ENTER THE GENUINE ARTICLE
At another time Pee-wee would have delighted to linger in this scout's
Utopia. But his chief thought now was to take advantage of his fortunate
escape. He had not the faintest idea where he was, more than that he was
a full two hour's ride from home. That would be a long and lonely hike,
even if he could find his way in the darkness.
He tried to recall the names of the various lakes in New Jersey and in
the neighboring state of New York, and he recalled a good many, but that
did not help him to identify this one. So he started up toward the town
in the hope of identifying that.
The village petered out toward the lake; there were but a few houses. It
was about eleven or twelve o'clock or after and the good people in the
straggling cottages thereabout had put out their lights and retired to
slumber before that wicked hour.
There was a stillness and gloom about these uninviting, dark houses; a
cheerlessness not to be found in the densest woods. They made Pee-wee
feel lost and lonesome, as the dim, silent wilderness could never do.
Soon he reached the town, and there in the center of a spacious lawn was
something which, in his loneliness and uncertainty, seemed the picture
of gloom. The ruin of a building which had been burned to the ground.
What a fire that must have been to witness! Better far than The Bandit
of Harrowing Highway! Over a partly fallen arch, under which many
reluctant feet had passed, Pee-wee could just make out the graven words:
WEST KETCHEM PUBLIC SCHOOL.
West Ketchem. So that was where he was. But he had never heard of West
Ketchem. The fame of this lakeside metropolis had not penetrated to
surging Bridgeboro. At least it had not penetrated to the surging mind
of Scout Harris. He tried to recall West Ketchem on the map of New
Jersey in his school geography.
But evidently West Ketchem had scorned the geography. Or else the
geography had scorned West Ketchem.
Undecided what to do, Pee-wee lingered a few moments among the mass of
charred timbers, and desks ruined and laid low, and broken blackboards,
all in an indiscriminate heap.
"I bet the fellers that live here are glad," he said to himself. "That
isn't saying they have to believe in fires, except camp-fires, but
anyway after it's all over they've got a right to be glad."
The situation of the school seemed to have been a sort of compromise
between the claims of the lake and the claims of the town. It was not
too far from the town and not too far from the lake. Perhaps it had been
built within sight of the lake so that the West Ketchem student body
could see it while at their lessons. A kind of slow torture.
Pee-wee had never before seen the familiar realities of school life thus
brought low and lying in inglorious disorder at his feet. It gave him a
feeling of triumph and had a fascination for him. Damp smelling books
were here and there among the ruins, histories, arithmetics, algebras
and grammars. He could tread upon these with his valiant heel. A huge
roll call book (ah, how well he knew it even in the darkness) lay
charred and soggy near the assembly-room piano. Junk heaps had always
had a fascination for Pee-wee and had yielded up some of his rarest
treasures. But a school, with all its disciplinary claptrap reduced to a
junk heap! He could not, even in this late hour and strange country,
tear himself away from it.
But another influence caused him to hesitate. What should he do? There
were hardly any lights in the town now. He was a scout and he could not
reconcile himself to the commonplace device of going to someone's house
and asking for shelter. His scout training had taught him self-reliance
and resource, and here was the chance to apply them, to go home, to find
his way without anyone's help. The lonely road called to him more than
the dark houses did.
But how about the car? Mr. Bartlett's stolen car? Would it be the way of
a scout to go home and tell about that? He had come in the car,
Providence had made him its guardian, and he would take it back again
and say, (or words to this effect) "Here is your super six Hunkajunk
car, Mr. Bartlett; they tried to steal it but I _foiled_ them! I was
disguised as a buffalo robe."
There was only one difficulty in the way of this heroic course and that
was that he could not run the car. Never again would he touch one of
those frightful nickel things on the instrument board. So, wishing to
handle this harrowing situation alone, with true scout prowess and
resource, he kicked around among the ruins of that tyrannous and fallen
empire, and tried to devise some plan.
Suddenly he heard a sound near him. He paused in the darkness, his scout
heel upon a poor, defenseless crumpled spelling book. Thus he stood in
mingled triumph and agitation, his heart beating fast, every nerve on
edge.
"Who--who's there?" he said.
He moved again, and was startled as his foot slipped off the charred
timber on which he was walking. The brisk autumn wind was playing havoc
among the debris, blowing damp pages over faster than anyone could turn
them. It played among a burned chest of old examination papers,
scattering them like dried leaves. Correct or incorrect, they were all
the same now. Pee-wee liked this roving, unruly wind, having its own way
in that dominion of restriction. He liked its gay disregard of all this
solemn claptrap.
But now he heard clearly the sound of footsteps among the ruins,
footsteps picking their way as it seemed to him, through the uncertain
support of all that various disorder. Groping, careful footfalls.
"Who's there?" he asked. And the only answer was a gust of wind.
Could it be those thieves in search of him? Or might it be the ghost of
some principal or teacher lingering still among these remnants and
reminders of authority?
Step, step--step.
Then from around the corner of a charred, up-ended platform appeared a
face. A face with a cap drawn low over it. And presently a dark form
emerged.
"Who--who are--you?" Pee-wee stammered.
"I'm a teacher as was here," the stranger said. "You needn't be scared
of me, kiddo."
"I was just kind of looking around," Pee-wee explained apologetically.
"Here's a pencil fur yer," the stranger said. "I jes' picked it up."
Pee-wee accepted this as a flag of truce, and felt somewhat reassured. A
man who would give him a pencil surely meant no harm. He had as much
right to be there as Pee-wee had.
"If you were a teacher here I shouldn't think you'd say 'as was,'"
Pee-wee ventured, "But gee whiz," he added, "I don't care how you say
it." No teacher had ever before called him kiddo and he rather liked it.
"Maybe you taught manual training, hey?" Pee-wee said. "Because they're
kind of different."
"There's where you hit it," said the stranger.
"Manual training?"
"Right the first time, and I'm just sort of collecting some of my junk."
"That's one thing about me, I'm good at guessing," Pee-wee said. "I
kinder knew you were that. Manual training, that's my favorite study
because it isn't a study at all. I made a bird-house, I did, in manual
training, a dandy big one."
"Bird-houses is a good thing to make," said the manual training
teacher.
Pee-wee could not see his new acquaintance very well or the bundle which
he carried. If the teacher had been after his junk he seemed to have
been fortunate in finding it, for he had collected a considerable amount
of booty. Indeed, he had but a minute before succeeded in disinterring
the safe which had been in the principal's office, but here he had met
with disappointment. He had, however, hit upon a microscope of some
value from the equipment of the student laboratory and he had found a
lady's handbag which he seemed to think worth keeping.
"What are _you_ doing here?" he asked of Pee-wee.