr. Bagley said, “That was a very good invention.” Then he shook hands
with Pee-wee again.
Jiminies, we knew all about the forest land east of Black Lake--anyway,
Pee-wee and I did. Dub and Sandy were new fellows at camp, so maybe they
didn’t. I’ll tell you how it was. Everybody at camp calls that the
Bagley land--sometimes we call it Bagley woods. It’s east of Temple
Camp. All the Scouts at camp knew about Mr. Temple wanting to buy it and
give it to the camp. But anyway, he couldn’t buy it, because the Bagley
estate wouldn’t sell it to him. But jiminy crinkums, I never bothered my
head about it. Last summer it was fenced off with barbed-wire from
Temple Camp and we couldn’t even go on it. A lot I should worry, they
can take the land away altogether for all I care.
I asked Mr. Bagley, I said, “Are you one of the people that wouldn’t
sell it to Temple Camp?”
He said, “Oh, goodness no!” just like that. He said those were the heirs
and there were a lot of them. But he said anyway, he was the real heir.
Jiminies, I felt sorry for him. He was mighty nice, just sitting there
and talking to us like that. He said he liked boys, especially Scouts,
and he said only for a tragedy that happened, Temple Camp would have all
that land.
Oh boy, you should have seen Pee-wee’s eyes open--that’s his middle
name, _tragedies_. He eats them alive. He said, “Was it a regular
tragedy where somebody got killed--or maybe murdered or something?”
Mr. Bagley said, “My father, Ephraim Bagley was killed, and it was less
than a mile from here. I have just visited the spot. I could hardly find
it, it looked so different from when I was last there.”
Pee-wee said, “You ought to have blazed a trail, that’s the way Scouts
do.” I guess Mr. Bagley must have thought he was very smart, because he
just reached over and shook hands with him.
Mr. Bagley said, “My father was an old man and he had a very tragic
end.” Then he kind of whispered to Dub and said, “And the Boy Scouts are
the losers.”
“Will you tell us about it?” Pee-wee piped up.
Believe me, that was some tragedy he told us about. He said he lived in
Bagley Center. That’s about five or six miles from Bagley’s Green. He
said that several years ago his father--that was old Ephraim
Bagley--made a will and it was going to be his last one. He said in that
will the old man left him the farm at Bagley Center and all that woods
near Temple Camp and everything.
The day he made the will, he started to Catskill with it so as to see
his lawyer and to sign it in front of witnesses and everything. That
night he didn’t come home and the next day they telephoned to Catskill
and they found that he had been there and had signed his will and had it
witnessed. Oh boy, you should have seen Pee-wee how he stared.
“Did bandits get him?” he wanted to know.
Mr. Bagley said, “No, but Beaver Chasm got him. We found him in the
bottom of the chasm next day--dead.”
“Jiminies!” I said.
“You know Beaver Chasm, don’t you?” Mr. Bagley said.
“Sure, I know it!” Pee-wee shouted. “Didn’t I stalk a turtle down there?
_Suuuure_, I know it.”
Mr. Bagley reached over and shook hands with Pee-wee just the same as
before. I couldn’t make out whether he thought the kid was a wonderful
hero for stalking a turtle, or whether he was just kind of making fun of
him. I had to laugh, Pee-wee was so serious the way he shook hands.
Dub and Sandy didn’t know anything about Beaver Chasm, because they were
new Scouts at camp. But I knew all about it. And Pee-wee knew all about
it--he even owned it. It was a wonder he never had it wrapped up and
sent home.
Mr. Bagley said, “Yes, sir, we found him lying in the bottom of the
chasm--_dead_. Both of his legs and one of his arms were broken. We
found his coat a few yards from where his body lay; it was caught on a
clump of brush.” All of a sudden, Mr. Bagley leaned away over toward us
and whispered, “And my father’s oilskin dispatch container with his will
in it was gone. Was _gone_!” Then he sat up straight and just looked at
us.
I said, “Gee, that was funny.”
“You call it _funny_!” Pee-wee shouted. “Don’t you even know when a
thing is serious?”
Mr. Bagley just kept looking at us, kind of dark and suspicious like. I
saw Dub sort of move as if he was uneasy for fear Mr. Bagley was
thinking we knew something about it. Then Sandy asked him if it was ever
found.
“It was never found,” he said, sort of slow like, and very serious. “And
that’s the mystery. _The oilskin dispatch container presented to my poor
father by an overseas boy who carried a message from General Pershing to
the British commander in it was gone from the pocket of my father’s
coat--and with it his last will and testament._”
We were sort of scared, he looked at us so serious. He just kept looking
at us. Then he said, “But I want you boys to know that if that will had
been found, I would have been glad to sell all that woodland to Temple
Camp, as sure as my name is Saul Bagley. I am for the Boy Scouts first,
last and always. But I can’t be held responsible for the meanness, and
the stubbornness, and the lack of public spirit of a crew of undeserving
beneficiaries under a former will of my poor father, now can I?”
That’s just what he said; he used dandy big words.