XV.—The Mascot of "Troop 1"[N]

XV.—The Mascot of "Troop 1"[N]

By Stephen Chalmers

THE troop was just about scared to death when the Scoutmaster announced at the close of the meeting that the visitor would remain for an informal talk with the boys.

The visitor was a big man in more than height. He was a State Commissioner—the kind you spell with a big C—a Commissioner of Forests, or Weights, or something like that; and he happened, too, to have an official position with Boy Scout Headquarters. He was, so to speak, a heap big Scout, and Troop 1, Saranac Lake, which is away back in the Adirondacks, felt uneasy.

"There aren't many of you," said the Commissioner to the group of Scouts gathered about him, "but you're all good stuff. You have a chance most Boy Scouts don't get. You were all born in the big North Woods. You have inherited instincts that can't be driven into a boy with teaching. You don't have to be taught trailing, or woodcraft, except maybe for an organized way of handling them. You can open old trails as a good turn to the public. You can patrol the woods, report forest fires, and you can fight forest fires, too, as I hear you have been doing. I hear, too, that the Municipal Board picked this troop to select a Christmas tree; that you felled that tree in a neat way and brought it to the village, helped set it up, and then patrolled the crowd with your staffs, so the little kids crowding around Santa Claus's municipal wagon wouldn't get hurt in the crush."

This made the Scouts breathe a little easier.

"But there is more than that to this Scout game——"

The Scouts began to fidget again. They knew they were not going to be let down as easy as all that, especially by a big Scout like this who knew conditions all over the country.

"The thing that comes easy for you to do is good. But, like bravery, the best form of it is doing what you are afraid to do, or doing what isn't second nature for you to do. You belong to the second generation of the wilderness. There are towns now and you live in them, and it is in the towns——"

The big man suddenly hesitated. He was looking at a small black face that emerged from a khaki collar between two first class Scouts in the front row. The Commissioner pointed at him and said, abruptly, breaking off his remarks:

"By the way, what's your name?"

The small black face went into strange contortions of embarrassment. It tried to hide like the ostrich, but the Scouts in front parted and revealed a little negro boy in Scout uniform with a tenderfoot badge pinned where it should be.

"I'm Smokey," said a faint voice. Then, remembering, he stiffened up, saluted the big man, and amplified:

"Dey calls me Smokey, sir. Dat's all de name I ever has. I'se just a li'l nigger, sir, but dey all's a moughty good bunch and dey don't mek no difference 'cause I ain't white."

There was a little applause and much grinning. The Commissioner of Forests, or Weights—I forget just what he was—stared in a queer way, then went on with his address from where he had left off.

I remember he laid particular stress on the fact that doing one's simple everyday duty was all right, but not just what was called a "Good Turn."

But all the time he was watching Smokey, who stood there drinking in every word and nudging his neighbor, a thin, pallid boy, who also wore a tenderfoot badge.

"What's your name?" the speaker broke off again to ask, pointing at Smokey's neighbor.

"I'm Jimmy," said he. "Smokey's me pal," he added, scrambling to his feet with a belated salute. "We—we likes bein' Scouts, sir."

Smokey wriggled in absolute approval of Jimmy's loyalty and comment.

Again the Commissioner looked puzzled. He went on with his talk, however, and when he had finished and the Scouts had left, he went into the Scoutmaster's office to compare notes with him. But he dismissed the notes pretty swiftly and suddenly said to the Scoutmaster:

"Where did you pick up those two kids, Smokey, and his—his pal, Jimmy?"

"Oh, that's quite a yarn," said the Scoutmaster. "Both of them were New York newsboys. They got sick down there—ill-feeding, lack of care and so on, and drifted up here. We have a lot of invalids who come here for their health—rich mostly. But Jimmy and Smokey weren't rich. In fact, if a couple of our boys hadn't heard about them and done one of the best turns ever pulled off, I——"

The Commissioner leaned forward and tapped the Scoutmaster on the knee.

"Tell me the whole story," said he, his eyes sparkling. And the Scoutmaster did.

The Story the Scoutmaster Told

Smokey and Jimmy were newsboys in the big city. Smokey was much littler, I expect, when he invested his first pennies in papers and tried to hold his own with the newsboy gang at the Grand Central Station. Jimmy was cock of the walk and had licked every newsboy on the stand. He looked little Smokey over. He resented the smokiness, but hated to wallop him; there was so little to wallop. And because the other newsboys tried to, Jimmy walloped the whole lot of them all over again. After that he felt sort of responsible for Smokey's welfare.

By and by Jimmy found out that Smokey never had had any parents. He came out of a colored orphan asylum—ran away, I expect. Jimmy didn't know anything about his parents, either. He came out of a foundling hospital—ran away, too, perhaps. Anyway, Jimmy says he felt he didn't have much on Smokey. They became close friends. Smokey thought Jimmy was God's little brother, and Jimmy proved it by taking absolute charge of Smokey's destiny.

They saved their pennies. Their living didn't cost much. They fed mostly at the back door of an east side quick-lunch place. For domicile they shared a basement with a drunken janitor, an Italian organ-grinder, and a monkey. The monkey got shoved off a second-story window ledge by some Christian person who probably resented the Darwin theory and died several days later of internal injuries. Smokey nursed him, while Jimmy and the organ-grinder worked harder and raised enough money to get a doctor. The doctor was indignant when he found that his patient was of the Simian persuasion. But that's a story by itself. You ought to hear Jimmy tell it. You'd find yourself laughing on only one side of your face.

About a week after the monkey died, Smokey fell ill. He hated to get up in the morning. He was just as dead-tired in the morning as when he lay down. His smokiness turned from a soft coal to an anthracite hue, and he went off his feed. Jimmy thought maybe Smokey needed a little Christian Science and walloped him as an experiment. Smokey took it as he would have taken anything from Jimmy, but he said—and his eyes were probably as big and solemn as an owl's:

"Jimmy," said he, "dey ain't no use'n you-all wallopin' me. Hones', Jimmy, Ah tinks Ah's a moughty sick li'l nigger."

That stuck in Jimmy's mind. He was sorry he had applied what he thought was practical Christian Science. He tried Smokey with therapeutic treatment. He gave him a cone of strawberry ice-cream. When Smokey ate only half of it, Jimmy knew it was a grave case and that something ought to be done about it.

That night after Smokey had crawled into the packing case where he was in the habit of sleeping—usually with the lid on—Jimmy talked over the crisis with the organ-grinder and the janitor. The janitor thought corn whiskey was good and went out to get some. He didn't come back that night and brought no whiskey when he turned up two days later. The organ-grinder, embittered by the loss of his monkey, had little faith in the medical profession; and in this Jimmy concurred. The newsboy, however, read the papers he sold, and was under the impression that Jimmy ought to get out into the country. Also, he wasn't sure that it was the best thing for Smokey to sleep in that packing-case with the lid on. Lacking funds, however, they were compelled to table the motion that Smokey be sent to the woods. Meanwhile Smokey got thinner and weaker and finally he hadn't the strength to push the lid off when he needed more air. It was then that the Lord provided.

One of Smokey's patrons was Pat Mulcahy, who drives the engine of the Montreal Express out of Grand Central every evening at 6.55. Smokey had been in the habit of taking a latest evening edition through to Pat in his engine cab. Mulcahy didn't get his paper one night, but next evening Jimmy turned up alongside the big locomotive and said:

"Here's yer paper, Mister Mulcahy. Smokey's down an' out. I tink he's got de Ol' Con. He worried hisself near stiff last night 'cos he fergot t' tell me youse was partic'lar 'bout gettin' de final. But don't youse worry, Mister, I'm runnin' the whole biz till Smokey's to rights again—see?"

Mulcahy was a good fellow. He'd bought from Smokey because—well, perhaps he liked the little fellow. He questioned Jimmy, and next night he cross-questioned him, about Smokey, and on the third night, when Jimmy reported the patient in a bad way, the engineer said:

"Now, lookee here, Jimmy. Can Smokey walk? Do you think he can stand a trip?"

"It couldn't make him no wuss, anyhow," says Jimmy.

"All right," said Mulcahy. "You get his things together. . . . Well just as he is, then . . . and bring him along here about 6.45 sharp to-morrow night—Hear?"

"I get yuh," said Jimmy. "Youse gonna give Smoky a free ride up to the country."

"You betcher life, Jimmy."

Smokey, when informed of this new turn of his destiny, didn't care much whether he went or stayed in his box; but Jimmy said he was to go, and of course that was all there was to it.

Next evening, when Smokey, the most washed-out little nigger that ever wobbled on weak knees, turned up at the station with Jimmy, the whole gang was there to give him a send-off. The guards let them all through the gates after the conductor of the Adirondack section had passed a wink, and the group of youngsters escorted Smokey to the big, wheezing engine. Jimmy first presented Mulcahy with his final, refusing the usual cent for it.

"Dat's on de house dis time," said Jimmy.

"Here—you—beat it!" said he. "Do you want to make me trouble?"

Smokey's eyes were full of tears as he said:

"So long, fellahs. You-all's a moughty good bunch."

Then he whispered something to Jimmy, who said, "Aw, fudge!" and went away, much embarrassed.

The engineer turned Smokey over to the conductor of the Adirondack section, and when the Montreal Express got under way he was comfortable on a pile of straw in a corner of the baggage car. At Poughkeepsie the conductor bought him a bottle of "pop." At Albany he fell heir to an orange and a chicken sandwich. At Utica he was sound asleep and a colored porter came through and spread a perfectly good Pullman blanket over the boy.

The train was wheezing at Tupper Lake when Smokey opened his eyes next morning. The baggage car door was opened and Smokey looked out. It was a big country, covered with trees and surrounded with great mountains. The sun was just rising and Smokey felt sure that this was the place where they made the movies. The golden east reminded him of his orange, and he ate it,—the orange.

The colored porter came through and told the boy to stay where he was until ordered to get out. Smokey was disappointed to learn that his friend Mulcahy had gone off duty at Utica, where his wife lived. Ten minutes later the porter came back again. He had a glass tumbler in his hand and it was half full of quarters and fifty-cent pieces.

"You is shuah a lucky kid," said the porter. "Some o' de gents in de Lake Placid smoker heerd 'bout you an' chipped in all dis."

"Dey's shuah-all a good bunch—folks is," said Smokey, his eyes big as he totaled three dollars and twenty-five cents.

The Adirondacks section was switched off the main line at Lake Clear junction, and less than half an hour later Smokey found himself in the main street of Saranac Lake. He made straight for the belt of woods that fringes the river below the falls of the power station, and sat down beneath a big pine. He felt that he could sit there forever and listen to the gossipy river and the whispering trees. It was very restful. He ate some of his accumulated grub and went to sleep, his last thought a wish that Jimmy could be there.

Mr. Commissioner (the Scoutmaster continued), that little nigger was in town about six weeks before our boys got on to him. He was lucky enough to get a job delivering newspapers for Tom Daley and, luckier still, the little fellow began to get well.

So long as the nights were still summery he slept beneath that same pine below the falls, but when the Autumn snap set in he had to find shelter. It was Tolman, the undertaker—a good sort—good as they make 'em—who picked him up, asked a few questions and got him the loft of Fred Smith's paintshop. A ladder ascended to a trap door and the garret was full of old truck; but Smokey thought it was a mansion with a marble staircase. He fixed up a couple of boxes for seats, and there was an old two-legged sofa that he propped up for a couch. He scurried around town, got hold of several burlap bags, stuffed them with hay and made himself a comfortable bed. Between this and improving health and the delivery business, Smokey felt that he was prospering in the world.

Then he got a letter. It was from Jimmy, to whom he had sent picture-postcards without getting a word in reply. But Jimmy's misspelled letter now explained everything.

"Dere smoke" (it ran—or something like that—I read it), "I hate tu tell ya for I dident think it was annything but I got the old Con too an im awful sick and duno whatin bleazes im gone do, say is there anny chanst up there where yu ar, but don you worry bout me. Jimmy."

It was a terrible blow to Smokey, but right away the optimism that seems to breed itself in these woods bolstered him to action. He promptly sent a picture-postcard, and on it he wrote:

"yu se the injiner mr. Milcay, an come on up its fine an I got a swel plaze to liv and lots ov work, no selin jist deliverin. Smokey."

But that was only the beginning of Smokey's discharge of obligation. He interviewed the Pullman conductor. The conductor passed the word to Mulcahy at Utica, and two days later the porter brought back word to the tense, waiting little figure at the Saranac Lake station that it was all fixed and Jimmy was coming on by next night's train.

All that evening and all next day Smokey was mighty busy. He bolted the delivery of the New York papers, but at every house he stopped long enough to gasp:

"Please lady, has you-all got any ole pitcher supplements?"

In the evening he had a pile of them. He had begged leave of Mat Munn, the grocer, to extract nails from discarded boxes. With these, and a brick for a hammer, he covered the sloping roof walls of the garret mansion with stage beauties, art supplements, Buster Browns, Happy Hooligans, baseball giants and magazine covers. This art paneling covered every draughty hole or crack. Flour sacks draped Jimmy's sofa-couch. All that last night, while the Montreal Express brought Jimmy into the hills, there sounded the persistent tap-tapping of Smokey's brick hammer.

But in the morning when Jimmy, pale and sickly, climbed down from the baggage-car, there was no Smokey to meet or greet him. Jimmy wandered around, weakness of body conspiring with disappointment to sap his courage. He had no idea where Smokey lived and, being a New Yorker with a metropolitan turn of thought, in that circumstance he felt himself and Smokey completely lost to each other.

Presently, as Jimmy sat disconsolate on a baggage truck, an individual in shirt sleeves and savoring of paint halted before him. After a moment's study he said:

"Hallo, Jimmy!"

Jimmy started, hope returning; but neither the man nor the savor of paint conveyed anything profitable.

"Aw, can the bunk stuff," said he wearily. "I'm f'm Forty-second Street—see?"

Fred the painter was able to extricate himself from suspicion, however. At the words "Smokey's all to the bad," Jimmy forgot everything, particularly himself and his own illness.

"Where izze?" he asked breathlessly. "I wanna see'm right away. D'yuh get me? Aw, don't you tell me that li'l nigger's gone an' croaked?"

"Naw, he ain't croaked," said Fred Smith, the painter, "but he's awful bad, and he sent me to meet you, Jimmy, and tell you to come right on just the same, 'cause everything's ready."

"He's up there," said Fred when they got to the shack. Jimmy, short of breath as he was, went up that ladder like a streak. At first he could see little, the garret was so dark, but a faint voice said from some burlap bags in the corner:

"Is dat youse, Chimmy?"

"What's de matter, Smoke?" Jimmy's voice was shaky and a short sharp cough punctuated his question.

"Bles' if Ah knows," said Smokey. "Ah was hammerin' a nail in Christy Mat'ewson when somet'in esploded in ma chiss. But say, Chimmy, light de can'le an' pipe de livin' room. Some—swell—Chimmy!—an' Ah done it a-all ma-se'f!"

Jimmy found the candle and lighted it. He surveyed Smokey lying in the corner, his eyes and head seeming a misfit for his frail body. The candle illumined the comic supplements and art sections on the sloping roof walls and the sofa with its flour-sack bedding turned down as for a guest. Lastly Jimmy's eyes encountered several dark red spots on the floor.

"Swell, ain't it, Chimmy?" said Smokey. "Why don't you-all say something?"

For answer Jimmy blew out the candle somewhat hastily, and Fred at the foot of the ladder heard some one sobbing in the mansion above.

The Scoutmaster turned to fumble with some papers on his desk. The Commissioner sat silent, his eyes wide and a bit shiny. He said nothing for at least half a minute, then, clearing his throat:

"And what then?"

"Oh, the rest is simple enough," said the Scoutmaster. "One of our Scouts got wind of it and told his patrol leader and they investigated. Then they got the other Scouts of the patrol together, went into the woods and cut some fuel, got a basket of grub and provisions from their mothers and a delegation of two called on Dr. Trudeau—you've heard of him—died just the other day—the Grenfell of the hills—and the doctor sent a nurse and then moved Jimmy and Smokey to a hospital, and——"

The Scoutmaster broke off, chuckling.

"Funny thing," he said, "when the great doctor climbed the ladder to where the two boys were lying sick, Jimmy, remembering the doctor who wouldn't attend the monkey, got suspicious and he said to Dr. Trudeau: 'There's just wan thing you got to un'stand right away, Doc. Smokey may be a li'l nigger, but he ain't no monk! D'yuh get me?'

"They both got well, and they got work, too. Then one evening they came down to look over this Scout business that had helped them for not so much as a 'thank you' and—well, Jimmy's a good little Scout. As for Smokey, he's the Troop Mascot, but—he still thinks Jimmy is God's little brother; and I don't know that I blame him."

"Fine!" said the Commissioner, and a few seconds later he repeated with even more emphasis, "FINE!"