That man’s name was Archibald Abbington, and he talked dandy, just as if he had learned it out of a book. One of those other people told us that his right name was Henry Flynn. I felt sorry for them, that’s one sure thing. And, oh, boy, but those were two peachy dogs they had. The thing those dogs did mostly was to chase Eliza. Miss Le Farge, she was the one that played Eliza. They never let anybody feed the dogs except her, so they’d be sure to chase her.
Harry said, “Why don’t you let them chase some of these squashes away? They stand around gaping just as if they never saw a human being before. How far is Grumpy’s Cross-roads anyway?”
Mr. Abbington said, “It’s a matter of a hundred miles or thereabout.” Gee, he was crazy about that wordthereabout. Then he said that they had a contract with Major Grumpy to give their first performance the next afternoon at the Grand Army reunion, but he didn’t know what they would do because they were stranded.
Harry was awful nice to him. He said, “Well, it looks as if you were in a kind of a tight place, Archy, and I wish we could help you out. We’re reproducing the good old times, too, as you might say, with our overland caravan. These are boy scouts who are taking care of our commissary department and this is their gallant leader, Roy Blakeley. How about it, Roy? Do you think we could squeeze in a good turn, just to vary the monotony? You’re the boss of that end of the outfit. It would mean driving all night instead of stopping to camp as we meant to do. Let’s look on the map and see where Grumpy’s Cross-roads is, anyway.”
I said, “The more the merrier; I don’t care where it is or how long it takes us to get there. We’ll take you. That’s our middle name, doing good turns.”
“We give shows ourselves sometimes,” Pee-wee said. “We have a movie apparatus and we give movie shows. But one thing, we’ve never been stranded.”
Brent said in that funny way of his, “But we hope to be, sometime; we can’t expect to have everything at once.”
Mr. Abbington said, awful dignified like, “We have been stranded many times, sir. I can assure you it is not pleasant, especially when one of our company is ill.”
Gee whiz, I could see plain enough that one of them wasn’t feeling good; that was the one they called Miss De Voil—she played Topsy. Maybe the squashes disagreed with her, hey?
Harry said, “Well, it’s up to you kids, Roy. Grumpy’s Cross-roads is east, so it isn’t exactly out of our way, only we’ll have to hit into a pretty punk road and there’ll be no sleeping around the camp-fire to-night. What do you say?”
Mr. Abbington and all the rest of those people looked at us kids awful anxious, sort of. Gee, it made me feel sorry for them. All of a sudden Pee-wee piped up. He said, “Camp-fires aren’t the principal things in scouting; good turns come first. Anyway, once I heard that actors always help each other and maybe, kind of, you might say we’re actors, because sometimes we give shows.”
Mr. Abbington said, “I am delighted to hear that, my young friend. Let me ask you what you have played.”
“He plays the harmonica when nobody stops him,” Westy said.
I said, “Oh, sure, he’s a peachy actor; he plays dominoes and tennis and tiddle-de-winks. The most stirring part he ever plays is when he stirs his coffee.”
Miss Le Farge said to another one of those ladies, “Oh, isn’t he just too cute?”
So then we helped them get all their stuff into the van. They had a tent and a lot of other things. Harry whispered to me that he guessed they hadn’t had any supper and he said he was afraid if we didn’t give them something to eat the man that played the slave driver wouldn’t have strength enough to whip Uncle Tom the next afternoon. Brent said maybe even Uncle Tom wouldn’t have strength enough to stand up and be whipped. He said, “We’d better feed them up.”
So we made a fire in the grove right alongside the road so as not to interfere with Miss De Voil, who was lying on one of the mattresses in the van. We told the ladies that they could have the van all to themselves that night so they could get good and rested. I fried some bacon for them and heated some beans and we got water out of the railroad station.
Gee whiz, the water was the only thing about that railroad that was running.
We ran the cars all that night so as to get those people to Grumpy’s Cross-roads in the morning. The ladies slept in the van, all except one; she was the one that played Aunt Ophelia. In the play she had to be strict, like a school teacher kind of, with Topsy. But when she wasn’t in the play she was awful nice. She sat up all night in Rossie Bent’s car, because she said she liked the fresh air. Mr. Abbington and Harry sat together outside the van. I didn’t get sleepy much. The rest of the fellows sprawled in Tom Slade’s car and Brent Gaylong’s car, and were dead to the world. It was nice traveling in the night only we had to go slow. We went across a kind of a prairie and every once in a while we came to farms. It was dandy to see the sun come up in the morning.
About five o’clock we came to a village and we asked a man how far it was to Grumpy’s Crossroads. He must have got up before breakfast, that man. He said it was about thirty-five miles, but that we’d have to go very slow on account of the road being all stones. We had to drive those cars easy, because they were supposed to be delivered new.
The man said, “If you’re bound east why didn’t you hit the south road and cut out Grumpy’s Crossroads altogether?”
Harry said, “Because these people have to appear at the Grand Army reunion at Grumpy’s Cross-roads this afternoon and we’ve got to get them there.”
The man said, “If that’s all you’re going to the Cross-roads for, you might as well take the south road. Bill Thorpe, he was t’the Cross-roads yesterday en’ he said th’ Uncle Tom’s Cabin show was called off on ’count of thar bein’ no trains runnin’. He said ole Major Grumpy was tearin’ ’is hair like a wild Injun at th’ railroad unions.”
Harry said, “Is that so? Well, I hope he won’t have his hair all pulled out by 2 P. M. Do you suppose old Grump ever heard of the Boy Scouts of America?”
“I’ll tell him all about them!” Pee-wee shouted. “You just leave it to me.”
The man was smoking a pipe and it kind of smelled like a forest fire. It smelled like a forest fire and a gas engine put together, kind of. He laid his pipe down on the step of the van so we’d know that what he was going to say was very serious.
He said, “You take my advice en’ daon’t mention no scaout boys t’the major; it’s like wavin’ a red flag before a bull as yer might say.”
“Doesn’t like ’em, hey?” Harry said.
“Hates ’em,” the man said.
“Eats ’em alive, I suppose,” Brent said.
“He’d eat ’em raw, only he ain’t got teeth enough,” the man said.
Brent said in that funny way he has, “Well, I guess that settles it, we’ll hit the trail for the Cross-roads; I kind of like old Grump already. I have a kind of a hunch he’ll put some pep into this Lewis & Clarke expedition. All we needed to make our joy complete was somebody to try to foil us.”
“Cracky, I hope he tries to foil us,” Pee-wee piped up.
“Is he a villain?” Brent wanted to know.
“Wall, he ain’t just exactly what you might call a villain,” the man said, very serious.
Brent said, “Oh, that’s too bad. We haven’t got a villain for our story yet. I suppose we’ll have to advertise when we hit into Indianapolis. ‘Wanted, willing and industrious villain; one with some experience preferred; good chance for advancement; duties, being foiled by the Boy Scouts of America.’”
The man said, “Guess you’re a kind of a comic, hey?”
“What’s the trouble between old Grump and the kids, anyway?” Harry asked him.
The man said, “Wall, naow, I’ll tell you. Th’ major’s an old Civil War man en’ he’s a great stickler on military training for boys; ain’t got no use for studyin’ natur’ en’ all that kind o’ thing. He’s daft abaout the Civil War, en’ he’s jest abaout th’ biggest old grouch this side o’ th’ Missippi River. This here reunion o’ his, every three years, is the pet uv his heart, as th’ feller says. He has th’ poor ole veterans limpin’ in from miles araound fillin’ ’em up with rations en’ givin’ ’em shows. He’s got money enough so’s ter make the United States Treasury look like a poor relation; andstingy!”
“That sounds fine,” Brent said; “we’ll have him eating out of our hands; we’ll have him so he comes when we call him. First I was in hopes we might fall in with some train robbers——”
“Gee, it isn’t too late yet!” Pee-wee shouted.
“But a ferocious old major is good enough,” Brent said; “we can’t expect to have everything. You’re positive about his hating the Boy Scouts, are you?” he asked the man. “Because we shouldn’t want to count on that and then be disappointed. It’s pretty hard when you think you’ve found a regular scoundrel and then find that you’re deceived. Are you willing to guarantee him?”
“Wall, I wouldn’ say exactly as he’s avillain,” the man said; “but he’s a ole wild beast, so everybuddy says, en’ I’m tellin’ yer not to wave no red flag in front uv him with a lot uv this scaout boy nonsense. ’Cause he ain’t in the humor, see?”
Harry said, “Do you know, Brent, I think the old codger will do first rate.”
“Oh, he’ll do,” Brent said; “of course, it isn’t like finding a pirate, or a counterfeiter, or an outlaw——”
“You make me tired!” Pee-wee yelled. “If Roy’s going to write all this stuff up, we have to have an old grouch, so as we can convert him sort of, don’t we, and then he’ll—then he’ll—what-d’ye-call-it—he’ll donate a lot of money and say the boy scouts are all right. I’ll manage him, you leave him to me.”
Brent said, “You don’t happen to know if he has a gold-haired daughter, do you?”
Gee whiz, I guess that man thought we were crazy—I should worry. Even the Uncle Tom’s Cabin people were laughing.
Brent said, “Because if our young hero could only rescue old Grump’s gold-haired daughter from kidnappers, perhaps old Grump would come across with a real watch that keeps time as a reward for our young hero’s bravery. I think we’ll have to try our hand with old Grump.”
“Are you—are yousurehe’s mad at the scouts?” Pee-wee wanted to know.
“Tell us the worst,” Harry said.
THE BLOODHOUND BEGAN SNIFFING THE FOOTPRINT.
THE BLOODHOUND BEGAN SNIFFING THE FOOTPRINT.
The man put one foot up on the step of the van and said, “Wall, yer see he owns the Fair Grounds. Thar was a crew uv these here scout kids camping over in the grove to one side of it, and not doin’ no manner of harm, I reckon.”
“That’s one good thing about us, we never do any harm,” Pee-wee piped up.
“Wherever they camp the violets spring up,” Rossie said.
“Sure, and dandelions and four-leaf clovers, too,” the kid shouted.
The man said, “Wall, naow, them kids wasn’ doin’ no manner uv harm, just cookin’ and eatin’——”
“Gee whiz, they have to do that!” Pee-wee told him. “That’s one thing about scouts, they always eat.”
“Most always,” Harry said.
“En’ nothin’ would do but he must chase ’em off,” the man said. “Some uv them men who wuz interested in the kids made a rumpus about it, but it weren’t no good; old Grump said off they must go, and off they went. I wuz sorry ter see it too, hanged if I weren’t, because they’re a bright, clever lot, them youngsters. Oft times when I’d go inter th’ Cross-roads with my old mare marketin’, there they’d be in th’ grove right alongside th’ road, sprawlin’ about and onct, when I come away abaout five o’clock in the mornin’, thar they were en’ give my old mare a drink out uv th’ spring.”
“Up early, hey?” Harry said.
“Naow, haow is them kids goin’ ter hinder th’ reunion? That’s what I say. Poked away off in th’ grove right on ter th’ end of the grounds. But the ole major, he says they was nuthin’ but a lot uv loafers; wanted to know what good they ever done. Why, Lor’ bless me, if he’d a made friends with ’em they might uv helped in the reunion, mightn’t they?... Wall, I guess he wuz all piffed abaout the show not bein’ able to get there. Trams east of th’ Cross-roads is runnin’ all right, but out this way thar ain’t been a wheel movin’ in a week, ’cept express trains from the east. If I was you fellers I wouldn’ go a couple of dozen miles out of my way over a pile of rocks what they call by the name of a road, I wouldn’, jus ter do a favor for an old grizzly bear, I wouldn’. Not me.”
Gee whiz, Mr. Abbington looked kind of anxious, because Harry just sat there on the seat whistling to himself as if he were thinking. The rest of us were all standing around.
Brent said, “Well, as long as old Grump is a stickler on military training, what do you say we take Grumpy’s Cross-roads right under his very nose? We’ll make our approach from the west, with our dry-goods delivery van and three five-passenger touring cars. General Harris will have charge of the Commissary. First, the signal corps will communicate with the boy scouts of Grumpy’s Cross-roads and advise them that reenforcements are on the way—in a dry-goods van and three touring cars. The grove on the edge of the parade grounds will be in our hands before night. We’ll have the Civil War veterans down on their knees begging for an armistice.”
“Yes, and maybe—maybe—old Major Grumpy will have to go and live in a castle in Holland, hey?” Pee-wee yelled.
Honest, isn’t that kid a scream?
First, Harry asked if the telegraph office was open, but it wasn’t open. The reason was, because there wasn’t any there. If that place had been a little smaller we might have run over it without seeing it and punctured one of our tires.
Then Brent said, “Well then, you don’t happen to have a nice hill handy, do you? We’ll return it in good condition when we get through with it.”
They didn’t happen to have any hills in that village—they were out of most everything. Brent said he guessed hills were hard to get. So we started off again and hit into the road that went to Grumpy’s Cross-roads. Gee whiz, if Major Grumpy’s temper was anything like that road,good night! That was what we all said. But we should worry about the road as long as we had all our plans made. Harry said the Kluck car could eat up the miles all right, but, oh, Sister Anne, if one of them tried eating the miles on that road it would have indigestion, all right. Even Pee-wee couldn’t have eaten those.
After we had gone maybe about nine or ten miles we came to a dandy; it was a kind of a young mountain. Now, on the way along, we had been making up a message that we would send by smudge signal, because we thought that if those other scouts got it, it would be a feather in their cap and we were thinking about them more than we were about ourselves. Because a scout is brother to every other scout, see?
So this is the smudge signal that we decided to send, and,good night, little we knew what it would lead to. Pretty soon you’ll see the plot beginning to get thicker.
Uncle Tom show will be given as announced.Deny rumors to contrary.Boy Scouts of America.
Uncle Tom show will be given as announced.Deny rumors to contrary.Boy Scouts of America.
Uncle Tom show will be given as announced.
Deny rumors to contrary.
Boy Scouts of America.
Brent said, “If those kids are up as early as old what’s-his-name said they were, they ought to see a smudge signal up on the top of a hill like this, and they can notify old Grump. Then later we’ll give him the knockout blow. He’ll look like a pancake when we get through with him.”
That started Pee-wee off—the word pancake. “We’ll go riding into the village, and we’ll kind of have our clothes torn, and we’ll look all what-d’ye-call-it—weary and footsore—and we’ll have all the Uncle Tom’s Cabin company sitting in the touring cars,” he said, “and we’ll have a big sign that saysBoy Scouts on the Job, hey? And maybe we’ll give a parade.”
Harry said, “Well, the best thing for us to do now is to parade up this hill and send the message. You see, although assaults are usually made unknown to the enemy, in this case we’ll make a big hit if we start some propaganda along ahead of us. It pays to advertise, as Jolly & Kidder would say.”
Now it was a pretty steep climb up to the top of that hill, all woods and jungle. We left the cars down on the road and most of the actor people stayed in them, because they were tired and sleepy. Westy stayed down there so as to cook them some breakfast.
For quite a long distance up that hill we went through thick woods, then we came out into an open place where we could look down and see the road. The autos looked small down there. We could see a little thin line of smoke going up where Westy was starting a fire. The sun was getting brighter and it made Jolly & Kidder’s van look all shiny on account of the bright paint on it. It seemed funny to see a department store car away out there in that lonesome country.
Pretty soon we got into more woods and Harry said he guessed there must be a trail. But we couldn’t find any.
He said, “This is a forsaken wilderness up here.”
“I bet the foot of white man never trod it,” Pee-wee said; “I bet it’s unknown to civilization up here.”
“Well, I guess we’re not likely to bunk into any movie shows,” Brent said.
Jiminetty, but it was some wild place, all right. We had to go single file and tear away the brush so that we could get through. Tom Slade went ahead, because he can find a trail if there is one, and even if there isn’t he always knows how to go. The farther up we went, the worse it got. We couldn’t see the road at all on account of the thick woods below us. Gee, it was so still up there that it was sort of spooky.
“I guess no white man ever trod this solemn wilderness before, as our young friend Scout Harris observed,” Harry said; “it gets worser and worser.”
Just then Tom Slade stopped and we all stopped in his path. In about a jiffy he was down on the ground. Gee whiz, I knew what that meant, for I knew Tom Slade.
“It’s a footprint,” he said.
Just then we heard a sound right near us, just like branches crackling, and in a couple of seconds one of those bloodhounds from the Uncle Tom’s Cabin show came dashing up through the bushes. He pushed Tom Slade right out of the way and began sniffing that footprint. He was so excited that he didn’t notice us.
First it seemed kind of as if that bloodhound was just scooping; that means using something that another scout has found. If I should find a robin’s nest and then another scout should stalk there, that would be scooping. Gee whiz, that’s a mean thing to do. Up at Temple Camp a scout will get himself disliked for doing that. But it’s all right to stalk the cooking-shack. Pee-wee thinks he’s the only one who has a right to hang out there—I should worry.
Anyway that has nothing to do with the bloodhound. Tom got out of his way, and we all stood about while the dog sniffed around the footprint, awful excited like. There wasn’t another footprint anywhere in sight.
Brent said in that funny way of his, “Well, I guess we’re up against the real thing at last. I guess old Snoozer here is on the track of Eliza. Listen and maybe we’ll hear her baby crying. She always carries a baby with her when she puts one over on the bloodhounds, doesn’t she?”
“You’re crazy!” Pee-wee shouted; “she always crosses the ice. Didn’t you see that big roll of canvas they’ve got? That’s got ice painted on it. They spread that on the stage and she runs across it with har—what-d’ye-call-it—her infant child.”
“Her which?” Harry said.
“I think she takes a thermos bottle, too, and an aluminum cooking set,” Brent said.
Harry said, “Well, anyway, she has given old Snoozer the slip this time.”
“That’s a man’s footprint,” Pee-wee said; “there’s a mystery up here.”
“Let’s see it,” Rossie Bent said; “where is it?”
“You make me sick!” the kid shouted. “How can youseea mystery?”
“You smell it, according to Snoozer,” Harry said; “this dog will have a fit in a minute.”
By that time the dog was pushing every which way in among the bushes and every few seconds coming back to the footprint.
“He seems to be kind of rattled.” That’s what Harry said.
Pretty soon the dog went running through the bushes out into a big open space that was just about on the top of the mountain. We found out afterward that that was why the mountain was named Bald Head. Gee whiz, he seemed rattled. He’d stop for a couple of seconds and look all around, then start off all of a sudden, then stop again.
Brent said, “Eliza’s got his goat this time. Look at old Tomasso there; he’s mad because Snoozer took his job.”
I looked at Tom Slade (because that’s whom he meant) and I saw that he was kind of picking among the bushes over to one side of the big open space. So I went over to where he was and I said, “Tom, what do you think about it? I always thought a bloodhound could follow any trail. That’s a fresh footprint too, isn’t it? But maybe that dog isn’t a real bloodhound, hey?”
Tom said, “He’s a real bloodhound, all right, but I don’t think he’ll find anything.”
I said, “Well, how about that footprint then? It was a fresh one. He ought to be able to follow that scent. Gee whiz, I never saw a dog act so funny. He’s all rattled and he doesn’t know which way to go.”
Tom didn’t say anything, only he looked over to the open space where the rest of the fellows were watching the dog. By that time the dog was running around and barking, half crazy.
“Eliza fell through the ice,” Brent called over to us.
Harry shouted, “She was very poor, she didn’t even have a scent. Snoozer’s going to have a nervous collapse in a minute; he’ll require first aid.”
I said to Tom, “Well, somebody was up here, that’s sure. That’s a new footprint we found. It’s plaguey funny that a bloodhound can’t follow that trail; I always thought a bloodhound——”
“A bloodhound isn’t a scout,” Tom said, kind of sober like, in that way he has; “he followed the trail as far as he could, I suppose. Look around here; don’t you see anything?”
That’s the way it has always been with Tom Slade ever since he got back from the war. In scouting, he would never do anything himself, but just give us fellows a hint that would start us off. “If you make as good use of your eyes as he makes of his nose, you ought to be able to discover something.” That’s what he said.
So then I looked all around, and sure enough I could see that the bushes were broken up toward the top and,good night, on one of them was hanging a little piece of rag.
“Some one has been through here,” I said, all excited; “why doesn’t the dog come over here? The trail leads over this way.”
Then I began whistling for the dog and calling to the fellows that we had the trail, and they all started over except the dog. He wouldn’t follow them or pay any attention to their whistling and calling, only stayed right where he was running around as if he had a fit.
Before the fellows reached the place where we were Tom said kind of low, “Don’t fly off the handle, kid; there are some bushes broken here and a rag. Now what does that mean?”
“It means the trail runs through here,” I said; “and that crazy fool of an Uncle Tom’s Cabin dog can’t follow the scent across that bare place. He’s just an actor, that’s all that bloodhound is. All he’s good for is chasing Eliza.”
Tom just took the rag from me and looked at it. “Well then, if the trail runs through here, where are the footprints?” he asked me.
“And the dog doesn’t seem to think it’s worth bothering about,” he said.
“You admit somebody went through here?” I shouted at him.
“Oh, somebody went through here, all right,” he said.
“And didn’t leave any footprints and didn’t leave any scent,” I came back at him.
“Only a rag,” he said.
By that time the fellows had reached the place where we were. “What’s the big idea?” Harry said. “What have you got there?”
Brent said, “As Ilive, it’s a piece of Eliza’s dress. The plot grows thicker.”
“There isn’t a footprint here,” I told them.
“She must have slid on the ice,” Brent said.
“I’m going to drag that dog over here by the collar,” Rossie spoke up.
“It’s a mystery,” Pee-wee shouted; “it’s a deep, dark mystery. We’ve got to solve it—I mean penetrate it.”
Gee whiz, that kid was more excited than the dog.
We all just stood there not knowing what to think. I could tell that Tom Slade had some kind of an idea, but you never catch that fellow shouting out about anything till he’s sure. Even when he was a tenderfoot in the troop he was that way.
It seemed mighty funny that we should find just one footprint in those bushes, but maybe there weren’t any more across that open space because it was hard and rocky. Anyway, the scent led out into that open space, that was sure. Then on the opposite side of the open space the bushes were broken and there was a rag hanging to one of them. Yet we couldn’t get that dog to go all the way across and take up the scent where we found the rag. That was the funny thing. It was funny that there weren’t any footprints under those bushes where the rag was hanging, too. Believeme, Pee-wee was right, it was a mystery.
Pretty soon the dog began following the scent back and Will Dawson went after him. In about ten minutes he came up again and said that the dog had followed it as far as a brook where there was a willow tree. He said the dog got rattled there just the same as he did on the summit. So he studied the place carefully and saw that there was a branch of the tree that stuck out over the water and he swung himself across and then back again by that. So he decided that was probably what the man had done on his way up the mountain. So you see that trail was cut in two places.
Will said that he left the dog poking around at the edge of the stream. And that was the last we saw of the dog till we got back to our caravan. Then we saw that he was under the van asleep. He was resting up so he could chase Eliza in the afternoon, that’s what Brent said. He chased Eliza twice every day, that bloodhound did.
Harry said, “Well, as Scout Harris says, it’s a mystery. Somebody was up here before us, that’s sure. There’s no use trying to dope it out, I suppose. Let’s send the signal. Our friends down below will think we’re lost.”
All the while Tom Slade was sort of wandering around that rocky open space on the top of the mountain. A couple of times he looked over to where we were as if he was kind of thinking. Most of the time he looked at the ground and the flat rocks. I knew he had some idea in his head, all right.
Pretty soon he came strolling over and said sort of offhand like, “Let’s follow these broken bushes in a ways.”
“Nobody went through here, Tom,” Rossie said; “if they had there’d be footprints. Let’s get busy with the smudge signal.”
“It’ll only take a minute,” Tom said.
“Every minute is precious, Tommy boy,” Harry told him.
“Sure, let’s go in,” Brent said; “I’m for adventure every time. You never can tell; come ahead.”
So we all followed Tom in. The brush was awful thick and I kept tearing it apart down near the ground, hunting for footprints, but I couldn’t find a single one. The brush wasn’t even broken above, either, after we had gone a few feet and Tom just pushed around without any signs to go by, all the while squinting his eyes into the bushes and poking the underbrush with his feet.
Pretty soon,good night, Pee-wee gave a shout. “I see it! I see it!” he yelled. “The mystery is solved! I know why there isn’t any man’s footprint here. It was ananimalthat came through! There he is now—it’s azebra!”
“A which?” Harry said.
“It’s got stripes—wide stripes,” the kid shouted. “Look there! See it? It’s a zebra! Don’t you know a zebra?”
Brent said, “I wouldn’t know one if I met him in the street.”
By that time Tom had gone ahead of us and hauled something out of the bushes. It wasn’t a zebra, but it had stripes all right—it was light colored and it had wide, dark stripes. I bet you can’t guess what it was, either.
It was a suit of convicts’ clothes.
“Didn’t I tell you it had stripes?” Pee-wee shouted. “Wasn’t I right? Now you see! A scout is observant.”
“If he sees a suit of clothes he thinks it’s a zebra,” Charlie Seabury said.
Harry said, “Well, you weren’t so far wrong, Kiddo. The stripes weren’t on an animal; they were on a jail bird. I’d like to know where he flew away to. This is getting interesting. I knew that clothing was very high, but I didn’t think we’d find a suit as far up as this.”
“Maybe he was a murderer, hey?” Pee-wee whispered.
“We can only hope,” Brent said in that funny way. Then he said, “I’ve always felt that I’d like to be a murderer. I thought I was a real convict when I was held in jail three hours after speeding in my flivver. But when I look at this striped suit, I realize that after all I didn’t amount to much as a criminal. Let’s take a squint at those clothes, will you? It’s always been the dream of my young life to escape from jail by using a hair-pin or a manicure file or some kind of acid. I wonder how this fellow escaped.”
“I bet he escaped in the dead of night,” Pee-wee said.
“The question is, where is he?” Harry said.
“He went away in an airplane,” Tom Slade said, awful sober like, just as if Brent hadn’t been joking at all.
Good night, we all just stood there stark still, looking at him.
“What makes you think that?” Rossie wanted to know.
“No one laid that suit of clothes here,” Tom said; “it wasdroppedhere. There aren’t any footprints. Out there in the flat part there are wheel marks from an airplane. I saw enough of those marks in France to know what they mean.”
“Tomasso Nobody Holmes, the boy detective!” I shouted.
“The airplane grazed the bushes when it went up,” he said; “that’s why some twigs are broken off. And part of one of the wings of the machine was torn, too. That’s because the airman didn’t have space enough to get away in. He took a big chance when he landed up here, that fellow.”
Harry just stood there drumming his fingers on one of the bushes and looking all around him and kind of thinking. Then he said, “What’s your idea, Tommy boy? Do you think a convict escaped and made his way up to the top of this jungle and that the airman alighted here for him by appointment?”
“The dog followed the scent out into the open, to the place where the wheel tracks are,” Tom said. “That’s where the man—that convict—got in. They didn’t have open space enough to start from there and they grazed the bushes. I guess it was pretty risky, the whole business. Anyway, they chucked the convict clothes out. This piece of silk is waxed; it’s part of the wing of a machine, all right.”
“Tomasso, you’re a wonder,” Rossie said; “no dog could follow a trail in the air.”
“There’s often a scent in the breeze,” Brent said.
“Didn’t I tell you it was a mystery?” Pee-wee shouted. “Didn’t I tell you it was a dark plot? As soon as I saw those clothes——”
“You thought they were a zebra,” Ralph Warner said; “a scout knows all the different kinds of animals.”
“You make me sick!” the kid shouted. “A convict is better than a zebra, isn’t he?”
“That’s a fine argument,” I told him.
“It’s logic,” the kid shouted.
“Well, let’s not complain,” Brent said; “a zebra would be a novelty, but a convict is not to be despised. We should be thankful for the convict, even though he isn’t here.”
“That’s the best part of it,” the kid shouted; “that makes the mystery. We’ve got to find him.”
We didn’t bother any more about the mystery then, because we wanted to send the signal and get started again, but you’ll see how that mystery popped up again and confounded us; I guess you know whatconfoundedmeans, all right. It means the same asbaffled, only I didn’t know whetherbaffledhas two f’s in it or not. But, gee whiz, I used it anyway—I should worry.
So now while our friends are waiting for us down on the road (I got this sentence from Pee-wee), I’ll tell you about sending that signal. Signals are my middle name—signals and geography. But the thing I like best about school is lunch hour. I’m crazy about boating, too.
That fellow, Harry Domicile, he’s crazy. He said, “If you like signals so much I don’t see why you send them. Why don’t you keep them?”
Will Dawson said, “It isn’t the signal we send, it’s a message; we send a message by a signal. See?”
Harry said, “But if it’s a good message why should you want to send it away? Why don’t you keep it? If it’s worth anything what’s the use of getting rid of it? A scout should not be wasteful.” Then he winked at Brent Gaylong.
Oh, boy, you should have seen Pee-wee. He shouted, “You’re crazy! Suppose I keep some-thing—suppose I keep——”
Rossie said, “Suppose you keep silence.”
“That shows how much you know about logic!” the kid yelled. “How can I keep silence——”
By that time we were all laughing, except Harry. He had the paper with the message written on it and he said, very sober like, “Well, if this message is any good at all I don’t see why we don’t keep it; it might come in useful.”
Pee-wee shouted, “A message is no good at all—even the most important message in the world is no good to the fellow that makes it——”
Brent said, “Then he’s just wasting his time making it. Before we send this message we’d better talk it over. If it’s any good we’ll keep it.”
Gee whiz, you should have seen our young hero; I thought he’d jump off the mountain. He yelled, “Do you know what logic is? You get that in the third grade. My uncle knows a man that’s a lawyer and he says—besides—anyway, do you mean to tell me——”
Harry said, “Go on.”
Brent said, “Proceed; we follow you.”
“Suppose I had a piece of pie,” the kid yelled. “If it was good I’d eat it, wouldn’t I?”
Brent said, “That isn’t logic.”
“Sure it’s logic!” Pee-wee shouted. “The better it is the more I’d get rid of, wouldn’t I?”
“Thou never spakest a truer word,” I told him.
“And it’s the same with messages,” he said.
I said, “Good night, you don’t want to eat it, do you?”
Harry said, “Well, if he doesn’t want to eat it, what’s the use of chewing it over? Let’s send it.”
I bet you think we’re all crazy, hey? I should worry.
So then we gathered a lot of twigs and started a fire about in the middle of that open space. While we were doing that, Charlie Seabury and Ralph Warner got some dead grass and brush and took it down to the brook and got it good and wet. Then they squeezed the water all out of it so it was kind of damp and muggy like. It has to be just like that if you want to send a smudge message. Maybe you don’t know exactly what a smudge signal is because maybe you think that a smudge is just a dirt streak on your face—I don’t mean on yours but on Pee-wee’s. That’s Pee-wee’s trade mark—a smudge on his face. Usually it’s the shape of a comet and it makes you think of a comet, because he’s got six freckles on his cheek that are like the big dipper. And his face is round like the moon, too, but, gee williger, I hate astronomy. But I’d like to go to Mars just the same.
Anyway this is the way you send a smudge signal. When you get the fire started good and strong you kind of shovel it into a tin can, but if you haven’t got any tin can, you don’t. Scouts are supposed to be able to do without things. We should worry about tin cans. Brent Gaylong has a tin can on wheels—that’s a Ford. My father says it’s better to own a Ford than a can’t afford. Anyway my sister says I ought to stick to my subject. Gee whiz, she must think I’m a piece of fly paper.
The reason that I ended that chapter was because I had to go to supper. So now I’ll tell you about the signal. If we had only had a tin can with some kind of a cover to lay over it, it would have been easy. But we hadn’t any so this is the way we did. After the fire was burning up we piled some of the damp grass and stuff on top of it and that made a smudge that went way up in the air. I guess any one could see that smudge maybe fifty miles, especially on account of it being up on the top of a mountain.
I said, “All we need now is a cloth or something to spread over it so we can divide the letters.” Because you know we use the Morse code.
So Brent said we could have his mackinaw jacket and he sent Pee-wee down to the brook to soak it in the water so that it wouldn’t catch fire. That was the beginning of Brent Gaylong’s bad luck. Crinkums, that fellow must have been born on a Friday—anyway, he was born on a Friday that day, I guess. But one good thing about Friday, it’s the day before Saturday. That’s why there are fifty-two Good Fridays.
So then we sent the message. The first word wasUncle, so to spell that we let the smudge rise for just a second, then laid Brent’s jacket over it for about three seconds, then let it rise for another second, then waited about three seconds more and then let it rise for, oh, I guess about ten seconds, maybe. That made two dots and a dash in the Morse code and it made the letter U good and big, cracky, bigger than you could make it on any blackboard, as big as the whole sky. Maybe it wouldn’t mean anything to you, but that’s because you’re not a scout. But anyway it meant U. I don’t mean it meant you, but I mean it meant U.
After that we made the other letters in the word Uncle—N-K-L-E—I don’t mean K, I mean C.
Then after we’d waited about a minute so as to separate the words we spelled T-O-M, and after that there was a big blot on our writing (that’s what Rossie said), because Brent’s mackinaw jacket burned up. He said he was sorry, because there were some peanuts in one of the pockets.
Anyway he said he was willing to die for the cause, so he took off his khaki shirt and after Pee-wee went down and soaked it in the brook, we used that to separate the words and letters. Maybe you’ll say that kind of writing isn’t very neat but we knew that it could be seen for miles and miles and that if the boy scouts in Grumpy’s Cross-roads saw it and read it, they’d tell Major Grumpy and he’d say the scouts were all right. Because that was our idea, we wanted those other scouts to get the credit.
I guess maybe it took a half an hour to send that message and it didn’t look much like a message to us. You’ve got to get away off if you want to read a smudge signal. A smudge signal is no good for a fellow that’s near-sighted. When we were all finished, this is what we had printed in the sky:
Uncle Tom show will be given as announced.Deny rumors.Boy Scouts of America.
Uncle Tom show will be given as announced.Deny rumors.Boy Scouts of America.
Uncle Tom show will be given as announced.
Deny rumors.
Boy Scouts of America.
Pee-wee wanted to put in something about foiling the railroad strikers, but Brent said if we made the message any longer he wouldn’t have any clothes left. Harry said that if the scouts at Grumpy’s Cross-roads got that message and delivered it to old Grump, that old Grump would surrender unconditionally. So maybe we had done a good turn for all we knew. Even if the telegraph operator at Grumpy’s Cross-roads should see that smudge he’d read the message, all right. But we said that more likely he’d he asleep and that scouts are always up early because up at Temple Camp Uncle Jeb Rushmore (he’s camp manager) is always telling us that the early bird catches the first worm. But, gee whiz, if I were the first worm I’d stay in bed and then the early bird wouldn’t catch me.
That’s what Pee-wee calls logic. That’s one thing he’s crazy about,—logic. Logic and Charlie Chaplin. He likes girls, too. He says they always smile at him. Gee whiz, can you blame them? It’s a wonder they don’t laugh out loud.