Roy Blakeley's roundabout hikeFitzhugh, Percy Keese
General
Roy Blakeley's roundabout hike
Fitzhugh, Percy Keese
Adventure stories; Boy Scouts of America -- Juvenile fiction; Hiking -- Juvenile fiction
“Even I’ve been to his house,” Pee-wee piped up. “Even I had supper at
his house--he’s a magnet. He owns so many railroads, he has a kind of a
collection of them. Didn’t I make him a willow whistle to blow in case
he gets held up by bandits--I leave it to Roy if I didn’t.”
Mr. Bagley put out his hand and shook hands with Pee-wee, like as if
Pee-wee was a kind of a hero. I had to laugh.
I said, “You mustn’t mind our young hero. He’s the one that invented the
Boy Scouts of America.”
Mr. Bagley said, “That was a very good invention.” Then he shook hands
with Pee-wee again.
Jiminies, we knew all about the forest land east of Black Lake--anyway,
Pee-wee and I did. Dub and Sandy were new fellows at camp, so maybe they
didn’t. I’ll tell you how it was. Everybody at camp calls that the
Bagley land--sometimes we call it Bagley woods. It’s east of Temple
Camp. All the Scouts at camp knew about Mr. Temple wanting to buy it and
give it to the camp. But anyway, he couldn’t buy it, because the Bagley
estate wouldn’t sell it to him. But jiminy crinkums, I never bothered my
head about it. Last summer it was fenced off with barbed-wire from
Temple Camp and we couldn’t even go on it. A lot I should worry, they
can take the land away altogether for all I care.
I asked Mr. Bagley, I said, “Are you one of the people that wouldn’t
sell it to Temple Camp?”
He said, “Oh, goodness no!” just like that. He said those were the heirs
and there were a lot of them. But he said anyway, he was the real heir.
Jiminies, I felt sorry for him. He was mighty nice, just sitting there
and talking to us like that. He said he liked boys, especially Scouts,
and he said only for a tragedy that happened, Temple Camp would have all
that land.
Oh boy, you should have seen Pee-wee’s eyes open--that’s his middle
name, _tragedies_. He eats them alive. He said, “Was it a regular
tragedy where somebody got killed--or maybe murdered or something?”
Mr. Bagley said, “My father, Ephraim Bagley was killed, and it was less
than a mile from here. I have just visited the spot. I could hardly find
it, it looked so different from when I was last there.”
Pee-wee said, “You ought to have blazed a trail, that’s the way Scouts
do.” I guess Mr. Bagley must have thought he was very smart, because he
just reached over and shook hands with him.
Mr. Bagley said, “My father was an old man and he had a very tragic
end.” Then he kind of whispered to Dub and said, “And the Boy Scouts are
the losers.”
“Will you tell us about it?” Pee-wee piped up.
Believe me, that was some tragedy he told us about. He said he lived in
Bagley Center. That’s about five or six miles from Bagley’s Green. He
said that several years ago his father--that was old Ephraim
Bagley--made a will and it was going to be his last one. He said in that
will the old man left him the farm at Bagley Center and all that woods
near Temple Camp and everything.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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