Percy Keese Fitzhugh

“ I said. “When Tony sees this whole bunch of scouts—a hundred and seventy-nine appetites—and finds out that none of us is going to go over there and buy a single sandwich from him; when he finds that we spurn his pie, what will he do? He’ll move his wagon over here. That’s high strategy. It’s so high you have to use a stepladder to get up to it. The scout appetite, when it acts in, what d’you call it, unison can move anything!”
“Sure it can!” they all yelled.
“But how are you going to move the car?” some scout or other wanted to know. ”

“ Maybe you can’t hear a fellow being silent. You can never hear Pee-wee being silent, that’s one sure thing.
Westy was frowning just as if it was the end of vacation, and I knew he was thinking some thinks.
Pretty soon he said, “The two hardest things are getting the car past Tony’s Lunch Wagon and past Slausen’s Auto Repair Shop. After that it will be clear sailing—I mean rolling. I say let’s have a big scout rally in Downing’s lot. Let’s have games and races and everything, and ask all the scout troops for miles and miles around, and everybody’ll have to be good and hungry.” ”

“ Pee-wee said. “It’s our car and I’m going to stick to it. I’m not going to leave it here to rot after all the fun we’ve had in it.”
I said, “You’re welcome to take it with you for all I care. Maybe you know some new kind of strategy to move it. I don’t see that our appetites are going to do us any good down here. Here’s the car in the middle of the marsh and that’s all there is to it. If there should happen to be an earthquake maybe that would move it.”
“Let’s have an earthquake,” the inventor piped up.
“Maybe when the earth revolves a little it will start the car, hey?” ”

“ Everybody was crazy about him. That’s the way it is with girls—they’re crazy about people who have had adventures.
I said to Westy, “The inventor started as a poor boy under Tony’s Lunch Wagon, and now look, he has the world at his feet. They go crazy about bandits.”
“Look,” Westy whispered to me.
I was just going to step into the car when I looked where he pointed, and there, standing all by himself, quite a ways off, was Charlie Slausen. He looked as if maybe he was waiting to speak to us, only didn’t dare to come up where all the people were. ”

“ Ellsworth had some suspicions about him.
“Give me your promise,” he said, “both of you. Nobody can force you to talk if you don’t want to—can they? All you fellows came here to-day to help clear up. That shows you’ve got the right stuff in you. Won’t you help a friend out? I’m not asking you to do anything but just keep your mouths shut. You’re not afraid of O’Day and that bunch, are you? Now’s the time to show if you’re really scouts.”
I said, “A scout is supposed to help people in trouble, I don’t deny that. ”

“ Jenson, “We’ve got the tracks all cleared and dug out for our car and we want you to give it a shove,” I said. “We built a bumper down by the river so as to be sure the car will stop if the brakes don’t work, because the brakes are not much good.”
He said, “Suppose the trestle collapses?”
I said, “That’s up to us. We’ll stay off the car till it stops. Safety first. If we lose the car it will be our fault and we won’t blame you.”
He said, “I haven’t got much faith in that old trestle. It’s all up and down like a scenic railroad in an amusement park. It’s all spongy underneath it.” ”

“ Tony Giovettioegleirotti, who keeps that lunch wagon, has defied us. We bought twenty-four frankfurters from him and he wouldn’t move his wagon. So what are we going to do about it?”
“Foil him!” Pee-wee shouted.
“We haven’t got any tinfoil,” someone else hollered.
“Listen,” I said; “everybody keep still. We’re going to have games and scout pace races and things, but nothing to eat. Every scout has to promise that no matter how hungry he is, he won’t go over and buy anything from Tony. ”

“ A scout is always supposed to do a given task. His dinner is a given task. He’s supposed to do a good turn every day. Maybe you think those are hard, but they are easy. If a scout in my patrol had some gumdrops and I ate half of them so he wouldn’t get sick, that would be a good turn. See?
A scout is supposed to save life, too. Once I saved Wig Weigand’s life. He nearly died laughing at Pee-wee Harris, and I got there just in time to push the kid off the springboard into the water so he had to stop talking. ”

“ Gee, there are a lot of people that have to move these days, but they don’t have to move the houses they live in, that’s one good thing. When you have to take your house with you, that’s no fun. Housing problems are bad enough, and transportation problems are bad enough. And besides, I hate problems anyway, especially in arithmetic. But, gee whiz, when you get a housing problem and a transportation problem all rolled into one-good night! ”

“ The car was standing on an old scow. The old rusty tracks were twisted and broken off and stuck out over the end. In five seconds we were all down on the deck of it, staring around.
Westy said, “Did you smell it? It’s cedar.”
And just then I remembered about something we had read in a scouts’ book about trees. Westy knows all the different kinds of wood; he’s crazy about trees. This is it, copied right out of the book:
Cedar is the wood most valuable for the hulls of vessels. ”

“ A railroad car is like a scout, because it can follow a track, but if there aren’t any tracks how is it going to get anywhere? But one thing, you can bet we didn’t want to have our scout meeting place down right next to the railroad station, because scouts are supposed to study nature and a lot of fun we’d have studying commuters. ”

“ I said, “You’ve got the right idea, Kid. A car may be down, but it’s never out.”
“Well, I’m going out,” Hunt Manners said. “I’m going home.”
“So am I,” Charlie Seabury said, very grumpy like.
“Go ahead,” I told them. “We should worry. Pee-wee and the inventor and I are going to stay here.”
“I’m going to stay, too,” Westy said.
“I’m going home to get supper and go to the movies,” Dorry said, with a black look on his face.
“Give my regards to Charlie Chaplin,” I said.
Hunt Manners said, very cross, “Come on, fellows. Let’s go up to Bennett’s and get some sodas. Want to go, Pee-wee?” ”

“ I guess Main Street didn’t amount to much either. There wasn’t any building where Slausen’s is, that’s sure. And Tony’s Lunch Wagon wasn’t there, that’s sure. They didn’t have any big grammar school in Bridgeboro then. Those were the happy days.
Now the first night after we got home after our wild ride, we had a troop meeting to see if we could think up any way to get our car from the station over to Van Schlessenhoff’s field. Because what’s the use of having a home if you haven’t got any place to put it? Be it never so humble, you’ve got to have a place to put your home. ”

“ So we decided that we’d force Tony to move his lunch wagon by the force of our appetites. Maybe you’ve seen exhibitions of things that scouts can do by the power of deduction and all that, and how they can do things by united strength, and everybody admits they can make a lot of noise when they sing together. ”

“ Pee-wee wanted to know.
“Oh, you’re just the little hero,” I told him. “If we all get drowned we’ll have to thank you.”
“Drowned? What are you talking about?” he said. “If you’re afraid——”
“Anybody that’s afraid can get out and walk,” I said. “We’ve got a private car and a private yacht too. We’re a rich patrol. I don’t think we’ll notice that crowd up at Temple Camp any more. We’ve got Submarine Sam looking like a mamma’s boy. A life on the ocean wave for us.”
“We’re going sideways,” Westy said. ”

“ I looked at the kid. Gee whiz, that was the hardest moment in his life. He stood between love and duty; I mean between love and more love.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I saw a yellow dog going east last night, and that means we’re going to have more adventures. Anyway, I can go with you and get a soda and then come back.”
Jiminies, I had to laugh.
“I’m through with this old shack; come on,” Tom Warner said.
“The pleasure is mine,” I told him. “So long.”
“We’re going to have adventures, ain’t we?” the inventor piped up.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but we’re going to have a game of checkers anyway.” ”

“ Time is powerless to rot it when it is in its natural element.
“What happened?” I asked him, because he seemed to know more about it than I did.
He said, “That’s easy to see. The creek flooded the marsh last night. The solid part of the trestle that we noticed was just several old scows. I guess this was the only one made of cedar. Anyway, it rose with the water and broke the old tracks and floated away. It’s lucky the car wasn’t half on one scow and half on another.”
“I’m always lucky, I am!” Pee-wee shouted. ”

“ Pee-wee managed to blurt out.
“We care a good deal,” Westy said. “Our glorious leader is all right on the field of battle, but when it comes to planning a strategical move——”
“We can’t go on eating for nearly three hours,” a scout from the East Bridgeboro troop said. “We’ve got to get home sometime.”
Minerva Skybrow (that was her name) , she just looked at us and she said, “Oh, doubtless you’ll think of a way; scouts are so smart. They’re so resourceful.”
One of the other girls said, “Yes, and they can do anything with their appetites, you know.” ”

“ The only court you know anything about is a tennis court. If we don’t answer questions we’ll get in trouble ourselves, and how is that going to help him? He didn’t do it, I could see that. Only he can’t afford to have people know he was there. He’s in bad with everybody. Probably now they’re trying to trace his movements yesterday. Even Mr. Ellsworth thinks he’s no good. We don’t know what they’re up to.”
“Well, how do we know anybody set fire to the shop?” Westy wanted to know.
“How do we know who left these match ends all around the floor of this car—and these cigarette butts?” ”

“ If you say I have to tell what we were doing in the garage, then I have to tell. Gee, I admit that. But I’ve got a reason not to tell and you’ll know tomorrow. Chief O’Day isn’t as smart as he thinks he is, I know that much.”
For about a minute my father didn’t say anything and I could hear the big clock ticking. I could hear the crickets outside, too, so that’s a sign school would be closing soon. No wonder everybody likes crickets.
Then my father said, “Roy, I want you to know I trust you.” ”

“ Before dark Westy rode up to my house on his bicycle, because I had told him that I’d help him clean it up. We weren’t thinking about the car, because we had decided that we’d go and see Mr. Downing the next morning; that would be Sunday.
We knew Mr. Downing took a lot of interest in the scouts, and we weren’t worrying, because we thought he would fix things for us. The way we talked to Mr. Slausen is the only way you can talk to a man like that, because he’s an old grouch. Everybody knows him. ”

“ Westy said. “Maybe when we move the car across Willow Place he’ll wake up. We’ll tell Mr. Jenson to give it a good hard bump.”
“That will be next Saturday,” I said. “Maybe if the kid were only awake he could invent a way to wake himself up.”
“Let’s try once more,” I said. “Scouts never give up.”
“They never wake up, you mean,” Westy said.
“You don’t call this a scout, do you?” I asked him. “If he is he ought to be in the dormouse patrol. They’re always supposed to be asleep.”
“If we get him started once,” Westy said, “there’ll be an epidemic of scouting up in the Willisville Home. ”

“ Recorder Van Wort was making a man pay twenty-five dollars for stopping his automobile in the wrong place in front of a fire hydrant.
I whispered to Westy, “That would be a good place for the inventor to park, in front of a fire hydrant.”
Westy kind of giggled and Recorder Van Wort began pounding with his mallet.
I said, “Keep still; the first thing you know he’ll throw it at you.”
That room was full of people and I could see my father sitting with Mr. Martin. I could see Mr. Slausen, too, sitting on the other side of the room, and Charlie alongside of him. ”

“ You’re the instigator of this car moving business, I suppose?”
Mr. Ellsworth said, awful funny, “Yes, I’m the evil genius.”
“And I understand fires are part of this scout rigmarole,” Mr. Slausen said.
“Yes, indeed,” Mr. Ellsworth said; “we’re all strong for the campfire. Had your place insured, I suppose, Mr. Slausen?”
“Lucky I did,” he said.
“We just want to give these lads a chance to explain their presence there,” Chief O’Day said.
Mr. Ellsworth just said, “Oh, I see.”
I just looked straight at Mr. Ellsworth and I said, “I can’t tell, Mr. Ellsworth, on account of a scout law. ”

“ That isn’t finding out how we’re going to get the car past Tony’s, is it? Give Westy a chance to speak. Let’s have a large chunk of silence.”
That’s always the way it is with us. We never can decide anything because we all talk at once and we jump from one subject to another. Especially when Pee-wee’s along. Mr. Ellsworth (he’s our scoutmaster, he’s got a dandy dog) , he says that silence is golden. But believe me, the Silver Foxes don’t bother about things that are golden. Speech is silver, and Pee-wee is Sterling. ”

“ Westy said; “the human mind can move anything.”
Mr. Jenson just said, “All right, over she goes.”
Some of us got on the car and the others walked along and the girls stayed around, laughing. A couple of them got on the car, but most of them were kind of afraid, I guess. Maybe they thought it would never stop. Some men stood around watching and laughing, too. What did we care?
The locomotive pushed the car so slow that we could walk ahead of it. It hardly moved. We felt pretty important when we saw the gates go down across Main Street and people and automobiles waiting till we got past. ”