  It was not difficult to arouse Mr. Wendell’s interest in the project. Always a firm believer in over night hikes and camping trips as the best possible means of carrying out the scouting program, he realized at once the value of such a place as this which could be made use of at all seasons of the year. With some of the discoverers and a number of other scouts whose interest had been stirred up by the tales of that first party, he made a trip up the mountain. The cabin was viewed from every standpoint and it was unanimously decided that there were far too many attractive possibilities in the building to allow it to stand there deserted and unused. Not long afterward Mr. Wendell and two of the troop committee visited the owner of the land—old Morford, the builder, had been merely a squatter—and by dint of persuasive argument obtained permission to use the cabin as a scout headquarters. It was too far from town to be turned into a regular meeting place, but the troop decided to furnish it and use it as an objective for hikes and brief winter camping trips. It was Cavanaugh who conceived the brilliant idea of using it also as a place of entertainment for some of the many soldiers from the big new Government training camp located in the neighborhood, who constantly thronged the town. The presence of that camp and the frequent sight of the soldiers thrilled the scouts as nothing else could have done. It did not take them long to know many men by sight and a few of them intimately. The crowd first in training happened to include a number of Western boys who had no friends in this part of the country and were too far from home to go back on furlough. The scouts got into the habit, therefore, of bringing some of these home with them for stays of varying length, and several of the young men who had been scouts themselves not so very long ago, revived their interest in the movement, frequently attending the troop meetings and even helping the busy scoutmaster in looking after the boys. From these the scouts kept secret the existence of the cabin. They wanted to furnish and equip it thoroughly, and then have a grand surprise party and house warming for the soldiers. But unfortunately all this took a good deal of time. They might easily have filled it with odds and ends of discarded furniture from their own homes, but the majority voted against this. The cabin had become the pride of their hearts, and they wanted, as they expressed it, to do the thing right. And so, for many weeks they worked like beavers at every possible chore and occupation which would bring in money for the fund, until at length the latter reached a very decent total. Bill McBride was treasurer and there were few waking hours that he did not think with pride and pleasure of the growing size of that canvas bag which held their hard earned dimes and nickels. It was in his mind one morning late in November as he caught up sweater and books and dashed out of the front door. The air was chill, and overhead the clouds were dark and lowering with a hint of snow in them. But Micky was not considering the weather as he sped along, nor was he even thinking of the Thanksgiving holiday which loomed so pleasantly near. “We’ve got over sixty dollars,” he said to himself as he hastened up the street, “and I don’t see why we shouldn’t begin pretty soon. If we don’t, Jack Farren and Harley and all the rest of that corking bunch will be ordered across and never see the cabin at all. You can get a lot of stuff for sixty dollars.” “Aye—Micky!” shrilled a voice from up a side street. “Wait up.” McBride glanced that way impatiently. Harry Ritter, stout, round-faced and indolent, was approaching at his usual lazy stroll. “Can’t, Rit, I’m late,” he called without pausing. Whereupon, with a grunt, Ritter speeded up and caught McBride about the middle of the next block. “I don’t see what’s your rush,” he complained, puffing a little. “It isn’t half-past eight yet.” “I know it, but I’ve got to fix Mrs. Wright’s furnace and carry out some ashes before school.” Ritter sniffed. “You still doing that?” he inquired disparagingly. “You are an easy mark. I’ll bet you don’t get a cent for it.” “Of course I don’t, you mercenary young pup,” retorted Micky. “I’m not doing it for money. When Jim was drafted, I said I’d look after her chores ’till he came back. You’re a hot scout, you are!” “Shucks! When I work, I want something out of it, especially with the troop needing money like we do.” Micky chuckled. “When you work!” he repeated with emphasis. “That’s a good one. Just let me know when you’re going to start, and I’ll come around and look on. It would be a real treat to see you exerting yourself for once.” “You go to grass! I’ll bet I’ve turned in as much money to the fund as anybody.” “Maybe so, but you didn’t earn it. You just grafted it off papa.” Ritter flushed floridly. “Huh!” he grunted. “You think so, do you? That runt, Midge Willett’s been stuffing you full of lies. Just wait till I give him a piece of my mind—” “Don’t do it,” laughed Micky. “You haven’t any to spare.” He skipped up a side street, leaving the stout youth snorting incoherently on the corner. A few houses beyond he turned in at the gate of a small, white-painted cottage, hastened along a gravelled path at the side, and dived into the open cellar door. When he had shaken down the small furnace, swept up the floor and carted the ashes around to the rear he knocked at the back door and stepped in, closing it behind him. It was an immaculate kitchen, fairly shining in its scrubbed, polished state of cleanliness. Everything was so spotless, in fact, that the vigorous movements of the broom, wielded by the small, spare woman in a limp calico dress seemed rather unnecessary. “Good morning, Mrs. Wright,” said Micky, pulling off his cap. “I’ve fixed the furnace and carried out the ashes. I’ll split your kindling this afternoon after school. Is there anything I can do for you downtown?” She glanced momentarily at him over one shoulder. The vigorous movement of the broom never ceased. “No, thank you, William,” she said briefly. Still Micky hesitated. He had noticed her reddened eyelids and a curious, unwonted droop to the usually erect shoulders. “I—I thought perhaps you might want something special from the store,” he persisted awkwardly. “To-morrow’s Thanksgiving, and—” She faced him suddenly, her thin, rheumatic fingers clenched about the broom handle. “Thanksgiving!” she repeated harshly. “What’s that to me? What have I got to be thankful for?” Her lips quivered for an instant and then straightened. “Jim’s going over—going to France. And—and they won’t let him come home to say good-by!” Micky drew a quick breath; for a moment the tragedy in her eyes turned him speechless. It hurt him, too, that look, and brought into his mind for a vivid second the eyes of a mother fox he had once seen, backed into a rocky corner, her frightened, shivering cubs behind her. “Oh!” he exclaimed sympathetically, an instant later. “They won’t give him leave? But—but couldn’t, you—go to see him?” “I could, but I’ve got no money,” flamed the woman—“and he leaves on Saturday.” Abruptly she turned her back and resumed that fierce, monotonous sweeping of the spotless floor. Micky stared for a moment at the narrow, drooping shoulders, the plain white collar, the soft, pretty, grayish hair, and of a sudden something rose in his throat and choked him. With eyelids stinging, he reached blindly for the knob, opened the door and stepped outside. Drawing it softly shut, he blinked rapidly several times before he stepped off the stone and moved slowly down the gravelled path. “It’s tough!” he muttered gruffly—“beastly tough!” A picture of Jim Wright flashed into his mind—laughing, fearless, blue-eyed Jim, whose devotion to his mother had been the only thing that made him await the machinery of the draft. He might have pleaded dependency, but he did not—could not, he told Micky, who was an ardent admirer of the older fellow. “She’ll have every cent of my pay, Micky, old scout,” he explained just before leaving. “And with you to help her over the hard spots, I guess she’ll make out all right. I just can’t stick around home when men are needed over there.” So he had gone into training—ordered, perversely, to a distant camp instead of one so near at hand. And Micky had kept his promise to help in the spirit as well as letter. Jim had been back just once in all those months; a soldier’s pay doesn’t stretch for frequent railroad journeys. And now he is going over. It might be years before his mother saw him again; it might be—never. “If only he was at Camp Wheeling,” growled the boy, speeding mechanically toward school. “It seems too stupid to send him all that ways. Why, the round trip costs nearly fifty dollars.” A remembrance of that look in the woman’s eyes came back to him and he ground his teeth. “Gee!” he burst out. “If I only had the money—if I could only get some!” But in a smallish town like Wharton, with everyone feeling the effect of the war in increased prices and voluntary self denial, fifty dollars seemed a really enormous sum to raise at short notice. It was not until Micky was running up the school steps that there came to him in a sudden, blinding flash the realization that this amount and more already reposed in the scout treasury. |
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