WE START

Now I’ll have to tell you about where I live and about Bridgeboro and all that, so you’ll know the country we invaded. But you needn’t think I’m going to bother you with geography because, gee whiz, I have no use for that. Believe me, when you see my picture on the cover of a book you’ll know there is no history or geography or anything like that in it. And the only figures you’ll see are the numbers of the pages, because I should worry about figures in vacation.

But anyway it’s dandy up where I live. My father owns a lot of property up there and so everybody calls it Blakeley’s hill. It’s in Bridgeboro but kind of just outside of Bridgeboro—you know what I mean.

Maybe you know how it is with towns that have rivers running through them. Rivers run through valleys—that shows how smart I am. There is always high land on both sides of a river. I don’t mean it has to be right close to the river.

Now this is the way it is where I live. Blakeley’s hill isn’t a hill exactly, it’s a ridge. It runs along the same way the river runs. The state road runs along that ridge and our house is on the state road only it’s way back from the road. We’ve got a dandy grapevine. We’ve got a sun parlor, too. That’s where Mr. Blakeley’s son sits and reads on rainy days. That’s why we call it a sun parlor.

Now if you sit on our porch you can look down over Bridgeboro; you get a peach of a view. Beyond Bridgeboro you can see the river. That’s where the town ends—at the river. There are a lot of turtles in that river. Across the river the land is low until you come to the other ridge. Now the space between the two ridges is the valley of the river. Correct, be seated.

In that low land between the river and the other ridge is Little Valley; that’s a village. It’s where Harry Donnelle lives. He’s got a Cadillac, that fellow has. Lots of times he treats us to soda, but he won’t be a scoutmaster. Oh, boy, but he’d make a dandy one. Little Valley isn’t very big; it hasn’t got its eyes open yet.

When you get past Little Valley there’s a kind of a small hill and then you come to the ridge. Up on top of the ridge is that big tree that Westy was squinting at. There are a lot of other trees up there but that one is bigger than any of them. Anywhere between my house and that other ridge you can see that tree. Down in Bridgeboro maybe there are places where you can’t see it on account of buildings, but most always you can see it. If you could have a string from my porch to that tree, the string would be right over Bridgeboro and the river and Little Valley and that other small hill. So now you know just how it is. From my porch to that tree is about seven miles as the crow flies, and believe me the crows have it easy compared to the boy scouts.

So now our troubles begin. If you want to follow us, all right, it’s up to you. I should worry. We have troubles of our own.

The next morning we started from my porch. We reminded ourselves of the Pilgrims and Christopher Columbus and a lot of other people you meet in school. Our young hero, P. Harris, was all decorated up like a band wagon, belt-axe, badges, compass, cooking set, a big coil of rope and the horn part of a phonograph. He had that hanging over his back like a soldier’s pack. The only thing he forgot to bring was the player piano from his house.

“What’s that phonograph horn for?” Westy asked him.

“It’s to use as a megaphone,” he said. “Suppose we want to—to—shout for a——”

“House to get out of the way?” I said.

“You never can tell when we may want to use it,” he said.

“I’m sorry I didn’t bring my mother’s sewing machine along,” Dorry said.

“We don’t need that with this kid along,” I said. “We’ll have enough stitches in our sides from laughing.”

“We ought to have some mothers and sweethearts and things to weep when we start off,” the kid said.

I said, “I don’t believe I’ve got any sweethearts around the house just at present, but wait a minute and I’ll see.”

“Tell them to bring some handkerchiefs,” Westy said.

“And a couple of buckets of tears,” Hunt Manners piped up.

I went inside and called to my mother and my sister Marjorie and asked them if they could come out on the porch and weep. My mother said she was very busy but she’d come and weep for about a minute. When they came out they were crying—from laughing so hard.

Then I delivered a speech. I said to my mother and sister, “You’re supposed to keep on weeping and wringing your hands while I make a farewell speech. Don’t you know the way the wives and sweethearts did when the Pilgrim Fathers started away?”

Then I said:

“Scouts of the Silver Fox Patrol and also the raving Raven that we have wished on us, there must be no good turns on this hike. We’re going the same way the crow flies, only different. The first time we have to turn to right or left we will have to admit we’re beaten, and come home. We’ll have to turn back like somebody or other who started for some place once upon a time in the third grade history—an explorer. The battle cry is ‘ONWARD.’ If we do any good turns they’ll have to be up and down, not to right or left. Anybody that wants to stay home can do it. At five o’clock this afternoon we intend to plant the Silver Fox emblem under that big poplar tree on west ridge. We’ll start a fire there so all the world can see. That fire will mean triumph. It will mean we went in a bee-line. If we have to push Little Valley out of the way we’ll do it—it isn’t so big. We’ll cross the valley——”

My mother said, “You’d better wear your rubbers.”

I said, “Do you think Christopher Columbus and Henry Hudson wore rubbers? At five o’clock this afternoon you look over to west ridge and see what you see. We intend to go straight—it says in the handbook a scout lives straight—but we can beat that, we can go straight. We are going to go in a bee-line for that tree and take possession of it in the name of the Silver Fox Patrol B.S.A. This is the only real boy scout drive that ever happened—all others are imitations. This is the famous bee-line hike invented by Westy Martin. We’re off!”

So then we raised our banner and started out. It was a big piece of cardboard fixed onto a scout staff and on it was printed with shoe-blacking:

THE BEE-LINE HIKE OF THE
SILVER FOX PATROL. GET
FROM UNDER, EVERYBODY
AND EVERYTHING.

Our first mishap was at the end of my lawn, when Pee-wee’s garter broke and a lot of junk fell on the ground when he stooped down to fix it.

“Got a safety-pin?” he wanted to know.

I said, “Pick up your coffee-pot and things and put them in the megaphone and come ahead. Do you think we’re going to start out to conquer the world with safety-pins?”

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