Dirty and I immediately recognized the two persons as our Scoutmasters: my father and Kmart Cowboy’s father.
“Oh shit,” Dirty mumbled, dropping his club to the ground.
I tried to conceal my club behind my body and then tossed it into the bushes beside me.
“You boys thought you made it out of camp clean, didn’t you?” Kmart Cowboy’s father asked.
“Yeah, well, um…”
“We knew where you were going,” my father said. “We followed you all the way here.”
Dirty and I looked at each other in panic, apparently both thinking of the previous raid upon the rival Scout troop’s campsite.
“We lost you for a little bit back in those other campsites but we knew where you were heading,” Kmart Cowboy’s father avowed.
I let out a sigh of relief. My father and the other Scoutmaster apparently walked straight to the trail leading to the pine forest and did not circumvent Camp Maple Dell as we did. Thus, they consequently did not witness us raiding the other campsite or see Fire Crotch defecating on the trail.
“So what were you boys just talking about?” my father asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Dirty replied. “Kmart Cowboy was just telling us about some dreams that he had.”
“Yeah, we heard that part,” Kmart Cowboy’s father stated. “But then it got quiet and you started laughing afterward. What was your other friend doing?”
Dirty and I looked at each other again, searching each other’s face for a viable excuse. “He was just telling us some jokes,” I lied.
“Well, we probably need to have a little discussion back at camp about some of the things we heard you boys talking about,” my father stated.
“Where did them other two run off to?” Kmart Cowboy’s father asked.
“They must have got scared,” I replied. “I guess they thought you were someone else. They took off running that way.”
“We’ll go find them,” Dirty suggested.
Dirty and I quickly turned away from our two Scoutmasters, thoroughly embarrassed over the fact that they had both earjacked our nasty conversation. We briskly walked in the direction of where we saw Kmart Cowboy running. “Son of a bitch, dude,” Dirty commented as we started walking through the pine forest toward the direction of where our compatriots had ran. “I can’t believe they were there the whole time.”
“Well, they didn’t hear everything,” I pointed out. “They wouldn’t have been asking us questions if they heard everything. We weren’t the ones talking about that nasty shit anyway. Kmart Cowboy had his pube-harvesting dream and Fire Crotch was the one showing his little dick to everyone.”
“You think they heard my eyebrow theory?”
“Oh, yeah, they probably heard that too.”
“Dammit.”
Kmart Cowboy suddenly appeared from behind the trunk of a large pine. “Tell me that wasn’t my dad back there,” he said, his voice straining.
“That was your dad back there,” Dirty stated.
“And mine too,” I added.
“Oh shit!”
“They heard everything,” Dirty remarked.
“Yeah, they know all about your pube dreams now and my old man wants to have some words with us when we get back to camp.”
“Fuck me!”
“Where’s Fire Crotch?” Dirty asked.
“He’s right here,” Kmart Cowboy replied. “Get out here!” he yelled off into the pine forest.
Seconds later, Fire Crotch appeared from behind another pine tree several yards away. He walked over to join us.
“We’re so busted,” Dirty announced to Fire Crotch.
“Isn’t that you guys’ dads?” Fire Crotch asked, squinting past us to see our two Scoutmasters that we left behind near the forest perimeter.
“Yep!” Kmart Cowboy responded.
“They’re probably waiting for us to walk back with them,” Dirty stated.
“Let’s ditch them,” I suggested.
“How?” Kmart Cowboy asked. “There’s only one trail out of here!”
“They’re old,” I pointed out. “They won’t be able to keep up with us. Let’s just walk back there and get on the trail. After we get hiking, we’ll just speed up and leave them behind. I don’t want to hear any lecture about pubes, man!”
“Okay, sounds like a plan.”
The four of us momentarily returned to where our Scoutmasters were standing. As we had plotted, we began the return hike back to our camp, following the main trail. We walked in pace with our Scoutmasters for one hundred yards or so and then gradually began walking faster. After several minutes, we substantially increased our pace. Within a short amount of time, the two Scoutmasters were well behind us, out of site along the various twists and turns of the hiking trail.
As we carried on down the trail at our brisk pace, my three comrades and I largely kept silent. Few words were uttered between us during the return hike and we soon reached the peripheral campsites of Camp Maple Dell. Once we re-entered the campsite areas, we encountered two staff members who were walking near the main lodge. They were in the midst of an intense conversation and were speaking loud enough to clearly be heard.
“That entire grub box was nearly destroyed,” one of the staff members said to his companion. “They must have taken a week’s worth of food out of there. So it wasn’t just one kid.”
“I’ve been working here for thirteen years,” the other staff member commented to his pal, “and I have never heard of someone going to the bathroom inside another Scout’s tent. I mean that is just downright foul.”
“There were two tents, Jim.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“There was that pillowcase found in the red tent and then the brownish tent had someone relieve themselves inside that poor kid’s sleeping bag.”
Dirty and I looked at each other with restrained laughter while overhearing the verbal exchange between the two staff members. Kmart Cowboy and Fire Crotch both hung their heads and looked at the ground as the two men crossed the path in front of us. The staff members took notice of us as they walked past, paused, and then abruptly halted.
“Hey, you boys,” one of the gentlemen addressed us. My comrades and I instinctively kept walking, acting as if we did not hear the man’s voice. “Hey, can we talk to you boys for a minute? Hey!”
Fire Crotch finally looked up and stopped walking, causing a chain reaction for the rest of us to stop walking as well. The two staff members slowly neared our small group, looking us over in a suspicious manner. Dirty and I stared at them carefully and prepared to run.
“What were you boys doing out that way?”
“Just hiking,” Kmart Cowboy quickly replied.
“Oh yeah? Where are you getting back from?”
“The pine forest.”
The two staff members looked around, glanced at each other, and then continued. “Were you boys alone all afternoon?”
“No,” I said. “Our Scoutmasters were with us. They followed us to the pine forest and are right behind us up the trail there a little bit.”
“Did you boys walk through