"Only a screech owl; it's unusual to find one so far in the woods as this!"

As it happened two ruddy screech owls, faithful lovers and monogamists, which had dwelt together as Darby and Joan in the hollow of an old apple-tree in a distant orchard, being persecuted both by boys and blue jays, had eschewed civilization, isolating themselves, at least from the former, in the woods.

As dawn broke between the tall pines and a pale river of daylight flowed along the logging-road, they were seen, both together, upon a low bough, with the dawn breeze fluffing their thick, rufous plumage, making them look larger than they really were, and their heads slowly turning from side to side, trying to discover the meaning of a camp-fire and other strange doings in this their retreat.

"Oo-oo! look at them," hooted Colin softly, creeping out of the cave and stealthily approaching their birch-tree. "They have yellow eyes and faces like kittens. Huh! they're more comical than a basket of monkeys.

Oh, there they go."

For even as his hand was put forth to touch them, they vanished silently as the ebbing shadows in the train of night.

"This must be a great place for owls," said Leon, blinking like one--not until far on in the night had he slept owing to the wrenching pain in his ankle. "Listen! there goes the big old hooter--the great horned owl--the Grand Duke we call him. Hear him 'way off: 'Whoo-whoo-hoo-doo-whoo!' Sounds almost like a wolf howling! _Ou-ouch!_"

"Is your ankle hurting badly, Starrie?"

"It's--fierce."

"Daylight is coming fast now; I'll be able to find the spring and wet those bandages again--and bring you a drink too"; this from the scout.

"Thanks. You're the boy, Nix!"

The brotherly act accomplished, there was silence in the cave where the four boys had again stretched themselves while young Day crept up over the woods.

Suddenly Leon's voice was heard ambiguously muttering in the cave's recess: "If it's The Thing, every fellow wants to be in it!"

"Say! fellows, I've got an idea," he put forth aloud.

"Out with it, if it's worth anything!" from Colin.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Leon! get it out quick, and let us go to sleep again!" pleaded Coombsie, who knew that if Starrie Chase was oppressed by an idea, other boys would hear it in his time, not in theirs.

"I propose that after we get home--when my ankle is better--we start a boy scout patrol in our town and call it the Owl Patrol! I guess we've heard the owls--different kinds--often enough to-night, to be able to imitate one or other of them."

"Good enough! The Scout's is the life for me!" sang out Colin.

"The motion is seconded and carried--now let's go to sleep!" from Marcoo.

"As I expect to stay in these parts for six months, or longer, I'll get transferred from the Philadelphia Peewits to the new patrol!" decided Nixon.

"Bully for you! We'll ask Kenjo Red and Sweetsie to come in; they're dandy fellows--and who else?" Leon hesitated.

"Why don't you get hold of that frightened boy who was with Toiney on the edge of the woods? We had a boy like him in our Philadelphia troop,"

went on Nixon hurriedly, ignoring a surge of protest. "Scared of his own shadow he was! Abnormal timidity--with a long Latin name--due to pre-natal influences, according to the doctors! Well, our scoutmaster managed somehow to enlist him as a tenderfoot. When he got out into the woods with us and found that every other scout was trying to help him to become a 'fellow,' why! he began to crawl out of his sh.e.l.l. He's getting to be quite a boy now!"

"But the '_Hare_'! he'd spoil--_Ouch!_" A sudden wrench of agony as Leon moved restlessly put the pointed question as to whether the mental pain which Harold Greer suffered might not be as hard to drag round as a thunderstorm ankle.

"All right, Nix! Enlist him if you can! I guess you'll have to pa.s.s on who comes into the new patrol."

Colin dug his nose into the pine-tips with a skeptical chuckle: that new patrol would have a big contract on hand, he thought, if it was to gather up the wild, waste energy of Leon,--that element in him which parents and teachers sought to eradicate,--turn it to good account, and take the fright out of the Hare.

But from the woods came a deep ba.s.s whoop that sounded encouraging: the Whoo-whoo-hoo-doo-whoo! of the Grand Duke bidding the world good-morning ere he went into retreat for the day.

It was answered by the Whoo-whoo-whooah-whoo! of a brother owl, also lifting up his voice before sunrise.

"Listen, fellows!" cried Leon excitedly. "_Listen!_ The feathered owls themselves are cheering the Owl Patrol."

CHAPTER VII

MEMBERS OF THE LOCAL COUNCIL

And thus the new patrol was started.

Three weeks after the September morning when an anxious search-party led by Asa Chase, Leon's father, and by that clever woodsman Toiney Leduc, had started out at dawn to search the dense woods for four missing boys, and found a grotesque-looking quartette with faces piebald from the half-effaced smears of Varney's Paintpot, breakfasting on blueberries and water by a still ruddy camp-fire,--three weeks after those morning woods had rung with Toiney's shrill "Hola!" the first meeting for the formation of the Owl Patrol was held.

In virtue of his being already a boy scout with a year's training behind him, Nixon Warren was elected patrol leader; and Leon Starr Chase who still limped as a result of his reckless descent of that freak pine-tree, was made second in rank with the t.i.tle of corporal--or a.s.sistant patrol leader.

Among the half-dozen spectators, leading men of the small town, who had a.s.sembled to witness the inaugural doings at this first meeting and to lend their approval to the new movement for the boys, there appeared one who was lamer than Leon, his halting step being due to a year-old injury which condemned him to limp somewhat for the remainder of his life.

This was Captain Andrew Davis, popularly known as Captain Andy, who had been for thirty years a Gloucester fishing-skipper, one of the present-day Vikings who sail forth from the Queen Fishing City at the head of its blue harbor.

He had commanded one fine fishing-vessel after another, was known along the water-front and among the fishing-fleet as a "crackerjack" and "driver," with other more complimentary t.i.tles. He had got the better of the sea in a hundred raging battles on behalf of himself and others. But it partially worsted him at last by wrecking his vessel in what he mildly termed a "November breeze"--in reality a howling hurricane--and by laming him for life when at the height of the storm the schooner's main-boom fell on him.

He was dragged forth from under it, half-dead, but, "game to the last,"

refused to be carried below. Lashed to the weather main-bitt--one of the sawed-off posts rising from the vessel's deck to which the main-sheet was made fast--in order to prevent his being swept overboard by the great seas washing over that deck, he had kept barking out orders and fighting for the lives of his crew so long as he could command a breath.

"And I didn't lose a man, Doc!" he said long afterwards to his friend and admirer, the Exmouth doctor, the hard-working physician with whose long-suffering bell Leon had mischievously tampered. "I didn't lose a man--only the vessel. When the gale blew down we had to take to the dories, for she was just washing to pieces under us. Too bad: she was an able vessel too! But I guess I'll have to 'take my medicine' for the rest of my life--an' take it limping!"--with a rueful smile.

But the many waters through which he had pa.s.sed had not quenched in Captain Andy the chivalrous love for his human brothers. Rather did they baptize and freshen it until it sprouted anew, after he took up his residence ash.o.r.e, in a paternal love for boys which kept his great heart youthful in his ma.s.sive, sixty-year-old body; and which kept him hopefully dreaming, too, of deeds that shall be done by the sons now being reared for Uncle Sam, that shall rival or outshine the knightly feats of their fathers both on land and sea.

So he smiled happily, this grand old sea-scout, as, on the occasion of the first meeting for the inauguration of the Boy Scout Movement, he heaved his powerful frame into a seat beside his friend the doctor who was equally interested in the new doings.

"Hi there, Doc!" said Captain Andy joyously, laying his hand, big and warm as a tea-kettle, on the doctor's arm, "we're launching a new boat for the boys to-night, eh? Seems to me that it's an able craft too--this new movement--intended to keep the lads goin' ahead under all the sail they can carry, and on a course where they'll get the benefit of the best breezes, too."

"That's how it strikes me," returned the doctor. "If it will only keep Starrie Chase, as they call him, sailing in an opposite direction to my doorbell, I'm sure I shall bless it! D'you know, Andy," the gray-bearded physician addressed the weatherbeaten sea-fighter beside him as he had done when they were schoolboys together, "when I heard how that boy Leon had sprained his ankle badly in the woods and that the family had sent for me, I said: 'Serve him right! _Let_ him be tied by the leg for a while and meditate on the mischief of his ways; I'm not going to see him!' Of course, before the words were well out, I had picked up my bag and was on my way to the Chase homestead!"

"Of course you were!" Captain Andy beamed upon his friend until his large face with its coating of ruddy tan flamed like an aurora borealis under the electric lights of the little town hall in which the first boy scout meeting was held. "Trust you, Doc!"

The ex-skipper knew that no man of his acquaintance lived up to the twelve points of the scout law in more thorough fashion than did this country doctor, who never by day or night closed his ears against the call of distress.

"I'll say this much for the young rascal, he was ashamed to see me bring out my bandages"; the doctor now nodded humorously in the direction of Leon Chase, who made one of a semicircle composed of Nixon, himself and six other boys, at present seated round the young scoutmaster whom they had chosen to be leader of the new movement in their town.

"But by and by his tongue loosened somewhat," went on the grizzled medical man, "and he began to take me into his confidence about the formation of this boy scout patrol; he seemed more taken up with that than with what he called 'the thunderstorm in his ankle.' Leon isn't one to knuckle under much to pain, anyhow! Somehow, as he talked, I began to feel as if we hadn't been properly facing the problem of our boys in and about this town, Andy."

"I see what you mean!" Captain Andrew nodded. "Leon is as full of tricks as a tide rip in a gale o' wind. An' that's the most mischievous thing I know!" with a reminiscent chuckle. "But what can you do? If a boy is chockfull o' bubbling energy that's going round an' round in a whirl inside him, like the rip, it's bound to boil over in mischief, if there ain't a deep channel to draw it off."