"LUCKY LUKE"
Next morning Tom had his breakfast in a dingy little restaurant and then
started along Terrace Avenue for the bank building, in which was the
Temple Camp office.
He still wore the shabby khaki uniform which had seen service at the
front. He was of that physique called thick-set and his face was of the
square type, denoting doggedness and endurance, and a stolid
temperament.
There had never been anything suggestive of the natty or agile about him
when he had been a scout, and army life, contrary to its reputation, had
not spruced and straightened him up at all. He was about as awkward
looking as a piece of field artillery, and he was just about as reliable
and effective. He was not built on the lines of a rifle, but rather on
the lines of a cannon, or perhaps of a tank. His mouth was long and his
lips set tight, but it twitched nervously at one end, especially when he
waited at the street crossing just before he reached the bank building,
watching the traffic with a kind of fearful, bewildered look.
Twice, thrice, he made the effort to cross and returned to his place on
the curb, interlacing his fingers distractedly. And yet this young
fellow had pushed through barbed wire entanglements and gone across No
Man's Land, without so much as a shudder in the very face of hostile
fire.
He always dreaded this street corner in the mornings and was thankful
when he was safe up in his beloved Temple Camp office. If he had been on
crutches some grateful citizen would have helped him across, and
patriotic young ladies would have paused to watch the returned hero and
some one might even have removed his hat in the soldier's presence; for
they did those things--for a while.
But such honors were only for those who were fortunate enough to have
had a leg or an arm shot off or to have been paralyzed. For the hero who
had had his nerves all shot to pieces there were no such spontaneous
tributes.
And that was the way it had always been with Tom Slade. He had always
made good, but somehow, the applause and the grateful tributes had gone
to others. Nature had not made him prepossessing and he did not know how
to talk; he was just slow and dogged and stolid, like a British tank, as
I said, and just about as homely. You could hardly expect a girl to make
much fuss over a young fellow who is like a British tank, when there are
young fellows like shining machine guns, and soaring airplanes--to say
nothing of poison gas.
And after two years of service in the thick of danger, with bombs and
bullets flying all about him; after four months' detention in an enemy
prison camp and six weeks of trench fever, to say nothing of frightful
risks, stolidly ignored, in perilous secret missions, this young chunk
of the old rock of Gibraltar had come home with his life, just because
it had pleased God not to accept the proffer of it, and because Fritzie
shot wild where Tom was concerned. He couldn't help coming back with his
life--it wasn't his fault. It was just because he was the same old Lucky
Luke, that's all.
That had been Roy Blakeley's name for him--Lucky Luke; and he had been
known as Lucky Luke to all of his scout comrades.
You see it was this way: if Tom was going to win a scout award by
finding a certain bird's nest in a certain tree, when he got to the
place he would find that the tree had been chopped down. Once he was
going to win the pathfinder's badge by trailing a burglar, and he
trailed him seven miles through the woods and found that the burglar was
his own good-for-nothing father. So he did not go back and claim the
award. You see? Lucky Luke.
Once (oh, this happened several years before) he helped a boy in his
patrol to become an Eagle Scout. It was the talk of Temple Camp how,
one more merit badge (astronomy) and Will O'Connor would be an Eagle
Scout and Tom Slade, leader of the Elks, would have the only Eagle Scout
at Camp in his patrol. He didn't care so much about being an Eagle Scout
himself, but he wanted Will O'Connor to be an Eagle Scout; he wanted to
have an Eagle Scout in his patrol.
Then, just before Will O'Connor qualified for the Astronomy Badge, he
went to live with his uncle in Cincinnati and the Buffalo Patrol of the
Third Cincinnati Troop pretty soon had an Eagle Scout among their
number, and the Cincinnati troop got its name into _Scouting_ and _Boy's
Life_. Lucky Luke!
It was characteristic of Tom Slade that he did not show any
disappointment at this sequel of all his striving. Much less had he any
jealousy, for he did not know there was such a word in the dictionary.
He just started in again to make Bert McAlpin an Eagle Scout and when he
had jammed Bert through all the stunts but two, Uncle Sam deliberately
went into the war and Tom started off to work on a transport. So you see
how it worked out; Connie Bennett, new leader of the Elks presently had
an Eagle Scout in his patrol and Tom got himself torpedoed. Mind, I
don't say that Uncle Sam went into the war just to spite Tom Slade. The
point is that Tom Slade didn't get anything, except that he got
torpedoed.
One thing he did win for himself as a scout and that was the Gold Cross
for life saving, but he didn't know how to wear it, and it was Margaret
Eillson who pinned it on for him properly. I think she had a sneaking
liking for Tom.
Poor Tom, sometime or other in his stumbling career he had probably
gotten out of the wrong side of his bed, or perhaps he was born on a
Friday. That was what Roy and the scouts always said.
And so you see, here he was back from the big scrap with nothing to show
for it but a case of shell-shock, and you don't have bandages or
crutches for shell-shock. There was young Lieut. Rossie Bent who worked
downstairs in the bank, who had come home with two fingers missing and
all of the girls had fallen at his feet and Tom had had to salute him.
But there was nothing missing about Tom--except his wits and his grip on
himself, sometimes.
But no one noticed this particularly, unless it was Mr. Burton and
Margaret Ellison, and certainly no one made a fuss over him on account
of it. Why should anybody make a hero of a young fellow just because he
is not quite sure of himself in crossing the street, and because his
mouth twitches? Boy scouts are both observant and patriotic, but they
could not see that there was anything _missing_ about Tom. All they had
noticed was that in resuming his duties at the office he had seemed to
be drifting away from them--from the troop. And when he came on Friday
nights, just to sit and hear Roy jolly Peewee and to enjoy their simple
nonsense, they thought he was "different since he had come back from
France"--perhaps just a little, you know, _uppish_.
It would have been a lucky thing for Tom, and for everybody concerned,
if Mr. Ellsworth, scoutmaster, had been at home instead of away on a
business trip; for he would have understood.
But of course, things couldn't have gone that way--not with Lucky Luke.