CHAPTER XIV

HONORS AND AWARDS

We took our time hiking back to the chasm. That’s the way we always do. We just ambled along kind of kidding each other--you know how. Because anyway we didn’t have to get back to Temple Camp till the next day. One reason we took our time was because Dub wanted to take some snapshots in the woods.

After a little while he said, “Now that we had our adventures with bandits and wills, can anybody tell me about the Gold Cross?”

“I can tell you all about it,” Pee-wee piped up. “You have to save a life by risking your own life. Then you’re a hero. It isn’t like winning the life-saving badge, like you have to do to get to be an Eagle. For that you only have to know how to save a life. But to get the Gold Cross you have to save one. See?”

“It’s the same, only different,” I said. “Some Scouts think that to win the taxidermy badge all you have to do is drive a taxi. Pee-wee thought he could get the plumbing badge by eating plums. But he was mistaken just the same as he was when he thought if he won the astronomy badge he’d be a Star Scout. He thinks a Life Scout is one that has saved a life.”

“Will you shut up while I give him information about scouting!” the kid screamed at me.

“Just the same as you can’t get the first aid badge till after you get the second aid badge,” I said to Dub. “That’s where a lot of Scouts fall down. Pee-wee thinks that pioneering means making pie, but you can’t get the badge that way because he tried. If you save a life by losing your own you get the Gold Cross. If you save two lives you get the double cross--I’ll leave it to Sandy.”

“That shows how much you don’t know about the rules!” Pee-wee yelled at me, “because they don’t have the Gold Cross any more, they have a round medal. They don’t have the Silver Cross or the Bronze Cross any more either.”

“But the double cross they have,” Sandy said.

“Absolutely, positively incorrect the first time,” I said. “If a Scout having won the first aid, second aid, and lemonade awards, gets double-crossed, that means he’s an Eagle Scout--I’ll leave it to Pee-wee. If you want to know all about scouting apply to Roy Blakeley, leader of the Silver Fox Patrol----”

“You mean the Silver Fool Patrol!” the kid said.

“Is there anything else you’d like to know?” I asked Dub.

He said, “Well, I was thinking that maybe if I saved a life, I’d get the life-saving badge and then I’d be an Eagle and I’d get the Gold Medal too.”

“You’ve got an appetite like Pee-wee,” I said.

“I thought I might kill two birds with one stone,” he said.

“A Scout is not supposed to kill birds,” I told him, “so there’s where you’re going to get in trouble. What do you want the Gold Medal for?”

“_He’s crazy_, don’t you listen to him!” Pee-wee shouted at Dub. “You win the life-saving badge by rules and you win the Gold Medal by being a hero. And if you get the Gold Medal, that doesn’t give you the life-saving badge.”

“Any more than if you’re chicken-hearted it gives you the poultry badge,” I told him. “That’s where lots of Scouts make mistakes. I never make any.”

“You have them ready made,” Pee-wee shouted.

Dub said--he was trying to be serious--he said, “Well it seems funny to me that if you save a life you don’t get the life-saving badge. If I could only do that, then I could finish my Eagle tests and get the Gold Medal too. You see I’ve got a towering ambition. What I’m thinking about is that Ellen Burnside award of a hundred dollars that goes with the Gold Medal. I thought I might save somebody’s life and get the medal and the hundred dollars, then get my Eagle badge on the strength of the life-saving stunt and then I could live up in Eagle Crag Cabin for the rest of the summer----”

“And have me visit you,” I said.

“Good-night, Napoleon didn’t have anything on you,” Sandy said.

“If you had a bean-shooter up at Eagle Crag Cabin you might conquer Temple Camp,” I said, “and you could send Pee-wee with a large detachment to demand the surrender of the cooking shack.”

Dub said, “Well I guess it can’t be did. First I was crazy enough to be counting on our getting some kind of a reward for finding that will, and then I was thinking maybe we’d get the reward for finding some bandits.”

“All you think about is money,” Sandy said.

“All I’m thinking about is staying till the end of the season with you fellows,” Dub said. “Just us four, I wish we could stick together till camp closes. We’ve had a lot of fun doing nothing. Gee, I like you fellows----” that’s just the way he said. He said, “That’s the way I am, I’d rather get in with just three or four fellows and bang around with them than be in with everybody. I’ve been here a week and I don’t know many Scouts at camp--only you fellows. Christopher, I wish I could stay with you. I’m kind of sorry I came up at all now, because it will be so hard to go back. Crinkums, you sure have kept me laughing.”

After he spoke like that we all just hiked along a little while and nobody said anything. Even Pee-wee didn’t say anything.

Pretty soon Sandy said to me, “How soon do you and Pee-wee have to go home?”

“Not till the camp closes up,” I told him.

“Oh boy!” Dub said.

“Me till August twenty,” Sandy said.

“Me till next Saturday,” Dub said. “Hard luck, hey? After I get home I’ll be thinking about you jollying Pee-wee.”

“Will you think about me answering him back?” Pee-wee piped up. “How I beat him in arguments?”

“Sure,” Dub said. And he just went along, kind of smiling and not saying anything. None of us said anything.

After a while the kid said, “Why do you have to go back?”

“Shut up,” I whispered to him. Sandy looked at the kid, too, and sort of frowned.

“Oh just because,” Dub said. “It’s like having one little sliver of pie--you only want more. I wasn’t thinking about it when we started out. Will you fellows be here next summer?”

Jiminies, but I felt sorry for him. I’ll tell you how it was with Dub, he was an in-and-outer. That’s a Scout that comes to camp alone without any troop or anything, and just stays a couple of weeks or so. Some of them only stay one week. Those fellows have to start home as soon as they get in with anybody. My troop goes up as soon as school closes and we stay till school opens. All of a sudden I could see how it was with Dub. Do you remember how even he kind of didn’t want to go get ice cream cones in Bagley Center? It was because he only had a little bit of money and he had to take care of it.

After the way he talked coming back then I knew that all the while he had really been counting on us getting some kind of a reward. Me, I should worry about those things. I’m out for fun, not money. And now I knew he was thinking of some way so he could stay at Temple Camp and go around with us. That fellow would be an Eagle Scout only for one badge, but that wouldn’t do him any good about staying at camp. If he saved some fellow’s life he’d get the Gold Medal, and besides he’d get a hundred dollars--that’s the Ellen Burnside award for anybody that gets the Gold Medal. But you don’t see fellows risking their lives every day in the week. It isn’t like trying for a badge. I felt sorry for him.

I was walking with him ahead of the others and he said, “I suppose you think I’m crazy. But do they give you that hundred dollars as soon as you win it?”

I said, “Listen Dub, I’ll tell you, no fooling, how it is. There are lots of different awards at camp--donations, sort of. But that’s the only one with money.”

“That’s why I’d like to win it, so I can stay,” he said. “I wonder if you get the money right away?”

I said, “That wouldn’t make any difference, Dub. I think it isn’t given out till later. But if a Scout wants to stay the camp will give him credit for it--that’s easy. Tom Slade--he’s chief scout assistant--he could fix that for you. But what’s the use counting on that, Dub?”

He said, “I know it.”

“Waiting for somebody to get his life in danger! You might be six months waiting.”

“And it isn’t such a good thing to be waiting for either; is it?” he said.

I said, “No it isn’t, if it comes to that--if you want to look at it that way. I never thought about that. Gee, I’d like to see you stay, Dub. I’d try to work you in on the hospitality award if I could. Any Scout that swims all around the lake without landing can ask another fellow to stay at camp all summer. But you see the trouble with all those awards is that they’re only given once in the season. Now there’s a Scout here named Wyne Corson and he won that award the first week he was here. You know Hervey Willetts, don’t you? That fellow with the funny little hat? Well, he’s the one that’s staying all summer with Corson. Now nobody else can win that award this season, or I’d try for it. If I had done it I’d get one of my patrol to do it. Only, you see, it’s only given out once in a season. The award is for just one fellow’s board at camp. It’s the same with the Ellen Burnside award. You’ve got to be the first one to save a life or you don’t get the hundred dollars. See? The money is only given to one Scout in a season. It’s a private award, not a B. S. A. award.

“Every season some fool, or maybe some tenderfoot, gets his life in danger at Temple Camp, and you’d get a chance to win the medal if you stayed long enough. That is, you would if you weren’t afraid of risking your own life. Only you want to win a hundred dollars inside the next week, and jiminy crinkums, if you did you’d be mighty lucky, that’s all I can say. If you got your Eagle award, even that wouldn’t do you any good. Because you couldn’t have Eagle Crag Cabin to stay in unless you were staying all summer. I mean you could have it to stay in as long as you’re here, but you’d only be here a week.”

“Heads or tails I lose, hey?” Dub said. “I guess there’s nothing for me to do but go home. Like you say, _united we stand, divided we sprawl_. Well anyway I’m glad I was here while you fellows were here. We had a good time while it lasted, hey?”

Jiminies, I felt awful sorry for him.