Tom Slade with the Colors Part 26

At the scouts' float hard by the bridge, the troop's cabin launch, the _Good Turn_, partic.i.p.ant in many adventures, past and to come, lay moored.

Even the sophisticated Roscoe, who had never "bothered much with the kids," knew of this famous boat. There had been a photograph of it hanging in the Temple Camp office, with the face of Tom Slade peering out through the little hatchway. The sudden knocking of the hull against the float in the still night startled him, and as he looked down upon the moon-lit river with its black background of trees he fancied again that he saw the face of Tom Slade looking out from the hatchway of the boat.

"h.e.l.lo, there!" he called, though of course he knew no one was there.

Once over the bridge, he took a short cut through Morrell's Grove for the River Road.

"It's best to let well enough alone," he told himself; "what's past is past. I'm not going to worry about it now. If Ellsworth hadn't hauled me into this thing, and given me that spiel, I wouldn't be bothering my head about things that happened months ago. I'm not going to worry."

He was singularly moody and dissatisfied for a person who was not going to worry.

"Wish I could get that Blakeley kid out of my head," he reflected.

But he couldn't exactly get that Blakeley kid out of his head, and he couldn't get that face out of his mind, nor Mr. Ellsworth's stinging words out of his memory. So he stumbled along through the dark grove, thinking what he should say to the boys and how he should talk to Margaret Ellison so as not to let her suspect his troubled conscience and general feeling of--not exactly meanness and dishonor, but....

"Girls are such blamed fiends for reading your thoughts," he grumbled.

About halfway through the grove he stopped suddenly in the narrow path.

For there was that face again peering out of the darkness. There was a slouch hat on it this time, but the old familiar shock of hair protruded from under it and there was an ugly scar on the forehead.

"It's blamed dark in here," said Roscoe, as he pulled himself together.

A lonely owl answered with a dismal shriek from a distant tree, making the night seem still more spooky.

Roscoe tried to whistle to keep up his spirits, but as he walked on along the path the face, instead of fading away, seemed to become clearer, and he could have sworn that there was the dark outline of a form below it leaning against a tree. It was only his fancy enlivened by his conscience, he knew, but it took him back to a night months before, when he had stood in a remote mountain trail and watched a figure clinging to a tree, and he remembered how he had stood speechless and listened, as a man may watch a thunderstorm. No one in all the wide world but those two had known of that meeting.

"Or ever will," thought Private Bent.

Suddenly he paused again, and he, Private Roscoe Bent, who would take delight in canning the Kaiser, who would give his young life if need be, to make the world free for democracy, trembled like a leaf.

The figure had moved--he was sure of it. For a couple of seconds he could not speak, he was breathing so heavily.

"h.e.l.lo!" he finally managed to call.

"h.e.l.lo!" came a dull voice. "There ain't any need to be afraid," it added.

"_I_ couldn't hurt you. I can't see very good--is--it--you--Roscoe?"

Roscoe spoke not a word but went forward and cautiously felt of the figure, laid his hand on the heavy thick shoulder and peered into the face.

"Tom Slade," he muttered.

"I didn't know you in your soldier's coat," said Tom; "it makes you look so tall and straight and--brave----"

Still the soldier did not speak, only kept his hand upon Tom's shoulder and looked into his square ugly face. And again the ghostly hoot of the owl made the little patch of woods seem more spooky and lonesome.

Then Private Roscoe Bent, Second Infantry, U. S. A., who intended to help roll the Teuton lines back and smash militarism once and for all, who would go over the top with all the fine frenzy of his impulsive nature and send the blond beast reeling, slipped his arm farther over Tom's shoulder until Tom Slade could feel the warmth from the thick sleeve of Uncle Sam's big military coat upon his own bare neck and threadbare flannel shirt. And the handsome head with its wavy blond hair which Private Roscoe Bent knew how to hold with such a fine air, hung down against that threadbare shirt in anything but martial fashion.

"Oh, Tom--Tom Slade----" he said, a feeling of great relief taking possession of him. "I know what to do now--now I can _see straight_--as you used to say.--You've come--to show me the right way, just as you did before."

CHAPTER XXVI

ROSCOE BENT BREAKS HIS PROMISE

"There ain't so much more to tell," said Tom, in his old lifeless way.

"After that we got torpedoed. The officer said only sixteen could get on a raft, and there was a man who was anxious to get on and he made seventeen, so I got off. I guess I was the last one on the ship. She made an awful noise when she went down."

"Yes--and----"

"There's nothing else." Tom's reports of thrilling happenings were always provokingly tame and brief. "I swam around for about two hours, I guess. I had a piece of a door to hold on to. That scar's where a big wave banged me against it.--A schooner picked me up. I'd 'a' got picked up sooner, maybe, only I was the last one and I drifted away from the ship lane--sort of. It was going to South America after bananas, so they took me there."

"How'd you get back?"

"Came home on another ship. I worked cabin boy. They caught a German spy on the first ship."

It was quite like him not to tell how they _happened_ to catch the spy.

"And then you came right here?"

"They gave me dinner in the Sailors' Mission in New York, and then I started out here."

"You don't mean you _walked_?"

"I'm going to Mrs. O'Connor's in the Alley where I used to live--till I can get a job. I made two good friends, but I don't know whether they were drowned.--You look good in your soldier suit."

Roscoe had to get control of himself before he could answer.

"That's a screech-owl," said Tom; "hear him? When you get--when I was a scout we had to learn the calls of all the different birds."

"Never mind that. Why did you go on that ship?"

"I told you--I wanted to help with the Colors."

Roscoe struggled again with his voice.

"Don't you think you did enough for the Colors," he said thickly, "when you gave me this uniform? Don't you think that was enough?"

"I didn't give it to you."

"Sit down here a minute. Don't you think you did enough for the Colors when you started me--over the top? Don't you?"

"It wasn't me. Anyhow, you can't do too much for the Colors."

Roscoe paused with his hand on Tom's knee. "No, I guess you can't," he said.

"You never told anybody, did you?" Tom asked.