ON TO BRIDGEBORO
Scoutmaster Ned Garrison had a middle name. Handling parents, that was
his middle name. He was a bear at that. He could make them eat out of
his hand. Had he not engineered the camping enterprise pending the
preparation of a makeshift school? Parents did not trouble him, he ate
them alive.
"You leave them to me," he said to Pee-wee as they advanced against poor
defenseless Bridgeboro. "They'll either consent or we'll shoot up the
town, hey, Safety First? We're on the rampage to-night; somebody's been
feeding us meat."
It was not Pee-wee's custom to leave a thing to somebody else. He
attended to everything--meals, awards, hikes, ice cream cones, camping
localities, duffel lists, parents, everything. He was the world's
champion fixer. You can see for yourselves what a triumph he made of not
rescuing the wrong car. That was merely a detail. If the car had been
the right one and no one had stopped him from rescuing it he would have
rescued it. Since everything worked out all right, he was triumphant.
And he was better than glue for fixing things.
"I'll handle them," he said.
"Well, we'll both handle them," said Scoutmaster Ned.
A little farther along the road Safety First said, "I don't see why the
road was closed off. It seems to me to be all right."
Pee-wee was now sufficiently subdued to think and speak calmly, and he
said, "That feller with the shirt put it there; he said he read the
signal. I guess he's crazy, hey?"
"Oh, the fellow with the shirt?" queried Fido Norton, humorously.
"I seem to remember a shirt," said Nick.
"That was it," Pee-wee said.
"He was just a little rube," said Charlie Norris.
"He's the one that said I was a thief," said Pee-wee. "I told him I
could prove I was a scout by eating a potato a certain way."
"And he didn't take you up?" said Scoutmaster Ned.
"He didn't have a potato," Pee-wee said.
"It's best always to carry potatoes with you," said Scoutmaster Safety
First.
"After this I'm always going to carry five or six," said Pee-wee.
"The proof of the potatoes is in the eating," said Nick.
"I know nine different ways to cook them," said Pee-wee; "and I can eat
them raw so that makes ten. I can eat potato skins too, so that makes
eleven."
"If you could eat potato-bugs that would make twelve," said Charlie
Norris.
"If you eat lightning bugs, that will make you bright," said Pee-wee;
"that's what Roy Blakeley says; he's in my troop. He's crazy and he says
he's glad of it. We've got three patrols in my troop and I'm a member of
the Ravens but I'm kind of in all of them. I know all about camping and
everything. In the fall you're supposed to camp east of a hill, do you
know why?"
"No, break it to us gently," said Nick.
"When you said _break it_, that reminded me that I can break an apple
into halves with one hand."
"Do tell," said Charlie; "what do you do with the other half?"
"What other half?"
"The other one."
"If they're both the same how can there be another one? I eat them."
"Really?"
"I eat mushrooms too, only if they're toad-stools they kill you."
"Why don't you eat a couple?"
"I _will_ not, because you bet I'm going to stay alive. I'll show you
how you can tell the difference when we get to that island. I'll show
you a lot of things. Do you know how to pump water with a
newspaper--rolled up? Gee, that's easy, I learned that when I was a
tenderfoot."
"What are you now, a second hand scout?"
"I'm a first class scout and I'm a first aid scout and--Do you know how
to make things out of peanut shells?"
"Will you show us that, too?"
"Sure, but anyway I never use chalk for scout signs; I use charred wood.
Do you know why?"
"Because chalk reminds you of school?"
"Because it's got too much civilization in it."
"Do they put that in it?"
"No, but it's there. Gee whiz, I've got no use for civilization, I don't
care what kind it is."
"Well, what about that codger?" asked Scoutmaster Ned. "He said he read
the signal?"
"Sure, and he was the one that stopped us when that fellow ran away. Gee
whiz, I didn't see any signal but I didn't look behind. Maybe he's just
disguised as a rube, hey? Anyway, he stopped us, that's one sure thing,
because we stopped and that proves it, doesn't it?"
"There's nothing the matter with the road," Safety First repeated.
"That's what has me guessing," said Scoutmaster Ned. "He couldn't have
read the message, that little codger. He's just a poor, little country
kid. I'd give a doughnut to know how he happened to put that rope across
the road. He never, _never_ read that message, you can bet on that."
"I know! I know!" vociferated Pee-wee. "He had a--a--inspiration. Give
me the doughnut."