THE CHRISTMAS BRIGADE
"Estu preta!" During the days that followed, while the fall season was
merged in winter, the Owls who had passed their outdoor tests in Sparrow
Hollow, six of whom were tenderfeet no longer, but second-class scouts,
did try to live up to their hearty motto. And this not only in the
development of their strong young bodies by exercise and drill, so that
every expanding muscle was under control, not only in the training of
their mental faculties toward keen observation and alert action, but
also in the chivalrous practice of the little every-day kindness to man
or beast--almost too trivial to be noticed, perhaps, yet preparing the
heart for the rendering of a supreme good turn!
Thus the Owl Patrol presently began to be recognized as a patriotic and
progressive force. The Improvement Society of the little town sought its
cooperation, and it soon became "lots more fun" to the boy scouts to
lend a hand in making that too staid town a more beautiful and lively
place to live in than to pile--as had often been the case
formerly--destruction on its dullness.
Under the direction of their energetic young scoutmaster they engaged in
other crusades too, besides that against things ugly and retarding, in
crusades for the rescue of many a needless and undue sufferer of the
animal kingdom, their most noted enterprise along these lines being an
attack upon the use of the steel trap among boys, especially those of
the woodland farms, whereby many a little fur-bearing animal met its
slow end in suffering unspeakable.
The use of this steel-jawed atrocity was bad enough in the hands of the
one or two adult professional trappers of the neighborhood who visited
their traps regularly. (And it is to be hoped that the Boy Scouts of
America, who champion the cause of their timid little brothers of the
woods, will some day sweep this barbarous contrivance altogether from
the earth!) But its use by irresponsible boys who set the traps in copse
or thicket, and, in the multitudinous interests of boydom, frequently
forgot all about them for days--leaving the little animal luckless
enough to be caught to suffer indefinitely--is a cruelty too heinous to
flourish upon the same free soil that yields such a fair growth of
chivalry as that embodied in the Scouts of the U.S.A.
One or two of the Owls, who shall remain incognito, had possessed such
traps in the past: now, they took them out into a back yard, shattered
them with a hammer, relegated the fragments to a refuse heap, and
instituted a zealous crusade against the use of the steel trap by
non-scouts of the neighboring farms, such as Godey Peck and his gang.
There was a hand-to-hand skirmish over this matter before the Owl Patrol
had its way; and the result thereof gave Godey cause for reflection.
"It hasn't made 'softies' of 'em anyhow, this scout movement," he
soliloquized. "They got the better _of us_. And they seem to have such
ripping good times, hiking an' trailing! But--"
The demurring "but" in this boy's mind sprang from the proviso that if
he enlisted in the Boy Scouts of America, he would be obliged, like
Leon, to part with his gun. Also, from a feeling that he would be
debarred in future from the planning of such lawless escapades as
playing stowaway aboard an unlaunched vessel; a scheme, it may be said,
which was never carried through, being nipped in the bud by watchful
shipwrights!
Godey Peck was on the fence with regard to the new movement. And he did
not yet know on which side he would drop down. Meanwhile from his
wavering point of indecision, beset with discomfort, he soothed his
feelings by renewed and vehement shouts of "Tin Scouts! Tin Soldiers!"
whenever a khaki uniform and broad drab hat hove in view.
He had ample opportunity to air his feeble-shafted malice during the
week preceding Christmas, for scouts, in uniform and out of it, were
constantly to be seen engaged in "hifalutin stunts," according to Godey,
which meant that they had been organized into a brigade by the
scoutmaster for the doing of sundry and many good turns befitting the
season.
It might be only the carrying of parcels, for a heavy-laden woman, who
had visited a distant city on a shopping expedition, from the little
railway station on the edge of the yellow wintry salt-marshes to her
home! Or the bearing of gifts from a benevolent individual or society to
some poor or solitary human brother or sister who otherwise might forget
the meaning of Christmas.
It was on behalf of one such person that Corporal Leon Chase--detailed
for duty on this brigade--took counsel with his mother on the afternoon
of Christmas Eve.
"You don't suppose that _she'll_ stay alone in that old baldfaced house
to-day and to-morrow, do you, mother?" he said, rather ambiguously. "The
town authorities ought to forbid her living on there all by herself;
she'll be snowed in pretty soon if this cold snap continues. Why! the
river is all frozen over--ice fairly firm too. I'm going skating by an'
by."
"I'd wait until it is a little more solid, if I were you," returned the
mother anxiously. "You know our brackish ice is apt to be treacherous;
the salt in the water softens it, so your father says, renders it more
porous and unsafe. I suppose you were speaking of old Ma'am Baldwin. I
don't see what the authorities can do. They can't force her into an
institution; she owns that old house. And I don't know that her
daughter's husband--little Jack's father--wants her in his home. It's
too bad that her son Dave should have turned out such a
good-for-nothing! Trouble about him has aged her, I guess; she's not as
old as she seems."
Then Starrie Chase inveigled his dimpling mother into a pantry and,
while she made passes at him with a rolling-pin, proceeded to whisper
in her ear--with a measure of embarrassment, for he was not accustomed
to himself in the role of alms-bearer. But in a shadowy corner within
him, once tenanted by Malign Habit, there still lurked a vision which
sprang out on him at times, of an old woman raising her feeble arm to
ward him off: it caused him to grit his teeth and mutter: "I wish I
could do something more than to chop her wood occasionally!" And vaguely
the mental answer would come: "_Estu preta!_ At a time when you least
expect it, you may find yourself up against the Big Minute!"
And in the mean time Starrie cornered his mother in the pantry--floury
shrine of Christmas culinary rites!--and presently listened,
well-pleased, to her answer:--
"Yes! I'm glad that you put it into my head, son. I'll pack some things
into a basket for her, and you can take it across the marshes now. It
must be bitterly lonely for her, poor old woman! And oh! Leon, as you'll
be in that direction, could you go on into the woods and get me some red
berries for Christmas decorations?"
"Sure, mum!" And Leon stepped forth to speak to Colin Estey, who was
awaiting him at the rear of the Chase homestead, exercising in a
preliminary canter a new pedalomotor which Santa Claus, masquerading as
the expressman, had dropped at his home a little too soon.
"Take care you don't run into a tree, smash it up, and drive a splinter
through your nose, as Marcoo did when he got his, last year!" admonished
Starrie. "Say! Col, I can't go skating for a little while: I'm bound for
the woods first to get some alder-berries for decorations. Want to
come?"
"Guess so!"
"You can leave that 'pedalmobile' here. Wait a minute! Mother's just
putting some Christmas 'grub,' mince-pies an' things, into a basket for
old Ma'am Baldwin; we'll deposit it at her door as we go along!"
"How'd it be to write on it, 'Merry Christmas from the Owls'?" suggested
young Colin whimsically: "that would keep her guessing; she'd maybe
think birds had come out o' the woods to feed her as they did Elijah or
Elisha of old."
So a card was tacked to the basket, on which was traced with a stub-end
of colored chalk the outline of a perching owl, highly rufous as to
plumage, with the proposed salutation beneath it.
But the two Owls who placed the gift did not find the recipient at home.
That baldfaced house beyond the frost-spiked marshes was empty, its
paintless door, half screened by the icy boughs of the wind-beaten
apple-tree, fast locked.
"I guess she's gone over to the town to spend Christmas Eve with her
daughter," suggested Colin. "She dotes on her gran'son, little Jack
Barry; he's quite a boy for nine years old! What shall we do with the
basket?"
"Raise that kitchen window an' slip it inside--the fastening's broken!"
"Say! but you're as barefaced as the house." Colin hugged himself with a
sense of having got off a good joke as he watched Leon boldly raise the
loose window and deposit the present within. "Let's put for the woods
now!" he added, the deed accomplished.
And the two scouts climbed the uplands toward those midwinter woods that
crowned the heights in dismantled majesty.
But they were not robbed of beauty, the December woods: the frosty
sunshine knew that as it picked out the berry-laden black alders
displaying their coral branches against the velvet background of a pine,
and embraced the regiment of hemlock bushes, green dwarfs which,
together with their full-sized brothers, held the fort for spring
against all the hosts of winter.
"Whee-ew! I think the woods are just dandy at this time o' year!" Leon
led a whistling onslaught upon the vividly laden black alder bushes,
while the white gusts of the boys' breath floated like incense through
the coral and evergreen sanctuary of beauty, guarded by the silvery
pillars of white birch-trees, where, in the bare forest, Nature had not
left herself without a witness to joy and color.
"These berries are as red as Varney's Paintpot," laughed Colin by and
by, as the two scouts retraced their steps across the salt-marshes,
crunching underfoot the frozen spikes of yellow marsh-grass. "Well, we
had a great time on that day when we found the old Paintpot--though we
succeeded in getting lost!"
"We surely did! I wonder if the frost will hold, so that we'll have some
good skating after Christmas? It's freezing now." Leon's gaze strayed
ahead to the solid white surface of the tidal river, stained with amber
by the setting sun.
They were within a hundred yards of it by this time, and caught the
shrill cries and yells of boyish laughter from youthful skaters who
careered and pirouetted at a short, safe distance from the bank. But a
clear view of what was going on was shut off from the two berry-laden
scouts, crossing the saffron marshes at a leisurely pace, by some
tumble-down sheds that intervened between them and the river.
"Well, the kids seem to be having a good time on the ice anyhow--though
I don't think it can be very firm yet. Whew! what's that?" exclaimed
Colin suddenly, as a piercing cry came ringing from the river-bank
whereon each blade of the coarse beach-grass glittered like a jeweled
spike under the waning sunlight.
"Oh! _somebody_ is blowing off the smoke of his troubles," laughed Leon
unconcernedly.
The afternoon was so sharply delectable, with the sky all pale gold in
the west, flinging them a remote, lukewarm smile like a Christmas
greeting from some half-reminiscent friend, the hearts of the two scouts
reflecting the beauty of the Christmas woods were so elated that they
could not all in a moment slide down from Mount Happiness into the
valley where danger and pain become realities.
But _now_ a volley of cries, frenzied and appealing, rang out over the
salt-marshes. Mingling with them--outshrilling them--came a call which
made each scout jump as if an arrow had struck him.
It was the weird hoot of an owl uttered by a human throat, shrill with
desperation, the signal call of the Owl Patrol--but with a violent note
of distress in it such as to their ears had never sharpened it before.
"_Gee whiz!_ Something's wrong--something's up! I'll wager 'twas Nix
Warren who hooted that time!"
Starrie Chase dropped his coral-laden branches upon the frozen ground.
"The Owls to the rescue!" he cried, and dashed toward the frozen
river-bank.