THE ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT OF PEPSY’S REST HAD TWO STEADY EMPLOYEES.

PEE-WEE HARRIS

BY

PERCY KEESE FITZHUGH

Author of

THE TOM SLADE BOOKS

THE ROY BLAKELEY BOOKS

ILLUSTRATED BY

H. S. BARBOUR

Published with the approval of

THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS : : NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America

Copyright, 1922, by

GROSSET & DUNLAP

TO THE ONLY ORIGINAL—THE

REAL PEE-WEE HARRIS—THIS

STORY IS DEDICATED.

FOREWORD

Hey, listen!

A lot of scouts said I was put out of the Tom Slade Series and so I had to go into the Roy Blakeley Series. And a lot of them said I was put out of the Roy Blakeley Series and that on account of that I started a series of my own. They said I had to get the author who wrote up Tom Slade’s adventures to help me. And a lot of them said if I didn’t look out, I’d be put out of this series, too.

That shows how much sense they have, because how can a person that’s the main thing in a thing put himself out of that thing? Anyway, I’d like to see anybody put me out of this series. If they tried that it would be the best part of all the stories.

Maybe when this series is finished I’ll be the only one left in it, but a lot I care because the fewer fellers there are the more there will be to eat. Roy Blakeley said if I’m writing a series the most important thing is to write close to the paper—that shows you how crazy he is. Gee whiz! He looks like a laughing hyena on the covers of those books he’s all the time writing.

Tom Slade isn’t so bad. I like Tom Slade. Only he doesn’t know anything about girls—that’s one thing—I know all about them.

Last summer I went down to where my uncle lives and spent vacation there and I had a peach of a time and all the things I did are told in the first story, but there are a lot of things left over and I’m going to tell these in another story. There are snakes and peach orchards and everything down there.

Then comes the second story and that’s about a dandy mistake I made. Gee whiz! I’ve made better mistakes than any feller in our troop. I didn’t make it on purpose, but anyway it led to a lot of dandy adventures. That’s one good thing about mistakes, anyway. But one thing sure, if I had got into the right automobile I would have just gone about two blocks. So that shows that the wrong one may even be better than the right one. Only you bet I’m not going to tell you all about that story here.

Then comes the third one and that’s the one where I started the Pollywog Patrol. It didn’t last long, but that’s all right, because pollywogs don’t last long. It wasn’t a full patrol, except we were full of dessert—three helpings. If you want plenty of dessert you’d better read that story.

After that story comes the fourth one and there’s where I made the dandiest mistake I ever made. Another feller helped me make it. On account of that mistake a girl was good and sorry for the way she treated me and I bet you’d say it served her right. But anyway we’re good friends now.

Then comes the fifth story and that’s the craziest one of all because that’s the story where I didn’t go to a desert island on account of the desert island coming to me.

After the fifth one the stories get crazier and crazier. Maybe there’ll be as many as a hundred because I’ve got lots of paper and a new fountain pen and I’m having more adventures all the time. I’ve got ninety-seven of them thought up already—I mean adventures that I really had. And I’ve got a hundred and fifty-two thought up that I’m going to have, and that’s not counting one big one that I’ve started on already. So the only thing that will stop me will be if I don’t have any more paper, but even then I can go on writing, because scouts can write on birch bark and you can see for yourself how many birch trees there are. As long as there are some birch trees left I can keep on writing, so don’t you worry.

Pee-wee Harris.

P. S. Scouts know how to make paper out of leaves, too, so as long as there are leaves I can keep on writing.

CONTENTS

PEE-WEE HARRIS

CHAPTER I

THE BATTLE OF THE BANANA

Pee-wee Harris, mascot of the Raven Patrol, First Bridgeboro Troop, sat upon the lowest limb of the tree in front of his home eating a banana. To maintain his balance it was necessary for him to keep a tight hold with one hand on a knotty projection of the trunk while with the other he clutched his luscious refreshment.

The safety of his small form as he sat on the shaky limb depended upon his hold of the trunk, while the tremendous responsibility of holding his banana devolved upon the other hand.

Pee-wee was so much smaller than he should have been and the banana so much larger than it should have been that they might almost be said to have been of the same size.

The slender limb on which Pee-wee sat trembled and creaked with each enormous bite that he took.

The bright morning sunlight, wriggling through the foliage overhead, picked out the round face and curly hair of our young hero and showed him in all his pristine glory, frowning a terrible frown, clinging for dear life with one hand and engaged in his customary occupation of eating.

He had ascended to this leafy throne with the banana in his pocket but he could not restore it to his pocket now even if he wished to. However, he did not wish to. In a military sense he was in a predicament; both arms were in bad strategic position and his center exposed to assault. His leafy throne was like many another throne in these eventful times—extremely shaky.

But the commissary department was in fine shape....

Suddenly the expeditionary forces of Uncle Sam appeared in the form of the postman, who paused on his way across the lawn to the house.

“Hello, up there,” he said, suddenly discovering Pee-wee.

“Hello yourself and see how you like it,” the mascot of the Ravens called down.

“I saw a banana up there and I thought maybe you were behind it,” the postman called, as he looked among the pack of letters he held in his hand.

“It’s only half a banana,” Pee-wee shouted.

“Well, you’re only half a scout,” the postman said; “you’d better drop it, here’s a letter for you.”

“For me?”

“For you.”

Steadying himself, Pee-wee took an enormous bite, considerably reducing the length of the banana. “Wait a minute till I finish it,” he said as best he could with his mouth full. “Waaer-mint.”

“Can’t wait,” the postman said, heartlessly moving away.

“Waymnt,” Pee-wee yelled, frantically taking another bite; “wayermntdyehear, waymnt!”

“Do you think the government can wait for you to finish a banana?” the postman demanded with a wicked grin upon his face. “You got two hands; here, take the letter if you want it; here it is,” he added, reaching up.

Pee-wee tried to dispatch the remainder of the banana by one gigantic and triumphant bite but the desperate expedient did not work; his mouth with all its long practice, could not keep up with his hand; it became clogged while yet a considerable length of banana projected out of the gracefully drooping rind.

“Here, take it,” the postman said in a tone of ruthless finality.

Chewing frantically and waving the remainder of banana menacingly like a club, the baffled hero uttered some incomprehensible, imploring jumble of suffocated words while the postman moved away a step or two, repressing a fiendish smile.

“Throw away the banana,” he said.

By this time Pee-wee was able to speak and while his chewing apparatus was momentarily disengaged he demanded to know if the postman thought he was crazy. The postman, resolved not to miss the fun of the situation, was not going to let Pee-wee take another bite; time was precious, and two more bites of the sort that Pee-wee took might leave his hand free.

“Take the letter,” he said with an air of cold determination, “or I’ll leave it at the house. Here, take it quick; I’ve no time to waste.”

“Do you want me to waste a banana,” Pee-wee yelled imploringly; “a scout is supposed—”

“Here, take it,” the postman said.

There followed the most terrible moment in the life of Pee-wee Harris, Scout. He knew that one more bite would be fatal, that the postman would not wait. In two bites, or in three at most, he could finish the banana and his hand would be free.

How could a postman, who brings joy to the lonely, words of love from far away, cheer to those who wait, comfort from across the seas, Boys’ Life Magazine—how could such a being be so relentless and cruel? If that letter were left at the house, Pee-wee would have to go to the house and get it, and there his mother was lying in ambush waiting to pounce upon him and make him mow the lawn. Why would not the postman wait for just two bites? Maybe he could do it in one. He had consumed a peach in one bite and a ham sandwich in four—his star record.

He made a movement with his hand, and simultaneously the postman retreated a step or two toward the house. Pee-wee tried releasing his hold upon the trunk with the other hand and almost lost his balance on the shaky limb.

“Here,” said the postman, unyielding, “chuck the banana and take the letter or you’ll find it waiting for you in the front hall. It’s an important letter, it feels as if it had a couple of cookies in it.” The postman knew Pee-wee. “Here you go,” the torturer said grimly, “take it or not, suit yourself.”

“Can’t you see both hands are busy?” the victim pled. “Two bites—a scout is supposed not to waste anything—he’s supposed—he’s supposed—wait a minute—he’s supposed if he starts a thing to finish it—wait! I’m not going to take a bite, I’m only giving you an argument—can’t you wait—”

“Here you go, last chance, take it,” the postman said, a faint smile hovering at the corner of his mouth, “one, two, —”

Out of Pee-wee’s wrath and anguish came an inspiration. “Stick the letter in the banana,” he said, holding the banana down.

“I don’t know about that,” the postman said, ruefully.

“I know about it,” Pee-wee thundered down at him. “You said I had to take it or not; that letter belongs to me and you have to deliver it. This banana, it’s—it’s the same as a mail box—you stick the letter in the banana. You think you’re so smart, you thought you’d make me throw away the banana, naaah, didn’t you? I wouldn’t do that, not even for—for—secretary—for the postmaster-general, I wouldn’t! A scout has resource.”

“All right, you win,” said the postman, good-humoredly, “only look out you don’t fall; here you go, hold on tight.”

Clutching to the knotty projection of trunk, Pee-wee reached the other hand as low as he could and the postman, smiling, stuck the corner of the coveted letter into the mealy substance of the banana.

“You win,” the postman repeated laughingly; “it shows what Scout Harris can do with food.”

“Food will win the war,” Pee-wee shouted. “You thought you could make me throw away my banana but you couldn’t. I knew a man that died from not eating a banana, I did.”

“Explain all that,” the postman said.

“He threw a banana away on his porch instead of eating it and later he stepped on it and slid down the steps and broke his leg and they took him to the hospital and compilations set in and he got pneumonia and died from not eating that banana. So there!”

“That’s a very fine argument,” the postman said as he went away.

“I know better ones than that!” Pee-wee shouted after him.

CHAPTER II

A TRAGIC PREDICAMENT

So there he sat upon his precarious perch trying to reassume the posture which insured a good balance, clinging to the trunk with one hand and to the banana with the other.

And now that the encounter which had almost resulted in a tragic sacrifice was over, and while our scout hero pauses triumphant, it may be fitting to apologize to the reader for introducing our hero in the act of eating. But indeed it was a question of introducing him in the act of eating or of not introducing him at all.

For a story of Pee-wee Harris is necessarily more or less a story of food. And this is a story abounding in cake and pie and waffles and crullers and cookies and hot frankfurters. There will be found in it also ice cream cones and jawbreakers and cocoanut bars and potatoes roasted on sticks. Heroes of stories may have starved on desert islands but there is to be none of that here.

In this tale, if you follow the adventures of our scout hero (who now at last appears before you as a star), you shall find lemonade side by side with first aid, and all the characters shall receive their just desserts, some of them (not to mention any names) two helpings.

So there he sat upon the branch, the mascot of the Raven Patrol, with an interior like the Mammoth Cave and a voice like the whisperings of the battle zone in France. Take a good look at him while he is quiet for ten seconds hand running. Everything about him is tremendous—except his size. He is built to withstand banter, ridicule and jollying; his sturdy nature is guaranteed proof against the battering assaults of unholy mirth from other scouts; his round face and curly hair are the delight of the girls of Bridgeboro; his loyalty is as the mighty rock of Gibraltar. A bully little scout he is—a sort of human Ford.

The question of removing the letter from the banana and getting rid of the banana (in the proper way) now presented itself to him. He took a bite of the banana and the letter almost fell. He then tried releasing his hold upon the trunk but that would not do. He then extracted the letter with his teeth which effectually prevented him from eating the banana.

What to do?

Steadying himself with one hand (he could not let go the trunk for so much as a moment), he brought the banana to his lips, held it between his teeth and took the letter in his unoccupied hand. As he bit into the banana the part remaining trembled and hung as on a thread; another moment and it would drop. The predicament was tragic. Slowly, but surely and steadily, the remainder of the banana broke away and fell—into the hand that held the letter.

Holding both letter and banana in the one perspiring palm, Pee-wee devoured first the one and then the other. Both were delicious, the letter particularly. It had one advantage over the banana, for he could only devour the banana once, whereas he devoured the contents of the letter several times. He wished that bananas and doughnuts were like letters....

CHAPTER III

AN INVITATION

The envelope was postmarked Everdoze which, with its one thousand two hundred and fifty-seven inhabitants, was the cosmopolitan center of Long Valley which ran (if anything in that neighborhood could be said to run) from Baxter City down below the vicinity of the bridge on the highway.

That is, Long Valley bordered the highway on its western side for a distance of about ten miles. The valley was, roughly speaking, a couple of miles wide, very deep in places, and thickly wooded. It was altogether a very sequestered and romantic region. Through it, paralleling the highway, was a road, consisting mostly of two wagon ruts with a strip of grass and weeds between them. To traverse Long Valley one turned into this road where it left the highway at Baxters, and in the course of time the wayfarer would emerge out of this dim tract into the light of day where the unfrequented road came into the highway again below the bridge.

About midway of this lonely road was Everdoze, and in a pleasant old-fashioned white house in Everdoze lived Ebenezer Quig who once upon a time had married Pee-wee’s Aunt Jamsiah. Pee-wee remembered his Aunt Jamsiah when she had come to make a visit in Bridgeboro and, though he had never seen her since, he had always borne her tenderly in mind because as a little (a very little) boy her name had always reminded him of jam. The letter, as has been said, bore the postmark of Everdoze and had been stamped by the very hand of Simeon Drowser, the local postmaster.

This is what the letter said:

Dear Walter:

Your uncle has been pestering me to write to you but Pepsy has been using the pen for her school exercise and I couldn’t get hold of it till to-day when she went away with Wiggle, perch fishing. Licorice Stick says they’re running in the brook most wonderful but you can’t believe half what he says. Seems as if the perch know when school closes, leastways that’s what your uncle says.

Pee-wee reread these enchanting words. Pepsy! Wiggle! Perch fishing! Licorice Stick! And school closing! And perch that knew about it. That was the sort of perch for Pee-wee. He read on:

I told your uncle I reckoned you wouldn’t care to come here being you live in such a lively place but he said this summer you would like to come for there will be plenty for you to do because there is going to be a spelling match in the town hall and an Uncle Tom’s Cabin show in August.

You can have plenty of milk and fresh eggs and Miss Arabella Bellison who has the school is staying this summer and she will let you in the school-house where there is a library of more than forty books but some of the pages are gone Pepsy says. She says to tell you she will show you where she cut her initials but I tell her not to put such ideas in your head and she knows how to climb in even if the door is locked, such goings on as she and Wiggle have, they will be the death of me.

Well, Walter, you will be welcome if you can come and spend the summer with us. I suppose you’re a great big boy by now; your mother was always tall for her age. There are boys here who would like to be scout boys and your uncle says you can teach them. We will do all we can so that you have a pleasant summer if you come and tell your mother we will be real glad to see you and will take good care of you.

I can’t write more now because I am putting up preserves, one hundred jars already. The apples will be rotting on the trees, it’s a shame. You will think we are very old-fashioned, I’m afraid.

Pee-wee paused and smacked his lips and nearly fell backward off the limb. One hundred jars of preserves and more coming! Apples rotting on the trees! All that remained to complete his happiness was a bush laden with ice cream cones growing wild. He read the concluding sentences:

Your uncle would be glad to go and bring you in the buckboard but it would take very long and he is busy haying so if you don’t mind the bad road it would be better for your father to send you in the automobile. Be sure to turn off the highway to the right just above Baxters. The road goes through the woods.

Your loving

Aunt Jamsiah.

Steadying himself with one hand, Pee-wee took the letter between his teeth as if he were about to eat it. Then he cautiously let himself down so that he hung by his knees, then clutched the limb with his hands, hung for a moment with his legs dangling, and let go. In one sense he was upon earth but in another sense he was walking on air....

CHAPTER IV

HE GOES TO CONQUER

Thus it befell that on the second day after the receipt of this letter Pee-wee Harris was sitting beside Charlie, the chauffeur, in the fine sedan car belonging to Doctor Harris, advancing against poor, helpless Everdoze.

He traveled in all the martial splendor of his full scout regalia, his duffel bag stuffed to capacity with his aluminum cooking set and two extra scout suits. His diminutive but compact and sturdy little form was decorated with his scout jack-knife hanging from his belt, his compass dangling from his neck, and his belt ax dragging down his belt in back.

A suggestive little dash of the culinary phase of scouting was to be seen in a small saucepan stuck in his belt like a deadly dagger. Thus if danger came he might confront his enemy with a sample of scout cookery and kill him on the spot.

His sleeves were bedecked with merit badges; from the end of his scout staff waved the flaunting emblem of the Raven Patrol; his stalking camera was swung over his shoulder like a knapsack; his nickel-plated scout whistle jangled against the saucepan; and in his trousers pockets were a magnifying glass, three jawbreakers, a chocolate bar, a few inches of electric wiring, and a rubber balloon in a state of collapse.

The highway from Bridgeboro was a broad, smooth road, a temptation and a delight to speeders, where motorcycle cops lurked in the bushes hardly waiting for cars with New York licenses.

It was late in the afternoon when they reached Baxter City and here they turned into such a road as Charlie vowed he had never seen before. Scarcely had they gone a mile over rocks and ruts when the dim woods closed in on either side, imparting a strange coolness. It was almost like going through a leafy tunnel. Projecting branches brushed the top of the car and mischievously grazed and tickled their faces. The voices of the birds, clear in the stillness, seemed to complain at this intrusion into their domain.

“I’d like to know how I’m going to get back through this jungle after dark,” Charlie said. “I wonder what anybody wanted to start a village down here for?”

“Maybe—maybe they did it kind of absent-mindedly,” Pee-wee said. “I never started a village so I don’t know.”

“Well, you’ll startle one anyway,” Charlie said. “I guess the village isn’t much bigger than you are.”

The road took them southward through the valley. They were not far west of the highway but the low country and the thick woods obscured it from view. They could hear the tooting of auto horns over that way and sometimes human voices sounding strange across the intervening solitude.

“I don’t see why they didn’t set the village down over at the highway; it’s not more than a mile or so,” Charlie said. “Maybe they were afraid the autos would run over it; safety first, hey? Nobody’ll run over it here, that’s one sure thing.”

Pee-wee took the last bite of a hot frankfurter he had bought at a roadside shack on the highway and was now more free to talk.

“Listen,” he said, “what’s that?”

It was a distant rattling sound which began suddenly and ended suddenly. They both listened.

“There must be a bridge up there along the highway,” Charlie said; “that’s the sound of cars going over it. Loose planking, hey?”

Pee-wee listened to the rattling of the loose planks as another car sped over the unseen structure, little dreaming of the part that bridge was destined to play in his young life. The commonplace noise of the neglected flooring seemed emphasized by the quiet of the woodland. That reminder of human traffic, so near and yet so far and out of tune with all the gentler sounds of the valley, presented a strange contrast and jarred even Pee-wee’s stout nerves.

“There goes another,” Charlie said; “we must be nearer to the highway than I thought.”

They had, indeed, inscribed a kind of loop and having passed its farthest point from the main road were traveling toward it again and would have emerged upon it just beyond the bridge but for the wood embowered and sequestered village which was their destination. The first sign of this village was a cow standing in the middle of the grass-grown road as if to challenge their approach. Perhaps she was stationed there as a sort of traffic cop....

CHAPTER V

ENTER PEPSY

It will be seen by a glance at the accompanying sketch that the village of Everdoze was about opposite the bridge on the highway. From this main road the village could be reached by a trail through the woods. On hearing of this, Charlie expressed regret that he had not allowed his passenger to make the final stage of the journey on foot.

“Well, I never in all my life!” said Aunt Jamsiah as Pee-wee stepped out of the car. “In goodness’ name, where’s the rest of you? I thought you were a great, tall, strapping boy. I hope your appetite’s bigger than your body. And what on earth is that saucepan for? Are you going to cook us all alive? Did you ever see such a thing!” she added, speaking to Uncle Ebenezer who had stepped forward to welcome his nephew.

“He’s all decked out like a carnival! He’s just too killing!” She then proceeded to embrace him while his martial paraphernalia clanked and rattled.

“We won’t need any more brass band,” said a young girl in a gingham apron and with brick red hair in long tightly woven braids, who stood close by; “he’s a melodeon. I don’t see what they sent such a big car for with such a little boy. ’Taint no fit, it ain’t.”

Pee-wee gave this girl a withering look which she boldly returned, continuing to stare at him. Her face was covered with freckles and she was so unqualifiedly plain and homely in face and attire that she might be said to have been attractive on the ground of novelty.

“Pepsy,” said Mrs. Quig, addressing her, “you shake hands with Walter and tell him you and he are going to be good friends. You come right here and do as I say now and no more of those looks.”

“I ain’t going to kiss him,” the girl said by way of compromising.

“You give him a welcome just like Wiggle is doing,” said Aunt Jamsiah, “and be ashamed that you have to learn your manners from such as he. You do as I say now.”

“You’re welcome—and I can beat you running,” the girl said.

“Girls are afraid of snakes,” Pee-wee retorted. Meanwhile the individual who had been cited as a model of social correctness by Aunt Jamsiah stood upon the doorstep looking eagerly up into Pee-wee’s face and wagging his tail with vigorous and lightning rapidity. Wiggle’s tail was easily the fastest thing in Everdoze. His head vibrated in unison with it and his look of intentness carried with it all sorts of friendly expectations. He fairly shook with excitement and cordiality. He followed the sedan car a few yards upon its homeward journey and then, by a sudden impulse, deserted it and returned to a position directly in front of Pee-wee with wagging tail and questioning gaze. Pie seemed to say, “I’m ready for anything, the sky is the limit.”

“You haven’t had a bite to eat since breakfast and you’re starving. I can tell it,” said Aunt Jamsiah. “You come right in the kitchen.”

“I had a lot of frankfurters and things at the places along the highway,” Pee-wee said. “I had waffles at one place. I bet they make a lot of money along that road selling things. There are shacks all the way. All the autoists stop and buy things to eat. You can get tires and everything.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to eat tires,” said Pepsy.

“You think you’re smart, don’t you?” Pee-wee said.

“What are your soldier clothes for?” the girl wanted to know.

“They’re not soldier clothes,” Pee-wee said; “I’m a scout.”

“I bet you don’t know as much as Miss Bellison does.”

“I bet I don’t either,” Pee-wee said, “so I win.”

“She’s the school teacher here and she knows everything.”

“Did she know I was coming?”

“No, she didn’t and—”

“Then she doesn’t know everything,” Pee-wee said.

“Smarty, smarty!” the girl retorted, “I came out of an orphan home and that’s more than you can say.”

“You only get one helping of dessert there,” said Pee-wee. “I’d rather be a scout than an orphan. I know a feller who was an orphan and he was sorry for it afterwards.”

“Are you going to stay all summer?”

“Till school opens,” Pee-wee said.

“Do you want me to show you where there’s a woodchuck hole?”

At this point Pee-wee was summoned again to the kitchen where he ate a sumptuous repast, after which Pepsy and Wiggle took him about and showed him the farm.

Pee-wee and Pepsy fenced a good deal but seemed to progress in this cautious and defensive way toward a friendly understanding. As for Wiggle he danced about, following elusive scents that led nowhere, carried off and back again by quick impulse, till at last the three ended their tour of inspection at a little summer house which had been built over a spring by the roadside. Here they drank of the bubbling, crystal water, Wiggle doing this as everything else, with erratic impulse, drinking a dozen times and not much at any time.

The dying sunlight painted the slopes of the valley with crimson tints and the countryside was very still. Through the woods to the west could be heard occasionally the discordant noise from the loose flooring of the bridge on the highway as an auto sped over it. In the quiet evening the sound, with its sudden start, its rattling clamor and its quick cessation, made a jarring note in all the surrounding peacefulness.

“That’s what wakes me up in the morning, the mail wagon going over,” Pepsy said; “I know it’s time to get up then. Those planks can talk, they say the same thing every day.

You have to go back,

You have to go back,

You have to go back.

You listen to-morrow morning.”

“They could never wake me up,” Pee-wee said, which was probably true. “What do you mean about their saying you have to go back?”

“When Aunt Jamsiah took me, I was a probator. Do you know what that means?”

“It’s what they do with people’s wills,” Pee-wee said.

“It means if I don’t behave I have to go back to the orphan home,” the girl said. “And every day I was afraid I’d have to go back—for a long, long time, I was. And when I was lying in bed mornings I’d hear the planks saying that—

You have to go back,

You have to go back.

just like that, and I’d get good and scared.”

“You won’t have to go back,” said Pee-wee. “You leave it to me, I’ll fix it. Those planks—I’ve known lots of planks—and they can’t tell the truth. Don’t you care. I wouldn’t believe what an old plank said. Trees are all right, but planks—”

“I don’t notice it so much now,” Pepsy said; “that was a year ago and Aunt Jamsiah says I’m all right and mind good except I’m a tomboy. That ain’t so bad, is it? Being a tomboy? A girl and me tried to set the orphan home on fire because they licked us, but I’m good here. But I wish they’d put a new floor on that bridge. Anyway, Aunt Jamsiah says I’m good now.” Pee-wee was about to speak, but noticing that the girl’s eyes were fixed upon a crimson patch on the hillside where the sun was going down, and seeing that her eyes sparkled strangely (for indeed they were not pretty eyes) he said nothing, like the bully little scout that he was.

“Anyway, one thing, I wouldn’t let an old bridge get my goat, I wouldn’t,” he said finally, “and besides, you said you would show me a woodchuck hole.”

CHAPTER VI

THE WAY OF THE SCOUT

Pepsy’s right name was Penelope Pepperall and Aunt Jamsiah had taken her out of the County Home after the fire episode, by way of saving her from the worse influence of a reformatory. She and Uncle Ebenezer had agreed to be responsible for the girl, and Pepsy had spent a year of joyous freedom at the farm marred only by the threat hanging over her that she would be restored to the authorities upon the least suspicion of misconduct.

She had done her work faithfully and become a help and a comfort to her benefactors. She had a snappy temper and a sharp tongue and was, indeed, something of a tomboy. But Aunt Jamsiah, though often annoyed and sometimes chagrined, took a charitable view of these shortcomings and her generous heart was not likely to confound them with genuine misdoing.

So the stern condition of Pepsy’s freedom had become something of a dead letter, except in her own fearful fancy, and particularly when that discordant voice of the bridge spoke ominously of her peril.

Pepsy had been trusted and had proven worthy of the trust. She had never known any mother or father, nor any home save the institution from which Aunt Jamsiah had rescued her, and she had grown to love her kindly guardians and the old farm where she had much work but also much freedom. “Chores will keep her out of mischief,” Aunt Jamsiah had said.

Wiggle’s ancestry and social standing were quite as much a mystery as Pepsy’s; he was not an aristocrat, that is certain, and having no particular chores to do was free to devote his undivided time to mischief; he concentrated on it, as the saying is, and thereby accomplished wonders. He was Pepsy’s steady comrade and the partner of all her adventurous escapades.

Pepsy was not romantic and imaginative; her freckled face and tightly braided red hair and thin legs with wrinkled cotton stockings, protested against that. She had a simple mind with a touch of superstition. It was a kind of morbid dread of the institution she had left which had conjured that ramshackle old bridge up on the highway into an ominous voice of warning. She hated the bridge and dreaded it as a thing haunted.

Pee-wee soon became close friends with these two, and from a rather cautious and defensive beginning Pepsy soon fell victim to the spell of the little scout, as indeed every one else did. Pepsy did not surrender without a struggle. She showed Pee-wee the woodchuck hole and Pee-wee, after a minute’s skillful search, showed her the other hole, or back entrance, under a stone wall.

“There are always two,” he told her, “and one of them is usually under a stone wall. They’re smart, woodchucks are.”

“Are they as smart as you?” she wanted to know.

“Smarter,” Pee-wee admitted, generously; “they’re smarter than skunks and even skunks are smarter than I am.”

“I like you better than skunks,” she said. Wiggle seemed to be of the same opinion. “I like all the scouts on account of you,” she said.

No one could be long in Pee-wee’s company without hearing about the scouts; he was a walking (or rather a running and jumping) advertisement of the organization. He told Pepsy about tracking and stalking and signaling and the miracles of cookery which his friend Roy Blakeley had performed.

“Can he cook better than you?” Pepsy wanted to know, a bit dubiously.

“Yes, but I can eat more than he can,” Pee-wee said. And that seemed to relieve her.

“I can make a locust come to me,” he added, and suiting the action to the word he emitted a buzzing sound which brought a poor deluded locust to his very hand. At such wonder-working she could only gape and stare. Wiggle appeared to claim the locust as a souvenir of the scout’s magic.

“You let it go, Wiggle,” Pee-wee said. “If you want to be a scout you can’t kill anything that doesn’t do any harm. But you can kill snakes and mosquitoes if you want to.” Evidently it was the dream of Wiggle’s life to be a scout for he released the locust to Pee-wee, wagging his tail frantically.

“You have to be loyal, too,” the young propagandist said; “that’s a rule. You have to be helpful and think up ways to help people. No matter what happens you have to be loyal.”

“Do you have to be loyal to orphan homes?” Pepsy wanted to know. “If they lick you do you have to be loyal to them?”

Here was a poser for the scout. But being small Pee-wee was able to wriggle out of almost anything. “You have to be loyal where loyalty is due,” he said. “That’s what the rule says; it’s Rule Two. But, anyway, there’s another rule and that’s Rule Seven and it says you have to be kind. You can’t be kind licking people, that’s one sure thing. So it’s a teckinality that you don’t have to be loyal to an orphan home. You can ask any lawyer because that’s what you call logic.”

“Deadwood Gamely’s father is a lawyer,” Pepsy said, “and I hate Deadwood Gamely and I wouldn’t go to his house to ask his father. He’s a smarty and I hit him with a tomato. Have I got a right to do that—if he’s a smarty?”

Here was another legal technicality, but Pee-wee was equal to the occasion. “A—a scout has to be a—he has to have a good aim,” he said.

CHAPTER VII

A BIG IDEA

They had been driving the cows home during this learned exposition on scouting. Two things were now perfectly clear to Pepsy’s simple mind. One, that she would be loyal at any cost, loyal to her new friend, and through him to all the scouts. She knew them only through him. They were a race of wonder-workers away off in the surging metropolis of Bridgeboro. She could not aspire to be one of them, but she could be loyal, she could “stick up” for them.

The other matter which was now settled, once and for all, was that it was all right to throw a tomato at a person you hated provided only that you hit the mark. Aunt Jamsiah had been all wrong in her anger at that exploit which had stirred the village. For to throw a tomato at the son of Lawyer Gamely was aiming very high.

The son of Lawyer Gamely had a Ford and worked in the bank at Baxter City and was a mighty sport who wore white collars and red ties and said that “Everdoze was asleep and didn’t have brains enough to lie down,” and all such stuff.

Pee-wee let down the bars while the patient cows waited, and Scout Wiggle (knowing that a scout should be helpful) gave the last cow a snip on the leg to help her along.

Here, at these rustic bars, ended Pepsy’s chores for the day and in the delightful interval before supper she and Pee-wee lolled in the wellhouse by the roadside. Wiggle, with characteristic indecision, chased the cows a few yards, returned to his companions, darted off to chase the cows again, deserted that pastime with erratic suddenness, and returned again wagging his tail and looking up intently as if to ask, “What next?” Then he lay down panting. Mr. Ellsworth, Pee-wee’s scoutmaster, would have said that Wiggle lacked method....

“If I had a lot of money,” Pepsy said, “you could teach me all the things that scouts know and I’d pay you ever so much. Once I had forty cents but I spent it at the Mammoth Carnival. I paid ten cents to throw six balls so I could get a funny doll and I never hit the doll and when I only had ten cents left I made believe the doll was Deadwood Gamely and I hated and hated with all my might while I threw the ball the last six times but I couldn’t hit the doll.”

“You can’t aim so good when you’re mad,” Pee-wee said, “so if you want to hit somebody with a tomato or an egg or anything like that you must have kind thoughts about the person that you’re aiming at, only you’re not supposed to throw tomatoes and eggs and things because you can have more fun eating them. I wouldn’t waste a tomato on that feller because anyway you’ve got your tongue.”

“You can’t sass him,” said Pepsy, “because he uses big words and he’s such a smarty and he makes you feel silly and then you begin to cry and get mad. When he says I’m an orphan and things—and things—Wiggle hates him, too, don’t you, Wiggle?” The girl was almost crying then and Pee-wee comforted her.

“Do you think I don’t know any long words?” he said. “I know some of the longest words that were ever invented and—and—even I can make special ones myself. Once I—don’t you cry—once I was kept in in school and Julia Carson was kept in too, because she wriggled in her seat—you know how girls do. I had to choose a word and write it a hundred times and I didn’t want to get through too soon, because I wanted to get out the same time she did. So I chose the word incomprehensibility, and I—”

“Is that girl pretty?” Pepsy wanted to know. “She’s got a wart on her finger. It’s the best one I ever saw,” Pee-wee said. “She’s afraid to get in a boat, that girl is.”

“I hate her,” Pepsy said.

“What for?” Pee-wee inquired. “Because she has a wart? Don’t you know it’s good luck to have warts?”

“Because—because she was bad and had to stay after school,” Pepsy said.

“That shows how much you know about logic,” Pee-wee said, “because I had to stay too and I was worse than she was. So there.”

“I wouldn’t be afraid to get in a boat,” Pepsy said proudly.

“I never said she was like you,” Pee-wee declared. “She’s not a tomboy.”

Pepsy seemed comforted.

“You leave that feller to me,” Pee-wee said. “I can handle Roy Blakeley and all his patrol and they’re a lot of jolliers—they think they’re so smart.”

“I like you better than all of them,” Pepsy said. “Sometimes I’m kept after school too, you can ask Miss Bellison.”

“One thing sure, I like you well enough to be partners with you,” Pee-wee said. “Do you want me to tell you something? I thought of a way to make a lot of money, and if I do I’m going to buy three new tents for our troop. Do you want to go partners with me? We’ll say the tents are from both of us and we’ll have a lot of fun.”

“I had a dollar once and I sent it to the heathens,” Pepsy said, “and I’d rather help you than the heathens, because I like you better.”

“Heathens are all right,” Pee-wee said, “and I’m not saying anything against heathens, especially wild ones, but we’re just as wild. You ought to go to Temple Camp and see how wild we are.”

He did not look very wild as he sat upon the narrow seat with his knees drawn up and his scout hat on the back of his head showing his curly hair. The girl gazed at his natty khaki attire, the row of merit badges on his sleeve, the trophies of his heroic triumphs. She was not the first to feel the lure of a uniform. But it was the first uniform she had ever seen at close range, for in the wartime she had been in that frowning brick structure which still haunted her.

“I’ll help you because you can do everything and you know a lot,” she said.

In the fullness of her generosity and loyalty to Pee-wee’s prowess she never reminded him or even thought of the things she could do which he could not. She would not do her little optional chore of milking a cow for fear he might perceive her superiority in this little item of proficiency. Poor girl, she was a better scout than she knew.

“If you think it up I’ll do all the work, and then we’ll be even,” she said.

So Pee-wee told her of the colossal scheme which his lively imagination had conceived.

“It all started with a hot frankfurter,” he said. “If I hadn’t bought a hot frankfurter I wouldn’t have thought of it. So that shows you how important a frankfurter is—kind of. Maybe a person might get to be a millionaire just starting with a frankfurter, you never can tell....”

CHAPTER VIII

MAKING PLANS

“I bought that frankfurter at a shack up on the highway and while I was eating it I just happened to think that as long as there’s lots of fruit and things here and as long as you know how to make fudge, we’d start a shack right here in this wellhouse and sell lemonade and fruit and fudge and cookies and things, and if we make lots of money I’d go up to Baxter City and buy some auto accessories like spark plugs and tire tape and things and we’d sell those, too. We’d put signs on the trees along the road telling people to stop here and I know how to make up signs so as to get people good and hungry. You have them say that things are hot in the pan and you have to have drinks with names like arctic and all like that. I know how to make them hungry and thirsty and I’ve got a balloon that I can blow up—see? And we’d print something on it and tie it to Wiggle’s tail and make him walk up and down the road. What do you say? Isn’t it a peachy scheme? Will you help me?”

No dream of Pee-wee’s could be impossible of fulfillment. With him, to try was to succeed, according to Pepsy’s simple and unbounded faith. The plan must be all right, and wondrous in its possibilities. It was an inspiration—born of a frankfurter. It was not for poor Pepsy to take issue with this master mind.

Yet she did venture to say, “Not very many autos come down here, only a few that go through to Berryville. Licorice Stick—”

“That’s a dandy name,” Pee-wee said.

“He goes by a dozen times a day, but he hasn’t got any money, and Mr. Flint goes by but he’s a miser and Doctor Killem goes by in his buggy and he says people eat too much—”

“He’s crazy!” Pee-wee shouted.

“And that’s everybody that goes by except a few when they have the town fair in Berryville.”

For a moment Pee-wee paused, balked but not beaten. “There’s going to be an Uncle Tom’s Cabin show in Berryville,” he said, “and the town fair, that’s two things. Let’s start in and maybe later there’ll be some summer boarders in Berryville. We’ll have waffles—I can make those. And we’ll have lemonade and fruit and all kinds of things and when you’re doing your chores I’ll tend counter. We’ll make a lot of money, you see if we don’t.”

In her generous confidence, Pepsy was quite carried away by Pee-wee’s enthusiasm. She knew (who better than she?) that strangers never came along that lonely by-road. But she believed that somehow they would come when the scout waved his magic wand.

“And I’ll make cookies,” she said, “and all the things to eat and you can print the signs—”

“And shout to the people going by,” Pee-wee concluded enthusiastically. “You have to yell ALL HOT! THEY’RE ALL HOT! Just like that.”

Few could resist this, Pepsy least of all. “Let’s go and ask Aunt Jamsiah about it right now,” she said.

“Let me do it, I know how to handle her,” said Pee-wee.

And Pepsy deferred to the master mind, as usual....

CHAPTER IX

IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE

Permission to use the wellhouse once secured, preparations for the vast enterprise progressed rapidly. The very next day, while Pepsy was at her chores, Pee-wee built a counter in the shack and sitting at this he printed signs to be displayed along the woody approaches to this mouth-watering dispensary.

Neither the gloomy predictions of his uncle nor the laughing skepticism of his aunt dimmed his enterprising ardor. The signs which he printed with his uncle’s crate stencil, procured from the barn, bespoke the variety of tempting offerings which existed so far only in his fertile mind.

He was somewhat handicapped in the preparation of these signs by the largeness of the perforated letters of the stencil and the limited size of the cards. He had preferred cards to paper because they would not blow and tear and Aunt Jamsiah had given him a pile of these, uniform in size, on one side of which had been printed election notices of the previous year. It was impossible, therefore, for Pee-wee to include all of each tempting announcement on one card, so he used two cards for each reminder to the public. Thus on one card he printed FRANKFURTERS and on its mate intended for posting just below, the palate-tickling conclusion, SIZZLING HOT.

FRANKFURTERS

SIZZLING HOT ⇾

This is how the sign would appear upon some fence or tree. It would be a knockout blow to any hungry wayfarer.

Another two-card sign, intended for warmer weather, read:

ICE CREAM

⇽ COLD AND COOLING

Other signs originating in Pee-wee’s fertile mind and covering the range of food and drink and auto accessories were these:

PEANUT TAFFY

SWEET AND DELICIOUS ⇾

OUR TIRE TAPE

⇽ STICKS LIKE GLUE

NON SKID

CHAINS ⇾

FRESH

⇽ BANANAS

DRINK

SWEET CIDER ⇾

MAGIC

⇽ CARBON REMOVER

There were many others, enough to decorate the road for miles in both directions. If Pepsy as chef could live up to Pee-wee’s promises the neighborhood would soon become famous. That was her one forlorn hope, that the fame of their offerings would get abroad and lure the traffic from its wonted path. But Pee-wee’s enthusiasm and energy carried all before them like a storming column and she was soon as hopeful and confident as he.

When her chores were finished that afternoon she hurried to their refreshment parlor, where Pee-wee sat behind the new counter like a stern schoolmaster, cards strewn about him, his round face black with stencil ink, still turning out advertising bait for the public.

“I don’t care what they say,” she panted; “we’re going to make a lot of money and buy the tents. I tripped on the third step in the house just now and that means surely we’ll have good luck and I can help just as much as if I was a really truly scout, can’t I? Aunt Jamsiah says if I make a lot of doughnuts you’ll just eat them all and there won’t be any to sell. We mustn’t eat the things ourselves, must we?”

“That shows how much she knows,” Pee-wee said; “we might have to do that to make the people hungry. If they see me eating a doughnut and looking very happy, won’t that make them want to buy some? We have upkeep expenses, don’t we?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell her that,” Pepsy said, “but I never thought of it. You always think of things. I’m going to wash the ink off your face, so hold still.”

She dipped her gingham apron under the trap-door in the flooring where the clear, cool water was, and taking his chin in her coarse little freckly hands, washed the face of her hero and partner. And meanwhile Wiggle tugged on her apron as if he thought she were inflicting some injury upon the boy.

So blinded was Pee-wee by this vigorous bath and so preoccupied the others that for the moment none of them noticed the young fellow of about twenty who, with hat tilted rakishly on the side of his head and cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth, stood in the road watching them.

CHAPTER X

DEADWOOD GAMELY TALKS BUSINESS

Deadwood Gamely was the village sport and enjoyed a certain prestige because his father was a lawyer. He was also somewhat of an object of awe because he went to Baxter City every day, and worked in the bank there.

His ramshackle Ford roadster was considered an evidence of the terribly reckless extravagance of his habits, but it was really nothing more than a sort of pocketbook, since all his money went into it, and a very shabby one at that. He had a cheap wit and swaggeringly condescending air which he practiced on the simple inhabitants of Everdoze, and in his banter he was not always kind. Yet notwithstanding that he was tawdry both in dress and speech the villagers did not venture much into the conversational arena with him because they knew that they were not his equals in banter and retort.

“Hello, little orphan Annie,” he said. “Bungel was telling me the wagon is coming for you pretty soon. Over the hill to the poorhouse. Ever hear that song? What’s that you’ve got there, a soldier? Watcher doing with him? Lucky kid, I’d like to be a soldier.”

“What were you, a slacker?” Pee-wee shouted.

This was not the kind of retort that Deadwood Gamely was accustomed to hearing and he gave a quick look at the small stranger in khaki who sat behind the counter like a judge on the bench staring straight at him.

“Don’t get him riled,” Pepsy whispered. “He likes to get me riled so’s just to make me feel silly; it’s—it’s Deadwood Gamely. He’s always togged out swell like that,” she added fearfully.

“The only thing that’s swell about him is his head,” said Pee-wee in his loudest voice. “Don’t you be scared of him, I’m here.”

“What’s that?” said the young man in a tone intended to be darkly menacing.

“You’d better put your hat on the top of your head or it’ll blow off,” said Pee-wee. “I said that I’m here. Let’s hear you deny it. If I was a crow I might be afraid of you.”

Slightly taken aback by his ready retorts, the young man could only say, “If you were a crow, hey?” He stepped a little closer to the counter but the ominous advance did not alarm Pee-wee in the least. He sat behind his card-strewn counter holding the stencil brush like a sort of weapon ready to besmear that face of sneering assurance if its owner ventured too near.

“So I’m a scarecrow, eh?” Mr. Gamely said with a side glance at Pepsy. He was not going to have her witness his discomfiture at the hands of this glib little stranger. Moreover, a slur at his personal splendor was a very grave matter and not to be overlooked.