EVERY WHICH WAY
At last they came to a cross-road and turned to the right. Simon
believed that this would bring them into the hill road again. And so it
would have if it had gone straight. It was odd how this familiar road,
where he had gone black-berrying many a time, had not one familiar thing
about it now. He did not know it for a road that he had traveled over
every time that he had gone to the creamery. Nor could either he or
Pee-wee see how it curved gradually.
Thus it brought them to another road which they thought was the hill
road. After they had gone a mile or so on this they realized that it was
not. The first cross-road had curved around till it was parallel with
the hill road; it was no longer a cross-road. Thus when it crossed
another road the boys thought this was the main road and would take them
straight home.
In point of fact it was just another cross-road. Soon an unfamiliar
house informed Simon that they were not on the main road. They were not
as badly off as he thought they were, but he did not know this. A fog is
a very funny thing and plays strange pranks with one in one’s own
neighborhood.
“We’re lost,” Simon said, stopping the oxen and looking perplexed.
“Wait till I look at my compass,” Pee-wee said.
Extracting this from where it had been dangling in the folds of limp,
wet bunting, Pee-wee found to his consternation that already the cheap
tin case had little specks of fresh rust on it. And worse than that the
paper dial within curled up like a dried leaf. The all pervading,
insinuating fog seemed to have penetrated even this trusty little guide.
With the aid of his trusty flashlight, Pee-wee saw the havoc wrought
upon the delicately balanced needle. The glue behind the dial had melted
and oozed up and gummed the pivot. Even the magnetic pole (which Pee-wee
had always regarded as his friend, and which showed him the way home
from school) was helpless now, or thoroughly embarrassed by glue.
“Wait till I hold up my finger,” Pee-wee said.
He held up his finger, but even his potent imagination could not fancy
the wind blowing from any particular quarter. There was no wind, only a
clammy, stifling calm. And if there had been any wind it is hard to say
how that would have helped him.
Simon was disinclined to try to turn their lumbering caravan in that
narrow road, particularly since one direction seemed as good as another
now.
“We’ll just keep going,” he said, “and maybe we’ll come to some house or
something that I know. It must be late because I’m getting hungry.”
“It’s about—it’s—it’s twenty minutes to nine,” Pee-wee said. “That’s
what it is by my appetite.” He could tell time at least and that was
fortunate.
“If there wasn’t a fog I could tell the way home by the stars,” Pee-wee
announced.
“If there wasn’t a fog I could get home without looking at the stars,”
said simple Simon.
“You’re supposed to go by the stars if you’re a scout,” Pee-wee said
disdainfully.
“What are you supposed to go by in a fog?” Simon asked innocently.
Pee-wee thought for a moment, then “handled” the situation. “They’re
_supposed_ to get lost,” he said; “you have to get lost sometimes. Gee
whiz, what’s the good of being a scout if you don’t?”
This seemed to convince Simon for he said no more. If getting lost was
indeed part of the game, Pee-wee was running true to the scout program,
for he was lost with a vengeance. Not a scout sign was there to help
him, nor were any of the tried and true wrinkles of the least avail in
that damp, enshrouding waste.
Neither one of our doughty adventurers had the slightest idea where they
were. They paused at another cross-road and Pee-wee made a vain search
for moss, but it had all gone to bed. He ventured a few yards from the
road in quest of a woodchuck hole for he knew that woodchucks always
burrowed in a southerly direction. But the woodchucks seemed all to have
taken their burrows in on account of the dampness.
He did find one hole near the roadside which went straight down, and
this seemed to reflect on the well known sagacity of the woodchuck,
until Simon lifted the reproach from that lowly creature by proving that
the hole had been made for the accommodation of a fence post. The well
known characteristic of fence posts of standing upright, settled the
matter once and for all.
“If there were beavers here I could tell,” said Pee-wee.
They turned into this side road and continued going; there seemed
nothing else to do. They were in a strange world and there was nothing
to give them the least clue as to where they were. The oxen seemed
willing enough to take any road; they had no theories or prejudices.
“We’re somewhere,” Pee-wee said, “that’s sure.” This seemed probable
enough but the knowledge was not hopeful or reassuring....