Chapter XXXV: The Knock-Out

Into the Hawkeye Spoke Trail he sped, hatless, abandoned. And they followed, not because they trusted him, but because he seemed possessed. At least they would see the fun of an anti-climax. Over the edge of Pine Hill he sped and across the Sloatsburg road and past Breakneck Pond and into the valley. He had picked his way at night before, the unruly little rascal, and he knew his ground now. No one asked him where he was going, but the moon beyond the signal hill smiled upon him and guided him.

On he sped, stumbling, pausing in doubt, then plunging forward again with maniacal desperation. He had been denied the pathfinder’s badge, this boy. It was quite all right and according to the handbook. Only they took credit afterward for his fine spirit. But it was not the Bear Mountain camps that stirred the soul within him as he ran headlong through the night. What bore him on in this perfect frenzy was a spirit from another camp, the personality of Tom Slade of Temple Camp which had knocked him flat and set him on his feet again. He knew what he knew. And he sped on....

And so it happened that a couple of score of Scouts swarmed into the wild, narrow valley and felt the heat which filled the place and saw the fast-approaching flames. They faced the infantry of the blaze and the rushing cavalry of the wind. And then indeed was fulfilled Brent Gaylong’s rueful prediction, _They shall not pass._

And they did not pass.

The Scouts found Brent in the upper end of the valley pulling up brush and throwing water across the path of the advancing flames. But the fire would have given its horrible, soulless, crackling laugh at his poor efforts. It was like a sharpshooter attacking an army.

“The--the brook is--over there,” Brent panted.

“Use your hats, Scouts,” their camp manager said. “Some of you pull up brush.”

Hatful after hatful of water was thrown upon the ground across the narrow, precipitous way. Working was hard, for the heat was terrific. Stones were rolled into the path of the flames. Brush was pulled up with a rapidity that set Brent’s poor striving at naught. And the land for a width of ten feet or more was soaked.

“Keep busy, we’ll make it,” the camp manager panted.

From the cabin a couple of Scouts came running with the barrel which was Tom’s and Brent’s dining table. As they approached the scene of action they were as clear as figures seen by day. The cabin stood in an area of red light, and the old elm near Conner’s well stood out with strange clearness in the surrounding brightness. That end of the valley where the little gulch was seemed like an inferno, bathed, as it was, in vivid red.

But between that spot and the consuming flames the Scouts had drawn their dead-line. Here the careering flames hissed and paused. Here they tried to get across and failed. And they sent volleys of sparks across the dead-line, and these were stamped out by ready feet, and the little patches of fire which they started here and there were drowned out with water from the barrel. And so the fight in the big gulch was fought and won, and the flames diminished and died, hissing as they abandoned their triumphal march.

Against the half-filled barrel leaned Spiffy Henshaw, panting and resting. And as sure as you live he had a big black smear upon his freckled countenance. They were still too busy to bother with him, and it was Tom Slade who first approached him.

“You’re all right, Spiff,” he said sociably. “You got my message?”

“I wouldn’t have got it if I hadn’t been breaking a crazy rule,” Spiffy announced, with a look of challenge at his camp manager.

Seeing Tom there the camp manager approached, and presently Spiffy was the center of a throng. He lifted himself and sat upon a bit of wood that lay across the barrel.

“Defiance on a monument,” said Brent. “Do you know,” he said, “I think somehow a barrel is the ideal pedestal for him. When they make a statue of Spiffy some day I hope they’ll have him on a barrel. So you read the sky even if you don’t read your book, hey, Spiff, old boy?”

“This is Spiff,” said Tom, his arm about his protégé.

“Oh, yes, we know him,” said the camp manager. “His acts are better than his reasoning.”

“Actions speak louder than reasoning,” said Brent.

“He certainly did a stunt to-night,” said the tall boy who knew the Morse code so well.

But Tom did not condescend to discuss the triumph of his little hero. Instead, he took out his handkerchief and wiped the smear off Spiffy’s cheek. “The honorable wounds of service,” he said. Then he patted him on the shoulder and let his hand rest there.

“Spiff,” said he, “you’re the best little Scout that ever got himself in dutch. And you’re wrong as usual. You say if you hadn’t broken a rule you wouldn’t have seen the message. If you hadn’t gone back to camp as I told you to do, you wouldn’t have all these Scouts standing around and staring at you now--as if they really thought you were a hero.”

“Can I stay with you?” Spiff asked.

“No, you can_not_. You’ve got them started now. Haven’t they just given you help without you asking for it? And now they’ll fall all over themselves to help you. There’s no chance for advancement, kid, at our cabin. A kid like you wants a wider field, big opportunities. We’re just a couple of campers here. This gulch is no place for a _hero_. What you want is a _world_ to conquer--not a cabin. How about that--am I right?” Tom laughed at the camp manager.

And the camp manager winked at Tom. I don’t know what he meant by it. But I do know that Spiffy Henshaw didn’t go home till school opened, and when he did he took the stalking badge and the pathfinder’s badge with him. I only hope his teachers in school understood him as well as Tom Slade did. But perhaps that would be too much to expect....