Tom Slade | Page 9

want the nickel for?"
"Fer a cup o' coffee."
Roy paused a minute, biting his lip ruminatively, frankly contemplating
him.
"I can make you a better cup of coffee," said he, "than any lunch wagon
juggler in this town. You're halfway up the hill now; come on up the
rest of the way--just for a stunt. Ever up on the hill?"
Tom hesitated.
"Come on, you're not in a hurry to get home, are you? I'll give you
some plum-duff I made and you can have a belt axe to chop it with if
you want to. Come on, just for a stunt."
"Who's up dere?"
"Just 'Yours sincerely.'"
"Yer live in de big house, don'cher?"
"Not fer me; guess again. Nay, nay, my boy, I live in Camp
Solitaire, with a ring round it. Anybody steps inside that ring gets his
wrist slapped and two demerits. I let the house stay there on account of
my mother and father and the cat. Don't you worry, you won't get
within two hundred feet of the house. The house and I don't speak."
Tom, half suspicious but wanting a cup of coffee, shuffled along at
Roy's side. The scout's offhand manner and rather whimsical way of
talking took the wind out of his belligerence, and he allowed himself so
far to soften toward this "rich guy" as to say,
"Me an' our house don't speak neither; we wuz chucked."

"Chucked?"
"Ye-re, put out. Old John Temple done it, but I'm hunk all right."
"When was that?"
"Couple o' days ago."
He told the story of the eviction and his companion listened as they
plodded up the hill.
"Well," said Roy, "I haven't slept indoors for two weeks, and I'm not
going to for the next six weeks. And the best way to get hunk on a
fellow that puts you out of a house is just to sleep outdoors. They can't
put you out of there very well. Camp, and you've got the laugh on
them!"
"Gee, I thought nobuddy but poor guys slep' outdoors."
"It's the poor guys that sleep indoors," said Roy.
"Don' de wind git on ye?"
"Sure--gets all over you; it's fine."
"My father give me a raw hand-out, all right, and then some
more."
"Well, there's no use fighting your pack."
"Yer what?"
"Your pack--as Dan Beard says."
"Who's he--one o' your crowd?"
"You bet he is. 'Fighting your pack' is scrapping with your job--with
what can't be helped--kind of. See?"

They walked along in silence, Tom's half-limping sideways gait in
strange contrast with his companion's carriage, and soon entered the
spacious grounds of the big old-fashioned house which crowned the
summit of Blakeley's Hill, one of the show places of the town.
"Can you jump that hedge?" said Roy, as he leaped over it. "This'll be
your first sleep outdoors, won't it? If you wake up all of a sudden and
hear a kind of growling don't get scared--it's only the trees."
Under a spacious elm, a couple of hundred feet from the house, was a
little tent with a flag-pole near it.
"That's where Old Glory hangs out, but she goes to bed at sunset. That's
what gives her such rosy cheeks. We'll hoist her up and give her the
salute in the morning."
Near the tent was a small fire place of stones, with a rough bench by it
and a chair fashioned from a grocery box. Before the entrance stood
two poles and on a rough board across these were painted the words,
CAMP SOLITAIRE, as Tom saw by the light of the lantern which Roy
held up for a moment.
The tent was furnished with a cot, blankets, mosquito-netting, several
books on a little shelf, and magazines strewn about with BOYS' LIFE
on their covers. On the central upright was a little shelf with a reflector
for the lantern, and close to the pole a rickety steamer chair with a
cushion or two. The place looked very inviting.
"Now this out here," said Roy, "is my signal pedestal. You know Westy
Martin, don't you? He's patrol leader, and he and I are trying out the
Morse code; you'll see me hand him one to-night. We're trying it by
searchlight first, then, later we'll get down to the real fire works. He
lives out on the Hillside Road a little way."
The signal pedestal was a little tower with a platform on top reached by
a ladder.
"Doesn't need to be very high, you see, because you can throw a

searchlight way up, but we use it daytimes for flag work. Here's the
searchlight," Roy added, unwrapping it from a piece of canvas.
"Belongs on the touring car, but I use it. I let my father use it on the car
sometimes--if he's good.
"Now