THE BIG B
So we decided that we wouldn't send any telegrams or anything, and that
we'd stay right there in Brewster's Centre Station till the railroad
took us away and put us where we belonged. We said it was up to them.
Westy's mother knew he had his "eats" outfit along, and I guess all our
families knew about there being a stove and coal in the car. Anyway, you
can bet that scouts' mothers don't worry about them when they're away.
Gee whiz, my mother worries more about me when I'm home, because I
always eat a lot of pie and cake when I'm home. And I'm always using the
'phone.
We all said it would be a lot of fun to camp out in that car and to just
not pay any attention to what had happened. When we got home, we'd be
home. We decided on some poetry that we'd send to the Bridgeboro _News_
when we got back. It isn't much good, but anyway, this is it:
We started out to wander,
We didn't mean to roam.
We're here because we're here,
And when we're home we're home.
We hope they'll come and get us,
But we're not in a hurry.
We've got forty-two cents and a movie outfit,
We should worry.
That isn't much good, is it? Anyway, we decided that the next thing to
do was to find out if there was a town anywhere around. There wasn't any
railroad station, that was sure. Now all the time that we were having
that rumpus in the car, those men stood over there on the platform in
front of that store, staring and staring and staring.
Pretty soon they all came over and the man with one suspender said,
"Thar be'nt no growed-up man along o' you youngsters, be there?"
Westy told him no.
Then he looked us all over, very easy like, and he said, "Yer chorin' on
the railroad?"
I said, "We're boy sprouts and this is Brewster's Centre."
He said, "Brewster's Centre? Whar?"
I said, "Right here in this car."
He just looked all around and then he said, "They haint cal'latin' on
changin' the name of this here taown ter Brewster's Centre, be they?"
"'Cause that won't go here," another one of the men said. "We wuz
promised a station, but we haint goin' ter have no changin' of names.
The railroad folks tried that down ter Skunk Hollow, settin' up a
jim-crack station, all red shingles and fancy roof, and callin' it Ozone
Valley. But they can't come any of that business up here."
"After Eb Brewster, too," the other man said; "and him crazier'n a
loon."
"Hadn't ought ter be thirty mile nuther," the man with one suspender
said; "that three oughter be an eight. Noow York is eighty mile on the
rail."
They all stood there squinting up at the _Brewster's Centre_ sign, and
all of a sudden I had a thought and I whispered to the fellows, "Don't
spoil the plot, it's growing thicker. Let me do the talking."
One of the men said to the others, "I alluz allowed Eb was jest talkin'
crazy when he said haow he had friends amongst them big railroad
maganates. But the taown haint never goin' to stand fer this, it
haint."
Then I spoke up and said very sober-like, "What _used_ to be the name of
this town?"
The man said, "'Taint youster; _'tis_. This here taown is Ridgeboro,
Noow York, and so it'll stay, by thunder!"
"Good night!" I said, and all the fellows started to laugh.
Because then I knew how it was. We must have been picked up by the wrong
train--a train going the other way. And the conductor must have had
_Ridgeboro_ instead of _Bridgeboro_ on his paper. Oh, boy, that was some
bull. And just as luck would have it, the people of that place were
expecting the railroad to give them a new station. I didn't know where
the old station was; I guessed there wasn't any.
Connie whispered to me, "Who do you suppose Eb Brewster is?"
"Search _me_," I told him; "but I bet he'll be tickled to death to find
that the town is named after him."