Brent stumbled up the step and stood in back of the van, holding his
trousers up with one hand and waving the other hand in the air.
“Free ride to the Veterans’ Reunion at Grumpy’s Cross-roads!” he began
shouting. “Children and veterans free! We take you but do not bring you
back. No connection with criminals and convicts! Free ride to the
carnival. Veterans welcome! All aboard for the carnival! Hail to the
Grand Army of the Republic and the Boy Scouts of America. Hurrah for
Jolly & Kidder, New York’s great cash store! Step inside, veterans!”
Pretty soon an old man with an old blue army cap came hobbling out of
the crowd, and Harry helped him up into the van. That was a starter. Men
began bringing boxes from the Post Office and putting them in the van
for seats. Most of the mothers wouldn’t let their children go because
there wasn’t any way for them to get back, but the veterans didn’t seem
to mind that. We got three veterans in Barrow’s Homestead and then
started out. I don’t know what the constable thought, but we should
worry about that. All the people cheered us and gave us a fine send-off.
Pee-wee said they were stricken with remorse—I guess he got that out of
a movie play.
We stopped for a couple of spark plugs and to get the timer of the van
adjusted, and a lot of the kids followed us as far as the end of the
town.
Harry drove the van and Brent drove the touring car, and Pee-wee and I
sat with Brent.
I said, “I wish you’d tell us about your adventures, you crazy Indian. I
thought we were in for a lot of trouble in that village. You’ve got me
guessing. Anyway you escaped like you said you were going to do. But I’d
like to know where you came from and where you got that bunch of rags.”
He said, “You should never laugh at honest rags. Beneath these rags
beats a noble heart. Boys, I am sick of crime and I am going to reform.”
That’s just the way he talked, the crazy Indian. He said, “I have had my
fondest wish, I have been a convict—a villyan. I have languished in a
dark moving van, I have foiled the shrewdest people in the world, the
boy scouts—not. Would you like to hear the story of my evil career? I
began life as an honest boy. I never stole but once in my life and that
was when I stole second base in a ball game.”
I said, “Will you stop your jollying and tell us what happened?”
He said, “Posilutely I will. There were two boy scouts sitting on the
step outside the Jolly & Kidder state prison. I was inside in my
convicts’ stripes.”
“Were you languishing?” Pee-wee piped up.
Brent said, “No, I was eating a banana. I said two scouts, but really it
was only about one and a half. They were supposed to be alert,
observant, resourceful.”
I said, “That’s right, rub it into us.”
He said, “While they were arguing on the back step I stood upon a
grocery box and crawled through the little window in back of the front
seat. I was _free_, like Monte Carlo—I mean Monte Cristo—”
“You mean Monticello,” I told him.
“You mean Montenegro,” Pee-wee put in.
“The world seemed bright and new,” Brent said.
“You’re crazy,” I told him; “go on, where did you get those clothes?”
He said, “Shh. Can I count on you never to breathe a word? The man I got
these clothes from lies dead in yonder swamp.”
“Who put him there?” Pee-wee wanted to know.
Brent said, “Shh, I did. The man was innocent. He was standing in a
field beyond the swamp. He was doing no harm. I approached him, crawling
through the grass.”
“What was he doing there?” Pee-wee wanted to know.
“He was scaring away crows,” Brent said.
“_He was a scarecrow_!” I blurted out.
“A harmless, innocent, hard working scarecrow,” Brent said. “As I think
of it now——”
[Illustration: BRENT CAPTURED A SCARECROW.]
“You make me tired!” Pee-wee yelled. “Why didn’t you say so?”
Brent said, “His trustful, happy, carefree face haunts me now. He was
only scaring away the crows——”
“You give me a pain!” the kid shouted. “You’re crazy.”
Brent said, “But I thought of my dungeon in the Jolly & Kidder van and
of my brutal keepers, those two boy scouts—asleep on the back step. I
said to myself, ‘I will never return whither——’”
“You mean thither,” Pee-wee said.
“I said to myself, ‘They will have to kill me to take me alive,’” Brent
said.
“Anyway, you killed him?” I asked him.
He said, “I killed him in cold blood—anyway it wasn’t more than
lukewarm. I tore him to pieces and took his clothes and concealed my
telltale convict stripes under a weeping willow. It was weeping its eyes
out.”
“It’s a wonder it wasn’t laughing,” I told him.
He said, “The poor fellow was as thin as a stick; his arms were made of
a cross stick, I think it was a broom stick. He lies under the marsh
grass in yonder swamp. And I am free!”
“You’re crazy too,” the kid shouted.
“I said I would escape and I did,” Brent began to laugh. “I decided that
I would escape from the very people who claim to be the most alert and
wide-awake—the boy scouts. You say I’m crazy. Very well, even a crazy
person can foil the boy scouts. I suppose that’s what you call logic.”
“That’s what you call nonsense,” Pee-wee yelled.
“I hope you boys had a good nap while I was escaping,” Brent said. “It
was a shame to do it, it was so easy. I tried to leave good plain
footprints, I did all that an honest convict could to help you, but in
vain. I doubt if the boy scouts could trail a steam roller. As for the
authorities of Barrow’s Homestead ... but I’ve seen enough of crime and
its evil results.” That’s just the way he talked. “Henceforth I mean to
be honest.”
“You’re a nut, that’s what you are!” Pee-wee shouted.
Brent said, awful kind of heroic like, he said, “Ha! Sayest thou so?
Then glance at this paper.”
I said, “What is it? Where did you get it?”
“I got it out of the inside pocket of this old coat,” he said; “and it
means mischief. _Shh_, no one has seen it but Harry Domicile; he agrees
with me that it has to do with a dark plot.”
“You mean you found it in the scarecrow’s pocket?” Pee-wee asked him,
all excited.
“I found it in the scarecrow’s inside pocket,” Brent said. “I don’t
think the scarecrow knew it was there. It is very mysterious. I think we
are on the track of a new mystery. That anybody who wore a black frock
coat should have had such a paper in his possession is very strange. It
is no wonder the crows shunned him.”