Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Roundabout Hike - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 5

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Every time I start telling you about one of our hikes, I say it’s the craziest hike I ever took. I guess it’s true, because they’re all crazier than each other. If there are a lot of things and each one of them is crazier than the other, that shows they’re all the craziest. If you don’t believe it, you can do it by long division only I like short division better—the shorter it is the better I like it. Even if there wasn’t any arithmetic at all I’d be satisfied.

But there’s one good thing about ancient history and that is we don’t study it in my grade. Next term I get civilized government and French pastry or history or something or other—I’m going to get a bicycle too. Then I’m going to have a bicycle trip and write about it.

So now I’m going to tell you about our latest hike—it’s a nineteen twenty-six model only it hasn’t got four wheel brakes. It hasn’t got any brakes at all—we just kept on going and going and going. The noise you hear will be Pee-wee Harris; when he talks, he’s always trying to get distance. Don’t blame me, I couldn’t get rid of him.

I’ll tell you how it was. When we got to Temple Camp, I said I was going to start a new up-to-date hike with all improvements. I said it was going to be so crazy that all the other hikes would have a lot of sense compared to it. Even I wrote a proclamation and tacked it up on the bulletin-board outside of Administration Shack, calling for volunteers absolutely positively for not more than one day’s service—maybe two days. It said that any one who was interested should call on Roy Blakeley at Silver Fox Cabin and that if I wasn’t there they should hunt around for me. Because most always if I’m not in one place, I’m in another. I’m sure to be somewhere. It said if they were interested they were lucky.

Of course, the first one to come up was Pee-wee Harris. He didn’t have far to come, because his patrol bunks in the next cabin to ours. He’s the head chip of the Chipmunks. He’s the one that had the law of supply and demand passed, especially demand. He’s a nice little scout, only he hasn’t got a voice to fit his size. His voice is a large thirty-six—it was made for a couple of giants. If there was a volcano going you couldn’t even hear it on account of Pee-wee.

Right away he wanted to know all about the hike. “When is it going to be and where is it going to be to?” he wanted to know.

“It’s not going to be to, it’s going to be from,” I told him. “And there are going to be only four Scouts in it—maybe six or seven. It’s going to start to-morrow morning at about three o’clock in the afternoon if it’s a pleasant evening and you’re not going to be in it. So you can see how good it’s going to be.”

“What’s the name of it?” he wanted to know. Because all our crazy hikes have names.

“It’s named the table d’hote hike,” I said, “and I got the idea of it from a grab-bag. It’s got a little of all our other hikes mixed into it; they’re going to be all separated together.”

He said, “What do you want to call it the table d’hote hike for? Don’t you know that’s a kind of a dinner? You’re crazy! Anyway, how can a hike be from a place? It’s got to be to a place. You can’t come from a place till you go to it first, can you?” He was starting to shout—you know how he does.

“Sure, doesn’t mince-meat come from an animal called a mince?” I said to him. “This hike is going to start from somewhere else and go to another place. As long as two places are separated there can be a hike. Anybody that knows geometry can do that. If two places are mixed into one, there can’t be any hike—that’s a fundamental proposition.”

“You don’t know what fundamental means,” he yelled.

“It’s derived from the word fun,” I told him, “and that’s my middle name. Mental means the opposite from physical—you learn that in the second grade. Mental means in your mind. Fundamental means fun in your mind. Ask me another.”

“Are you going to tell me about the hike or not?” the kid shouted. “How can I make up my mind if I want to go on it if I don’t know what it is?”

By that time a lot of Scouts were standing around laughing. Gee whiz, it doesn’t take much to get Pee-wee started.

I said, “Do you think a big enterprise like a hike can be started without due thought and consideration—and you needn’t tell me I got those words out of a book, because I know I did. Do you think Christopher Columbus started out to discover Columbus, Ohio, without making all plans and everything? I don’t know what kind of a hike it’s going to be yet. I’ll probably decide yesterday afternoon. And then I’ll pick out who’s going to go on it. I want four fellows and they’ve all got to be crazy.”

“They’ll be good and hungry before they get back,” said Pee-wee.

“That’s nothing, you’re good and hungry before you start out,” I told him. “You never get hungry, because you’re already that way.” Gee whiz, a meal a minute is that kid’s speed. The reason he never boils his vegetables is he’s afraid they’ll shrink. One night he stayed awake three hours trying to figure out how he could eat more than one meal at a time and after a while he woke up and found his mouth open, so he had to get up and shut it. This isn’t so much of a chapter, anyway I should worry, maybe the next one will be even still worse.