Scouts to the Rescue (1939), Chapter 11: “Hurtling Through Space”
The Resolution: Are you ready for this one? Are you ready? Bruce doesn’t get killed falling off a three-story roof because he lands in a huge vat of water. One of two, actually. Because for some reason, in this ghost town where tumbleweeds blow through the unpaved streets on which no grass grows, there’s enough rainwater that these two giants vats are filled to the brim.
Okay, whatever…
The Narrative: When Mary sees Bruce fall off the building, she immediately faints (apparently, she didn’t think it likely he would fall into a vat of water either). So when the gangsters are scared off by Marvin and Scanlon’s fresh ammunition and the Boy Scouts’ arrows and Indian sounds, they spy Mary on the ground and grab her as a hostage.
When the Boy Scouts discover that Mary is gone, they split into tracking parties, because nothing can track like a Boy Scout! Naturally, it’s Bruce’s and Rip’s team that picks up the tracks of the car that the gangsters use for their escape until it ran out of gas. Bruce uses the two-way radio in the car to contact, Bugs, the Boy Scout ham radio operator who couldn’t come on the camping trip because he’s on crutches, waaaay back in Chapter One. Bruce tells Bugs to get ahold of the G-Men (who’ve been in town, wondering what happened to Marvin) and send them up to Ghost Town in a car.
Then he and Rip track the gangsters overland, breaking sticks and stacking rocks and suchlike to blaze their trail. The tracking team led by Skeets finds the markers and go back to Ghost Town to round up some other Scouts, along with Marvin, Scanlon, and the newly-arrived G-Men. (In other words, even town is only about five blocks away!)
Bruce and Rip follow the trail to the old cabin that the gangsters use as their second hideout, and where the gangster are making Mary (naturally) cook for them. Fortunately, they’ve taken some things from the trunk of the gangsters’ car that they can MacGyver together into a rescue plan: some more cartridges, some loose gunpowder, and a long rope. First, they use sticks to dig a trench behind a row of bushes opposite the cabin, then pore in a line of gunpowder and a couple of boxes’ worth of cartridges. Then Rip ties up Bruce and leads him to the cabin as “the darned Scout that he captured.” The gangsters don’t know he’s switched sides, so they accept a second hostage.
Then Rip volunteers to go outside for a bucket of water for Mary’s kitchen duties, lights off the gunpowder, and rushes back in with a story of seeing a half-dozen G-Men coming toward the cabin. The gangsters start rushing out to shoot at the bushes from which gunshot reports are coming fast and furious. Inside, Bruce has gotten out of his bonds (he’s a Boy Scout — of course he can easily get out of Rip’s knots!), and he, Rip and Mary sneak out the back way.
The Cliffhanger: Their plan is to scale a cliff behind the cabin (which, um, was never there in any previous shot). But Mary sees a mountain lion, falls, and ends up unconscious onto a ledge that can only be accessed from above. Rip starts to lower Bruce with the rope, but then the mountain lion leaps at Rip, he lets go of the rope, and Bruce falls! Wow, two weeks in a row we end with Bruce in mid-air!
Next Week: The Boy Scouts Triumph (the last chapter!)
Scouts to the Rescue | Nathan Shumate October 24, 2009
