CHAPTER XXII
SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT
He was talking like that all the way round to the other side of the lake. Over there the woods are thick. We stood looking across the water at the camp--all we could see were the lights and the camp-fire blazing. We could see it upside down in the water.
I said, “That big light is the cooking shack. Now you just look to the left of that. Do you see a little bit of a light? That’s outside my patrol cabin. The three cabins of our troop are there. They’re just a little way up the hill from the camp. They’re just outside the inside. You never came up there like we asked you to.”
Dub said, “You fellows are lucky all right. Those cabins belong to your troop, don’t they?”
“Sure they do,” I said, “and there’s a tent there too, because we have four patrols now. Pee-wee used to be a Raven but he started a declaration of independence and now we’ve got the Chipmunks. We’re more to be pitied than blamed. We keep a lantern out so on very dark nights we can find our way. They’re all at camp-fire to-night, my troop.”
“I bet you wish you were there,” Dub said.
“Believe me, I’m glad to get rid of them,” I told him. “There’s an old Scout there to-night who’s telling yarns about the Northern Pacific Trail. The Atlantic and Pacific Trail is good enough for me--gee, I’m always chasing to that store when I’m home. You think _we’re_ lucky! Good night, I wish we had an Eagle Scout in my patrol.”
Dub said, “You’re all right coming away with me alone to-night. I don’t know, I just wanted to get away from the crowd.”
“The pleasure is mine,” I told him. “I should worry about the crowd. But you’re a funny kind of a gazzink. You want to get away from the crowd and all the while you want to stay at camp.”
He said, “I guess that’s just it, it makes me sore to be there and think how I can’t stay.”
I said, “Well, if I were you, Dub, I’d take that one last test and go home an Eagle Scout. That’s what I’d do if you’re asking me. I know that wouldn’t fix it for you so you could stay, and even the Gold Medal wouldn’t, but just the same an Eagle Scout is an Eagle Scout, I don’t care where he is. Gee, _I’m_ sorry you didn’t get the Burnside money. But what’s the good crying over spilled milk--there’s water enough in it already. _Boy_, if you were in my patrol you’d be an Eagle in one day. Twenty badges and then you flop! _Good night!_”
“I think I’ll flop out of the Scouts altogether,” he said, kind of gloomy.
“Sure, and be a quitter,” I told him. “Why, look at Will Dawson in my patrol--you know, that tall fellow? He’s got eight merit badges--first aid, athletics, both health badges, and pioneering. Those are the five you have to have for Star Scout. You know you don’t have to have the life-saving badge on that. He’s got the other five picked out--I have to laugh, he picked out easy ones. Angling! Jiminies, he was always doing that--all the fishes call him by his first name. Archery, that’s a cinch. And _bugling_! Oh boy, all you have to do is blow on a trumpet. Carpentry and bird study, those are the only ones he has to get. I had to laugh when he was practising hammering a nail. He got a blood blister and he put some iodine on it and he wanted the first aid badge. First aid to himself. Bird study isn’t so easy. By the time we have the closing events he’ll be a Star Scout and we’re going to make a big fuss about it and have a corn-roast and everything. And, gee whiz, that’s only half as good as an Eagle Scout.”
Dub said, “Yes, but where will he be? And where will I be?”
“Awh, come out of it,” I told him.
He didn’t say anything, only just walked behind me along through the woods close to the lake. On that opposite side from camp the trail is good and plain because it’s a little way up a hill kind of. There aren’t any swampy places over there. But you have to go single file till you get where the woods are thinner.
Dub said, “I’d like to be at that corn-roast.”
“Maybe you’re lucky not to,” I said. “Maybe there won’t be any. Maybe it will be like old man Bagley’s will and the reward for the bandits. Gee, will you ever forget that?”
“Don’t be talking about it,” he said.
“Maybe Will Dawson won’t even get by with bird study--believe me, the birds have got something to say about it.”
Dub said, “I guess he’ll get it all right.”
“He will or I’ll jump down his throat,” I told him. “Believe me, you’ve got something to be thankful for that you’re not leader of the Silver Foxes. That’s the only way you can get them together--with a corn-roast. They haven’t got any discipline and it’s good they haven’t, because if they did have, they’d all be trying to get it away from each other. Councilor Trent says we’re more than a patrol, we’re an institution, but, _gee_, who wants to be in an institution?”
All of a sudden I looked behind me and Dub wasn’t there. He was standing still maybe about twenty feet in back of me. I could just see him beckoning to me. I asked him what was the matter but he only beckoned.
I went back to where he was and he said, “Did you hear a sound?”
“A kind of a rustling up in the trees?” I asked him. “Maybe it was an eagle--you ought to be ashamed to look him in the face.”
“No--_listen_,” he said. “Doesn’t it sound like oar-locks?”
“Jiminies, it does,” I said. “It’s over there, about where the shore turns. Wait a second--listen--let’s make sure.”
“Somebody breaking the rule?” Dub said.
“Sure, that’s likely,” I said. “You know what Hervey Willetts said. ‘What’s the good of having rules if you don’t break them.’ Boy oh boy, I’d just like to know who it is. Shall we shout and tell him the outside of his boat is all wet?”
“No, don’t call,” Dub said.
“It’s oar-locks all right,” I said. “Listen--_shh_. Did you hear a kind of a splash? I’d like to make my voice kind of deep like Councilor Trent and call out and ask what they’re doing here, hey?”
Dub said, “No, don’t. We don’t have to tell on them, do we?”
“Nope,” I said. “That’s one thing Scouts up here are never asked to do. But I’d like to have some fun with them.”
He said, “_Shhh_--listen.”
“I bet it’s that Hervey Willetts,” I said in a whisper. “If it is, bye-bye, Hervey. There’ll be somebody waiting at the float all right.”
Dub grabbed me by the shoulder so I wouldn’t speak too loud. Then he said, “I don’t see why any one goes out like that if they know there’ll be somebody waiting at the float. The management sure knows if there’s a boat out. Why don’t they lock the boats?”
“They don’t believe in that,” I whispered. “They go by rule one--a Scout’s honor is to be trusted--this time it’s going to be busted. Maybe not, at that. Some scoutmasters up here are sheiks--leave it to them. It’s all right for them to take girls out rowing, yes, yes, yes. I bet it’s that one from Ohio with that girl that’s staying at Sunset Farm. Just for the fun of it I’ll stump you to shout _I’m a bear, woof, woof_! and then run.”
“No, wait a second,” Dub said. “If it’s a couple of Scouts it’s just as well for us to not know anything about it.”
I said, “I don’t hear any voices, do you?”
All of a sudden there was a sound like something dropping on wood--like something heavy.
“Would it be robbers, maybe?” Dub asked me.
“Now you’re making a noise like Pee-wee,” I said. “Sure, it’s pirates grappling for buried treasure.”
“Well what was that sound?” Dub asked me.
“Sounded to me like an anchor,” I told him. “Maybe they heard us and pulled it up. It sounded as if they dropped it on the floor of the boat. There are only two boats that have anchors--that’s that big red one, and the one that’s named Mary Temple. Listen for the oar-locks. I bet they row away.”
Just then we heard a splash, then in a few seconds a louder splash. I just grabbed Dub’s arm and we stood there, neither of us speaking. In about ten seconds there was more splashing and a voice called, “Help!” There was another word, too, but I didn’t know what it was. It sounded like _hope_ or _rope_. There was a voice from way up the hill, too, and it called, “_Hel-ope, hlope!_”
It was the echo from up in those woods.