Читать книгу Pee-Wee Harris in Darkest Africa - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 3

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For years Hickson’s Crossroads had basked in the sunlight of its pleasant valley heedless of the great world. You shall search for it in vain on the road map; as maps go it was not even a dot. To be sure, it had grown since the days when Josiah Hickson had smoked his pipe on the wooden platform of his general store and gazed at the dilapidated old signboard opposite which informed the passerby that it was nine miles to Bridgeboro.

That sign did not (as so many signs do nowadays) pleasantly inform the traveller of the particular claim to distinction possessed by the town he was approaching. It did not enlighten him with the thrilling intelligence that Bridgeboro was the home of that redoubtable scout, Pee-Wee Harris. I do not know what was the cause of this singular omission, but it is just possible that it was because Pee-Wee was not yet born. It seems incredible that there could ever have been a time when there was no Pee-Wee Harris but such is the fact. Those were quiet days before the advent of the automobile and the radio, and Pee-Wee Harris.

Since that peaceful era Hickson’s Crossroads had grown, but not so rapidly as to be troubled with growing pains. Along both rural crossroads there came to be rows of houses and stores, irregular and picturesque, and these intersecting back roads became Main Street and Hickson Street. The two, with wooden buildings running a half mile or so, formed a cross in the otherwise unoccupied country. It was not the only cross that this unoffensive village was destined to bear.

In the course of time Josiah Hickson’s pipe went out and was not relighted. Josiah Hickson himself went out and Mother Hickson also, so even the little graveyard grew in the relentless march of progress. In time the hot dog arrived and the horrible gasoline pump. And then came Pee-Wee Harris. The violation of Belgium by the Germans was nothing to the invasion of this rural paradise by the terrible scout whose latest triumphs and adventures we are here faithfully to record.

The story begins in “Bennett’s Fresh Confectionery” store in Bridgeboro (a very good place to begin) where our hero was pausing for a banana split on his way home from scout meeting. He was bedecked in the flaunting regalia which he customarily wore to scout meeting including his belt-axe and his compass, though indeed no compass was necessary to guide him to Bennett’s. He could have gone to Bennett’s with his eyes closed.

Dangling from his belt was his scout jackknife, his belt-axe, a miniature first aid kit and a fountain pen containing the juice of an onion instead of ink. This was for purposes of secret communication incidental to Pee-Wee’s dark and mysterious activities in the field of scouting. He had somewhere read that onion juice was invisible upon the written page until held over a fire when, obedient to this toasting process, it became visible in clear brown hue. Never in all of Pee-Wee’s colorful career had this device worked, but he still sedulously filled his pen with tears streaming down his frowning countenance and carried it wherever he went.

On this particular Friday night that frown which customarily cast its threatening shadow over Bridgeboro was even more portentous than usual. For Pee-Wee was meditating a “dandy scheme.” At scout meeting that night he had read an announcement that thrilled his very soul. It was in the form of a monthly bulletin from National Scout Headquarters and was tacked upon the troop room wall. As Pee-Wee gazed upon this he felt that at last his day had come and that glory was knocking on his door.

It read as follows:

SCOUTS ATTENTION

GRAND DRIVE FOR MEMBERSHIP

GO GET ’EM!

Scouts, do you want to join the GO GET ’EM campaign? Do you want to be a GO GETTER and get ’em? It takes a scout to catch a scout. A good scout scouts out scouts for scouting. If every scout secured a scout it would double our membership. Think of that! There are more fellows outside of scouting than inside.

Get busy and turn the outside in!

There’s only one thing better than a scout and that’s two scouts.

If they try to stay out I won’t let ’em;

I'll chase ’em and grab ’em and fret ’em;

I’ll say it’s a go and then off I will go;

And I’ll be a go-getter and get ’em.

See if you can remember that. Scout for scouts. A scoutish scout scoutishly scouts the unscoutish thought that he can’t scoutishly scout out scoutish scouts for scouting.

GO GET ’EM

It had been the cunning intention of the scout authorities to phrase this summons to action in such a way that it would fix itself in the heedless minds of young missionaries, to catch and hold them with a tongue twister, and the success of this sly verbal adventure was nothing less than sensational in the case of our sturdy little hero. For Pee-Wee’s tongue became weirdly involved even in ordinary conversation. In the field of difficult quotation it was pretty sure to run utterly amuck. That was partly because Pee-Wee commonly used his mouth for two purposes simultaneously—talking and eating.

Since recruiting scouts by the most despotic method was his speciality he saw in this call from headquarters the opportunity of his life. He had been a missionary and organizer on a small scale. He had formed the Alligators but they had all waddled away. He was the genius of that astonishing patrol, the Hoptoads, but this was an enterprise achieved at Temple Camp and when the season ended the Hoptoads all hopped away to their distant homes leaving their leader quite alone. He had then browbeaten a hopeless pair of twins and several admiring youngsters and welded them into the famous Chipmunk Patrol which had disintegrated after a brief and glorious career under the great scout maker.

So at last this redoubtable little adventurer, having, so to speak, used up all the small boys of Bridgeboro, returned to the fold to fill a vacancy in that hilarious aggregation the Silver Foxes. “The only way to get rid of him is to take him with us,” Roy Blakeley, the leader, had said, “When he’s very near you don’t hear him so much because he deadens his own sound. And besides he’s going to Africa; maybe we won’t hear him while he’s there, especially if the wind isn’t blowing this way.”

Pee-Wee did really intend to go to South Africa but of course everybody took that as a joke. He intended to be one of the fortunate boy scouts to accompany the adventurous Martin Johnson expedition into the African wild. As all boys who have read Safari know, Mr. and Mrs. Martin Johnson are the famous pair who have spent much time in the African jungles photographing wild animals for motion picture purposes and in the interest of science. Two boys were to be selected to accompany the party on its next sojourn. Hundreds of Eagle and Honor Scouts were making application. Pee-Wee had decided to be one of these two boys. His original idea had been to be both of them, but he had not been able to figure out just how he could do that.