THE "ALL BUT" SCOUT
In that same hour, perhaps a little earlier or later, I cannot say, Tom
Slade, having finished his duties for the day, strolled along the lake
shore away from camp and struck into the woods which extended northward
as far as the Dansville road.
He had no notion of where he was going; he was going nowhere in
particular. For aught I know he was going to ponder on the
responsibility which had been thrust upon him by the scout powers that
be, of judging stalking photographs preliminary to awarding the Audubon
prize offered by the historical society in his home town. Perhaps he was
under the influence of a little pensive regret that the season was
coming to an end and wished to have this lonely parting with his
beloved hills and trees. It is of no consequence. About all he actually
did was to kick a stick along before him and pause now and again to
examine the caked green moss on trees.
When he had reached a little eminence whence the view behind him was
unobstructed, he turned and looked down upon the camp. Perhaps in that
brief glimpse the whole panorama of his adventurous life spread before
him in his mind's eye, and he saw the vicious little hoodlum that he had
once been transformed into a scout, pass through the several ranks of
scouting, grow up, go to war, and come back to be assistant at the camp
where he had spent so many happy hours when he was a young boy.
And now there was not one thing down there, nor shack nor cabin nor
shooting range nor boat nor canoe, nor hero's elm (as they called it),
nor Gold Cross Rock, which had the same romantic interest as had this
young fellow to the scouts who came in droves and watched him and
listened to the talk about him and dreamed of being just such a real
scout as he. He moved about unconsciously among them, simple,
childlike, stolid, but with a kind of assurance and serenity which he
may have learned from the woods.
He was singularly oblivious to the superficial appurtenances of
scouting. He had passed through that stage. The pomp and vanity of the
tenderfoot he knew not. The bespangled dignity of the second-class and
first-class scout, these things he had known and outgrown. His medals
were home somewhere. And out of all this alluring rigmarole and romantic
glory were left the deeper marks of scout training, burned into his soul
as the mark is burned into the skin of a broncho. The woods, the trees,
were his. That, after all, is the highest award in scouting. It is a
medal that one does not lose, and it lasts forever.
As Tom Slade stood there looking down upon the camp, one might have seen
in him the last and fullest accomplishment of scouting, stripped of all
else. His face was the color of a mulatto. He wore no scout hat, he wore
no hat at all. It would have been quite superfluous for him to have worn
any of his thirty or forty merit badges of fond memory on his sleeves,
for his sleeves were rolled up to his shoulders. He wore a pongee
shirt, this being a sort of compromise between a shirt and nothing at
all. He wore moccasins, but not Indian moccasins. He was still partial
to khaki trousers, and these were worn with a strange contraption for a
belt; it was a kind of braided fiber of his own manufacture, the
material of which was said to have been taken from a string tree.
As he resumed his way through the woods he presently heard a cheery, but
rather exhausted, voice behind him.
"Have a heart, Slady, and wait a minute, will you?" Tom's pursuer
called. "I'm nearly dead climbing up through all this jungle after you.
Old Mother Nature's got herself into a fine mess of a tangle through
here, hey? Don't mind if I come along with you, do you? Look down there,
hey? Pavilion looks nice. I've been wondering if I stand any chance of
being called up on that platform on Saturday night. Looks swell with all
the bunting over it, doesn't it?"
The speaker, who had been half talking and half shouting, now came
stumbling and panting up over the edge of the wooded decline where the
thick brush had played havoc with his scout suit but not with his
temper.
"Some climb, hey?" he breathed, laughing, and affecting the stagger of
utter exhaustion. "I bet you knew an easier way up. The bunch told me
not to beard the lion in his den, but I'm not afraid of lions. Here I am
and you can't get rid of me now. I'm up against it, Slady, and I want a
few tips. They say you're the only real scout since Kit Carson. What I'm
hunting for is a wild animal, but I haven't been able to find anything
except a cricket, two beetles and a cow that belongs on the Hasbrook
farm. Don't mind if I stroll along with you a little way, do you? My
name is Willetts--Hervey Willetts. I'm with that troop from
Massachusetts. I'm an Eagle Scout--_all but_."
"But's a pretty big word," Tom said.
"You said it," Hervey Willetts said, still wrestling with his breath;
"it's the biggest word in the dictionary."