He didn’t really mean that “easy,” but as a matter of fact, it was much easier than it had been the first month. He was getting the habit. Before the second month was over, Tom had called him “teacher’s pet,” and been knocked into a slushy snow-drift and had his neck stuffed with snow.
“I’ll teacher’s pet you!” Bennie laughed, finally letting him up.
At the end of the second month Mr. Capen told him he could write to his uncle, and if his uncle would let him come to Oregon and take him on one of his mountain trips, Bennie could go—“providing, of course, you pass all your examinations in June,” his father added. “It’s up to you.”
“I’ll pass all right!” Bennie said, joyfully. “And say, Pa, if Spider’s father’ll let him go, do you suppose Uncle Bill would mind if he went with me? Gee, it would be great to have old Spider along!”
“I’m sure Uncle Billy wouldn’t mind, and I know your mother would feel a lot easier about your going,” Mr. Capen said. “I’ll see Spider’s father today.”
“Golly, you’re some dad!” cried Bennie.
“Well, I feel I’ve got more of a son than I had two months ago,” said Mr. Capen.
Bennie hadn’t seen his Uncle Bill (a younger brother of his mother’s) for three or four years. He lived in Portland, Oregon, where he was a very successful doctor, and every summer he took a vacation in the mountains, to get himself fit for his winter grind. Bennie remembered him as a tall, strong, good-natured man, who always came to see Mrs. Capen on his rare trips East, and always talked to Bennie about what fun it would be to show him “a real country”—meaning Oregon. Bennie liked him, but it was hard, at that, to sit down in cold blood and invite yourself for a visit, and, still worse, to invite somebody else to go with you! Bennie began, and tore up, two or three letters before he got one that he thought would do. This is what he sent:
Dear Uncle Bill:
The last time you were East you pulled a lot of talk about showing me “a real country.” I guess you never thought I could get that far to see it, so you were safe. But I’ve been plugging hard this winter and got such high marks that Pa thought I was sick and Ma sent for the doctor, and he says I need a change or I’ll know too much. So I’m all ready to be shown that country of yours. And there’s a chum of mine here, an awful good scout, Bob Chandler (Spider, we call him), who doesn’t believe Oregon is so much, either, and he’d go along, too, if you asked him real polite. Besides, if he came, Ma would let me come. Ma thinks if I go alone a Pullman porter will think I’m a dress suitcase and pull me off the train at Omaha, or something. And I guess it’s kind of fresh my suggesting this about Spider’s going, but he’s an awful good scout, and he and I have been climbing Monument Mountain on a rope. Shall I bring my rope? It is 100 feet long, and we boiled it on the stove so it is soft. If we do come what clothes shall we bring?
Your loving nephew, Bennie.
P.S.—Mother and Father are both well and send their love.
B.
The chances are that before this letter was sent, Bennie’s mother had written to her brother. But if she did, Bennie didn’t know it. He mailed his letter, and counted the days it would take to reach Portland. In twice that time he ought to have an answer. At the end of the week he and Spider were haunting the post-office.
Then, one day, the answer came. Bennie tore it open, and this is what he read:
Dear Bennie:
I start for Crater Lake and the Sky Line Trail on July 1st, leaving Portland by motor. I am a plain, rough man, but I might be improved by your learned society, and our scenery would be honored by your inspection. By all means bring Spider. Spiders are very useful in camp, to cook the bacon in. You’d better come two or three days ahead of the start, so I can look over your outfit. Bring your scout axes, canteens, flannel shirts, khaki breeches, leggings, and things like that. Boots are the most important item—very heavy, and water-proof. You can get good ones here. Bring snow goggles if you have them. Save your rope. I have one, though it isn’t boiled like yours. I always fry my ropes. I’ll write to you later about trains, and more about your equipment. Tell your mother that she is going to have a nice, quiet summer.
Your humble uncle, William Warren.
Bennie read this letter aloud to Spider, and they both emitted a whoop of joy.
“Some bird, old Uncle Bill!” cried Bennie. “Always fries his ropes! I bet he’s got a real Alpine rope—braided and everything. Gee, I’ll bet we climb a real humdinger of a mountain. Maybe Mount Hood! Oh, boy!”
“Say, I’d work every afternoon in the store for the rest of my life, to climb old Hood!” said Spider. “Come on, let’s go look up how high Mount Hood is.”
“I’ve looked it up—it’s 11,225 feet,” said Bennie.
“And Monument is 1,600,” Spider reflected. “More’n 9,000 feet taller than Monument! Wow!”
“It’s going to be a long time till June,” said Bennie.
It certainly did seem a long while to both the scouts between the time of getting Uncle Bill’s letter and the closing of school in June. But it was a pretty busy time, too. Bennie had to keep on studying, so he could make sure of passing his examinations, and Spider had to put in an hour or two every day in his father’s store. Beside that, they had to have another go at the Monument Mountain cliffs as soon as the snow was gone in the spring, and at about every other rock, big or little, within tramping radius of home. They took the rest of the scouts along on these expeditions, but as nobody but Bennie and Spider were going to Oregon, the others didn’t get so excited about climbing as they did, and soon everybody was playing baseball, leaving Bennie and Spider to practice rock scaling alone.
June came at last, and so did examinations. Bennie passed them easily, for the first time in his life—just because he had got his work from day to day. Then the time came to buy their railroad tickets and get their berths reserved. Before they knew it, their trunks were packed, and they were ready to start on the long journey.
Bennie noticed that his mother didn’t say very much the night before, but just sat and looked at him, while he was going over the tickets with his father, and folding them into a new pocketbook, with $100 in new bills, which Mr. Capen had brought home from the bank. Bennie put the purse into an inside pocket, and went over to his mother.
“Gee, Ma,” he said, “you’d think I was going to the North Pole or somewhere, instead of just to visit Uncle Bill. Nobody’s going to speak cross to your little Bennie, or make him take any wooden money, or hit him over the bean. Don’t you worry. I guess me ’n’ Spider can take a railroad trip without anybody needing to worry.”
But though he spoke with a laugh, Bennie didn’t feel very much like laughing, because when his mother looked at him, and tried to smile, he saw the tears behind her eyes, and he knew, somehow, that it wasn’t because she was afraid for him, but because he was going to be away from her so long. He couldn’t quite understand this, but he loved his mother tremendously, and it made him want to weep, too. In about one minute he was weeping, and so was his mother, with an arm about his shoulder.
Mr. Capen looked up in surprise.
“Hello!” he said. “Hello! So you don’t want to go, eh?”
Bennie straightened up, and gulped hard, trying to swallow his sob in a grin.
“Where—where do you get that stuff?” he demanded.
“Well, you don’t seem very cheerful about going.”
“It was ’cause Ma wasn’t cheerful,” said Bennie.
“I’m cheerful, dear,” said his mother, smiling at him. “I wasn’t crying because I was sad, but just because—because—well, you won’t understand, but because you’re so big and grown up now, and can go away by yourself.”
“Well, I don’t see’s that’s anything to cry about, for a fact,” said Bennie.
“Bennie,” his father remarked, “you have never been a mother.”
“You said a mouth——”
“Bennie! slang, to your father!” said his mother.
“You have uttered a truthful remark, sir,” grinned Bennie.
The next day Mr. and Mrs. Capen and Spider’s father and mother came down to the depot with the two scouts. Half a dozen of their troop were there, too, and the last thing they heard as they waved from the car window, was the scout yell. The last thing Bennie saw was his mother’s face. She was smiling bravely at him, and keeping the tears back.
In about an hour the boys had to change to a through train, which took them to Chicago. At Chicago they would have to spend the afternoon and early evening, and then take the Northwest Limited on the Union Pacific, which took them right to Portland, Oregon. They had their tickets in their pockets, and their berth checks, and about once in fifteen minutes they felt of themselves, to see if the precious pocketbooks were still there.
Neither Bennie nor Spider had ever been West before, and as long as daylight lasted they sat close to the window. But it was dark all too soon. When the train entered Syracuse, and traveled, apparently, right down the main street, the two scouts looked right into the lighted shop-windows, but out in the country they saw nothing. So they went to bed, each with his precious pocketbook under his pillow.
They were up at daylight, and dressed long before the other passengers began to come into the washroom. Now they saw the Great Lakes beside the track, like the ocean, and rolled through the smoke of Gary, where the great steel mills are, and saw Lake Michigan, and almost before they knew it, were in Chicago.
The boys had careful directions what they were to do in Chicago. They were to get right aboard the transfer ’bus and ride over to the Northwestern station, checking their suitcases there. Then they could walk around the city, if they liked. It is a queer sensation to arrive in a great city which you have never seen before. Bennie and Spider, after the ’bus had rolled them quickly across the bridge to the other station, and they had checked their bags, walked out into the street, without any idea where they were, and turned east to see the town. They recrossed the bridge, walked a few blocks, and were suddenly in the Loop. The streets were none too wide. The elevated railroad roared and thundered overhead. The great buildings towered into the air. Trolleys, motors, thousands of people crowded the way from wall to wall.
“Some burg!” Bennie exclaimed. “Little old New York hasn’t got much on this village. I didn’t know Chicago was so big.”
“Guess we haven’t got everything in the East,” Spider answered.
They walked on till they reached Michigan Boulevard, that splendid great avenue which sweeps down by the lake shore, and they wondered how Chicago stands for the smoke of the trains between the Boulevard and the beach.
“Why don’t they make the old railroad electrify itself?” Spider asked. “Gee, it’s turned all the marble sooty black.”
It was a hot day, and getting hotter, so they finally went out on a pier and sat in the breeze till it was time to hunt up a place for supper.
After supper they walked around the Loop, which was now filled with theatre crowds, and then back to the station, got their bags, and hunted out the track their train was to go on. The rear observation platform had an illuminated red sign hung out behind, with the name of the train—“Northwest Limited.” It gave them a thrill to see those words! And that train for three days would be their home. As soon as the gates were open, they got aboard and hunted out their berths.
The next morning, when they woke, the train was rushing through Iowa. Mile after mile after mile of rolling country, dotted with farmhouses, great red barns, little wood lots close beside them, and endless acres of sprouting corn, and tall wheat, as far as the eye could see. Mile after mile, and never a town, but always the fields of corn and wheat, the herds of cattle, the great red barns.
“Golly!” Bennie exclaimed. “We don’t know what a farm is, do we?”
“I never saw so much corn in my life—I didn’t know there was so much,” Spider answered.
That day they passed through Omaha, and were still bowling along through the endless oceans of corn in Nebraska when night came. It was terribly hot now, and dusty and dirty. Spider wiped his face, and when he looked at his handkerchief, it was black! Bennie said he felt as if somebody had poured cinders down his back.
“Wait till you wake up tomorrow,” said the brakeman, who overheard them, “and you’ll see snow.”
“You look sort of honest,” Bennie laughed, “but I don’t believe you.”
“All right,” said the brakeman. “Want to bet?”
“Can’t,” said Bennie. “All my money’s in hundred dollar bills.”
“We cross the height of land in Wyoming before you’re awake,” the trainman went on. “We’re up 7,000 feet or more there—in Wyoming.”
“You mean the Rocky Mountains? Do we cross ’em at night?” cried Spider. “Gee, what tough luck.”
“Not much mountains where we cross. But you’ll see mountains, all right, if you don’t sleep all the morning—and snow, too.”
“Bring me some now, I want to take it to bed with me,” said Bennie.
Spider, whose turn it was to sleep in the lower berth that night, pulled up the curtain as soon as it was daylight, and looked out. He gave a jump, reached up and poked Bennie awake, and began to dress. In ten minutes the boys were out on the observation platform, staring hard. The train was in Wyoming now, on a vast, high plateau, a country that didn’t look like anything they had ever seen. It rolled away to the horizon in every direction, like a tossing, oily gray sea, without a tree on it, apparently without any grass on it worth mentioning, but covered with pale green sage bushes in clumps here and there. It was a naked, desolate looking land, and yet they saw great droves of cattle wandering over it, and now and then a white strip of road, and finally, all of a sudden as the train rounded a bend, seemingly right beside the track a couple of miles away, a huge blue mountain covered completely on top with a cap of white snow, and streaked with snow all down the ravines on its northern side.
The scouts gave a yell of joy at the sight. “A snow mountain!” they cried.
“Do I win or not?” said the brakeman, appearing behind them. “That’s the mountain. Pretty soon, off south, you’ll see some higher ones, down in Utah.”
“How far is it to that mountain—about five miles?” Bennie asked.
It looked two, but he thought he’d add a few.
The trainman grinned. “I wouldn’t try to walk it before breakfast,” said he. “It’s about twenty or thirty, I reckon.”
That day they rolled along through endless miles of the naked cattle country, that in the East would have seemed like a desert. No New England cow could have lived on it, Spider declared. Then they began to get into the Idaho mountains, on the branch line, and turned and twisted down cañons with the naked red hills folding up in front of and behind the train. They went to sleep in Idaho and woke up in Oregon—woke up to see more mountains, and more snow—long ranges of mountains to left and right with snow on the summits, though it was now almost July first, and hot as Tophet in the train.
The train presently began to climb an endless grade, up and up and up, getting over the pass of the Blue Mountains, and into heavily timbered country—real woods at last, after the long ride through the prairie and the sage brush. On and on went the train, till at last it reached the Columbia River, and the excited boys, braving the cinders that swirled in on the observation platform, sat out there and saw at last below them the great green river rushing swiftly along, cutting its way through the high, rocky banks.
These banks began to get higher and steeper. They were entering the gorge of the Columbia, where it cuts through the Cascade range. Soon the banks were real precipices, 1,000, 2,000 feet high. At The Dalles, they picked up the Columbia Highway, the most wonderful motor road in America, and could see where it was cut right out of the sides of the cliffs in places. When the train stopped at Hood River, a lot of people got off to stretch, the boys with them, and a man took them down the platform and said, “Look!”
They looked to the south, and there it was! Shooting up apparently right behind the depot, shaped like a cone, dazzling white, tall, stately, beautiful against the sky—Mount Hood! These were the eternal snows! There was a real climb!
Bennie just gasped for a second. Then he found his tongue. “It—it’s just as big as I thought it would be!” he said.
“It’s the finest thing in the world,” said the man. “I live in Portland, and every clear day I look at it, sixty miles away, and it’s like a friend.”
“Is it hard to climb?” Spider asked.
“No,” said the man. “It’s a cinch. If you’re looking for a climb, go down and tackle Jefferson.”
“Never even heard of it,” said Bennie.
“There are a lot of things out here you eastern folks never heard of,” the man answered.
The boys wanted to ask him more, but just then the conductor called “All aboard,” and they lost him in the rush.
For the next hour they were busy looking at the scenery, at the great river on one side, and the great cliff walls on the other, with thousand-foot waterfalls leaping down almost on the train, and the Columbia Highway running alongside of the track in places, in other places disappearing and coming into sight again far up on top of some headland.
“Gee, I wish we were in a motor!” Spider sighed.
“Maybe Uncle Bill will take us this way in his,” said Bennie.
Now the cliffs grew lower. The river was through the gorge. Presently the river disappeared, and the train ran through level land a little way, and the houses began to get thicker and thicker. They crossed another river on a drawbridge, and saw tramp ships lying up to the docks, and on the other side rolled into the Portland depot.
At the train gate, looming up above the crowd, Bennie spied the head of his uncle, and in another minute he had him by the hand, and was introducing Spider, and Uncle Billy was putting the dress suitcases into his car, and then they were off through the streets of Portland, with the lights coming on, the darkness falling.
“I guess you boys are pretty hot and tired, eh?” said Uncle Bill. “Of course, you never have any hot weather in the East.”
“It’s about like this Christmas time at home,” Bennie answered. “I was just wishing I had an overcoat.”
“You’ll wish you had a couple before I get through with you,” said Uncle Bill. “I heard to-day there are seven feet of snow yet on the rim of Crater Lake. We’ve got to camp up there. It’ll be pretty slippery, too, getting down to the water. Guess we’ll have to fry a couple of ropes.”
“Boil mine—about four minutes,” said Bennie.
His uncle laughed as he put the car up a steep grade out of the business section to the heights overlooking the city. The residences look right out over the town, and now they could see the checkerboard squares of the streets, marked out with electric lights. They stopped at the doctor’s house, and he showed them in, his housekeeper meeting them.
“Now beat it and get a bath,” he said, “and then grub! Hurry up, for I’m all ready to eat, and if you keep me waiting, I’ll have to begin on one of those ropes.”
“Say, he’s a regular scout,” said Spider, as they were cleaning up.
“Boy, I got a hunch we’re going to have some good time!” answered Bennie from the tub.
When the boys came downstairs, Uncle Billy, who was a bachelor, led the way at once into the dining-room, and they began to eat.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said, as he carved the meat. “How’d you boys like to be movie actors?”
“Oh, you Charlie Chaplin!” Bennie grinned. “Sure, I’d like it. Spider, though, ain’t beautiful enough.”
“Of course, he hasn’t your classic Greek features,” said Uncle Billy, looking hard at Bennie’s snub nose. “But maybe he can ride a horse. Can you ride a horse, Bennie?”
“Sure—I guess so. I never tried.”
“Can you, Spider?”
“Not very well, sir. I have ridden our old delivery horse a good bit, though, but mostly bareback.”
“You see, Bennie,” the doctor laughed, “he’s going to be a better actor than you are, after all, in spite of your fatal beauty.”
“What do you mean, actors, anyhow?” Bennie demanded. “What’s the big idea?”
“Well,” the doctor explained, “we’re not going alone on this trip. I have a friend, a business man here in Portland, who is a fine amateur photographer. He’s got a new movie camera now, that he wants to experiment with. He wants to take a sort of scenic picture of the Oregon mountains, so he’s coming along, in his car, with his son, Lester. You and Spider and Lester and I have got to be the troupe. Whenever he sees a nice precipice he wants to shoot, we’ll have to do a Douglas Fairbanks up the side of it, or make a Pearl White jump down a thousand-foot waterfall. How does that strike you?”
“Uncle Billy,” Bennie said, very solemnly, “you have come to exactly the right people. Spider and me—I—are the original human flies. We walk up precipices before breakfast every day at home.”
“With a boiled rope?” his uncle laughed. “Well, I’m glad you’re trained for the job. Wait till you see Lester Stone, though. He’s the real athlete! Slender, wiry, hard as nails!”
“How old is he?” the scouts asked, instantly alert and a little bit jealous. They’d show him eastern boys could be hard and athletic, too!
“Just about your age,” the doctor answered carelessly. “He and his father will be over to meet you after dinner.”
It wasn’t long after dinner before the door-bell rang, and the scouts heard Uncle Billy greeting somebody in the hall. A moment later he ushered in a big six-footer of a man, and a boy who was just about as wide as he was high.
“My nephew, Bennie Capen, and his old college chum, Spider Chandler,” said Uncle Billy. “Boys, this is my college chum, Dick Stone. And this is Dick’s willowy and athletic little son, Lester. I’m trying to get some flesh on his bones, because the poor little thing has been puny since childhood.”
Mr. Stone shook hands so hard that Bennie winced, and then they shook hands with Lester, who had a round, pink face like a cherub and eyes that danced merrily.
Bennie and Spider couldn’t help bursting out laughing.
“What’s the matter?” Uncle Billy asked solemnly. “Did somebody make a joke? I never can see a joke!”
“You can make one, all right,” Bennie laughed. “Gee, you said Lester was wiry and hard.”
“What’s the joke in that?” the doctor demanded, looking very stern. “He is! Only the wires are insulated. You poke his arm and see if he isn’t hard.”
Lester doubled his fist, and tightened the muscles of his arm, and Bennie and Spider hit him above the elbow. To their amazement, he was hard—at that point, anyway. They looked at him with new respect.
“Just the same,” Bennie said, “I hope you fried that rope good and plenty.”
(“He looks just like an apple dumpling,” Spider whispered to Bennie, a minute later.)
(“Sure, let’s call him Dumpling,” Bennie whispered back.)
(“Guess we’d better not begin right now,” Spider suggested. “That guy’d make a great guard on our football team.”)
(“If he fell on the ball, it would explode,” laughed Spider.)
The rest of the evening was spent in going over the maps of Oregon, to lay out their trip, and in planning equipment. They were to be gone six weeks or more, and expected to camp all the time. As they were going to get from place to place in only two motor cars, which between them had to carry five passengers and all the equipment, it took close figuring. The scouts, of course, didn’t have much to say about all this. They just sat and listened, because they were guests, and, besides, they had never been off on such an expedition.
But what fun it was only to listen! Have you ever been off on a camping trip? Of course you have. So you know the joy of getting together a day or two before the start, each person with a list of things he thinks ought to be taken, and then going over the lists, checking them off to see that nothing is being taken that is not needed, and nothing is forgotten that is needed. It’s almost as much fun as the trip itself.
The scouts soon discovered that Mr. Stone was as jolly as Uncle Billy, and that “Dumpling” was even fuller of fun than his father. Before an hour had passed, the scouts were calling him Dumpling to his face, and then his father and the doctor took it up; but Dumpling himself only grinned the broader and said, “Ho, I don’t care what you call me, so long’s you call me to dinner.”
The next morning the boys were up early, and out of the house, to get a glimpse across the city of the white pyramid of Mount Hood against the eastern sky. They spent that day hard at work with the doctor getting the equipment out and sorted and packed into the car.
They had never seen an automobile rigged like Uncle Billy’s. It was a powerful five-passenger car, with extra braces on the running-boards. First the doctor screwed a kind of iron fence on one running-board which came up as high as the tops of the doors. Then, on the other, he set two boxes, also as high as the doors, and as deep as the running-board. These boxes opened not at the top, but at the front, with hinged doors. Inside of them were shelves. On the shelves of one he stood the provisions—the canned fruits, the condensed milk, and all the other things they were going to take at the start. The other was filled with camp dishes. When the boxes were full, the doors were shut and locked, and the boxes strapped firmly to the car.
Then, on the other side, in the space between the fence and the side of the car, went the heavy canvas bags containing the tent and the three sleeping bags. These bags were wonderful things. They rolled up and went into canvas sacks. But when you unrolled them, you found inside a tire pump, and you pumped them up with air, making a nice pneumatic mattress to sleep on. Inside the canvas flap which strapped over this mattress were several warm blankets.
“Say, boy!” cried Bennie. “This beats sleeping on old hemlock boughs, the way we have to at home, eh, Spider? Remember the way the boughs used to get all full of sticks about one A. M. last summer?”
“I’ll say so. We’re going to sleep so well on these we’ll forget to wake up.”
“Oh, no you won’t! Not with me in camp,” the doctor smiled.
After the running-boards were loaded, Uncle Billy got out a wonderful camp stove, which collapsed into three pieces, with the funnel also shutting up, and put the whole thing into a canvas sack, which lay on the floor of the car. Then he put in three folding camp stools and a folding table. Finally he handed each boy a stout khaki dunnage bag.
“Now,” said he, “get all your stuff into those two bags! No suitcases allowed on this trip! Your two bags and mine, and the canteens and our cameras and the alpenstocks and the fried rope, and overcoats and one of you boys and anything else we’ve forgotten have all got to go on the rear seat.”
“Think I’ll sit in front with you,” said Bennie.
“Think I’ll ride with the Stones,” said Spider.
“Not with Dumpling in the car, you won’t!” Bennie laughed—“unless he travels in a trailer on behind.”
The doctor prescribed early bed that evening, because they were to get an early start.
“What do you call early, seven o’clock?” asked Bennie.
Uncle Billy looked pained. “Seven o’clock!” he sniffed. “My esteemed nephew, at seven o’clock on this trip we will usually have traveled at least fifty miles, and you’ll be asking about lunch. I’ll wake you up at five.”
“And I thought I was going to have a nice summer!” said Bennie, pretending to be very gloomy.
At five o’clock the next morning, he and Spider were sleeping soundly when a voice boomed into their dreams, “All aboard for Crater Lake! Last call!”
They were out of bed and rushing to get first into the tub before they half knew what had happened.
But it was really long after seven before they got started. The dunnage bags had to be packed with the clothes they were going to need, breakfast eaten, everything gone over again to make sure nothing was forgotten, and then followed a wait of an hour before the Stones’ car arrived, loaded down like theirs, with the tripod of the movie camera in a case on top of the luggage in the rear, and Dumpling and his father sitting in front.
“All aboard!” shouted the doctor.
“Well, how do you get aboard?” said Bennie. “You can’t open a single door.”
“If you can’t get into a car over the top of the door you’ll never get up Mount Jefferson,” said his uncle.
Bennie was in the front seat with exactly two motions. Spider dove into the rear, and found a hole to sit in amid the luggage. The doctor and Mr. Stone tooted their horns, the housekeeper waved from the door—and they were off!
The day before had been cloudy and cold, though the boys had been too busy with their packing to notice it much. Now, however, that they were off at last, and wanted to see every bit of country there was to be seen, they were acutely conscious that it was a heavy day, without a single glimpse of Mount Hood through the vapor, and the threat of rain at any minute.
“Nice weather you’ve handed us for a start off,” said Bennie to his uncle.
“Oh, this won’t last long,” Uncle Billy assured him. “We have the finest climate in Oregon of anywhere in the world. It’s never very cold in winter, and it’s never very hot in summer, and our tent probably won’t get wet on this entire trip.”
“Is that so?” said Bennie. “Some smart tent, I’ll say. Look at your wind-shield.”
Indeed, as he spoke, the first drops of the rain began to splash on the glass.
“You wait!” Uncle Billy smiled.
On the edge of Portland they stopped for gas, and the Stones’ car pulled in behind them. A big, smiling man, covered with axle grease, came out to fill them up.
“Hello, Doc,” he said. “Off for a trip? Got a fine day to start. As far as I can see, it rains for twelve months of the year in Portland, and it ain’t very pleasant the rest of the time.”
Bennie and Spider shouted with joy at this, and the garage man looked a little surprised.
“Well, that went big!” he said.
“Uncle Bill didn’t tip you the wink in time,” Bennie answered. “He’s just been telling us it never rains in Oregon.”
“Sorry I crabbed your game, Doc,” the man laughed. “Didn’t know these scouts weren’t native web-feet.”
“They’ll not see any more rain till they get back to Portland,” the doctor said, quite seriously.
The garage man winked solemnly at Bennie, who grinned back.
“Well, Uncle Bill, we sure have got one on you now,” Bennie laughed, as they drove on. “Eh, Spider?”
“Kind of looks so,” Spider had to admit.
“The sun will be coming out at Salem, and this is the last rain you’ll see, except maybe a thunder shower or two,” Uncle Billy persisted. “And now, just for that, I’ll tell you something else. We’ll get to Salem—that’s the State capital—in time for lunch. The Boy Scouts of Salem are going to give us the luncheon, not on your account, but because you are with me. You two boys will have to make speeches. Good, long speeches, too, not just ‘Glad to be here.’ Got one on me, have you? Take that!”
“Aw, quit your kiddin’,” Bennie cried. “Not really, Uncle Bill?”
“Gosh, I never made a speech in my life!” Spider groaned from the rear seat. “I’d just go right down through the floor.”
“Our floors are made of good old Douglas fir—not a chance,” the doctor grinned. “You’ll have to stand right up and show ’em how good Massachusetts is.”
“Poor old Massachusetts,” said Bennie. “She’s got a bum chance to make a hit with us representing her. Oh, golly, what’ll I do?”
“I guess you’d better be thinking of something to say as we go along. I was going to stop so we could pick some real Oregon cherries on the way, but maybe I’d better not. You’ll need to keep your alleged minds on your speeches.”
Bennie and Spider looked at each other and groaned.
“Honest, Uncle Billy, I think this is a real nice climate,” said Bennie.
“Ha! nothing doing! You can’t get around me that way. Besides, they are probably cooking the luncheon already. The invitations are all out.”
“Has old Dumplin’ got to make a speech, too?”
“Oh, no,” said the doctor. “He’s a native, not a distinguished visitor from the East.”
“We’ll be extinguished visitors by the time it’s over,” Spider said.
“Hi, that’s good! Remember it, and put it in your speech,” Bennie cried. “Wish I could think of something funny. Gosh, you never can when you want to.” He looked woebegone.
“You get up with a face like that, and you’ll make a hit like Charlie Chaplin,” Spider assured him.
The boys cheered up a bit, however, as the rain ceased and the car sped on up a good road, through the rich fields of the Willamette valley, mile after mile of prune orchards and cherry orchards and hop plantations and Loganberry fields where the canes, tied in rows to wires, stretched for hundreds of yards on either side of the road.
Presently they came to a “ranch” (as everybody out there calls his farm or orchard), where the cherries were being picked, and the doctor stopped the car. The Stones, who were right behind, stopped too, and everybody got out.
“Sell us some cherries?” asked the doctor.
“Got anything to pick ’em in?” asked the owner of the orchard.
“Sure—the radiator pails.”
“All right, you can pick all you want in that first tree, for fifty cents. Hold on, though. Not that cute little feller there. I don’t want my tree busted down.”
“I’ll stand below and you can throw ’em into my mouth,” Dumpling laughed.
They got the collapsible canvas pails which were carried in the cars to fill the radiators with, and began to pick. The cherries were huge things, of a deep, wonderful, winey red, and almost melted in your mouth. Bennie and Spider had never seen nor tasted such cherries, and they ate two for every one they picked. The pails were full in five minutes, at that, and still the tree hardly seemed touched.
“What’s the name of these babies?” Bennie asked.
“Bing,” said the doctor.
“No, I didn’t ask you to play soldier. I asked you what’s the name of these cherries?”
“Bing, I tell you. Bing, B-i-n-g.”
“Well, it sounds like Bing,” Bennie laughed. “That’s a silly name for a cherry, but, oh, boy, some fruit!”
“You won’t be in any condition to eat that lunch when we get to Salem,” the doctor laughed.
“Soon’s I get there, and think about that old speech again, I won’t want any lunch, anyhow,” Bennie answered. “Might ’s well fill up now.”
The two cars rolled into Salem at noon. Salem is a small city, built around a large central park in which the State Capitol building stands. This park was now filled with roses, the bushes even growing in long rows between the sidewalks and the street. The doctor ran the car around this park, and then hunted up the camp where they were to be entertained by the Salem Boy Scouts. This was in a grove, just outside the town, and about fifty scouts were already there, with three or four fires going. As the two cars came up, the scout master gave a sharp command, the troops fell into formation, at attention, and there was a loud cheer of welcome as Bennie and Spider tried to climb out over the luggage gracefully. Poor Dumpling had a hard time getting out of his car, but not one of the Salem scouts laughed. In a few minutes, the scout master had presented the guests all around, and preparations for the luncheon began in earnest.
It was a good lesson in scouting, all right. Different boys had definite jobs, and they went at them quickly and efficiently. Sawhorses and boards were produced from a wagon, and made into rough tables. More boards, on boxes, made the seats. Paper plates, knives, forks, and spoons, and tin cups were put in place. The scouts who could cook best were busy at the fires. There was the smell of coffee, of broiling steak, of frying potatoes, and of flapjacks. Three or four of the scouts meanwhile were putting great dishes of fruit—berries and cherries—on the tables. In spite of all the cherries they had eaten, the smells made Spider and Bennie hungry again. They tried, of course, to help with the preparations, but the Salem scouts wouldn’t let them.
“No, you’re guests,” the scout master said.
Finally the scout master clapped his hands, and called in a loud voice, “Come and get it!” This was the first time Spider and Bennie had heard the western camp call to grub. But they didn’t need to be told what it meant.
As soon as the food was eaten, the scout master rose in his place, and announced that troop leader Tom Robinson would welcome their guests to Oregon. Tom Robinson, a tall, powerful boy of sixteen, got up looking extremely scared, and everybody shouted and applauded, whereupon he looked scareder still. But he made a nice little speech, in spite of his nervousness, telling Spider and Bennie how glad the Salem scouts were that they had come so far to see Oregon, which, he said, had the finest climate in the world, and hoping they’d have a good time, and inviting them to come and visit the Salem scouts in their camp up in the mountains in August.
Everybody applauded again, and then looked at Spider and Bennie, yelling, “Speech, speech!”
“You do it,” whispered Bennie to Spider.
“Go on—you got to do it,” Spider retorted.
“You’ve both got to do it,” the scout master laughed.
So Bennie got up. He felt queer in his knees, which didn’t seem to half hold him up, and his mouth felt dry. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded strange to him, as if it belonged to somebody else.
“We’re awfully glad to be here,” he said, “and you scouts are sure good to us to give us this grand feed. I ate so many Bing cherries this morning I thought all I could do would be to make a noise like a robin, but I sure got away with my share of the grub. It’s pretty fine to come 4,000 miles, all across the U. S. A., and find a bunch of scouts out here just the same as at home. Some organization, the Boy Scouts! ’Course, we came to see the wilderness, and about all the wilderness we’ve seen so far is a big city like Portland, and Salem, and about ten million fruit trees, and sixteen million automobiles. And we heard it was a good climate out here, too, but my uncle’s garage man says it rains twelve months in the year and isn’t very pleasant the rest of the time. But we sure like Oregon, and you fellows are a great bunch of scouts, and—and I guess that’s all I got to say.”
Bennie sat down abruptly, amid much applause.