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TOM SLADE IN THE NORTH WOODS

One of the surest signs of approaching autumn in this suburban town of ours, is the reappearance in the main thoroughfares of my adventurous young friend Tom Slade after his summer sojourn in the mountains. When I see that familiar form in brown negligee attire careering down Main Street in the outlandish flivver which seems to be a very part of him, I know that Temple Camp has closed for the season, that the schools are again open, and that soon I shall be raking up dried leaves on the front lawn. The return of Tom Slade is just as much a harbinger of autumn as the coming of the first robin is a harbinger of spring.

My first glimpse of that dilapidated Ford always arouses a cheery feeling in my heart and I am not offended at the rather perfunctory wave of the hand with which Tom recognizes and greets me as he hurries by. I know that when he gets around to it he will run up to see me and beguile me with an account of the summer up at the big scout camp of which he is the very spirit.

Sometimes I think that there is no single character in this whole thriving town who would be as much regretted as Tom Slade, if he should go away. There is a breezy kind of picturesqueness about him that sets him apart and makes him a sort of local celebrity. I think I have never in my life seen him wearing a regular suit of clothes. He goes hurrying about town in the winter months quite hatless; he seems always on the go. I have seen a good many boys in this town, who were scouts not so long ago, grow up and become absorbed in the seething business of the growing community. Some of them are grown into ingratiating young fellows in banks, some are in the real estate "game" as they call it; they are all driving around in good cars and exhaling a distressing atmosphere of sophistication.

When I go into the Trust Company and am welcomed patronizingly by young Ellis Berrian I could almost choke him for his self-sufficiency. He used to caddie for me over at the Warrentown course. These white-collared young gentry are cutting a great swath and producing nothing. They buy cars on the installment plan and talk glibly about the rise in values when the new bridge shall span the Hudson.

The first I ever knew of Tom Slade was when he was a hoodlum down in Barrel Alley and he got his name in our local newspaper for knocking down a heroic official who was placing the few Slade belongings in the street by way of executing a court order of eviction. Tom, then fourteen, knocked the official in the gutter--I think it was the gutter.

Then the local scout troop got hold of him and found that he had an uncanny way of doing what he set his heart on doing. He made a record in scouting. His mother and father both died, and the scouts took him up to camp with them. His heroism up there brought him to the attention of Mr. John Temple, of whom this town may well be proud, and the outcome of the whole business was that Mr. Temple founded Temple Camp up in the Catskills which has grown into one of the biggest scout communities in this country.

When the war cloud broke Tom enlisted, and came back when it was over with a record that made him a celebrity in this young city. He was right then at the parting of the ways. He might have got a job in one of the banks or studied law on Mr. Temple's bounty, and become another hapless member of that group of young ghouls who haunt the court-house and are sometimes driven back on real estate and title searching. It must be confessed Tom would have made a wretched lawyer. But the spirit of adventure was in him, the wind blew in his face, the woods called to him. He went up to Temple Camp and became a sort of assistant there.

I do not know exactly what are his duties, but when I visited Temple Camp a couple of years ago, he seemed to form a kind of link between the management and the scouts. He invited me up there and I hardly laid eyes on him during my whole week's stay. All I can say is that he was always in a hurry, always hatless, and always had a group of scouts following him about. He had what none of the councilors or scoutmasters had, and that was picturesqueness. I think he is the only official up there who has anything bizarre about him. I suppose a big camp like that must have its hero, and he is that.

Temple Camp has a small office in this town, where there is a manager, a bookkeeper, and two or three girls who send out circulars and prospectuses. During the winter months, Tom identifies himself with this prosy department of the romantic scout community in the Catskills, and in the spring he is off again to get the boats in the water and repair the springboard or the observation tower, and fell trees for new cabins, and heaven knows what all. During his season in Bridgeboro I am likely to see him to talk with a dozen times more or less. He stays down at the old County Seat Hotel and comes up here for dinner occasionally. He is always welcome. Sometimes we play chess and I can always beat him at that. We talk into the wee hours.

In our fireside chats this winter we shall have more serious matters to recall than heretofore. The adventures we will discuss will seem like things seen in a dream. And when February gales whistle around the bay window in this cozy library, my little sanctum will seem the more secure and cheery because of our harrowing recollections of a wind-swept mountain in the north woods, where a wild voice that haunts me even now was drowned in the fury of the gale as it echoed in the ghostly fastnesses of that eery wilderness. We will live over again the chilling terrors of a night when wild eyes stared into mine, and clawing fingers groped toward my throat, and the wind moaned and was never still. Perhaps we may even fancy that we see the poor departed spirit that is said to haunt the neighborhood of Weir Lake over which the towering Hogback casts its brooding shadow; the wandering shade that is ever searching and never finding a living soul in whom to confide the appalling truth about the tragedy of Leatherstocking Camp.

If you would know this story as Tom and I know it, you may come here in imagination to my little sanctum, and welcome you will be. You may fancy that you have tumbled the books and papers from that littered couch before the open fire plunk on to the floor as Tom himself is wont to do. Then you may fancy that you are reclining comfortably among my numerous cushions listening to a winter's tale about the lonely spaces of the North.

It is now midwinter and more than a year has passed since Tom ran up here early in September to see me after his return from Temple Camp. For reasons you are to know about he did not pay me his usual call of greeting this last fall. As I think it over now it seems to me his camp must have closed early that year, for the weather was quite summery and I was sitting on the porch when I saw that dilapidated Ford of his come up the quiet street making a noise like a brass band run amuck. On the side of this gorgeous chariot is printed TEMPLE CAMP, BLACK LAKE, NEW YORK. But Temple Camp has long since repudiated this ramshackle car which completed an honorable career in mountainous and rocky by-roads. It is now Tom's official equipage and will be, I think, till the end of time.

"Tomasso," said I, "I wish you would park that thing around the corner; I'm afraid people will think it belongs to me."

"What's the matter with it?" he called from the curb. "I'm going to turn it upside down and empty the motor out of it this winter and get it ready for the Adirondack trails next spring. All she needs is a new block--and a new body. She's going to do some stepping next summer."

"Yes, yes, explain all that," I said, as he breezed up onto the porch and grabbed my hand. "It's good to see you, Tommy, old boy."

He wore, as usual, a khaki-colored flannel shirt with trousers to match. He never bothers about a scarf and, as he scorns a hat, the breeze plays havoc with his hair. I would say that the most bizarre detail of his attire is a belt which he says is of snakeskin. He got it from old Uncle Jeb Rushmore, the one time scout and guide on the western plains, who is now ending his days as chief scout at the big camp.

"Well, Tom," I said; "What's the good word?"

"It's taken from a character in Cooper's novels, in case you don't happen to know," I commented dryly. And I added, "If I had a thousand dollars to throw away I'd buy you a new car."

"Well, the name fits pretty pat," Tom said. "Did you ever hear of Harrison McClintick, the leather king? I suppose maybe that's why he named his camp Leatherstocking. He's a war millionaire; he made a fortune in leather during the war."

"Did he make leather stockings?" I asked.

"He's the man to see if you want a thousand dollars," I said. "Do you wear your present regalia when you go up to Temple's?"

"Not a thousand dollars," I said. "They're starting a new Golf Club down at Cedarville and I'm interested in that, thank you."

Tom extended his arms on either side of him, bracing his hands against the railing on which he sat. "Listen," he said, "I want to tell you about something that happened this summer--I mean something I heard about. If I can get Mr. Temple interested I'm going to do something big."

"Somehow I can't picture you as a stock and bond salesman, Tom," I said.

"That's just the trouble," he complained. "I wish I was ten years older, then maybe Mr. Temple would listen to me. But you'll listen to me, and he'll listen to you."

"I'd do more for you than listen to you, Tommy, old boy," I said. He was so breezy and enthusiastic, so fresh and wholesome in his unconventional attire, that I could not help letting a little ring of affection sound in my words. "But it would be a terrible blow to me, Tom, if you should get interested in business. To me you have always seemed the very spirit of scouting."

"No, but listen," he continued eagerly. "Up at camp this summer a crew of government surveyors blew in one day; they're connected with the Geologic Survey--nice chaps, all of them. All the scouts fell for them."

"And then?"

"Well, they were there to make a survey of Beaver Chasm up in back of the camp--you know the place."

"You were going to take me there, but you never did," I said. "You were building cabins instead."

"I'm all ears," I said.

"They were in one of those rich men's camps--those places are all through the Adirondacks, you know. There was a lake about half a mile across, a fine hunting lodge--big chimney-place and everything. Yes, I've seen it myself! I took a run up there before I came home. The hunting lodge is, oh, maybe, fifty by a hundred, all rough stone. Outbuildings and everything! Regular millionaire's camp!"

"Go on," I said, laughing at his enthusiasm. "Did you meet the millionaire?"

"So I didn't learn anything when I was there, only I saw the place. Oh boy, what a place for trout fishing--regular mountain streams, you know, rocks and everything. Well, now here's what the surveyors told me--I'll give you an idea of the place afterwards."

"Any golf up there?" I coyly ventured.

"There you go with your golf!" he hurried on. "No, there's no golf. But if you want to get your shoes shined or your suit dry cleaned--you old front porch shark--you can go to Plattsburg about twenty miles away, over the mountains."

"Do the buses run often?" I asked.

"Fancy that," I commented.

"Proceed," I said with quiet dignity.

"Now what do you say to that place for a scout camp? You've heard a lot of talk--Mr. Temple himself started it--about a training camp for scoutmasters. There's the spot, made to order! What I want you to do is talk to Mr. Temple about it, so as he'll talk with the local council--maybe the national council."

"Sure, why not?"

"Hmph," I mused. "But tell me, Tommy boy, why does Mr. Harrison McClintick, the leather king millionaire, want to sell his romantic camp in the wilderness?"

"Let's go indoors and listen," I said, rising.

"There was a tragedy up there," Tom said.

"Well!" I commented. And then, happening to glance out toward the street, I said, "Do you know that man standing near your car, Tom?"

"He looks like a hobo," Tom said.

He did indeed; I think he was the most dubious looking person that I ever beheld. His clothing was in the last stages of wear, and he had a scraggly beard which somehow suggested neglect of shaving rather than a preference for that style of adornment. At the distance from which I saw him, he might have been either young or old. I suppose no man with a beard looks very young. More than once he had glanced furtively toward the porch. However, I had not thought it worth while to interrupt Tom's eager narrative. But now that we were going indoors I called attention to him.

"He can hardly have designs on your car," I observed ironically, as we sauntered into the house.

Little did I dream of the part that this loitering stranger was to play in our two lives. I soon forgot him in the appalling story which my young friend proceeded to tell me. Yet already that prowling figure was cast in the drama in which Tom and I were to play our parts. Already the springs of action were moving which were later to produce a thrilling drama at lonely Leatherstocking Camp.

Seated comfortably in my library, Tom at once plunged into what I suppose might be called the human interest side of his story. I must confess I am not greatly interested in leather, nor even in millionaires' camps. Nor was I altogether carried off my feet by Tom's vision of a new camp. But I listened with rapt attention to his account of the tragic incident which had made Leatherstocking Camp a place of bitter memory to its owner.

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