ing to succeed his father in the editorial chair.

"So, 'Fatty' was there!" exclaimed one of the group. "How did you ever
get him into a houseboat? Must have been a big one!"

"Yes, Frank was there," Fremont replied, with a friendly glance at
young Shaw. "His father sent him along to report the expedition."

"I haven't seen any book about it!" broke in another.

"Frank wrote four postal cards and nine letters," laughed Fremont. "The
cards were descriptive of the scenery, and the letters asked for more
money."

"Why can't we get up a trip down the Rio Grande this spring?" was
asked. "The soldiers are on the border, and it would be sporty. We can
stand guard with Uncle Sam."

"I want to know how Fremont got his houseboat," said one of the lads.
"Perhaps we can get one in the same way. It would be fun to build a
boat. Anyhow, I'm for the Rio Grande trip this spring. It would be
glorious."

"We might build the boat up in New Mexico," said the other, "and drop
down to the Gulf. That is, I guess we could. The Rio Grande is
shallow, and large boats run only a short distance up the river, but we
might make it with a small one."

"Let Fremont tell how he built his boat and got his provisions."

"Well," Fremont began, "we were standing on the high bridge at
Nashville, one day, when Frank Shaw brought out the brilliant thought.
He was doing a thinking part just then, for there was a fine chance of
our getting good and hungry before our checks got to us."

"Then he was thinking, all right!" a boy laughed.

"Frank explained," George continued, "that the Cumberland river had
been placed in the scenery for the sole purpose of providing
transportation for us to the Mississippi. Then he went on and told how
we could build a flat-boat with a cabin on it and beat the railroads
out of our fare to Cairo. So we counted our money, right there, on the
bridge, and started for a lumber yard."

"It was a sporty notion, all right! Just you wait until we get a
houseboat into the dirty waters of the Rio Grande!"

"When we got the lumber, we all turned to and built the boat. We didn't
know much about boat-building, but we used what few brains we had and
got the boards together in pretty good shape, considering. Boy Scouts
can do almost anything now, since they're learning how to help
themselves. There isn't a boy in the room who can't build a fire with
sticks and cook a good meal on it. Also, we'll show, directly, that we