Camp Bob's Hill

Contents

CHAPTER PA6E

I. Skinny Gets a Letter .i

II. Off for Long Lake.19

Chapter I

I F you will take a map of Massachusetts, which, you know, is a part of the United States of America, and look up in the northwest corner, you will find some funny-looking black marks and the word “ Greylock.” Greylock is a mountain, and a mountain is a high elevation of land. My geog¬ raphy says so.

Skinny says that the marks look more like our cave than they do like a mountain, and that is what we all think, but I suppose it is the best that the geography folks can do.

Anyhow, Greylock is the highest mountain in Massachusetts, which, if you don’t know, the teacher ought to make you stay after school.

That is where this history begins,—not on top of Greylock, but at the bottom of one of its foothills, which we call Bob’s Hill—with me, John Alex¬ ander Smith, hoeing in our garden one Saturday morning toward the last of May, wishing vacation time would hurry along or, anyhow, that some of the boys would show up.

I was just resting and looking at a window in the upper part of our barn. There was only one whole pane of glass left in the window and I was wondering if I could hit that one with a stone, when I heard an awful yell.

Then a voice shouted, “ Charge, my braves. Eat ’em alive,” and before I could have said Jack Rob¬ inson more than three times, the whole Band swarmed over the fence, from Phillips’s driveway, into the garden.

“ You’d better be careful, Skinny Miller,” I said, “ how you go charging over those peas and beans, or there’ll be something doing. My mother’ll charge you all right, that’s what she will.”

But, just the same, they surrounded me and marched me into the house where Ma was looking out of the kitchen window to see what all the noise was about.

“ Mrs. Smith,” said Skinny, as bold as anything, “ the Band is going to have a meeting at the cave right away and Pedro being secretary, we need him to write up the doings.”

“ I’ll finish hoeing to-night,” I told her. “ I’m ’most through, anyway. It’ll be cooler then, too.”

“ Is this to be a meeting of bandits or Indians or Boy Scouts? ” she asked, trying to look very sober, but I could see a twinkle in her eyes. “ Because,” she went on, “ if it is Boy Scouts, I have just fried a batch of doughnuts, but I don’t suppose Indians or bandits care about such things.”

We all gave a yell at that. Then Skinny held up one hand and we stopped to hear what he had to say.

“ Fellers,” said he, “ when it comes to Pedro’s mother’s doughnuts, there ain’t any difference be¬ tween being Boy Scouts, bandits, or Injuns. We’re good for two apiece any day of the week.”

Then he folded his arms like a bandit and looked around fierce. “ Are we, or ain’t we? ” said he.

“ We are,” we all shouted in chorus, except Bill Wilson. Bill yelled, “ Betcher life!” so loud that

Ma covered her ears and made believe she was scared.

Then she gave us the doughnuts in a paper bag and told us to clear out. It did not take us long. In less than a minute we were climbing up through Blackinton’s orchard, along a path which winds among the trees. Beyond the orchard, Bob’s Hill is so steep that we didn’t stop to climb straight up, but took a sort of road that leads around and up on the other side. We usually dig our shoes in and climb straight up, partly for the fun of doing it and partly because from the top we can see all up and down the valley, the village below, and East Mountain opposite. It’s great.

This time we took the easier way and soon were beyond the top and hurrying toward our cave.

Straight ahead was old Greylock, smiling down at us in the sunshine and looking so fine that we gave a cheer. Between, green fields sloped gradu¬ ally up to the woods on the mountain-side, where we knew that a mountain brook was tumbling over the rocks in a splendid waterfall, then dashing down past our cave.

There are eight of us and sometimes we are bandits, sometimes Indians, and sometimes Boy Scouts, just as Ma said, though mostly we are Scouts because we like to wear uniforms, rescue people, and all that sort of thing. No matter which we are, I am secretary and have to put all the doings in the minutes of the meetings.

Our patrol leader is Skinny Miller. His front name is Gabriel, only he does not use it any, except sometimes, when we are bandits, he calls himself Gabe. When he does that, he is something fierce.

The summer before this history begins, Mr. Nor¬ ton, our Scoutmaster, had got us to join the Boy Scouts and the Band became Raven Patrol. Then the Gingham Ground Gang joined as Eagle Patrol, and there we were all tied up together so that we couldn’t fight any more, because Boy Scouts only can fight the enemy.

The map doesn’t say anything about them, but we think more of Peck’s Falls than of all the rest of the geography except Bunker Hill Monument, where some of Skinny’s ancestors fell. He thinks a lot of Bunker Hill Monument. You see, our cave is in Peck’s Falls woods, where we can hear the roar of the falls and, when we look out, can see the clear mountain water tumbling between rocks.

When you want to walk up to Peck’s Falls, you can go the longer way around, past the old Quaker Meeting House, then south on the west road until you come opposite the woods; or you can go straight back from Park Street, through Phillips’s or Blackinton’s orchard, and over the hill and across, until you come out on the west road, opposite the falls. Then you walk up a road that comes down the mountain-side, until you see two red houses stand¬ ing close together on the right-hand side.

That isn’t the p^ce; but watch, and when the folks are not looking, go between those houses and squeeze through the bars: then follow along a stream until you come to a barb-wire fence on the edge of the woods. The Band knows where there is a hole in that fence with a tiny path on the other side, leading through a tangle of blackberry bushes and underbrush. It winds among the trees, the roar of falling water growing louder and louder all the time, until, after a few minutes, you come out all of a sudden into an open space and see the falls, with Pulpit Rock reaching across in front.

If it doesn’t make you dizzy, you can edge your way carefully along the narrow rocky ledge, until you are in front of the falls, leaning back against the rock for all you are worth and almost holding your breath. For it is fifty feet or more, straight down to a shallow pool of clear water and a rushing stream, and from the woods far above, a mountain brook leaps and tumbles from rock to rock, now out of sight behind some ledge, then dancing and foam¬ ing in the sunshine, but all the time laughing and singing, until it falls with a roar into the pool below.

Say, when Benny jumped off the end of Pulpit Rock, with the tramp chasing—but I have told all about that once in the doings of the Band.

“ Fellers,” said Skinny, after we had watched the falls as long as we wanted to and then had made our way back off the rock, “ the hour has struck. To the cave, and mum’s the word! ”

We made our way down the steep side of the ravine, following a narrow path, until we came to the level of the brook below the falls. In front of us, on the edge of the water, was a big rock sticking out of the ground, with a tree growing from the top.

Skinny looked up and down to see if all was clear.

“ Bill,” said he, “ you guard the path and let no one come up without the countersign.”

“ Without the which ? ”

“ Without the password.”

“ What is the password ? ” asked Bill.

But Skinny was inside the cave by that time and did not hear. It was a good thing for Bill, too, because it makes Skinny mad to have us ask ques¬ tions.

Bill came in last and we all sat there on the sandy floor of the cave, waiting to find out about the meeting.

“ Pedro—I mean the secretary will call the roll,” said Skinny.

“ Skinny,” I called, “ Bill, Hank, Benny, Chuck, Harry, Wally.”

“ We are all here,” I told him, “ counting me.”

“ Fellers,” said Skinny, “ I don’t know whether we are Scouts or bandits or Injuns, but we want to have some fun as soon as school lets out, whatever we are.”

“ You bet! ” we yelled.

“ Pedro, you are secretary. There can't any¬ body read your writin’, but we can hear and you can tell us about the doings of the Band.”

“ I guess everybody here knows about them al¬ ready,” I said. “ We were it.”

He stood up, until his head nearly reached the top of the cave, folded his arms, and looked fierce.

“ Am I leader of this patrol, or ain’t I ? ” said he.

“ You’re leader, all right, but you’re crazy with the heat,” I told him.

“Shut up, Pedro, can’t you?” said Bill. “We want to hear about our deeds. They listen good.”

So I had to do it.

“ A long time ago,” I began, “ about three years,

I guess, Tom Chapin found this ’ere cave, and we formed a band of bandits, with Tom as captain. We had all kinds of fun that summer and Tom got chased by a bull, when he tried to paralyze it io Skinny Gets a Letter

by the power of the human eye, like the school reader says, and we got lost on Greylock, and we found some hidden treasure.”

“ Put in about licking the Gingham Ground Gang,” said Bill, when I stopped to get my breath.

“ Skinny, I mean Mr. President,” said Benny Wade, “ we licked ’em all right, but they are Scouts now, so that doesn’t count.”

“ Skip the fightin’ part,” said Skinny. “ But, just the same, we can lick ’em again any day of the week and don’tcher forget it.”

He swung his arms fierce and you couldn’t hear anything for a while after that. Then I went on:

“ When Tom went away to school with the money which we had found, Skinny became captain and he is a good one. We built a dam to get the flood out of our cave and we smoked out a tramp.”

“ We could have drownded him out,” said Bill. “ Only we didn’t want to spoil the dam.”

“ And the next summer some of us went out to Ralph Baxter’s in Illinois, and went down the river in a boat and camped out at Starved Rock, on Il¬ linois River. Hank found a pearl in a clam shell and Skinny lassoed a robber who tried to steal it. Last summer we joined the Boy Scouts and Mr. Norton, our Scoutmaster, took us on a hike over Florida Mountain, as far as Connecticut River.

4t And now,” I went on, sitting down, “ it’s ’most vacation time again and we want to have some more fun before we get so old that we can’t. I’m going on fourteen, already.”

“ Now you’ve said something, Pedro,” called out Benny. “ I’m ’most twelve and I can remember when I was only nine.”

“ Oh, shucks! ” said Skinny. “ Who cares about gettin’ old? Now, listen, and mum’s the word! ” With that he pulled a letter out of his pocket and opened it slowly to give us time to be surprised.

“ Do you remember I told you about my cousin Dick out in Indiana? Here is what he says, or part of it:

“ Valparaiso, Ind., May 26.

“ Dear Skinny :

“ I have got a scheme better than any stunt you ever pulled off. Bring the Band out here this sum¬ mer. We have all kinds of little lakes around here and I know where I can get some tents. We’ll camp out on one of the lakes and have the time of our lives. They are trying to organize some Boy Scouts here and your coming will help it along and that is good Scout work, ain’t it?

“ It needn’t cost so much. There will be cheap rates to Chicago and we can earn a lot of money picking huckleberries. There is a big huckleberry marsh near one of the lakes and when the berries are ripe they want all the pickers they can get. We can earn enough to take care of all the expenses of the camp and then some.

“ What do you say ?

“ Your cousin,

“ Dick.”

“ P.S.—Alice Laurence’s mother, the girl you saved when she fell over the edge of the canyon at Starved Rock, has rented a cottage on one of the lakes for the summer.”

We didn’t say a word when Skinny had finished reading, except Bill, and he didn’t say anything, but he stood on his hands and played a tune with his feet against the roof of the cave where it sloped down, and we knew what he meant.

“ It’s a good scheme,” I said. “ Only our folks may not let us do it. It’s ’most as far as we went before.”

“ Everybody that wants to do it, holler,” said Skinny.

An awful roar went out the hole that leads into the cave and floated down through the ravine.

“ Let’s earn money, Saturdays,” said Hank, “ un¬ til it’s time to go. We can mow lawns and hoe gardens and do all kinds of things.”

We all gave a groan at that, but it seemed the best way and that is what we decided to do; but first we had to find out if our folks would let us go.

Sunday afternoon, I heard a whistle out in front of the house and when I went out, I found Skinny looking as if he had lost his best fish pole.

“ They won’t let me do it,” said he, as soon as he saw me coming.

“ Same here,” I told him.

“ Folks are always thinking that a boy is going to get into trouble. Why, look at the Band. Nothing ever happened to us—nothing much, I mean. We never got killed yet nor drownded.”

“ I asked Pa to go with us, if he was afraid to let us go alone.”

“ Good for you! What did he say ? ”

“ He said he'd like to go, all right, and if we would camp out in the back yard, he’d do it.”

“ I wish Mr. Norton would go.”

“ Let’s ask him. He’s got to go somewhere, hasn’t he? Everybody goes on a vacation, and he said last summer that maybe he’d take our whole troop out this year.”

“We don’t want the whole troop. They couldn’t all go, anyhow. I don’t believe he’d go so far.”

“ Well, he told us to go to him with our troubles, and this is trouble, all right.”

“ There he comes now,” shouted Skinny, and, sure enough, there was Mr. Norton, our Scoutmas¬ ter, coming down Park Street, as big as life. We both made a run for him, hardly stopping to give the Scout salute.

“ What’s this ? Am I being surrounded ? ” he asked, laughing.

“ You can’t go until you promise to do it,” said Skinny. “ Will you promise? ”

“ Being in something of a hurry, I guess I’ll have to promise,” said he, with his eyes twinkling.

“ When do we start ? ”

i5

“ How did you know about it? ” we asked him.

“ I only judged by the symptoms. It’s almost vacation time and that’s the open season for Scouts.”

Then we told him about Dick’s letter and how our folks didn’t want us to camp out on any lake alone. You see, we were not used to lakes, all we had being Hoosac River, which you can wade across in some places in summer.

“ I’ll tell you what,” said he, after thinking it over, both of us watching him anxiously. “ This is a matter that cannot be decided offhand. It is different from a trip to Peck’s Falls, or even from a hike over the mountain. Let’s leave it in this way: You find out what it will cost and whether your folks will let you go if I go along to look after you, and find out how many of you can go. We’ll have a meeting of the patrol at my house next Saturday night. It happens that I am expect¬ ing a letter from Chicago any day now and if it says what I think it will say, I shall have to go out there this summer, anyhow. I must hurry along now. Don’t forget Saturday night.”

Forget it! We didn’t think or talk of anything else all the week. Just as soon as my folks heard that Mr. Norton might go along, they gave in right away.

“ It’s kind of expensive, but we’ll call it a part of your education,” said Pa, “ and charge it up to profit and loss. That trip last summer with Mr. Norton was a great thing for you, John, and I must say that you have been a different boy since you joined the Scouts.”

When Saturday night came, it was an excited bunch of Scouts that rang the bell at Mr. Norton’s house. He opened the door and stood there, smiling down at us; then motioned for us to go in.

“ Now, boys,” said he, when we all had sat down, “ which shall it be first, business or pleasure? Mrs. Norton is trying to keep two quarts of ice cream from melting. How about it, Captain?”

“ Why can’t we do both? We want to know about the trip and it wouldn’t be right to let that ice cream melt.”

Before Mr. Norton could answer Mrs. Norton came in with a tray full of dishes, heaped up with ice cream, and that settled it. I have noticed that’s the way Ma settles things at our house. She doesn’t talk about them; she just does them.

We didn’t talk much of any for a few moments; then Mr. Norton stopped long enough to say, “ Well, boys, it is settled so far as I am concerned. I’ll have to go to Chicago whether you do or not. I could run in to the city from the camp very easily, as often as my business made it necessary. How about you ? ”

“ I can go,” I told him. Skinny said that he could and, one after the other, all the boys said the same except Hank Bates. He sat there, quiet, with his face kind of working, as if he was trying to keep from crying. I knew what the trouble was, for he had told me.

“ How about you, Hank ? ”

“ I can’t go,” said he, wiping his eyes and pre¬ tending it was sweat. “ The folks said they would like to have me be with you, but it is going to cost too much money. Father has been sick, you know.”

“ I wish your father could go with us,” Mr. Norton told him. “ It would do him a world of good, but I suppose that is out of the question.”

He waited for a moment, then went on, “ Isn’t it fortunate how things happen sometimes? I need someone to help me before I go and after I get back. It will take quite a bit of your time, but it will be worth the price of a round-trip ticket to me. What do you say, will you help me out? ”

Hank got up with a funny look on his face, gave the Scout salute, and then started for the door.

“ I must be going now,” said he, with a queer little quiver in his voice. “ I want to tell the folks.” In another second he was going down the street on a run.

That is how I came to be writing this history and that is how eight bandits, Injuns, or Scouts, from the northwest corner of Massachusetts, came to be camping out on Long Lake, near the northwest corner of Indiana.

Chapter II

T HERE are more lakes around Valparaiso than you could shake a stick at. Not that you would want to shake a stick at any of them except, of course, a fish pole. We shook a lot of those.

Dick met us at the depot one forenoon late in June. We thought it would paralyze the natives, when we piled off the train, yelling like Indians, Bill Wilson doing his best, but they never noticed it. You see, they have a college there, or something, and are used to such things.

It was just as Dick said. There are all kinds of lakes around Valparaiso. They are small lakes, except Lake Michigan, which is about fifteen miles away. That seems like the ocean, it is so big. The others are smaller and that is what Mr. Norton likes about them.

“ The beauty of a lake,” he explained, “ lies largely in its shore line, because water looks much the same everywhere. When the shores are so far away that you can’t see them plain, the lake isn’t half as pretty as when you can look across and get on to its curves.”

Anyhow, these lakes are pretty, as you will find out for yourself if you ever go there. First, there is Sager’s Lake on the south edge of the city. That is almost as pretty as Peck’s Falls. A small stream has been dammed and the water has filled a little valley, between two wooded bluffs.

Then, beginning about three and one-half miles north of the city, there is a whole string of lakes. Flint, Long, and Canada open into each other. Wahob comes pretty near opening into the others, only it doesn’t, and there are a whole lot of little ones, which don’t open into anything. We didn’t find out about them all at once. Whenever we’d think we had found them all, we would go out on a hike some day and discover another.

We had taken a train that would land us in Valparaiso in the forenoon in order to have plenty of time to get our camp ready before dark.

“ We don’t want any hotel bills, if we can help it,” Mr. Norton told us, “ although there are a num¬ ber of hotels on the lake, I understand, where we can put up if necessary.”

“ Hotel nothin’! ” said Skinny. “ What’s the matter with sleeping on the ground and looking up at the stars and things ? The Band didn’t have any hotel or tent, I guess, or anything but bushes, that time we camped out at the old mill on Fox River, and we didn’t have any hotel when we did the hike stunt to get a First-class Scout’s badge.”

“ You slept in a barn,” Bill told him, “ that’s what you did, and hay is different from bare ground, and a lady gave you your breakfast in the house.”

That was so. Skinny did sleep in a barn and he worked for a farmer’s wife enough to pay for his breakfast. The rest of us didn’t find any barn and we slept out of doors and cooked our own break¬ fast, which was great fun, only scary.

u Aw, g’wan!” said Skinny, “what if I did?

There is nothing in Scout law against sleeping in a barn, is there? I lassoed a bear on the way back, didn’t I? How many of you fellers dast lasso a bear?”

“ You were up in a tree, though, and didn’t dast come down.”

“ It looks some like a storm,” said Mr. Norton, winking at me. “ Bill, suppose you look for a wagon to carry our stuff in.”

“ I guess you won’t go to any hotel when I’m around,” Dick told us. “ Only you’ll have to sleep on the floor at our house, because we haven’t beds enough for so many. You are to come up to the house for dinner, anyhow. The folks said so. There is an electric railway to the lakes. Bill, tell the man to take your trunks and things to the station and the car will drop them off near where we are going to camp.”

“ That is a good plan,” said Mr. Norton, “ and dinner will taste good. Now, if Dick will tell me where to go, I’ll order some supplies and have them sent on in advance with the rest of the things. We found out last summer that boys on camping trips develop some wonderful appetites. I’ll pay for the things myself, for I presume you boys are pretty near ‘ broke,’ but I shall expect each of you to pay me back for your share, either when you get to picking berries, or after you reach home.”

He was right, too. I mean about the being broke part. I only had a few dollars left, and the other boys were the same.

“ I think it would be well to go over to the Court House,” said he, afterward, “ and see about a fish¬ ing license. I understand that a license fee is charged for fishing in the lakes.”

“ I ain’t going to pay anything just for catching a few fish in a lake,” said Skinny. “ This is a free country, I guess.”

We all thought the same about it, but Mr. Norton told us that if we were going to fish we would have to take out a license. “ I think you will want to do some fishing,” said he, “ before the summer is over. One of the first lessons a Scout should learn, is that laws should be obeyed. This is a free coun¬ try, in one sense, as Skinny says, but that doesn’t mean that everybody can do just as he pleases, regardless of law. What is law? Can anybody tell me? ”

“ Law is the things you can’t do,” Bill told him.

“Well, not altogether that. It is the thing you can do, sometimes. This country is governed by the people, isn’t it? Well, law is the will of the people. The people of Indiana have said that a fishing license of one dollar must be paid except by those living in this or the adjoining counties. We live in Massachusetts and we must pay a small license fee or violate the law, and we don’t want to do that. One of the greatest dangers which our country is facing is disregard for law. Some people have so much money that they think they are bigger than the law. Others have so little that they seem to think that the law does not apply to them.”

“We haven’t much,” said Benny, “ and a dollar is a whole lot.”

“ Well, I’ll advance the fee, and trust to your honesty, when the berries get ripe. And I begin to see,” he added, laughing, “ how Charles H. Nor¬ ton, Scoutmaster, stands a good chance of going ‘ broke ’ himself.”

It seemed strange to be so far from home and away from Bob’s Hill, though it wasn’t the first time. Dick’s folks seemed glad to see us and gave us a fine dinner. Then we started for our camp, all dressed in our Scout uniforms. It made people stare to see us march down Main Street and Skinny was real chesty over it.

“ Maybe we’d better be Injuns,” he whispered, “ seeing as how we are out West.”

“ We can’t in these clothes,” Benny told him. “ Let’s be Scouts to-day and Injuns to-morrow.”

“ And bandits every day in the week,” said Bill.

Before we could stop him, he opened his mouth and gave a yell that brought folks to their front doors. Then he turned to us and called:

“ Everybody. One, two, three-”

Say, Valparaiso knew we were in town before we had gone four blocks.

Our patrol has the raven for its patrol animal, raven being a high-toned name for crow, and the caw of the crow is our signal. It sounded as if a whole flock of crows had broken loose. It made us feel better and march straighter to hear it, be¬ cause there is something about a crow that makes us think of Greylock and the Bellows Pipe, Bob’s Hill, and home. Some folks don’t like crows—be¬ cause they don’t sing, I guess. They don’t claim to sing, and don’t try; but Patrol I, Troop 3 of Massachusetts would rather hear them caw, soaring around in the Bellows Pipe between the mountains, than the best canary that was ever shut up in a cage.