PARLOR SCOUTS
The three winners of the Rotary Club award were not altogether cheered
by the talk of their traveling acquaintance. They felt a trifle ashamed
and dissatisfied with themselves. Here was a brisk, resourceful,
adventurous man whose vocation seemed a very dream of romance. And he
looked upon them as nice boys playing an interesting game. He did not
take them seriously.
He regarded Shining Sun (or Stove Polish as he preferred to call him) as
a rare discovery—a real, all around, dyed-in-the-wool, little scout, a
scout whose skill and lore could be used in adventurous undertakings.
Amateurs! Nice boys! And they were about to have their reward of merit
for three exploits, the recital of which had not exactly staggered Mr.
Wilde. They were going to drive around Yellowstone Park in autos and
stop at the hotels and visit modern, well-equipped camps, and see the
petrified forests and the geysers.
And meanwhile an Indian boy was going into the unfrequented depths of
the vast park to do for white men what they could not do for themselves.
Descendent of savages though he was, and with the primitive vein
persisting in him, they took him seriously, these men; he was a real
little scout. Not a boy scout.
These were the thoughts, the reflections, of Westy Martin as he arose
saying in a rather disheartened tone, “Come on, let’s go out on the
platform and watch the scenery.”
The three boys staggered through the aisle of the car holding to the
seat backs as the rushing train swerved in its winding course among the
mountains. They had been but visitors in the smoking car and now in the
one next it they came to their own seats, which at night had been
transformed into berths.
On one of the seats lay a duffel bag containing the few camping utensils
which they had brought against the unlikely prospect of a night’s
bivouac in the open. Westy was glad that they had not exposed these
up-to-date devices to their acquaintance in the next car. He might have
commented flippantly on the collapsible or the folding frying pan. In a
previous encounter with that Philistine of the smoking car he had
inquired about the meaning of Westy’s treasured pathfinder’s badge, and
had said that when he was a boy he had often played hares and hounds and
hide-and-seek.
“Come on out in back,” said Warde.
They staggered on through the train holding the backs of seats to steady
their progress. All the passengers seemed weary, the cars littered and
hot and stuffy. Discarded newspapers and magazines lay on the seats and
floor. The passengers sprawled lazily in postures far from elegant. Only
the train seemed wide-awake and bent upon some definite purpose. It
roared and rattled and whistled and now and again a faint answering
whistle was heard from the distant mountains as if the ghost of some
locomotive long dead were concealed there.
In one of the cars a litter of sticky bits of tissue paper filled the
aisle in company of an empty box which had contained somebody or other’s
fresh lemon-drops. Westy was not the scout to pass by such a litter, he
had cleared up the luncheon rubbish after too many motoring parties for
that. But he did not stoop to this worthy task of the scout now. He was
not in the mood to be a menial, a housemaid scout; not with the exploits
of Shining Sun so fresh in his mind. He was thoroughly dissatisfied with
himself and he passed the litter by in proud disdain of it.
“Don’t you be a lemon-drop scout,” he said sneeringly to Warde, who was
just behind him.
“How did you know I was going to stoop?” Warde asked.
Ah, that was the question. It was because Westy Martin was a better
scout than he knew and like the true woodsman had eyes in the back of
his head.
“I’m kind of sorry we didn’t ask him if he’d let us go up in the forest
with him,” Warde said.
“A tall chance,” said Westy disconsolately.