A SCOUT IS OBSERVANT

Westy said, “I wonder how our old friend the ghost is?”

I said, “If we meet him we’ll take him along with us. He ought to be good on a bee-line hike because he can go right through anything.”

I said, “If it wasn’t for Warde Hollister I’d take him into my patrol. I’ve got every kind of a freak in there now except a ghost.”

“You haven’t got me,” Pee-wee shouted.

I said, “No, that’s one kind of a freak I haven’t got.”

“If you could have a ghost and a bandit in this patrol we’d be complete,” Westy said.

“I’m bad enough,” Warde Hollister said.

I said, “Sure, we’re satisfied if you are. Take us for better or worse; you’ll probably find us a good deal worse.”

Warde said, “It’s been good fun so far.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” I told him. “Wait till you get up to Temple Camp. Even the laughing brook is all the time giggling at us. Wait till you see the raving Ravens.”

“That’s all right,” Pee-wee piped up. “Up there people in the village always smile at us—grown-up people.”

“It’s a wonder they don’t laugh out loud,” I said.

All of a sudden, as we were going along, Pee-wee grabbed me by the shoulder and whispered, “Look!”

“Have a heart,” I told him; “don’t knock me down. What is it?”

“Look!” he whispered. “Look! Where that board is broken.”

Then I knew what he meant. About twenty feet off our path was a kind of an old tumbled-down shack. It was boarded up in front with old odds and ends of boards that were not painted. There was quite a big piece gone from one of the boards, and as I looked through that I could see a face.

“Shh, do you see it?” I whispered to Westy. Then I kind of urged the fellows along the path because I didn’t want us to be standing right there in front of that hole.

“What—what did I tell you?” Pee-wee whispered, all excited.

“You didn’t tell me anything,” I said. “Shh, don’t talk so loud. Come on, let’s walk along a little further. Do you want him to see us?”

“Did you see?” Pee-wee whispered, so excited he could hardly speak. “It was a black man. It’s the bandit. I discovered him.”

“What are we going to do about it?” I asked the other fellows. “There’s somebody in there.”

“Sure there is,” two or three of them said.

Will Dawson said, “I saw him plain; he was standing in back of a box. He was a colored man, all right.”

“I was the first to discover him,” Pee-wee whispered.

I said, “All right, findings is keepings; you can have him, he’s yours. Now are you satisfied?”

By that time we were about ten yards past the shack, standing all in a group. The person inside couldn’t see us through the opening in front of the shack but for all we knew he might be peeking at us through some little crack or hole. It made me feel funny to think that he was in there staring at us and we not able to see him.

I said, “Come on, let’s walk along just as if we didn’t suspect anything; we can talk while we’re walking.”

So we started along and Dorry said, “The best thing is for one of us to run ahead to Little Valley and tell the police there.”

“You’ll find the police department standing in front of the post office,” I said. “That’s where he usually hangs out.”

I guess the only one of us that hadn’t spoken at all was Warde Hollister. All of a sudden he said, “What’s the good of notifying the police? Scouts aren’t afraid, are they? Harris is the one who discovered him. So he ought to be the one to go back and capture him.”

“That shows how much you know about scouts,” Pee-wee said. “Scouts are supposed to be cautious. If you’re reckless, then you’re not a good scout. See? Maybe I’d like to go back and capture that bandit, but I have to make a sacrifice and not do it. See?”

I said, “Sure, it’s as clear as mud. Let’s sit down here just as if we were going to take a rest; let’s sprawl on the ground just as if we weren’t thinking about that shack at all. Then we can talk about what we’d better do.”

“Maybe the ground is better a little further along,” the kid said.

“This is all right,” Westy said.

So we sat down right in our path and Will Dawson and Dorry Benton started playing mumbly-peg, so that if the man in the shack saw us he wouldn’t be suspicious. Because if he thought we had seen him and were going to tell, he’d probably start running away.

“Don’t look back,” Westy said. “What are we going to do? We can’t capture him ourselves, can we?”

“The only way would be to sprinkle a little salt on him,” Warde Hollister said.

It seemed sort of funny the way that fellow talked because all of us had seen that black face in the shack and a bandit is no joke, especially a negro bandit, but any color is bad enough. Anyway, I was glad to see that Warde was getting crazy like the rest of us. But I didn’t know till another minute how crazy he really was.

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