TOM'S GUEST
Tom liked his new acquaintance immensely, but he did not altogether
understand him. His apparently reckless and happy-go-lucky temperament
and his breezy manner, were very attractive to sober Tom, but they
seemed rather odd in a scoutmaster. However, he could think of no good
reason why a scoutmaster should not have a reckless nature and a breezy
manner. Perhaps, he thought, it would be well if more scoutmasters were
like that. He thought that returned soldiers must make good
scoutmasters. He suspected that scoutmasters out west must be different.
Of one thing he felt certain, and that was that the scouts in William
Barnard's troop must worship him. If he was different from some
scoutmasters, perhaps this could be accounted for by the fact that he
was younger. Tom suspected that here was just the kind of scoutmaster
that the National Organization was after--one with pep. On the whole, he
thought that William Barnard was a bully scoutmaster.
At all events he seemed to be pretty skillful at woodcraft. The next
morning he set to work in real earnest and Tom took fresh hope and
courage from his strenuous partner.
"This is _your_ job," his friend would say; "all I'm doing is helping;
sort of a silent partner, as you might say."
But for all that he worked like a slave, relieving Tom of the heavier
work, and at night he was dog tired, as he admitted himself. Thus the
work went on, and with the help of his new friend, Tom began to see
light through the darkness. "We'll get her finished or bust a trace,"
Barnard said. They bunked together in one of the old cabins and Tom
enjoyed the isolation and the pioneer character of their task. Relieved
of the tremendous strain of lifting the logs alone, his shoulder
regained some of its former strength and toughness, and the confidence
of success in time cheered him no less than did the amusing and
sprightly talk of his friend.
Barnard had not been there two days when his thoughtfulness relieved Tom
of one of the daily tasks which had taken much time from his work. This
was to follow the trail down the hillside and through the woods to where
it ran into the public road and wait there for the mail wagon to pass
and get the letters. "I'll take care of that," he said, as soon as Tom
answered his inquiry as to how mail was received at camp, "don't you
worry. I have to have my little hike every day."
There was quite an accumulation of mail when Uncle Jeb, looking strange
and laughable in his civilized clothes, as Barnard called them, arrived
on Saturday morning. The bus, which brought him up from Catskill,
brought also the advance guard of the scout army that would shortly
over-run the camp.
These dozen or so boys and Uncle Jeb strolled up to visit the camp on
the hill, and Uncle Jeb, as usual, expressed no surprise at finding that
Tom's visitor had come. "Glad ter see yer," he said; "yer seem like a
couple of Robinson Crusoes up here. Glad ter see yer givin' Tommy a
hand."
"I got a right to say he's my visitor, haven't I?" Tom asked, without
any attempt at hinting. "'Cause I knew him, as you might say, over in
France. We catch fish in the brook and we don't use the camp stores
much."
"Wall, naow, I wouldn' call this bein' in the camp at all; not yet,
leastways," Uncle Jeb said, including the stranger in his shrewd,
friendly glance. "Tommy, here, is a privileged character, as the feller
says. En your troop's coming later, hain't they? I reckon we won't put
you down on the books. You jes stay here with Tommy till he gets his
chore done. You're visitin' him ez I see it. Nobody's a goin' ter bother
yer up here."
So there was one troublesome matter settled to Tom's satisfaction. He
had wanted to consider Barnard as his particular guest on their
hillside retreat and not as a pay guest at the camp. He was glad for
what Uncle Jeb had said. But he was rather surprised that Barnard had
not protested against this hospitality. What he was particularly
surprised at, however, was a certain uneasiness which this scoutmaster
from the west had shown in Uncle Jeb's presence. But it was nothing
worth thinking about, certainly, and Tom ceased to think about it.