Percy Keese Fitzhugh

“ He leaned far out of the car, rocking it somewhat, and it undoubtedly did utter an uncanny response which sounded for all the world like that joyous call.
“Make it sit up and beg, can’t you?” asked a man in a hammock.
“I’ve got an inspiration,” whispered Pee-wee; “let’s make it talk and take up collections wherever we go. Will you? We can get a lot of money that way. I’ll pass around my hat now, shall I, and then we’ll make it say ‘good-by.’”
“We don’t want any money,” said Townsend; “you’ll spoil all the fun. It talks for love, like you. It doesn’t talk for money. ”

“ How do you like to do a thing when you don’t know you’re doing it? You can’t enjoy being asleep because you’re asleep when you’re asleep. In order to enjoy being asleep you have to be awake, and then you’re not asleep.” He tousled Pee-wee’s curly hair by way of capping the argument. “So there you are, it can’t be did.”
“Do you call that logic?” Pee-wee roared. “Don’t you suppose I enjoy doing lots of things when I don’t know what I’m doing?”
“Oh, undoubtedly,” Townsend laughed. ”

“ It was a very long hill and as Lizzie’s cross-eyed lights illuminated the road they had traveled, Pee-wee looked down along the lighted area and saw that the way was bordered with thick woods. As for Townsend, he kept his gaze fixed behind him and steered the car with difficulty up through the darkness.
“The great advantage of traveling this way,” said he, “is that if we run over any one the lights shining down the road below us will show us that we have done so. Keep your eye out down the hill and let me know if I have run over any one.” ”

“ But don’t you see, Kid, that with no license card and with me looking so young they’re going to stop me and haul me in at every plaguy town we pass through. If I looked old enough to have a license, probably no one would stop me and I’d take a chance. But we’re going to be stopped in Kingston, we’re going to be stopped in Saugerties, we’re going to be stopped in Catskill, we’re going to have no end of trouble. The hardest thing to make people believe is the truth, sometimes—Kid,” Townsend added wistfully. ”

“ The world likes to see people (especially boys) original and industrious. It always pays its tribute to ingenuity.
“It’ll be a kind of a show, too,” Pee-wee said.
And, indeed, so it proved. Pee-wee knew his public. He had enlivened the tedium of summer boarding-houses before, but this proved his master stroke. It was “just what they wanted,” to quote the advertisements.
Early in the morning they set forth, the gasoline so low in the tank that Townsend, wriggle and jounce as he would, could not arouse an answering splash from the depths below him. ”

“ Here comes an automobile along the road; now maybe you’ll get arrested for blocking up the road with that big gate and it’ll serve you right.”
“Here you go,” laughed Townsend, throwing the banana so that it struck the round countenance of our hero. “What kind of a car is it, a roadster or a two seater?”
“It’s a roadster,” said Pee-wee, studying it with the glass. “I think it’s a Buick.” ”

“ So you can’t starve—scouts can’t. Because nature is your slave, see?”
“What could be nicer?” said Townsend.
“And besides that,” said Pee-wee, working his mouth and legs to their full capacity, “you can’t famish because, do you know why? The stars—the big dipper—”
“Sure, I suppose you could drink out of that,” said Townsend.
“That shows how crazy you are!” roared Pee-wee. “You’re crazier than Roy Blakeley and he’s crazier than a whole insane asylum. The stars guide you, don’t you know that much? Do you know any stars?” ”

“ Townsend fished around in the coffee-pot with a lead pencil and pronounced it free of other contents. They drank their coffee, one out of a collapsible metal cup, the other out of an empty mustard can. Coffee is very good in such receptacles. It should never be sipped from a respectable breakfast cup, never. But if you use a mustard can be sure that there are no pieces of chalk or crayon in it. These things are good in tracking and blazing, but not in coffee.
That morning, Pee-wee tried his hand at griddle-cakes, while his patrol leader gazed wistfully on. ”

“ Pee-wee felt strange and very lonesome. There he was, almost exactly half-way between Bridgeboro and Temple Camp marooned in a railroad tower house. To be sure, his situation was not desperate; occasionally an auto passed along the road, the Italian woman (though apparently not deeply interested in his adventures) was somewhere within call, and, in any case, Townsend would either return or send some one. What Pee-wee could not comprehend was that a perfectly innocent person could be subjected to the indignity of arrest. ”

“ And so they had gone and Pee-wee had spent three rather lonesome days waiting for Townsend’s parents to get ready to go to Orange Lake. It was during that time that he had his great inspiration.
Pee-wee had had many inspirations; they seemed to grow wild in his brain. But this was by far the greatest one of all. And it furnished an example of how great events may flow from trifling causes. For this world catastrophe started with a gum-drop. ”

“ Townsend took another from his pocket and sitting up threw it so it fell just short of the window.
“You did that on purpose,” roared Pee-wee.
“I’m so weak from hunger that I can’t throw,” said Townsend. “Wait till I’ve had a little nourishment and I’ll try again. Let’s talk about the relay race. No, let’s tell Ford stories. Why is a—”
“You throw that banana up here, do you hear!” Pee-wee fairly screamed, glaring down like a frowning judge from his high rostrum, his face decorated with vivid smudges, his scowl terrible to behold.
“Why is this Ford like a stew?” Townsend asked. ”

“ Pee-wee demanded.
“You’ll see,” said Tom. “Start your fire and get ready. I’ve got the right idea on this unknown pal business better than you have. You’re way off the track, kid. You start your little fire and leave the rest to me. Come on, Beech, come on the rest of you fellows, you must be hungry.”
It was not long after this that our lonely hero, somewhat squelched by recent happenings, heard an outlandish but strangely familiar noise and soon was aware of two lights poking their way up through the woods. ”

“ Pee-wee took another look through the field-glass and seemed to be of Townsend’s way of thinking. “What do you mean? What do they do?” he asked.
“Oh, they hang out outside a town usually and stop everybody that comes along,” said Townsend sociably, “and every one that hasn’t got his license cards is invited to stay whether he wants to or not and when they get a nice little batch of them they parade them into town and they’re all fined and live happily forever after. Is it hot up there?” ”

“ Gee whiz, I got all sunburned.”
“Look at my arms,” said Townsend. “I’m good and tired, I know that.”
“I’m going to make rice cakes, you like those,” said Pee-wee. “We’ll find a good place in the woods to camp, hey? And I’ll fry some bacon too, hey?”
“Go as far as you like,” said Townsend; “I’ll eat anything. I could eat a bale of hay.”
“We’ll make an omelet with some egg powder too,” said Pee-wee encouraged. “We’ll have a banquet, hey? Because maybe this’ll be our last supper alone together. Maybe I’ll make hunter’s stew too!” he shouted in sudden inspiration. ”

“ He brought it back with him on the supposition that it might possibly do.
“Couldn’t you use my scout belt either?” he asked.
“Your scout belt has important duties to perform, Kid. No, we’ll have to go to the garage, much as I hate to do it. Now you begin to appreciate this flivver. Where would you find another car—Cadillac, Pierce, I don’t care what—that would break down almost in front of a garage? Look at that garage not a hundred yards ahead of us! Some car, hey? Can you beat her?”
Pee-wee could not see the logic of this, though indeed he had learned to love Townsend’s Ford. ”

“ Only ten cents!”
“I’m reading a pretty dull novel,” said a lady. “We can sharpen everything,” Pee-wee shouted. “We don’t care what it is. After the sharpening is over we give a special side show exhibition that sharpens dull times and everything—don’t fail to wait and see Scout Ripley and his talking Ford—it dances, it sings, it, it lays down—”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” laughed a man.
But no amount of laughing could drown Pee-wee out. “Have your knives and scissors and pencils and everything sharpened by the Ford that got arrested because a goat ate the auto license! ”

“ It was not the scowl of ill nature. Rather was it the scowl of a hero. It seemed to say, “Come on, you bunch of jolliers, I can handle you!” It was a scowl that no artist could paint. It was a tremendous scowl to be worn by such a small boy, and it was said in the troop that this was the cause of his being top-heavy and falling off roofs and fences, and diving into cracker jars and provision barrels. Certain it is that wherever Pee-wee went, he went head first. ”

“ Thus hastily equipped with a “walking lunch” they sallied forth and, after rambling about the neighboring village, decided to hike down to the Hudson which their map showed to be about two miles distant.
“Let’s hire a boat and go for a row, hey?” said Pee-wee, munching his lunch as he trudged along at Townsend’s side.
“What, with five cents?” laughed Townsend. “What’s the use hiring one? Let’s buy one? We’ve got resources.” ”

“ Pee-wee said. “Resources mean kind of in your brain, sort of. Like if I was starving in the woods—hunters, they can’t starve. They can eat herbs,—even bark off trees, they can. Gee whiz, you’re a patrol leader and you don’t know about those things. ”

“ They were, in fact, returning to Newburgh after assisting in quite a haul at a likely spot where highways intersected a little north of the scene of the last recorded harrowing adventures. There, each passing motorist had been held up for his driver’s license upon showing which he had been suffered to go his way unmolested. The car came to a stop before the single gate which blocked the right half of the road.
“What’s the matter here? Who put this gate down?” demanded Inspector Snagg. “Whose car is that there?”
“It isn’t exactly a car,” said Townsend quietly, “but it’s mine.” ”

“ The life of a Packard or a Cadillac would be tame and prosy, indeed, compared with the sprightly history of Townsend’s Ford. Townsend often said that Pee-wee was the Ford among scouts. Perhaps it was because he made so much noise and things were always going wrong with him. ”

“ The emery treatment would not last long, the entertainment was but the thing of an hour.
But if a laugh isn’t worth ten cents with a sharpened scissors thrown in as a premium, why then a scout might as well beg and be done with it. When you consider the overhead expenses, you can’t make people laugh and sharpen scissors for less than ten cents—it can’t be done.
CHAPTER XXVII
TOWNSEND AND HIS FLIVVER “I think boy scouts are wonderful,” said a lady boarder.
“Sure they are,” Pee-wee agreed. “They can’t take anything for a service; they can’t take any money unless they earn it. ”

“ I’m going to have Chocolate Drop send up canned stuff for two, enough to last all summer, and besides I’m taking a lot of things with me, doughnuts and bacon and spaghetti and salmon and, oh, gee, a lot of things.”
“Well, I’ll start the ball rolling,” said Beech. “I’ll bang up to Spring Valley first thing in the morning and see if I can find Norton. I’ll get my first-class badge in the bargain, so don’t have any vain regrets about me. Kill two birds with one stone, hey? I dare say the last scout will come trotting in in a few days. So long, I’ll see you again some time, Bridgeboro. ”

“ Rowing against wind and tide is a thankless task.
Townsend could have made shore easily enough, but it is the scout way to leave a thing where one finds it. He did the only thing he could do striving against such odds, which was to keep close in shore where the current was less strong, and pull the boat along by clutching the overhanging foliage where there was any. It was slow work, but of such a nature that Pee-wee could assist. ”

“ This is the net results of your relay race. Take it or leave it. You forgot that a scout never turns back; in scouting relay races are a myth. They just ain’t. A scout that starts always wants to see the finish. All that stuff in the scout handbook is nonsense. No scout ever handed a letter about eats and things to another scout and then went home—never. You’re all off on scouting, kid.
“Now look here, kid, this is Alton Beech’s crowd and you’re not going to break up the party. We’ve got a vacant cabin for these fellows and they’re going to bunk in it and eat down in camp. ”

“ It beats anything how it holds out. I’d start out to-night again only I’m afraid we’d get stuck in the road and I don’t want to get stuck in the road at night. There’s a gas station in a barn about a mile up the road; there’s a big boarding-house there, but I hate like the dickens to—”
“Scouts can’t ask favors,” Pee-wee shouted. They’re supposed to have resources and—”
“Well, my resources are just a dime at present,” said Townsend.
“Listen,” shouted Pee-wee, “I’ve got an inspiration. It’s a dandy idea. All we need is ten cents and a big boarding-house!” ”

“ Pee-wee demanded in a voice of thunder.
“Wait a minute till I stop laughing,” said Townsend. “The pl—pl—the plot seems to be—be—growing thicker. I can’t laugh and think at the same time.”
“Well then, think first,” called the motley hero; “I want to come down. If it’s a smash-up up the road—”
“I don’t think it’s a smash-up, Kid,” laughed Townsend. “From what you say I think it’s an inspectors’ drive.”
“What’s that?” Pee-wee called.
“Oh, every now and then the auto inspectors have a kind of intensive campaign to round up people who drive without licenses,” said Townsend, companionably. ”