A Scout of To-day Part 12

"That's just it! Ours is a slow little town--not much doing for the boys! Not even a male teacher in our graded schools to organize hikes and athletics for them! I am afraid that more than one lad with no natural criminal tendency, has got into trouble, been ultimately sent to a reformatory, owing to a lack in the beginning of some outlet safe and exciting for that surplus energy of which you speak. Take the case of Dave Baldwin, for instance, son of that old Ma'am Baldwin who lives over on the salt-marshes!" The doctor's face took on a sorry expression.

"There was nothing really bad in him, I think! Just too much tide rip!

He was the counterpart of this boy Leon, with a craving for excitement, a wild energy in him that boiled over at times in irregular pranks--like the rip--as you say."

"And you know what makes _that_ so dangerous?" Captain Andy's sigh was heaved from the depths of past experience. "Well! with certain shoals an' ledges in the ocean there's too much water crowded onto 'em at low tide, so it just boils chock up from the bottom like a pot, goes round and round in a whirl, strings out, foamy an' irregular, for miles. It's 'day, day!' to the vessel that once gets well into it, for you never know where 'twill strike you.

"And it's pretty much the same with a lively boy, Doc: at low tide, when there's nothing doing, too much o' something is crowded onto the ledges in him, an' when it froths over, it gets himself and others into trouble. Keep him interested--swinging ahead on a high tide of activity under all the sail he can carry, and there's no danger of the rip forming. That's what this Boy Scout Movement aims at, I guess! It looks to me--my word! it _does_ look to me--as if Leon was already 'deepening the water some,' to-night," wound up Captain Andy with a gratified smile, scrutinizing the face of Starrie Chase, which was at this moment marked by a new and purposeful eagerness as he discussed the various requirements of the tenderfoot test, the elementary knowledge to be mastered before the next meeting, ere he could take the scout oath, be invested with the tenderfoot scout badge and be enrolled among the Boy Scouts of America.

"A movement such as this might have been the saving of Dave Baldwin,"

sighed the Doctor. "He was always playing such wild tricks. People kept warning him to 'cut it out' or he would surely get into trouble. But the 'tide rip' within seemed too much for him. No foghorn warnings made any impression. I've been thinking lately of the saying of one wise man: 'Hitherto there has been too much foghorn and too little bugle in our treatment of the boys!' Too much croaking at them: too little challenge to advance! So I said to the new scoutmaster, Harry Estey, Colin's brother," nodding toward a tall young man who was the centre of the eager ring of boys, "I said, 'give Leon the _bugle_: give it to him literally and figuratively: you'll need a bugler in your boy scout camp and I'll pay for the lessons; it will be a better pastime for him than fixing my doorbell.'"

"I hope 'twill keep him from tormenting that lonely old woman over on the marshes; the boys of this town have made her life a burden to her,"

said Captain Andy, thinking of that female recluse "Ma'am Baldwin," to whom allusion had been made by Colin and Coombsie on the memorable day which witnessed their headstrong expedition into the woods. "She has been regarded as fair game by them because she's a grain cranky an'

peculiar, owing to the trouble she's had about her son. He was the youngest, born when she was middle-aged--perhaps she spoiled him a little. Come to think of it, Doc, I saw the young scape-grace a few days ago when I was down the river in my power-boat! He was skulking like a fox round those Sugar-loaf Sand-Dunes near the bay."

"How did he look?"

"Oh, shrunken an' dirty, like a winter's day!" Captain Andy was accustomed to the rough murkiness of a winter day on mid-ocean fishing-grounds. "He made off when he saw me heading for him. He's nothing but an idle vagrant now, who spends his time loafing between those white dunes and the woods on t' other side o' the river. He got work on a farm after he was discharged from the reformatory, but didn't stick to it. Other fellows shunned him, I guess! Folks say that he's been mixed up in some petty thefts of lumber from the shipyards lately, others that he keeps a row-boat stowed away in the pocket of a little creek near the dunes, and occasionally does smuggling in a small way from a vessel lying out in the bay. But that's only a yarn! He couldn't dodge the revenue officers. Anyhow, it's too bad that Dave should have gone the way he has! He's only 'a boy of a man' yet, not more'n twenty-three. When I was about that age I shipped on the same vessel with Dave's father--she was a trawler bound for Gran' Banks--we made more than one trip together on her. He was a white man; and--"

"_Captain Andy!_" A voice ringing and eager, the voice of the scoutmaster of the new patrol who had just received his certificate from headquarters, interrupted the captain's recollections of Dave Baldwin's father. "Captain Andy, will you undertake to instruct these boys in knot-tying, before our next meeting, so that they may be able to tie the four knots which form part of the tenderfoot test, and be enrolled as scouts two weeks from now?"

"Sakes! yes; I'll teach 'em. And if any one of 'em is such a lubber that he won't set himself to learn, why, I'll spank him with a dried codfish as if I had him aboard a fishing-vessel. Belay that!"

And the ex-skipper's eye roved challengingly toward the scout recruits from under the heavy lid and short bristling eyelashes which overhung its blue like a fringed cloud-bank.

The threat was welcomed with an outburst of laughter.

"And, Doctor, will you give us some talks on first-aid to the injured, after we get the new patrol fairly started?" Scoutmaster Estey, Colin's elder brother, looked now at the busy physician, who, with Captain Andy and other prominent townsmen, including the clergymen of diverse creeds, was a member of the local council of the Boy Scouts of America which had been recently formed in the little town.

"Yes; you may rely on me for that. But"--here the doctor turned questioningly toward the weather beaten sea-captain, his neighbor--"I thought the new patrol, the Owl Patrol as they have named it, was to consist of eight boys, and I see only seven present to-night. There's that tall boy, Nixon Warren, who's visiting here, and Mark Coombs, his cousin; then there's Leon Chase, Colin Estey, Kenjo Red, otherwise Kenneth Jordan," the doctor smiled at the red head of a st.u.r.dy-looking lad of fourteen, "Joe Sweet, commonly called Sweetsie, and Evan Macduff.

But where's the eighth Owl, Andy? Isn't he fledged yet?"

"I guess not! I think they'll have to tackle him in private before they can enlist him." The narrow rift of blue which represented Captain Andy's eye under the cloud-bank glistened. "You'll never guess who they have fixed upon for the eighth Owl, Doc. Why! that frightened boy, Ben Greer's son, who lives on the little farm-clearing in the woods with his gran'father and a Canadian farmhand whom Old Man Greer hires for the summer an' fall."

"Not Harold Greer? You don't mean that abnormally shy an' timid boy whom the children nickname the 'Hare'? Why! I had to supply a certificate for him so that he could be kept out of school. It made him worse to go, because the other boys teased him so cruelly."

"Jus' so! But that brand o' teasing is ruled out under the scout law. A scout is a brother to every other scout. I guess the idea of trying to get Harold enlisted in the Boy Scouts and thereby waking him up a little an' gradually showing him what 'bugaboos' his fears are, originated with that lad from Philadelphia, Nix Warren, who, as I understand, showed himself to be quite a fellow in the woods, starting a friction fire with rubbing-sticks an' doing other stunts which caused his companions to become head over heels interested in this new movement."

"But how did _he_ get interested in Harold Greer?" inquired the doctor.

"Well, as they trudged through the woods on that day when they made circus guys of themselves at Varney's Paintpot, and subsequently got lost, they pa.s.sed the Greer farm and saw Harold who hid behind that French-Canadian, Toiney, when he saw them coming. Apparently it struck Nix, seeing him for the first time, what a miserable thing it must be for the boy himself to be afraid of everything an' nothing. So he set his heart on enlisting Harold in the new patrol. He, Nix, wants to pa.s.s the test for becoming a first-cla.s.s scout: to do this he must enlist a recruit trained by himself in the requirements of a tenderfoot; and he is going to try an' get near to Harold an' train him--Nixon's cousin, Mark Coombs, Marcoo, as they call him, told me all about it."

"Well, I like that!" The doctor's face glowed. "Though I'm afraid they'll have difficulty in getting the eighth Owl sufficiently fledged to show any plumage but the white feather!" with a sorry smile. "I pity that boy Harold," went on the medical man, "because he has been hampered by heredity and in a way by environment too. His mother was a very delicate, nervous creature, Andy. She was a prey to certain fears, the worst of which was one which we doctors call 'cloister fobia,' which means that she had a strange dread of a crowd, or even of mingling with a small group of individuals. As you know, her husband, like Dave Baldwin's father, was a Gloucester fisherman, whose home was in these parts. During his long absences at sea, she lived alone with her father-in-law, her little boy Harold and one old woman in that little farmhouse on the clearing. And I suppose every time that the wind howled through the woods she had a fresh fit of the quakes, thinking of her husband away on the foggy fishing-grounds."

"Yes! I guess at such times the women suffer more than we do," muttered Captain Andy, thinking of his dead wife.

"Well!" the doctor cleared his throat, "after Harold's mother received the news that her husband's vessel was lost with all hands, on Quero Bank, when her little boy was about five years old, she became more unbalanced; she wouldn't see any of her relatives even, if she could avoid it, save those who lived in the house with her. I attended her when she was ill and begged her to try and get the better of her foolishness for her boy's sake--or to let me send him away to a school of some kind. Both Harold's grandfather and she opposed the latter idea.

She lived until her son was nine years old; by that time she had communicated all her queer dread of people--and a hundred other scares as well--to him. But in my opinion there's nothing to prevent his becoming in time a normal boy under favorable conditions where his companions would help him to fight his fears, instead of fastening them on him--conditions under which what we call his 'inhibitory power of self-control' would be strengthened, so that he could command his terrified impulses. And if the Boy Scout Movement can, under G.o.d, do this, Andy, why then I'll say--I'll say that knighthood has surely in our day come again--that Scout Nixon Warren has sallied forth into the woods and slain a dragon more truly, perhaps, than ever did Knight of the Round Table by whose rules the boy scouts of to-day are governed!"

The doctor's last words were more to himself than to his companion, and full of the ardor of one who was a dragon-fighter "from way back": day by day, for years, he had grappled with the many-clawed dragons of pain and disease, often taking no reward for his labors.

As his glance studied one and another of the seven boyish faces now forming an eager ring round the tall scoutmaster, while the date of the next meeting--the great meeting at which eight new recruits were to take the scout oath--was being discussed, he was beset by the same feeling which had possessed Colin Estey on that September morning in the Bear's Den. Namely, that the Owl Patrol would have a big contract on hand if it was to get the better of that mischievous "tide rip" in Leon and prove to the handicapped "Hare" what imaginary bugaboos were his fears!

But Leon's face in its purposeful interest plainly showed that, according to Captain Andy's breezy metaphor, to-night he was really deepening the water in which his boyish bark floated, drawing out from the shoals among which he had drifted after a manner too trifling for his age and endowment.

And so the doctor felt that there _might_ be hope for the eighth Owl chosen, and not present, being still a scared fledgling on that little farm-clearing in the woods, having never yet shaken a free wing, but only the craven white feather.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BOWLINE KNOT

Scout Nixon Warren, henceforth to be known as the patrol leader of the Owls, was himself possessed by the excited feeling that he was faring forth, into the October woods to tackle a dragon--the obstinate Hobgoblin of confirmed Fear--when on the day following that first boy scout meeting in Exmouth he took his way, accompanied by Coombsie, over the heaving uplands that lay between the salt-marshes and the woodland.

Thence, through thick grove and undergrowth, they tramped to the little farm-clearing, where they had come upon Toiney and the dead racc.o.o.n.

Nixon had arrayed himself in the full bravery of his scout uniform to-day, hoping that it might attract the attention of the frightened boy whose interest he wished to capture.

The October sun burnished his metal b.u.t.tons, with the oxidized silver badge upon his left arm beneath the white bars of the patrol leader, and the white stripe at his wrist recording his one year's service as a scout.

Because of the impression they hoped to produce, Marcoo too had donned the uniform, minus stripes and badge--the latter he would not be ent.i.tled to wear until after the all-important next meeting when, on his pa.s.sing the tenderfoot test, the scoutmaster would pin it on his shirt, but reversed until he should have proved his right to wear that badge of chivalry by the doing of some initial good turn.

But Marcoo, like his companion, carried the long scout staff and was loud in his appreciation of its usefulness on a woodland hike.

And thus, a knightly-looking pair of pilgrims, they issued forth into the forest clearing, bathed in the early afternoon sun.

As before, their ears were tickled afar off by the sound of a tuneful voice alternately whistling and singing, though to-day it was unaccompanied by the woodchopper's axe.

"That's Toiney!" said Marcoo. "Listen to him! He's just 'full of it'; isn't he?"

Toiney was indeed full to the brim and bubbling over with the primitive, zestful joy of life as he toiled upon the little woodland farm, cutting off withered cornstalks from a patch which earlier in the season had been golden with fine yellow maize of his planting. His lithe, energetic figure focused the sun rays which loved to play over his knitted cap of dingy red, with a bobbing ta.s.sel, over the rough blue shirt of homespun flannel, and upon the queer heelless high boots of rough unfinished leather, with puckered moccasin-like feet, in which he could steal through the woods well-nigh as noiselessly as the dog-fox himself.

As the two scouts emerged into the open he was singing to the sunbeams and to the timid human "Hare" who basked in his brightness, a funny little fragment of song which he ill.u.s.trated as though he had a sling in his hand and were letting fly a missile:--

"Gaston Gue, si j'avais ma fron-de, Gaston Gue, je te l'aurais fron-de!"

This he translated for Harold's benefit:--

"Gaston Gue, if I haf ma sling, Gaston Gue, at you I vould fling!"

"Well! you needn't 'fling' at us, Toiney," laughed Nixon, stepping forward with a bold front. "Hullo! Harold!" he added in what he meant to be a most winning tone.

"Hullo, Harold! How are _you_?" supplemented Marcoo in accents equally sugared.

But the abnormally timid boy, with the pointed chin and slightly rodent-like face, only made an indistinguishable sound in his throat and slunk behind some bushes on the edge of the corn-patch.

Toiney, on the other hand, was never backward in responding vivaciously to a friendly greeting.