It is now midwinter and more than a year has passed since Tom ran up
here early in September to see me after his return from Temple Camp. For
reasons you are to know about he did not pay me his usual call of
greeting this last fall. As I think it over now it seems to me his camp
must have closed early that year, for the weather was quite summery and
I was sitting on the porch when I saw that dilapidated Ford of his come
up the quiet street making a noise like a brass band run amuck. On the
side of this gorgeous chariot is printed TEMPLE CAMP, BLACK LAKE, NEW
YORK. But Temple Camp has long since repudiated this ramshackle car
which completed an honorable career in mountainous and rocky by-roads.
It is now Tom’s official equipage and will be, I think, till the end of
time.
“Tomasso,” said I, “I wish you would park that thing around the corner;
I’m afraid people will think it belongs to me.”
“What’s the matter with it?” he called from the curb. “I’m going to turn
it upside down and empty the motor out of it this winter and get it
ready for the Adirondack trails next spring. All she needs is a new
block--and a new body. She’s going to do some stepping next summer.”
“Yes, yes, explain all that,” I said, as he breezed up onto the porch
and grabbed my hand. “It’s good to see you, Tommy, old boy.”
He wore, as usual, a khaki-colored flannel shirt with trousers to match.
He never bothers about a scarf and, as he scorns a hat, the breeze
(especially when he is driving) plays havoc with his hair. I would say
that the most bizarre detail of his attire is a belt which he says is of
snakeskin. He got it from old Uncle Jeb Rushmore, the one time scout and
guide on the western plains, who is now ending his days as chief scout
at the big camp.
“Well, Tom,” I said; “What’s the good word?”
He sat on the railing unrolling his sleeves, as a trifling concession to
social propriety, I suppose. “I’ve been trying to get up here ever since
Saturday,” he said, “but we’re making a big map of the camp down at the
office--it’s going to be a peach, ’bout five feet square. They’re going
to photograph it down and send out copies with the spiel--you know that
booklet. By the way, do you want to buy a thousand dollars’ worth of
stock in a new camp? Up in the Adirondacks? _Leatherstocking_, how’s
that for a name?”
“It’s taken from a character in Cooper’s novels, in case you don’t
happen to know,” I commented dryly. And I added, “If I had a thousand
dollars to throw away I’d buy you a new car.”
“Well, the name fits pretty pat,” Tom said. “Did you ever hear of
Harrison McClintick, the leather king? I suppose maybe that’s why he
named his camp Leatherstocking. He’s a war millionaire; he made a
fortune in leather during the war.”
“Did he make leather stockings?” I asked.
“Listen to what I’m going to tell you,” said Tom, ignoring my
playfulness. “I’ve just come from Mr. Temple’s----”
“He’s the man to see if you want a thousand dollars,” I said. “Do you
wear your present regalia when you go up to Temple’s?”
“Sure, he doesn’t care,” Tom rattled on. “Listen, I want your advice and
I may want some help----”
“Not a thousand dollars,” I said. “They’re starting a new Golf Club down
at Cedarville and I’m interested in that, thank you.”
Tom extended his arms on either side of him, bracing his hands against
the railing on which he sat. “Listen,” he said, “I want to tell you
about something that happened this summer--I mean something I heard
about. If I can get Mr. Temple interested I’m going to do something
big.”
“Somehow I can’t picture you as a stock and bond salesman, Tom,” I said.
“That’s just the trouble,” he complained. “I wish I was ten years older,
then maybe Mr. Temple would listen to me. But you’ll listen to me, and
he’ll listen to you.”
“I’d do more for you than listen to you, Tommy, old boy,” I said. He was
so breezy and enthusiastic, so fresh and wholesome in his unconventional
attire, that I could not help letting a little ring of affection sound
in my words. “But it would be a terrible blow to me, Tom, if you should
get interested in business. To me you have always seemed the very spirit
of scouting.”
“No, but listen,” he continued eagerly. “Up at camp this summer a crew
of government surveyors blew in one day; they’re connected with the
Geologic Survey--nice chaps, all of them. All the scouts fell for them.”
“And then?”
“Well, they were there to make a survey of Beaver Chasm up in back of
the camp--you know the place.”
“You were going to take me there, but you never did,” I said. “You were
building cabins instead.”
“Forget it,” said Tom. “They spent a couple of nights with us at
campfire; they’ve been in the Florida Everglades and up in Alaska and
down the Mississippi on levee work and gosh knows where all. Well last
summer, before they hit Temple Camp neighborhood, they were surveying up
in the Adirondacks around Lake Placid. After that they hit it for
Ausable Chasm. About ten miles east of the boundary of the Adirondack
Park--I know just about where it is--they got into a pretty punk road
that led around north of a mountain. Hogback--ever hear of it? Well,
they drove along and all of a sudden the road ended--plunk. Right in the
middle of the woods. That’s the way it is with a lot of roads up there
in the Adirondacks. Well, there was a trail, a sort of continuation of
the road. Of course they couldn’t drive, but they hiked in about a mile
or so and ran right into a camp--_now wait_!”
“I’m all ears,” I said.
“They were in one of those rich men’s camps--those places are all
through the Adirondacks, you know. There was a lake about half a mile
across, a fine hunting lodge--big chimney-place and everything. Yes,
I’ve seen it myself! I took a run up there before I came home. The
hunting lodge is, oh, maybe, fifty by a hundred, all rough stone.
Outbuildings and everything! Regular millionaire’s camp!”
“Go on,” I said, laughing at his enthusiasm. “Did you meet the
millionaire?”
“Nah, he wasn’t there; the place is for sale. There were just a couple
of game wardens bunking there when the surveyors saw the place. When I
was there week before last there wasn’t a soul. But I saw a deer--saw
two of ’em. So you see it’s not much like Times Square. _Oh man alive_,
that’s some wilderness up there. Why, when I went back to Temple Camp I
thought I was on Broadway.
“So I didn’t learn anything when I was there, only I saw the place. Oh
boy, what a place for trout fishing--regular mountain streams, you know,
rocks and everything. Well, now here’s what the surveyors told me--I’ll
give you an idea of the place afterwards.”
“Any golf up there?” I coyly ventured.
“There you go with your golf!” he hurried on. “No, there’s no golf. But
if you want to get your shoes shined or your suit dry cleaned--you old
front porch shark--you can go to Plattsburg about twenty miles away,
over the mountains.”
“Do the buses run often?” I asked.
He ignored my query and hurried on. “Well, now that camp is owned by
Harrison McClintick who made _millions_ in leather during the war. He
made holsters for pistols, and leather belts, and with the odds and ends
he made leather buttons, and the strips that couldn’t be used for
leather buttons or puttee laces, he made into shoelaces. By the time he
got through with a leather hide there wasn’t enough left to clog up a
fountain pen.”
“Fancy that,” I commented.
“Yes sir; well, to make a long story short, that place, _Leatherstocking
Camp_, is for sale, and it can be bought _cheap_. Now wait a minute, I’m
going to tell you something--keep still.”
“Proceed,” I said with quiet dignity.
“Now what do you say to that place for a scout camp? You’ve heard a lot
of talk--Mr. Temple himself started it--about a training camp for
scoutmasters. There’s the spot, made to order! What I want you to do is
talk to Mr. Temple about it, so as he’ll talk with the local
council--maybe the national council.”
I am afraid that I must have looked very practical and sober to poor
Tom. I remember laying my open hands finger to finger with the first
fingers against my pursed lips as I contemplated him rather dubiously.
“Want _me_ to speak to Mr. Temple?” I queried ruefully.
“Sure, why not?”
“Hmph,” I mused. “But tell me, Tommy boy, why does Mr. Harrison
McClintick, the leather king millionaire, want to sell his romantic camp
in the wilderness?”
“Now you’re talking,” said Tom. “Listen----”
“Let’s go indoors and listen,” I said, rising.
“There was a tragedy up there,” Tom said.
“Well!” I commented. And then, happening to glance out toward the
street, I said, “Do you know that man standing near your car, Tom?”
“He looks like a hobo,” Tom said.
He did indeed; I think he was the most dubious looking person that I
ever beheld. His clothing was in the last stages of wear, and he had a
scraggly beard which somehow suggested neglect of shaving rather than a
preference for that style of adornment. At the distance from which I saw
him, he might have been either young or old. I suppose no man with a
beard looks very young. More than once he had glanced furtively toward
the porch. However, I had not thought it worth while to interrupt Tom’s
eager narrative. But now that we were going indoors I called attention
to him.
“He can hardly have designs on your car,” I observed ironically, as we
sauntered into the house.
Little did I dream of the part that this loitering stranger was to play
in our two lives. I soon forgot him in the appalling story which my
young friend proceeded to tell me. Yet already that prowling figure was
cast in the drama in which Tom and I were to play our parts. Already the
springs of action were moving which were later to produce a thrilling
drama at lonely Leatherstocking Camp.