CHAPTER XXI

THE LAKE TRAIL

That afternoon we stayed and helped those surveyors to get their own tent up, and we built them a scout fireplace out of stones. They were going to cook with an oil-stove--jiminy, nix on that. That Bobby Easton was a nice fellow all right. He said he remembered seeing us at camp but he didn’t get acquainted with us because he was new at camp. He was helping those surveyors on field assignment, that’s what they call it. Lots of Scouts at camp do like that. A couple of fellows I knew went for a week with some men who were stocking the lakes and streams with fishes.

Bobby Easton was going to stay with those surveyors for a week--as long as they camped in the chasm. A stake boy is the one that holds the cord and drives stakes and all like that. Pee-wee thought it was a fellow that ate a lot of steak. At night we all had supper together and those surveyors told us.

The next day we took down our tent and went back to Temple Camp. If you stay over your time you don’t get camping leave again, so if you ever go there you better be careful. Those surveyors went back to camp with us--they were telling us how they were going to do surveying for levees down on the Mississippi. Boy, wouldn’t I like to go with them! At camp they made up a statement about how Bobby Easton saved Pee-wee’s life--it was an affidavit like you have to have--and all of us had to sign it. Then Bobby had to answer a lot of questions by the camp council--that’s the same as local council. Then after a while he got the Gold Medal for life-saving from the National Court of Honor. He showed it to me after he got it. He got the Burnside award, too, after about a week, and he bought a canoe to keep on the lake. So I guess he’s coming up there every summer. He treated us all to ice cream too, down in Catskill. But all that wasn’t until after he got through helping the surveyors over in the chasm.

So then poor Dub only had about a week to stay because Pee-wee didn’t find anybody who was dying to have his life saved. I said that maybe there might possibly be an earthquake or something and a lot of people would almost get killed. But there wasn’t any earthquake--jiminies there never is at Temple Camp. Pee-wee said over in Japan they have dandy tidal waves. But what good do they do us--that’s what I asked him.

Two or three nights before the day Dub had to go home, he said to me, “Are you going to be at camp-fire to-night?”

“Sure, there’s nothing else to do,” I said.

He said, “Let’s take a hike, just us two.”

“Sure,” I told him, “but watch out for Pee-wee.”

“Are you game to walk around the lake?” he asked me. He said he had never done that and he wanted to do it. He wanted to see how it was on the other side of the lake.

“It’s all woods,” I told him. “The shore comes down steep and those hills are all covered with woods--you can see from camp how it is. There’s a trail goes all the way around.”

He asked me did I care so much about camp-fire.

“Sure not,” I said. “Haven’t I got all summer to sprawl around camp-fire?” Then right away I was sorry I said that. Because in a couple of days he had to go home. “Come on in the office,” I said, “and I’ll get permission.”

Dub waited, reading the bulletin-board while I told the councilor that I was going for a hike with another fellow. The councilor (that was Saunders, he’s a nice councilor all right) he said, “These night hikes are being discouraged but you boys come home early and I guess it will be all right.”

I said, “Believe me, I’ll get back by ten because I’ll want to get a piece of pie before cooking shack closes up. Chocolate Drop, he’s cook, and he goes to bed about ten o’clock.”

Dub was waiting for me, looking around Administration Shack. He was looking at the Indian canoe and the elk’s head and the stuffed beaver--there are a lot of things like that in Administration Shack. I guess he had never been in there except when he was being registered. He was looking at the big bulletin-board when I went back to him and he said, “We might row across if it wasn’t for that.” He was pointing at a notice that said--here’s just what it said because I copied it:

Attention is called to the rule recently announced forbidding the use of boats or canoes after dark. The mishap of Wednesday evening last emphasizes the importance of a rigorous enforcement of this new regulation. Boats and canoes must not be taken from their mooring places after supper except by special permission. Disregard of this rule will be followed by summary dismissal from the camp community.

“That’s on account of tenderfoots,” I told Dub. “Some of the Scouts that are up here this season ought to have their nurse girls with them. Anyway I’d rather walk around, wouldn’t you?”

“Sure, anything suits me,” Dub said. “I’m going home in a couple of days anyway.”

I said, “You don’t mean you’d take a boat for that reason, do you? If you’re going home you might as well go right.”

He said, “No, I only meant I have to go home in a couple of days. Come ahead, I didn’t mean anything, let’s hike around.”

I felt sorry for him because he had to go right when the season was getting started, but how could I help it? You can bet I wouldn’t want to be leaving when the Scouts are coming every day. “You might as well go merrily, merrily,” I said. “You’ll be up next summer.”

“I’ll be going to work next summer,” he said.

“Forget about it,” I told him.

We started walking around the lake, going toward the brook--that’s west. If you look at the map you’ll see how we went. It’s about three and a half miles around the lake. If you want to see Pee-wee jump up in the air just tell him it’s longer one way around the lake than it is the other way. Just tell him that with a sober face if you want to see some fireworks. When you get past the brook it’s all woods, but there’s a trail. It’s hard to follow it in the dark unless you’ve been over it in the daytime. I bet I’ve been over it a hundred times. If you ever come to Temple Camp I’ll take you around.

While we were hiking around through the woods I asked Dub how he made out with those pictures he took that day we were on our way from Bagley Center to the chasm. He said they came out pretty good.

I said, “Then all you’ve got to do to be an Eagle is to take the life saving tests? I should think you would have done that before this.”

“What’s the use?” he said.

“Awh, come out of it, Dub,” I told him. “Just because you can’t stay all summer, is that any reason for not caring about your tests? _Boy_, if I had only one test more to be an Eagle you can bet I’d hop over the top all right. There are lots of Scouts here that would change places with you, you can bet.”

“Yes--they wouldn’t,” he said. “And go back to a flat up over a bakery store? I bet you and all your patrol, and Pee-wee, live in nice big houses.”

“Believe me,” I told him. “Pee-wee would change places with you to live over a bakery store. If he lived over a bakery store you’d never see him up here. Look out where you’re stepping, it’s marshy near the shore.”

He said, “Look at the luck that Easton fellow had--the Gold Medal and a hundred bucks. And he doesn’t need it either, his folks are rich.”

“That has nothing to do with it,” I said. “You win a prize or you don’t. Being rich hasn’t got anything to do with it.”

“Yes, but he would have stayed all summer anyway,” Dub said.

“Oh gollies, is that all you’re thinking about?” I said. “Gee, you weren’t like that when we were at Beaver Chasm.”

“I didn’t have to go so soon then,” he said.

“It wasn’t until after Bobby Easton won the Gold Medal that you started grouching,” I said to him.

He said, “What do I care about the Gold Medal--or being an Eagle Scout either? They don’t get me anything.”

“_Good night!_ Don’t get you anything?” I said.

“Sitting home minding the baby while my mother’s out working,” he said. “What good is it being an Eagle Scout when you have to do that? Or the Gold Medal either--what good is it? Now I’m sorry my mother let me come up here at all. Gee, all she could scrape together was two weeks’ board and that isn’t enough up here even just for two weeks. Fellows buy cones and hot dogs and everything and go to the movies over in Catskill. I couldn’t even chip in for the closing events.”

I said, “Well, what of it? You won’t be here anyway.”

“Don’t rub it in,” he said.

“I don’t mean it that way,” I told him. “Only why should you be putting up a half a dollar for something you won’t have anything to do with? Anyway that’s against the rule in this camp, taking up collections like that. Gee, I should think you’d be glad your mother did that--sending you up here like that.”

He said, “Do you live in a big house?”

“Sure,” I told him, “but what’s the difference? They’re all the same size when you get on the outside of them--the outside of every house is the same size. You go outside your house and you’ve got just as much room as I have when I go outside of my house. Let’s hear you deny it.”

“Tell that to Pee-wee,” he said, kind of laughing.

“Look out, you’ll crack your face laughing,” I told him.

He said, “When I go outside my house I just have to sit in the gutter. There used to be a lot but they’re building on it.”

“When I go outside of my house there’s a big lawn I have to mow,” I told him. “Jiminies, you’re lucky--you don’t have to cut the sidewalk.”

He said, “You crazy Indian, you make me laugh.”

“Sure, why not?” I said to him.