The Boy Scouts in A Trapper's Camp

Excerpt

AN INTERRUPTED DREAM

Walter Upton pushed aside books and papers, yawned, stretched, yawned again, then settled back in his chair comfortably, his hands clasped behind his head.

"I'm glad that vacation is only one week off," he murmured. "School is all right, and I know I'm going to be mighty sorry when school-days end for good. Just the same, this infernal grind to get a scholarship does get a fellow's goat sometimes. If I don't win it I don't see how I can go to college next year unless I can find some way to earn the money. Poor old Dad! That slump in stocks pretty nearly bowled him over. Lucky I thought of this scholarship when he tried to tell me that unless business picked up he couldn't send me to college next year. It sure did me good to see the shine in his eyes when I told him about this and that I was going to win it. He's a great old scout, and I'm going to get it now if for nothing more than to see that shine in his eyes again. My, but it's a tough old grind! Wonder how it would seem to go to a prep school like Hal Harrison and not have to think about money and where it is going to come from. I guess scholarships don't bother Hal any. Wonder if he is coming home for the Christmas winter vacation."

Idly Walter allowed his eyes to wander over the walls of his den. It was a snug little room, simply furnished with a spring cot, which was a bed by night and a couch by day, a desk, a deep-cushioned Morris chair, a revolving desk chair, a foot-rest and two well filled bookcases. The walls were covered with photographs. Nearly all of them were of outdoor scenes, most of them of his own taking, for he was an expert with the camera. A number were enlargements neatly framed. Among these was the famous flashlight made during his first summer at Woodcraft Camp which had furnished the evidence to put Red Pete, the outlaw and poacher, behind the bars. There, too, were the splendid portraits (they were nothing less) of the bull moose of Swift River, a lasting tribute to the nerve of Plympton, the tenderfoot comrade of that memorable cruise.

There were studies of deer and other wild animals, views of Woodcraft Camp, of scenes along Swift River, and of the various camps and points of interest on Lost Trail, the relocating of which by Walter and his four fellow Scouts of the Lone Wolf Patrol had won for them the distinction of a special letter of commendation from national headquarters of the Boy Scouts of America.

Above the door hung a hard-used set of boxing gloves. Crossed above one window were a pair of snow-shoes, while above the other window were a pair of fencing foils. In one corner, each in its case, were two fishing-rods, a rifle and a tennis racquet. In the opposite corner leaned a Scout staff and a couple of canoe paddles. A great horned owl stared unblinkingly down from the top of one of the plain oak bookcases. On the wall just back and above it was fastened a small banner having the head of a wolf worked in black against a white background, and bearing the one word "Persistence." It was the Lone Wolf banner which had been carried on that never-to-be-forgotten search for Lost Trail....