THREE OF A KIND
The pigeon-holes in the station at Westover were not sufficiently
numerous, nor varied in their contents, to send an aimless pilgrim to
any great distance. Tickets for points along the main line and along the
several branches were to be had there. By the grab-bag device one might
find himself at the seashore or at some remote mountain hamlet. He could
not go through to South Africa or to the island of Yap without change.
But this made no difference to Pee-wee. He included the heaven above and
the earth beneath and the waters under the earth in his preparations. He
was not going to take any chances of finding himself in the Klondike
without snow shoes, so he devised a pair out of two old tennis rackets.
He built a camp-fire and got a huge tin can and stewed up an odorous
concoction, following a recipe for mosquito dope which he had seen
printed in a camping booklet. This was for use in the tropics. A scout
must be prepared. It would probably have driven all the tropical pests
to cover for it certainly drove all the Goodale guests in from the
porch. They barricaded themselves in the sitting room and closed the
windows.
Pee-wee seemed to go on the principle that the less junk he carried in
his brain the more he should carry in his duffel bag and dangling from
his person. This stuff was all thoroughly edited by his two friends on
the momentous day of their departure, and when they started, Pee-wee
carried with him nothing but thirty-five dollars and a safety-pin. With
this latter his mother pinned the bills within his shirt for
safe-keeping. By pulling his shirt out from his neck he could look down
and see that his fortune was all right.
“It’s too bad we know we’re going to Westover, hey?” he said. “But, gee
whiz, you’ve got to know _something_ to get started, or we’d just kind
of keep going round and round the house maybe, like you did at that
lake.”
“That’s the idea,” said Ray; “we leave all our plans and knowledge at
the nearest station; from that point we go where the wind blows us.”
“I can tell which way the wind is blowing,” Pee-wee said.
“Don’t, it would be fatal,” said Fuller. “One little scrap of knowledge
might spoil all.”
“I’ve got a lot of little scraps,” Pee-wee said; “but I won’t bother
with them, hey? I won’t even look up at the stars because I can tell
which way I’m going by the stars. I wouldn’t look at the dipper—I
wouldn’t even look at it if I was lost and famished—that’s the same as
starving. Maybe we’ll get into, way into the woods, hey? Because up
around Temple Camp if you count three houses, gee whiz, that might take
you miles and miles and miles where the foot of white man never trod, it
might. That’s how far apart they are. Maybe when we get out at somewhere
or other the third house will be a hermit’s cave, hey? Gee whiz, you
never can tell.”
“That’s the beauty of it,” said Fuller Bullson. “I went on a bee-line
hike,” Pee-wee vociferated, keeping up a running fire of talk as he
trudged along, straining a cautious look down his neck occasionally,
“and we had to make a resolution to go straight, and gee whiz, that
resolution was a nuisance, because we were all the time thinking about
it.”
“You should have left it home,” said Ray.
“Gee, I’ll never take one with me again,” said Pee-wee.
“You see,” said Fuller, “if you _are_ lost you can’t _get_ lost. Can
you?”
“_Sure_ you can’t,” Pee-wee agreed enthusiastically.
“If you don’t care where you go you can’t go to the wrong place,” said
Ray. “Places aren’t wrong or right. How can places be wrong or right?”
“Gee whiz, they can’t,” Pee-wee agreed. “Anybody can see that.”
“A place can’t be incorrect,” said Fuller Bullson as if laying down a
fundamental proposition. “What’s another place? Why, it’s the place you
don’t go to, that’s all. Am I right?”
“_Sure_ you are,” vociferated Pee-wee.
“And if you go to it,” said Ray, “why then the other place is the other
place. So no place can be wrong. The mistake is in your head in wanting
to go to a particular place when really there is no particular place.
It’s like the fountain of perpetual youth. You’ve heard of that, haven’t
you?”
“Maybe we’ll find it, hey?” said Pee-wee, excitedly. “Gee, I hope we get
to a station that’s on the edge of a—a—a trackless wilderness. Don’t
you? Did you ever discover anything wonderful—by not knowing where you
were going?”
“Positively, we discovered you,” said Fuller.
“And you didn’t know where you were going that night you discovered us,”
said Ray.
“That’s a dandy argument,” Pee-wee said. “Suppose—suppose we get to the
edge, kind of, of a forest and there are no houses for—for fifty miles—”
“That’s us,” said Ray.
“Just keep going,” said Fuller.
“One thing sure, I like you,” said Pee-wee.
“Three of a kind,” said Ray.
“Maybe it’ll be a desert, hey?” Pee-wee suggested. “Gee, I kind of hope
we land at a fishing village, only I like deserts, too.
Suppose—suppose,” he added in sudden terror. “Suppose we land at a
school! But anyway I don’t care, because right near a school is usually
a candy store and maybe it’ll be the third house, hey? Because I’m
always lucky, that’s sure.”