AROUND THE FIRE
After this decisive conflict the period of reconstruction or rather the
period of demolition, began auspiciously. It began with a grand feast
cooked out-of-doors in the brass kettle which was the pride of Roy's
life. That brass kettle stood upon a scout fireplace of stones, and from
its interior a hunter's stew diffused its luscious fragrance to those
who sat about, feeding the companionable fire. The scouts were quite
masters of the situation, their coming must have been like a freshening
breeze to the lonely visitant at the old deserted camp, and their fun
and brisk efficiency and readiness seemed to give him a new life and
afford him amusement which was expressed in that silent, likeable, yet
haunting smile. It was not often that he laughed aloud and he talked but
little, and then with a kind of diffidence that seemed odd in one so
much their senior.
"I'm going to leave that kettle to my ancestors when I die," Roy said.
"It's been all over and I've cooked everything in it except Cook's
tours; it's travelled more than they have, anyway. It's been to Temple
Camp and we fished it up from the bottom of the lake once and I guess as
many as ten thousand wheat cakes have come out of that kettle. Hey,
Pee-wee?"
"Nine thousand eight hundred is all Pee-wee can say for sure about,"
Westy said.
"Are you used to camping?" Doc Carson asked Blythe. "I thought maybe you
liked this kind of thing because you came here."
"It was just that I was out of a job," Blythe said frankly. "Anything's
better than nothing. I happened to wander in here and met a man with an
auto. He works for the concern that's going to tear the camp down; a
salvage concern. He got me this job. I don't suppose you'd call it a
job, it's an assignment. I picked out the three buildings and they sent
me a paper with the numbers on. I've only been here a couple of days.
Yesterday was the only time I was in Bridgeboro. I was going to give it
up. I didn't have any supplies and I didn't know who to get to help
me--I was mighty glad that friend of yours came up yesterday and said
he'd tell you fellows it was all right."
"He's our scoutmaster," said Pee-wee. "He's all right, only you've got
to know how to manage him. We'll start in to-morrow morning and we'll
show that savage concern all right. We'll show them what we can do."
"Maybe they won't be so savage," Roy said.
"Pee-wee can manage them," Westy observed.
"Oh sure, all you have to do is to know how to manage them," commented
Connie. "They can't come too savage for our young hero."
"He can even tame wild flowers," Roy said; "lions--dandelions and
tiger-lilies and everything. He eats them alive."
"Speaking of eating, how about the stew?" Artie Van Arlen asked.
"It has to stew for an hour," Roy said. "Somebody get out the tin
plates; be prepared, that's our motto. All the comforts of home. Where's
_your_ home?" he asked Blythe in a sudden impulse.
"Oh I'm just a kind of a tramp," Blythe said uneasily. "I guess I must
have left home before I had my eyes open."
"That was before you could walk," Pee-wee reminded him.
"The last home I was in was in New York," Blythe said. "It wasn't mine."
"I guess you're like we are," Westy said, noticing perhaps a little
embarrassment in their friend's manner, "our home is outdoors."
"And believe me, the sky has all the tin roofs I ever saw beaten twenty
ways," observed Warde Hollister. That was pretty good for a new scout.
"Roofs are all right to slide down," Pee-wee observed. "They're all
right as long as you're not under them."
"Believe me, we wouldn't have the sky over us if we didn't have to,"
said Roy. "It's a blamed nuisance when it rains. The trouble with the
solar system is there are too many stars and planets and things in it.
You can't get out into the open."
"What are you talking about?" Pee-wee retorted contemptuously.
"I'd get rid of all the stars, stationary stars, movie stars and all,"
Roy said.
"Scouts are supposed to like the stars," Pee-wee informed Blythe.
"Sure, if he had his own way he'd eat hunter's stew out of the Big
Dipper," said Roy. "A lot he knows about the stars; he doesn't even know
that Mercury is named after a thermometer."
"This bunch is crazy," Pee-wee informed Blythe.
"That's because we sleep under crazy quilts," Roy said.
Blythe just sat there laughing, the silent, diffident pleasure in his
countenance shown by the crackling, cheery blaze.
"What would you do if you didn't have the North Star, I'd like to know?"
Pee-wee demanded. "We'd be all roaming around lost in the woods, dead
maybe."
"I should worry about roaming around dead," said Roy. "Do you think I've
got the North Star?"
With a look of pitying contempt, Pee-wee turned from Roy to the more
congenial bowl, now sizzling and bubbling on the fire. "It's ready," he
said.
"Be prepared," said Roy; "each one arm himself with a tin plate and
after that every scout for himself. This is called a hunter's stew
because you have to hunt for the meat in it, but it's got plenty of
e-pluribus unions in it. The potatoes and dumplings go to the patrol
leaders, carrots to first and second hand scouts; tenderfeet get nothing
because the stew isn't tender enough...."
It was pleasant sitting there in the bright area surrounded by darkness,
chatting and planning the work for the morrow, and eating hunter's stew,
scout style, patent applied for. And notwithstanding the slurs which Roy
had cast at the sky it was pleasant to see that vast bespangled
blackness over head. In the solemn night the neighboring shacks were
divested of their tawdry cheapness, the loose and flapping strips of
tar-paper and the broken windows were not visible, and the buildings
seemed clothed in a kind of sombre dignity--silent memorials of the boys
who had made those old boards and rafters ring with their shouts and
laughter. Not a sound was there now from all those barnlike remains of a
life that was gone. Only the noise of the saw and the hammer would
resound where once the stirring revelry echoed.
"You hear some funny sounds here at night, when the wind blows," Blythe
remarked.
"Shh, listen; I hear something now," one of the scouts said.
"I heard that last night," said Blythe uneasily; "or else I dreamed it."
Westy, who had been poking up the fire, paused, his stick poised,
listening. "It's over there," he said, pointing to the tall dark outline
of the windmill.
"There isn't breeze enough to turn the fan," Doc Carson said.
"It sounds like someone groaning," said another.
From the neighborhood of that old tower, though perhaps farther off,
they could not tell, came a sound almost human, a kind of moaning
intermingled with a plaintive wail, pitched in a higher key.
"Spooky," Westy said.
"This is the kind of a place I like," said Connie.
"Only it's nice to have somebody here," Blythe admitted.
"That's all right, _we're_ here," Pee-wee said.
They did not hear the sound again. If one were superstitious he might
have conjured that sound into a crying of the ghost of some dead soldier
haunting the old forsaken camp. But these scouts did not believe in
ghosts.
They did, however, believe in hunter's stew and they forgot all else as
they sat around their camp-fire in the quiet darkness, telling yarns,
and amusing their new friend by jollying....