CHAPTER XVII
THE SIGNALMAN
"Patrol leaders and corporals, muster your men!" The voice of the youngscoutmaster rang sharply out upon the night.
The three boy patrols, Owls, Seals, and Foxes, who fell quickly intoline at his order, were no longer surrounding their camp-fire amid thedusky sand-hills. That had been deserted even while Toiney was speaking,while he was pointing out the claims of a larger fire on theirattention.
From the glare in the sky this was evidently a threatening blaze; itsfierce reflection overhung like an intangible flaming sword the trio ofrecently erected summer residences about quarter of a mile from thescouts' camp--those handsome bungalows from which the summer birds hadflown.
"That's no brush fire," Scoutmaster Estey had exclaimed directly hesighted the glare. "It's a building of some kind. Come on, fellows;there's work for us here!" And snatching one of the two camp-lanternsfrom its sandy pedestal he led the way across the dark wilderness of thedunes.
Nixon caught up the second luminary and followed his chief. In theirwake raced the three patrols, down in a sandy hollow one moment,climbing wildly the next, tearing their way through the plumed tangle ofbeach-grass and other vegetation that capped each pale mound now swathedin blackness, Toiney keeping Harold by his side.
"It isn't one of the houses, thank goodness! Only a big shed!" cried thescoutmaster as they neared the scene of the fire, where golden flamestore in two the darkness that cowered on either side of them, havinggained complete mastery of an outbuilding which had been used as amodest garage during the summer.
"_Whee-ew!_ Gracious!" Nixon vented a prolonged whistle ofconsternation. "Why! 'twas into that very shed that we saw DaveBaldwin--or the man whom we took for him--disappear a couple of hoursago."
But the demands of the moment were such, if the three houses were to besaved, that the remark, tossed at random into the darkness, was lostthere amid the reign of fiery motes and rampant sparks that strove tocarry the destruction farther.
"Luckily, the wind isn't setting toward the house--it's mostly inanother direction!" The scoutmaster by a breathless wave of his blinkinglantern indicated the largest of the three bungalows to which theblazing outbuilding belonged. "No hope of saving that shed! But if thelittle wood-shed near-by catches, the house will go too. We may head thefire off!"
It was then that he issued the ringing order to patrol leaders and thosesecond in command to muster their men.
And as the boy scouts fell into line, while Toiney was muttering,aghast: "Ah, _quel gros feu_! She's beeg fire! How we put shesout--engh?" the alert brain of the American scoutmaster had outlined hisplan of campaign; and the air cracked with his orders:--
"Toiney, take the Owls and break into that clam-digger's shack on thebeach: get his pails! Foxes and Seals form a line to the beach; fill thepails as you get them an' pass 'em along to me! Tide's high; you needonly wade in a little way! Hey! Leon,"--to Corporal Chase, who wasobeying the first order with the rest of his patrol,--"you're good atsignaling: take these lanterns, get up on the tallest sand-hill an'signal Annisquam Lighthouse; tell them to get help! Men there canprobably read semaphore!"
"_We_ may not be able to prevent the fire's spreading. And if it attacksthat bungalow, the others will go too--the whole colony! Lighthouse menmay take the glare in the sky to mean only a brush-fire," added thescoutmaster, _sotto voce_, as he stationed himself upon the crest of thesandy slope that led from the burning shed to the dim lapping water.
That doomed shed was now blazing like a mammoth bonfire. The flamesflung their gleeful arms out, seizing a solemn gray birch-tree for apartner in their wild dance, scattering their rosy fire-petals broadcastuntil they lodged in the roof of the wood-shed adjacent to the house,and upon the piazza of the bungalow itself.
But they had a trained force to reckon with in the boy scouts. In theclam-digger's shack were found more than a dozen pails which their ownerhad cleaned and set in order before he went home that evening. And amongthe excited raiders who seized upon them with wild eagerness was HaroldGreer--Harold who a year ago was called "poltron" and "scaree" even bythe friend who protected him--Harold, with the last wisp of bugbearfear that trammeled him burned off by the contagious excitement of themoment--acquitting himself sturdily as a Scout of the U.S.A!
Under his patrol leader's direction he took his place in the chain ofboys that formed from the conflagration to the wave-edge of the beach,where half a dozen of his comrades rushed bare-legged into the howlingtide, filled the pails and passed them along, up the line, to theirscoutmaster on the hill.
And he held to his place and to his duty stanchly, did the one-time"poltron," even when Toiney, his mainstay, was summoned to the hill-top,to aid the commander-in-chief in his direct onslaughts upon the fire.Seeing which, Scout Warren touched his shoulder once proudly, inpassing, and said in a voice huskily triumphant: "Well done, Harold! Ialways knew you were a boy!"
The dragon which had held sway upon that woodland clearing was slain atlast, and the scars which he had left upon his victim were beingcauterized by the fire.
"Go to it, boys! Good work! That's fine!" rang out the commanding shoutof the scoutmaster above the sullen roar of semi-defeated flames and thehiss of contending elements.
"_Houp-la!_ _Ca c'est bien!_ Dat's ver' good!" screamed Toiney airilyfrom his perch atop of a ladder which he had found in the wood-shed.
From this vantage-point he was deluging with salt water the roof of thesmaller shed and also the walls of the bungalow wherever a fire-seedlodged, ready to take root. Like a huge monkey he looked, swarming upthere, with the flame-light dancing deliriously upon his dingy red cap!But his voice would put merriment into any exigency.
"_Houp-e-la!_ We arre de boy! We arre de bes' scout ev'ry tam'!" hecarolled gayly, as he launched his hissing pailfuls at each threatenedspot. "_Continue cette affaire d'eau_--go on wit' dis watere bizness. Wedone good work--engh?"
So they were, doing very good work! But the issue was still exceedinglydoubtful as to whether, without any proper fire-fighting apparatus, theycould hold the flames in check, restricting their destruction to thelarge shed whose roof toppled in with a resounding crash, and avolcano-like eruption of sparks.
And what of Leon? What of Corporal Chase, alone upon the tallestsand-hill he could pick out, a solitary scout figure remote from hiscomrades with the dune breeze shrieking round him?
What were his feelings as he shook his two bright signaling lanternsaloft at arm's length, to attract the attention of the men who kept thedistant lighthouse beyond the dunes at the mouth of another tidal river,and then spelled out his message with those flashing luminaries, insteadof the ordinary signal-flags: "Fire! Get help! House afire! Get help!"calling assistance out of the black night?
Well! Starrie Chase was conscious of a monster thrill shooting throughhim to his feet which firmly pressed the sandy soil: breaking up into ahundred little thrills, it made most of the sensations which he hadmisnamed excitement a year ago seem tame, thin, and unboyish.
He stood there, an isolated, sixteen-year-old boy. But he knew himself atrained force stronger than the "mad-cat" wind that clawed at him, thanthe tide which moaned behind him, even than the fire he combated;stronger always in the long run than these, for he was growing into aman who could get the better of them ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
He was a scout, in line with the world's progress, allied with rescue,not ruin, with healing, not harm, with a chivalry that crowned all.
"Fire! Get help!" Thus he kept on signaling at intervals, his left armextending one flashing lantern at arm's length, while the companionlight was lowered to his knees for the formation of the first letter ofthe message. And so on, the twin lights held at various anglesillumining the youthful signalman until he stood out like a black statueon a pedestal among the lonely dunes.
To Starrie Chase that sand-peak pedestal seemed to grow into a mountainand his uniformed figure to tower with it--become colossal--in theexcitement of the
moment!
While, not twenty yards distant, behind a smaller sand-hillock, crouchedanother figure whose half-liberated groan the wind caught and tossedaway like a feather as he gazed between clumps of beach-grass at thegesturing form of the scout.
It was the same figure which had haunted the dunes, listening to thecamp-fire revelry upon the boy scouts' first night in camp, the samewhich had so suddenly appeared upon the marshes near the pup-seal'screek.
But distress seemed now to lie heavier upon that vagrant figure,instead of diminishing. For, as he still studied the light-girdled formof the signalman, Dave Baldwin vented a groan full and unmistakable, andblew upon a pair of burned hands.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE LOG SHANTY AGAIN
"This fire has been the work of some incendiary--that's what I think!"was the opinion delivered later that night by the captain of the nearestfire-brigade, who, with his company, had been summoned by Leon'ssignaled message, passed on via telephone wires by the lighthouse men.
"Of course, it may have been a case of accident or spontaneouscombustion, but the former seems out of the question, seeing that thehouses were empty, and the latter not probable," went on the grizzledchief. "Anyhow, I congratulate you on your boys, Mr. Scoutmaster! Underyour leadership they certainly did good work in saving this whole summercolony."
"So they did; I'm proud of them!" returned the scoutmaster impulsively,which made the three patrol leaders within hearing, Scout Warren of theOwls, Godey Peck of the Foxes, and Jesse Taber of the Seals, straightentheir tired bodies, feeling repaid.
"Well! I expect you'll see one or two officers landing upon theseSugarloaf Dunes to-morrow, to try and get at the cause of the fire,"said the chief again. "It started in that shed where, so far as we know,there was nothing inflammable."
"I ought to tell you," Scoutmaster Estey looked very grave, "that two ofmy scouts saw a man entering the shed," pointing to what was now a meresmouldering heap of ashes, "just about an hour, or a little over, beforethe fire broke out. When they first caught sight of him he was on thepiazza of the bungalow itself, and seemed trying to get into the house."
"Ho! Ho! I thought so. This is a case for the district police, I guess!"muttered the grizzled fire-chief.
That was the opinion also of the police representatives who landed uponthe white dunes from a motor-boat early the next morning. And when thesharp questioning of one of the officers brought out the fact that theindividual who had lurked about the scene of the fire was believed to bea youthful ne'er-do-weel, Dave Baldwin, with a prison record behind him,whose name was known to the two policemen, though his person was not,suspicion fastened upon that vagrant as possibly the malicious authorof the fire.
"That fellow first got into trouble through a morbid craving forexcitement," said one of the officers. "The same craving _may_ have ledhim on from one thing to another until he hasn't stopped atarson--especially if he had a spiteful motive for it, which is likelywith a tramp. That may have been his purpose in trying to enter thehouse."
"I can scarcely imagine Dave's having become such an utter degenerate,"answered the scoutmaster sadly. "I went to school with him long ago. AndCaptain Andy Davis knew his father well; they were shipmates on morethan one trawling trip to the Grand Banks. Captain Andy speaks of theelder David Baldwin as a brave man and a big fisherman. Even if the sondid start this fire, it may have been accidental in some way."
"Well! we must get our hands on him, anyhow," decided the officer. "Iwonder if he's skulking round among the dunes still; that's notprobable? I'd like to know whether any one of these observant boy scoutsof yours saw a boat leave this shore since daybreak?"
It transpired that Coombsie had: after a night of unprecedentedexcitement--like his tossing brother scouts who sought the shelter oftheir tents about one o'clock in the morning--he had been unable tosleep, had crept out of his tent at daybreak and climbed a whitesand-hill, to watch the sun rise over the river.
"I saw a rowboat shoot out of a little creek farther up the river, Ishould say about half a mile from the dunes," said Marcoo. "There wasonly one person in it; seemed to me he was acting rather queerly; he'drow for a while, then stand up in the stern and scull a bit, then rowagain."
"Could you see for what point he was heading?"
"For the salt-marshes high up on the other side of the river, I guess! Ithink he landed there."
"Then, he's probably hiding in the woods beyond the marshes. We mustsearch them. That French-Canadian, Toiney Leduc, who's camping with you,has worked as a lumberman in those woods; he knows them well, and is agood trailer. I'd like to have him for a guide this morning." Here theofficer turned to the scoutmaster. "And if you have no objection I thinkit would be well that those two boys should come with us," he noddedtoward Scouts Warren and Chase. "They can identify the man whom they sawtrying to enter that bungalow last night."
There is nothing at all inspiriting about a man-hunt; so Nixon and Leondecided when, within an hour, they landed from the police boat on thefamiliar salt-marshes high up the river, and silently took their wayacross them, in company with Toiney and the policemen, over the uplandsinto the woods.
They had come upon the fugitive's boat, hidden among a clump of bushesnear the river. Using that as a starting-point, Toiney followed DaveBaldwin's trail into the maze of woodland; though how he did so was tothe boy scouts a problem, for to them it seemed blind work.
But the guide in the tasseled cap, blue shirt, and heelless high boots,would stop now and again at a soft spot on the marshes or uplands, orwhen they came to a swampy patch in the woods; at such times he wouldgenerally drop on all fours with a muttered: "Ha! _V'la ses pis!_" inhis queer patois. "Dere's heem step!" And anon: "Dere me fin his feetsagain!"
When there was no footprint to guide him Toiney would stoop down andread the story of the dry pine-needles, just faintly disturbed by thetoe of a rough boot which had kicked them aside a little in passing.
Or he would carefully examine a broken twig, the wood of which, beingwhitish and not discolored, showed that it had been recently snapped bya tread heavier than that of a fox; and again they would hear him mutterin his quaint dialect: "_Tiens! le tzit ramille casse_: de littal stickbroke! I'll t'ink hees step jus' here--engh?"
It was a lesson in trailing which the two boy scouts never forgot asthey took their way through the thick woods, fairly well known to themnow, past Varney's Paintpot, Rattlesnake Brook, and other points ofinterest.
Ere they reached the Bear's Den, however, the trail which Toiney hadbeen following seemed to turn off at an angle and then double backwardthrough the woods, in an opposite direction to that in which they hadbeen pursuing it.
"Mebbe she's no' de same trail?" pondered the guide aloud. "Mebbe dere'soder man's feets, engh?"
It was now that a sudden idea, a swift memory, struck Scout Warren.
"Say! Starrie," he exclaimed in a low tone to his brother scout. "Do youremember our looking all over that loggers' camp last year, the shantyback there in the woods, with the rusty grindstone trough and mountainof sawdust beside it? We found some fresh tobacco ash on the table andin one of the bunks which showed that, though the shanty was deserted insummer, somebody was using it for a shelter at night. That somebody mayhave been Dave Baldwin."
"Yes, they say he has spent his time--or most of it--loafing among thedunes or in the woods," returned Leon, well recalling the incident andhow, too, he had scoffed at the boy scout for taking the trouble to readthe sign story told by every article in and about the rough shanty,including the overturned trough.
"Eh! what's that, boys?" asked one of the two policemen, catching partof the conversation.
As in duty bound they told him; and the search party turned in thedirection of the log shanty.
As they surmised it was not empty. On the discolored mattress in thelower bunk left there by the lumbermen who once occupied it, wasstretched the figure of a man, fast asleep. One foot emerging from acharred, torn trouser-leg which looked as if it
had come into contactwith fire, hung over the edge of the deal crib.
When the party filed into the shanty the sleeper started up and rubbedhis eyes. At sight of the two policemen his smudged face took on apinched pallor.
"I didn't do it on purpose!" he cried in the bewilderment of this suddenawakening, without time to collect his senses. "So help me! I nevermeant to set that shed on fire!"
"You were seen hanging round there an hour before the blaze broke out,and trying to get into the house too," challenged the elder of thepolicemen.
Dave Baldwin slipped from the bunk to the ground; he saw that his bestcourse lay in making a clean breast of last night's proceedings.
"So I was!" he said. "And these two fellows," he pointed to the boyscouts, "saw me up on the piazza of the house, trying a window. I washungry; I'd had nothing to eat all day but the last leg of a woodchuckthat I knocked on the head day before yesterday. I thought the summerpeople who had just gone away might have left some canned stuff orremnants o' food behind 'em. I didn't want to steal anything else, or todo mischief!" he went on with that same passionate frankness of a manabruptly startled out of sleep, while the policemen listened patiently."I didn't, I tell ye! I'd been hangin' round those Sugarloaf Dunes fornigh on two weeks, watching the boys who were camping there, having aripping good time--doing a lot o' stunts that I knew nothingabout--wishing I'd had the chanst they have now!"
"How came you to go into the shed that was burned down?" asked one ofthe officers.
"I was hungry, as I tell you, an' I couldn't get into the house, so Ithought I'd lie down under the nearest cover, that shed, go to sleep an'forget it. I guess I knocked the ashes out o' my pipe an' dozed. Smokean' the smell o' wood burning woke me. I found one side o' the shed wason fire. Maybe, some one had left an oily rag, or one with turpentine onit, around, and the spark from my pipe caught it. I don't know! I triedto stamp out the fire--to beat it out with my hands!" He extendedblistered palms and knuckles. "I've made a mess o' my life I know! But Iain't a crazy fire-bug!"
"Why didn't you try and get help to fight it?"
"I was too scared. I thought, likely as not, nobody would believe me,seeing I had a 'reformatory record,'" the youthful vagrant's facetwitched. "I was afraid o' being 'sent up' again, so I hid among thedunes and crossed to the woods this morning."
"Well, you can tell all that to the judge; you must come with me now,"said the older policeman inflexibly, not unkindly; he knew that men whensuddenly aroused from sleep usually speak the truth; he was impressed bythe argument of those blistered palms; on the other hand, the youthfulvagrant's past record was very much against him.
But those charred palms were evidence enough for Toiney; though theymight leave the officers of the law unconvinced.
"Ha! _courage_, Dave," he cried, feeling an emotion of pity mingle withthe contempt which he, honest Antoine, had felt for the _vaurien_ whohad caused his old mother's heart to burst. "_Bon courage_, Dave! I'llno t'ink you do dat, for sure, me. Mebbe littal fire fly f'om you' pipe.I'll no t'ink you do dat for de fun!"
"We don't think you did it on purpose, Dave," struck in the two boyscouts, seconding their guide.
Nevertheless, Dave Baldwin passed that night in a prison cell andappeared before the judge next morning with the certainty confrontinghim that he would be remanded to appear before the higher court on thegrave charge of being an incendiary.
And it seemed improbable that bail would be offered for the prisoner, sothat he would be allowed out of jail in the mean time.
Yet bail was forthcoming. A massive, weatherbeaten figure, well known inthis part of Essex County, stood up in court declaring that he was readyand willing to sign the prisoner's bail bonds. It was Captain AndyDavis.
And when all formalities had been gone through, when the prisoner wasliberated until such time as his case should come up for trial, CaptainAndy took him in tow.
"You come along home with me, Dave!" he commanded. "I'm going to put itup to you straight whether you want to live a man's life, or not."
And so he did that evening.
"I've been wanting to get hold of you for some time, Dave Baldwin," saidthe sea-captain. "Your father an' I were shipmates together on more'none trip. He was a white man, brave an' hard-working; it's hard for meto believe that there isn't some o' the same stuff in his son."
The youthful ne'er-do-weel was silent. Captain Andy slowly went on:--
"As for the matter of this fire, I don't believe you started it onpurpose. I doubt if the policemen who arrested you do! It's your pastrecord that's against you. Now! if I see the district attorney, DaveBaldwin," Captain Andy's eyes narrowed meditatively under the heavylids, "and succeed in getting this case against you _nol prossed_--Iguess that's the term the lawyer used--it means squashed, anyhow, do youwant to start over again an' head for some port worth while?"
"Nobody would give me the chance," muttered the younger man huskily.
"I will. I've bought a piece of land over there on the edge of thewoods, lad; it ain't more'n half cleared yet. I'm intending to start afarm. But I don't know much about farming; that's the truth!" The grandold Viking looked almost pathetically helpless. "But you've worked on afarm, Dave, when you were a boy and since: if you want to take hold an'help me--if you want to stick to work an' make good--this is yourchance!"
An inarticulate sound from the _vaurien_; it sounded like a sob bittenin two by clenched teeth!
"The two boys who were with the officers who arrested you told me thatyou declared you'd been hangin' round the Sugarloaf Dunes lately,watching those scouts at their signaling stunts an' the like, an'wishing that you'd had the chance they have now, when you were a boy.Well! _theirs_ is a splendid chance--better than boys ever had before,it seems to me--of joining the learning o' useful things with fun."Captain Andy planted an elbow emphatically upon a little table near him."Now! Dave, you don't want to let those boy scouts be the ones to do thegood turns for your old mother that you should do? If you ain't set onbreaking her heart altogether--if you want to be a decent citizen of thecountry that raises boys like these scouts--if you want to see your ownsons scouts some day--well, give us your fin, lad!"
The captain's voice dropped upon the last words, the semi-comicalwind-up of a peroration broken and blustering in its earnestness.
There was a repetition of the hysterical sound in Dave Baldwin's throatwhich failed to pass his gritting teeth. He did not extend his hand atCaptain Andy's invitation. But his shoulders heaved as he turned hishead away; and the would-be benefactor was satisfied.
"And so Captain Andy is going to stand back of Dave Baldwin and give himanother chance to make good in life!" said the Exmouth doctor, member ofthe Local Council of Boy Scouts, when he heard what had come of thevagrant's arrest. "That's like Andy! And I don't think he'll have muchdifficulty with the district attorney; nobody really believes thatBaldwin started that fire maliciously, and the district attorney will bevery ready to listen to anything Captain Andy has to say!"
Here the doctor's eye watered. He was recalling an incident which hadoccurred some years before at sea, when the son of that districtattorney, who did not then occupy his present distinguished position,and the doctor's own son, with one or two other young men of DaveBaldwin's age, had been wrecked while yachting upon certain ragged rocksof Newfoundland, owing to their foolhardiness in putting to sea when astorm was brewing.
At daybreak upon an October morning their buffeted figures were sighted,clinging to the rocks, by the lookout on the able fishing vessel,Constellation, of which Captain Andrew Davis was then in command.
The furious gale had subsided. But as Captain Andy knew, the greatestdanger to his own vessel lay in the sullen and terrible swell of the"old sea" which it had stirred up.
Nevertheless, the Constellation bore down upon the shipwrecked men,getting as near to them as possible, without being swept on to the rocksherself.
Then Captain Andy gave the order to put over a dory, stepped into it,and called for a v
olunteer. Twice, to and fro through the towering swellof the old sea, went that gallant little dory. She was smashed tokindling wood on her second trip, but not before the men in her could behauled aboard the Constellation with ropes--not before every member ofthe yachting party was saved!
"And I guess if Captain Andy wants a chance to haul Dave Baldwin off therocks where the old sea stirred up by the gusts of his own waywardnessand wrongdoing have stranded him, the district attorney won't stand inthe way!" said the doctor to himself.
His surmise proved correct.
* * * * *
It was just one month after the fire upon the dunes that the threepatrols of boy scouts, Owls, Foxes, and Seals, assembled at a point ofrendezvous upon the outskirts of the town, bound off upon a longSaturday hike through the October woods.
But some hearts in the troop were at bottom heavy to-day, though on thesurface they rose above the feeling.
For it was the last woodland hike, for the present, that Scout Warren ofthe Owls would take with his patrol. The return of his parents fromEurope was expected during the coming week; and he--now with two whitestripes upon his arm, signifying his two years of service in the BoyScouts of America, wearing also the patrol leader's bars and first-classscout badge--would rejoin his Peewit Patrol in Philadelphia.
However, his comrades' regrets were softened by Nixon's promise that hewould frequently visit the Massachusetts troop with which he had spentan exciting year, and which, unintentionally, he had been instrumentalin forming.
And on this brilliant October Saturday Assistant Scoutmaster ToineyLeduc, perceiving that the coming parting was casting a faint shadowbefore, exerted himself to banish that cloudlet as the troop started onits hike.
"_Houp-e-la!_ We arre de boy! We arre de stuff! We arre de bes' scoutev'ry tam'!" he shouted with an _esprit de corps_ which found its echoin one breast at least--that of the terrier, Blink, who to-day caperedwith the troop as its mascot. "We arre de bes' scout; _n'est-ce pas_,mo' smarty?" And Toiney embraced Harold, marching at his side--Harold,whose lips turned up to-day and every day now in the scout's smile, forsince the night of the dune fire had not each of his comrades and thescoutmasters too, kept impressing on him that he had "behaved like alittle man and a good scout" at duty's call!
There were individuals among the onlookers, too, watching the threepatrols march out of the town that morning, who shared Toiney'sprimitive conceit that they were the "best scouts"; or at least fairlyon the way to being a model troop.
Little Jack Baldwin, gazing at his rescuers, Scouts Warren and Chase,Marcoo and Colin Estey, marching two and two at the head of the leadingpatrol, clapped his hands and almost burst his heart in wishing that hecould be twelve years old to-morrow so that he might enlist as atenderfoot scout.
Whereupon his old grandmother smilingly bade him "take patience," forthe two years which now separated him from his heart's desire would notbe long in passing.
And the boy scouts, as they raised their broad-brimmed hats to old Ma'amBaldwin, saw a happier look upon her face than it had ever worn before,to their knowledge.
Farther on they came upon the explanation of this! They were taking adifferent route to-day from that which they usually followed in enteringthe woods. About a mile from the town they struck a partial clearing,where the land, not yet entirely relieved of timber, was evidently beinggradually converted into a farm.
As the scouts approached they heard the ringing strokes of a woodsman'saxe, and presently came upon a perspiring young man, putting all hisstrength into felling a stubborn oak-tree.
"Hullo, Dave; how goes it?" cried the scoutmaster, halting with histroop.
"Fine!" came back the panting answer from the individual engaged in thisscouting or pioneering work, who was the former _vaurien_, Dave Baldwin.
"Find this better than loafing about the dunes, eh?"
"Well! I should say so," came the answer with an honest smile.
But the boy scouts were hardly noticing Dave Baldwin: Owls, Foxes, andSeals, they were gazing in transfixed amusement at their hero-in-chief,Captain Andy, owner of this half-cleared land.
He, who in his seagoing days had been known by such flattering titles asthe Grand Bank Horse, the Ocean Patrol, and the like, was seated in themidst of a half-acre of pasture land, holding on like grim death to oneend of a twenty-foot rope coiled round his hand, the hemp's otherextremity being hitched to the leg of a very lively red cow whichpresently dragged him the entire length of the pasture and then acrossand across it, in obedience to her feminine whims.
"She'll be the death o' me, boys!" he shouted comically to the convulsedscouts. "Great Neptune! I'd rather take a vessel through the breakers onSable Island Bar than to be tied to her heels for one day."
"For pity's sake! Hold on to her, Cap!" Dave Baldwin paused in hisenergetic tree-felling. "Yesterday, she got into that little plowedfield that I'd just seeded down with winter rye, and thrashed aboutthere!"
"Ha! I'll t'ink you go for be good _habitant_--farmer--Dave," broke inToiney suddenly and genially. "I'll t'ink you get dere after de w'ile,engh?"
It was plain to each member of the troop that so far as Dave himself wasconcerned he was already "getting there,"--reaching the goal of anhonest, industrious manhood.
The triple responsibility of starting a farm, directing the energies ofhis benefactor, and combating the cow, was rapidly making a man of him.
They heard the virile blows of his axe against the tree-trunk as theymarched on their woodland way. And their song floated back to him:--
"At duty's call, with a smile for all, The Scout will do his part!"
Dave Baldwin paused for a minute to listen; then, as he swung his axe ina tremendous, final blow against the tottering oak, he too broketriumphantly into the refrain:--
"And we'll shout, shout, shout, For the Scout, Scout, Scout, For the Scouts of the U.S.A!"
THE END
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