Dandy hike over to the woods. My patrol got there first and
pretty soon the Ravens came along and Doc Carson had his First Aid
kit--you'd think somebody was going to fight a duel, honest. "Why don't
you start a base hospital and be done with it?", I said.

Pretty soon the Elks came along and Skinny was with them. As soon as I
looked at him I felt kind of bad like, for I saw I was right about the
two dollars. I knew I was right all the time, but now I saw it and
jingoes, it spoiled all my fun. Because he had a belt-axe on and I
could see he was very proud of it. He came up to me and smiled that
funny kind of a smile he had, and he said, "I got one; see, I got one."

It was a new one all right, but not a regular scout-axe, and I guessed
he must have bought it in the hardware store. It was what they call a
camp axe--just the same only different. His belt was loose anyway, on
account of him being so thin, but the axe dragged it way down and made
him look awful funny, but he had on the scout smile and that's the
principal thing.

"It's a good one, ain't it?" he asked me.

"It's all right," I said, but I just couldn't take it and look at it.

"It'll cut, too," he said; "and I'm going to chop down a lot of trees.
And it's my very own, isn't it?"

Jiminy, I didn't know how to answer that, so I didn't say anything, only
I told him not to chop down many because he wasn't strong yet. And I
told him not to chop any that didn't have chalk marks. I told him to ask
Connie Bennett, and to stay near him, because Connie is the Elks' leader
ever since Tom Slade went away. "You do what Connie tells you", I said.

Well, the way that kid started you'd think he was going to chop the North
Pole in half. "He'd be able to chop through the equator in a couple of
hours at that rate," I told Connie. But anyway, he was getting fresh air
and a whole lot of fun. Some of the fellows chopped and some of them cut
off the branches and tied the saplings together, three or four each,
because we were going to haul them as far as the bridge and then float
them down to the landing.

Every little while I looked at Skinny and he was chopping away at one
sapling for dear life. He had it all full of nicks and every nick had
a place all to itself.

"That isn't chopping, it's what you call woodcarving," Dorry Benton said.

"He's a good butcher, anyway," Artie said.

Every time Skinny hit, he hit in a different place and he would never get
the sapling dow