The Boy Scouts of Bob's Hill Part 1

The Boy Scouts of Bob's Hill.

by Charles Pierce Burton.

July 31st, 1913.

TO THE PUBLIC:--

In the elecution of its purpose to give educational value and moral worth to the recreational activities of the boyhood of America, the leaders of the Boy Scout Movement quickly learned that to effectively carry out its program, the boy must be influenced not only in his out-of-door life but also in the diversions of his other leisure moments. It is at such times that the boy is captured by the tales of daring enterprises and adventurous good times. What now is needful is not that his taste should be thwarted but trained. There should constantly be presented to him the books the boy likes best, yet always the books that will be best for the boy. As a matter of fact, however, the boy's taste is being constantly vitiated and exploited by the great ma.s.s of cheap juvenile literature.

To help anxiously concerned parents and educators to meet this grave peril, the Library Commission of the Boy Scouts of America has been organized. EVERY BOY'S LIBRARY is the result of their labors. All the books chosen have been approved by them. The Commission is composed of the following members: George F. Bowerman, Librarian, Public Library of the District of Columbia, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C.; Harrison F. Graver, Librarian, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Pa.; Claude G. Leland, Superintendent, Bureau of Libraries, Board of Education, New York City; Edward F. Stevens Librarian, Pratt Inst.i.tute Free Library, Brooklyn, New York; together with the Editorial Board of our Movement, William D.

Murray, George D. Pratt and Frank Presbrey, with Franklin K. Mathiews, Chief Scout Librarian, as Secretary.

In selecting the books, the Commission has chosen only such as are of interest to boys, the first twenty-five being either works of fiction or stirring stories of adventurous experiences. In later lists, books of a more serious sort will be included. It is hoped that as many as twenty-five may be added to the Library each year.

Thanks are due the several publishers who have helped to inaugurate this new department of our work. Without their co-operation in making available for popular priced editions some of the best books ever published for boys, the promotion of EVERY BOY'S LIBRARY would have been impossible.

We wish, too, to express our heartiest grat.i.tude to the Library Commission, who, without compensation, have placed their vast experience and immense resources at the service of our Movement.

The Commission invites suggestions as to future books to be included in the Library. Librarians, teachers, parents, and all others interested in welfare work for boys, can render a unique service by forwarding to National Headquarters lists of such books as in their Judgment would be suitable for EVERY BOY'S LIBRARY.

Signed James E. West Chief Scout Executive.

CHAPTER I

"THE BAND" AND THE CAVE

BLACKINTON'S barn is exactly at the foot of Bob's Hill. Phillips's is, too, and so is our garden; but I am not telling about those now. Beyond the barns are apple orchards, reaching halfway up the hill, as you know, if you have read about the doings of the Band.

When they built Blackinton's barn they cut into the hill, so that the roof of the stable slopes clear down to the ground, on the hill side in the orchard. It makes a fine place for us boys to sit and talk about things.

Mrs. Blackinton, who owns the barn, says that maybe climbing around on a roof isn't the best thing in the world for s.h.i.+ngles but boys have got to do something and she is willing to take a chance; only to be as careful as we can, and not to eat any more apples than are necessary to our happiness and well being.

Anyhow, seven of us Bob's Hill boys sat there one Sat.u.r.day afternoon in May, planning what to do in the long vacation. Every member of the Band was there, not counting Tom Chapin, except Skinny Miller; and we were expecting him every minute.

He was late then, and every little while one of us would stick his head around the edge of the barn to see if he wasn't coming up the driveway from Park Street. We might as well have sat still, for you never can tell which way he will come.

Pa says that Skinny is like the wind, which bloweth whither it listeth.

I don't exactly know what he meant but that is what he said, or something like that.

It was quiet in the orchard. There was hardly a sound except the buzzing of insects in the suns.h.i.+ne, and somehow that only seemed to make it more quiet and dreamy.

Suddenly Bill Wilson stood up on the sloping s.h.i.+ngles and gave such a warwhoop that it almost made the bark rattle on the trees. When Bill turns his voice loose it is something awful.

We looked up to see what it all was about. He had grabbed Benny Wade by the hair and, giving another yell louder than the first, was pretending to scalp him. Bill always likes to play Indian.

Benny didn't want to be scalped. Although he is two years younger and not nearly so big, he grabbed Bill around the legs and held on until they both slipped and went tumbling down the steep roof to the ground, where they sat, with the rest of us laughing down at them.

Just then we heard another warwhoop, sounding from up the hill somewhere, beyond the orchard. Bill and Benny scrambled to their feet, and we all looked and listened.

We saw nothing for a minute or two. Then something darted through the gate, which leads into the orchard from the hill; dropped down out of sight behind the fence, and commenced crawling backward toward the nearest apple tree. Every few seconds, it would raise up long enough to point something, which looked like a gun, at the enemy.

"Great snakes!" whispered Bill. "What's that?"

But we could tell in a minute without asking, for when it reached the tree it stood up and peered around the trunk, aiming a stick and pretending to fire. We knew then that Skinny was on the way.

"It's Skinny!" shouted Benny, throwing a stick at him.

Skinny waved one arm for us to be quiet, then began to wriggle back to the next tree. Making his way slowly from tree to tree, with a quick dash he finally reached the roof, where he felt safe.

"That was a close call, Skinny," said Bill. "I heard a bee buzzin'

around out there in the orchard, a few minutes ago."

"Bee, nothin'!" Skinny told him, still pointing with his gun and looking around in every direction. "They pretty near had me surrounded."

That was the beginning of this history, which tells all about the doings of the Band, that set all the people talking about us for miles around.

Perhaps you never heard about the Band; how we found a cave at Peck's Falls, part way up the mountain, and had all kinds of fun playing there and on Bob's Hill. There are eight of us in all. Skinny is captain. His folks call him Gabriel but we don't like that name. Skinny is a good name for him, he is so fat. He can run though, even if he is heavy, and you would think that he could fight some if you had seen him once, when the Gingham Ground Gang got after us.

Benny Wade is the littlest fellow in the bunch but he feels just as big as anybody and sometimes that is almost as good as being big. Besides these there are Harry, Wallie, Chuck, Bill Wilson, Hank Bates,--Oh, yes, I most forgot,--and myself.

My name is John Alexander Smith. The boys call me Pedro, and I have been secretary ever since Tom Chapin found the cave. It's up to me to write the doings of the Band and the minutes of the meetings.

Tom Chapin was our first captain and he meets with us now, whenever he is in town.

The village where we live is in a long, narrow valley, with little Hoosac River flowing north through the center of it, until it gets beyond the mountain range. Then it turns west and hurries down into the Hudson.

Bob's Hill stands just west of the village and looks down upon the highest steeples. Over the brow of the hill and a little south are Plunkett's woods. West, straight back, a mile or more, begins the timbered slope of old Greylock, which, everybody knows, is the highest mountain in Ma.s.sachusetts. And in the edge of the first woods, a little back from the road, is the prettiest place you ever sat eyes upon.

Grown-up folks call it "the glen," but we boys just say "Peck's Falls."

I don't know why, only there is a waterfall there, which begins in a brook, somewhere up on the mountainside, and plays and tumbles along, until finally it pours down from a high cliff into a pool a hundred feet below; then dashes off to join Hoosac River.

A queer-shaped rock, with a high back and narrow ledge, which we call the "pulpit," bridges the ravine in front of the falls, fifty feet and maybe more, above the rus.h.i.+ng water. A little farther down the ravine, at the edge of the stream, is another rock. It will do no harm now to say that our cave is under that rock, because folks have found out about it, although not many know about there being two entrances.

All these things that I have told about belong to us boys. Mr. Plunkett thinks that he owns Plunkett's woods and Bob's Hill. I mean the very top of it. And somebody has been cutting trees off from Greylock, until it looks like a picked chicken in spots. But we call them all ours because we have more fun with them than anybody else does, and it seems to us that things belong to those who get the most out of them.

We knew from the way Skinny was acting that he had something on his mind, so we sat down and waited for him to tell us.

"Fellers," said he, after a while, "we've been Injuns and we've been bandits, and we have had fun, good and plenty. I ain't sayin' that Injuns and bandits are not all right sometimes but----"

"Guess what!" broke in Benny. "We've been 'splorers, too. Don't you remember 'sploring out in Illinois last summer? About LaSalle and that other guy and What's-her-name who fell over the cliff?"

"That was all right, too," said Skinny, "and I couldn't forget it in a thousand years, but I tell you those things are back numbers. They are out of date."

"Never mind about the date," said Hank, "but hurry and get it out of your system. We've got to be something, haven't we? If we ain't Injuns and we ain't bandits, what are we?"