AS PEE-WEE RAISED HIS MEGAPHONE OUT FELL THE COFFEE POT AND OTHER STUFF.
“It’s all right, come ahead!” the kid called through the megaphone.
When we came to the porch the man looked us over very funny, like. He didn’t laugh, but I think he was having a hard job not to. Then I knew we’d win because I could see he was losing his morale.
He said, “Well, what’s all this?”
I said, “This is the Silver Fox Patrol, First Bridgeboro Troop, Boy Scouts of America, and I’m their leader and we’re on a bee-line hike and we can only go straight west.”
He said, “And who are all those youngsters out on the sidewalk?”
I said, “They’re just following us, they don’t count.”
He said, “Oh.”
Then Pee-wee said, “I’ll tell you about the scouts. When they start out to do a thing, they do it. See? Nothing can stop them. Maybe you know howa—a—cannon-ballgoes——”
The man said, “I can imagine.”
“You know what irresistible is?” the kid asked him. “Well, that’s what we are.”
The man said, “Oh, I see.”
“Sure,” Pee-wee said; “things that are hard, that’s what we like.”
“We eat ’em alive,” Westy said.
I said to Pee-wee, “Do you know what insubordinate is? Well, that’s whatyouare. Keep still while I talk. You’re only my official staff.”
The man said, “Well, you’d better pick up your official coffee-pot and saucepan, and state your terms. I’m not sure that I want an irresistible army of invasion going through my house.”
“Irresistible armies of invasion aren’t so bad,” the kid piped up. “I’ll tell you how it is——”
“Keep still,” I said, “or I’ll put you in the megaphone.” Then I said to the man, “We started from Blakeley’s Hill and we pledged ourselves to go straight west——”
“Without deviation,” the kid shouted; “do you know what that means?”
I said, “We pledged ourselves to go straight west till we come to a certain tree on west ridge, and not to turn to the right or the left. So you seewe’ll have to go right through your house.”
The man just sat there a little while, kind of thinking. I began to get anxious.
The kid said, “You know scouts always wipe their feet when they go in a house. Maybe they’re kind of wild, but they always wipe their feet.”
I could see the man was trying hard not to laugh, and he just sat there thinking. Then he said, “Since you admit scouts are wild I think I won’t let them go through my house.”
“Now, you see,” I whispered to Pee-wee.
“Oh, they’re not soverywild,” he said.
All the time the man seemed to be thinking and he said, “If you could just climb over the house now; wouldn’t that be better? Since you can do anything? I think you said you areirresistible.”
Good night!I could have strangled that kid. I said, “We’d like to go the easiest way.”
The man said, “Ah, then youdon’treally care for hard things? You are what might be called parlor scouts. I see. How about your appetites?”
“I’ll tell you about our appetites!” the kid shouted.
I said, “Believe me, we can give you the best recommendations.”
Then the man said, “Well, I’m sorry I can’t let you go through the house.”
I said, “You don’t think we’d take any food, do you?”
He said, “Not that, but I’m afraid going through the house is out of the question. If you would care to try climbing over it I’ll supply you with ladders. While my gardener is getting the ladders, cake and pie will be served. That is my proposition. If you care to take me up, all right. If not, we part friends. A man’s house is his castle; I dare say you’ve heard that. If you are so wild and adventurous, show your mettle.”
I said, “Didn’t you see metal enough when my official staff spilled the saucepan and the coffee-pot and things?”
The man just said, “That is my offer. Cake, pie and the roof. Or nothing. You are the leader. What do you say?”
“Say yes,” Pee-wee whispered to me.
Jiminies, that kid would climb over the Woolworth Building for a piece of pie.
Table of Contents
FAMINE
I said, “All right, we accept the offer.”
“Just sit around and make yourselves at home,” the man said. Then he went around the side of the house.
Jiminies, we didn’t know what to make of that man. He was nice and sociable, and he seemed to be always trying not to laugh, and everybody knows that fat people are good-natured. And he seemed kind of to like us, too. Then why didn’t he let us go through his house? That was whatIwanted to know. If he had just been grouchy and ordered us off his place we wouldn’t have been so surprised. But if he liked us well enough to go to some trouble on account of us, then why wouldn’t he let us just go through his house?
I said, “We should worry. It won’t be the firstroof I climbed over. Only I don’t understand it, that’s all.”
“It’s a mystery,” Pee-wee said. “Maybe he’s got some kind of a plot. Hey?”
“Maybe he just wants to see if we can make good,” Westy said.
Hunt said, “We’ll give him a demonstration, all right.”
“Maybe he meditates treachery,” the kid said. I guess he got those words out of the movies.
“Well,” I said, “we’re here because we’re here and we’re going to stay here and see it through.”
Pretty soon the plot grew thicker. We could hear that man talking over the telephone in the house. He was saying, “Yes, get here as soon as you can; a big haul.”
“We’re going to get hauled in,” Pee-wee said. “He’s calling up the police. What shall we do?” He looked frightened.
I said, “Stay right here; we’re not quitters.”
Then we could hear the man saying more. Gee williger, it had me guessing. He said,“Yes—yes. Oh, we could release them in a couple of months.”
“Did you hear what he said?” Pee-wee whispered. “They’ll release us in a couple of months.Come on, let’s get out of here. What do you think it means?”
I said, “I don’t know what it means. This man has me guessing. But we haven’t done anything wrong. This is the Bee-line hike. Are we going to see it through or not?”
“We are!” they all said.
“All right,” I said; “over the roof for us.”
Dorry said, “I guess if Warde Hollister saw us now he’d say we’re up against a real adventure.”
“All he wants is to be a movie actor,” Pee-wee said. “That’s what he told me. He said scouts were just kids. I bet he’d have to admit that this is a dark mystery, all right.”
Dorry said, “I know that man’s name all right, it’s Copley. Often I see him at the station.”
“I knew he had something to do with cops,” Hunt said. “I wonder how soon we’ll know what’s up his sleeve.”
“I wonder how soon he’ll pass the cake,” Pee-wee said.
Anyway we didn’t have to wait long for the refreshments. Mrs. Copley came out and passed around cake and cookies and things and she was nice and friendly. And while we were sprawlingaround on the porch eating, a man came around with a couple of ladders.
Mrs. Copley said, “I’ll just lay this plate of cookies on the table and you boys can help yourselves while you’re waiting for Mr. Copley to come out.” Then she put the plate on a little wicker table over near the end of the porch. After that she went in the house.
Pee-wee said, “Those cookies are good, I’m going to have a couple more.”
“Don’t go over to the end of the porch,” I told him. “We have to stay right here in front of the door; this is where the bee-line is.”
“The bee-line can have a branch to it while we’re waiting,” the kid said. “Maybe the bee-line might be wider than youthink—maybe.”
“The bee-line runs just this side of those cookies,” I said.
“You’re a fine kind of a leader,” he said, “to let her stand that plate over there. Is that what you call tactics?”
I said, “Why didn’t you take a half dozen cookies when she passed them around the same as the rest of us did? You only took one.”
“You don’t call that tactics, do you?” Westy asked him.
“I’ve got some manners,” the kid said.
I said, “Well, you haven’t got any cookies. Look here.” Then I showed him about a half a dozen. Oh, boy, they were nice and brown and crisp and they had nuts in them. The fellows all had about as many as a dozen cookies each, because Mrs. Copley had said, “Oh,dotake more, I’msureyou’re a hungry lot of scouts.”
Pee-wee sat there on one of the steps watching us eat cookies. Every time he moved I said, “You stay right where you are. Remember, this is abee-line hike.”
Westy said, “These cookies are mighty good.”
I said,“M—mmm,that’s what they are.”
Hunt said, “They’re about the best I ever tasted. I’ve got eleven left.”
“I bet they were just cooked,” Dorry said.
I said, “Well, here goes another.”
Will Dawson said, “That’s one thing I like about the Raven Patrol; they have such good manners.”
Pee-wee said, “Do you mean to tell me a bee-linecan’t havea—a—kind of a side track to it? Especially when we’re sitting still?”
“Oh, positively not,” I said. “A bee-line hasn’t even got any waves or wrinkles in it. It’s just as straight as a line drawn right through the middle of this cookie.”
“Or this one,” Westy said.
I said, “Yes, but this one is bigger. Do you see this cookie, Kid? Do you see that nut sticking up out of the end of it? Now suppose I draw a straight line——”
“You make me tired!” the kid yelled, and he started to get up.
“My official staff will be seated,” I said.
“You call this a kind of an army, don’t you?” the kid shouted. “Do you mean to tell me that we can’t make a flank movement?”
“Couldn’t be did,” I said; “remember your solemn pledge. Your duty is to stay as near to your beloved leader as you can. You just notice how these fellows obey me;now watch. Every scout will take a cookie in his right hand. When I say three they will start to eat. One, two, three. A scout is obedient——”
“You mean a scout is resourceful,” the kidshouted, jumping to his feet. All of a sudden he grabbed the coil of rope we had and,good night, if he didn’t lasso the table and drag it over to him!
Just as he pulled the table within reach and was starting to fill his pockets with cookies, we heard some one call.
“Still! Just a minute! Don’t move!”
Table of Contents
REEL ADVENTURE
“All right. Good.” I heard the voice say.
We all looked around and standing there on the lawn was Mr. Copley smiling and right beside him a fellow about twenty-five years old, I guess. He had an awful nice smile, with a regular good-natured, open face. Right beside him was a camera, and down on the ground was a big kind of a leather box with a handle to it. On that box was printed:
COPLEY FILM CORPORATIONTHE WEEKLY ANIMATED NEWSALL THE WORLD IN PICTURES.
“G-o-o-d night!” I said. “We’re pinched. We’re in the movies!”
Mr. Copley said, “Boys, this is Mr. Tom Gilligan, of the Animated News. Our young friendof the megaphone is now famous. He will appear on the same film with President Harding leaving the White House in an automobile. Now we’re going to give the people of the United States and Canada a glimpse of an amusing novelty, a scout bee-line hike. The next picture shows the young heroes climbing over a house which happens to be in their path.”
So that’s how it happened that part of our bee-line hike got on the screen. Most movie stars get a lot of money, but anyway we got a lot of cookies. And that’s how it was that people away out in California could see our young hero lassoing a wild and woolly wicker table and massacring a whole tribe of cookies. We came right after President Harding. He was lucky because if we’d come along about ten seconds sooner on that film we’d have been climbing over the top of the White House. Just after us on that film came a railroad train that had been wrecked. That was one thing we escaped on our hike anyway.
Mr. Tom Gilligan was a nice fellow. He went around the country taking pictures of all sorts of things, famous men smiling and shaking hands, and houses burning down and people beingcrushed by falling buildings and everything. He said Pee-wee lassoing cookies was one of the best things he ever took. He said he’d like to take Pee-wee again.
I said, “Take him for all we care; you’re welcome to him. Only don’t bring him back.”
It wasn’t hard climbing over that house, but Tom Gilligan made us do a lot of fancy things. He said people would like that. So we had Pee-wee roll down the shed in back of the house and spill all the stuff out of his megaphone. It’s worth thirty cents and the war tax to see that. You’ll see me standing up on the peak of the house hugging the chimney, and holding my hand above my eyes and scanning the distant country to the West. This is what it said on that picture: “Scout Blakeley picking out the bee-line to the West, guided by his distant beacon.”
It was easy sliding down the roof in back; we just slid down onto the back porch and down to the ground.
In back of that house is Monument Park. It isn’t very big, you can put it in your pocket. Tom Gilligan said he’d go a little farther with us to see what we ran into next.
Now from Monument Park we could see the big poplar tree good and plain. The reason for that was partly on account of the park being so open and partly on account of the land beyond being low, because all the while we were going down toward the river. West of the park there aren’t so many houses because in Bridgeboro a lot of people don’t like to live too near the river. Some people are crazy. The houses down that way are not so big and they’re not so close together.
The only thing that stood in our way in the park was the big wooden fence, sort of, with all the soldiers’ names on it. It wasn’t so very long and we might have gone around it only I decided that our path was right about through the middle of it. So we crawled under it.
Then right ahead of us was River Road, crossing our path. We stopped and took a squint and used our compass and decided that our path was between two houses.
Tom Gilligan said, “I think it’s right through that house on the left.”
I said, “No, sir, it’s right across the lawn between the two houses. You just want us to getinto some trouble so you can show the whole of the United States and Canada. I know you.”
He said, “You kids take another look at that tree. Your bee-line is just—exactly—precisely—across the side porch of that house with the brown shingles. Now you see.”
I said, “You’re right. I’ve got to send my official staff to that house for permission to cross neutral territory.”
But when I looked around for my official staff, there he was standing stark still about ten yards behind us.
I said, “Come ahead, official staff. What’s the matter with you?”
He said, “Do you know whose house that is? I didn’t know because I never came toward it this way before. It’s Warde Hollister’s house. I can tell by the bay window.”
“That suits me,” I said.
“You’ll—you’ll have to use diplomacy,” Pee-wee said. “I know that fellow.”
“Believe me,” I said, “I’ve got the diploma for diplomacy. You fellows camp right here and leave that fellow to me. Here’s where we not only cross neutral porches, but here’s where wetake a prisoner, too. In about ten minutes I’ll have the enemy eating out of my hand.”
“What?” Pee-wee just blurted out.
“Eating out of my hand,” I said. “You know what eating means, don’t you?”
“S——sure I do,” the kid said.
Table of Contents
DIPLOMACY
I left the fellows where they were and went across the street, keeping straight west. Away over on the ridge, beyond the river and beyond Little Valley, I could see the big tree good and clear against the sky. It seemed sort of lonely up there. I said to myself, “You wait, old tree, we’re coming straight along.” Gee whiz, I was kind of glad that our destination was a tree and not some building or other. You’ll never catch me planting the Silver Fox emblem on the roof of an apartment house. I’m not saying anything against buildings, but one thing, I have no use for them. My mother says it’s good to have a roof over your head, but I’d rather have it underneath me because you can have more fun climbing over it, that’s what I told her. That’s why I believe in roofs. But I like trees better. I like trees better than anything except holidays. The thing I like worst of all is algebra.
I went straight over to that house and stopped on the sidewalk right plunk in front of the part of the porch that sticks out past the end of the house. Then I gave the Silver Fox call good and loud. As soon as Pee-wee heard me he started shouting it through the megaphone. It sounded like a Silver Fox with a cold.
Pretty soon the door opened,and—good night, there was Warde Hollister.
I said, “Tag, you’re It. Will you please come down here on neutral territory? We belong to the League of Notions and we can’t cross anyfrontiers—I mean front yards.”
He said, “What do you want here?”
I said, “Answered in the affirmative. We’re here because we’re here and the end of your front porch is in the way. It sticks out like the West Front just before the armistice.”
“You must be crazy,” he said.
“Positively guaranteed,” I told him. “We’re so crazy that a crazy quilt is sensible compared to us.”
“If you want to see me, come up here,” he said. “Are you afraid to come up?”
“Afraid?” I said. “Didn’t we go right into the same film with President Harding? Who’s afraid ofyou? Not I, quoth he. I can’t come up because I can’t go off the track and your front steps are about thirty feet too far north.”
“You’re one of those scouts,” he said.
“Tell me something new,” I said; “did you think I didn’t know that? Maybe you don’t know I’m a famous movie star; we’reallstars, we’re known as the big dipper. Did you ever hear of Douglas Saving Banks?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Well, I’m not him,” I told him. “Come on down, will you?”
He looked across the street and saw the rest of the fellows and I guess he must have seen the big leather box withCopley Film Corporationon it. Anyway, he just stared. Then he came over to the end of the porch and sat on the railing and said,
“What do you want, anyway? One of you fellows was here yesterday. I told him I didn’t want to bother with you.”
“That was my official staff,” I said. “We don’t bother with him either; we carry him as excess baggage. That’s the Japanese junk man. Did you ever hear that song? It’s dedicated to him. We should worry about the scouts. But you see this is the way it is. We’ve got the movie people after us and we can’t get rid of them. They’re trying to stir up a new war here in Bridgeboro after everything is all peaceful again and school is closed. We’re on a bee-line hike to a big tree over on west ridge, and we have to go straight no matter what’s in the way. Gee whiz, it’s not much fun.
“But, anyway, that big fellow thinks if we try to climb across your porch it will be a good idea for you to come out and look very grouchy and try to stop us; maybe you could look that way if you tried to, hey? And then we’ll be very sweet and nice and give you a big hunk of candy and you’ll say the boy scouts are all right and you’d like to join them. Of course you don’t have toreallyjoin them. All you have to do is be in the animated news, all the world in pictures, right in the same film with President Harding. Maybe you wouldn’t care to be a movie actor, hey? You should worry, it will soon be over. Mr. Gilligan, he just wants to show how fellows get to be scouts. It’s propaganda. After it’s all over you can go in the house again, and we’ll beat it for the river. You don’t have toreallyjoin, it’s only in the picture. See? It won’t be a real chunk of candy we hand you so as to show that we’re kind and generous. It will be a rock. But it will look like candy. It will be rockcandy.”
Table of Contents
THE BEE-LINE
So if you saw that animated-news-of-all-the-world film and saw Pee-wee Harris handing a nice piece of candy to a boy who isn’t a scout, you’ll know it wasn’t real candy he was handing him. That’s why he had such a generous, kind look on his face. A scout isbrotherly—especially with rocks.
That was the only movie play I ever wrote. I didn’t write that, but I thought it up. Tom Gilligan said it was fine. One good thing, there were only three pictures in it. It was a scout propaganda picture. It was calledKindness Wins, or Letting Him Have a Rock. Only Tom Gilligan cut out the last part of the name.
That picture showed us all climbing over the railing of that porch, and then it showed Warde Hollister coming out and shaking his fist at us.He did that fine for a fellow that wasn’t a scout. Then it showed us telling him about our adventures and showing him the coffee-pot and all the cooking things. And then it showed our generous little hero handing him a nice piece of candy. After that the fellow said he’d like to join the scouts because they had such a lot of fun. And so he joined and they all lived happily forever and forever.
After Tom Gilligan had taken the pictures just the way he wanted them Warde Hollister threw the piece of rock at a tree and missed it because he wasn’t a scout—because scouts always aim straight, only they don’t throw rocks, but if they did they wouldn’t miss.
“Now you’re in the movies,” I said, “and you’re satisfied because that’s just what you wanted. And we thank you a lot.”
He said, “Where are you going now?”
“Oh, just across the porch if you’ll let us,” I told him, “and then across the river in a bee-line. Some job, hey? Then straight for that big tree on the ridge. You look up there late this evening and see if there’s a fire burning. Then you’ll know we’re roasting potatoes. Do you know what I think? I think the bee-line takes us right through the haunted house across the river. I bet you’re glad you’re only a scout in the movies. Pity the poor scouts, hey?”
He said, kind of hesitating, “I’m not afraid of haunted houses.”
“Are you afraid of snakes?” Pee-wee piped up.
He said, “No, I’m not.I—like roasted potatoes, though.”
“How many do you like?” the kid asked him.
“As many as I can get,” Warde said. “And I’d like to go with you fellows if you’ll let me.”
Westy said, “Do you mean you’d like to join the scouts?”
He said, “Yes, I do.”
Tom Gilligan was standing there with his camera over his shoulder and his big leather bag in his hand, all ready to go away. I guess he was going back to the station and I was sorry because I liked that fellow.
He said to Warde, “You’re a wise young fellow, you are. Go in for the real thing and don’t bother with imitations. What’s the use of jumping off a cliff made of pasteboard when you’ve got real roofs to climb over? What’s the use of doing stunts in a studio when you can go on a bee-line hike across the country? You’re a wise young fellow, you are. You stick to the boy scouts; they’ll keep you moving.”
Then he said, “Well, so long, kids.” And away he went.
I said, “Come over here right close to us and keep near us, Warde. We’re keeping this bee-line as narrow as we can.”
He jumped up on the porch rail right beside us. The others were all right there, squatting on the porch or sitting on the rail. We could see across the river and past the old ramshackle buildings there and right over the village of Little Valley to the ridge. That big tree stood up higher than all the others and it seemed just as if it were all alone off there. I guess it was about one o’clock then.
I said, “We’re going to cook some eats as soon as we get to the river, because we like to eat near where there’s water. Then we’ll have to think how we’ll get across.”
“Did you come straight all the way from your house?” Warde wanted to know.
“Just as straight as we could,” I said. “If we side-stepped anything we didn’t mean to. There’s no use saying you’re going to do a thing, and then kid yourself about it and not do it. Maybe a bee-line hike is kind of crazy, but it’s hard, too. It’s easy to make yourself think the line runs between two houses when it doesn’t. It’s sort of the same when you get to be a scout. It’s like a bee-linehike—sort of.”
We all just sat there and nobody said anything until Westy said, “That’s right.”
“Maybe you don’t understand,” Dorry said.
Warde said, “Yes, I do understand.”
After that nobody said anything, not even Pee-wee, and we just sat there.
“Sure you can go with us,” I told him. “And just as I said, you’ll see we’re kind of crazy. But just the same we don’t sneak around and we don’t turn back; not till we have to, anyway. You can join the scouts just for the fun of it if you want; the same as you can start on a bee-line hike and go zigzagging around the easiest way if you want to. Maybe you don’t understand just exactly what I mean,” I said to him. “Anyway there’s a place to be filled in my patrol.”
“Could I getin—maybe?” he asked.
I said, “Sure you could. Who’s stopping you? Even one of our fellows came after you, didn’t he? And you see for yourself how the movie people come afterus. You don’t see us running after them. They know where adventures are, all right.”
“And no war tax either,” Westy said.
“And plenty of eats,” Pee-wee piped up.
Then for a little while again none of us said anything.
Table of Contents
EATS
So that’s how Warde Hollister got to be a Silver-plated Fox. Already he has four merit badges and he’s crazy like the rest of us, only more so. If he keeps on, maybe he’ll be as crazy as I am because I wasn’t so crazy when I started.
And that shows how you never can tell what you may run into on a bee-line hike. But when it comes to running into things just you wait till you get to the next chapter.
Now from Warde Hollister’s house we went straight for the river. There aren’t many houses down there and the land is low and we could see the tree all the time. We had to climb over a couple of fences and over the storage shed of the boat club, and we had to crawl under Benton’s ice house that stands on piles.
Then we came to the river. There are willow trees down there and we sat under one of them to eat our lunch. We started a fire and I made some flapjacks. Warde Hollister said that was the first time he had ever eaten lunch out in the open like that and he said it was fine.
I said, “Have all you want, don’t be bashful. They’re nice and tender, they’re intended for tenderfeet.”
He said, “Is that what I am?”
“You’re not anything yet,” I told him; “you have to pass some tests; endurance tests and things like that. I’m going to introduce you to our scoutmaster and he’ll take care of you.”
“Eating flapjacks is an endurance test,” Pee-wee said.
Westy said, “Sure, if you can eat these you can do anything.”
“Are some of those things hard?” Warde asked me. “I mean those tests,” he said.
“They’re not so hard as these flapjacks,” Hunt Manners told him.
“Oh, is that so?” I said. “I notice hard things don’t troubleyoumuch.”
He said, “The pleasure is mine; flop me another one, will you?”
“They call these things stove-lids up at Temple Camp,” Will Dawson told Warde.
I said, “Yes, and you’re a pretty good stove-lifter, all right.”
“I bet you have a lot of fun, you fellows,” Warde said, kind of laughing.
“Sure,” I told him, “we have so much fun that even the weeping willows die crying from laughing so hard. If you had this patrol to look after your hair would soon turn white. My teeth are white already from worrying. We remind ourselves of balloons instead of foxes. We should worry. You’re in for it now and you can’t help yourself. The worst is yet to come. Don’t you care, smile and look pleasant. You might have done worse, you might have got into the Raven Patrol.”
“What’s the matter with the Raven Patrol?” the kid shouted, trying to eat a flapjack and shout at the same time.
“One good thing about them,” Westy said.
“What’s that?” Hunt asked him.
“That’s that they’re not here,” Westy said.
“The Raven Patrol willbe—it’ll be flourishing when the Silver Foxes are all busted up!” the kid shouted.
“Sure,” I told him, “but not until then. Wait till you see that bunch,” I said to Warde. “They’re dead and they don’t know it.”
“They died laughing at P. Harris,” Westy said.
“You think you’re so smart, don’t you?” the kid shouted. “One of our patrol is camp librarian at Temple Camp.”
“They’re all highbrows,” Westy said. “They think Scott’s Emulsion is by Sir Walter Scott. They’re all busy studying monotony in that patrol.”
“Do you mean to tell me that—that—that Ravens——” the kid began yelling.
“You see how ravens can go up in the air,” I said to Warde. “Now you know why they’re called the Raving Ravens. They’re all right as long as you don’t feed them meat. They think you can do good turns riding on a merry-go-round.”
“What’s the second-hand scout?” Warde wanted to know.
“Good night,” I said, “don’t make me laugh. You mean a second-classscout. Of course there are slightly used scouts, 1915 models, but you wouldn’t call them exactly second-hand. First comes the tenderfoot, then the second-class scout and then the first-classscout—and above that are the Silver Foxes in a class by themselves.”
“That’s because they can’t get anybody to go in the class with them,” Pee-wee shouted.
Westy said, “Well, here we are talking about classes in vacation time. In a minute we’ll be talking about arithmetic. Let’s talk of something pleasant while we’re eating.”
I said, “Sure, let’s talk of something pleasant. I didn’t start talking about the Ravens. The question is how are we going to follow a bee-line across the river? I wish the equator went across the river and we could walk on that.”
Table of Contents
BLACK OR WHITE
We knew it would be pretty easy going after we got across the river. But getting across the river, that was the question. We knew well enough that we couldn’t swim straight across on account of the tide running out. It would have carried us downstream. The river isn’t very wide there and it isn’t much of a swim across, only if we tried it we’d land east of our course.
Westy said, “We’re up against it now. What are we going to do?”
“If we wait till the tide is full,” Hunt said, “we’ll have to sit around here till about eleven o’clock to-night.”
I said, “Do you suppose the rope would reach across?”
“Sure it would,” Dorry answered, “only how are we going to get it across?”
“Throw it,” Pee-wee said.
“And what will hold it there?” I asked him. “Besides, what good is the rope as long as we haven’t got our bathing suits? You don’t expect us to walk on the rope, do you?”
“Oh, here comes a boat!” Dorry shouted. “See it? It’s just coming around the bend. There are two men in it.”
“Are they nice men?” I asked him.
“What are you talking about?” Pee-wee shouted. “They’re a quarter of a mile away!”
I said, “That wouldn’t prevent them from being nice men. Your uncle is all the way over in Europe and he’s a nice man.”
“All I can see is their backs,” Westy said.
I said, “Well, as far as I can tell from their backs they look as if they might be nice men. Maybe we can get them to carry the end of the rope across and fasten it on the other side.”
“Yes, and what will we do then?” the kid wanted to know.
“Then we’ll say ‘thank you,’” I told him.
“Yes, and what then?”
I said, “Why, then we’ll ask them to row us across keeping the boat close to the rope. They could never row straight across with the tide running this way.”
“I don’t see why the tide has to be running out just now,” Hunt said.
“Neither do I,” I said; “especially as it’s just going to turn around and come right in again. It might as well stay in. It goes to a lot of trouble for nothing. We should worry.”
Pretty soon the boat was nearly opposite us, and I shouted, “Hey, Mister, will you give us a lift across?”
Pee-wee whispered to me, “I know who that front man is; he’s a detective. You better look out how you speak to him. That’s Detective Pinchem.”
As soon as the kid spoke I saw that he was right. I shouted, “Hey, Mister Pinchem, will you give us a lift across? We’re lost, strayed or stranded.”
The men in the boat started for the shore and Mr. Pinchem called, “Hello, you scouts, what are you doing here?”
I said, “We’ve got as much right here as this river has. It’s in our way and we want to get across.”