Boy Scouts of America -- Juvenile fiction; Camps -- Juvenile fiction; Children's stories; Hiking -- Juvenile fiction
In about half a minute all the camp was down at the lake and everybody
was excited. Most all the kids were told to go in the pavilion. Tom
Slade had a big oilcloth hat, rubber boots and a lantern. He looked kind
of like a picture of a fisherman or a captain on a boat or something. It
kind of gave me thrills to see him because, gee whiz, that fellow always
knows what he’s about.
I guess everybody knew what it meant. Mr. Whittaker (he’s a trustee)
called through the big megaphone, but there wasn’t any answer from
across the lake.
Then several men started around by the trail—Tom Slade and Mr. Whittaker
and Uncle Jeb Rushmore, he’s manager. Some scouts started after them,
but they were chased back. We stood on the porch of the commissary shack
(you can see where that is) watching. Every now and then we could see
the light from Tom Slade’s lantern as they picked their way along the
trail through the woods.
I guess it was about two hours before they came back. We just stood
around waiting for them. When they came, Uncle Jeb and another man were
carrying something on a canvas stretcher. That was Mr. Carson, and he
was unconscious. Mr. Kennekott, the man who had gone with him, was
drowned. He had got underneath the boat when it turned over and one of
his legs had been caught underneath the seat. Even when Mr. Carson was
better he didn’t know how he’d got to shore.
After what happened the boat was blown out into the middle of the lake,
and some of them went out in another boat and towed it to the landing.
They found Mr. Kennekott caught underneath it. His leg was between the
middle seat and the floor. That seat was very low. The tin box with the
money must have gone down where the boat upset.
There wasn’t much fun at Temple Camp after that. It was a kind of an off
summer anyway on account of the camp being sort of rebuilt. Mr.
Kennekott’s troop went away, and they have never come back to Temple
Camp. Jiminies, you can’t blame them. They were a nice troop, those
fellows. One of them had the bronze medal—he sat next to me at eats.
The camp officials dragged the lake over on the other side, but they
never found the box. Mr. Temple, who founded the camp, he said they
shouldn’t worry. So that was the end of it except after a while scouts
began fishing for the box. Lots of them did that. They kidded themselves
that they were treasure hunters, I guess. I never did because it always
reminded me of what happened.
Of course, it was too deep to dive over there, and there was a strict
rule against that. Because I’ll tell you why. There used to be houses
where Black Lake is and in some places old chimneys and things like that
stood on the bottom. And there’s a rule that we can only dive near the
landing. After a while the trustees made a rule that we shouldn’t even
go over there and grapple for the box. That was after little Skinny
McCord nearly got drowned. So that was the end of the whole thing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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