"Hear! Hear!"
"Go to it. You"re doing fine!"
"The object of the puzzle," said Roy, rolling up his sleeves as if he intended to do the puzzle then and there, "the object of the puzzle is to get inside the Ravens" tent without entering it. Will some gentleman in the audience kindly loan me a high hat and a ten-dollar gold piece?
No? Evidently no gentleman in the audience."
"Cut it out," said Westy. "They"ll be back in an hour. What are we going to do?"
"We are not going to do anything until the silent hour of midnight,"
said Roy. "Then we are going to make reprisals."
"How do you make those?" called Westy.
"That"s some word, all right," said Ed.
"I tracked that all the way through the Standard Dictionary," said Roy.
"How about Mr. Ellsworth?"
"He has announced his policy of strict neutrality," said Roy. "The field is ours! The obnoxious post-card will be ours if you, brave scouts, will do your part! For one month now has that obnoxious post-card hung in the Ravens" tent. For one month has Pee-wee Harris smiled his smile and gone unshaved--I mean unscathed. Shall this go on?"
"No! No!"
"Shall it be said that the Silver Foxes are not Sterling silver but only German silver?"
"Never!"
"Shall the silver of the Silver Foxes be tarnished by that slanderous card?"
"Never!"
"They have called us the "Follow Afters"--they have said that we are nothing but "Silver _Polish_""!
"We"ll rub it into them," shouted Westy.
"They have taken cowardly refuge in the troop rule that no Silver Fox shall enter their tent except on invitation, and this insertion--"
"You mean aspersion."
"Glares forth from the upright of their sordid lair--"
""Sordid lair" is good!"
"No extra charge," said Roy; "until now the worm has turned. If we cannot enter their tent then we must take down their tent, remove the card, and put the tent up again."
"Oh, joy!" said Ed.
"And it must not be done sneakingly in their absence, but to the soft music of their snoring. The enterprise is beset with many dangers.
Those who are not willing to venture (as What-do-you-call-him said when he stormed Fort Something-or-other) may stay behind!"
Before camp-fire yarns, an elaborate card was prepared in the privacy of the Silver Foxes" tent in Roy"s characteristically glaring style, on which appeared the single word, STUNG!
The night for this bold deed had been well chosen. The Ravens had been stalking all day and at camp fire Tom listened wistfully to the account of the day"s most notable stunt which was Pee-wee"s tracking of a muskrat more than half a mile within the required twenty-five minutes of the Second Cla.s.s provision.
"Pee-wee"ll be the first to jump out of the Tenderfoot Cla.s.s this summer," said Mr. Ellsworth, as he poked the crackling fire. "You Silver Foxes will have to get busy." He looked pleasantly at Tom. "Hey, Tommy?"
"I was wondering," said Roy, as he stretched himself on the ground close to the cheerful blaze, "if we couldn"t work in something special for next Wednesday--it"s troop birthday. We"ll be two years old."
"That"s right, so it is," said Artie Van Arlen, Raven. "I"m a charter member; the Silver Foxes weren"t even heard of or thought of at that time."
"No, they"re a lot of upstarts," said Doc. Carson, the first-aid boy.
"You"d think to hear them talk that they started before National Headquarters did. I remember when this troop was a one-ring circus: just us Ravens, and we had some good times too. I had my first-aid badge before those triple-plated Silver Foxes were born!"
"They have no traditions," said the Ravens" patrol leader.
"They"re an up-to-date patrol, though," said Roy. "The Ravens are pa.s.se--like the old Handbook. That kind of patrol was all right when the thing first started; the Silver Foxes are a last year"s model."
"Well," laughed Mr. Ellsworth, raking up the fire and drawing his grocery-box seat closer, "maybe the Silver Foxes will be ancient history soon. I"m thinking of a new pack of upstarts for you foxes to make fun of."
"You haven"t made another flank move on Connie Bennett, have you?"
laughed Roy. They were all familiar with Mr. Ellsworth"s dream of another patrol.
"Connie rests his head on a pine cushion and imagines he"s a Boy Scout," said Artie.
"He blows the dust off a _Dan Dreadnought_ book and imagines it"s the wind howling through the forest," said Westy.
"He runs the tennis-marker over the lawn and thinks he"s tracking,"
said Pee-wee.
"No, not as bad as that, boys," laughed the scoutmaster. "Between you and me and the camp fire, I suspect Connie"s got the bug."
"Haven"t given up hope yet?" said Roy.
"Never say die," answered Mr. Ellsworth, good-naturedly.
Once, twice, thrice had he made a daring a.s.sault on the Bennett stronghold and once, twice, thrice had he been gallantly repulsed by the Bennett right wing, which was Mrs. Bennett. He had planted the Bennett veranda with mines in the form of _Boys" Life_ and _Scouting,_ but all to no avail. Yet his hopeful spirit in regard to the visionary Elk Patrol was almost pathetic.
The tent of the venerable Raven patrol was pitched under a spreading tree and they retired with their proud and ancient traditions, blissfully unaware of the startling liberty which was to be taken with their historic dignity by those upstart Silver Foxes. Mr. Ellsworth, with a commendable application of his policy of strict neutrality, retired to his own tent to dream of the new patrol.
Never in the history of the troop had a Silver Fox trespa.s.sed unknown into the ancient privacy of the Ravens, and never had a Raven condescended to enter the Silver Fox stronghold save honorably and by invitation. They knew the Silver Foxes for a sportive crew pervaded by the inventive spirit of Roy Blakeley, but they had no fear of any violation of scout honor and the obnoxious card hung ostentatiously on the central upright of their tent.
In the still hour of midnight the enterprising Silver Foxes emerged in spectral silence from their lair and the battle-cry (or rather, whisper) was "Revenge," p.r.o.nounced by Roy as if it had a dozen rattling R"s at the beginning of it. Every boy was keyed to the highest pitch of excitement.
The Ravens" tent was a makeshift affair of their own manufacture and when its sides were not up it was more of a pavilion than a tent: the Ravens believed in fresh air. There were two forked uprights and across these was laid the ridgepole. The canvas was spread over this and drawn diagonally toward the ground on either side. There were front and back and sides for stormy weather but they were seldom in requisition.
The program, discussed and settled beforehand, was carried out in scout silence, which is about thirty-three and one-third per cent greater than the regular market silence. Tom and Eddie Ingram, being the tallest of the foxes, stationed themselves at either upright, the other members of the patrol lining up along the sides where they loosened the ropes from the pegs. Then Tom and Ed lifted the ridgepole, the scouts along the sides held the canvas high, and the entire patrol moved uniformly and in absolute silence. The tent, intact, was moved from over the sleeping Ravens as the magic carpet of the _Arabian Nights_ was moved. It was a very neat little piece of work and showed with what precision the patrol could act in concert. Thanks partly to their strenuous day of stalking, never a Raven stirred except Doc. Carson, who startled them by turning over.
In the centre of the Ravens" tent a sapling had been planted, its branches cut away to within several inches of its trunk, so that it made a very pa.s.sable clothes-tree. This still stood, like a ghostly sentinel, among the slumbering Ravens, laden with their clothes and paraphernalia. The sudden and radical transformation of the scene was quite grotesque and the unsheltered household G.o.ds of the Ravens looked ludicrous enough as they lay about in homelike disposition with nothing above them but the stars.