Now nothing happened the next week except going to school, and, gee
whiz, there’s no adventure in that. The best thing about school is
Saturday because there isn’t any. You can talk about Good Friday, but
good Saturdays are good enough for me. Anyway, it’s funny how great men
always get born on holidays, like Washington and Lincoln. That’s the
thing I like best about those men—their birthdays. That’s one thing I’m
thankful for about Thanksgiving, too; it always comes on a holiday. But
one thing I hate, and that is hop-toads.
So now that school is over for the week I’ll tell you about the big
rally. Wasn’t that a quick week? Believe me, when I’m writing stories I
take a hop, skip and a jump from one Saturday to another. Except in
vacation.
That rally was a big success. By ten o’clock on Saturday morning there
were seven troops, not counting our own, in Downing’s lot ready to do or
die. One came from East Bridgeboro, two came from Ennistown, one came
from Northvale, one came from Little Valley, and two came from Sloan
Hollow. There were seven troops and nineteen patrols. We have three
patrols, so that makes twenty-two. There were a hundred and seventy-nine
appetites altogether.
They all wanted to know what was the big idea, so I got up on a grocery
box and made a speech. General Blakeley inspiring his troops. Oh, boy!
I said, “Scouts, that old railroad car over near the station belongs to
us. It’s our trooproom. It has to be moved on this old track down to the
river. Tony Giovettioegleirotti, who keeps that lunch wagon, has defied
us. We bought twenty-four frankfurters from him and he wouldn’t move his
wagon. So what are we going to do about it?”
“_Foil_ him!” Pee-wee shouted.
“We haven’t got any tinfoil,” someone else hollered.
“Listen,” I said; “everybody keep still. We’re going to have games and
scout pace races and things, but nothing to eat. Every scout has to
promise that no matter how hungry he is, he won’t go over and buy
anything from Tony. I’m going to appoint a committee to go over there
and keep smacking their lips, but——”
“I’ll be on that committee!” Pee-wee shouted.
“You’ll be on the ground if you don’t keep still!” I told him. “You
fellows are supposed to go over there in small detachments, kind of, and
hang around, and jingle the money in your pockets, and act as if you
were hungry——”
“I can act that way!” Pee-wee shouted.
“Sure, just act natural,” I told him. “You’ve had practice enough being
hungry.”
“What’s the big idea?” somebody called out.
“The big idea is to mobilize all our appetites,” I said. “When Tony sees
this whole bunch of scouts—a hundred and seventy-nine appetites—and
finds out that none of us is going to go over there and buy a single
sandwich from him; when he finds that we spurn his pie, what will he do?
He’ll move his wagon over here. That’s high strategy. It’s so high you
have to use a stepladder to get up to it. The scout appetite, when it
acts in, what d’you call it, _unison_ can move anything!”
“Sure it can!” they all yelled.
“But how are you going to move the car?” some scout or other wanted to
know.
“You leave that to me,” I told him. “What _you’re_ supposed to do is to
get the way cleared. You’re supposed to re—what d’you call
it?—reconnoiter around Tony’s and read the bill of fare that’s pasted
on the door, and jingle your money and kind of maybe smack your lips and
look like the poor starving children in Europe. _But don’t buy
anything!_ If you were to buy anything, even a single cheese sandwich,
you’d be—you’d be Benedict Arnold——”
“Did he eat cheese sandwiches?” one of the crowd wanted to know.
“He was a traitor!” I shouted at him. “I don’t know what he used to eat.
Shut up.”
“He was in favor of Switzerland, he ate Swiss cheese sandwiches,” Brick
Warner yelled.
“Will you shut up?” I hollered.
“It says in my History he swallowed his pride and wrote to
Washington——”
“Some appetite!” one of those fellows from East Bridgeboro yelled.
“Now I don’t know what I was talking about,” I said.
“You never did,” a scout shouted at me.
I said, “Will you _listen_? If you all act in the right way and Tony
finds that you’re not going to buy anything from him, he’ll move his
wagon over here. Let him know you won’t buy anything except on scout
territory. See? He’ll come across, you wait and see. All we have to do
is hold out. The afternoon milk——”
“We don’t want any milk,” they all began screaming. “What do you think
this is? A baby show?”
“I’m talking about a train,” I shot back at them; “a milk train. Didn’t
you ever hear of a milk train?”
“I never knew milk came from a milk train,” Hunt Manners shouted.
“I thought it came from the milkman,” another fellow called.
I said, “Oh, sure, it comes from the Milky Way, just the same as germs
come from Germany. You’re all so bright you ought to have dimmers.”
“Dinners——” Pee-wee yelled.
“There you go again,” I told him. “No, not dinners—_dimmers_! Listen,
will you? The afternoon milk train gets here——”
“To-morrow morning,” a kid from Little Valley yelled.
“It isn’t as slow as they are in Little Valley,” I said; “it’ll be here
at about four-sixty——”
“Five o’clock,” a scout piped up.
“Right the first time,” I said. “How did you guess?”
“What about it?” a lot of scouts wanted to know.
“This about it,” I said; “if the tracks are clear by that time Mr.
Jenson, who is engineer on that train, is going to push the car——”
“He must be a strong man,” somebody shouted.
“Oh, sure,” I told him; “he’s so strong he wasn’t even born on a weak
day. Now will you keep still a minute? He’s going to push the car with
the locomotive over to this field while the train is being——”
“While it’s being milked,” another kid hollered.
Honest, that crowd was so crazy that a crazy quilt would turn green with
envy, I said.
“Please listen and then everybody can talk at once. Your job is to
inveigle——”
“What do you mean, inveigle?” somebody hooted.
“Keep still,” I said; “inveigle is Latin for luring; you know what that
is, don’t you? Your job is to get that lunch wagon over to this field by
fair means or rainy means or any old means——”
“He doesn’t know _what_ he means,” somebody yelled.
“And I’ll do the rest,” I told them. “Only you have to have the tracks
clear by five o’clock this afternoon.”
“How are you going to get the car past that old garage?” somebody wanted
to know.
“That’s another story,” I said. “You should worry about how we’re going
to do that. We’ll find a way. Scouts are resourceful. There’s more than
one way to kill a cat——”
“Scouts are supposed to be kind to animals,” one fellow shouted.
“I’m not talking about a real cat,” I said; “that’s just an expression.
I’m talking about Mr. Slaus——”
Good night! Just then while I was talking I happened to look over to
Slausen’s and there was Mr. Slausen standing in the back doorway
watching us and listening. Gee whiz, I guess he heard everything I said.
Anyway, I should worry, because I didn’t say anything that I was ashamed
of. But just the same he had an awful funny look on his face.