Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Roundabout Hike - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 8

Table of Contents

Now pretty soon it’s going to start. The next morning we went in front of Administration Shack and everybody was there laughing at us. I made a kind of a speech. I said, “We, the big four, I mean the big three and a half, on account of Pee-wee, do solemnly pledge our words that we will go the way the wind blows till five o’clock to-night, because then we’ll have to come home on account of supper. The solemn pledge only lasts till five o’clock.”

One Scout said, “Why don’t you make it last for the rest of the season? If you got back by Labor Day that would be all right. What’s your hurry?”

I said, “We will be at camp-fire to-night with much scientific information to impart about the winds because wherever they go, we’re going to follow them with Scout Harris’ famous windmeter, patent not applied for.”

So then I held up that crazy thing and the confetti all blew out pointing into the woods up in back of the camp. That was west. The cricket escaped out of the bottle—I guess he decided he didn’t want to go. I dumped the lightning bug out, too. So then we started up into the woods and every now and then we held up the windmeter to make sure we were going right. Oh boy, we were having a peachy hike. It was like a regular, sensible hike, even. Pretty soon I knew we were coming to Bagley’s Green, that’s a village. You go through the woods about two miles and then you come to the railroad cut and then Bagley’s Green.

Now I’ll tell you how it was. When we started out it was early in the morning and there was a good breeze. You know how it is mornings. But by the time we got to Bagley’s Green the breeze had died down. There’s a kind of a little park sort of where the railroad station is and when we got to that, there wasn’t any breeze at all.

I said, “A Scout’s honor is to be toasted or trusted or something or other. We’ve got to stop here till the wind springs up. And anyway, I just as soon take a rest. If the wind can take a rest, we can, too. What’s fair for one is fair for all.”

So we all sat down on the grass in the middle of that place, we should worry. It was a kind of a big lawn all around the station.

Dub said, “If the breeze started coming from the east we wouldn’t know it on account of the station; the station would act like a windshield.”

I said, “Don’t worry, if we see it acting that way, we’ll know the wind is around on the other side of it. We’ll appoint Pee-wee a committee to watch how the station acts.”

Egg Sandwich said, “What are we going to do, just sit here?”

“Sure,” I said, “it’s according to rules. We’re governed by the wind. We may have to stay here for hours.”

“How can we be governed by the wind when there isn’t any?” the kid wanted to know.

“That’s easy,” I told him. “You might as well say how can we starve if we haven’t got any food to be deprived of. Gee whiz, you’re in the third grade and take up zoology and you don’t know that! I’ll have a game of mumbly-peg with anybody,” I said.

Dub said, “This is a fine kind of a hike—two miles and then get stalled.”

“Look at ships; don’t they get becalmed?” I said. “Come on, let’s have a game of mumbly-peg.”

So then we all started playing mumbly-peg with Dub’s jack-knife. I said, “Gee, this is a dandy hike; it’s the best hike I ever didn’t take; you don’t get all tired out, that’s one thing.”

“It’s a hikeless hike,” Sandy said. Sometimes we called that fellow Sandy, but that’s not saying anything against egg sandwiches.

“If we don’t think up some other kind of a hike, we’ll be stalled here all night, maybe,” Pee-wee said. “Anyway, till five o’clock. Do you think I want to sit here in the sun and play mumbly-peg all afternoon? Geeeee whiz!”

“Don’t blame me, blame the wind,” I told him.

“How can I blame it when there isn’t any to blame?” he shouted.

“That’s a good argument,” I told him.

“I’m thinking about lunch-time more than I’m thinking about arguments,” Pee-wee said. “What are we going to do at twelve o’clock?”

“We’ll eat our own words,” Sandy said, “and go any way we want to.”

“Sure, a couple of solemn vows will make a nice lunch,” I said. “What do we care where we go? The wind is the quitter, not us, I should worry.” I said, “We’ll stay here till twelve o’clock and if the breeze doesn’t spring up by that time, we’ll go to the next village willynilly, that means any way no matter what. Then, we’ll buy some eats.”

“If we had brought some with us like I wanted to do, we could eat them now,” Pee-wee said. “That’s what we get for starting out not prepared like Scouts are supposed not ever to do—now you see what we get.”

“I don’t see it,” Dub said.

“You mean what we don’t get,” I said. “Where do you suppose that breeze went anyway? I’d just like to know where it went.”

“Maybe it went crazy like you,” Pee-wee shouted.

“I never thought of that,” I told him.

Jiminies, we were all sprawling on the grass talking a lot of nonsense and kidding Pee-wee and taking each other’s hats off and pulling up grass and throwing it in each other’s faces—a lot we cared about hiking.

“Now you see how it is,” the Kid said to Dub and Sandy. “Do you blame the Scouts over at camp that they won’t go on hikes with him—gee whiz, they all had a taste of it. We always get stalled like this and just sit around fooling and don’t do anything and he calls it a hike. Even he’ll write all about it and a publisher will print it to show how crazy he is and he’ll expect fellers to buy those books where he tells a lot of crazy nonsense. This is the first summer you fellers ever saw him, but he’s like this all the time, you ask Westy Martin in his own patrol. He’s the only one of them that’s got any sense.”

I said, “Scout Harris, you will cease talking about my old college chump, Westy Martin. I won’t hear another word against him. He can’t help it if he has some sense—he’s more to be pitied than blamed. I won’t hear a word against him—not even a punctuation mark. Anyway, what’s the use of having sense? That’s one law I have no use for, the law of gravity.”

Dub said, “Let’s tell riddles.”

“Sure,” I said, “that’s a good idea. Now the hike is really started. Why doesn’t Santa Claus wear a scout suit? Give me any answer, I don’t care what, and I’ll give you the question to it.”

“Why doesn’t Santa Claus wear a scout suit?” the kid shouted.

“Because there isn’t any Santa Claus,” I told him. “No sooner said than stung. Open your mouth and I’ll shoot this grasshopper in it.”

By that time, Dub and Sandy were lying on their backs kicking their legs and laughing so hard they couldn’t speak.

After a while, Dub said, “Here’s an answer, and you give me the question to it.”

“Absotively, posolutely,” I told him.

He said, “The answer is yes.”

“The question is, is it?” I told him. “Any one else wants to ask an answer?”

“I’ll ask one,” Sandy said. “Yes, we have no marbles.”

“The question to that is, Why don’t we make some marble cake?” I said. “The way you do it is to subtract the adverb from the combined total with one to carry. Here comes a man.”

“You better stop your nonsense or he’ll think you’re crazy,” Pee-wee said. “I bet he’s going to chase us away from here.”

“I wonder where he blew in from,” Sandy said.

“Blew in! That’s a good one!” Dub said. “There isn’t enough breeze to blow any one to an ice cream soda.”

“Well, I’m going to go to one pretty soon whether I get blown to it or not,” Pee-wee shouted.

By that time we were all sitting up brushing the grass off ourselves and straightening up our hair kind of, on account of the man who was coming toward us.

“I think something is going to happen,” Dub said.