Under Boy Scout Colors.
by Joseph Bushnell Ames.
CHAPTER I
THE LIVE WIRE
Dale Tompkins slung the bulging bag of papers over one shoulder, and, turning away from the news-stand, walked briskly down the main street of Hillsgrove. The rain had ceased, and the wind that had howled fiercely all day long was shifting into the west, where it tore to tatters the banks of dun gray clouds, letting through gleams and patches of cold blue sky tinged with the pale, chill yellow of a typical autumn sunset.
The cold look of that sunset was well borne out by a keen nip in the air, but Dale was too thankful to have it clear at all to complain. Besides, he wasn"t exactly the complaining sort. Turning up the collar of a rather shabby coat, he thrust both hands deep into his trousers" pockets and hurried whistling along, bent on delivering his papers in the quickest possible time.
"I ought to get home by seven, anyhow," he thought calculatingly. "And if Mother"ll only give me a hurry-up snack, I"ll be in time for meeting."
He rolled the last word under his tongue with the prideful accent of a novice. Then, with a sudden start, one hand jerked out of his pocket and slipped between the b.u.t.tons of the thread-bare coat. For an anxious moment it groped there before the fingers closed over a metal badge, shaped like a trefoil, that was pinned securely to the flannel shirt.
A somewhat sheepish grin overspread the freckled face, and through an open gate Dale shot a paper dexterously across the porch to land accurately in the middle of the door-mat.
"I"d hate to lose it the very first week," he muttered, with a touch of apology. Mechanically he delivered another paper, and then he sighed.
"Gee! A month sure seems an awful long time to wait when you know about all the tests already. I could even pa.s.s some of the first-cla.s.s ones, I bet! That handbook"s a dandy, all right. I don"t guess there was ever another book printed with so much in it, exceptin", maybe--"
The words froze on his lips, and he caught his breath with a sharp, hissing intake. From somewhere in the next block a scream rang out on the still air, so shrill, so sudden, so full of surprise and pain and utter terror that Dale"s blood turned cold within him, and the arm, half extended to toss a folded paper, halted in the middle of its swing, as if encountering an invisible obstacle. The pause was only momentary. Abruptly, as if two hands were pressed around a throbbing throat, the cry was cut off, and in the deathly silence that followed, Dale hurled the paper hastily, but accurately, from him, and turned and ran.
Eyes wide and face a little white, he tore across the road, splashing through puddles and slipping in the soft mud. Whirling around the corner into Pine Street, he saw a woman rush bareheaded out of a near-by house and two men come running down an adjacent alley. Rather, he noted them with that odd sense of observation which works intuitively, for his whole being was concentrated on the sight of that slight, boyish figure lying motionless in the roadway.
For a second Dale stared blankly, unable to understand. His first thought was that some human agency had done this thing, but almost as swiftly he realized that there was no one in sight who could have struck the child unconscious, nor had there been time for such an a.s.sailant to get away. Then, as he hurried closer through the gathering dusk, he caught sight of a trailing wire gripped convulsively in the small hands, and in a flash he realized the truth. In a flash, too, he realized that the body was not as motionless as he had supposed. A writhing, twisting movement, slight but ceaseless, quivered through the helpless victim, from his thin, black-stockinged legs to the blue lips. To the white-faced lad bending over him it seemed to tell of great suffering borne, perforce, in silence--and he was such a little kid!
From Dale"s own lips there burst a smothered, inarticulate cry. Every idea, save the vital need of tearing loose that killing grip, vanished from the older boy"s mind. Heedless of a warning shout from one of the men, he bent swiftly forward and caught the child by one shoulder.
What happened then Dale was never afterward able to describe clearly.
It was as if some monstrous tingling force, greater, stranger than anything he had ever known, struck at him out of the air. In a twinkling it tore him from the boy on the ground and hurled him almost the width of the street. He crashed against the stone curbing and for a second or two lay there, dazed and blinking, then climbed painfully to his feet.
"I oughtn"t to have--touched him--with my bare hands," he muttered uncertainly. "I must have got nearly the whole charge!"
He felt faint and sick and wobbly. From the horrified group gathered helplessly around the unconscious boy across the street, a woman"s hysterical cry beat on his brain with monotonous iteration: "What can we do? What can we do? It"s terrible! Oh, can"t you do something?"
"If we only had rubber gloves--" murmured one of the men, vaguely.
"Where"s a "phone?" interrupted another. "I"m going to get "em to shut off the current!"
"You can"t," some one replied. People were constantly rushing up to gasp and exclaim, but do nothing. "The power-house is clear over at Medina.
It"ll take too long to get the connection."
"I"m going to try, anyhow," was the sharp retort. "It"s better than doing nothing."
As he dashed past Dale and disappeared into a neighboring house, the boy moved slowly forward. He splashed through a puddle, and something he had read, or heard, came back to him. Water was a perfect conductor, and he had been standing in a regular pool of it when he grabbed the child. No wonder he had been shocked.
"Insulation," he murmured, his head still swimming. "That"s it! The handbook says--"
The bag of papers b.u.mped against his thigh, and somehow Dale"s numbed brain began to clear swiftly. How could he have forgotten that paper was a non-conductor as well as silk or rubber? Rubber! Why, the bag itself was made of some kind of waterproof stuff. He thrust aside a half-grown, gaping youth.
"Give me a show, can"t you?" he cried almost fiercely. Thrilled, exhilarated with a sudden sense of power, he jerked the bag off his shoulder. "The kid"ll never live if he waits for you fellows to do something." With extraordinary swiftness he pulled out several thicknesses of newspaper and wrapped them about one hand and arm.
Similarly swathing the other, he dropped the rubber-coated bag to the ground and stepped squarely on it. His eyes were wide and almost black with excitement. "Oh, cut that out!" he snapped over one shoulder to a protesting bystander. "Don"t you s"pose I _know_ what I"m doing? I"m a scout!"
A second later he had gripped the unconscious child again by an arm and shoulder. This time there was no shock, only a queer, vibratory tingling that Dale scarcely noticed, so intent was he on doing the right thing.
He must not bungle now. He remembered perfectly what the book said about releasing a person in contact with a live wire. It must be done quickly and cleanly, without unnecessary tugging, or else the shock and burning would be greatly increased. Dale braced his feet and drew a long breath. Then, suddenly, he jerked backward with all the strength he could summon. The next thing he knew he was sitting squarely in a puddle with both arms around the child, whose grip on the deadly wire he had broken.
Instantly the hitherto inactive group was roused to life and movement, and amidst a Babel of talk and advice they surged around the unconscious lad and his rescuer. Before the latter realized what had happened, some one had s.n.a.t.c.hed the little chap from him and started swiftly toward one of the near-by houses. After and around them streamed a throng of men, women, and children, pitying, anxious, or merely curious, but, now that the danger was past, all equally voluble with suggestions or advice.
Dale rose slowly to his feet, and stood for a moment staring after them with a troubled frown. "Why don"t they give him air?" he said. "If only they wouldn"t bunch around him like that--"
He paused hesitatingly, watching the procession mount the steps and cross a wide veranda. The stress and excitement that had dominated him till now seemed to have vanished, and a reaction set in. He wondered whether folks wouldn"t think him too "fresh" for thrusting himself forward as he had done. The remembrance of the man to whom he had talked back made him wriggle uncomfortably; it was one of his oldest customers. "Gee!" he muttered, with a touch of uneasiness; "I reckon I must have sa.s.sed him pretty well, too!"
Dusk had given place to night. Under a flaring gas-light at the curb two early arrivals, who had stayed behind to guard the deadly, dangling wire, were busy explaining the situation to several wide-eyed later comers. They formed an animated group, and Dale, standing in the shadow behind them, felt curiously out of it and alone. The wind, sweeping up the street, struck through his wet clothes and made him shiver.
"Time I was getting started," he thought. "It must be awful late."
As he bent over to pick up his bag, the movement set his head to throbbing afresh. His exploring fingers encountered a lump, where he had hit the curb, that felt about the size of an ostrich-egg. Dale"s forehead wrinkled, and he opened the bag mechanically, only to find the remaining papers were soaked through and ruined. Those he had wrapped around his hands lay in the mud at his feet, soggy ma.s.ses of pulp. And he had delivered only four out of the lot!
Dale tried to smile, but his lips only quivered. With a second, more determined, effort, he clenched his teeth tightly, slung the empty bag over his shoulder, and started back toward the news-stand. But he went in silence. Somehow the usual whistle was impossible.
CHAPTER II
THE NEW TENDERFOOT
It was close to half past seven before Dale delivered his last paper. He had been delayed in the beginning by old Jed Hathaway"s having to know all about it, and insisting on hearing every little detail before he could be induced to provide a second supply. Dale tried to be patient under the cross-examination of the garrulous old newsdealer, but it wasn"t easy when he knew that each minute wasted now was going to make it harder to get through in time for the scout meeting. When he was released at last, he hurried all he could, but the minute-hand of the old town-clock was perilously close to the perpendicular when he got back to the square again.
Clearly, there was no time to go home even for that "hurry up" snack he had been thinking about. There wasn"t even time to get a sandwich from the lunch-wagon, two blocks away. "Have to pull in my belt and forget about it till I get home after meeting, I reckon," he thought.
In suiting the action to the word he realized that his hurried efforts at the news-stand to clean off the mud had been far from successful. It plastered his person, if not from head to foot, at least from the waist down, and now that it was beginning to dry, it seemed to show up more distinctly each moment. He couldn"t present himself before Scoutmaster Curtis in such a plight, so he raced across the square to his friend Joe Banta"s shoe-cleaning establishment, borrowed a stiff brush, and went to work vigorously.
Brief as was the delay, it sufficed to make him late. Though not at all sectarian, Troop Five held its weekly meetings in the parish-house of the Episcopal church, whose rector was intensely interested in the movement. These were scheduled for seven-thirty on Monday evenings.
There was usually a brief delay for belated scouts, but by twenty minutes of eight, at latest, the shrill blast of the scoutmaster"s whistle brought the fellows at attention, ready for the salute to the flag and the other simple exercises that opened the meeting.
Precisely one minute later Dale Tompkins burst hastily into the vestibule and pulled up abruptly. Through the open door a long line of khaki-clad backs confronted him, trim, erect, efficient-looking. Each figure stood rigidly at attention, shoulders back, eyes set straight ahead, three fingers pressed against the forehead in the scout salute, and lips moving in unison over the last words of the scout oath.
"... To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight."
"Colors post!" came crisply from the scoutmaster facing the line.
From the shadows of the entry Dale felt a sort of thrill at the precision of the movement and the neatness with which the slim color-bearer, who had faced the line just in front of Mr. Curtis and his a.s.sistant, pivoted on his heel and bore the flag, its silken folds gently rippling, past the scouts still standing at attention and on out of sight toward the farther end of the room.
Of course it was only Courtlandt Parker, who was in Dale"s grade at school and a very familiar person indeed. But somehow, in this role, he did not seem nearly so familiar and intimate. To the watching tenderfoot it was almost as if he had ceased for the moment to be the airy, volatile, harum-scarum "Court," whose pranks and witticisms so often kept the whole grade stirred up and amused, and had become solely the sober, earnest, serious color-bearer of the troop.
"A lot of it"s the uniform, of course," thought Dale. "It does make a whopping difference in a fellow"s looks." He glanced down at his own worn, still disheveled garments with sudden distaste. "I wish I had mine!" he sighed.