PEACE!
Blythe was bunking in one of the shacks which he had secured the
privilege of tearing down and it was apparent to the scouts that his
knowledge of camping was primitive. But Pee-wee, out of the greatness of
his scout heart, volunteered to be his guide, philosopher, and friend in
these matters.
"We'll show you how to do," he said. "If there's anything you don't
understand you just come to me. I've got the camping badge and the
pathfinder's badge, and the astronomer's badge--"
"He's an astronomer," interrupted Roy; "he knows all the movie stars."
"He sees everything in the sky," Hunt Ward added; "he's the one that put
the see in sea-scout."
"Sure, and put the pie in pioneer scout too," Roy said. "He studied
first aid and last aid and lemonade and everything. He's a scout in very
high standing only he doesn't stand very high. You stick to him and you
can't go wrong."
"Do you mean to say I haven't the badge for camping?" the diminutive
Raven demanded as he unburdened himself of his various paraphernalia.
"Do you mean to say I didn't study the heavens when I was a tenderfoot?"
"No wonder the stars went out," Roy said. "Here, take this bag of flour
and put it over in the corner. You're in Camp Merritt now, you have to
obey your superior officer. Here, take the spools of thread out of this
coffee-pot and kick that big can over here, the one marked dynamite. I'm
going to put the sugar in that. Anyone who takes any sugar without
permission will be blown up by his patrol leader. _Look what you're
doing!_ Don't set the pickles on the chocolate. Hand me that bottle
of ink before you spill it in the egg powder."
It was good to see Blythe laughing at Pee-wee's heroic effort to dispose
of the commissary stores which his companions loaded upon him. It was a
laugh of simple, genuine pleasure, almost childlike.
"Don't drop the fly-paper in the flour," Roy shouted to Pee-wee in
frantic warning, as Pee-wee wrestled valiantly under the load of boxes,
packages and cans. "Put the cork back in the molasses jug before it
spills into the Indian meal."
"We'll have home brew," Westy said.
"You mean home glue," Roy answered. "_Look at him!_ He's got the
powdered cocoanut all over the bacon!"
"Keep those things off me!" the victim shouted as the boxes and cans
piled up on him. "Do you think I'm a freight car?"
"As he stooped to pick up a box a can went rolling under Blythe's
makeshift bed. As he reached for the can a bag of beans burst like a
sky-rocket, pouring a shower down his neck and into his pockets and over
the floor.
"_Now you see!_" he yelled. "The eggs are sliding down!"
"_Help, help!_" called several scouts.
Pee-wee picked up two cans of sardines and sacrificed a bag of rice. He
gathered up rice and beans together, and a jar of jam went rolling on a
career of foreign travel. All was confusion.
"_Time!_" he screamed.
"He asks for an armistice," Roy shouted.
"You mean a couple of dozen arms," Westy shrieked.
"If you put another thing on me I'll drop the eggs," Pee-wee screamed.
"I'll drop them so that they--they--_bounce_, too."
This threat of frightfulness cowered his assailants.
"That's against international law," Roy shouted.
"I don't care, I'll do it!" Pee-wee yelled. "You pile one more thing on
me and I'll--"
"Start an eggmarine campaign," Westy said.
"That's the first time I ever knew food to get the best of Pee-wee,"
Artie Van Arlen observed.
The diminutive mascot of the Raven Patrol having valiantly protected the
eggs in one extended hand gradually divested himself of the mountain
under which he had labored, and by a fine strategic move took a tactical
position behind these defenses with the pasteboard box of eggs upraised
in heroic and threatening defiance. The war had come to an end suddenly,
like the World War.
"Unconditional surrender," Roy shouted.
"Do I get three helpings of stew for supper?" demanded the victor, by
way of imposing an indemnity before he proceeded with disarmament.
"Sure, eggs won the war," Roy conceded.
As for Blythe, he was sitting on a grocery box in No Man's Land,
laughing so hard that his sides ached. Their banter seemed a kind of
tonic to him. And it was when he laughed and seemed so simple and
childlike and so much one of them, that they found him so likable.