PEE-WEE TRIUMPHANT
In a little while the boys were rewarded by the appearance of a pair of
headlights coming around the bend in the road.
“You be ready to run up to the house and wake them,” whispered Pee-wee,
clutching his ice-pick.
“Suppose they haven’t a ’phone,” said Emerson.
“They have,” said Pee-wee; “a scout has to notice things. Don’t you see
the wire branching over that way?”
Emerson thoroughly liked Pee-wee but now he was beginning to have a
wholesome respect for his friend’s prowess and resource. Why should the
fugitives not come this way? And if they did, had not Pee-wee provided
for all contingencies? Had he not even taken note of the ’phone wire
stretched from the main lines along the highway to the distant house?
And his disinclination to arouse the occupants of that house till
necessary suggested both self-reliance and consideration for others.
Yes, to be sure, thought Emerson, he was in the hands of a bully little
scout.
“I think you’re very clever,” said Emerson.
“Even I’ll get you something to eat afterwards too,” said Pee-wee,
“because you know Schmitt’s Bakery on Main Street. By the time we leave
here the bakers will be starting to work in the cellar and I know them
and I know how to get in the back way and they’ll give us some hot
rolls. Do you like hot rolls? Do you like buns? _Shhh_, here comes the
car.”
The car proved to be a roadster and the driver of it was not a gypsy.
Pee-wee removed the sign with a few words of explanation and the car
went ahead. Another car came, and still another, then a long interval
with no cars.
“Gee whiz, I’m hungry too, I’ll say that,” said Pee-wee.
“Don’t say it,” said Emerson.
Pretty soon they were rewarded by the sight of another pair of
headlights coming around the bend. As the car approached its dimmed
lights suddenly flared up and set two bright columns straight against
the warning sign.
Slowly, with its great nickel headlights glaring, the big machine moved
forward toward the obstruction. It stopped, then advanced very slowly a
few feet more. Then, with heart thumping, Pee-wee beheld something which
made his blood run cold—a bright-colored shawl with spangles that shone
brilliant in the moonlight and a dusky woman with a bandage around her
forehead.
But this was not all. For sitting at the wheel was the most villainous
looking man that Pee-wee had ever seen, a man with a mustache of a
pirate or a Spanish brigand. There was murder in his slouch hat and the
scarf which was knotted about his throat (when taken in conjunction with
this hat and his atrocious mustache) suggested a man who would not be
satisfied with murder; who would be satisfied with nothing less than
torture and massacre. He was Bluebeard and Captain Kidd and all the
thieving, kidnaping gypsies of the world rolled into one horrible,
appalling, brutal spectacle!
And then Pee-wee realized that he was face to face with the escaping
gypsies and the Hunkajunk car. He was terrified, trembling. But he would
not shirk his perilous duty now.
“Run to the house,” he whispered to Emerson; “try not to let them see
you; crawl on the ground for a ways. Hurry up.”
Scarcely had he said the words when he lowered himself to the ground
and, crawling through the tall grass which bordered the road, came
around to the back of the car. The pulsating engine helped to drown the
slight sound of his cautious movements but his heart beat against his
chest like a hammer until he had emerged from his concealment and stood
trembling but unseen except by the little red eye of the tail-light.
Then, his hand shaking, but his resolve unweakened, he raised his arm
and with all the furious vigor of an assassin plunged his deadly
ice-pick to the very heart of the innocent cord tire which immediately
began breathing its last in a continuous hissing sound while our hero
started to run.
“Goodness me we’ve got a flat!” called the merry voice of Pee-wee’s
sister, Elsie.
She was nestling in the rear seat between Carmen and Napoleon and on the
front seat sat Charlie Chaplin close by the terrible gypsy brigand so as
to make room for Martha Washington. Elsie was very sweet in her Joan of
Arc costume, far too sweet to have had as an escort the gypsy king whose
kindly task of taking the party to their several homes the champion
fixer had so effectually baffled.
_Sssssssssssss_, went the tire.
“We’ve got a puncture,” said Napoleon.
“Sure as you live,” said Charlie Chaplin.
“That was a new tire, too,” said Harry Bensen, the gypsy king, as he got
out to inspect the damage.
“Isn’t it exasperating!” said Carmen alias Ruth Collins.
“Now I suppose we’ll _simply never_ get home,” chirped Martha Washington
alias Marjorie Dennison. “And I want you all to stop at my house for a
cup of coffee, it’s so chilly.”
Slowly, fearfully, the mighty hero retraced his steps. The hurrying
Emerson, too, had heard the merry voice of Elsie Harris and then the
others and he paused midway between the road and the dark house, and
then returned curiously.
“What on earth are you doing here?” Elsie asked of the abashed hero.
“And Emmy Skybrow too! You both ought to be home in bed.”
“I—we—we got an—a call over the radio,” Pee-wee stammered. “It was
broadcasted that a stolen car with gypsies in it was maybe coming this
way so we laid keekie for it and I thought Harry Bensen was a gypsy like
the announcer said so that shows anybody can be mistaken so I punched a
hole in the tire with an ice-pick because then if it had been stolen—the
car—we’d have caught them, wouldn’t we? So I jabbed a hole in it with an
ice-pick but anyway I was mistaken. But anyway if you’re going to
Marjorie Dennison’s for hot coffee we’ll go with you, and we’ll help you
change the tire too, because, gee whiz, we’re good and hungry.”
We need not recount the comments of the several members of the
masquerade party, particularly the rather pithy observations of
Pee-wee’s sister Elsie who had previously suffered at his hands. It will
be quite sufficient to say that Harry Bensen, the gypsy king, was a good
sport and a staunch admirer of Pee-wee. They put on a spare tire and
then took the unhappy heroes into the car and made good speed for the
Dennison place in East Bridgeboro.
But in fact Pee-wee was not unhappy, only Emerson was unhappy. For
Pee-wee was, as usual, triumphant. He sat on the front seat wedged in
between Harry Bensen, the gypsy, and Martha Washington. Charlie Chaplin
sat upon the top of the door to make room for him.
“Didn’t I tell you I’d fix it for you?” Pee-wee demanded of Emerson who
squatted unobtrusively on the floor in back. “Didn’t I say I’d get you
some eats? Now you’re going to have hot coffee and cake maybe and
everything. Didn’t I say I’d fix it for you? Gee whiz, if a scout says
he’ll do a thing he does it.”
“Even if he has to use an ice-pick,” said Harry Bensen, the gypsy king.
“I’d like to be a scout,” said Ruth Collins.
“Gee, it’s great being a scout,” said Pee-wee.
“It’s not so great being a scout’s sister,” said Joan of Arc.
“Joan of Arc carried a sword,” said Harry Bensen, nudging Pee-wee, “and
a scout carries an ice-pick. I don’t believe you could use an ice-pick
with such deadly skill.”
“The way I feel now I would like to use an axe with deadly skill if I
had one,” said Elsie.
“What a bloodthirsty family,” laughed Harry Bensen.
“Are you hungry?” Pee-wee asked, looking around and peering down at the
silent Emerson. “Now you’re going up to Dennison’s and I fixed it for
you and you’re going to have eats just like you wanted, so gee whiz, you
can’t say I’m not a fixer.”
“_Fixer_ is right,” laughed Harry Bensen.
END
End of Project Gutenberg's Pee-wee Harris: Fixer, by Percy Keese Fitzhugh