THE LOG CABIN FUND
It was not difficult to arouse Mr. Wendell’s interest in the project.
Always a firm believer in over night hikes and camping trips as the best
possible means of carrying out the scouting program, he realized at once
the value of such a place as this which could be made use of at all
seasons of the year.
With some of the discoverers and a number of other scouts whose interest
had been stirred up by the tales of that first party, he made a trip up
the mountain. The cabin was viewed from every standpoint and it was
unanimously decided that there were far too many attractive
possibilities in the building to allow it to stand there deserted and
unused. Not long afterward Mr. Wendell and two of the troop committee
visited the owner of the land—old Morford, the builder, had been merely
a squatter—and by dint of persuasive argument obtained permission to use
the cabin as a scout headquarters.
It was too far from town to be turned into a regular meeting place, but
the troop decided to furnish it and use it as an objective for hikes and
brief winter camping trips. It was Cavanaugh who conceived the brilliant
idea of using it also as a place of entertainment for some of the many
soldiers from the big new Government training camp located in the
neighborhood, who constantly thronged the town.
The presence of that camp and the frequent sight of the soldiers
thrilled the scouts as nothing else could have done. It did not take
them long to know many men by sight and a few of them intimately. The
crowd first in training happened to include a number of Western boys who
had no friends in this part of the country and were too far from home to
go back on furlough. The scouts got into the habit, therefore, of
bringing some of these home with them for stays of varying length, and
several of the young men who had been scouts themselves not so very long
ago, revived their interest in the movement, frequently attending the
troop meetings and even helping the busy scoutmaster in looking after
the boys.
From these the scouts kept secret the existence of the cabin. They
wanted to furnish and equip it thoroughly, and then have a grand
surprise party and house warming for the soldiers. But unfortunately all
this took a good deal of time. They might easily have filled it with
odds and ends of discarded furniture from their own homes, but the
majority voted against this. The cabin had become the pride of their
hearts, and they wanted, as they expressed it, to do the thing right.
And so, for many weeks they worked like beavers at every possible chore
and occupation which would bring in money for the fund, until at length
the latter reached a very decent total.
Bill McBride was treasurer and there were few waking hours that he did
not think with pride and pleasure of the growing size of that canvas bag
which held their hard earned dimes and nickels. It was in his mind one
morning late in November as he caught up sweater and books and dashed
out of the front door.
The air was chill, and overhead the clouds were dark and lowering with a
hint of snow in them. But Micky was not considering the weather as he
sped along, nor was he even thinking of the Thanksgiving holiday which
loomed so pleasantly near.
“We’ve got over sixty dollars,” he said to himself as he hastened up the
street, “and I don’t see why we shouldn’t begin pretty soon. If we
don’t, Jack Farren and Harley and all the rest of that corking bunch
will be ordered across and never see the cabin at all. You can get a lot
of stuff for sixty dollars.”
“Aye—Micky!” shrilled a voice from up a side street. “Wait up.”
McBride glanced that way impatiently. Harry Ritter, stout, round-faced
and indolent, was approaching at his usual lazy stroll.
“Can’t, Rit, I’m late,” he called without pausing.
Whereupon, with a grunt, Ritter speeded up and caught McBride about the
middle of the next block. “I don’t see what’s your rush,” he complained,
puffing a little. “It isn’t half-past eight yet.”
“I know it, but I’ve got to fix Mrs. Wright’s furnace and carry out some
ashes before school.”
Ritter sniffed. “You still doing that?” he inquired disparagingly. “You
_are_ an easy mark. I’ll bet you don’t get a cent for it.”
“Of course I don’t, you mercenary young pup,” retorted Micky. “I’m not
doing it for money. When Jim was drafted, I said I’d look after her
chores ’till he came back. You’re a hot scout, you are!”
“Shucks! When _I_ work, I want something out of it, especially with the
troop needing money like we do.”
Micky chuckled. “_When_ you work!” he repeated with emphasis. “That’s a
good one. Just let me know when you’re going to start, and I’ll come
around and look on. It would be a real treat to see you exerting
yourself for once.”
“You go to grass! I’ll bet I’ve turned in as much money to the fund as
anybody.”
“Maybe so, but you didn’t earn it. You just grafted it off papa.”
Ritter flushed floridly. “Huh!” he grunted. “You think so, do you? That
runt, Midge Willett’s been stuffing you full of lies. Just wait till I
give him a piece of my mind—”
“Don’t do it,” laughed Micky. “You haven’t any to spare.”
He skipped up a side street, leaving the stout youth snorting
incoherently on the corner. A few houses beyond he turned in at the gate
of a small, white-painted cottage, hastened along a gravelled path at
the side, and dived into the open cellar door.
When he had shaken down the small furnace, swept up the floor and carted
the ashes around to the rear he knocked at the back door and stepped in,
closing it behind him.
It was an immaculate kitchen, fairly shining in its scrubbed, polished
state of cleanliness. Everything was so spotless, in fact, that the
vigorous movements of the broom, wielded by the small, spare woman in a
limp calico dress seemed rather unnecessary.
“Good morning, Mrs. Wright,” said Micky, pulling off his cap. “I’ve
fixed the furnace and carried out the ashes. I’ll split your kindling
this afternoon after school. Is there anything I can do for you
downtown?”
She glanced momentarily at him over one shoulder. The vigorous movement
of the broom never ceased. “No, thank you, William,” she said briefly.
Still Micky hesitated. He had noticed her reddened eyelids and a
curious, unwonted droop to the usually erect shoulders. “I—I thought
perhaps you might want something special from the store,” he persisted
awkwardly. “To-morrow’s Thanksgiving, and—”
She faced him suddenly, her thin, rheumatic fingers clenched about the
broom handle. “Thanksgiving!” she repeated harshly. “What’s that to me?
What have I got to be thankful for?” Her lips quivered for an instant
and then straightened. “Jim’s going over—going to France. And—and they
won’t let him come home to say good-by!”
Micky drew a quick breath; for a moment the tragedy in her eyes turned
him speechless. It hurt him, too, that look, and brought into his mind
for a vivid second the eyes of a mother fox he had once seen, backed
into a rocky corner, her frightened, shivering cubs behind her.
“Oh!” he exclaimed sympathetically, an instant later. “They won’t give
him leave? But—but couldn’t, you—go to see him?”
“I could, but I’ve got no money,” flamed the woman—“and he leaves on
Saturday.”
Abruptly she turned her back and resumed that fierce, monotonous
sweeping of the spotless floor. Micky stared for a moment at the narrow,
drooping shoulders, the plain white collar, the soft, pretty, grayish
hair, and of a sudden something rose in his throat and choked him. With
eyelids stinging, he reached blindly for the knob, opened the door and
stepped outside. Drawing it softly shut, he blinked rapidly several
times before he stepped off the stone and moved slowly down the
gravelled path.
“It’s tough!” he muttered gruffly—“beastly tough!”
A picture of Jim Wright flashed into his mind—laughing, fearless,
blue-eyed Jim, whose devotion to his mother had been the only thing that
made him await the machinery of the draft. He might have pleaded
dependency, but he did not—could not, he told Micky, who was an ardent
admirer of the older fellow.
“She’ll have every cent of my pay, Micky, old scout,” he explained just
before leaving. “And with you to help her over the hard spots, I guess
she’ll make out all right. I just can’t stick around home when men are
needed over there.”
So he had gone into training—ordered, perversely, to a distant camp
instead of one so near at hand. And Micky had kept his promise to help
in the spirit as well as letter. Jim had been back just once in all
those months; a soldier’s pay doesn’t stretch for frequent railroad
journeys. And now he is going over. It might be years before his mother
saw him again; it might be—never.
“If only he was at Camp Wheeling,” growled the boy, speeding
mechanically toward school. “It seems too stupid to send him all that
ways. Why, the round trip costs nearly fifty dollars.” A remembrance of
that look in the woman’s eyes came back to him and he ground his teeth.
“Gee!” he burst out. “If I only had the money—if I could only get some!”
But in a smallish town like Wharton, with everyone feeling the effect of
the war in increased prices and voluntary self denial, fifty dollars
seemed a really enormous sum to raise at short notice. It was not until
Micky was running up the school steps that there came to him in a
sudden, blinding flash the realization that this amount and more already
reposed in the scout treasury.