Westy Martin (he’s in my patrol; he’s my special chum), he said, “The
only way to do is to go to work systematically.”
“Sister what?” Pee-wee shouted.
“Systematically,” I told him; “that means without any help from our
sisters. Now shut up.”
“How long is it going to take to move that car all the way from the
station over to the river? That’s what _I’d_ like to know,” he shouted.
“About forty-eight hours and three months,” I said. “If you’ll give
Westy a chance to speak, maybe he’ll give us an idea.”
We were all walking back up to town after our inspection of the old
sunken tracks, and I could see that Westy was kind of silent; I mean I
could hear that he was silent; I mean—you know what I mean—I should
worry. Maybe you can’t hear a fellow being silent. You can never hear
Pee-wee being silent, that’s one sure thing.
Westy was frowning just as if it was the end of vacation, and I knew he
was thinking some thinks.
Pretty soon he said, “The two hardest things are getting the car past
Tony’s Lunch Wagon and past Slausen’s Auto Repair Shop. After that it
will be clear sailing—I mean rolling. I say let’s have a big scout
rally in Downing’s lot. Let’s have games and races and everything, and
ask all the scout troops for miles and miles around, and everybody’ll
have to be good and hungry.”
“That’s easy!” Pee-wee shouted.
“Sure,” Connie Bennett piped up. “We’ll have the East Bridgeboro Troop
over because there’s a fat scout in that troop.”
“I know the one you mean,” Hunt Ward said. “He’s shaped like a ferry
boat.”
I said, “Sure, and here’s our own dear Pee-wee; he’s a whole famine in
himself. He wouldn’t dare to look Hoover in the face.”
“But what’s the idea?” Dorry wanted to know.
“You started an argument and you haven’t got any premises.”
“Some highbrow,” I told him.
“Sure, Downing’s lot is the premises,” our young hero piped up.
“Premises is a place.”
“I’ve hiked all over but I’ve never been to that place,” I told him.
“Can you get ice cream cones there?”
“Premises is the basis of an argument,” Westy said. “You choose your
premises and stand on it.”
“A stepladder is good enough for me,” I said.
“Premises is real estate!” the kid fairly yelled. “Everybody knows
that.”
“I don’t know it,” Punk Odell said, “and I’m everybody.”
“You mean you think you are,” Pee-wee shot back.
“Well,” I said, “what’s the difference whether it’s real estate or
imitation estate? That isn’t finding out how we’re going to get the car
past Tony’s, is it? Give Westy a chance to speak. Let’s have a large
chunk of silence.”
That’s always the way it is with us. We never can decide anything
because we all talk at once and we jump from one subject to another.
Especially when Pee-wee’s along. Mr. Ellsworth (he’s our scoutmaster,
he’s got a dandy dog), he says that silence is golden. But believe me,
the Silver Foxes don’t bother about things that are golden. Speech is
silver, and Pee-wee is Sterling.
Let’s see, where was I? Oh, I know. I was just starting to keep still so
Westy could talk.
He said, “We’ll have a big rally and we’ll have signs up all around the
field. All the scouts will have to be good and hungry.”
“That’s easy!” Pee-wee shouted.
Westy said, “We’ll have signs up all around saying _A SCOUT IS HUNGRY_,
and things like that. We’ll have some poetry on big planks——”
“And when Tony sees all that,” Connie Bennett piped up, “and finds that
we won’t go over and buy any eats from him, why, then he’ll move his
wagon over to the lot and we’ll have a chance to move the car. It’s a
bully idea if Pee-wee doesn’t weaken and spoil it all.”
“What are you talking about?” Pee-wee yelled. “I can go without anything
to eat for—for an hour, if I have to!”
So we decided that we’d force Tony to move his lunch wagon by the force
of our appetites. Maybe you’ve seen exhibitions of things that scouts
can do by the power of deduction and all that, and how they can do
things by united strength, and everybody admits they can make a lot of
noise when they sing together. But I bet you never saw what they can do
by concerted appetite—that means all being hungry at the same time.
You can move a house that way. Anyway, you can move a lunch wagon.