Blythe was bunking in one of the shacks which he had secured the privilege of tearing down and it was apparent to the scouts that his knowledge of camping was primitive. But Pee-wee, out of the greatness of his scout heart, volunteered to be his guide, philosopher, and friend in these matters.

"We'll show you how to do," he said. "If there's anything you don't understand you just come to me. I've got the camping badge and the pathfinder's badge, and the astronomer's badge--"

"He's an astronomer," interrupted Roy; "he knows all the movie stars."

"He sees everything in the sky," Hunt Ward added; "he's the one that put the see in sea-scout."

"Sure, and put the pie in pioneer scout too," Roy said. "He studied first aid and last aid and lemonade and everything. He's a scout in very high standing only he doesn't stand very high. You stick to him and you can't go wrong."

"Do you mean to say I haven't the badge for camping?" the diminutive Raven demanded as he unburdened himself of his various paraphernalia.

"Do you mean to say I didn't study the heavens when I was a tenderfoot?"

"No wonder the stars went out," Roy said. "Here, take this bag of flour and put it over in the corner. You're in Camp Merritt now, you have to obey your superior officer. Here, take the spools of thread out of this coffee-pot and kick that big can over here, the one marked dynamite. I'm going to put the sugar in that. Anyone who takes any sugar without permission will be blown up by his patrol leader. _Look what you're doing!_ Don't set the pickles on the chocolate. Hand me that bottle of ink before you spill it in the egg powder."

It was good to see Blythe laughing at Pee-wee's heroic effort to dispose of the commissary stores which his companions loaded upon him. It was a laugh of simple, genuine pleasure, almost childlike.

"Don't drop the fly-paper in the flour," Roy shouted to Pee-wee in frantic warning, as Pee-wee wrestled valiantly under the load of boxes, packages and cans. "Put the cork back in the mola.s.ses jug before it spills into the Indian meal."

"We'll have home brew," Westy said.

"You mean home glue," Roy answered. "_Look at him!_ He's got the powdered cocoanut all over the bacon!"

"Keep those things off me!" the victim shouted as the boxes and cans piled up on him. "Do you think I'm a freight car?"

"As he stooped to pick up a box a can went rolling under Blythe's makeshift bed. As he reached for the can a bag of beans burst like a sky-rocket, pouring a shower down his neck and into his pockets and over the floor.

"_Now you see!_" he yelled. "The eggs are sliding down!"

"_Help, help!_" called several scouts.

Pee-wee picked up two cans of sardines and sacrificed a bag of rice. He gathered up rice and beans together, and a jar of jam went rolling on a career of foreign travel. All was confusion.

"_Time!_" he screamed.

"He asks for an armistice," Roy shouted.

"You mean a couple of dozen arms," Westy shrieked.

"If you put another thing on me I'll drop the eggs," Pee-wee screamed.

"I'll drop them so that they--they--_bounce_, too."

This threat of frightfulness cowered his a.s.sailants.

"That's against international law," Roy shouted.

"I don't care, I'll do it!" Pee-wee yelled. "You pile one more thing on me and I'll--"

"Start an eggmarine campaign," Westy said.

"That's the first time I ever knew food to get the best of Pee-wee,"

Artie Van Arlen observed.

The diminutive mascot of the Raven Patrol having valiantly protected the eggs in one extended hand gradually divested himself of the mountain under which he had labored, and by a fine strategic move took a tactical position behind these defenses with the pasteboard box of eggs upraised in heroic and threatening defiance. The war had come to an end suddenly, like the World War.

"Unconditional surrender," Roy shouted.

"Do I get three helpings of stew for supper?" demanded the victor, by way of imposing an indemnity before he proceeded with disarmament.

"Sure, eggs won the war," Roy conceded.

As for Blythe, he was sitting on a grocery box in No Man's Land, laughing so hard that his sides ached. Their banter seemed a kind of tonic to him. And it was when he laughed and seemed so simple and childlike and so much one of them, that they found him so likable.

CHAPTER IX

AROUND THE FIRE

After this decisive conflict the period of reconstruction or rather the period of demolition, began auspiciously. It began with a grand feast cooked out-of-doors in the bra.s.s kettle which was the pride of Roy's life. That bra.s.s kettle stood upon a scout fireplace of stones, and from its interior a hunter's stew diffused its luscious fragrance to those who sat about, feeding the companionable fire. The scouts were quite masters of the situation, their coming must have been like a freshening breeze to the lonely visitant at the old deserted camp, and their fun and brisk efficiency and readiness seemed to give him a new life and afford him amus.e.m.e.nt which was expressed in that silent, likeable, yet haunting smile. It was not often that he laughed aloud and he talked but little, and then with a kind of diffidence that seemed odd in one so much their senior.

"I'm going to leave that kettle to my ancestors when I die," Roy said.

"It's been all over and I've cooked everything in it except Cook's tours; it's travelled more than they have, anyway. It's been to Temple Camp and we fished it up from the bottom of the lake once and I guess as many as ten thousand wheat cakes have come out of that kettle. Hey, Pee-wee?"

"Nine thousand eight hundred is all Pee-wee can say for sure about,"

Westy said.

"Are you used to camping?" Doc Carson asked Blythe. "I thought maybe you liked this kind of thing because you came here."

"It was just that I was out of a job," Blythe said frankly. "Anything's better than nothing. I happened to wander in here and met a man with an auto. He works for the concern that's going to tear the camp down; a salvage concern. He got me this job. I don't suppose you'd call it a job, it's an a.s.signment. I picked out the three buildings and they sent me a paper with the numbers on. I've only been here a couple of days.

Yesterday was the only time I was in Bridgeboro. I was going to give it up. I didn't have any supplies and I didn't know who to get to help me--I was mighty glad that friend of yours came up yesterday and said he'd tell you fellows it was all right."

"He's our scoutmaster," said Pee-wee. "He's all right, only you've got to know how to manage him. We'll start in to-morrow morning and we'll show that savage concern all right. We'll show them what we can do."

"Maybe they won't be so savage," Roy said.

"Pee-wee can manage them," Westy observed.

"Oh sure, all you have to do is to know how to manage them," commented Connie. "They can't come too savage for our young hero."

"He can even tame wild flowers," Roy said; "lions--dandelions and tiger-lilies and everything. He eats them alive."

"Speaking of eating, how about the stew?" Artie Van Arlen asked.

"It has to stew for an hour," Roy said. "Somebody get out the tin plates; be prepared, that's our motto. All the comforts of home. Where's _your_ home?" he asked Blythe in a sudden impulse.

"Oh I'm just a kind of a tramp," Blythe said uneasily. "I guess I must have left home before I had my eyes open."