Read Ebook: Along the Mohawk Trail; Or Boy Scouts on Lake Champlain by Fitzhugh Percy Keese West James E James Edward Author Of Introduction Etc Schuyler Remington Illustrator

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Ebook has 2237 lines and 90487 words, and 45 pages

There was not a soul stirring about the Arnold place, and as he passed it he thought again of the boy whose particular companion he had meant to be. He had a great admiration for Harry Arnold, and Harry, though he jollied the younger boy and called him "Kid," was quite under the spell of his young friend and prot?g?.

So Master Gordon Lord walked slowly up the quiet, suburban street until the roof of his own home was visible through the trees. He had finished his apple, and he now sent the core spluttering against a tree. The scout smile had gone under a cloud for the time being, for the boy now began to realize the extent of his disappointment. There was not another boy in sight. Ordinarily Arnold would have been mowing the lawn or attending to some other outdoor work about the place at this time; but there was no Arnold in sight now, and he seemed doubly absent because Gordon knew where he had gone. Then his disappointment began to take the form of anger, and even his anger was not well-directed, for it included the very boy who had made him a scout and who had helped him into the second class. But the thought that both patrols would soon be rushing gayly up the Hudson while he trudged homeward in an almost boyless Oakwood was too much for him, and he sat down on a rock along the stretch of road between his own home and the Arnold house and blamed them all and told himself that Arnold was a "lobstereen"--whatever may be the meaning of that dreadful appellation.

Now there are many ways in which a man may afford a vent to his anger, but the very best way for a boy to do so and by far the most satisfactory is to choose a suitable target at an appropriate distance and to sit down on a rock or log and proceed to pelt it with stones. For with every cast of a missile goes a certain quantity of the unwholesome spirit till it has all been dissipated in the free air. The first stone is usually thrown in wrath, the next several in a kind of sullen carelessness, and lo, the marksman presently finds himself captured by the sporting instinct and aims, calmly and cheerfully, at his target with no feeling but the sportsmanlike desire to hit the mark. This method is strongly recommended to boys and its effects will be found to be immediate and magic.

On the present occasion Gordon Lord passed quickly through the wrathful and sullen stages and rose with characteristic determination and a sure aim. You cannot aim true when you are angry, and at the present moment Gordon cared more about hitting the mark than about anything else. Presently the stone sped from his hand and went banging against the slender tree.

"Good shot!" he heard a cheery voice call.

Gordon turned, and there, as sure as you live, stood Arnold.

There was no doubt about it. There was the blue flannel shirt with the double row of pearl buttons. There was the thin book-strap for a belt, and there was the full scout's badge, not on his sleeve, but on the front of his hat. There was the seamanship badge on his right arm. There was the Beaver neckerchief tied in the celebrated Beaver knot. There was the leather wristlet. It was Arnold, all right.

"Just throwing stones."

"Do you know you've missed the train?"

"I knew that fifteen minutes ago."

"Well, you're a--"

"No, I'm not, Harry,--now just hold on a minute,--I started down--"

"Yes," said Arnold, crossly, "and I waited till five minutes before train time, then cut up through the fields to your house."

"If you'd only come up by the park, you'd have seen me showing Miss Leslie--honest, Harry, you ought to have been there. She was trying to juggle eight books down to school and most of them were on the sidewalk. So there was the chance for your Uncle Gordon. I happened to know a trick--"

"I know," interrupted Arnold, smiling in spite of himself, "you showed her a way."

"Right."

"Did a good turn."

"Right for Harry."

"And missed the train."

"Correct."

Gordon took a careful aim and sent another stone to the mark.

"And you did a good turn, too, Harry; a bully one, coming to find me. You've started the day fine."

"Yes, we've made a grand starter," said Arnold, as they sauntered toward his home. "We're a couple of A-1 scouts--not. The whole troop will be laughing at us."

"But remember the good turns, Harry."

"I don't see us doing any stalking together," was the reply.

"Do you know how I fixed those books for her, Harry?"

"No, and I don't want to know."

They walked on in silence to the Arnold place, and Gordon followed his somewhat disgruntled friend to the latter's room. It was familiar ground to him, for much of their planning and preparation had taken place in it, and now he threw himself into the comfortable recess of a Morris chair and tactfully awaited some sign of improvement in his companion's humor. Meanwhile, Harry made a tour around his well-filled apartment, rearranging things and collecting the boyish litter, by way of affording a vent to his mood. He took a canoe paddle from one corner and placed it in another. He straightened his school diploma on the wall. His manner was anything but cordial, and Gordon watched him with a twinkle in his eye but did not venture a remark.

"There's the blazing system," grunted Harry, throwing a paper over to the bed. "A lot of good it'll do us now."

He hammered a nail in the wall and hung a pair of moccasins on it. The nail came out.

"Put it eighteen inches from the door casing, Harry."

"How'd you know that?"

"Don't know--just found it out."

"Well," said Harry, after a few minutes more of sullen silence, "what are we going to do about it?"

"Do about it?"

"Yes, what are we going to do about it? Hang around in Oakwood for two months?"

"They'll write."

"Yes, I suppose they will," said Harry. "We'll hear something in a few days. The trouble is they may not know for a few days just where they're going to settle. You know, they're going to get out at Ticonderoga and strike up into the woods north. Red Deer spoke of following the old Mohawk trail. I wish I had his map."

He thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood gazing out of the window. Neither spoke.

"Harry," said Gordon, at length, "it would be a great stunt for us to go up there and find them."

"You must be crazy, Kid."

"Of course, they'll write and tell us where they are, but that may be a week or more, and when we got to them they'd all laugh at us. Now, if we could just--"

"It's out of the question, Kid."

"No, it isn't either," persisted Gordon. "Here we are, a couple of scouts--been tracking and stalking and signaling and woodcrafting and all that sort of thing for six months. We know the troop is going to camp along Lake Champlain on the New York side."

"Lake Champlain's a hundred and fourteen miles long," interrupted Harry.

"That's nothing. We know they're somewhere along the west shore of that lake--I say, let's go and find them."

"Why, you hair-brained kid, it would be like hunting for a needle in a haystack," said Harry, warming up a little to the idea under the younger boy's enthusiasm.

"Well, there's a way to find a needle in a haystack, Harry. You fix a big magnet on the end of a long stick and then begin--"

But that was as far as he got. Harry Arnold sat down on the edge of the bed and laughed himself hoarse. He came out of this fit in much the same condition as one comes out from the crisis of a fever. His ill humor was quite gone and his mood was more agreeable and receptive than it had been since he left the station in quest of his delinquent friend.

The attractive features of the scheme began rapidly to appeal to the older boy. It was all very well tracking and stalking in the Oakwood woods, where any member of the troop could take his bearings by the church steeple. It was all very well pretending to be lost. It was a good enough makeshift to think up emergencies, to make them to order, and then gallantly to surmount them by a knowledge of woodcraft. But here was a real test for their ability, their endurance, their sagacity, their observation, resource, and experience. A Saturday afternoon grapple with the little patch of Oakwood woods was like a bout with a punching bag--the exercise was good, but the element of uncertainty and real peril was absent. For a punching bag cannot hit back. And after all they had only been playing a game in which Nature--the opponent--had been frightfully handicapped. She had held no surprises for them and presented no obstacles. The difficulties they had overcome had been manufactured for that especial purpose. They had pretended to be lost--but they could hear the Town House bell every half-hour. No, the whole thing seemed tame beside the enchanting picture of a real encounter with Nature up among the rugged foothills of the Adirondacks.

There, along the winding course of Lake Champlain, somewhere within hail of its shore and nestling among the hills that flank it--somewhere in that wilderness would be encamped the two patrols of the Oakwood scouts. And shielding them and baffling the searchers would be the swamps, the mountains, the valleys, and the strange, dim woods. Here would be a foeman worthy of their steel, and beside it the modest, familiar little patch of woodland that skirted their suburban home seemed pitiably small. So that Gordon very truthfully remarked:

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