PAGE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FOUR
If Pee-wee had stolen a glimpse from under the buffalo robe at about the
time that he was writing under difficulties his momentous message to the
world, he might have noticed a little old-fashioned house nestling among
the trees along the roadside.
At that time the house was dark save for a lamp-light in a little window
up under the eaves. Little the speeding hero knew that up in that tiny
room there sat a boy engrossed with the only scout companion that he
knew, and that was the scout handbook. It had come to him by mail a few
days before.
This boy lived with his widowed mother, Mrs. Mehetable Piper. His name
was Peter, but whether he was descended from the renowned Peter Piper
who picked a peck of pickled peppers, the present chronicler does not
know. At the time in question he was eating the handbook alive. The
speeding auto passed, the mighty Bridgeboro scout pinned his missive to
his remnant of sandwich and hurled it out into the dark world, the boy
up in the little room went on reading with hungry eyes, and that is all
there was to that.
Peter belonged to no troop, for in that lonely country there was no
troop to belong to. He had no scoutmaster, no one to track and stalk and
go camping with, no one to jolly him as Pee-wee had. Away off in
National Headquarters he was registered as a pioneer scout. He had his
certificate, he had his handbook, that is all. It is said in that book
that a scout is a brother to every other scout, but this scout's
brothers were very far away and he had never seen any of them. He
wondered what they looked like in their trim khaki attire. He could
hardly hope to see them, but he did dare to hope that somehow or other
he might strike up a correspondence with one of them. He had heard of
pioneer scouts doing that.
In his loneliness he pictured scouts seated around a camp-fire telling
yarns. He knew that sometimes these wonderful and fortunate beings with
badges up and down their arms went tracking in pairs, that there was
chumming in the patrols. He might sometime or other induce Abner Corning
to become a pioneer scout and chum with him. But this seemed a Utopian
vision for Abner lived seven miles away and had hip disease and lived in
a wheel-chair.
Peter had a rich uncle who lived in New York and took care of a building
and got, oh as much as thirty dollars a week. The next time this rich
uncle came to visit he was going to ask him if he had seen any real
scouts with khaki suits and jack-knives dangling from their belts and
axes hanging on their hips.
Peter experimented with the axe in the woodshed but it was so long that
the handle dragged on the ground and he could sit on it. He had likewise
pinned a Harding and Coolidge button on his sleeve and pretended it was
a signalling badge. _A signalling badge!_ He did not tell his mother
what he was pretending for she would not understand. Out in the small
barn he had presented himself with this, with much scout ceremony, and
he had actually trembled when he told himself (in a man's voice) to
"step forward and receive this token...."
The car in which Scout Harris was being carried reached the lake and
still Peter Piper poured over his scout handbook by the dim, oily
smelling lamp, up in that little room. The two scoutmasters rowed across
and were greeted by their noisy troops and still Peter Piper read his
book. The scout of scouts, W. Harris of the nifty Bridgeboro outfit, was
nearly suffocated, then escaped and stood triumphant over the ruins of
the West Ketchem school, and still Peter Piper's smarting eyes were
fixed upon that book. They were riveted to page two hundred and
eighty-four and he was reading the words "Scouts should thoroughly
master these two standard...."
He read it again and again for his strained eyes were blinking and the
page seemed all hazy. He paused to rest his eyes, then read on. But he
did not turn the page. For an hour his gaze was fixed upon it. Just on
that one page....