Tom Slade at Black Lake | Page 6

win a scout award by
finding a certain bird's nest in a certain tree, when he got to the place he
would find that the tree had been chopped down. Once he was going to
win the pathfinder's badge by trailing a burglar, and he trailed him
seven miles through the woods and found that the burglar was his own
good-for-nothing father. So he did not go back and claim the award.
You see? Lucky Luke.
Once (oh, this happened several years before) he helped a boy in his
patrol to become an Eagle Scout. It was the talk of Temple Camp how,
one more merit badge (astronomy) and Will O'Connor would be an

Eagle Scout and Tom Slade, leader of the Elks, would have the only
Eagle Scout at Camp in his patrol. He didn't care so much about being
an Eagle Scout himself, but he wanted Will O'Connor to be an Eagle
Scout; he wanted to have an Eagle Scout in his patrol.
Then, just before Will O'Connor qualified for the Astronomy Badge, he
went to live with his uncle in Cincinnati and the Buffalo Patrol of the
Third Cincinnati Troop pretty soon had an Eagle Scout among their
number, and the Cincinnati troop got its name into Scouting and Boy's
Life. Lucky Luke!
It was characteristic of Tom Slade that he did not show any
disappointment at this sequel of all his striving. Much less had he any
jealousy, for he did not know there was such a word in the dictionary.
He just started in again to make Bert McAlpin an Eagle Scout and
when he had jammed Bert through all the stunts but two, Uncle Sam
deliberately went into the war and Tom started off to work on a
transport. So you see how it worked out; Connie Bennett, new leader of
the Elks presently had an Eagle Scout in his patrol and Tom got himself
torpedoed. Mind, I don't say that Uncle Sam went into the war just to
spite Tom Slade. The point is that Tom Slade didn't get anything,
except that he got torpedoed.
One thing he did win for himself as a scout and that was the Gold Cross
for life saving, but he didn't know how to wear it, and it was Margaret
Eillson who pinned it on for him properly. I think she had a sneaking
liking for Tom.
Poor Tom, sometime or other in his stumbling career he had probably
gotten out of the wrong side of his bed, or perhaps he was born on a
Friday. That was what Roy and the scouts always said.
And so you see, here he was back from the big scrap with nothing to
show for it but a case of shell-shock, and you don't have bandages or
crutches for shell-shock. There was young Lieut. Rossie Bent who
worked downstairs in the bank, who had come home with two fingers
missing and all of the girls had fallen at his feet and Tom had had to
salute him. But there was nothing missing about Tom--except his wits

and his grip on himself, sometimes.
But no one noticed this particularly, unless it was Mr. Burton and
Margaret Ellison, and certainly no one made a fuss over him on account
of it. Why should anybody make a hero of a young fellow just because
he is not quite sure of himself in crossing the street, and because his
mouth twitches? Boy scouts are both observant and patriotic, but they
could not see that there was anything missing about Tom. All they had
noticed was that in resuming his duties at the office he had seemed to
be drifting away from them--from the troop. And when he came on
Friday nights, just to sit and hear Roy jolly Peewee and to enjoy their
simple nonsense, they thought he was "different since he had come
back from France"--perhaps just a little, you know, uppish.
It would have been a lucky thing for Tom, and for everybody
concerned, if Mr. Ellsworth, scoutmaster, had been at home instead of
away on a business trip; for he would have understood.
But of course, things couldn't have gone that way--not with Lucky
Luke.
CHAPTER V
ABOUT SEEING A THING THROUGH
But there was one lucky thing that Tom had done, once upon a time. He
had hit Pete Connegan plunk on the head with a rotten tomato.
That was before the war; oh, long, long before. It was a young war all
by itself. It happened when Tom was a hoodlum and lived with his
drunken father in Barrel Alley. And in that little affair Tom Slade made
a stand. Filthy little hoodlum that he was, instead of running when Pete
Connegan got down out of his truck and started after