But the Mary Temple cup was safe upon its little velvet pedestal.
There was only one name upon the lips of all, now. But he heard the
shouts only in a sort of trance. He heard his name called, and it
sounded strange to him to hear _his_ name--Billy Simpson--shrieked by
the multitude. It sounded like a different name, somehow. He could not
face them--no, he could not do that. And no one saw him.
No one saw him as he crept up through the bushes far from the screaming,
howling, clamorous, worshipping crowd. No one saw him as he sped around
the edge of camp and past Outpost Cabin where his own name echoed
against the dead, log walls. _His own name!_ No one saw him as he
climbed up through the woods to Cabin Hill. Yes, one person saw him. A
tenderfoot scout who thought more of some bobolink or other than of the
race, saw him. He was gazing up into the tree, a small lonely figure,
when the victor, the hero, sped by. It seemed to him that the fleeing
figure spoke to him; anyway, it spoke.
“Tell her--tell her I couldn’t have done it if she hadn’t been watching
me.”
The tenderfoot scout did not know whom he was speaking of, so no one was
ever told anything. He thought the fleeing figure in the black sweater
might be a thief.
Reaching the Ravens’ cabin, the victor paused just a second, and
listened to the spent sound of the cheering down at the shore. Then he
fell to ransacking his suitcase for a writing tablet. He had no duffel
bag, for you see he was only a new scout. He had come hastily, with
heart beating high.
Upon his writing tablet he scrawled a few lines, and left the whole
tablet, with a stone for a weight, upon the stump outside. He had stood
by that stump when he had taken the scout oath. His one frantic fear was
that Brent Gaylong would amble along and show him that what he was going
to do was all wrong; call him a quitter.
A sound! No--yes! No, it was only the breeze in the quiet trees.
He gathered together his few poor belongings, then paused for a last
glimpse at the note.
Tell Gaylong I don’t bother with little things. Tell Pee-wee
Harris the cup is safe till next summer anyway. Tell him his
place is open in the patrol because I’m through. He knows
what fixing means, because he’s a fixer. So tell him I fixed
it. He’s the best little scout that ever was--_he’s my idea
of a scout_.
Then he was gone. He hurried up through the woods and waited for the
bus. He had to carry his suitcase continuously in his right hand,
because his left hand and arm were nearly numb. The driver had to help
him up into the bus, he was so stiff and lame.
As he sat in the seat, nursing his stinging hand, and saw the beautiful
Catskill country, the wide fields where the men were cutting hay, the
woods through which the scout trails ran, the distant smoke arising from
the cooking shack at Temple Camp, the whole episode of his coming, of
his triumph and of his going away seemed like happenings in a wonderful
dream....
THE END