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Updated: May 22, 2025
Wall's absence a lucky stroke he had conquered. What had happened had been among scouts. They had settled it among themselves. He felt, dimly, that a great lesson had been learned. Maybe it would be better to leave things as they were. The Scoutmaster's greeting was cheery. "Hello there, hikers! How did you find the going?" Ritter and the others glanced at one another sideways.
What was the use of letting the other patrols prepare for the unexpected and doing nothing yourself? The Scoutmaster's whistle called the patrols to attention. Don gave a quick glance as his patrol took its station. His heart sank. Bobbie Brown was not in place. Mr. Wall walked down the line of scouts. He was halfway through inspection when Bobbie burst into the room.
"How about that, Thad?" "You never said truer words," was the scoutmaster's comment. "Yum, yum, I don't know when I've enjoyed a supper like I have this one," Step Hen acknowledged. "I hope it ain't the last time I'll hear you say that," remarked Giraffe. "Hope so myself," returned the other, "because it'd be too bad if I had to quit eating at my tender age."
In the general excitement the miles slipped away unnoticed. All at once the woods were ahead. Mr. Wall halted the column and called the teams. "I want you to compare your watches with mine." The Scoutmaster's timepiece said ten minutes of three. Don and the others set their watches. "At 3:30," Mr. Wall continued, "each team will enter the woods.
"Speech, speech!" called Eddie Ingram, of the Silver Foxes. Tom looked uneasily at Mr. Ellsworth and on the scoutmaster's laughing nod of encouragement arose. He was not at his best in a thing of this kind; he had always envied Roy his easy, bantering manner, but he was not the one to shirk a duty, so he stood up. He was about fifteen and of a heavy, ungraceful build.
Don grasped at this straw. Not that he believed it, for he didn't; but it gave him a chance to ease the tension. He forced a smile and said that Tim might come bolting in at the last minute. The moment the roll call was completed, he turned the talk to the Scoutmaster's Cup. He didn't want to give the scouts a chance to sit there and think.
It was slow work passing the wire through the branches of trees. Tim climbed and shinned his way from limb to limb like a monkey. Wherever the wire was laid, it was fastened in place with rubber tape. About one hundred and twenty-five feet were out when the Scoutmaster's whistle sounded the recall. The scouts came back to camp. There was a comparison of results.
We talked to the scoutmaster's employer and some of his friends; he was a fine person. We questioned people who might have been in a position to also observe something; they saw nothing. The local citizens had a dozen theories, and we thoroughly checked each one. He hadn't been struck by lightning. He hadn't run across a still.
Don decided gloomily that there wasn't much chance to get ahead by being clean and on time for roll call every scout in the troop was clean and on time. It was the monthly contests that would decide the winner of the Scoutmaster's Cup. Before going home he studied the changed figures on the blackboard: PATROL POINTS Eagle 106-1/2 Fox 111 Wolf 108-1/2
Writing an official report on this incident was difficult. On one side of the ledger was a huge mass of circumstantial evidence very heavily weighted against the scoutmaster's story being true. On our second trip to Florida, Lieutenant Olsson and I heard story after story about the man's aptitude for dreaming up tall tales.
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