Percy Keese Fitzhugh

“ What do you want the Gold Medal for?”
“He’s crazy, don’t you listen to him!” Pee-wee shouted at Dub. “You win the life-saving badge by rules and you win the Gold Medal by being a hero. And if you get the Gold Medal, that doesn’t give you the life-saving badge.” ”

“ That’s where you’re positively absolutely wrong the first time, Bunko Daraway Reckless Bravado, because you have to take it whether you want it or not—you’re a hero. You can’t help being one any more than Pee-wee can help being a fixer and doing such good turns to his Scout comrades—accent on the good turns. Do you think it worries us not to get a medal? Didn’t we not find a will? And didn’t we not find some bandits? If we got what we were after when Pee-wee was along we’d all drop dead from shock and so Dub Smedley couldn’t stay anyway, so what do we care? ”

“ I said. “Some Scouts think that to win the taxidermy badge all you have to do is drive a taxi. Pee-wee thought he could get the plumbing badge by eating plums. But he was mistaken just the same as he was when he thought if he won the astronomy badge he’d be a Star Scout. He thinks a Life Scout is one that has saved a life.” ”

“ As long as we have a windmeter we can go everywhere.”
“Oh, we can go more places than that,” Dub said.
I said, “Sure, only one thing, I hope the windmeter reverses so we can come home again.” I said, “Has it got a reverse gear, kid?”
“Will you let go my leg!” Pee-wee hollered. “Geeeeeee whiz! You grab my windmeter in one hand and you grab my leg with the other and if you don’t look out, you’ll pull me off the springboard; a lot you care with your crazy talk! Now you’ve got a new feller started with all your nonsensical nonsense!” ”

“ I told him. “Because only for Will and I keeping still you might have had the Gold Medal—even your Eagle badge too, maybe? You’re so quiet, I thought maybe after all you were sore. Are you?”
“You have to be quiet when Pee-wee’s around,” he said. “A fellow doesn’t get a chance to say anything.”
I said, “Will you let me tell Pee-wee and Sandy so they’ll know what you are before you go? They won’t let on at camp. Then all the four of us will make you the full salute, Dub. Gee Dub, Will and I feel mean. I know you’ve got to go and we can’t help you that way. ”

“ I was just going out on the lake with Dub Smedley—he comes from Jersey City, I don’t blame him. We were going to catch some sunfish. All of a sudden I saw Pee-wee sitting way out on the end of the springboard dangling his legs. He belongs in my troop (I guess you know that) only up at Temple Camp, I don’t see much of him, lucky for that, I’m not kicking. He hangs around the cook shack most of the time. Me, I’m out for life, liberty and the pursuit of snappiness. ”

“ I bet you and all your patrol, and Pee-wee, live in nice big houses.”
“Believe me,” I told him. “Pee-wee would change places with you to live over a bakery store. If he lived over a bakery store you’d never see him up here. Look out where you’re stepping, it’s marshy near the shore.”
He said, “Look at the luck that Easton fellow had—the Gold Medal and a hundred bucks. And he doesn’t need it either, his folks are rich.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” I said. “You win a prize or you don’t. Being rich hasn’t got anything to do with it.” ”

“ I said, “You’re all right, Dub, only you’re not going to get away with it. Whatever you said, we’re going into the office and tell the whole thing, just how it was. We happen to be a couple of solid silver-plated foxes and we congratulate you because you’re an honor hero. I dare you to sneak up to camp-fire and get the key of Cooking Shack from Chocolate Drop. We want to get some pie.”
Dub said, “Listen, you fellows, we’re in luck. Nobody has to go home to-morrow. Even Pee-wee Harris couldn’t have fixed it any better. ”

“ Dub said.
“Do you think I’m afraid of them?” the kid asked him. “Gee whiz, they’re only just actors. When they have to do things where you have to have prowesses and things like that—and reckless daring―”
“Goodness me,” I said.
“I bet there isn’t one of them can dive like Hervey Willetts does,” Pee-wee said. “They just do things that kind of make it look as if they’re brave. Scouts are real heroes because they no fooling take their lives in their hands―”
“Like spaghetti,” Sandy said. ”

“ But you’re wrong as I usually never am. If that rock is in the tent, we are the ones who put it there—deny it if you can. If we didn’t put the rock in the tent, then how did the tent get outside the rock? It’s as clear as mud, I’ll leave it to Sandy.”
By that time Dub and Sandy were both laughing because they had Pee-wee and me started.
I said, very sober like, “We can claim that we lifted a rock weighing about a quarter of a ton because we put it in that tent and we did not have a derrick. Therefore by the same line of reasoning we’re stronger than mustard. Am I right?” ”

“ Dub said, “I bet it’s hard candy he eats.”
“Sure, rock candy,” Sandy said.
The man said, “I think it was marshmallows.”
Pee-wee didn’t bother saying anything till he finished his cone—he was too busy. Then, all of a sudden he opened up.
“That shows how much you don’t know,” he said to the man, “because boys in moving pictures are a lot of bluffs. That was just a dummy they threw off the cliff. They don’t do real things like Scouts do. Some of them do like Douglas Fairbanks, but most of them, I can do better things myself—thrilling and all that.” ”

“ If you want to see Pee-wee jump up in the air just tell him it’s longer one way around the lake than it is the other way. Just tell him that with a sober face if you want to see some fireworks. When you get past the brook it’s all woods, but there’s a trail. It’s hard to follow it in the dark unless you’ve been over it in the daytime. I bet I’ve been over it a hundred times. If you ever come to Temple Camp I’ll take you around.
While we were hiking around through the woods I asked Dub how he made out with those pictures he took that day we were on our way from Bagley Center to the chasm. ”

“ Didn’t I make him a willow whistle to blow in case he gets held up by bandits—I leave it to Roy if I didn’t.”
Mr. Bagley put out his hand and shook hands with Pee-wee, like as if Pee-wee was a kind of a hero. I had to laugh.
I said, “You mustn’t mind our young hero. He’s the one that invented the Boy Scouts of America.”
Mr. Bagley said, “That was a very good invention.” Then he shook hands with Pee-wee again.
Jiminies, we knew all about the forest land east of Black Lake—anyway, Pee-wee and I did. Dub and Sandy were new fellows at camp, so maybe they didn’t. ”

“ Early the next morning, as soon as anybody could see the bulletin-board, Scouts started coming up to my patrol cabin to join the hike—jiminies, you’d think I was the Pilgrim Fathers starting out. I told them there wouldn’t be any hike till I thought of a good one. “Do you think I haven’t got my vast public to think about?” I told them. “Boy scouts all over the country who are always writing letters to find out if I’m real or just imitation. And anyway,” I said, “I’m not going to take the whole of Temple Camp with me—only just four fellows.” ”

“ Sandy said, “and go any way we want to.”
“Sure, a couple of solemn vows will make a nice lunch,” I said. “What do we care where we go? The wind is the quitter, not us, I should worry.” I said, “We’ll stay here till twelve o’clock and if the breeze doesn’t spring up by that time, we’ll go to the next village willynilly, that means any way no matter what. Then, we’ll buy some eats.”
“If we had brought some with us like I wanted to do, we could eat them now,” Pee-wee said. “That’s what we get for starting out not prepared like Scouts are supposed not ever to do—now you see what we get.” ”

“ I’m willing to hunt for that oilskin container, only if we do we’re going to do it right. We’re going to start out like Columbus did, only different.”
“There you go,” Pee-wee shouted.
“All right,” I said. “We’re at Beaver Chasm, aren’t we. And it’s time for lunch. We’re about two miles from Bagley Center and we’re about five miles from camp. How long can we hold out without eats?”
“Maybe five minutes,” Dub said.
“Maybe three at a pinch,” Sandy said.
“I can’t hold out at all,” Pee-wee piped up; “not even at a pinch.”
“A fine lot of Scouts!” I said. “Now I’ll show you what a fine Scout I am. ”

“ Way up there, even, we could hear Pee-wee shouting away. When he gets excited it always seems as if he’s mad. I heard him say something about Silver-plated Foxes (that’s my patrol) and Sandy thought he was telling that other fellow he was only a silver-plated hero, because that’s the way he talks.
All of a sudden I noticed those three grown up fellows—they were talking excited together. Just then a couple of them jumped up and came out in the middle of the chasm and one shouted, but the fellows up on the top didn’t pay any attention. ”

“ I said. “You know what Hervey Willetts said. ‘What’s the good of having rules if you don’t break them.’ Boy oh boy, I’d just like to know who it is. Shall we shout and tell him the outside of his boat is all wet?”
“No, don’t call,” Dub said.
“It’s oar-locks all right,” I said. “Listen—shh. Did you hear a kind of a splash? I’d like to make my voice kind of deep like Councilor Trent and call out and ask what they’re doing here, hey?”
Dub said, “No, don’t. We don’t have to tell on them, do we?”
“Nope,” I said. “That’s one thing Scouts up here are never asked to do. ”

“ Sandy said.
“Maybe we’ll have time to go and get some sodas,” Pee-wee said.
“Go ahead,” I told him. “I’m going to sit here and see if any Scouts for camp get off this train.”
“Will you go with me?” the kid asked Will.
“You go with him,” Will said to Sandy.
“Come on, I’ll treat you,” the kid said. “I’ll bring back some gumdrops.”
“Don’t come back at all if you don’t want to, the pleasure is ours,” I said.
“We’ll hear the whistle,” Sandy said.
“Go ahead,” I told him.
Sandy’s a nice fellow, he’ll even drink sodas to help a friend. He’s always doing good turns. ”

“ That’s outside my patrol cabin. The three cabins of our troop are there. They’re just a little way up the hill from the camp. They’re just outside the inside. You never came up there like we asked you to.”
Dub said, “You fellows are lucky all right. Those cabins belong to your troop, don’t they?”
“Sure they do,” I said, “and there’s a tent there too, because we have four patrols now. Pee-wee used to be a Raven but he started a declaration of independence and now we’ve got the Chipmunks. We’re more to be pitied than blamed. We keep a lantern out so on very dark nights we can find our way. ”

“ Pee-wee, like I told you, is in the same troop with me. He lives on Terris Avenue in Bridgeboro. He’s got one mother, one father, one sister and three million appetites. He used to be in the Raving Ravens, then he started the Chipmunks and all that bunch were up at camp when we had this hike, but most of the time Pee-wee doesn’t bother much with his patrol—they’re lucky. Anyway, I guess you know all about Pee-wee and me. If you’re not deaf, dumb and blind, you must know about him. Me, I’m more quiet like a sawmill.
Dub Smedley belongs in Jersey City, it’s right next to a ferry. ”

“ Even Pee-wee didn’t say anything. When you know something happened in a place—like getting killed—that place seems kind of scary. And besides I had never looked down into it like that before. When you go in where the brook is, it doesn’t seem so deep and dark.
One of us asked Mr. Bagley if he had any idea how his father’s coat happened to be away from his body, because that seemed funny.
He said, “I have no more idea than the man in the moon. All I know is that when we lifted his coat off that clump of brush the oilskin container was not in any of the pockets. We know that he went to Catskill. ”

“ Jiminies, we were all sprawling on the grass talking a lot of nonsense and kidding Pee-wee and taking each other’s hats off and pulling up grass and throwing it in each other’s faces—a lot we cared about hiking.
“Now you see how it is,” the Kid said to Dub and Sandy. “Do you blame the Scouts over at camp that they won’t go on hikes with him—gee whiz, they all had a taste of it. We always get stalled like this and just sit around fooling and don’t do anything and he calls it a hike. ”

“ Pee-wee said. He was talking for the benefit of Dub and Sandy because they were new fellows at camp.
“Sure,” I said, “and we can fry some resources or boil them in ice water. I say let’s eat and after that let’s hike back to camp and get permission to start out again to-morrow and camp for a couple of days in the chasm. We can bring a tent and some provisions and everything and we won’t say anything to any one why we’re going to do it and if we find that oilskin container we’ll be the big noise at Temple Camp. ”

“ Pee-wee screamed at Dub and Sandy. “He has to be so smart with new fellers at camp he told Harold Titus that a tomahawk is a male bird and Harold Titus wrote it down in his scout record book. I’m warning you to be careful because you’re new fellers and the first thing you know he’ll make fools of you like when he told even a little lame tenderfoot that Robin Hood is a bird’s hat, you can ask Westy Martin in his own patrol and even worse he told another little feller―”
“We’ll wait while you take a bite,” I said.
“I can eat and talk too!” the kid shouted. ”

“ Sandy said, “The more we don’t make, the better I’ll like it. Anyway we can camp in the chasm to-night, can’t we? I say let’s go back and get acquainted with those movie people.”
Dub said, “Sure, maybe we can get them to take pictures of us hunting for old man Bagley’s will.”
“Well, anyway,” I said, “there’s one thing that’s real and that’s ice cream cones. What do you say we go and get some and then start back?”
Dub said, “Let’s not bother.”
“Do you call ice cream cones a bother?” the kid shouted. ”

“ Pee-wee piped up. “Those are just the kinds of things we’re supposed to do, because we’re scouts and we even find lost people sometimes—you look in the newspapers and see. And I bet if that will is down there we can find it, because anyway, I know a feller that lost a licorice jaw-breaker through a cellar grating in front of a grocery store in Bridgeboro where I live and because I told him to buy an ice cream cone instead and he wouldn’t so I said I’d get it from him because Scouts have to be out for service.” ”