"If you had no money, how did you get your houseboat?" asked
another member of the group. "Houseboats don't grow on bushes
down there, do they?"

"Oh, we had a little money," George Fremont replied, "but not
enough to take us to Chicago in Pullman coaches. The joint
purse was somewhere about $10. We built the houseboat ourselves,
of course."

"Must have been a strange experience, going broke like that!"
one of the others said. "Hurry up and tell us about it! I
believe it does a fellow good, once in a while, to get where
he's got to hustle for himself or go hungry!" he added,
glancing at the others for appreciation of the sentiment.

"I suppose it does seem funny for some other fellow to be broke
in a desolate land," said another voice, "but it isn't so funny
right there on the spot. Little Old New York looked a long way
off when we were in Nashville!"

The speaker, a boy of sixteen, short, and heavily built, left a
window from which he had been looking out on a wild March night
and joined the group before the fire. This was Frank Shaw,
familiarly known to his friends of the Black Bear Patrol, Boy
Scouts of America, as "Fatty" Shaw. He was the only son of a
wealthy newspaper owner of the big city, and in training to
succeed his father in the editorial chair.

"So, 'Fatty' was there!" exclaimed one of the group. "How did