So now I’ll tell you about how all this crazy business started. It happened accidentally on purpose. Our troop was up at Temple Camp—that’s where we spend our summers. One morning six of us went down to Catskill Landing in the bus to get some fish-hooks and jaw-breakers; I’m crazy about those, I don’t mean fish-hooks. The six scouts that happened to be along were Bert Winton, (he belongs out west) and Hervey Willetts, (gee whiz, he belongs everywhere I guess) and Garry Everson (he lives down the Hudson) and Warde Hollister (he’s in my patrol and my patrol is the Silver Foxes and they’re all crazier than each other, those fellows) and Pee-wee Harris (he’s one of the raving Ravens of our troop) and Roy Blakeley, that’s me, I mean I, correct, be seated. I was named after my sister because she was named before I was. I’m patrol leader of the Silver Foxes, but I’m not to blame, because they were wished onto me. I’m more to be pitied than blamed. Now it’s about ten miles from Temple Camp to Catskill Landing. And it’s about three hundred and forty-eleven miles back from Catskill Landing to Temple Camp. I bet you’ll say that isn’t possible and I know it isn’t possible but it’s true just the same. So this is the way it is. The first chapter of this story tells how we went to Catskill Landing and the next twenty or thirty chapters tell how we got back to Temple Camp. You can stay in Catskill Landing if you want to and not bother with the rest, I should worry. But the book includes the round trip only it wasn’t so round; it was kind of square like a circle and rectangular and right-angular and left angular, and every which way. It was shaped like a lot of wire all tangled up. The way back was so crooked that we met ourselves a lot of times going the other way. So if you want to you can call this story The Tangled Trail. But I like the Funny-bone Hike better. Suit yourself. CHAPTER II WE START BACK The scout that was to blame for the whole thing was Hervey Willetts. Believe me, that fellow ought to be kept in a cage. He belongs to a patrol named the Reindeers but he ought to belong to the tomcats because half the time nobody knows where he is. His scoutmaster says he wanders over the face of the earth but, believe me, he wanders across the head of the earth and down the neck of the earth; the face isn’t big enough for him. The scouts at camp call him the wandering minstrel because he goes all over and he’s all the time singing. It was just a streak of luck that we happened to have him with us that day. He wears a funny little hat without any brim and with holes cut in it so his thoughts can get out because they make him top-heavy when he’s climbing trees. We were just starting to hike back from Catskill Landing when he said, “Come on, let’s make it snappy.” “What do you mean, make it snappy?” I asked him. “Let’s put some ginger in it,” he said.