“grizzlies? oh, hundreds of them! but they’re away back up in the mountains; you won’t see them.”
“they’re about the fiercest animals there, aren’t they?” one of the boys asked.
“well,” drawled the traveling man, working his cigar over to the corner of his mouth and contemplating the boys in the shrewd way he had. “i don’t know about that. the wallerpagoes are pretty ructious. but they don’t bother you unless you bother them. now you take a skehinkum, one of the big kind——”
“you mean the kind with the whitish black fur?” warde hollister laughed.
the traveling man worked his cigar over to the opposite corner of his mouth and looked at warde with an expression of humorous skepticism. “don’t you learn about them in the boy scouts?” he asked.
“oh, positively,” said warde. “they’re all right is long as you don’t feed them on gum-drops.”
the traveling man was having the time of his life with the three boys. they called him the traveling man because they thought he looked and talked like one. they had ventured to ask him his business and he had told them that it was starting revolutions in south america. he had even hinted that he was in a plot to blow up the panama canal, and had asked them not to mention this to their parents. he had said that if they kept his secret he might later let them in on a scheme to restore north america to its rightful owners, the indians. “wrap it up and we’ll take it and deliver it to them,” warde hollister had said.
throughout the long journey they had wondered and speculated as to what and who this amusing stranger really was. and they had decided in conference that he was a traveling salesman. he seemed to have a hearty contempt for the boasted prowess of boy scouts, but the three boys did not dislike him for that. in the pleasant art of jollying they had been able to hold their own. and he seemed to like them for that. but he would not take them seriously.
they had told him about tracking and signaling and outdoor resourcefulness and woods lore and he had been pleased to poke fun at them about their skill and knowledge. he had appeared to derive much entertainment from this pastime. pee-wee harris (raven and mascot) would have been able to “handle” him, but unfortunately pee-wee was not on this trip. so the responsibility for defending the dignity of scouting fell to warde hollister, edwin carlisle and westy martin.
“and bandits?” westy asked.
“bandits? oceans of them! they spurt right up out of the geysers,” said the stranger.
“what could be sweeter?” said eddie carlisle.
“can’t you answer a civil question?” westy asked, the least bit testily.
“things have to be civil to suit you, hey?” the traveling man said. “anything uncivilized: and——”
“we’re asking you if it’s true that there are train robbers and men like that in the park?” westy said.
“sure there are,” said the stranger. “where do you suppose they buy their post cards to send home?”
the three boys seemed on the point of giving him up as a hopeless case.
“why? do you want to go hunting them?” the stranger asked.
“we wouldn’t be the first boy scouts to help the authorities,” warde said.
this seemed to amuse the traveling man greatly. he contemplated the three of them with a kind of good-humored, sneering skepticism. then he was moved to be serious.
“well, i’ll tell you how it is,” he said. “the yellowstone park is really two places; see? there’s the wild yellowstone and the tame yellowstone. the park is full of grizzlies and rough characters of the wild and fuzzy west but they don’t patronize the sightseeing autos. they’re kind of modest and diffident and they stay back in the mountains where you won’t see them. you know train robbers as a rule are sort of bashful.
“you kids are just going to see the park and you’ll have your hands full, too. you’ll sit in a nice comfortable automobile and the man will tell you what to look at and you’ll see geysers and things and canyons and a lot of odds and ends and you’ll have the time of your lives. there’s a picture shop between norris and the canyon; you drop in there and see if you can get a post card showing pelican cone. that’ll give you an idea of where i’ll be. you can think of me up in the wilderness while you’re listening to the concert in the old faithful inn. that’s where they have the big geyser in the back yard—spurts once an hour, johnny on the spot. i suppose,” added the stranger with that shrewd, skeptical look which was beginning to tell on the boys, “that if you kids really saw a grizzly you wouldn’t stop running till you hit new york. i think you said scouts know how to run.”
“we wouldn’t stop there,” said the carlisle boy; “we’d be so scared that we’d just take a running jump across the atlantic ocean and land in europe.”
“what would you really do now if you met a bandit?” the stranger asked. “shoot him dead i suppose, like deadwood dick in the dime novels.”
“we don’t read dime novels,” said westy.
“but just the same,” said warde, “it might be the worse for that bandit. didn’t you read——”
the traveling man laughed outright.
“all right, you can laugh,” said westy, a trifle annoyed.
the stranger stuck his feet up between warde and westy, who sat in the seat facing and put his arm on the farther shoulder of eddie carlisle who sat beside him. then he worked his unlighted cigar across his mouth and tilted it at an angle which somehow seemed to bespeak a good-natured contempt of the boy scouts.
“just between ourselves,” said he, “who takes care of the publicity stuff for the boy scouts anyway? who puts all this stuff in the newspapers about boy scouts finding lost people and saving lives and putting out forest fires and plugging up holes in dams and saving towns from floods and all that sort of thing? i read about one kid who found a german wireless station during the war——”
“that was true,” snapped warde, stung into some show of real anger by this flippant slander. “i suppose you don’t know that a scout out west in illinois——”
“you mean out east in illinois,” laughed the stranger. “you’re in the wild and woolly west and you don’t even know it. i suppose if you were dropped from the train right now you’d start west for chicago.”
the three boys laughed for it did seem funny to think of illinois being far east of them. they felt a bit chagrined too at the realization that, after all, their view of the rugged wonders they were approaching was to be enjoyed from the rather prosaic vantage point of a sightseeing auto. what would buffalo bill or kit carson have said to that?
the traveling man looked out of the window and said, “we’ll hit emigrant pretty soon if it’s still there. the cyclones out here blow the villages around so half the time the engineer don’t know where to look for them. i remember barker’s corners used to be right behind a big tree in montana and it got blown away and they found it two years afterward in arizona.”
