And so Peter Piper, of Piper's Crossroads, proved too much for Scoutmaster Ned. He kept his secret. But he had a very narrow escape from being a hero.

Scoutmaster Ned had his way, too. "So you think you'd like to have a pike at that camp, eh?" he said.

Scoutmaster Ned's theory about camping was to keep open house. If he lacked discipline (which it is to be feared he did) he made up in pep, and the surprises that he was forever springing on the camp were a perpetual joy. I suspect that he was not well versed in his scoutmasters' handbook. He was a sort of human north wind. He adopted the pose of being driven to distraction by "those kids" and he denounced them roundly and said there were too many of them and that he was going to pick out one and drown the rest. Then he would show up with a new one. He was a sort of free-lance scoutmaster and I wonder how he ever drifted into the movement. Probably he didn't drift in, but blew in.

Scoutmaster Safety First (Bill) was his balance-wheel.

"Where is she? I'll talk to her," he said to Peter.

So he talked with Mrs. Piper while Peter stood by. He sat down in the kitchen and drank a gla.s.s of milk and ate a piece of pie and told her that it was the first real piece of pie he had ever eaten in his life.

Would he have another? Well, he'd say he would! Mrs. Piper thought he was about the finest "young gent" she had ever seen.

He told her all about his adventures of the night as if she were a pal and when she said she had slept through all the rumpus outside, he said, "Well, you've got West Ketchem, where I come from, beaten twenty ways.

Could I have just one little sliver--no, not as much as that--well, all right. That town, why you couldn't wake it up, Mrs. Piper, not with an earthquake. It would just fall down through the crack in the earth and go right on sleeping--no I couldn't eat another speck. We must be off."

"We?"

"Oh yes, Pete's going with me. He's going to make us a little visit for a week or two. We have lessons and everything, study nature, and all that, and all he wants to eat. I'll bring him back, he wants to see the real scouts in captivity. No accounting for tastes, hey, Mrs. Piper?

You'd better bring along a coat, Pete; but don't change your clothes, you're not going to church; come just as you are, so I'll be able to tell you from the rest in case I should decide to kill them all. That let's you out, see? Come ahead before your mother changes her mind."

Poor Mrs. Piper had not yet made up her mind, so she could not very well change it. Scoutmaster Ned had made up her mind for her.

"I'll have to get Sally Flint ter come over and visit with me," said Mrs. Piper doubtfully.

"Just the one," said Scoutmaster Ned. "She'll keep you company and you'll have a little peace with this youngster gone. Mrs. Piper, if I had my way I'd chloroform every boy in creation. I wonder you look so young with a wild Indian like that around."

"Oh, I ain't lookin' so young," she smiled, greatly pleased.

Before she realized it she was shaking hands with Scoutmaster Ned while her other arm was around Peter. "I'm going to come here and stay a month," the young man said. "I'm going to churn b.u.t.ter and eat pie--if I can escape from that outfit. Well good-bye, we're off. I hope the old bus runs."

"It looks reel smart with all the blue paint," said Mrs. Piper.

"Handsome is as handsome does," said Scoutmaster Ned. "Climb in, Pete, what are you scared of? It won't eat you. Anybody'd think you were stalking--stepping so carefully. Know what stalking is? They'll show you."

Mrs. Piper stood holding her gingham ap.r.o.n to her eyes as they rode off.

It was of exactly the same pattern as Peter's shirt. He looked funny sitting rather fearfully on the front seat. She had never dreamed of seeing him enthroned amid such sumptuousness. Perhaps some day he would go away and come back _rich_--a hero. Her Peter. And this stranger liked him. She was weeping because she had never heard her boy called Pete since his father died. She liked to hear him called Pete, it was so friendly, and recalled the past so vividly....

As if Scoutmaster Ned would have called him anything else than Pete!

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

HINTS

They showed him. As Scoutmaster Ned had told him they would do, they showed him. And Peter Piper was in dreamland; it was all too good to be true. They showed him how to track and stalk. And how to signal.

Nick showed him how to make a smudge fire, and Peter was doubly sure, then, that Nick would win the cup. In the nights he dreamed of the winning of that cup, of Nick winning it. Yes, they showed him. Fido Norton showed him how to track a rabbit, and a small-sized, pocket edition of a scout in the Elephant Patrol showed him (very difficult) how to trail a hop-toad. Charlie Norris showed him how to use a deadly kodak, which Peter had never seen before. He liked it because it pulled open the way a turtle's neck comes out, and then went in again. Oh yes, they all showed him.

And meanwhile Peter Piper kept his secret and no one ever knew of his little exploit, for which the handbook really deserved all the credit.

The adventure of the stolen car was now forgotten in a hundred new activities, and with it the rope across the road and the lantern and all that. Sometimes when they spoke of that, Peter was troubled. But they did not often speak of it. And he did not even tell them that he was a pioneer scout. Harding and Coolidge he now kept in the pocket of his stove-pipe pantaloons. For Peter Piper was approaching scouthood through the tenderfoot cla.s.s. Yes, they were all busy showing him.

Scout Harris showed him. Oh yes, he showed him. But Scout Harris was too busy showing all the rest of them to do any exclusive showing for the pioneer scout. And besides, Peter, who was too new and too bashful and too awed by his companions and surroundings to be a good general mixer, was mostly occupied with his hero, Nick Vernon. Pee-wee, who was a mixer as well as a fixer, went on mixing and fixing and soon he performed his greatest of all "fixing" feats; probably the greatest fixing feat in scout history. Perhaps the greatest fixing stunt in the history of the world.

But Peter was satisfied to laugh at Pee-wee with the rest of them, with that bashful, hesitating laugh, which endeared him to them all.

It was natural that he should follow Nick Vernon about the island, for everyone liked Nick, who was quiet, humorous, modest and withal very resourceful and skilful. He had a kind of a contained air, as if he knew more than he gave out, in contrast to Scout Harris who gave out more than he knew. A bantering, off-hand way he had, as if all the things he did (and he could do many) were done just to kill time. Skilful though he was, he did not take himself too seriously. Everything he did he seemed to do incidentally.

He would wander aimlessly into some triumph. "Going tracking?" they would say. "Guess so," he would answer. He never made a fuss. The general impression that he gave was that scouting was a good enough way to while away a summer. Peter Piper worshipped at the shrine, winning scout personality. He hoped that his mother would allow him to stay for the finish so that he could see Nick receive the cup. He watched, jealously, anxiously, the stunts of the other scouts, but none of them could be mentioned along with Nick's signalling.

One morning Nick sauntered down to the sh.o.r.e, Peter with him.

"Going to wigwag?" they asked him.

"Maybe, if there's anyone to wigwag to. No use talking if there isn't anyone in town to listen."

"Scout Harris talks whether there's anyone to listen or not," one said.

"Shall I bring the card to wigwag with?" Peter asked.

"No, don't bother. Got some matches? Never mind if you haven't."

Peter ran back and got some.

"If you're signalling tell them not to hurry with the school, we can wait. Scout Harris is giving us an education. He's going to move the lake to-morrow."

"He's a queer duck," one of the party sprawling around the tents said as the two made their way down toward the sh.o.r.e.

"Who, Pete?"

"No, Nick; jiminy, it always seems as if--I don't know--as if he has something up his sleeve."

"It's his arm," commented a joker.

"Maybe he knows about a mystery," Pee-wee said; "maybe there's treasure buried on this island."

"There'll be some scouts buried on this island if we all die laughing at you," another scout observed. "Come on, let's dig some bait."

Nick did not decide what he was going to do till he reached the sh.o.r.e.

That was just like him. Peter was all excitement.

"Are you going to signal?" he asked.

Nick often signalled over to town and sometimes he got an answer, for there were other scouts over there. He did it just for pastime. Usually it was the wigwag that he used. But on this morning, noticing the dried leaves all about, he said, "We'll try a smudge, that's pretty good sport; Morse Code, you know." He looked about half-interestedly and began kicking leaves into a pile, Peter doing the same. If Nick had any particular purpose in this business, at least you would not have supposed so. He seemed as aimless as a b.u.t.terfly. "Are you going to ask about school?"

"No," laughed Nick, dragging some leaves with his foot; "there's no school for a month, we know that. If you know a thing you know it; isn't that so?"

"I don't know many things."