THE SOLEMN VOW
In less than an hour after the arrival of the trio the whole camp was
singing, “_Will you love me when my flivver is a wreck?_” But Pee-wee
paused not to participate in the honors paid to Townsend and Liz. He
deserted the old love for the new and betook himself to Memorial Cabin.
He found the scene quiet and restful after his strenuous journey. The
birds sang in the trees which enclosed the rustic cabin, squirrels,
darted from limb to limb and hurried up and down the trunks, and the sun
sent his playful rays down through the leafy branches. No sign was there
of Pee-wee’s unknown guest.
Having inspected his lonely domicile he returned to the turmoil of the
camp proper and entered the sacred precincts of the cooking shack where
he announced his arrival in camp to Chocolate Drop, the cook.
“I’m here,” said Pee-wee; “I’m back again.”
“I sees you is,” said Chocolate Drop, smiling all over. “You dun gwan to
lib on de hill?” he asked.
“I want eats and things for two scouts for three weeks,” Pee-wee
announced. “I’m going to do all the cooking and everything like on a—a
frontiers. Maybe I won’t be seen down here in camp at all even.”
This news, which might have been received with approbation by Ray
Blakeley and others, was regarded with consternation by Chocolate Drop.
However, he graciously supplied Pee-wee with commissary stores in
accordance with our hero’s request and for several days Pee-wee was so
busy with enthusiastic preparations for the reception of his unknown
guest that he was not seen in the main body of the camp. In the
seclusion of his retreat and the pre-occupation of hospitable
preparations he lived in sublime ignorance of the volcanic eruption
which was presently to engulf him.
For in planning his famous relay race Pee-wee had neglected to take into
consideration an important element of the scout nature. Relay races are
all right when there is nothing too seductive at the ends of them. In
the case of a relay race ending at a delightful summer camp the danger
of it becoming cumulative is very great.
Having completed his preparations for the reception of his unknown
guest, Pee-wee was seated one evening on the doorstep of Memorial Cabin
communing with nature and eating a luscious tomato. The rays of dying
sunlight painted the hills across the lake a vivid crimson and the
truant streams from his luscious refreshment painted his scout suit an
equally vivid hue. It seemed almost as if the sun were actually setting
in his face in a very riot of colorful glory. Intuition, bolstered by a
series of elaborate deductions, had convinced the lonely tenant of the
cabin that the time of fulfillment was at hand, that his solitary guest
would shortly appear. So strong was this conviction upon Pee-wee that he
had, by the exercise of tremendous will power, refrained from partaking
of his lonely, self-cooked meal, in consideration of the imminent
arrival of his mysterious companion. “I’m going to wait till eleven
o’clock,” he said, referring to his hospitable period of fasting,
“because anyway he ought to be here to-night, that’s the way I figure
it.”
Pee-wee was always quite himself when playing a part, and so far as he
was concerned, there was no living soul in all the country roundabout—no
one but his solitary companion, the last runner to receive his much
handled credential, hastening silently, like some stealthy Indian
emissary, toward his sequestered retreat. Cheerful voices could be heard
down at camp, but Pee-wee heeded them not. The inviting dinner horn
sounded and re-echoed from the hill’s across the darkening lake and for
a moment it tempted him with its suggestions of waffles and honey. But
he put these thoughts out of his mind with the redoubled resolution
that, he, the lonely host of Memorial Cabin, the hospitable hermit and
all that sort of thing, would not mingle with his kind, but remain in
magnificent and romantic isolation in his lair. He had boasted, indeed,
with such flaunting boasts as only he could utter, that neither he nor
his unknown friend would partake of a single meal in camp during the
visitor’s stay but would live like pioneers “on hunters’ stew that we
make ourselves and things like that.”
“I bet the two of you will be down for dinner the second day,” Roy
Blakeley had predicted.
“That shows how much you know about primitive life,” our hero had
thundered.
“It shows how much I know about your hunters’ stew,” Roy had said. “I
bet the two of you will be down for dinner after one grub on the hill.”
“If the stranger is able to walk,” Warde Hollister had said.
“Oh that’s understood,” Roy had agreed.
Our hero had contemplated these scoffers with characteristic scorn.
“That shows,” he had begun, then coming up for air proceeded in tones of
thunder, “that shows that you’re all parlor scouts—”
“What do you call yourself—a kitchen scout?” Roy had laughed.
“It shows how much you know about resolution and, and, and—solemn
vows—and pioneer life and surmounting obstacles by your own initials, I
mean initiatives and things like that, I bet you—I bet you—we don’t come
down to one single meal while he’s here. I bet you we don’t even come
down to find out what time it is, I bet you we don’t. I bet we tell time
by the sun. Even salt, I haven’t got any but I know how to get it from
rocks. I’m not going to even ask for it. Even matches we’re not going to
ask for. I bet we don’t come near Temple Camp” (he called it Temple Camp
as if by that formal designation to put it far away) “for _anything_.
Absolutely, positively—and definitely—we won’t come down for eats or
anything. So you needn’t expect to see us.”
“Thank goodness for that,” Roy had said.