“Didn’t I tell you there were things to do?” said Pee-wee.

PEE-WEE HARRIS IN LUCK

BY

PERCY KEESE FITZHUGH

Author of

THE TOM SLADE BOOKS

THE ROY BLAKELEY BOOKS

THE PEE-WEE HARRIS 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

CONTENTS

PEE-WEE HARRIS IN LUCK

CHAPTER I

THE ART OF CHOOSING

Whenever Pee-wee Harris was given the choice of two desserts he invariably chose both. This policy, which eliminated all possibility of vain regrets, had worked so well that he applied it on all occasions where a difficult choice was involved, on the wise principle that if he took everything he would not lose much.

Thus, when the Sunday School picnic with its ice cream and cake conflicted with the troops’ hike, Pee-wee saved the day and much of the ice cream by proposing that they hike to the scene of the picnic.

His greatest triumph of maneuvering, however, was when he “foiled” Father Time by means of the daylight saving law. On that memorable occasion he set the hands of the kitchen clock back an hour which enabled him to have supper home at six o’clock and also to reach the scout rally at North Bridgeboro at six o’clock, where he partook of a second supper, including a helping of plum pudding—and a helping of apple pie. Thus, he solved the problem of being in two places at the same time at meal-time. A scout is resourceful.

Pee-wee never had to pause and consider which thing he preferred, since he preferred all things. The place that he liked best to go was everywhere. The thing that he liked best to do was everything. Broadly speaking, the thing which he liked best to eat was food. And speaking more particularly the food that he liked best was dessert. But it might be said that he ate everything; adventures, hairbreadth escapes, colossal enterprises, dark mysteries—he ate them alive.

So it befell that when Pee-wee’s mother offered him the choice of going to Temple Camp or accompanying her into the mountains where she hoped to rest, he announced that he would go to the mountains first and to Temple Camp afterward. He did not specify how long he would remain in the mountains, but he assured his mother that Temple Camp and the mountains would be a moderate mouthful for one summer.

“I’m afraid it is very quiet up there,” said Mrs. Harris warningly.

“Gee whiz, I’ll show them how to make a noise,” Pee-wee assured her. “I can multiply my voice three times. Do you want to know how?”

“I’d rather hear you subtract it,” said Pee-wee’s mother.

“Do you want to know how?” he persisted.

“Tell me but don’t show me,” she said.

“You do it with echoes,” Pee-wee said; “it’s a scout stunt. I bet you couldn’t do it. Gee whiz, you say it’s quiet up there; I bet I can make those mountains talk. If I shout at a mountain that’s facing another mountain they’ll both answer; that makes three voices. Only I have to shout good and loud; I have to yell. See? All I need is a lot of lonely mountains. The quieter it is up there the more noise I can make. See? I might even make four of them shout.”

The vision of Pee-wee acting as a sort of orchestral leader to a range of mountains rather appalled his mother, but she said with a gentle smile as was her wont, “I’m afraid the place is very quiet and lonely, and such pleasure as you have you will have to make for yourself. I don’t want you to be restless and disappointed when you get there. It isn’t at all like Temple Camp, you know.”

“Have they got a windmill?” Pee-wee demanded vociferously.

“I don’t know, I’m sure.”

“Because I know how to put a riot-rattle in a windmill so it will make a lot of noise; it’s a scout trick. I can show them how to churn milk with a vacuum cleaner, too.”

“I don’t believe they have any vacuum cleaners up there, dearie,” Mrs. Harris said, reaching for a letter that lay on her dresser. “Let me read you what the letter says.”

The letter was written on cheap lined stationery, dignified by a rubber stamp heading which read,

GOODALE MANOR FARM

ASA GOODALE, PROP.

The writing was shaky and crude and evidently the result of much laborious care. It read as follows:

dear madem your letter of third instant reed and can acomidate you for month of Aug. with sunny room also small room if desired, there is not menny peple here but one young lady aged sixteen but plenty of fresh milk and holesome fair and methedist church at Snailsdale Manor about seven miles the nearest station, if you come let me no so can meat you. take Snailsdale branch of Drerie railroad to Snailsdale Manor nearest station, address to Snailsdale Manor P. O.

respectibly

Asa Goodale.

“I’m afraid they haven’t even a rural mail delivery,” said Mrs. Harris. “Your Uncle Charlie, who went up for the hunting several years ago, said that the only living things he saw up there were Mr. and Mrs. Goodale, their son, a team of oxen, several cows, and a woodchuck. And he thinks the woodchuck has since moved away. I suppose they have chickens. I don’t know how old Mr. Goodale’s son is.”

“Sure, I’ll go,” Pee-wee announced conclusively, “because anyway one thing scouts hate and that is civilization. And anyway I bet that woodchuck didn’t move away at all, because woodchucks have back entrances under stone walls and scouts know where to look for them; gee whiz, no woodchuck can fool me. I bet there are skunks up there, too, and lots of other peachy things; I can tell by deduction,”

“Well, he doesn’t give any skunk as a reference,” smiled Mrs. Harris; “I’m afraid you’ll find it very quiet and dull.”

“If you’re a scout you can make your own noise,” Pee-wee said; “you don’t have to depend on noises, just the same as you can always make the forest yield food. You can eat fungus even.”

“Well, I think fresh milk will be better than fungus,” said Mrs. Harris.

“Fungus is all right to eat and so is moss,” Pee-wee said. “That shows how much you know about scouting. You can even eat ground-worms, if you’re a scout.”

“Gracious heavens!” said Pee-wee’s mother.

CHAPTER II

“THEY’RE OFF”

The Snailsdale branch of the Drerie Railroad went through the loneliest country that Pee-wee had ever seen. Leaving the main line at Woodsend Junction, the train of two musty, dilapidated, old cars lurched and rattled along like an old hay wagon.

The engineer and the conductor were all there was to the train crew and there was a pleasant air of family familiarity between them and the few lounging passengers bound for Snailsdale Manor, all calling each other by their first names.

The engineer, glancing backward, shot remarks about the crops to the occupants of the baggage compartment who were playing checkers on a milk can. He wore old-fashioned spectacles, did this engineer, and he looked over the top of them along the track like a stern schoolmaster. His very look was enough to frighten away any cow that had ever attended school. The conductor’s name was evidently Hink, and from the trend of the talk it appeared that his cow was capable of some speed, if his train was not for she had escaped the day before and had not yet returned. He told every one about this.

There were two stations, or rather sheds along this line, at which the train stopped, but no one got on or off. The ghosts of former passengers or loiterers were to be seen, however, in the form of carved initials which literally covered these makeshift shelters. Across the end of each of these sheds was a large sign, quite disproportionate to the modest edifice, giving the name of the station. The signs looked garish enough on these board shelters for they were of the regulation size and pattern used for such purpose from one end of the Drerie Railroad to the other. Thus HICKSON CROSSING was as great as Jersey City (if that were possible), at least so far as its flaunting sign was concerned. The other station was HAWLEY’S. The sign did not say Hawley’s what; it just said HAWLEY’S. There did not seem to be anything about for Hawley to own.

One would say that it would be quite impossible for any village, or neighborhood, or cross-road, to have less of a station than these two. Yet the neighborhood of Goodale Manor Farm beat them in this, for it had just no station at all. It is true that a road crossed the track and that half a mile of travel over this road brought one to the farm, but the train never stopped at this road. It kept going, after a fashion, and did not stop till it reached Snailsdale Manor.

Beyond Snailsdale Manor lay Snailsdale Glen, then North Snailsdale, where there was a tannery, three houses and a turntable. Here the engineer turned around while Hink turned the seat-backs over and the train was ready to return to Woodsend Junction. Posted on the side of this busy terminal was a list of two names called to service by the draft. Those rural heroes had gone and served, and in the interim the single locomotive had ridden upon its drowsy carousal, how many times?

But the two names were still posted there at the station.

CHAPTER III

SOME DOINGS

Snailsdale Manor had a real station, as befitted a town of five thousand people. It had all modern improvements, including a tin water cooler and a posting board with a three-year-old time-table tacked on it.

Posted here also was an announcement which attracted Pee-wee’s attention. He was sagacious enough to read the date first of all to make sure that the magnificent affair advertised had not already taken place, for the announcement might have pertained to some gala celebration of a prehistoric age.

OLD HOME WEEK

AT

SNAILSDALE MANOR!

COME ONE COME ALL

SATURDAY, JULY 10th, 1921.

GORGEOUS PARADE

FIREWORKS AT NIGHT.

COME EVERYBODY!

Pee-wee read this announcement while he and his mother waited for Mr. Goodale.

Now if there was one thing more than another dear to the heart of Scout Harris it was a parade. Not that such an affair constituted anything in the way of a novelty in his young life, for indeed his whole career was one grand, triumphal procession. When he walked down the street it was a parade. When he went to scout meeting in his full regalia, including his aluminum cooking set, it was a veritable pageant. Some said that Pee-wee was more than a parade, that he was a circus.

Be that as it might, there was nothing, excepting a fire, which Pee-wee so adored as a parade. And he contemplated this announcement with thrilling anticipations.

“I’m going to be there,” he said to his mother; “I’m going to be in it. I’m going to be in the fireworks, too.”

Exactly how he meant to be “in” the fireworks he did not explain, but perhaps he expected his propensity for going up in the air to help him in that particular. He was presently to give a demonstration of his proficiency in aerial flight, for he heard a voice close behind him say:

“You can’t be in it because you don’t belong here. You’re waiting for Farmer Goodale, and his place is seven miles from here, and there aren’t any people there anyway, and he only has one horse. They’re asleep down there, only they haven’t got sense enough to lie down.”

Pee-wee turned and beheld a boy of about fifteen, wearing a regulation suit and regulation straw hat and a regulation scarf and white collar, and a regulation handkerchief nattily folded in the regulation way and projecting out of his breast pocket. He presented a singular contrast to Pee-wee, who was in scout negligee, his broad-brimmed hat far enough back on his head to expose his curly hair, the Raven patrol scarf tied loosely about his neck, with a compass as big as a watch dangling from the knotted ends of it.

“Do you think I can’t find my way from Mr. Goodale’s?” he demanded, as if that were the only condition of participating officially in the festivities. “Lots of times I’ve been as far as fifty miles from civilization and I can always find my way. I bet you’re not a scout.”

“I wouldn’t be one,” said the youth.

“Maybe you couldn’t,” Pee-wee retorted, “because you’re kind of civilized. Gee whiz, I used to be that way, but you don’t have any fun. I bet you hang around the post office waiting for mail. I can tell by looking at you, but we don’t bother with mail, because we write on birch bark.”

“I wouldn’t spoil my fountain pen writing on birch bark,” said the civilized youth.

“That shows how much you know about scouts!” Pee-wee said with withering scorn. “Fountain pens are no good; you’re supposed to write with charred wood. If you’re mad you can use beet juice for ink, because that’s red and it means anger; only scouts don’t get mad,” he added cautiously.

“What’s your name?” the stranger asked, contemplating Pee-wee curiously.

“Walter Collison Bately Harris, R.P., F.B.T., B.S.A. I bet you don’t know what that means. What’s yours?”

“Everett Braggen.”

“Do you live here?”

“Do you think I’d live in a place like this? No, I board here. But it’s better than where you’re going. That’s away, way off in the woods and there’s nobody there and it’s too far to walk—”

“You mean hike,” Pee-wee said.

“Anyway, you won’t have any fun down there,” said Master Braggen consolingly; “but you couldn’t get into our hotel, because it’s full and all the places here are full and we’re going to have a big tennis tournament next week and our hotel is going to win it because two fellows from Hydome University are coming to our hotel and they’re champions. You can come and see the tournament but you can’t be in the parade, because how could you go in it all alone?

“All the farms and boarding houses around here are getting up floats; ours is going to be the best. It’s going to be all decorated with bunting and paper lanterns and it’s going to be like grass on it and it’s going to represent our lawn. It’s going to have wicker chairs with people sitting in them and a girl is going to be lying in a hammock reading and I’m going to be sitting at a little wire table playing cards with another fellow. It’s going to have SNAILSDALE HOUSE above it. We’re going to win the prize and we’re going to win the tennis tournament too. It’s a good joke, because nobody knows that those two chaps from Hydome University are coming to our house. If I see you watching the parade I’ll wave my hand to you.”

The thought of this conventional youngster waving his hand condescendingly from his throne of glory was too much for Pee-wee. That rolling scene of complacent ease and comfort was terrible enough. But that Everett Braggen should look down from his card playing to wave a polite ta-ta to Pee-wee was more than our hero could bear. And he resolved then and there that he would organize a float bodying forth a scene so wild and blood-curdling as to strike terror to the whole brood of letter-writing, hammock-lounging, card-playing denizens who infested Snailsdale Manor. From his obscure retreat he would deal a mortal blow to civilization, the worst kind of civilization; he would deal this post office loitering and waiting-for-the-dinner bell business one tremendous stroke from which it would never recover.

He did not know how he was going to do this, but he was going to do it....

CHAPTER IV

ACTION

Mr. Goodale soon arrived in a buckboard wagon drawn by an old veteran of a horse which Pee-wee inspected critically. “I’m going to have a float in the parade,” he announced; “have you got two horses?”

“G’long,” said Mr. Goodale to the horse, after passengers and luggage were all safely aboard. “Well, naow, I ain’t much on paradin’ I reckon. We got a team of oxen, but trouble is, sonny, there ain’t no folks. Ter fuss up and go into a parade yer got ter hev folks. I guess we ain’t fixed up fer mixin’ with them Snailsdale folks. Most on ’em are rich, I reckon. G’long. They ain’t nobody ter our place but jest Mrs. Stillmore n’ her daughter.

“Hope, she’s a mighty nice gal, n’ she’s frettin’ herself ’cause there ain’t no young fellers. Says she’d go back home if t’wan’t fer her mother. Yer see we ain’t on the railroad, that’s where the trouble is. We have to depend on Snailsdale Manor fer mails n’ station n’ sech. I s’pose these young gals they want ter go ter sociables and sech like; I d’no ’s I blame ’em. When I wuz a wheezer I used to go ter barn dances every month or two, but there ain’t been none since Josh Berry’s barn burned daown. Maybe this here youngster will kinder cheer her up a mite,” he added pleasantly.

Pee-wee swelled up at this important responsibility.

“Kinder young though, I reckon,” mused Mr. Goodale.

“It’s adventure that counts,” said Pee-wee; “size don’t count, because look at mustang ponies, they’re stronger than horses.”

“Well, you’ll get plenty of fresh milk n’ that’ll make you grow,” said Mr. Goodale.

“And that’s what we want most of all,” said Pee-wee’s mother.

A ride of about seven miles brought them to the farm, which seemed completely isolated from the world. The old-fashioned porch commanded a view of mountains extending afar until the rugged profusion was tinged with the sky’s gray and seemed to merge in the horizon. Not a house was there to be seen in all that wild expanse. Once a day a train of smoke crept across above the wooded lowland near at hand, and the cheerful whistle of the locomotive could be heard echoing among the hills. Often, as she sat upon the funny, rickety little porch, Hope Stillmore wondered what would happen if she were to start out and go straight across all those wooded mountains. Where would she come out? And what would she see?

Mrs. Harris and Mrs. Stillmore, being both in search of rest, enjoyed this jointly, and we need not trouble ourselves with their reading and crocheting and other wild amusements.

Pee-wee’s acquaintance with Hope began on the porch after he had attended to the more important matter of eating supper. It was then, as he wandered out through the musty sitting room with its dismal melodeon in the corner and its picture of Asa Goodale during his dancing days, that the buoyant spirit of our young hero was momentarily clouded by a sense of newness and strangeness.

Everybody knows those awkward minutes after the first meal before acquaintance has begun. One wanders aimlessly, and usually ends on the front porch. Pee-wee wandered through the sitting-room, out of a side door, around the barnyard, and thence to the porch. Hope Stillmore was rocking frantically in a rickety chair as if in a kind of forlorn hope of extracting some excitement out of that piece of furniture. Each time she came forward her dainty little feet gave a vigorous push and back she went again. Probably she relieved her nerves in this way. This expression of impatience and despair is not uncommon on the porches of farm houses during the summer.

Hope Stillmore was of an age not exceeding sixteen (perhaps fifteen would be about right) and it is only fair to her to say that she was very pretty.

“I bet you can’t do that two hundred times without touching your feet to the floor,” Pee-wee said.

“I’m not counting the times,” said Miss Hope.

“Put your feet up on the cross-piece and keep them there,” Pee-wee said, “and then start and I’ll count for you. You’re not supposed to touch the floor. Most always girls go over backwards, but don’t you care, because the window sill is there. I won’t make fun of you.”

“Oh, you won’t?” said Miss Hope ironically.

“Sure I won’t because girls can do lots of things that fellers can’t do; gee whiz, I have to admit that.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“If I tilt you over backward I bet you can’t get up by yourself with your hands clasped,” Pee-wee said. “We all tried that at scout meeting and I was the only one that did it. Are you good at doing things?”

“There aren’t any things here to do.”

“Sure there are,” Pee-wee said; “there are lots of things only you don’t do them. You have to invent them.”

“Well, I’m not an inventor; I’m not a boy scout.”

“No, but you’re a girl, aren’t you? Gee whiz, you have to admit that. That’s one thing I don’t like about girls, they take dares from people. I met a city feller at the station—”

“Where?” the girl asked excitedly.

“Oh, gee whiz, you wouldn’t like him. And he as much as dared me to join the parade. He said I couldn’t, so that means I have to, because there’s no such word as can’t in the dictionary. Gee, I hate language, don’t you?”

“You seem to use a good deal of it.”

“I mean studying it,” Pee-wee said. “What’s your favorite study?”

“I’m studying monotony lately.”

“Gee, I tell you something to do and you won’t do it. Do you call that logic?”

“If I broke my neck I wouldn’t call it logic,” the girl laughed in spite of herself.

“If you broke your neck I know all about first aid,” Pee-wee said, “and I dare you to do it, I don’t mean break your neck but anyway a person that takes a dare is scared of a ghost, I can prove it by Roy Blakeley.”

“Is he coming here?” Miss Hope Stillmore asked.

“Naaah, he’s up at Temple Camp; he can cook better than girls, he can. Only he’s crazy. All the fellers in his patrol are crazy. He says you can have fun being crazy. Gee whiz, there’s fun wherever he is, that’s sure. If you throw a dare back at a person maybe that’ll change your luck.”

Miss Hope Stillmore smiled as she rocked. “Do you dare me to do it?” she finally asked.

“Sure I do,” said Pee-wee delighted. “Put your feet up on the cross-piece, and if you put them down it’s no fair. That’s right. Now start in rocking.”

There was nothing better to do so the girl, with her pretty little pumps caught on the rung of the chair by their pretty French heels, started rocking vigorously and as the chair tipped perilously backward with her increasing exertions it skidded slowly across the porch, while Pee-wee counted in frantic excitement. She was in for it now and she would not stop. Her face was flushed and she was laughing uncontrollably. Something was happening at Goodale Manor Farm at last. Pretty soon the chair went tumbling down the steps and the girl gathered herself up, holding a bruised knee, but all the while laughing.

“A hundred and fifty-seven not counting when it tumbled over,” Pee-wee announced grimly. “Anyway it’s better than monotony, hey? Didn’t I tell you there were things to do? You leave it to me. Will you help me fix up a float so we can join the parade? I’ll show you how to hammer nails so you won’t get blood blisters and I’ll show you how to saw and we’ll get some bunting and we’ll win the prize. Will you?

“Gee whiz, there are a lot of things to do, I thought up about seventeen already and maybe even I’ll be able to get some fellers here for you, because scouts can do lots of things, miracles kind of, only you and I’ll be pals, hey? Will you?”

“Indeed I will,” said Hope Stillmore, “only you made me hurt my knee.”

“Don’t you care,” said Pee-wee.

CHAPTER V

PALS

So Miss Hope Stillmore was launched upon the sea of adventure in a rocking chair with Scout Harris for pilot. She abandoned the study of monotony for the study of carpentry, interior and exterior decoration, botany, photography, stalking, signalling, tracking, and a variety of other scout arts.

It was Pee-wee’s fate in life to be accepted as a substitute for something better because he was amusing. He did not object to this because, as he said, he had plenty of fun just the same. Being small and full of enterprises entirely disproportionate to his size, he was acceptable everywhere and universally liked. Girls thought he was “excruciating” and “adorable.” Men were greatly taken with him and liked to hear him talk. At Temple Camp, where he and his scout troop spent the summers, he was called the mascot, sometimes the animal cracker. Pee-wee had not an enemy. More than that, he had none but friends.

But he had never had a pal. He had called many boys, and some girls, his “particular chums,” but these chums had lived elsewhere than in Pee-wee’s home town; they were the friends of his holiday adventures and enterprises. They, on their part, had fast and steady chums whom they returned to.

Each summer Pee-wee had a particular chum at Temple Camp. But he had no pal in his scout troop or out of it. You see that was because Pee-wee was a mascot and not to be taken seriously. They liked to have him along when there were two or three others in the party. But no one fellow sought him out. He would stand as much jollying as a Ford will stand abuse. Perhaps, after all, it was just because he was small and rather unique that he stood alone. He was too generous, or perhaps too busy, to resent it when some companion of a month or so deserted him for more important things. Was he not himself always jumping from one scheme to another?

So, perhaps, he did not exactly speak out of the depths of his heart when he proposed that he and Hope Stillmore be pals. Perhaps she did not answer him out of the depths of her heart when she told him that they certainly would.

At all events, they certainly were pals. Hope was not averse to exploring the woods, and Pee-wee was certainly not averse to imparting his knowledge of woods lore.

“I thought you told me girls couldn’t keep secrets,” she said as she picked her way through the thicket to see a thrush which he had promised to find for her observation. “Now you’re telling me all the secrets of the woods. That shows you’re a telltale. So there!”

“That’s different,” Pee-wee said; “you can tell everything you want to about the woods. Do you know how I can tell we’re walking north? On account of the moss growing on the north sides of the trees. Squirrels build on the north sides of trees, too. So, gee whiz, you needn’t worry, we can’t get lost.”

“Here’s a squirrel’s nest on one side with some moss on the other,” said Hope innocently.

“That shows how crazy some squirrels are,” Pee-wee said. “They don’t even know the north when they see it.”

“They should carry compasses like you,” Hope laughed.

“Safety first,” Pee-wee answered, “but if that compass should get lost—”

“I shouldn’t think a compass could get lost; it always points to the north,” Hope said.

“I mean if I lost it,” Pee-wee said, as he trudged along ahead of her. “But you needn’t worry because it can’t get lost; see?” Indeed, such a calamity seemed unlikely for the compass dangled from a rope necklace not much slenderer than a clothesline.

“I shan’t worry as long as I’m with you,” she said.

“Gee whiz, I’ve rescued maidens before,” he said.

“Maidens?”

“Sure, they’re the same as girls.”

“And when are we going to see a thrush?”

“Pretty soon I’ll find you one. The male ones are always handsomer than the female ones, that’s always the way it is. But that doesn’t mean I’m better looking than you. Gee whiz, you’re awful pretty, everybody says so.”

“Now you’re going to make me conceited. Is that boy in Snailsdale Manor good looking? The one with the suit of clothes?”

“Gee, I guess maybe you’d say so; he’s all dressed up; he has his handkerchief all sticking out of his pocket and everything. Scouts have no use for those things because they’re kind of wild.”

“Did you ask him to come down here and see you?”

“Naah, because he’s busy with the parade and the tennis match and a lot of things. Anyway, we’ll get up a float to beat the Snailsdale House, hey? I’ve got an inspiration. Do you know what that is?”

“I’m afraid we can’t decorate a float because we haven’t got any to decorate—”

“That’s nothing. You didn’t have anything to do till I showed you how to—”

“Fall off the chair and hurt my knee?”

“That’s nothing, I know a girl that broke her arm.”

“Oh, how dreadful!”

“So, will you help me with the float? Because I want to show that feller, he’s so fresh.”

“Is he tall?”

“Tallness doesn’t count,” said Pee-wee.

“Is he light or dark?”

“Do you mean is he a colored feller?”

“Oh, gracious no! I mean what color is his hair? You say scouts are so observant.”

“They’re observant about—kind of—about—you know—about natural things.”

“Oh, has he got false hair?”

Suddenly Pee-wee had an inspiration. “I couldn’t see his hair on account of his having a straw hat over it,” he said.

“Everybody that stays at the Snailsdale House is rich,” said Hope wistfully. “They have dances there every night. Do you know how to dance?”

“Sure,” said Pee-wee, “I’ll teach you. I know an Indian war dance. I know the dance that the cannibals dance, too. Do you want to learn it?”

“Oh, horrors, no!”

“So will you help me with the float?” he asked after his erratic fashion of rebounding to the main subject. “Do you know where the hay wagon stands? Under that crazy old kind of a building? The one on stilts?”

“With corn-husks in it?” Hope asked.

“I don’t know what’s in it,” Pee-wee continued excitedly, “but, anyway, it’s all old and rotten and it’s no good except to keep the hay wagon under. So I’m going to ask Mr. Goodale to let it down onto the hay wagon, all he’ll have to do is kind of to saw off the legs. See? Even he can put it back if he wants to. And then we’ll decorate it all up and put a great big sign on that says Goodale Manor Farm and we’ll get the oxen and you can drive them if you want to and we’ll drive up to Snailsdale Manor and join the parade. So will you? Because all the houses are going to have floats in that parade. And, gee whiz, that’ll be something to do, won’t it? You bet I’m not going to stand in the street and have that feller waving his hand to me from a float—I’m not, you can bet. Not that feller.”

“You just dislike him because he dressed like a young gentleman,” said Hope.

Pee-wee scented her unfavorable decision in this matter and groping in his fertile mind, dragged up a blighting argument.

“You want him to be dressed like a gentleman, don’t you? Sure, you as much as said so. You like the way he has his handkerchief all tucked nice and pretty in his pocket. Suppose he should pull that out and wave it at me! That would spoil it all, wouldn’t it? So will you say you’ll do it—and cross your heart?”

“I don’t know how to drive oxen,” she said, hedging.

“All you have to do is keep saying ‘gee’,” said Pee-wee. “So will you do it?”

“No, I won’t,” said Hope, “because it’s silly. We haven’t got any money and we haven’t got lots of people and everybody would just laugh at our float. That boy would just laugh at us.”

“That shows how much you know about scouts,” Pee-wee said; “they’re supposed to spread laughter.”

“Well, I’m not going to have people laughing at me,” said Hope. “I’d rather come hiking in the woods like this—if I can’t do the things I want to do,” she added.

“You don’t need any money to have fun,” Pee-wee said, loud enough so the very woods echoed this magnificent truth. “As long as we have fun, what do we care what people say?”

“Well, I care,” Hope said, “and I’m not going to be a silly. Everybody up in town would laugh at this poky old place if we went in the parade. So let’s forget about it and look for the thrush. Nobody’ll laugh at us here, anyway, even if we don’t have any excitement.”

But Miss Hope Stillmore was presently to have excitement enough to last her for several days. And that without the presence of dancing and grown-up boys. She was to learn that the woods were not quite as “poky” as she had thought. And incidentally she was to learn something about scouts, too....

CHAPTER VI

THE WOODS TRAIL

Pee-wee swallowed his disappointment, trudging sturdily along in silence. The realization that something was going to happen and that he was not going to be in it was hard for him to bear. With one willing collaborator he could do anything. There was no one else about the place but Simon Hasbrook, the farm boy, who was always busy with his chores. Besides, Pee-wee liked Hope Stillmore; she was his pal....

Hope, on her part, seemed not to take his disappointment to heart. Perhaps she thought that with so many ideas bubbling up in his mind, he would soon think of something else.

“Let me go ahead,” she said gayly, “and see if I can follow the trail.”

So he let her pass him and she led the way along the narrow, all but indistinguishable path which wound through the woods. She seemed very graceful and pretty tripping along in her little pumps, the absurdest things for hiking, pausing now and then to make sure of the elusive trail and then tripping gayly on again in triumph.

“You see I’m just as good on frontiers as I am on front porches,” she said. “You thought I was going to turn to the left, didn’t you? Little Smarty!”

The almost obliterated path had probably once been used as a short cut through the woods. But a long period of disuse had reduced it to a mere line of least resistance through the dense foliage. In places its course was distinguishable only by the piles of dried brush, which had once been cut along the way, to make travel easier.

These odds and ends of bushes and low-hanging branches had been gathered into little mounds at intervals. They looked like piles ready for burning. In places they were the only guide-posts. They must have been cut long since, for the surrounding growth showed no sign of pruning. Pee-wee, always curious, examined one of these brittle, interwoven mounds and found it dank and soppy underneath, with a multitude of repulsive little slugs darting about. He could lift the whole mass a little, like a mattress and see the bare, damp ground with its one or two blades of light green grass poking out of the over-rich earth. The slugs seemed aroused out of a lifetime of darkness and inertia.

As Pee-wee dropped the mass, the brittle twigs cracked, and he heard a sort of continuation of this sound after the tangled mound had settled. The noise was not unlike the crackling of twigs but it seemed more continuous and aggressive than the passive sound of the subsiding debris.

Something, he did not at the time know what, caused Pee-wee to start, then shudder. It was not that he knew the sound, for he did not; he thought it must be the natural sequel of the disturbance he had caused. Nor for a moment did he see aught. But that strange telegraphy which heralds things ghastly and mortal, touched the chords of his nature and he quaked and his blood ran cold.

Then, suddenly he heard a piercing, agonizing scream....

CHAPTER VII

THE HERO

Then he saw. A dozen feet or so ahead of him stood Hope Stillmore, her form in an attitude of recoiling, her face depicting an unspeakable terror, as she tried to drag her foot out of one of those piles of tangled brush. Her dainty silk stocking was torn and her ankle was bleeding. Her recoiling posture, as she tugged and wrenched was appalling to witness. Such panic fright Pee-wee had never seen on human countenance before.

Sticking right up out of the middle of the pile and swaying menacingly was a hissing snake with tongue darting like forked lightning. Its motion was backward and forward and the noise it made was like escaping steam. Each forward movement of that supple, loathsome body seemed to shorten the distance between the flat, scaly head with its little, beady eyes, and the frantic, terror-stricken, struggling girl. And all the while the rattling sound continued, muffled somewhat by the pile in which it was embedded. There was no doubt that the reptile was about to spring; each movement seemed to leave the attack for the next movement. The girl’s struggles and suspense were heart-rending.

“Look away and don’t move,” Pee-wee said excitedly, at the same time pulling his khaki shirt up over his head.

“I can’t! I can’t!” Hope cried frantically; “I’m caught! Oh, help, help!”

“Don’t look at him and stop calling; look away,” Pee-wee said.

She averted her head but kept tugging. She was conscious of Pee-wee moving. Her heart beat like a hammer. Suddenly she heard the hissing louder, then it ended in a kind of smothered spasm. She thought that her little comrade had been bitten till she heard him say, cheerily:

“Now I’ve got him; oh, boy, I’ve got him good! That shows you that I’m a scout all right,” he added with frank vanity.

The girl, half dead with fright, looked around and beheld a strange sight. With his left hand Pee-wee was holding a long stick on the end of which was wound his shirt. It looked like a mop. In this were buried the fangs of the deadly reptile. But its death-dealing power was over. Its venom was spent for the time being, on the khaki negligee of Pee-wee Harris, scout of the first class.

It might have bitten the girl and left no more than a smarting cut after that. But even that balm was denied it, for while the sturdy little scout let it spend its poison on the proffered bait, he struck blow after blow with an end of a branch which he wielded with his right arm. The whole thing happened all in an instant and left Hope Stillmore gasping.

“You—you—did you—you—kill it?” she panted, looking in fearful horror at the results of Pee-wee’s merciless attack. Her chest was heaving, and she could hardly speak. “Are you—you—sure—you—he’s dead?”

“Sure, he’s dead. Gee whiz, he couldn’t be deader. Don’t you know you must never look straight at a rattlesnake? He would have gone away only he probably has a nest there. He didn’t bite you, did he?” he added anxiously, looking at her cut ankle.

“No, oh no,” she said, exhausted and almost reeling from fear. “Help me out, I’m going to fall.”

He parted the tangled brush into which her foot had sunken and been held as in a trap. And she leaned on him, small though he was and thus walked a few paces and sat down all but hysterical upon a log. Perhaps she would have given way to hysterics, but seeing her sturdy little rescuer standing before her, still armed with his implements of war, which he evidently cherished, she was moved to laughter. And so she laughed and cried at the same time, which was a stunt that neither Pee-wee nor any other boy could do.

“Oh, you look so funny!” she said, smiling while her eyes streamed.

Perhaps he did look funny, standing there like some doughty knight of old, minus his shirt, but with the look of a hero on his countenance, and his mop and his deadly cudgel over his shoulder. But anyway, Hope Stillmore laughed while she still gulped and cried.

For just as I told you, it was the fate of Pee-wee to be laughed at. People never thought of what he did, but how he looked. He was amusing, above all. Perhaps if Straw-hat Braggen had killed the snake (if you can imagine such a thing) pretty Miss Hope Stillmore would have been soberly grateful and called him “just simply wonderful” and a hero. But she laughed at Pee-wee.

And there you are.

CHAPTER VIII

PEE-WEE GOES TO IT

It was not until afterward that Hope realized the full significance of Pee-wee’s act. When she saw her mother embrace and kiss him (much to Pee-wee’s discomfort) and heard the comments of the household generally, it struck her that she had been rescued from a horrible death, like a girl in a story. The one false note in the whole business was that her hero was not tall and commanding, like some of the college boys she knew at home. Then she could have regarded him with romantic tenderness.

Farmer Goodale, somewhat doubtful about the affair, made a trip to the scene of Pee-wee’s triumph and his inspection only increased the little scout’s glory. He said that the reptile was a rattlesnake, sure enough, and a very formidable one. Simon Hasbrook, the farm-boy, also made a pilgrimage to the historic field of glory, and reported that the dead snake was the largest he had ever seen.

As for Pee-wee, his exploit was soon relegated to the back of his seething mind in the interest of more important conquests. For he intended to triumph over Straw-hat Braggen as he had triumphed over the snake. He intended to vanquish him, not with a mop and a cudgel, but with a float which would be a vision of splendor.

His first move was against Mr. Goodale. “If we have a float in the parade,” he said excitedly, “it’ll make lots and lots of people come and board here, because it pays to advertise, and all we have to do is kind of to drop that building down onto the hay wagon and then decorate it; see? All we have to do is to saw off the four stilts and let it down—kerflop. It’ll come down all right.”

Mr. Goodale agreed that if the four stilts were sawed off the structure would undoubtedly descend upon the hay wagon.

“On account of the attraction of gravity,” Pee-wee said. “Then when we’re all through with it we can sort of raise it up again, because then we’ll have plenty of money on account of the farm getting to be so popular, so it’s a kind of an investment. So will you do it? If you’ll help me saw it off I’ll do all the rest, and I can even print a great big sign, because I know all about printing, because my uncle is in the printing business. So will you do it?”

“I don’t see how as it’s goin’ ter bring folks here,” drawled Mr. Goodale, good-humoredly, and somewhat captivated in spite of himself, by Pee-wee’s enthusiasm; “because all the folks up ter Snailsdale hev got boardin’ places—”

“Yes, but when they see our float they’ll want to come here; you leave it to me because I took a snapshot of all the fellers eating up at Temple Camp and I made them all smile as if they were getting two or three helpings, and the trustees put that picture in a circular, so that proves it, because the next summer scouts came all the way from Arizona. Gee whiz, that’s why nobody comes here, because we don’t advertise. Lots of rich people go to the Snailsdale House.”

“Waal,” smiled Farmer Goodale, by no means convinced, but quite unable to withstand the fire of Pee-wee’s enthusiasm, “we’ll see what can be done—”

“And can Simon go, and drive the oxen?” Pee-wee interrupted, excitedly, anxious to bring Mr. Goodale to the point of unconditional surrender. “And can I use the red paint that’s out in the barn?”

“Haow’d you find out ’baout that?”

“I saw it there, and can I use a couple of those boards out in the pigpen?” Evidently Pee-wee had made a preliminary inventory of the entire farm.

In plain truth neither Mr. Goodale nor any one else had any faith in the practical character of Pee-wee’s enterprise. But if our hero paused to consider this lack of spirit and cooperation he probably consoled himself with the reflection that all great inventors and promoters are scorned by the world until their triumphs have been won. In Pee-wee’s mammoth enterprises he was not unaccustomed to working alone. The well-known case of Christopher Columbus was always in his mind.

Farmer Goodale and his wife had too long prayed and hoped for summer boarders at their sequestered homestead to believe that a boy scout could perform the miracle of bringing any trunk and suitcase pilgrims to their door. Three years previously they had advertised in the New York Sunday papers and in the vacation book published by the railroad. They had even taken down the partition between the two sitting rooms to make a spacious floor for dancing. But no one had ever come, save an occasional old lady, or a weary school teacher. Mrs. Goodale said it was because her husband had an old-fashioned habit of telling the truth about his lonely place.

At all events the kind-hearted old man wished those who did come to be contented and happy. So after contemplating the old corn-husk house shrewdly from various angles, he piled timbers between it and the hay wagon until the space of a foot or more was filled. Then he sawed through the four supporting stilts and by pulling the timbers out one after another, let the ramshackle old structure down upon the wide, clumsy hay wagon.

“There yer be,” he said, as he proceeded to nail it here and there and to bind it with rope to the frame of the wagon; “naow I reckon she’ll do. More like a float fer a insane asylum, I’d say. Naow you can set ter work and kill time puttin’ on yer gewgaws n’ Simon’ll go ’long with yer when th’ day comes. Anything else?” He stood, saw in hand, looking over the top of his old steel-rimmed specks, a shrewd, amused smile on his furrowed, bronzed face. “Naow yer kin go to it, as the feller says.”

So Pee-wee went to it. The architectural conception, which was now an accomplished fact, was ludicrous in the last degree. The old, slatted corn-husk receptacle standing upon the hay wagon looked like nothing either Gothic or Moorish. Mrs. Stillmore said it was roorish, a name derived from rural. The structure, which was of a familiar sort seen on farms, slanted out from its base till it reached the point of juncture with a roof disproportionately massive and heavy. The sides of the structure had slats instead of siding so that the whole business had not a little the appearance of a rolling circus cage.

It was this fact that put it into Pee-wee’s fertile brain to use a pig or a calf as a tenant of this traveling cell by way of suggesting the bounteous fare at Goodale Manor Farm. He deferred this matter till later, pending the completion of his exterior decorations.

After the first curiosity of the household had been satisfied no one visited him in his corner of the barnyard and the work of gala preparation went forward without audience, save for a rooster that made a practice of sitting on the fence and watching the artistic labor. Perhaps he had an artistic bent. At all events, he sat on the fence hour in and hour out contemplating the work with profoundest interest.

He was Pee-wee’s only companion.

CHAPTER IX

A VISION OF SPLENDOR

The next morning Pee-wee made a great discovery in the loft of the carriage house. This was a large sign at least six feet long and more than a foot wide, containing in glaring paint the words:

GOODALE MANOR FARM.

It was evidently a souvenir of the hopeful days when the partition between the sitting rooms had been taken down. Pee-wee dragged it to the kitchen door and consulted Mr. Goodale, who was drying his hands there.

“Waal, now, that’ll jes’ suit you, won’t it?” said Mr. Goodale. “I never know’d abaout it bein’ poked away till you pulled it out. That was goin’ ter be nailed up between the gate-posts out yonder, ony it never was,” he said wistfully. “’Member that sign, mother?” Mrs. Goodale paused in her cake making to look reminiscently at the dust-covered memorial of shattered hopes. “Carl Jellif painted that sign; I give ’m ten dollars. He was a city painter he was, slick ez a school marm on spellin’ and fancy stuff. He wuz out here ter paint the station up ter Snailsdale n’ he boarded daown here while he done th’ County Fair work. He died uv th’ flu, he did.” Mr. Goodale paused, his face half dry, to indulge in these memories. “You take it and use it, sonny,” he concluded.

It nevers rains but it pours and that same morning Hope Stillmore came gingerly across the mud of the barnyard with an armful of old, faded bunting and a couple of good-sized American flags, the spoils of an extended exploration of the attic.

“We found a gold mine in the attic,” she chirped. “Just look at all this lovely stuff; it was used in the County Fair when Mr. Goodale was on the committee, and Mrs. Goodale says we can use it, and I’m going to help you decorate if you’ll let me. I’m going to do it because of what you did for me—because you saved my life.”

“Are you going to be partners with me?” Pee-wee asked delightedly.

“Yes, I’m going to be partners with you and we’re going to decorate it together, so there.” She did not tell him that her mother had shamed her into this. Her interest, once aroused, seemed genuine, at all events.

“And are you going to ride on the float with me?”

“Yes, I am, I don’t care what. So now.”

“After the parade’s over I’m going to treat you to ice cream in Snailsdale,” Pee-wee said.

“Won’t that be lovely!”

“Fifteen-cent plates.”

“Oh, scrumptious!”

“And when lots of people come here it will be your good turn as well as mine, hey? Because, gee whiz, Mr. Goodale, he’s a peach of a man. And, besides, maybe there’ll be a lot of big fellers come, too, and then I bet you’ll be glad, hey? Gee whiz, that’ll be doing more for you than saving you from a rattlesnake, hey?” Indeed, it would have been somewhat in the nature of saving her life.

“We’re not going to think about anything except just the float,” Hope said. “So let’s start right in.”

“And we’re sure going to be partners for keeps?”

“Honest and true, just like in a story.”

“Gee, I’ve met a lot of girls, but I like you better than any of them, that’s one sure thing.”

“Well, I know a lot of boys—”

“I bet you know as many as a hundred.”

“And you’re braver than any of them. That’s one sure thing. And you know all about the woods.”

“I know all about getting lost in them,” Pee-wee said. “Anyway you’re prettier than Roy Blakeley’s sister. Just because I didn’t keep asking you that doesn’t mean I don’t like you better than anybody else. Lots of people would be partners with me only they’re too busy. But I’d rather have you for a partner than anybody. I’m going to get you some candy on the day of the parade. I bet fellers take you to the movies, don’t they?”

“I said we weren’t going to think of anything but the float,” Hope reproved him.

“But I can say I like you, can’t I?”

“Yes, but let’s get to work.”

The work began auspiciously enough, Hope dealing her finger a blow with the hammer. Everything went along swimmingly and the wheels of the hay wagon began to look quite gay and festive with the spokes wrapped in bunting and with bunting rosettes surmounting the old hubs. It was surprising how the girl knew just where to begin and how her nimble fingers made graceful loops and knots here and there.

Pee-wee was delighted as the morning passed in this pleasant comradeship and cooperation. They went in when the dinner bell rang, full of artistic and striking conceptions for the afternoon’s work, and at the table talked of their plans. It seemed likely that the afternoon would see the work well on its way toward completion. Hope seemed quite under the spell of Pee-wee’s enthusiasm (which was potent), and so for Pee-wee, he could not do justice to his dinner by reason of talking, and he could not do justice to his enthusiastic talk by reason of his dinner. He wrestled with both valiantly.

But the joyous progress was too good to last. By mid-afternoon the ramshackle old combination of house and wagon was resplendent in its particolored holiday array. The old hay wagon, which creaked as if it had rheumatism in its aged joints, appeared to have renewed its youth, its dried and shrunken boards concealed like wrinkles under the all-pervading makeup of gaudy bunting.

Pee-wee was straddling the roof, ready to throw the end of a rainbow streamer down to his partner when suddenly he beheld a Ford car standing in the road, its single occupant craning his neck in the direction of the barnyard. Even at the distance of some thirty yards or so, Pee-wee recognized the aggressive, cock-sure pose and demeanor of the staring driver.

It was Straw-hat Braggen.

CHAPTER X

ANOTHER VISION OF SPLENDOR

Everett Braggen ran his Ford to the side of the road, and came toward the partners smiling all over. He was in the transition period when sometimes he wore short trousers and sometimes long ones, and on this day, unfortunately he wore long ones. This made him look considerably older than on the day when Pee-wee had encountered him in the Snailsdale station. His suit must have been a different one than he had worn on that occasion, but his handkerchief was folded in precisely the same stiff fashion of affected carelessness exhibiting its border.

“Well—I’ll—be—jiggered!” he said, affecting not to see Hope, but at the same time adjusting his scarf by a little pull, in honor of her. He also made sure that his handkerchief was properly disposed for exhibition. “What—do—you—know—about—that? I was just out taking a little spin to get away from the traffic cops when who should I see but you? How are you, Kiddo? So this is Goodale Farm, huh?” he added, looking around and giving his scarf another artistic little jerk so that it stuck out.

“And what the dickens are you up to?” he asked, planting himself in front of the float as if he might possibly be induced to buy it. “Great kids, these boy scouts, hey?” He did not address this last remark to any one in particular. By way of showing how far removed he was from a boy scout he sat down on a box and carefully gave each trouser leg a little hoist, then contemplated his ankles.

“It’s just sort of killing time,” Hope said, rather apologetically. “Anything’s better than nothing.”

Pee-wee was a little disappointed at that. “We’re going in the parade,” he said, “and we’re going to try for the prize; this is my partner, ain’t you, Hope?”

This was all the introduction that he received, but it was all he required.

“Some artist, hey?” he commented, alluding to Pee-wee.

“It’s all we could find to do in this poky old place,” said Hope, as if a little ashamed of her participation in the decorative enterprise. She stood, as if rather abashed by Braggen’s derisive inspection of their handiwork, a hammer dangling from one hand and a strip of bunting hanging over her shoulder.

Pee-wee felt disappointed, almost betrayed. He had always the courage of his convictions, and as for acknowledging defeat before the end of battle, his sturdy little heart rebelled at such a thing.

“It isn’t finished yet,” he said; “it’s going to be a good deal better than this. There’s a—a kind of a secret about it—something that’s going to be inside of it—you wait till you see it in the parade. There’s an inspiration that goes with it,” he added, darkly.

Everett Braggen winked significantly at Hope and she smiled. Both the work and the smile were at Pee-wee’s expense.

“You ought to see the float we’re going to shoot into the parade,” said the visitor; “it’s a traveling landscape. Yours, sincerely, is going to be sitting on the lawn playing cards while we roll merrily, merrily on. The girls up at the Snailsdale House—that’s my little old hang-out—they can’t eat their meals on account of getting that float ready. They’ve got us trotting over to the village store forty-eleven times a day. Every person in the house put up two bucks. Our float’s going to be a whole parade in itself.”