“You’re the Scouts that started out camping on a three days’ leave, aren’t you?” Bobby Easton asked me. “I was going to come and ask you if I could go but a Scout told me not to because you fellows were crazy. Now that I know you I think I’d like to stick to you.” “Why not?” Dub said. “I’ll be starting home next week.” “Don’t be so sure,” I told him. “Maybe we’ll be able to fix it yet--we should worry.” CHAPTER XXI THE LAKE TRAIL That afternoon we stayed and helped those surveyors to get their own tent up, and we built them a scout fireplace out of stones. They were going to cook with an oil-stove--jiminy, nix on that. That Bobby Easton was a nice fellow all right. He said he remembered seeing us at camp but he didn’t get acquainted with us because he was new at camp. He was helping those surveyors on field assignment, that’s what they call it. Lots of Scouts at camp do like that. A couple of fellows I knew went for a week with some men who were stocking the lakes and streams with fishes. Bobby Easton was going to stay with those surveyors for a week--as long as they camped in the chasm. A stake boy is the one that holds the cord and drives stakes and all like that. Pee-wee thought it was a fellow that ate a lot of steak. At night we all had supper together and those surveyors told us. The next day we took down our tent and went back to Temple Camp. If you stay over your time you don’t get camping leave again, so if you ever go there you better be careful. Those surveyors went back to camp with us--they were telling us how they were going to do surveying for levees down on the Mississippi. Boy, wouldn’t I like to go with them! At camp they made up a statement about how Bobby Easton saved Pee-wee’s life--it was an affidavit like you have to have--and all of us had to sign it. Then Bobby had to answer a lot of questions by the camp council--that’s the same as local council. Then after a while he got the Gold Medal for life-saving from the National Court of Honor. He showed it to me after he got it. He got the Burnside award, too, after about a week, and he bought a canoe to keep on the lake. So I guess he’s coming up there every summer. He treated us all to ice cream too, down in Catskill. But all that wasn’t until after he got through helping the surveyors over in the chasm. So then poor Dub only had about a week to stay because Pee-wee didn’t find anybody who was dying to have his life saved. I said that maybe there might possibly be an earthquake or something and a lot of people would almost get killed. But there wasn’t any earthquake--jiminies there never is at Temple Camp. Pee-wee said over in Japan they have dandy tidal waves. But what good do they do us--that’s what I asked him. Two or three nights before the day Dub had to go home, he said to me, “Are you going to be at camp-fire to-night?” “Sure, there’s nothing else to do,” I said. He said, “Let’s take a hike, just us two.”