"Just as straight as we could," I said. "If we side-stepped anything we didn't mean to. There's no use saying you're going to do a thing, and then kid yourself about it and not do it. Maybe a bee-line hike is kind of crazy, but it's hard, too. It's easy to make yourself think the line runs between two houses when it doesn't. It's sort of the same when you get to be a scout. It's like a bee-line hike--sort of." We all just sat there and nobody said anything until Westy said, "That's right." "Maybe you don't understand," Dorry said. Warde said, "Yes, I do understand." After that nobody said anything, not even Pee-wee, and we just sat there. "Sure you can go with us," I told him. "And just as I said, you'll see we're kind of crazy. But just the same we don't sneak around and we don't turn back; not till we have to, anyway. You can join the scouts just for the fun of it if you want; the same as you can start on a bee-line hike and go zigzagging around the easiest way if you want to. Maybe you don't understand just exactly what I mean," I said to him. "Anyway there's a place to be filled in my patrol." "Could I get in--maybe?" he asked. I said, "Sure you could. Who's stopping you? Even one of our fellows came after you, didn't he? And you see for yourself how the movie people come after _us_. You don't see us running after them. They know where adventures are, all right." "And no war tax either," Westy said. "And plenty of eats," Pee-wee piped up. Then for a little while again none of us said anything. CHAPTER XI EATS So that's how Warde Hollister got to be a Silver-plated Fox. Already he has four merit badges and he's crazy like the rest of us, only more so. If he keeps on, maybe he'll be as crazy as I am because I wasn't so crazy when I started. And that shows how you never can tell what you may run into on a bee-line hike. But when it comes to running into things just you wait till you get to the next chapter. Now from Warde Hollister's house we went straight for the river. There aren't many houses down there and the land is low and we could see the tree all the time. We had to climb over a couple of fences and over the storage shed of the boat club, and we had to crawl under Benton's ice house that stands on piles. Then we came to the river. There are willow trees down there and we sat under one of them to eat our lunch. We started a fire and I made some flapjacks. Warde Hollister said that was the first time he had ever eaten lunch out in the open like that and he said it was fine. I said, "Have all you want, don't be bashful. They're nice and tender, they're intended for tenderfeet." He said, "Is that what I am?" "You're not anything yet," I told him; "you have to pass some tests; endurance tests and things like that. I'm going to introduce you to our scoutmaster and he'll take care of you." "Eating flapjacks is an endurance test," Pee-wee said. Westy said, "Sure, if you can eat these you can do anything."