so then willie cook cooked his meat and potatoes and as long as he was a tenderfoot and didn’t know much about scouting we showed him how scouts eat. we let him keep one potato and about an ounce of meat to take back to camp for evidence to show to the raving ravens. after that we felt pretty good so we sprawled around and rested a while.

scout cook said, “are you going straight back to camp?”

“not straight,” hervey said, “but we’re on our way there. if it’s where it was this morning, we’re going to go to it. i suppose it was there when you left, wasn’t it?”

“it’s usually there,” bert said.

“don’t pay any attention to them,” pee-wee said to his new member; “they’ve been acting like that all day. they’ve been going around and around and around like a chicken with its head off. hervey willetts and roy blakeley are the worst of the lot.”

“sure, we’re each worse than the other if not more so,” i said. “the question is, where do we go from here?”

“we go straight west to temple camp,” pee-wee shouted; “we’re not going to, what d’you call it, deviate.”

“call it whatever you want, i don’t care,” i said.

“and we’re going to go pretty soon, too,” the kid said; “we’re going to go while the column of smoke from the cooking shack is still going up. we can’t see the sun any more; we haven’t got anything to follow but the smoke.”

“wrong the first time,” i said. “we’ve got hervey willetts to follow. i’d rather follow him than the sun; the sun always goes to the same place; he goes every which way. there’s no pep to the sun. is there, scout cook?”

i guess the poor little kid thought we were a pack of lunatics. he didn’t know what to say.

“what time did you leave camp?” i asked him.

he said, “about one o’clock; just after the bus came with a lot of new scouts. there’s a big troop coming to-night and uncle jeb has got to send them to bear mountain camp because there aren’t any more tents or cabins to put them in. i’d rather stay at temple camp, wouldn’t you?”

“the only place i like to stay at is nowhere,” hervey said; “and i don’t care to stay very long even there. why didn’t the bunch in administration shack let that troop know before they started, i wonder?”

“the troop sent a telegram,” willie cook said.

“what do you say we hike to bear mountain to-night?” hervey said.

“are there bears there?” willie wanted to know.

i said, “no, they call it bear mountain because all the scouts go round in their bare feet up there. give me temple camp every time; there’s only one thing i don’t like about it, and that is going home from it.”

“if you like it so much it’s a wonder you don’t go there,” pee-wee shouted. “you’ve been going there all day and none of us are there yet. pretty soon the smoke will die down and then what? you know yourself you can’t trust signboards or anything up here. we know that column of smoke is in the west because that’s where the sun went down and we know that temple camp is the only place that sends up a big column of smoke like that. are you going to stop your nonsense and follow it or not?”

“we don’t need the smoke,” warde said. “see that roof right in line with the smoke? all we have to do is to follow the roof——”

“we’ll climb over it,” hervey said.

“let the smoke die down. what do we care?” garry said. “the roof won’t die down; that’s a sure beacon.”

all of a sudden hervey jumped up. “follow your leader,” he said.

so off we started with little willie cook coming along behind and trying to keep up with us while we sang:

don’t ask where you’re headed for nobody knows,

just keep your eyes open and follow your nose;

be careful, don’t trip and go stubbing your toes,

but follow your leader wherever he goes.