THE SOLEMN VOW

In less than an hour after the arrival of the trio the whole camp was singing, “Will you love me when my flivver is a wreck?” But Pee-wee paused not to participate in the honors paid to Townsend and Liz. He deserted the old love for the new and betook himself to Memorial Cabin.

He found the scene quiet and restful after his strenuous journey. The birds sang in the trees which enclosed the rustic cabin, squirrels, darted from limb to limb and hurried up and down the trunks, and the sun sent his playful rays down through the leafy branches. No sign was there of Pee-wee’s unknown guest.

Having inspected his lonely domicile he returned to the turmoil of the camp proper and entered the sacred precincts of the cooking shack where he announced his arrival in camp to Chocolate Drop, the cook.

“I’m here,” said Pee-wee; “I’m back again.”

“I sees you is,” said Chocolate Drop, smiling all over. “You dun gwan to lib on de hill?” he asked.

“I want eats and things for two scouts for three weeks,” Pee-wee announced. “I’m going to do all the cooking and everything like on a—a frontiers. Maybe I won’t be seen down here in camp at all even.”

This news, which might have been received with approbation by Ray Blakeley and others, was regarded with consternation by Chocolate Drop. However, he graciously supplied Pee-wee with commissary stores in accordance with our hero’s request and for several days Pee-wee was so busy with enthusiastic preparations for the reception of his unknown guest that he was not seen in the main body of the camp. In the seclusion of his retreat and the pre-occupation of hospitable preparations he lived in sublime ignorance of the volcanic eruption which was presently to engulf him.

For in planning his famous relay race Pee-wee had neglected to take into consideration an important element of the scout nature. Relay races are all right when there is nothing too seductive at the ends of them. In the case of a relay race ending at a delightful summer camp the danger of it becoming cumulative is very great.

Having completed his preparations for the reception of his unknown guest, Pee-wee was seated one evening on the doorstep of Memorial Cabin communing with nature and eating a luscious tomato. The rays of dying sunlight painted the hills across the lake a vivid crimson and the truant streams from his luscious refreshment painted his scout suit an equally vivid hue. It seemed almost as if the sun were actually setting in his face in a very riot of colorful glory. Intuition, bolstered by a series of elaborate deductions, had convinced the lonely tenant of the cabin that the time of fulfillment was at hand, that his solitary guest would shortly appear. So strong was this conviction upon Pee-wee that he had, by the exercise of tremendous will power, refrained from partaking of his lonely, self-cooked meal, in consideration of the imminent arrival of his mysterious companion. “I’m going to wait till eleven o’clock,” he said, referring to his hospitable period of fasting, “because anyway he ought to be here to-night, that’s the way I figure it.”

Pee-wee was always quite himself when playing a part, and so far as he was concerned, there was no living soul in all the country roundabout—no one but his solitary companion, the last runner to receive his much handled credential, hastening silently, like some stealthy Indian emissary, toward his sequestered retreat. Cheerful voices could be heard down at camp, but Pee-wee heeded them not. The inviting dinner horn sounded and re-echoed from the hill’s across the darkening lake and for a moment it tempted him with its suggestions of waffles and honey. But he put these thoughts out of his mind with the redoubled resolution that, he, the lonely host of Memorial Cabin, the hospitable hermit and all that sort of thing, would not mingle with his kind, but remain in magnificent and romantic isolation in his lair. He had boasted, indeed, with such flaunting boasts as only he could utter, that neither he nor his unknown friend would partake of a single meal in camp during the visitor’s stay but would live like pioneers “on hunters’ stew that we make ourselves and things like that.”

“I bet the two of you will be down for dinner the second day,” Roy Blakeley had predicted.

“That shows how much you know about primitive life,” our hero had thundered.

“It shows how much I know about your hunters’ stew,” Roy had said. “I bet the two of you will be down for dinner after one grub on the hill.”

“If the stranger is able to walk,” Warde Hollister had said.

“Oh that’s understood,” Roy had agreed.

Our hero had contemplated these scoffers with characteristic scorn. “That shows,” he had begun, then coming up for air proceeded in tones of thunder, “that shows that you’re all parlor scouts—”

“What do you call yourself—a kitchen scout?” Roy had laughed.

“It shows how much you know about resolution and, and, and—solemn vows—and pioneer life and surmounting obstacles by your own initials, I mean initiatives and things like that, I bet you—I bet you—we don’t come down to one single meal while he’s here. I bet you we don’t even come down to find out what time it is, I bet you we don’t. I bet we tell time by the sun. Even salt, I haven’t got any but I know how to get it from rocks. I’m not going to even ask for it. Even matches we’re not going to ask for. I bet we don’t come near Temple Camp” (he called it Temple Camp as if by that formal designation to put it far away) “for anything. Absolutely, positively—and definitely—we won’t come down for eats or anything. So you needn’t expect to see us.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Roy had said.