SCOUTS
WHEN, toward the latter part of March, the days were so warm that
Johnnie was able once more to take short, daily walks, he never went
without bringing home a box to split up for kindling. The box was an
excuse. And he wanted the excuse, not to ease his conscience about
leaving Grandpa alone, but to save himself should Big Tom happen home
and find him gone.
So far as Grandpa was concerned, the feeble veteran scarcely seemed to
know any more whether he was alone or not, there being small difference
between the flat without Johnnie and the flat with Johnnie if Johnnie
had a book. But also Grandpa always had some one else with him now--some
one who comforted his old heart greatly. This was Letitia.
Grandpa had always shown much fondness for the old doll. And one
day--soon after Cis received the new one--when Johnnie chanced to give
Letitia into the hands of the old man, the latter was so happy that
Johnnie had not taken Letitia away, and Cis had not. Instead, she gave
the old doll to Grandpa. And so it came about that Letitia shared the
wheel chair, where she lay in the crook of Grandpa's left arm like a
limp infant (she was shedding sawdust at a dreadful rate, what with the
neglect she was suffering of late), while her poor eyes fixed themselves
on distance.
"She don't look like she's happy," Johnnie had declared to Cis more
than once. "She looks like she's just standin' it."
"Why, Johnnie!" Cis had reproved, "And here you've always said that _I_
was silly about her!"
"Who's silly?" Johnnie had demanded, defensive, and blushing furiously.
"Grandpa's tickled to have her," Cis had continued.
There the matter was dropped. Nevertheless, Johnnie had then formed a
certain firm conviction, which he continued to hold. It was that Cis was
lacking in loyalty to the old doll (forgetting that only recently he had
hurled Letitia headfirst into the tiny room).
By the end of March Johnnie had begun to fret about One-Eye. He missed
the cowboy sadly; and what made the latter's absence seem all the harder
to bear was the belief that his friend was back in New York again, yet
was not visiting the flat because he was, for some reason, displeased.
With Cis?--about that new doll--or what?
"He's mad about somethin',"--Johnnie vowed it over and over. "He said
he'd be gone a few days. But that was _months_ ago."
Cis denied that she had anything to do with One-Eye's staying away. She
missed him, too; or, rather, she felt the loss of those almost nightly
gifts of fruit and sweets. As for Barber, he had no more good cigars to
smoke before his fellow longshoremen. And his lunch pail lacked oranges
and bananas at noontime, and had to be filled with prunes. Altogether,
the cowboy's failure to return worked a general hardship.
"Oh, why don't he write me again?" mourned Johnnie. These days he
secretly enjoyed any glimpse of Edwarda, and would even steal into Cis's
room sometimes to peep at her. She made him feel sure that One-Eye had
really once been there with them--as did also the letter and the blue
handkerchief.
Johnnie lightened his heart with all this testimony. For it was often
difficult for him to feel any more certain about the cowboy than he did
about his four millionaires, or Sir Galahad, say, or Uncas, or Goliath,
or Crusoe. He could revel gloriously in make-believe, yes; but perhaps
for this very reason he found himself terribly prone to doubt facts! And
as each day went by, he came to wonder more and more about the reality
of One-Eye, though the passing time as steadily added romantic touches
to the figure of the Westerner.
Often at night Johnnie held long conversations with him, confessing how
much he missed him, thanking him for past favors, begging him to return.
"Oh, One-Eye, _are_ y' mad at me?" he would implore. And if there were
stars framed by the window, they would dance as the gray eyes swam.
Whenever he roved hither and thither, hunting for boxes, he was really
hunting his friend. He kept close watch of the men who passed him,
always hoping earnestly that one day he might catch sight of One-Eye.
He brought home only one box at a time. At first if some grocer gave him
a large one, so that he had more wood than was needed to start the
morning fire, he burned his surplus, so that he would have to go out
again the following day. Later on he gave the extra sticks to Mrs.
Kukor, tying them into a Robinson Crusoe bundle, like fagots, and
sending them up to the little Jewish lady via the kitchen window when
she let down a string. The two had a special signal for all this; they
called it the "wood sign."
One morning as Johnnie was strolling along New Bowery, alert as ever for
the sight of a pair of fur-faced breeches, his heart suddenly came at a
jump into his throat, and his head swam. For just ahead of him, going in
the same direction, was a tall man wearing a One-Eye hat!
Without a doubt in his mind that here was some one who knew his dear
friend, Johnnie let fall a small box he was carrying under one arm and
rushed forward, planting himself, breathless, in the man's way. "Oh,
Mister!" he cried. "Oh, where's One-Eye? Would y' tell him for me that I
want t' see him?--_awful_ bad! I'm Johnnie--Johnnie Smith!"
The man had long hair that covered his collar like Grandpa's. Also he
plainly had a temper much like Big Tom's. For after staring down at the
boy for a moment, he kicked out at him. "_On_ your way!" he ordered
angrily. "Ske-daddle!--you little rat!"
Johnnie obeyed. He was stunned--that any man having on a One-Eye hat
could act so bad. His pride was hurt, too, at being kicked at in public,
and called a rat--he, the intimate of the famous Westerner. And his
sense of justice was outraged; he had done nothing to deserve attack and
insult.
This was not a matter for one of those "think" revenges. He might never
see the man again, and whatever he did must be as plain to all passersby
as had been the other's performance. So when Johnnie was well out of
reach of the long-haired man, he halted to call back at him. "_You_
ain't no real cowboy!" he declared. "Girl's hair! Girl's hair!"
But a pleasant experience came treading on the very heels of the
unpleasant. This was under the Elevated Railroad in Second Avenue. At
the moment, Johnnie chanced to be a great, champing war horse, grandly
drawing, by a harness made all of the finest silk, a casket (that small
box) filled with coins and bars of gold from Treasure Island. Being a
war horse of Camelot, and, therefore, unused to New York and train
tracks on stilts, he was prancing and rearing under his gay trappings in
wild style when----
Up the stone-paved avenue they came, two and two, two and two, two and
two, and behind those twos still others, all boys of Johnnie's own age,
all dressed just alike, wearing clean khaki uniforms, new flat-brimmed
hats of olive-drab, leggings, and polished brown shoes. What they were
he did not know, though he guessed them to be rich, noting how proud was
their carriage--chins up, backs straight. Beside them walked their
leader, a grown young man, slender, and with a tanned face plentifully
touched with red.
The war horse shrank into his rags. He would have darted out of sight so
as not to be seen; would have hid behind a pillar of the Elevated,
dreading looks of scorn, and laughter, and cat calls, but the sight of
that marching column thrilled and held him. Once before he had seen a
number of boys whom he had envied. They had had on sweaters and caps,
the caps being lettered. They had carried baseball masks, and bats. But
were such--a noisy, clamorous crew--worthy to be compared with _these_
young gods?
Tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp!--they passed him, their look high. But the
eyes of all were kind and friendly as they caught sight of Johnnie.
Yet--could they know who he was? of his friendship with the great
cowboy? Hardly. And still the column did not mock at him. There was not
a taunt, not a hoot!
When they were gone, he stood staring after them, so entranced that he
was in danger of being run down by a surface car, or an automobile.
Presently, however, on being ordered off the rails by an irate truck
driver, he made on homeward slowly, his yellow head lowered
thoughtfully, the box scraping along behind him at the end of a piece of
rope.
"Guess they're some kind of soldiers," he told himself, and reflected
that they were small to have been sent to war.
A hand touched his shoulder, stopping him. He glanced up. And could
scarcely believe his eyes. For here, as surprising as lightning out of a
sunny sky, was that leader, that grown young man. "Say, boy!" he panted,
breathing hard from a run. "I saw you just now as we went by. Would you
like to be a scout?"
"A--a scout?" faltered Johnnie, and did not know whether or not he could
trust his ears; because only recently he had come to know all about
scouts, regarded them as far beyond even the most distinguished among
men (always barring cowboys), and had decided that, next after being one
of One-Eye's company, he would like to be a scout. And here----
"Yes. Would you?" What had brought the leader back was the look of
heartrending yearning in the gray eyes of a tattered little boy. He
smiled, seeing that look swiftly change to one of joy, of awe.
"A scout!" repeated Johnnie. Suddenly beside him there was standing a
figure that was strange to Second Avenue. The figure was that of a
sunburned, lanky individual wearing a hunting shirt of forest-green,
fringed with faded yellow, and a summer cap of skins which had been
shorn of their fur. Under the smock-frock were leggings laced at the
sides, and gartered above the knees. On his feet were moccasins. There
was a knife in his girdle, and in his hands a long rifle. This was one
of Johnnie's new friends, that slayer of bad Indians, that crack shot,
the brave scout of _The Last of the Mohicans_. "And y' say I can be one?
One just like Hawkeye?"
"Hawkeye?"--the young man was puzzled.
Johnnie was disappointed. "Oh, y' don't know him," he said. "But he's a
scout."
"I mean a boy scout," explained the other, kindly. "Like my troop
there"--with a jerk of the head toward the khaki-clad column, now halted
a block away on the edge of the sidewalk.
Now that radiant, sunlit look--the glowing eyes and the flashing teeth
adding to the shine of hair and brows and lashes. "_Boy_ scout!" cried
Johnnie. Hawkeye was gone. Another vision stood in his place. It was
Johnnie himself, gloriously transformed. "Oh, gee! Oh, my goodness! Oh,
Mister! Oh, _could_ I? I'm crazy to! _Crazy!_"
The usual crowd of the curious--boys mostly--was now pressing about the
leader and Johnnie, the two or three grown people in it peeping over the
heads of the younger ones. But the young man seemed not to mind; and as
for Johnnie, if honors were coming his way on the open street, what
could be better than to have a few onlookers?
"Of course you'll be one," declared the leader, heartily. He produced a
pencil and a businesslike notebook. There was a pair of glasses hanging
against his coat on a round, black cord. These he adjusted. "Name and
address?" he asked; "--then I'll drop in to see you, and we'll talk it
all over with your father."
Johnnie gave the information. "Only I ain't got a father," he corrected,
as the pencil traveled. "But y' can tell the boy scouts, if y' want t',
that I got a cowboy friend named One-Eye, and he lives in a garden
that's down in a terrible big cellar, and wears fur all up his pants in
front, and a bigger hat'n yours, and spurs. And I got five
books--_Aladdin_, and _The Mohicans_, and _Treasure Island_, and _King
Arthur_ and _Crusoe_!"
The crowd listened, ready to laugh if the young man did, which was what
the young man did not. On the contrary, what Johnnie had said seemed to
have wrought the considerable effect Johnnie had desired. For the young
man opened his eyes so big at Johnnie that the glasses fell off, and
hit a button of his tunic with a clear ring. "You--you read?" he
inquired.
"I should say so!" returned Johnnie, cheeks going red with pride. "Most
all the time! But I'm goin' t' write a lot next--goin' t' copy all my
books out, 'cause Cis says that's the way I can learn t' spell the big
words. And lookee!--the handkerchief One-Eye give me!"
"Did you say One-Eye or Hawkeye?" asked the young man, feeling of the
handkerchief with evident respect for its appearance and quality.
"Oh, One-Eye!" declared Johnnie. "'Cause that's all the eyes he's got.
But he owns miles and miles of land, and hunderds of cattle, and he's so
rich that he rides ev'rywheres he goes in the city in a taxi, all the
time!"
"Well! well!" exclaimed the leader. There was just the flicker of a
smile in his eyes now (Johnnie noted that those eyes were exactly the
color of ground coffee).
"I've got a dog, too,"--talking as fast as possible in order to get a
great deal said. "But I jus' think him, like I do Mister Buckle, and
Mister Astor, and Mister Rockefeller, and Mister Carnegie, and the
Prince of Wales, and Mister Van----"
At that the leader laughed, but he patted Johnnie on the shoulder. "Tell
me all about 'em when I come," he said. "I must go now. But I'll see you
soon. Good-by!" As he backed, his hand went to the brim of his hat--in a
salute!
"Goo-good-by!" Johnnie faltered. His own right hand moved uncertainly,
for he would have liked to make the salute in return, only he did not
know how.
The other started off at a run, following the rails up the Avenue, while
some of that crowd turned away, scattering. What remained of the group
began to aim questions at Johnnie, rooted to the pavement beside his
box. "Who's 'at, kid? What's he want? What y' goin' t' do?"
To answer, Johnnie had to lower himself down from the skies, to which he
had been lifted by that salute. "You kids don't know One-Eye," he said,
a trifle loftily. "Well, do y' know Aladdin? or Long John Silver? or--or
Jim Hawkins? or Uncas? or King Arthur?"
The last name proved to be an error in selection. Instantly the
half-dozen boys about Johnnie set up a derisive shout: "He knows a King!
Aw, kids! He knows a King! Whee!"
A faint smile, betokening pity, curved Johnnie's lips. Oh, but they
_were_ ignorant! and had no stylish friends! "That gent, he come back t'
ask me t' be a scout," he explained calmly. "Didn't y' hear what he
said? And maybe I'll be one--that is till I go out West t' be a cowboy."
The shouting and the laughter broke forth again, redoubling. "And he's
goin' t' be a cowboy!" they yelled. "Look at 'im! Old rags! Yaw!"
Johnnie put the rope over a shoulder and again started for home. He
scarcely heard the screeching urchins. And he did not heed them. He was
in khaki and leggings now, and had on a wide hat held in place by a
thong which came just short of his chin. A haversack was on his back,
hanging from lanyards that creased a smart coat. He was also equipped
with a number of other things the names of which, as yet, he did not
know.
Tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp!--he was as military as a major-general.