The Wolf Patrol: A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts

''Ain't got none.'

'You're a fine lot to call yourselves the Raven Patrol!' cried Arthur jeeringly. 'What have you got, I'd like to know?'

Chippy looked him straight in the eye.

'The mind to run straight an' play fair,' he said. ''Ow's that for bein' good enough?'

'Pooh!' said Arthur. 'A patrol of scouts must be turned out properly. That's the first thing.'

'I dunno about that,' growled Chippy, and drew a very dirty and well-thumbed book from the inner pocket of his ragged jacket. 'I bin a-goin' by what the cove says as writ this 'ere book – B. – P.'

'You can't teach me much about that book!' said Arthur loftily. 'I know it from end to end.'

'Well, I bin through it about ten times, I shouldn't wonder,' huskily murmured Chippy, 'an' I've got it all wrong if 'e don't say as to run straight an' play fair is just about all there is to it.'

Chippy began to turn over the leaves, and there was silence for a moment. The patrol had left everything to their leader. No one else said a word. But Dick Elliott felt interested above all. He knew that this was his doing. It was he who had really started the Raven Patrol by giving the book to Chippy Slynn.

The latter looked up quietly. He had found the place he wanted.

'I can't teach yer much out o' this 'ere book, eh?' he said. 'I can teach yer "Scout Law No. 4."' And Chippy read in a loud voice: '"A scout is a friend to all, and a brother to every other scout, no matter to which social class the other belongs."'

'Wait a bit!' said Arthur. 'You think you're very sharp, but how do I know you're a scout?'

'Page forty-two,' said Chippy, who certainly knew the text-book very thoroughly. 'See it? I gi'ed yer the signal.'

'And then you show your badge!' cried Arthur triumphantly. 'Now, where's your badge, wharf-rat?'

For a moment Chippy looked stumped. Then he recovered himself and read out: '"Or proves that he is a scout,"' and scratched his jaw and looked hopeful again.

'Yes; but how are you going to prove it?' said Arthur. 'You can't prove it! Clear out, and don't waste any more of our time!'

'Yus, I can prove it!' replied Chippy. 'Try me! I'll let yer 'unt me, if yer like. If yer cop me, yer can call me no scout!'

'That's a fair offer, Arthur,' said Dick quietly.

And two or three of the patrol expressed the same feeling.

'Oh, rubbish!' cried Arthur impatiently. 'I'm patrol-leader, and I give orders. I don't mean to go shuffling over the heath after a chap like that!'

Chippy's sharp eye fell on Arthur's necktie. It was hanging outside his waistcoat, with a knot in the end of it. Every boy scout has to do one good turn a day, and the knot is to remind him of that duty.

'Look 'ere,' he said, 'the knot ain't out o' yer necktie yet! Now's yer chance for a good turn. Lemme prove it.'

Everyone had to laugh at this clever twist of the argument, and Billy Seton murmured:

'I'm hanged if this chap is any sort of a fool! Come, Arthur, give him a show! It'll be great fun, anyway. We're tired of hunting each other. Perhaps he'll give us a merry little run.'

'Well,' said Arthur, 'if you fellows are keen on it, I won't stand in your way. Seems to me a pretty poor sort of game. Still, it will do to choke him off with as well as another.'

CHAPTER V

THE CHOKING-OFF OF CHIPPY

'We'll make a man-hunt of it,' said Billy Seton. 'I suggest that somebody lends him a pair of tracking-irons, and we give him a quarter of an hour's start. When we come up to him we'll fire at him with tennis-balls, as usual. If we hit him three times, he's dead. If he hits one of us first, that man's dead, and out of the hunt.'

'Righto!' said Chippy. 'I've studied them rules. I'm ready.'

'And I'll lend the tracking-irons,' cried Dick Elliott.

Chippy put on the tracking-irons with immense pride and delight. He had wondered so much what these things were, and to fasten a pair on his feet, and to make tracks with them for a real patrol to pursue him – it was simply great.

'Wait a bit!' said George Lee. 'We've got our tennis-balls to fire at him; but how is he going to fire at us?'

'That's all right,' said Chippy. 'We've played that game. I've got mine 'ere.'

He dived a hand into one of his wide-spreading pockets, and brought out a ball.

'That isn't a tennis-ball,' said Arthur scornfully.

It was not. Chippy's funds did not run to tennis-balls. It was a bottle-cork wrapped up in pieces of rag, and whipped into shape with string.

'I'll tek my chance wi' it,' said Chippy calmly, and prepared to start.

The patrol laughed as he scuttled out of the pit, and Dick stood with watch in hand to give him the proper law.

'He's a rum-looking beggar!' said Billy Seton, 'but I'll be hanged if he isn't wide-o. And I reckon he stood it uncommonly well, the way you jawed him, Arthur. He didn't get a bit raggy; he just hung on to his chance of showing himself to be a boy scout.'

'Pooh!' said Arthur. 'This is turning the whole thing into piffle. You fellows seemed to want to chivvy him, so I agreed just for the joke. But it isn't likely that we shall recognise wharf-rats as brother scouts!'

'Not likely!' cried No. 6, whose name was Reggie Parr; but the others said nothing.

When time was up, away went the Wolf Patrol on the tracks which Chippy Slynn had made, and for some distance they followed them at an easy trot, for Chippy had posted straight ahead over grassy or sandy land, on which the irons left clear traces. But within a mile and a half of the sandpit the track was lost.

Arthur Graydon drove in his patrol-flag beside the last marks which could be found, and ordered his scouts to separate and swing round in a wide circle until the line was picked up again.

The tracks had ended beside the wide high-road which crossed the heath, and half the patrol took one side of the road and half the other. Within three minutes Dick Elliott raised the wild howl which was their patrol-call, and everyone rushed towards him. He had found the trail. It was on the further side of the high-road, and ran straight ahead beside it, and on raced the Wolves along the tracks.

Chippy had observed how clear a trail he left, and when he came to the high-road, he thought it was about time to throw his pursuers out a little, for they could travel much faster than he could go in the tracking-irons. So at the edge of the high-road down went his head and up went his feet, and he walked across the smooth hard road on his hands, leaving no trace, or such a trace as the Wolf Patrol were not yet clever enough to pick up. With the tracking-irons safely hoisted in the air, he went quite thirty yards before he turned himself right side up again, and scuttled off. He went another mile, and practised the same manoeuvre once more, and then he crept very warily forward, for the land was rising to a ridge. Unless he crossed this ridge with the utmost caution the boys behind him on the heath would see his figure against the sky-line. He marked a place where the ridge was crowned with gorse-bushes, and through these he wriggled his way, receiving a hundred scratches, but troubling nothing about that.

On the other side the ridge went down even more steeply than by the slope which Chippy had just ascended, and up this farther side a huge waggon, drawn by four powerful horses, was slowly making its way.

As soon as Chippy saw the waggon an idea popped into his mind, and he hurried forward to meet the great vehicle. He kept among the bushes so that the driver did not see him. The latter, indeed, from his high perch, was too busy cracking his whip over his team to urge them to the ascent to see that small, gliding figure slipping through the gorse. So Chippy dodged behind the waggon, swung himself up by the tail-board, and climbed in as nimbly as a cat. The forepart of the waggon was full of sacks of meal, and a heap of empty sacks lay against the tail-board. In a trice he had hidden himself under the empty sacks, and lay there without making sign or sound.

The waggon rolled on over the ridge, and soon Chippy heard the long-drawn note of a Wolf's howl. He knew the patrol was now near at hand, but he lay quite still, and peered out at the side of the tail-board, for the latter was hanging a little back.

At the next moment he was being carried clean through the lines of the Wolf Patrol. They had separated, and had been searching busily at the second place where he had thrown them off. Not one glanced at the familiar sight of a big waggon rolling back to the town, for as it passed, Billy Seton raised the patrol call to tell his companions that he had found the trail. All rushed towards him to resume the hunt, and away they went.

As soon as they were out of sight up jumped Chippy, swung himself over the tail-board, and dropped into the road. He dived at once into the bushes which bordered the way, and the waggoner never knew that he had given anyone a lift. Now Chippy set himself to track the trackers. He followed them up as fast as he could go, taking advantage of every patch of cover, and holding his ball in his hand ready to fire.