CHAPTER XII
THE CHRISTMAS BRIGADE
"Estu preta!" During the days that followed, while the fall season wasmerged in winter, the Owls who had passed their outdoor tests in SparrowHollow, six of whom were tenderfeet no longer, but second-class scouts,did try to live up to their hearty motto. And this not only in thedevelopment of their strong young bodies by exercise and drill, so thatevery expanding muscle was under control, not only in the training oftheir mental faculties toward keen observation and alert action, butalso in the chivalrous practice of the little every-day kindness to manor beast--almost too trivial to be noticed, perhaps, yet preparing theheart for the rendering of a supreme good turn!
Thus the Owl Patrol presently began to be recognized as a patriotic andprogressive force. The Improvement Society of the little town sought itscooperation, and it soon became "lots more fun" to the boy scouts tolend a hand in making that too staid town a more beautiful and livelyplace to live in than to pile--as had often been the caseformerly--destruction on its dullness.
Under the direction of their energetic young scoutmaster they engaged inother crusades too, besides that against things ugly and retarding, incrusades for the rescue of many a needless and undue sufferer of theanimal kingdom, their most noted enterprise along these lines being anattack upon the use of the steel trap among boys, especially those ofthe woodland farms, whereby many a little fur-bearing animal met itsslow end in suffering unspeakable.
The use of this steel-jawed atrocity was bad enough in the hands of theone or two adult professional trappers of the neighborhood who visitedtheir traps regularly. (And it is to be hoped that the Boy Scouts ofAmerica, who champion the cause of their timid little brothers of thewoods, will some day sweep this barbarous contrivance altogether fromthe earth!) But its use by irresponsible boys who set the traps in copseor thicket, and, in the multitudinous interests of boydom, frequentlyforgot all about them for days--leaving the little animal lucklessenough to be caught to suffer indefinitely--is a cruelty too heinous toflourish upon the same free soil that yields such a fair growth ofchivalry as that embodied in the Scouts of the U.S.A.
One or two of the Owls, who shall remain incognito, had possessed suchtraps in the past: now, they took them out into a back yard, shatteredthem with a hammer, relegated the fragments to a refuse heap, andinstituted a zealous crusade against the use of the steel trap bynon-scouts of the neighboring farms, such as Godey Peck and his gang.
There was a hand-to-hand skirmish over this matter before the Owl Patrolhad its way; and the result thereof gave Godey cause for reflection.
"It hasn't made 'softies' of 'em anyhow, this scout movement," hesoliloquized. "They got the better _of us_. And they seem to have suchripping good times, hiking an' trailing! But--"
The demurring "but" in this boy's mind sprang from the proviso that ifhe enlisted in the Boy Scouts of America, he would be obliged, likeLeon, to part with his gun. Also, from a feeling that he would bedebarred in future from the planning of such lawless escapades asplaying stowaway aboard an unlaunched vessel; a scheme, it may be said,which was never carried through, being nipped in the bud by watchfulshipwrights!
Godey Peck was on the fence with regard to the new movement. And he didnot yet know on which side he would drop down. Meanwhile from hiswavering point of indecision, beset with discomfort, he soothed hisfeelings by renewed and vehement shouts of "Tin Scouts! Tin Soldiers!"whenever a khaki uniform and broad drab hat hove in view.
He had ample opportunity to air his feeble-shafted malice during theweek preceding Christmas, for scouts, in uniform and out of it, wereconstantly to be seen engaged in "hifalutin stunts," according to Godey,which meant that they had been organized into a brigade by thescoutmaster for the doing of sundry and many good turns befitting theseason.
It might be only the carrying of parcels, for a heavy-laden woman, whohad visited a distant city on a shopping expedition, from the littlerailway station on the edge of the yellow wintry salt-marshes to herhome! Or the bearing of gifts from a benevolent individual or society tosome poor or solitary human brother or sister who otherwise might forgetthe meaning of Christmas.
It was on behalf of one such person that Corporal Leon Chase--detailedfor duty on this brigade--took counsel with his mother on the afternoonof Christmas Eve.
"You don't suppose that _she'll_ stay alone in that old baldfaced houseto-day and to-morrow, do you, mother?" he said, rather ambiguously. "Thetown authorities ought to forbid her living on there all by herself;she'll be snowed in pretty soon if this cold snap continues. Why! theriver is all frozen over--ice fairly firm too. I'm going skating by an'by."
"I'd wait until it is a little more solid, if I were you," returned themother anxiously. "You know our brackish ice is apt to be treacherous;the salt in the water softens it, so your father says, renders it moreporous and unsafe. I suppose you were speaking of old Ma'am Baldwin. Idon't see what the authorities can do. They can't force her into aninstitution; she owns that old house. And I don't know that herdaughter's husband--little Jack's father--wants her in his home. It'stoo bad that her son Dave should have turned out such agood-for-nothing! Trouble about him has aged her, I guess; she's not asold as she seems."
Then Starrie Chase inveigled his dimpling mother into a pantry and,while she made passes at him with a rolling-pin, proceeded to whisperin her ear--with a measure of embarrassment, for he was not accustomedto himself in the role of alms-bearer. But in a shadowy corner withinhim, once tenanted by Malign Habit, there still lurked a vision whichsprang out on him at times, of an old woman raising her feeble arm toward him off: it caused him to grit his teeth and mutter: "I wish Icould do something more than to chop her wood occasionally!" And vaguelythe mental answer would come: "_Estu preta!_ At a time when you leastexpect it, you may find yourself up against the Big Minute!"
And in the mean time Starrie cornered his mother in the pantry--flouryshrine of Christmas culinary rites!--and presently listened,well-pleased, to her answer:--
"Yes! I'm glad that you put it into my head, son. I'll pack some thingsinto a basket for her, and you can take it across the marshes now. Itmust be bitterly lonely for her, poor old woman! And oh! Leon, as you'llbe in that direction, could you go on into the woods and get me some redberries for Christmas decorations?"
"Sure, mum!" And Leon stepped forth to speak to Colin Estey, who wasawaiting him at the rear of the Chase homestead, exercising in apreliminary canter a new pedalomotor which Santa Claus, masquerading asthe expressman, had dropped at his home a little too soon.
"Take care you don't run into a tree, smash it up, and drive a splinterthrough your nose, as Marcoo did when he got his, last year!" admonishedStarrie. "Say! Col, I can't go skating for a little while: I'm bound forthe woods first to get some alder-berries for decorations. Want tocome?"
"Guess so!"
"You can leave that 'pedalmobile' here. Wait a minute! Mother's justputting some Christmas 'grub,' mince-pies an' things, into a basket forold Ma'am Baldwin; we'll deposit it at her door as we go along!"
"How'd it be to write on it, 'Merry Christmas from the Owls'?" suggestedyoung Colin whimsically: "that would keep her guessing; she'd maybethink birds had come out o' the woods to feed her as they did Elijah orElisha of old."
So a card was tacked to the basket, on which was traced with a stub-endof colored chalk the outline of a perching owl, highly rufous as toplumage, with the proposed salutation beneath it.
But the two Owls who placed the gift did not find the recipient at home.That baldfaced house beyond the frost-spiked marshes was empty, itspaintless door, half screened by the icy boughs of the wind-beatenapple-tree, fast locked.
"I guess she's gone over to the town to spend Christmas Eve with herdaughter," suggested Colin. "She dotes on her gran'son, little JackBarry; he's quite a boy for nine years old! What shall we do with thebasket?"
"Raise that kitchen window an' slip it inside--the fastening's broken!"
"Say! but you're as barefaced
as the house." Colin hugged himself with asense of having got off a good joke as he watched Leon boldly raise theloose window and deposit the present within. "Let's put for the woodsnow!" he added, the deed accomplished.
And the two scouts climbed the uplands toward those midwinter woods thatcrowned the heights in dismantled majesty.
But they were not robbed of beauty, the December woods: the frostysunshine knew that as it picked out the berry-laden black aldersdisplaying their coral branches against the velvet background of a pine,and embraced the regiment of hemlock bushes, green dwarfs which,together with their full-sized brothers, held the fort for springagainst all the hosts of winter.
"Whee-ew! I think the woods are just dandy at this time o' year!" Leonled a whistling onslaught upon the vividly laden black alder bushes,while the white gusts of the boys' breath floated like incense throughthe coral and evergreen sanctuary of beauty, guarded by the silverypillars of white birch-trees, where, in the bare forest, Nature had notleft herself without a witness to joy and color.
"These berries are as red as Varney's Paintpot," laughed Colin by andby, as the two scouts retraced their steps across the salt-marshes,crunching underfoot the frozen spikes of yellow marsh-grass. "Well, wehad a great time on that day when we found the old Paintpot--though wesucceeded in getting lost!"
"We surely did! I wonder if the frost will hold, so that we'll have somegood skating after Christmas? It's freezing now." Leon's gaze strayedahead to the solid white surface of the tidal river, stained with amberby the setting sun.
They were within a hundred yards of it by this time, and caught theshrill cries and yells of boyish laughter from youthful skaters whocareered and pirouetted at a short, safe distance from the bank. But aclear view of what was going on was shut off from the two berry-ladenscouts, crossing the saffron marshes at a leisurely pace, by sometumble-down sheds that intervened between them and the river.
"Well, the kids seem to be having a good time on the ice anyhow--thoughI don't think it can be very firm yet. Whew! what's that?" exclaimedColin suddenly, as a piercing cry came ringing from the river-bankwhereon each blade of the coarse beach-grass glittered like a jeweledspike under the waning sunlight.
"Oh! _somebody_ is blowing off the smoke of his troubles," laughed Leonunconcernedly.
The afternoon was so sharply delectable, with the sky all pale gold inthe west, flinging them a remote, lukewarm smile like a Christmasgreeting from some half-reminiscent friend, the hearts of the two scoutsreflecting the beauty of the Christmas woods were so elated that theycould not all in a moment slide down from Mount Happiness into thevalley where danger and pain become realities.
But _now_ a volley of cries, frenzied and appealing, rang out over thesalt-marshes. Mingling with them--outshrilling them--came a call whichmade each scout jump as if an arrow had struck him.
It was the weird hoot of an owl uttered by a human throat, shrill withdesperation, the signal call of the Owl Patrol--but with a violent noteof distress in it such as to their ears had never sharpened it before.
"_Gee whiz!_ Something's wrong--something's up! I'll wager 'twas NixWarren who hooted that time!"
Starrie Chase dropped his coral-laden branches upon the frozen ground.
"The Owls to the rescue!" he cried, and dashed toward the frozenriver-bank.