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[Illustration: TOM HAULED THE LOGS BY MEANS OF A BLOCK AND FALL.
Tom Slade at Black Lake--Frontispiece (Page 96)]
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TOM SLADE AT BLACK LAKE
By
PERCY KEESE FITZHUGH
Author of
THE TOM SLADE AND THE ROY BLAKELEY BOOKS
Illustrated by
HOWARD L. HASTINGS
Published with the approval of
THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Publishers--New York
Made in the United States of America
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Copyright, 1920, by GROSSET & DUNLAP
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PREFACE.
Several persons have asked me when Tom Slade was ever going to grow up
and cease to be a Scout. The answer is that he is already grown up and
that he is never going to cease to be a Scout. Once a Scout, always a
Scout. To hear some people talk one would think that scouting is like
the measles; that you get over it and never have it any more.
Scouting is not a thing to play with, like a tin steam-engine, and then
to throw aside. If you once get caught in the net of scouting, you will
never disentangle yourself. A fellow may grow up and put on long
trousers and go and call on a girl and all that sort of thing, but if he
was a Scout, he will continue to be a Scout, and it will stick out all
over him. You'll find him back in the troop as assistant or scoutmaster
or something or other.
I think Tom Slade is a very good example. He left the troop to go and
work on a transport; he got into the motorcycle messenger service; he
became one of the greatest daredevils of the air; he came home quite
"grown up" as you would say, and knuckled down to be a big business man.
Then, when it came to a show down, what did he do? He found out that he
was just a plain Scout, shouldered his axe, and went off and did a big
scout job all alone. So there you are.
I am sorry for those who would have him too old for scouting, and who
seem to think that a fellow can lay aside all he has learned in the
woods and in the handbook, the same as he can lay aside his short
trousers. It isn't as easy as all that.
Did you suppose that Tom Slade was going to get acquainted with nature,
with the woods and streams and trees, and make them his friends, and
then repudiate these friends?
Do you think that a Scout is a quitter?
Tom Slade was always a queer sort of duck, and goodness only knows what
he will do next. He may go to the North Pole for all I know. But one
thing you may be sure of; he is still a Scout of the Scouts, and if you
think he is too old to be a Scout, then how about Buffalo Bill?
The fact is that Tom is just beginning to reap the real harvest of
scouting. The best is yet to come, as Pee-wee Harris usually observes,
just before dessert is served at dinner. If it is any satisfaction to
you to know it, Tom is more of a Scout than at any time in his career,
and there is a better chance of his being struck by lightening than his
drifting away from the troop whose adventures you have followed with
his.
It is true that Tom has grown faster than his companions and found it
necessary to go to work while they are still at school. And this very
circumstance will enable us to see what scouting has done for him.
Indeed if I could not show you that, then all of those eight stores of
his adventures would have been told to little purpose. The chief matter
of interest about a trail is where it leads to. It may be an easy trail
or a hard trail, but the question is, where does it go to?
It would be a fine piece of business, I think, to leave Tom sitting on a
rock near the end of the trail without giving you so much as a glimpse
of what is at the end of it.
So you may tell your parents and your teachers and your uncles and your
aunts not to worry about Tom Slade never growing up. He is just a trifle
over eighteen years old and very strong and husky. Confidentially, I
look upon him as nothing but a kid. I keep tabs on his age and when he
has to go on crutches and is of no more interest to you, I shall be the
first to know it. He is likely to have no end of adventures between
eighteen and twenty.
Meanwhile, don't worry about him. He's just a big overgrown kid and the
best Scout this side of Mars.
P. K. F.
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Tom Looks at the Map 1
II. He Sends a Letter 5
III. The New Struggle 10
IV. "Lucky Luke" 16
V. About Seeing a Thing Through 24
VI. "The Woods Property" 29
VII. Just Nonsense 35
VIII. Five, Six, and Seven 45
IX. Roy's Nature 52
X. Tom Receives a Surprise 55
XI. Tom and Roy 59
XII. The Long Trail 66
XIII. Roy's Trail 73
XIV. The Really Hard Part 76
XV. A Letter From Barnard 80
XVI. The Episode in France 86
XVII. On the Long Trail 94
XVIII. Tom Lets the Cat Out of the Bag 101
XIX. The Spectre of Defeat 106
XX. The Friend in Need 110
XXI. Tom's Guest 117
XXII. An Accident 122
XXIII. Friends 132
XXIV. Tom Goes on an Errand 138
XXV. Two Letters 147
XXVI. Lucky Luke's Friend 152
XXVII. Thornton's Story 158
XXVIII. Red Thornton Learns Something About Scouts 170
XXIX. Tom Starts for Home 176
XXX. The Troop Arrives 182
XXXI. Archer 193
XXXII. Tom Loses 197
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TOM SLADE AT BLACK LAKE
CHAPTER I
TOM LOOKS AT THE MAP
Tom Slade, bending over the office table, scrutinized the big map of
Temple Camp. It was the first time he had really looked at it since his
return from France, and it made him homesick to see, even in its cold
outlines, the familiar things and scenes which he had so loved as a
scout. The hill trail was nothing but a dotted line, but Tom knew it for
more than that, for it was along its winding way into the dark recesses
of the mountains that he had qualified for the pathfinder's badge. Black
Lake was just an irregular circle, but in his mind's eye he saw there
the moonlight glinting up the water, and canoes gliding silently, and
heard the merry voices of scouts diving from the springboard at its
edge.
He liked this map better than maps of billets and trenches, and to him
the hill trail was more suggestive of adventure than the Hindenburg
Line. He had been very close to the Hindenburg Line and it had meant no
more to him than the equator. He had found the war to be like a
three-ringed circus--it was too big. Temple Camp was about the right
size.
Tom reached for a slip of paper and laying it upon the map just where
the trail went over the hilltop and off the camp territory altogether,
jotted down the numbers of three cabins which were indicated by little
squares.
"They're the only three together and kind of separate," he said to
himself.
Then he went over to the window and gazed out upon the busy scene, which
the city office of Temple Camp overlooked. He did this, not because
there was anything there which he wished particularly to see, but
because he contemplated doing something and was in some perplexity
about it. He was going to dictate a letter to Miss Margaret Ellison, the
stenographer.
Tom had seen cannons and machine guns and hand grenades and depth bombs,
but the thing in all this world that he was most afraid of was the long
sharply pointed pencil which Miss Margaret Ellison always held poised
above her open note book, waiting to record his words. Tom had always
fallen down at the last minute and told her what he wanted to say;
suggesting that she say it in her own sweet way. He did not say _sweet_
way, though he may have thought it.
So now he stood at the open window looking down upon Bridgeboro's
surging thoroughfare, while the breath of Spring permeated the Temple
Camp office. If he had been less susceptible of this gentle influence in
the very air, he would still have known it was Spring by the things in
the store windows across the way--straw hats and hammocks and tennis
rackets. There were moving vans, too, with furniture bulging out behind
them, which are just as certain signs of merry May as the flowers that
bloom in the Spring. There was something too, in the way that the sun
moved down which bespoke Spring.
But the surest sign of all was the flood of applications for cabin
accommodations at Temple Camp; that was just as sure and reliable as the
first croaking of the frogs or the softening of the rich, thick mud in
Barrel Alley, where Tom had spent his childhood.
He moved over to where Miss Margaret Ellison sat at her machine. Mr.
Burton, manager of the Temple Camp office, had told Tom that the only
way to acquire confidence and readiness of speech was to formulate what
he wished to say and to say it, without depending on any one else, and
to this good advice, Peewee Harris, mascot of Tom's Scout Troop had made
the additional suggestion, that it was good to say it whether you had
anything to say or not, on the theory, I suppose, that if you cannot
shoot bullets, it is better to shoot blank cartridges than nothing at
all.