Percy Keese Fitzhugh

“ Westy said; “what is this? A hike or a monopoly?”
“It’s a go,” I said. “Nothing will stop us now. The world must be made safe for the Boy Scouts of America! Give me another peanut, somebody. Food will win the war. Hurrah, for the Silver-plated Fox Patrol and the bee-line hike!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Warde said; “and he’ll never frighten good little boy scouts again. Nobody will ever get another prize for hitting him in the eye with a baseball. His glorious career as a target is over. Step up, lads, and take a look at him.”
Oh, boy, I guess we never felt so silly in our lives. Poor bandit, he was just one of those figures that sit in a chair and are pelted with baseballs, three shots for a dime. “Every time you hit the nigger!” That’s what the man used to call. ”

“ I said, “I don’t know much about the girl scouts except that they giggle a lot but I’ll say this much, they know how to run and when it comes to good turns——”
“Will you let me prove I’m a scout? A real one?”
I said, “You’re as real as real estate. All you have to do is say what you want.”
She said, “Will you let me climb down that rope and go with you, and finish the bee-line hike with you?” ”

“ We could never tame him.”
“Maybe if he could only see that scouts have a lot of fun,” the kid said; “because he thinks they don’t do anything but good turns. I wish I could get him for you, I know that, because you did a lot of things for me. But he only just laughed at me and he said we didn’t have any fun.”
I said, “Kid, you’re a little brick. When it comes to good turns you eat them alive. We should worry about Warde Hollister. If he wants to camp out on his wild and woolly front porch, we should bother our young lives about him. Let him lurk in his hammock. ”

“ I said, “This is a bee-line hike; it’s either straight west or home, victory or defeat. No beating around the bush.”
“That’s us!” they all shouted.
Warde said, “Well, then, we’ve either got to go on or turn back. And I’m going to find out which we have to do. There’s no use standing here talking about it. If we’re beaten, we might as well know it. We can be good losers, I hope. We can either go down this hill or we can’t and I’m not going to say we can’t till I know we can’t. ”

“ 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 to really join, 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 doesn’t make any difference whether it’s a hike or a dinner or a—tournament or what. If you begin it you’ve got to finish it. If you’re a quitter you’re no scout. Maybe you like to risk your life and I know you don’t risk your life playing tennis. But just the same that’s your bee-line hike for to-day. ”

“ He said, “If I’m right it means that the wheel went just half way around—one half a revolution.”
[Pg 102]
“Some highbrow,” I said. “Don’t talk about revolutions, they remind me of history. A half a revolution is better than the French Revolution. Take your feet off me. Do you want a whole car to yourself?”
“It’s pretty crowded in here,” Westy said.
“Well, go up on the top floor if you’re not satisfied,” I told him. “You’ll get a good view up there.”
“How do you know there’s a good view in that car?” Pee-wee said. ”

“ The battle cry is ‘ONWARD.’ If we do any good turns they’ll have to be up and down, not to right or left. Anybody that wants to stay home can do it. At five o’clock this afternoon we intend to plant the Silver Fox emblem under that big poplar tree on west ridge. We’ll start a fire there so all the world can see. That fire will mean triumph. It will mean we went in a bee-line. If we have to push Little Valley out of the way we’ll do it—it isn’t so big. ”

“ Maybe the line would have held Warde all right if he moved back on his hands and knees. But anyway, it didn’t hold when I pulled on it. I guess I pulled too hard. Anyway the line broke right near my hand and most of it went over the edge of the shelf.
“There it is at the bottom,” Warde said. He didn’t seem excited or disappointed. I never saw a fellow like Warde Hollister—never. I’ve seen brave fellows but never a fellow just like him.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Westy said; “what next?”
I guess Warde must have heard that because he called, “Nobody’s to blame. You tell my people.” ”

“ There is always high land on both sides of a river. I don’t mean it has to be right close to the river.
Now this is the way it is where I live. Blakeley’s hill isn’t a hill exactly, it’s a ridge. It runs along the same way the river runs. The state road runs along that ridge and our house is on the state road only it’s way back from the road. We’ve got a dandy grapevine. We’ve got a sun parlor, too. That’s where Mr. Blakeley’s son sits and reads on rainy days. That’s why we call it a sun parlor.
Now if you sit on our porch you can look down over Bridgeboro; you get a peach of a view. ”

“ CHAPTER X 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 is brotherly—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. ”

“ He said, “The world belongs to the boy scouts. Everybody knows them and likes them. To say they’re on top is just telling the truth. I think we will hook you boys up with Brown’s hats. We may ask you to pose. Brown’s hats are known the world over. Step right down, boys, and have no fear.”
“Did you see me from the train?” Pee-wee asked him. ”

“ As we went away we were all careful not to look up, and we talked about all different things as if we didn’t know there was any one up in that wheel at all. And if anybody ever tells you that boy scouts can’t really catch grown-up people except in books, you can tell them I said they can do it in amusement parks too. ”

“ Because with a nice, long, straight street like that it’s easy to fool yourself and say it goes straight west when it doesn’t, quite. But Central Avenue did, because away down beyond the other end of it, and away across the river we could see that big tree up on the ridge. Central Avenue doesn’t go all the way through town but we saw that as far as it did go it went straight west. We made good and sure. Because a bee-line hike is no good unless you’re strict about it.
After we had gone a couple of blocks we couldn’t see the tree any more on account of being right in the thick part of town. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ We had dandy fun sitting around there talking. Girls are all right, only they’re kind of funny, they keep giggling all the time—giggling and fixing their hair. But anyway, they know how to do good turns. Most of them like algebra and they’re funny in other ways too. But gee whiz, everybody has something the matter with him. I know a girl who stuck a safety pin on a stump for a scout sign. ”

“ When some one hit him a good hard crack he’d topple off the seat and then the man would give you a kewpie doll or maybe an ash-tray. The poor old wooden “nigger” had been packed away and all we had seen was his black face sticking up above some old boxes.
[Pg 93]
I said to Warde, laughing good and hard, “You knew it all the time, didn’t you?”
He just said, “A scout is observant. Do I get the Gold Cross?”
Westy said, “I don’t think you get the Gold Cross, but we ought to get leather medals, I know that. We’re a fine outfit of scouts not to know an old ‘hit-the-nigger’ target from a bandit.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ So this story is just about my own patrol and Pee-wee Harris, and some buildings and a couple of valleys and a hill and some pie, and a forest and some ice cream cones and a big tree and a back yard and a woman and a ghost and a couple of girls and ten cents’ worth of peanut brittle. It’s about a college, too. Maybe you think we’re not very smart on account of being kind of crazy, but anyway we went through college in ten minutes. So you can see from that how bright we are. That’s why we call ourselves the Silver Foxes. ”

“ 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.
[Pg 51]
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. ”

“ But after that, all the kids in Bridgeboro [Pg 81] said the wheel was haunted. If you say a place is haunted, it’s haunted.
But one thing, it kept the kids away from the old park. Because, anyway, they weren’t supposed to go there. Gee whiz, I can’t say whether I’m afraid of a ghost or not because I never saw one, but I know that white is their patrol color. Anyway, if I were a ghost I wouldn’t hang out in a ferris-wheel, I know that. ”

“ 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 Hollister is a better scout than any of us. Deny it if you dare, quoth I. He has performed the most heroic act since Artie Van Arlen, patrol leader of the Ravens, killed a couple of hours waiting for a train for Temple Camp. They don’t care what they kill, those scouts.”
We put the baseball target back where he belonged and I guess he’s dead yet for all I know. He faced a good many bee-lines, that’s one sure thing. Anyway, we should bother about him because we had our own bee-line hike to finish, only the worst was yet to come. ”

“ So we sat down right in our path and Will Dawson and Dorry Benton started playing mumbly-peg, so that if the man in the shack saw us he wouldn’t be suspicious. Because if he thought we had seen him and were going to tell, he’d probably start running away.
“Don’t look back,” Westy said. “What are we going to do? We can’t capture him ourselves, can we?”
“The only way would be to sprinkle a little salt on him,” Warde Hollister said. ”

“ 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.”
“WE’VE GOT AS MUCH RIGHT HERE AS THIS RIVER HAS, AND WANT TO GET ACROSS.”
[Pg 69]
Pee-wee whispered to me very anxious-like, “You better look out how you talk to him, he’s a detective. He can arrest us if he wants to.”
Westy said, “Why should we be afraid? We haven’t taken anything.”
I said, “I’m not so sure about that. We’re taking a hike. Maybe if we can’t prove it belongs to us——”
“You’re crazy,” the kid said. ”

“ THE BEE-LINE HIKE OF THE
SILVER FOX PATROL. GET
FROM UNDER, EVERYBODY
AND EVERYTHING.
Our first mishap was at the end of my lawn, when Pee-wee’s garter broke and a lot of junk fell on the ground when he stooped down to fix it.
“Got a safety-pin?” he wanted to know.
I said, “Pick up your coffee-pot and things and put them in the megaphone and come ahead. Do you think we’re going to start out to conquer the world with safety-pins?” ”