Tom Slade at Black Lake Part 9

"Kinder like home, Tommy," Uncle Jeb said.

The sun was going down beyond the hills across the lake and flickering up the water and casting a crimson glow upon the wooded summits. The empty cabins, and the boarded-up cooking shack, shone clear and sharp in the gathering twilight. High above, a great bird soared through the dusk, hastening to its home in the mountains, where Silver Fox trail wound its way up through the fastness, and where Tom and Roy had often gone. And the memory of all these fond a.s.sociations gripped Tom now, and he had to tighten his big ugly mouth to keep it from showing any tremor of weakness.

"Maybe it won't be as easy as Uncle Jeb thinks," he said to himself, "but anyway, I'll be here and I won't be interfering with them, and I'll get the cabins finished and I'll go away before they come. They'll have to like Billy Barnard, that's sure; and maybe he'll tell them about my not knowing who he was until after I gave them the cabins. They'll all be on the hill together and they'll have to be friends...."

Yes, they would all be on the hill together, save one, and they would be friends and there would be some great times. They would all hike up the mountain trail, all save one, and see Devil's Pool up there. Tom hoped that Roy would surely show Barnard and his troop that interesting discovery which he and Roy had made. The hard part was already attended to--making Margaret and Mr. Burton keep still. And, as usual, Lucky Luke's part was the easiest part of all--just building three cabins and going away. It was a cinch.

"Shall I build a camp-fire?" he asked of Uncle Jeb.

And so, in the waning twilight, Tom Slade, liar and forgetter of his friends, built a camp-fire, on this first night of his lonely sojourn at Temple Camp. And he and Uncle Jeb sat by it as the night drew on apace, and it aroused fond memories in Tom, as only a camp-fire has the magic to do, and stilled his jangling nerves and made him happy.

"In about a month there'll be a hundred fellows sitting around one like this," he said.

"En that Peewee kid'll be trying to defend hisself agin Roay's nonsense," Uncle Jeb remarked.

"I ain't going to stay to be a.s.sistant camp manager this season," Tom said; "I'm going back to work. I'm having my vacation now. I kind of like being alone with you."

"What is them sh.e.l.l-holes?" Uncle Jeb asked. "Yer got catched into one, huh?"

And then, for the first time since Tom had returned from France, he was moved to tell the episode which he had never told the scouts, and which he had always recalled with agitation and horror. Perhaps the camp-fire and Uncle Jeb's quiet friendliness lulled him to repose and made him reminiscent. Perhaps it was the letter from Barnard.

"That's how I got sh.e.l.l-shocked," he repeated. "When you get sh.e.l.l-shocked it doesn't show like a wound. There's a place named Veronnes in France. A German airman fell near there. It was pretty near dark and it was raining, but anyhow I could just see him fall. I could see him falling down through the dark, like. I was on my way back to the billets for relief. I had to go through a marsh to get to that place where he fell. I thought I'd sink, but I didn't.

"When I got there I saw his machine was all crumbled up, and he was all mixed up with the wires and he was dead. I was going to give him first aid if he wasn't. But anyway, he was dead. So then I searched him and he had a lot of papers. Some of them were maps. I knew it wouldn't be any use to take them to billets, because the wires were all down on account of the rain. So I started through the marshes to get into the road to Rheims. Those marshes are worse than the ones we have here. Sometimes I had to swim. It took me two hours, I guess. Anyway, if you _have_ to do a thing you can do it.

"When I got to the road it was easy. I knew that road went to Rheims because when I was in the Motorcycle Service I knew all the roads.

Pretty soon I got to a place where a road crossed it and there were some soldiers coming along that road. I kept still and let them pa.s.s by and they didn't see me. I knew there were more coming and I could hear the sound of tanks coming, too. Maybe they were coming back from an attack.

"All of a sudden everything seemed bright and I saw a fellow right close to me and then there was a noise that made my ears ring and dirt flew in my face and I heard that fellow yell. As soon as I took a couple more steps I stumbled and fell into a place that was hot--the earth was hot, just like an oven. That was a new sh.e.l.l-hole I was in.

"I just lay there and my arm hurt and my ears buzzed and there was a funny kind of a pain in the back of my neck. That's how sh.e.l.l-shock begins. I heard that fellow say, 'Are you all right?' I couldn't speak because my throat was all trembling, like. But I could feel my sleeve was all wet and my arm throbbed. I heard him say, 'We must have had our fingers crossed.' Because you know how kids cross their fingers when they're playing tag, so no one can tag them? The way he says things in this letter sounds just like the way he said. He's happy-go-lucky, that fellow, I guess.

"There was a piece of the sh.e.l.l in there and it was red hot and by that he saw my arm was hurt, and he bandaged it with his s.h.i.+rt. He saw my scout badge that I wore and he asked me my name. That's all he knows about me. Pretty soon something that made a lot of noise moved right over the hole and I guess it got stuck there. He said it must be a tank that got kind of caught there. Pretty soon I could hardly breathe, but I could hear him hollering and banging with a stone or something up against that thing. I heard him say we could dig our way out with his helmet. Pretty soon I didn't know anything.

"The next thing I knew there was fresh air and people were carrying me on a stretcher. When I tried to call for that fellow it made me sob--that's the way it is when you're sh.e.l.l-shocked. You wring your hands, too. Even--even--now--if I hear a noise----"

Tom Slade broke down, and began wringing his hands, and his face which shone in the firelight was one of abject terror. And in another moment he was crying like a baby.

CHAPTER XVII

ON THE LONG TRAIL

That night he bunked in Uncle Jeb's cabin, and slept as he had not slept in many a night. In the morning his stolid, stoical nature rea.s.serted itself, and he set about his task with dogged determination. Uncle Jeb watched him keenly and a little puzzled, and helped him some, but Tom seemed to prefer to work alone. The old man knew nothing of that frightful malady of the great war; his own calm, keen eyes bespoke a disciplined and iron nerve. But his kindly instinct told him to make no further reference to the war, and so Tom found in him a helpful and sympathetic companion. Here at last, so it seemed, was the medicine that poor Tom needed, and he looked forward to their meals, and the quiet chats beside their lonely camp-fire, with ever-growing pleasure and solace.

He hauled out from under the porch of the main pavilion the logs which had been saved from the fire that had all but devastated the camp during its first season, and saved himself much labor thereby. These he wheeled up the hill one by one in a wheelbarrow. There were enough of these logs to make one cabin, all but the roof, and part of another one.

When Tom had got out the scout pioneer badge which Roy had noticed on him, it had been by way of defying time and hards.h.i.+p and proclaiming his faith in himself and his indomitable power of accomplishment. As the work progressed it became a sort of mania with him; he was engrossed in it, he lived in it and for it. He would right his wrong to the troop by scout methods if he tore down the whole forest and killed himself. That was Tom Slade.

Up on the new woods property, which included the side of the hill away from the camp, he felled such trees as he needed, hauling them up to the summit by means of a block and falls, where he trimmed them and notched them, and rolled or pried them up into place. At times whole days would be spent on that further slope of the hillside and Uncle Jeb, busy with preparations for the first arrivals, could not see him at all, only hear the sound of his axe, and sometimes the pulleys creaking. He did not go down into camp for lunch as a rule, and spent but a few minutes eating the snack which he had brought with him.

At last there came a day when five cabins stood upon that isolated hilltop which overlooked the main body of the camp, and Tom Slade, leaning upon his axe like Daniel Boone, could look down over the more closely built area, with its more or less straight rows of cabins and shacks, and its modern pavilion. Five cabins where there had been only three. They made a pleasant, secluded little community up there, far removed from the hustle and bustle of camp life. "No wonder they like it up here," he mused; "the camp is getting to be sort of like a village.

They'll have a lot of fun up here, those two troops, and it's a kind of a good turn how I bring them together. n.o.body loses anything, this way."

True--n.o.body but Tom Slade. His hands were covered with blisters so that he must wind his handkerchief around one of them to ease the chafing of the axe handle. His hair was streaky and dishevelled and needed cutting, so that he looked not unlike one of those hardy pioneers of old. And now, with some of the rough material for the last cabin strewn about him and with but two weeks in which to finish the work, he was confronted with a new handicap. The old pain caused by the wound in his arm returned, and the crippled muscles rebelled against this excessive usage. Well, that was just a little obstacle in the long trail; he would put the burden on the other arm. "I'm glad I got two," he said.

He tried to calculate the remainder of the work in relation to the time he had to do it. For of one thing he was resolved, and that was to be finished and gone before those two troops arrived, the troop from the west and his own troop from Bridgeboro. They were to find these six cabins waiting for them. Everything would be all right....

He mopped his brow off, and rewound the handkerchief about his sore hand. The fingers smarted and tingled and he wriggled them to obtain a little relief from their cramped condition. He b.u.t.toned up his flannel s.h.i.+rt which he always left wide open when he worked, and laid his axe away in one of the old familiar cabins. It chanced to be one in which he and Roy had cut their initials, and he paused a moment and glanced wistfully at their boyish handiwork. Then he went down.

As he pa.s.sed through Temple Lane he saw that Uncle Jeb had been busy taking down the board shutters from the main pavilion--ominous reminder of the fast approaching season. Soon scouts would be tumbling all over each other hereabouts. The springboard had been put in place at the lake's edge, too, and a couple of freshly painted rowboats were bobbing at the float, looking spick and glossy in the dying sunlight. Temple Camp was beginning to look natural and familiar.

"I reckon it'll be a lively season," Uncle Jeb said, glancing about after his own strenuous day's work. "Last summer most of the scouts was busy with war gardens and war work and 'twas a kind of off season as you might say. I cal'late they'll come in herds like buffaloes this summer."

"Every cabin is booked until Columbus Day," Tom said; "and all the tent s.p.a.ce is a.s.signed."

"Yer reckon to finish by August first?" Uncle Jeb asked.

"I'd like to finish before anybody comes," Tom said; "but I guess I can't do that. I'll get away before August first, that's sure. You have to be sure to see that 5, 6 and 7 go to my troop, and the new ones to the troop from Ohio. You can tell them it's a kind of a surprise if you want to. You don't need to tell 'em who did it. It's nice up there on that hill. It's a kind of a camp all by itself. Do you remember that woodchuck skin you gave Roy? It's hanging up there in the Silver Fox's cabin now."

"What's the matter with your hand?" Uncle Jeb inquired.

"It's just blistered and it tingles," Tom said. "It's from holding the axe."

CHAPTER XVIII

TOM LETS THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG

While they were having supper in Uncle Jeb's cabin, Tom hauled out of his trousers pocket a couple of very much folded and gather crumbled pieces of paper.

"Will you keep them for me?" he asked. "They're Liberty Bonds. They get all sweaty and crumpled in my pocket. They're worth a hundred dollars."

Mr. Burton had more than once suggested that Tom keep these precious mementos of his patriotism in the safe, but there was no place in all the world in which Tom had such abiding faith as his trouser side pockets, and he had never been able to appreciate the inappropriateness of the singular receptacle for such important doc.u.ments. There, at least, he could feel them, and the magic feel of these badges of his wealth was better than lock and key.

"Keep them for me until I go away," he said.

Uncle Jeb straightened them out and placed them in his tin strong box.

"Yer ain't thinkin' uv stayin' on, then?" he queried.

"Not after I'm finished," Tom said.