After a while the creek began to get wider and then I could see far ahead of me the roof of a house. Then, all of a sudden, I heard somebody shout.

"Don't bother to plug the hole up, leave it the way it is, so if the water comes in, it can get out again."

Then I heard a voice shout, "You're crazy!" and I knew it was the fellows jollying Pee-wee Harris and they were talking about a hole in the boat, because that was the roof I saw. So then I knew I was coming out into Dutch Creek right where it pa.s.ses Little Valley.

Oh, boy! Wasn't I excited? Pretty soon I could see the boat and some of the fellows on it working away, sawing and hammering and jollying each other, the way the fellows in our troop are always doing. You can see by the map just how I got to where they were. I guess I must have been as near as fifty feet before Connie Bennett threw down his hammer and shouted. "Look who's here!"

Westy Martin was sitting on the edge of the deck dangling his feet and eating a sandwich. Well, you ought to have seen them all stare.

"What in the d.i.c.kens do you call this?" Wig Weigand hollered.

But I didn't say a word till I got right close to them, then I gave Westy a good swat with my reed paddle.

"I am Weetonka, the famous Indian chief!", I shouted, "and I haven't had anything to eat since eight o'clock. Give me that sandwich or I'll scalp you!"

CHAPTER VIII

RESOPEKITWAFTENLY

This chapter and the next one are mostly about Wigley Weigand, but we usually call him Wig-Wag Weigand, because he's a cracker-jack on wig-wag signalling. He's good on all the different kinds of signalling. He's a Raven, but he can't help that, because there wasn't any Silver Fox Patrol when the Raving Ravens started.

The Ravens were the--what do you call it--you know what I mean--nucleus of the troop. That's how it started. There are about half a million scouts in America and all of them can't be Silver Foxes, even if they'd like to.

Wig has the crossed flags--that's the signalling badge, and the fellows say he can make the sky talk. Believe me, he can make it shout. He isn't so bad considering that he's a Raven and there's one good thing about him anyway--and that's that his mother always gives us cookies and things when we go on a hike. I got a dandy mother, too, and maybe you'll see how much I think about her, kind of, in the next chapter. Anyway I have to thank Wig Weigand, that's one sure thing.

Now maybe you think I did a good stunt in that marsh, but a scout doesn't get credit unless he uses his brains and does everything all right. And that's where I fell down, and it came near making a lot of trouble, believe me.

Many's the time Tom Slade (he's in the war now) told me never to leave a scout sign after it wasn't any more use. "Scratch 'em out," he said, "because even if it means something now, it might not mean anything six months from now." Jiminy, that fellow has some brains. He said, "Never forget to take down a sign when it's no use anymore." Well, when I found I wasn't going to die a terrible death (that's what Pee-wee called it) I didn't have sense enough to take away that note that I stuck on the reeds. When I stuck it there I reached up as high as I could, So even when the tide was high up there, I guess it didn't reach it. I was so excited to find I could get away that I never thought anything about it. And when I sailed into Little Valley in my Indian canoe, gee, I had forgotten all about it.

I found that the troop had done a good day's work caulking the hull up and slapping a couple of coats of copper paint on it, while the tide was out. So then we decided that as long as the tide was going down, we'd float her down with it to the Bridgeboro River and then wait for the up tide to float her upstream to Bridgeboro.

We decided that we'd rather fix her up in Bridgeboro. So you see that this chapter is about the tide, too. Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Donnelle both told me that I must have plenty of movement in my story, so I guess the tide's a good character for a story, because it's always moving.

Well, you ought to have seen those fellows when I sailed in shouting that I was Weetonka, the famous Indian chief. Doc Carson dropped his paint brush on Connie Bennett and he was splashed all over with copper paint--good night!

"Where did you get that thing," Pee-wee shouted, "it looks like a horse's trough."

"You have to part your hair in the middle to ride in it, I can tell you that," I told him.

"Where were you all the time?" he said.

"I was captured by a band of Apaches," I said.

"What kind of a band?" Pee-wee yelled.

"A bra.s.s band," I told him; "a bra.s.s band of Apaches."

"You make me sick!" he said, kind of disgusted.

"They took me to their village and were going to burn me at the stake, only the butcher didn't bring it, then they decided they'd chop me to pieces only the butcher didn't bring the chops--"

Oh, boy! you should have seen that kid. He fired a wet bailing sponge at me and I dodged it and it hit one of his own patrol--kerflop! I guess you'll think all us fellows are crazy, especially me. I should worry.

I told them I escaped in the canoe and all that kind of stuff, but at last I told them the real story and you can bet they were glad I was saved. They all said I had a narrow escape, and I admit it was only about an inch wide.

Now, I have to tell you about how we floated the house-boat down to Bridgeboro River, and maybe you'd better look at the map, hey? Oh, but first I want to tell you about the name we gave it. Some name! We christened it with a bottle of mosquito dope. It's regular name was all rubbed off, so we decided we'd vote on a new name.

This is the way we fixed it. Each patrol thought of a name and then we mixed the three names up and made one name out of them. Then you just add a little sugar and serve.

The Ravens voted the name Sprite, the Elks voted the name Fly and the Silver Foxes voted the name Weetonka, on account of me. Then we wrote all these letters down and mixed them all up and arranged them every which way, till we got this name:

RESOPEKITWAFTENLY

Oh, boy, some laugh we had over that name. We were all sitting around in the two cabin rooms and believe me, it was some giggling match.

"It sounds like a Bolshevik name," Westy Martin said.

"You wait till the infernal revenue people get that name," I said, "it'll knock'em out." Because, of course, I knew we'd have to send the name to the infernal revenue people--I mean internal or eternal or whatever you call it--because you have to do that to get your license number.

"It's a good name," I said, "you don't see it every day."

"Thank goodness for that," Doc Carson said, It's as long as a spelling lesson or Pee-wee's tongue."

"It'll be a pretty expensive name; it'll take a lot of paint," Brick Warner said.

"We should worry," I said.

So then I made some coffee, because I'm the troop cook, and we thought it was best to eat before we started. That bunch is always hungry.

They said it was punk coffee, but that was because they didn't bring enough to go around.

"Don't laugh at the coffee," I told them, "you may be old and weak yourselves some day." I made some flapjacks, too, and then we started.

We didn't have to do much work because the ebb was running good and strong, and we just sat around the deck with our feet dangling over, and pushed her off with our scout staffs whenever she ran against the sh.o.r.es. She didn't keep head on, but that was no matter as long as she went, and pretty soon (I guess it must have been about seven o'clock) we went waltzing into Bridgeboro River.

And then was when we made a crazy mistake.

Just for a minute we forgot that the tide would be running down the river instead of up. If we had only remembered that, three or four of us could have gone ash.o.r.e with a rope and tied her in the channel, which ran along the near sh.o.r.e. Then all we would have had to do would have been to sit around and wait for it to turn, so we could drift up to Bridgeboro with it.

But just when we were floating out of the creek, we forgot all about what the tide would do to us, unless we were on the job and sure enough it caught us and sent us whirling around and away over on to the flats.

"Good night!" I said when I heard her sc.r.a.pe.

"We should have had sense enough to know the tide is stronger here than in the creek," they all said.

"What's the difference?" Dorry Benton said,