PREFACE.

Several persons have asked me when Tom Slade was ever going to grow up and cease to be a Scout. The answer is that he is already grown up and that he is never going to cease to be a Scout. Once a Scout, always a Scout. To hear some people talk one would think that scouting is like the measles; that you get over it and never have it any more.

Scouting is not a thing to play with, like a tin steam-engine, and then to throw aside. If you once get caught in the net of scouting, you will never disentangle yourself. A fellow may grow up and put on long trousers and go and call on a girl and all that sort of thing, but if he was a Scout, he will continue to be a Scout, and it will stick out all over him. You'll find him back in the troop as assistant or scoutmaster or something or other.

I think Tom Slade is a very good example. He left the troop to go and work on a transport; he got into the motorcycle messenger service; he became one of the greatest daredevils of the air; he came home quite "grown up" as you would say, and knuckled down to be a big business man.

Then, when it came to a show down, what did he do? He found out that he was just a plain Scout, shouldered his axe, and went off and did a big scout job all alone. So there you are.

I am sorry for those who would have him too old for scouting, and who seem to think that a fellow can lay aside all he has learned in the woods and in the handbook, the same as he can lay aside his short trousers. It isn't as easy as all that.

Did you suppose that Tom Slade was going to get acquainted with nature, with the woods and streams and trees, and make them his friends, and then repudiate these friends?

Do you think that a Scout is a quitter?

Tom Slade was always a queer sort of duck, and goodness only knows what he will do next. He may go to the North Pole for all I know. But one thing you may be sure of; he is still a Scout of the Scouts, and if you think he is too old to be a Scout, then how about Buffalo Bill?

The fact is that Tom is just beginning to reap the real harvest of scouting. The best is yet to come, as Pee-wee Harris usually observes, just before dessert is served at dinner. If it is any satisfaction to you to know it, Tom is more of a Scout than at any time in his career, and there is a better chance of his being struck by lightening than his drifting away from the troop whose adventures you have followed with his.

It is true that Tom has grown faster than his companions and found it necessary to go to work while they are still at school. And this very circumstance will enable us to see what scouting has done for him.

Indeed if I could not show you that, then all of those eight stores of his adventures would have been told to little purpose. The chief matter of interest about a trail is where it leads to. It may be an easy trail or a hard trail, but the question is, where does it go to?

It would be a fine piece of business, I think, to leave Tom sitting on a rock near the end of the trail without giving you so much as a glimpse of what is at the end of it.

So you may tell your parents and your teachers and your uncles and your aunts not to worry about Tom Slade never growing up. He is just a trifle over eighteen years old and very strong and husky. Confidentially, I look upon him as nothing but a kid. I keep tabs on his age and when he has to go on crutches and is of no more interest to you, I shall be the first to know it. He is likely to have no end of adventures between eighteen and twenty.

Meanwhile, don't worry about him. He's just a big overgrown kid and the best Scout this side of Mars.

P. K. F.

CHAPTER I

TOM LOOKS AT THE MAP

Tom Slade, bending over the office table, scrutinized the big map of Temple Camp. It was the first time he had really looked at it since his return from France, and it made him homesick to see, even in its cold outlines, the familiar things and scenes which he had so loved as a scout. The hill trail was nothing but a dotted line, but Tom knew it for more than that, for it was along its winding way into the dark recesses of the mountains that he had qualified for the pathfinder's badge. Black Lake was just an irregular circle, but in his mind's eye he saw there the moonlight glinting up the water, and canoes gliding silently, and heard the merry voices of2 scouts diving from the springboard at its edge.

He liked this map better than maps of billets and trenches, and to him the hill trail was more suggestive of adventure than the Hindenburg Line. He had been very close to the Hindenburg Line and it had meant no more to him than the equator. He had found the war to be like a three-ringed circus—it was too big. Temple Camp was about the right size.

Tom reached for a slip of paper and laying it upon the map just where the trail went over the hilltop and off the camp territory altogether, jotted down the numbers of three cabins which were indicated by little squares.

"They're the only three together and kind of separate," he said to himself.

Then he went over to the window and gazed out upon the busy scene, which the city office of Temple Camp overlooked. He did this, not because there was anything there which he wished particularly to see, but because he contemplated doing something and3 was in some perplexity about it. He was going to dictate a letter to Miss Margaret Ellison, the stenographer.

Tom had seen cannons and machine guns and hand grenades and depth bombs, but the thing in all this world that he was most afraid of was the long sharply pointed pencil which Miss Margaret Ellison always held poised above her open note book, waiting to record his words. Tom had always fallen down at the last minute and told her what he wanted to say; suggesting that she say it in her own sweet way. He did not say sweet way, though he may have thought it.

So now he stood at the open window looking down upon Bridgeboro's surging thoroughfare, while the breath of Spring permeated the Temple Camp office. If he had been less susceptible of this gentle influence in the very air, he would still have known it was Spring by the things in the store windows across the way—straw hats and hammocks and tennis rackets. There were moving vans, too, with furniture bulging out behind them, which are4 just as certain signs of merry May as the flowers that bloom in the Spring. There was something too, in the way that the sun moved down which bespoke Spring.

But the surest sign of all was the flood of applications for cabin accommodations at Temple Camp; that was just as sure and reliable as the first croaking of the frogs or the softening of the rich, thick mud in Barrel Alley, where Tom had spent his childhood.

He moved over to where Miss Margaret Ellison sat at her machine. Mr. Burton, manager of the Temple Camp office, had told Tom that the only way to acquire confidence and readiness of speech was to formulate what he wished to say and to say it, without depending on any one else, and to this good advice, Peewee Harris, mascot of Tom's Scout Troop had made the additional suggestion, that it was good to say it whether you had anything to say or not, on the theory, I suppose, that if you cannot shoot bullets, it is better to shoot blank cartridges than nothing at all.

CHAPTER II

HE SENDS A LETTER

"Help him, but encourage him to be self-confident; let him take responsibilities. He understands everything well enough; all he needs is to get a grip on himself." That is what Mr. Burton had told Margaret Ellison, and Margaret Ellison, being a girl, understood better than all the army surgeons in the country.

You see how it was; they had made a wreck of Tom Slade's nerves as a trifling incidental to making the world safe for democracy. He started at every little noise, he broke down in the middle of his talk, he hesitated to cross the street alone, he shuddered at the report of a bursting tire on some unlucky auto. He had never been at ease in the presence of girls, and he was now less at ease than before he had gone away.6

He had fought for nearly two years and Uncle Sam liked him so much that he could not bring himself to part company with him, until by hook or crook, Mr. Burton and Mr. Temple managed to get him discharged and put him in the way of finding himself at his old job in Temple Camp office. It was a great relief to him not to have to salute lieutenants any more. The shot and shell he did not mind, but his arm was weary with saluting lieutenants. It was the dream of Tom Slade's life never to see another lieutenant as long as he lived.

He leaned against the table near Miss Margaret Ellison and said, "I—I want—I have to send a letter to a troop that's in Ohio—in a place called—called Dansburg. Shall I dic—shall I say what I want to tell them?"

"Surely," she said cheerily.

"Maybe if it isn't just right you can fix it up," he said.

"You say it just the way you want to," she encouraged him.

"It's to the Second Dansburg Troop and7 the name of the scoutmaster is William Barnard," Tom said, "and this is what I want to say...."

"Yes, say it in your own words," she reminded him.

"We got—I mean received," he dictated hesitatingly, "your letter and we can give you—can give you—three cabins—three cabins together and kind of separate like you say—numbers five, six, and seven. They are on the hill and separate, and we hope to hear from you—soon—because there are lots of troops asking for cabins, because now the season is beginning. Yours truly."

"Is that all right?" he asked rather doubtfully.

"Surely it is," she said; "and don't forget what Mr. Burton told you about going home early and resting. Remember, Mr. Burton is your superior officer now."

"Are you going home soon?" he asked her.

"Not till half-past five," she said.

He hesitated as if he would like to say something more, then retreating rather clumsily,8 he got his hat and said good-night, and left the office.

The letter which he had dictated was not laid upon Mr. Burton's desk for signature in exactly the phraseology which Tom had used, but Tom never knew that. This is the way the letter read:

Mr. William Barnard, Scoutmaster, Second Dansburg Troop, Dansburg, Ohio. Dear Sir:

Replying to your letter asking for accommodations for your three patrols for month of August, we can assign you three cabins (Numbers, 5,6 and 7) covering that time. These are in an isolated spot, as you requested, being somewhat removed from the body of the camp.

Circular of rates and particulars is enclosed. Kindly answer promptly, as applications are numerous.

Yours truly,

The letter went out that night, and as it happened, a very considerable series of adventures resulted.9

Perhaps if Margaret Ellison had looked at the map or even stopped to think, she would have consulted with Tom before typing that letter, which was the cause of such momentous consequences. As for Mr. Burton, he knew that Tom knew the camp like A. B. C. and he simply signed his name to the letter and let it go at that.

CHAPTER III

THE NEW STRUGGLE

Tom did as he had promised Mr. Burton he would do; he went home and lay down and rested. It was not much of a home, but it was better than a dugout. That is, it was cleaner though not very much larger. But there were no lieutenants.

It was a tiny hall-room in a boarding house, and the single window afforded a beautiful view of back fences. It was all the home that Tom Slade knew. He had no family, no relations, nothing.

He had been born in a tenement in Barrel Alley, where his mother had died and from which his good-for-nothing father had disappeared. For a while he had been a waif and a hoodlum, and by strict attention to the code of Barrel Alley's gang, he had risen to be king11 of the hoodlums. No one, not even Blokey Mattenburg himself, could throw a rock into a trolley car with the precision of Tom Slade.

Then, on an evil day, he was tempted to watch the scouts and it proved fatal. He was drawn head over ears into scouting, and became leader of the new Elk Patrol in the First Bridgeboro Troop. For three seasons he was a familiar, if rather odd figure, at Temple Camp, which Mr. John Temple of Bridgeboro had founded in the Catskills, and when he was old enough to work it seemed natural that these kindly gentlemen who had his welfare at heart, should put him into the city office of the camp, which he left to go to war, and to which he had but lately returned, suffering from shell-shock.

He was now eighteen years old, and though no longer a scout in the ordinary sense, he retained his connection with the troop in capacity of assistant to Mr. Ellsworth, the troop's scoutmaster.

He had been rather older than the members of this troop when he made his spectacular12 leap from hoodlumism to scouting, and hence while they were still kicking their heels in the arena he had, as one might say, passed outside it.

But his love for the boys and their splendid scoutmaster who had given him a lift, was founded upon a rock. The camp and the troop room had been his home, the scouts had been his brothers, and all the simple associations of his new life were bound up with these three patrols.

Perhaps it was for this reason that among these boys, all younger than himself, and with whom he had always mingled on such familiar terms, he showed but few, and those not often, of the distressing symptoms which bespoke his shattered nerves. Among them he found refuge and was at peace with himself.

And the boys, intent upon their own pursuits, knew nothing of the brave struggle he was making at the office where his days were spent, and in the poor little shabbily furnished room where he would lie down on his iron bed and try to rest and forget the war and not hear the noises outside.13

How he longed for Friday nights when the troop met, and when he could forget himself in those diverting games!

Since the first few days of his return from France, he had seen but little of the troop, except upon those gala nights. The boys were in school and he at the office, and it seemed as if their two ways had parted, after all his hopes that his return might find them reunited and more intimate than ever before. But after the first joyous welcome, it had not been so. It could not be so.

Of course, if they had known how he loved to just sit and listen to them jolly the life out of Peewee Harris, they would doubtless have arranged to do this every night for his amusement, for it made no difference to them how much they jollied Peewee. If they had had the slightest inkling that it helped him just to listen to Roy Blakeley's nonsense, they would probably have arranged with Roy for a continuous performance, for so far as Roy was concerned, there was no danger of a shortage of nonsense. But you see they did not think of these things.14

They did much for wounded soldiers, but Tom Slade was not a wounded soldier. And so it befell that the very thing which he most needed was the thing he did not have, and that was just the riot of banter and absurdity which they called their meetings. At all this he would just sit and smile and forget to interlace his fingers and jerk his head. And sometimes he would even laugh outright.

I am afraid that everything was managed wrong from the first. It would have been better if Mr. Burton or Mr. Ellsworth or somebody or other had told the troop the full truth about Tom's condition. I suppose they refrained for fear the boys would stare at him and treat him as one stricken, and thereby, perhaps make his struggle harder.

At all events, it was hard enough. And little they knew of this new and frightful war that he was struggling through with all the power of his brave, dogged nature. Little they knew how he lay awake night after night, starting at every chime of the city's clock, of how he did the best he could each15 day, waiting and longing for Friday night, hoping, hoping that Peewee and Roy would surely be there. Poor, distracted, shell-shocked fighter that he was, he was fighting still, and they were his only hope and they did not know it. No one knew it. He would not let them know.

For that was Tom Slade.

CHAPTER IV

"LUCKY LUKE"

Next morning Tom had his breakfast in a dingy little restaurant and then started along Terrace Avenue for the bank building, in which was the Temple Camp office.

He still wore the shabby khaki uniform which had seen service at the front. He was of that physique called thick-set and his face was of the square type, denoting doggedness and endurance, and a stolid temperament.

There had never been anything suggestive of the natty or agile about him when he had been a scout, and army life, contrary to its reputation, had not spruced and straightened him up at all. He was about as awkward looking as a piece of field artillery, and he was just about as reliable and effective. He was not built on the lines of a rifle, but rather17 on the lines of a cannon, or perhaps of a tank. His mouth was long and his lips set tight, but it twitched nervously at one end, especially when he waited at the street crossing just before he reached the bank building, watching the traffic with a kind of fearful, bewildered look.

Twice, thrice, he made the effort to cross and returned to his place on the curb, interlacing his fingers distractedly. And yet this young fellow had pushed through barbed wire entanglements and gone across No Man's Land, without so much as a shudder in the very face of hostile fire.

He always dreaded this street corner in the mornings and was thankful when he was safe up in his beloved Temple Camp office. If he had been on crutches some grateful citizen would have helped him across, and patriotic young ladies would have paused to watch the returned hero and some one might even have removed his hat in the soldier's presence; for they did those things—for a while.

But such honors were only for those who18 were fortunate enough to have had a leg or an arm shot off or to have been paralyzed. For the hero who had had his nerves all shot to pieces there were no such spontaneous tributes.

And that was the way it had always been with Tom Slade. He had always made good, but somehow, the applause and the grateful tributes had gone to others. Nature had not made him prepossessing and he did not know how to talk; he was just slow and dogged and stolid, like a British tank, as I said, and just about as homely. You could hardly expect a girl to make much fuss over a young fellow who is like a British tank, when there are young fellows like shining machine guns, and soaring airplanes—to say nothing of poison gas.

And after two years of service in the thick of danger, with bombs and bullets flying all about him; after four months' detention in an enemy prison camp and six weeks of trench fever, to say nothing of frightful risks, stolidly ignored, in perilous secret missions,19 this young chunk of the old rock of Gibraltar had come home with his life, just because it had pleased God not to accept the proffer of it, and because Fritzie shot wild where Tom was concerned. He couldn't help coming back with his life—it wasn't his fault. It was just because he was the same old Lucky Luke, that's all.

That had been Roy Blakeley's name for him—Lucky Luke; and he had been known as Lucky Luke to all of his scout comrades.

You see it was this way: if Tom was going to win a scout award by finding a certain bird's nest in a certain tree, when he got to the place he would find that the tree had been chopped down. Once he was going to win the pathfinder's badge by trailing a burglar, and he trailed him seven miles through the woods and found that the burglar was his own good-for-nothing father. So he did not go back and claim the award. You see? Lucky Luke.