Alan Douglas - Woodcraft - or, How a Patrol Leader Made Good

Crashes of thunder, sounding like the roll of heavy artillery in battle, echoed through the forest some miles above the town of Hickory Ridge on an August day.

Overhead, black, sullen clouds had covered the heavens, and at any moment now the ominous stillness of the woods might give way to the rushing sound of the wild wind, together with a downpour of rain.

Two half-grown lads, dressed in the usual khaki costume recognized as the official uniform of the Boy Scouts of America, were standing there in the midst of the heavy growth, casting uneasy looks around them.

It is one thing to watch the coming of a furious storm from the windows of one's home, and quite another to be caught napping, miles away from shelter. And the smaller of the comrades had a frightened look on his face.

"My goodness! hear that, will you, Larry?" exclaimed this rather timid fellow, as he instinctively caught hold of his more sturdy comrade's sleeve, when a particularly fierce flash of lightning was succeeded by a terrific crash. "Ain't you going to find a hollow tree somewhere, and climb in? Why, we'll get soaked to the skin if we don't look out, I tell you!"

"I reckon you're about right there, Jasper," replied the other, Larry Billings by name; and he made a wry face while speaking. "But then, you see, there are some things worse than getting wet, and being struck by lightning happens to be one of the same. Excuse me, if you please; I'll take my medicine the best I can, but you remember, Jasper, among a lot of other things we learned when we joined the scouts, we were warned never under any circumstances to get under a tree during a thunderstorm."

"But that meant out in the open, where there might be only one tree," remonstrated Jasper, whose last name happened to be Merriweather. "Here in the woods it's a heap different, I should think. Among so many big trees you don't think now for a minute that freak lightning's going to pick out the very one we're in, to knock it to flinders, do you, Larry?"

"I don't know, and what's more I ain't going to try to find out," went on the stockier built lad, with resolution in his manner. "You and me came away up here just to see how much we had learned about woodcraft, and it wouldn't look right if we shied at one of the rules the first chance. Besides," he went on, with a broad grin, for Larry was a good-natured fellow ordinarily, "if the experiment proved to be a dead failure, we wouldn't be given a chance to try it over again, you see. Lightning don't often knock at the same door twice."

"Ugh! you make me shiver, Larry!" exclaimed the smaller lad. "But what in the wide world can we just do to keep dry?"

"Oh! that's the least thing that bothers me," replied the other. "Being wet ain't anything much-a-much. I've tumbled in mill races, and been yanked out of ponds ever since I was knee high to a duck. But the worst is yet to come, Jasper."

"Now you're just trying to scare me, Larry, and you ought to be ashamed to do it. You know I used to be the most timid fellow ever, and that it was only after I joined the scouts, and went on that trip up the Sweetwater to Lake Solitude that I began to outgrow that failing. Now it's beginning to get a grip on me again. But tell me, whatever do you mean by saying the worst is something more than getting our new uniforms soaked through?"

"Why, you see, Jasper, we're lost, that's what!" remarked Larry, although the fact did not seem to frighten him very much, for he was chuckling while speaking as though it looked like a big joke to him.

But with poor Jasper the case was entirely different.

"Well, that beats the Dutch!" he cried with genuine disgust. "The two of us felt so dead sure we knew it all, that nothing would do for us but to come away up here five miles or so from home, just to show everybody that we could take care of ourselves. And now you deliberately tell me we've gone and got lost, like the poor little babes in the woods, and with a terrible storm going to pounce down on us right away."

"Oh! brace up, Jasper!" exclaimed Larry, seeing the lower lip of his comrade quivering, and his face showing signs of becoming pallid. "This may be the making of us as scouts, you see. No fellow's worth beans until he's proved that he can take the rough jolts as well as the smooth things of life. Just put your teeth together, and say you're going to grin and bear it, no matter what comes."

"Ain't I trying to, Larry," pleaded the smaller chap, "but it seems like my teeth keep on rattling all the while. I'm shivering, and yet it can't be with the cold. I wish I had some of Elmer Chenowith's nerve just now."

"Shucks! I reckon now that you can have your share of nerve, Jasper," declared Larry, impatiently, "if only you make up your mind to take it. Didn't Mr. Garrabrant, our fine scout-master, tell us only the other night that was so? Just shut your teeth hard, and say over and over again that you ain't goin' to let anything feaze you. You'll be surprised at the feeling it gives you."

"I wonder now, did Elmer really mean to keep tabs on what we were doing?" remarked Jasper, after another tremendous peal of thunder had seemed to almost split the heavens open. "You know, we thought he looked at us kind of funny when he asked us what we meant to do this morning, hiking out of Hickory Ridge, with our sticks in our hands and some grub in our haversacks."

"Oh! I don't think Elmer would bother following all this way," replied Larry, though at the same time he might have been seen to cast an anxious, eager glance around, as though indulging in a faint hope himself that something of the sort had happened.

"Well, he's the best fellow ever, you know, Larry," the smaller boy went on, "and he's sure taken a heap of interest in my trying to make a man of myself. He even took the trouble to come and see me twice, and go over a lot of things with me that he said a true scout ought to know."

"Sure Elmer is worth his weight in gold," Larry affirmed. "And now's the time to show him his faith in you wasn't wasted, Jasper. Buck up, and just make up your mind neither of us happens to be made of salt, so a little juice ain't going to hurt us. As for that lightning, well, perhaps we might find some hole to climb in, because it wouldn't hunt us out underground."

"Oh! if we only could!" gasped Jasper, as another flash came that fairly dazzled both boys; to be succeeded by a sudden report that sounded as though something had exploded near by.

"Listen! what's that?" demanded the smaller boy, again clutching his comrade by the sleeve.

"Reckon she's hiking along right fast now," answered Larry, grimly. "Come, let's walk over this way. Who knows but we might run on some sort of shelter. And when we're up against such a snag, I tell you flat that beggars ain't goin' to be choosers if the chance comes our way."

"That must be rain we hear away off there," suggested Jasper, shuddering.

"Rain and wind together; and sounds to me like it might turn out to be something of a howler. Hope the trees don't go dropping around us. We might have some trouble dodging 'em if they came too fast."

Jasper shot a quick look at his companion's face, as if to see whether Larry could mean what he said. Then he bit his lower lip until it actually bled. But for the time being not another expression of dismay did he utter. Fear of ridicule had conquered over the genuine article.

They hurried forward, both of them eagerly looking for some hollow log, or overturned tree, that might give some promise of shelter against the deluge that would soon be upon them.

"You keep tabs on the right, and I'll cover the left!" remarked Larry, but he had to raise his voice to almost a shout now, because of the increasing roaring sound that was sweeping down upon their rear.