HERVEY LEARNS SOMETHING
They strolled on through the woods together, the younger boy's gayety
and enthusiasm showing in pleasing contrast to Tom's stolid manner.
He was a wholesome, vivacious boy, this Willetts, with a breeziness
which seemed to captivate even his sober companion, and if Tom had felt
any slight annoyance at being thus overhauled by a comparative stranger,
the feeling quickly passed in the young scout's cheery company.
"They told me down in camp that if I need a guide, philosopher, and
friend, I'd better run you down, or up----"
"If you'd gone a little to the left you'd have found it easier," Tom
said, in his usual matter-of-fact manner.
"Oh, I suppose you know all the highways and byways and right ways and
left ways and every which ways for miles and miles around," Hervey
Willetts said. "I guess they were right when they said you'd be a good
guide, philosopher, and friend, hey?"
"I don't know what a philosopher is," Tom said, with characteristic
blunt honesty, "but I know all the trails around here, if that's what
you're talking about."
"Oh, you mean about guides?" Hervey asked, just a trifle puzzled.
"That's an expression, _guide, philosopher, and friend_. It comes from
Shakespeare or one of those old ginks; it means a kind of a moral guide,
I suppose."
"Oh," said Tom.
"But I need, I need, I need, I need a friend," Hervey said.
"You seem to have lots of friends down there," Tom said.
"A scout is observant, hey?" Willetts laughed.
"I mean you always seem to have a lot of fellows with you," Tom said,
ignoring the compliment. "Everybody likes your troop, that's sure. And
your troop seems to be stuck on _you_."
"_Good night!_" Hervey laughed. "They won't be stuck on me after
Saturday. That'll be the end of my glorious career."
"What did you do?" Tom asked, after his customary fashion of construing
talk literally.
"Oh, I didn't exactly commit a murder," the other laughed, "but I fell
down, Sla--you don't mind my calling you Slady, do you?"
"That's what most everybody calls me," Tom said, "except the troop I was
in. They call me Tomasso."
"Sounds like tomato, hey?" Hervey laughed. "No, my troubles are about
merit badges. I've bungled the whole thing up. When a fellow goes after
the Eagle award, he ought to have a manager, that's what I say. He ought
to have a manager to plan things out for him. I tried to manage my own
campaign and now I'm stuck--with a capital S."
"How many merits have you got?" Tom asked him.
"Twenty," Hervey said, "twenty and two-thirds. Just a fraction more and
I'd have gone over the top."
"You mean a sub-division?" Tom asked.
"That's where the little _but_ comes in," Hervey said. "B-u-t, but. It's
a big word, all right, just as you said."
"Is it architecture or cooking or interpreting or one of those?" Tom
asked.
Hervey glanced at Tom in frank surprise.
"Maybe it's leather work, or machinery, or taxidermy or marksmanship,"
Tom continued, with no thought further from his mind than that of
showing off.
"Guess again," Hervey laughed.
"Then it must be either music or stalking," Tom said, dully.
His companion paused in his steps, contemplating Tom with unconcealed
amazement. "Right-o," he said; "it's stalking. What are you? A mind
reader?"
"Those are the only ones that have three tests," Tom said. "So if you
have twenty merits and two-thirds of a merit, why, you must be trying
for one of those. Maybe they've changed it since I looked at the
handbook."
Hervey Willetts stood just where he had stopped, looking at Tom with
admiration. In his astonishment he glanced at Tom's arm as if he
expected to see upon it the tangible evidences of his companion's feats
and accomplishments. But the only signs of scouting which he saw there
were the brown skin and the firm muscles.
"They change that book every now and then," Tom said.
Still Hervey continued to look. "What's that belt made out of?" he
asked.
"It's fiber from a string tree," Tom said; "they grow in Lorraine in
France."
"Were you in France?"
"Two years," Tom said.
"How many merit badges have you got, anyway, Mr.--Slady?"
"Oh, I don't know," Tom said; "about thirty or thirty-five, I guess."
"You _guess?_ I bet you've got the Gold Cross. Where is it?" Hervey made
a quick inspection of Tom's pongee shirt, but all he saw there was the
front with buttons gone and the brown chest showing.
"I couldn't pin it on there very well, could I?" Tom said, lured by his
companion's eagerness into a little show of amusement.
"Where is it?" Hervey demanded.
"I'm letting a girl wear it," Tom said.
"Oh, what I know about _you!_" Hervey said, teasingly. "You can bet if I
ever get the Gold Cross or the Eagle Badge (which I won't this trip) no
girl will ever wear them."
"You can't be so sure about that," said Tom, out of his larger worldly
experience, "sometimes they take them away from you."
"You're a funny fellow," Hervey said, while his gaze still expressed his
generous impulse of hero-worship. "I guess I seem like just a sort of
kid to you with my twenty merits--twenty and two-thirds. Maybe some girl
is wearing your Distinguished Service Cross, for all I know. But we
fellows are crazy to have the Eagle award in our troop. I suppose of
course you're an Eagle Scout?"
"I guess that was about three or four years ago," Tom said.
"Once a scout, always a scout, hey?"
"That's it," Tom said.
They strolled along in silence for a few minutes, Hervey occasionally
stealing a side glimpse at his elder, who ambled on, apparently
unconscious of these admiring glances. Now and again Tom paused to
examine a patch of moss or some little tell-tale mark upon the ground,
as if he had no knowledge of his companion's presence. But Hervey
appeared quite satisfied.
"I'll tell you how it is," he finally said, selecting what seemed an
appropriate moment to speak; "I was elected as the one in our troop to
go after the Eagle award. We want an Eagle Scout in our troop. We
haven't even got one in the city where I live."
"Hear that?" Tom said. "That's a thrush."
"A thrush?"
"Yop; go on," Tom said.
"So they elected me to win the Eagle award. Some choice, hey? I had
seven badges to begin with; maybe that's why they wished it onto me. I
had camping, cooking, athletics, pioneering, angling, that's a cinch,
that's easy, and, let's see--carpentry and bugling. That's the easiest
one of the lot, just blow through the cornet and claim the badge. It's a
shame to take it."
"You mean you've won thirteen more since you've been here?" Tom asked.
"That's it," said Hervey. "First I got my fists on the eleven that have
_got_ to be included in the twenty-one, and then I made up a list of ten
others and went to it. I chose easy ones, but some of them didn't turn
out to be so easy. Music--oh, boy! And when I started to play the piano,
they said I wasn't playing at all, but that I really meant it. Can you
beat that?"
Tom could not help smiling.
"So you see I've been pretty busy since I've been here, too busy to talk
to interviewers, hey? I've piled up thirteen since I've been here;
that's a little over six weeks. That isn't so bad, is it?"
"It's good," Tom said, by no means carried away by enthusiasm.
"I thought you'd say so. So now I've got twenty and I know them all by
heart. Want to hear me stand up in front of the class and say them?"
"All right," Tom said.
"No sooner said than stung," Hervey flung back at him. "Well, I've got
first aid, physical development, life saving, personal health, public
health, cooking, camping, bird study----"
"That's a good one," Tom said.
"You said it; and I've got pioneering, pathfinding, athletics, and then
come the ten that I selected myself; angling, bugling, carpentry,
conservation or whatever you call it, and cycling and firemanship and
music hath charms, not, and seamanship and signaling. And two-thirds of
the stalking badge. I bet you'll say that's a good one."
"There's one good one that you left out," Tom said. "I thought you'd
think of it on account of that last one."
"You mean stalking?"
"I mean another that has something to do with that?"
"Now you've got me guessing," Hervey said.
"Well, how do you want me to help you?" Tom asked, thus stifling his
companion's inquisitiveness.
"Well," said Hervey, ready, even eager to adapt himself to Tom's mood,
"all I've got to do is to track an animal for a half a mile or so----"
"A quarter of a mile," Tom said.
"And then I'm an Eagle Scout," Hervey concluded. "But if I want to be in
on the hand-outs Saturday night, I've got to do it between now and
Saturday, and that's what has me worried. I want to go home from here
an Eagle Scout. Gee, I don't want all my work to go for nothing."
"You want what you want when you want it, don't you?" Tom said, smiling
a little.
"It's on account of my troop, too," Hervey said. "It isn't just myself
that I'm thinking about. Jiminies, maybe I didn't choose the best ones,
you know more about the handbook than I do, that's sure, and I suppose
that one badge was just as easy as another to _you_. Maybe you think I
just chose easy ones, hey?"
"Well, what's on your mind?" Tom said.
"Do you know where there are any wild animal tracks?" Hervey blurted out
with amusing simplicity. "I don't mean just exactly where, but do you
know a good place to hunt for any? A couple of fellows told me you would
know, because you know everything of that sort. So I thought maybe you
could give me a tip where to look. I found a horseshoe last night so
maybe I'll be lucky. All I want is to get started on a trail."
"Sometimes there are different trails and they take you to the same
place," Tom said.
No doubt this was one of the sort of remarks that Tom was famous for
making which had either no particular meaning or a meaning poorly
expressed.
Hervey stared at him for a few seconds, then said, "I don't care whether
it's easy or hard, if that's what you mean. Is it true that there are
wild cats up in these mountains?"
"Some," Tom said.
"Well, if you were in my place, where would you go to look for a trail?
I mean a real trail, not a cow or a horse or Chocolate Drop's kitten.
[Chocolate Drop was the negro cook at Temple Camp.] If I can just dig
up the trail of a wild animal somewhere, right away quick, the Eagle
award is mine--ours. See? Can you give me a tip?"
Tom's answer was characteristic of him and it was not altogether
satisfactory.
"I'm not so stuck on eagles," he said.