Believe me, that was good news. Hotels are all right—I’m not saying
anything against hotels—but when it comes to eats, oh boy, a scout
blow-out in the woods has got my kindest regards. And one thing about a
scout camp is that anybody is welcome, especially scouts.
Harry said he guessed the car would be all right, because it was all
wrong and no one could start it anyway. He said that just then he’d
rather have some liver and bacon than the car. So we left it standing
there and started back along the street, hunting for the woods road. We
went a little way up a couple of different roads, but they both ran
through open country. At last we hit into another road that went through
woods. It was narrow and rocky and up-hill and the woods were so thick
that the trees were all tangled over-head and it was awful quiet.
“Well, this is the right sort of a place for scouts,” Harry said;
“they’ve got the right idea.”
“Keep your eyes peeled in the woods for a camp-fire,” Grove said.
“I’m getting hungrier every minute,” Pee-wee shouted.
“Same here, only more so,” I said.
Pretty soon one of us saw a light. It was pretty small and if it was a
camp-fire, the camp must have been quite a way off.
“_There It is! There it is!_” Pee-wee piped up, “it’s——”
“It’s in the road, I think,” Harry said.
In about a couple of minutes we heard voices and some one said, “Raise
her a little more.”
Then, good night, before we knew it, we were around a turn and walking
plunk into a Ford car with a half a dozen fellows standing around, while
one of them was blowing up a tire.
“Any scout camp around here?” Harry asked them.
“This is the only scout outfit I know of,” one of them said; “we had a
blowout.”
For about a half a minute we just stood there and none of us spoke. Then
Harry said very calm like, to Pee-wee:
“Is this the blowout that you had in mind? Are you sure the man on
horseback said _liver_?”
“He—he was going very fast,” our young hero blurted out.
“I see,” Harry said; “we are foiled again.”
“_Good night!” I_ just blurted out, “the man must have called _flivver_!
Pee-wee, you’re a scream.”
All of a sudden some one said, “That you, Blakeley?”
I said, “Why are you——”
“Don’t you remember Brent Gaylong?” he said.