Tom Slade at Black Lake | Page 7

run, that's why," Tom had said.
Strange to relate, Pete Connegan did not kill him. For a moment he stood staring at his ragged assailant and then he said, "Be gorry, ye got some nerve, annyhow."
"If I done a thing I'd see it through, I would; I ain't scared," Tom had answered.
"If ye'll dance ye'll pay the fiddler, hey?" his victim had asked in undisguised admiration....
Oh well, it was all a long time ago and the only points worth remembering about it are that Tom Slade didn't run, that he was ready to see the thing through no matter if it left him sprawling in the gutter, and that he and the burly truck driver had thereafter been good friends. Now Tom was an ex-scout and a returned soldier and Pete was janitor of the big bank building.
He was sweeping off the walk in front of the bank as Tom passed in.
"Hello, Tommy boy," he said cheerily. "How are ye these days?"
"I'm pretty well," Tom said, in the dull matter-of-fact way that he had, "only I get mixed up sometimes and sometimes I forget."
"Phwill ye evver fergit how you soaked me with the tomater?" Pete asked, leaning on his broom.
"It wasn't hard, because I was standing so near," Tom said, always anxious to belittle his own skill.
"Yer got a mimory twinty miles long," Pete said, by way of discounting Tom's doubts of himself. "I'm thinkin' ye don't go round with the scout boys enough."
"I go Friday nights," Tom said.
"Fer why don't ye go up ter Blakeley's?"
"I don't know," Tom said.
"That kid is enough ter make annybody well," Pete said.
"His folks are rich," Tom said.
That was just it. He was an odd number among these boys and he knew it. Fond of them as he had always been, and proud to be among them, he had always been different, and he knew it. It was the difference between Barrel Alley and Terrace Hill. He knew it. It had not counted for so much when he had been a boy scout with them; good scouts that they were, they had taken care of that end of it. But, you see, he had gone away a scout and come back not only a soldier, but a young man, and he could not (even in his present great need) go to Roy's house, or Grove Bronson's house, or up to the big Bennett place on just the same familiar terms as before. They thought he didn't want to when in fact he didn't know how to.
"Phwen I hurd ye wuz in the war," Pete said, "I says ter meself, I says, 'that there lad'll make a stand.' I says it ter me ould woman. I says, says I, 'phwat he starts he'll finish if he has ter clane up the whole uv France.' That's phwat I said. I says if he makes a bull he'll turrn the whole wurrld upside down to straighten things out. I got yer number all roight, Tommy. Get along witcher upstairs and take the advice of Doctor Pete Connegan--get out amongst them kids more."
I dare say it was good advice, but the trouble was that Lucky Luke was probably born on a Friday, and there was no straightening that out.
As to whether he would turn the world upside down to straighten out some little error, perhaps Pete was right there, too. Roy Blakeley had once said that if Tom dropped his scout badge out of a ten-story window, he'd jump out after it. Indeed that would have been something like Tom.
Anyway the saying was very much like Roy.
CHAPTER VI
"THE WOODS PROPERTY"
When Tom reached the office he took a few matters in to Mr. Burton.
"Well, how are things coming on?" his superior asked him cheerily. "Getting back in line, all right? This early spring weather ought to be a tonic to an old scout like you. Here--here's a reminder of spring and camping for you. Here's the deed for the woods property at last--a hundred and ninety acres more for Temple Camp. We'll be as big as New York pretty soon, when we get some of that timber down, and some new cabins up.
"I'm glad we got it," Tom said.
"Well, I should hope," Mr. Burton came back at him. "That's off the Archer farm, you know. Gift from Mr. Temple. Runs right up to the peak of the hill--see?"
Tom looked at the map of the new Temple Camp property, which almost doubled the size of the camp and at the deed which showed the latest generous act of the camp's benevolent founder.
"Next summer, if we have the price, we'll put up a couple of dozen new cabins on that hill and make a bid for troops from South Africa and China; what do you say? This should be put in the