E-text prepared by James Eager
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 19815-h.htm or 19815-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/8/1/19815/19815-h/19815-h.htm)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/8/1/19815/19815-h.zip)
This is book 3 in the Roy Blakeley series. It concludes
the story started in book 1: _Roy Blakeley_ (see
https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10552).
ROY BLAKELEY, PATHFINDER
by
PERCY KEESE FITZHUGH
Author of
Tom Slade, Boy Scout, Tom Slade with the Colors,
Tom Slade on the River, Etc.
Illustrated
Published with the Approval of
The Boy Scouts of America
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers :: New York
Made in the United States of America
Copyright, 1920, by
Grosset & Dunlap.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Hello, Here I Am Again . . . . . . 1
II. An Awful Wilderness . . . . . . . 7
III. Undaunted! . . . . . . . . . . . 12
IV. Go! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
V. I Go on an Errand . . . . . . . . 20
VI. I Discover Some Tracks . . . . . . 24
VII. I Meet the Stranger . . . . . . . 28
VIII. Up a Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
IX. Awful Sticky . . . . . . . . . . . 39
X. I Make a Promise . . . . . . . . . 43
XI. Seeing Is Believing . . . . . . . 46
XII. Marshal Foch . . . . . . . . . . . 52
XIII. Around The Camp-Fire . . . . . . . 58
XIV. But I Didn't Write It . . . . . . 65
XV. No! No! No! Go On! Go On! . . . . 73
XVI. The Mystery . . . . . . . . . . . 79
XVII. Appalling! Wonderful! Magnificent! 83
XVIII. On to Glory . . . . . . . . . . . 87
XIX. Jib Jab, Is He Human? . . . . . . 92
XX. The Parade . . . . . . . . . . . 96
XXI. We Visit The Side Show . . . . . . 100
XXII. Brent Gaylong . . . . . . . . . . 106
XXIII. Brent's Story . . . . . . . . . . 113
XXIV. The Light In The Woods . . . . . . 119
XXV. In The Dark . . . . . . . . . . 123
XXVI. Dorry And I And The Cricket . . . 128
XXVII. We Take Harry Into Our Confidence 133
XXVIII. In The Woods . . . . . . . . . . 139
XXIX. Jib Jab And Harry . . . . . . . . 144
XXX. Jib Jab Is Surprised . . . . . . . 149
XXXI. Jib Jab's Story . . . . . . . . . 154
XXXII. Jib Jab Turns Out To Be Human . . 158
XXXIII. We Part Company . . . . . . . . . 164
XXXIV. A Good Idea . . . . . . . . . . 168
XXXV. What I Heard On The Telephone . . 173
XXXVI. Up The Trail . . . . . . . . . . 179
XXXVII. A Voice . . . . . . . . . . 185
XXXVIII. We Fight And Run Away . . . . . . 189
XXXIX. Welcome Home . . . . . . . . . . 197
XL. Mmm-Mm-M-M! . . . . . . . . . . 203
ROY BLAKELEY, PATHFINDER
CHAPTER I
HELLO, HERE I AM AGAIN
This story is all about a hike. It starts on Bridge Street and ends on
Bridge Street. Maybe you'll think it's just a street story. But that's
where you'll get left. It starts at the soda fountain in Warner's Drug
Store on Bridge Street in Catskill, New York, and it ends at the soda
fountain in Bennett's Candy Store on Bridge Street in Bridgeboro, New
Jersey. That's where I live; not in Bennett's, but in Bridgeboro. But I'm
in Bennett's a lot.
Believe _me_, that hike was over a hundred miles long. If you rolled it up
in a circle it would go around Black Lake twenty times. Black Lake would
be just a spool--_good night!_ In one place it was tied in a bowline knot,
but we didn't count that. It was a good thing Westy Martin knew all about
bowline knots or we'd have been lost..
Harry Donnelle said it would be all right for, me to say that we hiked all
the way, except in one place where we were carried away by the scenery.
Gee, that fellow had us laughing all the time. I told him that if the
story wasn't about anything except just a hike, maybe it would be slow,
but he said it couldn't be slow if we went a hundred miles in one book.
He said more likely the book would be arrested for speeding. I should
worry. "Forty miles are as many as it's safe to go in one book," he said,
"and here we are rolling up a hundred. We'll bunk right into the back
cover of the book, that's what we'll do." Oh boy, you would laugh if you
heard that fellow talk. He's a big fellow; he's about twenty-five years
old, I guess.
"Believe _me_, I hope the book will have a good strong cover," I told him.
Then Will Dawson (he's the only one of us that has any sense), he said,
"If there are two hundred pages in the book, that means you've got to go
two miles on every page."
"Suppose a fellow should skip," I told him.
"Then that wouldn't be hiking, would it?" he said.
I said, "Maybe I'll write it scout pace."
"I often skip when I read a book, but I never go scout pace," Charlie
Seabury said.
"Well," I told him, "this is a different kind of a book."
"I often heard about how a story runs," Harry Donnelle said, "but I never
heard of one going scout pace."
"You leave it to me," I said, "this story is going to have action."
Then Will Dawson had to start shouting again. Cracky, that fellow's a fiend
on arithmetic. He said, "If there are two hundred pages and thirty lines on
a page, that means we've got to go more than one-sixteenth of a mile for
every line."
"Righto," I told him, "action in every word. The only place a fellow can
get a chance to rest, is at the illustrations."
Dorry Benton said, "I wish you luck."
"The pleasure is mine," I told him.
"Anyway, who ever told you, you could write a book?" he asked me.
"Nobody _had_ to tell me; I admit I can," I said.
"How about a plot?" he began shouting.
"There's going to be a plot forty-eight by a hundred feet," I came back at
him, "with a twenty foot frontage. I should worry about plots."
Harry Donnelle said he guessed maybe it would be better not to have any
plot at all, because a plot would be kind of heavy to carry on a hundred
mile hike.
"Couldn't we carry it in a wheelbarrow?" Will wanted to know.
"We'd look nice," I told him, "hiking through a book with the plot in a
wheelbarrow."
"Yes, and it would get heavier too," Westy Martin said, "because plots
grow thicker all the time."
"Let's not bother with a plot," I said; "there's lots of books without
plots."
"Sure, look at the dictionary," Harry Donnelle said.
"And the telephone book," I told him, "It's popular too; everybody reads
it."
"We should worry about a plot," I said.
By now I guess you can see that we're all crazy in our patrol. Even Harry
Donnelle, he's crazy, and he isn't in our patrol at all. I guess its
catching, hey? And, oh boy, the worst is yet to come.
So now I guess I'd better begin and tell you how it all happened. The
story will unfold itself or unwrap itself or untie itself or whatever you
call it. This is going to be the worst story I ever wrote and it's going
to be the best, too. This chapter isn't a part of the hike, so really the
story doesn't begin till you get to Warner's Drug Store. You'll know it by
the red sign. This chapter is just about our past lives. When I say, "go"
then you'll know the story has started. And when I finish the pineapple
soda in Bennett's, you'll know that's the end. So don't stop reading till
I get to the end of the soda. The story ends way down in the bottom of the
glass.
Maybe you don't know who Harry Donnelle is, so I'll tell you. He was a
lieutenant, but he's mustered out now. He got a wound on his arm. His hair
is kind of red, too. That's how he got the wound-having red hair. The
Germans shot at the fellow with red hair, but one good thing, they didn't
hit him in the head.
He came up to Temple Camp where our troop was staying and paid us a visit
and if you want to know why he came, it's in another story. But, anyway,
I'll tell you this much. Our three patrols went up to camp in his father's
house-boat. His father told us we could use the house-boat for the summer.
Those patrols are the Ravens and the Elks and the Solid Silver Foxes. I'm
head of the Silver Foxes.
The reason he came to camp was to get something belonging to him that was
in one of the lockers of the house-boat. I wrote to him and told him about
it being there and so he came up. He liked me and he called me Skeezeks.
Most everybody that's grown up calls me by a nickname. As long as he was
there he decided to stay a few days, because he was stuck on Temple Camp.
All the fellows were crazy about him. At camp-fire he told us about his
adventures in France. He said you can't get gum drops in France.
Gee, I wouldn't want to live there.