Tom Slade at Temple Camp | Page 8

just because I want to be alone with you. Maybe it's
selfish, but if it is I can't help it. I think sometimes a feller might do
something selfish and make up for it some other way--maybe. But I
don't think any feller's got a right to do something selfish and then call
it a good turn. I don't believe a long hike would hurt Pee-wee. He's the
best scout-pacer in your patrol. But I want to go alone with you and I'd
just as soon tell Mary so. I suppose it would be selfish, but we'd just try
to make up----"
"Oh, shut up, will you!" snapped Roy. "You get on my nerves,
dragging along with your theories and things. I don't care who goes or
if anybody goes. And you can go home and sleep for all I care."

"All right," said Tom, rising. "I'd rather do that than stay here and fight.
I don't see any use talking about whether it's a good turn to Pee-wee."
(Roy ostentatiously busied himself with his packing and pretended not
to hear.) "I wasn't thinking about Pee-wee so much anyway. It's Mary
Temple that I was thinking of. It would be a good turn to her, you can't
deny that. Pee-wee Harris has got nothing to do with it--it's between
you and me and Mary Temple."
"You going home?" Roy asked, coldly.
"Yes."
"Well, you and Pee-wee and Mary Temple can fix it up. I'm out of it."
He took a pad and began to write, while Tom lingered in the doorway
of the tent, stolid, as he always was.
"Wait and mail this for me, will you," said Roy. He wrote:
"Dear Mary--Since you butted in Tom and I have decided that it would
be best for Pee-wee to go with him and I'll stay here. Anyway, that's
what I've decided. So you'll get your wish, all right, and I should worry.
"ROY."
Tom took the sealed envelope, but paused irresolutely in the doorway.
It was the first time that he and Roy had ever quarrelled.
"What did you say to her?" he asked.
"Never mind what I said," Roy snapped. "You'll get your wish."
"I'd rather go alone with you," said Tom, simply. "I told you that
already. I'd rather see Pee-wee stay home. I care more for you," he said,
hesitating a little, "than for anyone else. But I vote to take Pee-wee
because Mary wants--asks--us to. I wouldn't call it a good turn leaving
him home, and you wouldn't either--only you're disappointed, same as I
am. I wouldn't even call it much of a good turn taking him. We can
never pay back Mary Temple. It would be like giving her a cent when

we owed her a thousand. I got to do what I think is right--you--you
made me a scout. I--I got to be thankful to you if I can see straight.
It's--it's kind of--like a--like a trail--like," he blundered on. "There can
be trails in your mind, kind of. Once I chucked stones at Pee-wee and
swiped Mary's ball. Now I want to take him along--a little bit for his
sake, but mostly for hers. And I want to go alone with you for my own
sake, because--because," he hesitated, "because I want to be alone with
you. But I got to hit the right trail--you taught me that----"
"Well, go ahead and hit it," said Roy, "it's right outside the door."
Tom looked at him steadily for a few seconds as if he did not
understand. You might have seen something out of the ordinary then in
that stolid face. After a moment he turned and went down the hill and
around the corner of the big bank building, passed Ching Woo's
laundry, into which he had once thrown dirty barrel staves, picked his
way through the mud of Barrel Alley and entered the door of the
tenement where Mrs. O'Connor lived. He had not slept there for three
nights. The sound of cats wailing and trucks rattling and babies crying
was not much like the soughing of the wind in the elms up on the
Blakeley lawn. But if you have hit the right trail and have a good
conscience you can sleep, and Tom slept fairly well amid the din and
uproar.
CHAPTER V
FIRST COUP OF THE MASCOT
Anyway, he slept better than Roy slept. All night long the leader of the
Silver Foxes was haunted by that letter. The darkness, the breeze, the
soothing music of crickets and locusts outside his little tent dissipated
his anger, as the voices of nature are pretty sure to do, and made him
see straight, to use Tom's phrase.
He thought of Tom making his lonely way back to Barrel Alley and
going to bed