The boy scouts of Berkshire

Foreword

HIS is a book for scouts, and for boys who

JL want to be scouts. It is not a tale of thrilling adventure in strange lands, because it is the story of a scout patrol right at home, in the kind of an American town you and I live in. But these scouts of the Chipmunk Patrol had a pretty good time just the same, and sometimes a pretty exciting one. If you would like to know how they had it, if you would like to hear what boy scouting meant to them, what they learned in camp and on the long hike, what games they played, what adventures befell them, from the days when, as tenderfeet of twelve, in short trousers, they joined the troop, till they grew to football size and merit badges, then the author hopes you’ll read his book. If you are a scout already, he is willing to wager there aren’t so many first-class scouts in your patrol as there are in this story ; but that is not because you aren’t so smart as the scouts of Berkshire, but because you haven’t tried so hard, or paid so much attention to business. You can do everything the boys in this book did, if you take a hitch in your belt and get down to the

FOREWORD

The story, you will find if you read it, leaves the Chipmunks at a point where they are strong, “ prepared,” and old enough to tackle bigger things. The smiling Peanut, always cheerful, always ready for fun or for trouble, can hardly be expected to stay cooped up in the village of Southmead all his life ! We have no idea where he’ll go, but it is certain that he, and some of his fellow scouts, will go somewhere pretty soon, to see strange countries and tackle new adventures. And it is equally certain that Peanut will expect us to write a book about it. The last time we saw him, he had almost decided to save up his earnings and go with Mr. Rogers to the great Dismal Swamp of Virginia, and was urging the Wildcat and others to go along, too. Anyhow, we’ve got our paper ready, and our pencils sharpened.

Chapter I

I T was a fine Saturday morning in early June.

The Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts were brilliant green, and as the river wound through the meadows at their feet it sparkled in the sun so brightly that you would never have guessed it was fouled with the drainage from various towns and not fit for a dog to swim in. The eight o’clock trolley out of Southmead was rolling along beside this river, and on the two rear seats were eight boys, some of them in brown khaki uniforms, some not, and a man of thirty. They were the Chipmunk Patrol of the Southmead Boy Scouts. They had been enrolled as tenderfeet only a few days, for the boy scout organization was new in Southmead, and, with their scout-master, they were bound on their first hike, up October Mountain.

Seven of them were boys under fourteen, for the Chipmunk Patrol was made up of what the Crow J 3

Patrol called “ the little kids.” The eighth boy, Robert Everts, was older. He was nearing his sixteenth birthday, and was the leader of the patrol. He sat beside the scout-master, a young man who looked as if he were still capable of giving an account of himself on the athletic field, and who had been influential in organizing the boys of Southmead into a scout troop.

“The kids are feeling good this morning, Mr. Rogers,” said Rob. “ Ought I to tell them to keep quieter? ”

The scout-master grinned. “ Never mind,” he said, “they are in the rear seats and not disturbing anybody. We’ll take it out of ’em before night ! ”

As he spoke, a small red head turned around on the seat in front, and the keen, mischievous eyes of Bobbie Morrison were fixed upon his. Bobbie Morrison was the smallest boy in the patrol, but, as the physics you study in school would say, his spirits varied inversely as his size. He was so small that he was called Peanut, but he was active and quick as a cat, sandy as a little terrier, and with an unfailing supply of good nature.

“ Hi, fellers,” he now shouted. “ Mister Rogers says he’s goin’ to take it out of us ! ”

He rose in his seat, took off his brown scout hat (for he was one of the boys in uniform) and, grabbing it by the brim like a tennis racquet, reached over and hit Arthur Bruce on the head.

Arthur Bruce was the exact opposite of Peanut in everything but good nature. He was slow of speech and action, stocky and strong for his age — about thirteen — and quiet and serious in manner. But he, too, was invariably good-natured. He turned with a jump when Peanut’s hat came down on his head, grinned amiably, and deliberately taking off his own hat smote Willie Walker, who was on the seat behind.

Willie Walker was noted among the boys for his ability to talk incessantly, and say nothing. He was often called Willie Talker. Willie had a shock of yellow hair which stood straight up on his head, every which way, like Slovenly Peter’s in the famous story. He was not a bad boy, but nobody had taught him how to fix his mind on a subject, so that he was always getting credit for being a dull boy in school, because he never knew his lessons, and for being a bad boy because he used his brain to invent new kinds of spitballs instead of learning his geography. Willie really had a brain, but it went every which way, like his hair. It needed combing.

“ Hi, there ! ” he yelled, when Arthur’s hat hit him. “ I ain’t done nothin’. Pass it on.”

He rose in his seat and “ passed it on,” smacking Dennis O’Brien on the head with his cap.

Dennis took his turn at somebody else. All the boys were whacking each other, and Willie Walker was crying, “ Hit him again, he's Irish ! ” The conductor and a few passengers on the forward seats watched, amused. One boy only, on the rear seat, seemed to be taking no active part. He was Lou Merritt, a stocky, dark-eyed lad, poorly dressed, without a uniform. The scout-master watched him. Now and then he would sneak his hat off quickly, when he thought nobody was looking, wallop a boy on the seat in front, and sneak his cap back on his own head before he was detected. Finally somebody hit him.

“ Aw, quit it, will you ? ” he half whined. “ I didn’t hit you.”

“ No, don’t hit Lou ; he’s got a soft head,” said Willie Walker, with one of his shrill laughs. He was always making jokes and laughing at them himself. It didn’t trouble him in the least whether anybody else laughed or not.

The scout-master looked at Lou sharply. “ Is Lou a bit of a sneak?” he asked Rob Everts.

“ I’m afraid so,” the latter replied.

“ H’m,” said the man. “ We’ll have to attend to his case.”

The car had by now passed through a village, and was running along by the side of a steep hill. Th® scout-master signaled to the conductor, and the car stopped where a crossroad led off up the slope. “ All out ! ” he cried.

There was a quick scramble under the seats, and the boys piled out with their equipment — each boy with a staff and a small khaki knapsack. Two or three boys, in addition, had tin dippers and small frying-pans tied to their belts, and Arthur Bruce had a small sheathed axe, such as hunters carry. The car moved on. The little squad of boys, left in the road, shouldered their packs, fell, at Rob’s command, into column of twos, and began to march up the country road. Rob walked at the head, with Mr. Rogers at one side. It was an awkward squad behind, for the Chipmunks did not yet know how to march.

“Too bad we haven’t got some music,” said Rob.

The scout-master turned to the boys. “Who’s the best whistler?” he asked.

“ I am,” came the shrill voice of Willie Walker.

“ Well, what do you know about that ! ” cried Peanut. “ Honest, he don’t care what he says.”

The other boys set up a shout of derision, which didn’t in the least disturb Willie’s good nature.

“ All right,” said the scout-master, “ I’ll take you at your word. Fall out.”

Willie pretended to stub his toe and fell, quite literally, out of the line. Some of the boys snickered. Some of them didn’t. The scout-master stood over Willie and spoke with sudden sternness.

“ Get up ! ” he said.

Willie got up, a little ashamed.

“ Dust your clothes ! ”

He dusted his clothes with his hands.

“ Now, when you are marching under orders, it isn’t funny to be fresh,” the scout-master went on. “ Scouts are supposed to know how to march, to obey orders, not to be silly little kids any more. Go up in front and whistle a march, and keep on whistling till you are ordered to stop ! ”

Willie went to the front of the line. “ What shall I whistle ? ” said he.

“You’re the best whistler here; you ought to know,” said Mr. Rogers.

The other boys again laughed. Willie, whose natural good nature was not easily crushed, saw he was caught in his own trap. He puckered his lips, and began to whistle, some two notes off the key, “ Our Director.”

“ Fall in ! ” cried Rob.

The boys fell into column of twos again.

“ Forward march ! ”

With Willie at their head, whistling, the patrol renewed its march, keeping step now.

“Isn’t that the Harvard football song?” asked Rob of Mr. Rogers.

“ Yes,” said he. “ Everybody whistle ! ”

It wasn’t exactly a pretty sound which resulted, but it had the march rhythm, and whistling merrily the Chipmunks swung along up the road. Presently Willie began to tire, and his whistle ceased.

“ Hi,” called Peanut, “ the band’s gin out ! ”

“ Walker ! ” shouted the scout-master, “ whistle 1 I told you to whistle till you were ordered to stop.”

“ I ain’t got no breath,” grinned Willie, sheepishly.

“ Say, ‘ I haven’t any breath.’ ”

“ I haven’t got n-any breath,” said Willie.

“ Now whistle without it,” said Mr. Rogers, sternly, though he winked at Peanut while he spoke.

Willie began to whistle again.

“ Willie can’t talk while he whistles,” said Dennis O’Brien.

“ Poor Willie ! ” cried Peanut.

Willie looked back, grinning, but he kept on whistling. When his breath really began to fail, the scout-master called out, “ Patrol, halt. Band cease. Break ranks.”

Willie gave a shrill scream of joy. “ Some drum and fife corps, I am ! ” he said

The road had been taking the boys steadily up, through second growth timber, and beside a rushing brook. The morning was growing warm, and the boys were thirsty. They started for the brook.

“ Hold on ! ” cried the scout-master. “ Do you know whether there are any houses above on this brook ? ”

The boys shook their heads.

“Then don’t drink the water,” said Mr. Rogers.

“ Why not ? ” asked Harold Pratt.

“ One of the first things for a scout to remember,” Mr. Rogers explained, “ is never to drink water, nor let anybody else drink it, which may be tainted. One of the worst diseases is typhoid fever, and that almost always comes from tainted water or milk. It is a disease caused by a little germ in the intestines, and if a person has this disease, and the refuse from his body, instead of being burned, should go into a drain, and the drain should empty into a brook like this one, everybody who drank the water could catch typhoid fever, too. When you drink brook water, you must be sure there are no drains emptying into it above you. Water that comes out of springs is safer, because the ground filters it.”

“ What do you do when there’s no spring ? ” asked two or three of the boys.

“ Always boil the water, then,” the man answered. “ If water is heated enough to boil, the heat kills all germs. It should always be the rule of a scout, When in doubt about the purity of water , boil itP

“ I guess we’ll come to a spring soon,” said Arthur Bruce, putting his cup back in his belt.

“ I’m goin’ to drink anyhow,” said Willie Walker.

“No, you’re not,” cried two of the boys. “You obey orders ! ”

“ That’s the stuff,” cried Rob, the patrol leader. “ Forward march.”

The boys set out again up the road. Presently they came to a spring on the bank, gushing through a pipe into a wooden horse trough. “ Is this all right?” they asked.

“ What do you think?” said the scout-master.

The boys looked beyond the spring up the slope of the hill. There were no houses to the top. “ Sure 1 ” they cried, and plunged their dippers under the pipe.

The road now wound through a gap in the hills, and was comparatively level for a way.

“ We’ll go scout pace,” said Mr. Rogers.

“ What’s that ? ” asked some of the boys.

“I know!” cried Peanut. “It’s in the ‘Manual.’ It’s fifty paces dog trot, and fifty paces walk.”

“ That’s right,” said Rob, who had also read the scout “ Manual.” “ And you’ve got to do a mile in twelve minutes that way to be a second-class scout.”

“That’s one of the things you’ve got to do,” smiled Mr. Rogers. “ All ready, now. Don’t try to keep in line. Each boy for himself.”

He set off at a gentle dog trot, with short steps so that he would not tire the little fellows, counting his paces aloud. The rest followed after. At fifty paces he dropped into a walk, and walked fifty paces ; then trotted again, then walked. After a few times, every one ceased counting, for it became easy and natural to trot about so far, then walk about so far, then trot again. The stronger boys were soon ahead of the others, though little Peanut, his knapsack bobbing on his back, was right up with the leaders. They were all panting.

“ Gee ! ” cried Peanut between puffs, “ you do get over the ground this way ! ”

“ Good scouts can keep it up all day,” said Mr. Rogers.

“Whew!” said Peanut. “Well,” he added bravely, “ I guess I could — if I had to.”

They had gone perhaps half a mile, and were all pretty hot, when somebody called out, “ Hi, where’s Lou Merritt ? ”

Everybody looked back. In the rear Arthur Bruce and Frank Nichols, both slow runners, were puffing along, sticking to the pace, but Lou was nowhere in sight.

“ Shall I go back for him ? ” asked Rob.

“ Perhaps you’d better,” said the scout-master. “ Halt your squad.”

“ Patrol, halt ! ” said Rob. “ Peanut, you come back with me.”

“ Surest thing you know,” said Peanut, fresh as a daisy.

The two boys disappeared round the bend of the road Presently they came back with Lou between them.

“ He says he has a stitch in his side, sir,” said Rob.

“ Well, I have,” Lou whined. “ I get ’em all the time. I can’t run like that.”

The scout-master looked at him sharply, and the boy averted his eyes. “ Didn’t I see you running around the square down at the village the other night ? ” he asked.

“ I didn’t have no pain then,” said the boy.

“ Aw, he ain’t got none now,” said Willie Walker.

“ That’s a lie,” retorted Lou.

Rob, the patrol leader, and two of the boys, before the scout-master could say a word, cried, “ Hi, stop that kind of talk ! That doesn’t go in the scouts.”

“ That’s right, boys,” said Mr. Rogers. “ That doesn’t go in the scouts. We don’t swear, and we won’t have any boys that do. I guess you’d better beg our pardons, Lou, for that word.”

“ Well, it is a lie,” Lou half whimpered.

“ We’ll attend to that later. First, you beg our pardons for the cuss word.”

“ I — I’m sorry,” said Lou.

“ Good. And now, look me in the face ! Do you swear on your honor as a scout that you have a stitch in your side, so that you can’t obey orders and go scout pace ? ”

Lou raised his eyes to the man’s. “ Yes,” he said.

Mr. Rogers turned to Willie Walker. “ Lou has sworn on his honor as a scout, Willie,” he said ; “ you’d better take back the lie.”

“ Aw, he’s fooling yer. I know Lou,” replied Willie.

“ We’ve put him on his honor as a scout,” the man said, seriously. “ It’s up to you to show yours. Scouts always trust the word of their fellows.”

“ All right,” said Willie. “ Sorry, Lou ; take it back.”

The other boy made no reply, shifting his eyes. Mr. Rogers looked at him, puzzled and frowning. The march was resumed, without formation now, each boy walking at his own gait along the road, which was getting steeper and rougher.

“ How far have we been? ” asked Dennis O’Brien, taking off his hat and mopping his forehead.

Mr. Rogers took a pedometer from the fob pocket of his trousers. “ Five miles,” he said.

“What’s that thing?” asked Peanut. “Looks like a watch.”

“A pedometer,” the man replied. He shook it and the boys heard a click inside. “You see, every time I take a step, the weight inside is bobbed up once, and that moves the needle on the dial face just so far. Now, my step is twenty-eight inches long, and the works are adjusted to that length step, so that when I have taken 2,262 steps, the dial registers one mile.”

“ Wow,” said Willie. “ Do I take 2,262 steps a mile?”

“You take more,” said the scout-master, “because your step is shorter than mine.”

“ It makes me tired,” the boy laughed. “ Ain’t we most there?”

“ Say, I’m hungry; let’s eat now ! ” put in Harold Pratt.

“ Aw, Prattie’s always hungry,” said Peanut. “ Come on to the top. How much farther is it ? ”

“ About a mile,” laughed Mr. Rogers. “ I guess we’ll go to the top, and find a place to camp for lunch. We’ve got to have a spring, you know.”

“Say, when are we going to do the tracking ? ” asked Arthur Bruce. “ That’ll be the fun ! ”

“ After lunch. Forward march ! ”

The road was now going up sharp. Another quarter of a mile, and it came out of the woods into what looked like a level clearing. The hemlocks, behind and all around, a little lower than this clearing, stretched for miles like a green sea. There was no sign of a mountain, except a bit of a hill off to the left, and no house except, far away, a single group of buildings which had once been occupied by the millionaire who had owned this whole vast extent of upland forest as a game preserve.

“ Is this a mountain ? ” said one of the boys. “Don’t look much like it to me.”

“It’s really a great upland plateau,” said Mr. Rogers. “ Wait till you see the view.”

They now struck off the road toward the hill, walking rapidly through the hemlocks. Willie Walker was no longer chattering.

“What’s the matter with Willie?” shouted Dennis O’Brien. “ He’s so still 1 ”

Willie grinned, rather sheepishly.

“ Aw, he’s tired ! ” said Peanut, scornfully. “ I ain’t tired !”

Whereupon, to show that he wasn’t, he began to climb a tree.

“ Fall in ! ” shouted Rob.

Peanut scrambled down again, and ran to his place, grinning cheerfully.

A few moments more, and they began to scramble up the hill. Suddenly they came out into another clearing, and, turning back, looked out over the green sea of the hemlocks, down through a gorge up which the road had brought them, and so across a great space of hills huddled fainter and fainter into the distance, till on the horizon they saw a long line of blue domes and pyramids, lying almost like a cloud.

“ The Catskills 1 ’’ cried the scout-master.

“Those blue things way over there?" asked Peanut. “ How far away are they ? "

“ Maybe forty or fifty miles."

“ Come on, let’s walk there," said Willie, with one of his shrill laughs.

“ Willie’s gettin’ rested," remarked Dennis O’Brien.

The scout-master noticed that Lou Merritt was looking in silence at the far-off blue mountains. He went over and put his hand on the lad’s shoulder. “ What are you thinking about, Lou ?’’ he said.

“ Them mountains is where Rip Van Winkle went," said the boy, in a shamefaced kind of way. “ I was thinkin’ about him sleepin’ up there, and the little men playin’ nine-pins."

Mr. Rogers patted him kindly. “ Those are the mountains," he replied. “ Perhaps some day we can take a long hike over to them. I’m glad you thought of old Rip when you saw them. None of the other boys did."

Lou lifted his face to the man’s with a look of gratitude, and colored. The man patted his shoulder again and turned away.

“ There’s a lot of good in that boy," he thought to himself. “ He’s got imagination. Why is he a sneak ? How can we cure him ? ’’

You see it isn’t always easy to be a scout-master.

“ And now,” he cried aloud, “ lunch ! Rob, send your men down the hill in different directions to find a spring. The first boy who finds a good one, or a clear brook, whistle three times.”

“ Lunch ! ” yelled Willie Walker and Harold Pratt, leaping up from the grass where they had thrown themselves. “ Wow ! ”

Eight boys vanished like so many rabbits down the hill into the woods. Mr. Rogers watched them go with a smile. Then he followed, in a slightly different direction, for he knew where the spring was.

CHAPTER II The First Camp-Fire HE spring came out from under a rock in

A the hemlocks, and trickled away in a tiny stream through the moss. The scout-master soon reached it and sat down to wait. He heard the boys shouting out in the woods. Presently he heard the crash of dead twigs near by, and saw Arthur Bruce coming up the tiny trickle of the brook, head down, evidently searching for a pool large enough to dip water from. Mr. Rogers slipped behind a tree. The boy came to the spring, took one look, and, thrusting his fingers into his mouth, blew three shrill blasts.

“Good work, Arthur,” said the scout-master, stepping from behind his tree.

Arthur grinned, pleased. The other boys were soon heard coming, and in a few minutes they were all gathered in.

“ Who found it? ” asked Frank Nichols.

“ Arthur,” said Mr. Rogers. “ I knew where it was. How’d you do it, Arthur?”

“ Why,” said the boy, “ I looked over the country from the hill before we started, and saw where the lowest ground was. I thought a brook would be there, of course, if it was anywhere. When I found the brook, it was too small and muddy, so I followed it up to the spring.”

“ That’s good woodcraft, Arthur,” said the scout-master. “ Now for the fires. Boys, before you can be second-class scouts, each one of you has got to make a fire, using only two matches. Everybody select a spot and try it. We’ll cook on the best fire. Arthur, do you know how to make the stone backing?”

“ Yes, sir,” said Bruce.

“ Well, you show the rest. Here 1 here are two matches apiece for you.”

The boys took their matches, and scurried around for loose stones. They each arranged their stones so as to form a kind of box, with one end open and no cover, eight inches high, a foot wide, and eighteen inches long.

“ Shouldn’t the open end be turned toward the wind ? ” asked Rob.

“ Sure,” said Arthur Bruce, who, unlike most of the other boys, lived out on the edge of the village and was already, at thirteen, a good woodsman. “ It makes a draught.”

Some of the fire pits were well made, some were pretty careless. Willie Walker couldn’t make his stand up.

“ Humph,” said Peanut, tugging at a stone half as heavy as himself. “ Your rocks are too little.” Peanut’s oven was entirely made of three pieces, propped against one another, and was the best of the lot.

Their ovens made, the boys began to gather fuel. Peanut and Arthur Bruce went to a birch tree and peeled off some dry bark, placing it at the bottom, then, on top of that, they laid small dead twigs from the hemlocks, and on top of that, in a kind of pyramid, larger dead sticks, which they cut neatly with Arthur’s axe, sharing it by turns. Carefully shielding their matches, they each touched off the birch bark, and each had a fire crackling without using the second match at all. The other boys tried to use dead grass or leaves for the first kindlings, and some of them had damp wood. Two or three, in their eagerness to get their fires lighted first, broke the first match while scratching it, and the wind blew out Willie Walker’s second match, so he got no fire at all.

“ What would you do, Willie, if you were all alone in the woods on a cold night, and had only two matches ? ” asked the scout-master. “ Wouldn’t you be more careful ? ”

Willie grinned. “ I'll always carry a whole box,” he said. But he asked for a third match, and carefully shielding that in his hat, he got his light finally.

Rob and Mr. Rogers walked around the ring of eight fires. “Arthur’s and Peanut’s fire pits are both better than mine,” said the leader. “ I think Peanut has the best oven because it’s strongest. You could stand a heavy kettle across it.”

“ Peanut wins, ” agreed the scout-master. “ Other fires out ! ”

The boys sprang with their dippers to the pool, and soon had the fires extinguished.

“ Now shall we cook ? ” they cried, gathering round Peanut’s fire.

Arthur Bruce looked scornful. “We gotter have a bed of coals first,” he said.

“ Of course,” Mr. Rogers added. “ You can’t cook over a flame like that ; it would merely burn your food up, and the heat’s not steady enough, either. But your fire’s all hemlock now, Peanut. You want hard wood to make good coals.”

The boys scattered on the search for hard wood, and soon brought back some faggots of dead oak and maple, which they stacked on the fire. After fifteen minutes of impatient waiting, the sticks had settled down below the rim of stones, into a glowing bed of coals.

“ Now cook ! ” cried Rob

The boys dove into their knapsacks. Some had lamb chops, some bacon. There were two or three small loaves of bread, little papers of salt and butter, and fruit. The boys who had frying-pans soon had their bacon sizzling over the coals.

“ But how are we going to cook the chops ? ” cried Willie.

“ Will somebody lend me a frying-pan ?” from two or three at once.

“ Say, do you cook these things in your fingers ? ”

“ Ouch ! ”

“ Wow ! that fire’s hot ! ”

There was an uproar round the little blaze.

“ I know how,” said Arthur. He whipped out a big knife, took a green stick and slit the end like a clothes-pin, stuck the end of the chop bone into the slit, where the green wood held it like a vise, and had his chop sizzling above the coals in a jiffy.

“ Hi, great head ! Don’t it hurt to be so smart ? Lend me your toad stabber,” shouted Willie, all in one breath.

He and Lou and Frank Nichols and Dennis O’Brien all followed suit, and in two minutes five or six lamb chops, on the ends of sticks, were sizzling above the fire. Willie’s fell off into the coals. “ I don’t care,” he shouted, as he fastened in another chop, “ that lamb had a lot more ribs ! ”

“ My, that’s good ! ” exclaimed Frank Nichols, later, as he tossed the bare bone into the embers, and wiped his greasy fingers on the moss.

“ Um, um ! you bet ! ” said Peanut, his mouth emerging from behind his chop long enough to speak, and disappearing again.