"SEEN IN THE MOVIES"
I guess the fellows down in the car must have seen the notice where it
was printed kind of faint like, against a hill, because they couldn't
have seen it on the screen. Anyway, they set up a howl and began
shouting up out of the windows. They're a crazy bunch.
"Show them Pee-wee peeling potatoes! Show them Pee-wee flopping
flip-flops!" they began yelling.
"Show them the one of me stirring soup," the kid said, grabbing me by
the arm; "that's the best one!"
I said, "You crazy Indian, do you think those people in the flyer are
there to see a movie show? Keep still, here come a couple of men with
lanterns."
"They're going to penetrate the mystery," Pee-wee said. I guess he got
that out of some book, hey? _Penetrate the mystery._
I said, "As long as they didn't penetrate this car, I'm satisfied."
We could see two lights bobbing along toward us from the train. Even
with lanterns it must have been a pretty risky job, walking those ties.
All the while Pee-wee and I were taking down the sheet, and as soon as
we loosened it from the sticks, the fellows down in the car pulled them
in.
"Look how clear it shows against the hill, now the sheet isn't up," I
said to Pee-wee.
I guess you know what I meant, all right. Even through the sheet the
printing had shown kind of dim against a hill in back of the train, but
with the sheet taken down it showed pretty clear and it seemed awful
funny. And besides, now that the sheet was down we had a good look at
the train; the light from the movie apparatus seemed to shine right
along the tops of the cars.
All of a sudden, Pee-wee grabbed me by the arm and said, "Look! _Look!_
On the top of the second car. Look! Do you see? Right beside that long
sort of a boiler thing."
I looked, and then, for once, I had sense enough to do the right thing
in a hurry. I closed the shutter in the apparatus.
"Did you see them?" Pee-wee whispered, all excited.
"Sure," I said; "two men."
They were lying on the top of the car, right close against a big, long
thing like a boiler. It was much bigger than the thing on our car. One
was lying on one side of it, and the other one on the opposite side. The
reason I shut the light off in such a hurry was because I didn't want
them to know they were seen.
"Are they train robbers?" Pee-wee whispered to me. "Are they
highwaymen?"
"They're high enough to be highwaymen," I told him.
"Maybe they're bandits, hey?" he said.
"I hope so, for your sake," I told him. "I hope they're a couple of
pirates, but I guess they're only tramps. Come on, let's go down."
We dangled the movie apparatus down and the fellows took it in through
the window. Then they came out on the platform and helped the kid and me
down. That was a pretty hard job, believe _me_. Just as we got our feet
on terra what d'ye call it.--I mean terra cotta[A]--that Latin for
platform--anyway, you know what I mean--as soon as we got our two feet
(I mean four feet) on the platform, the two men with lanterns had just
reached it.
One of the men said, "What's all this? What are you doing here, anyway?
Who are you?" Gee whiz, it sounded like an examination paper.
Whenever we get mixed up with grown-up people it's usually me--I mean
_I_--that has to do the talking. Pee-wee usually helps though. So I gave
the men our regular motto.
I said, "We're here because we're here. Ask me something easy. This is
the Comedy of Errors." I said that because we have the Comedy of Errors
in school and I just happened to think of it.
I guess the man was the fireman; anyway, he had on a jumper. He walked
into the car and looked all around with his lantern and the other man
looked all around, too, trying to size us up, I guess.
The fireman said, "Comedy of Errors, huh?"
Pee-wee said, "Sure, that's in Shakespeare."
"Well, it's mighty gol darn lucky you had a movie machine along," the
fireman said. "You youngsters have had a _mighty narrow_ escape."
"Why shouldn't it be a narrow escape?" Connie said. "It's a narrow
bridge. Anyway, where do we go from here?"
"There's a couple of men lying on the top of one of your cars, too,"
Pee-wee said; "we could see them by the light."
"Tramps, I guess," the brakeman said. He didn't seem to be surprised.
So then we told them all about how it was with us--our adventures with
the car and all that. They said we had a bad coupling and that it was no
wonder it had parted.
"We should worry," I told him; "scouts stick together, even if couplings
part. But anyway, we'd like to get off this bridge."
The fireman said it wouldn't be a bad idea.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote A: He probably meant terra firma.]