Читать книгу Pee-Wee Harris in Darkest Africa - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 7

Table of Contents

Of the defunct Chipmunk Patrol there was one scout survivor besides Pee-Wee, and that was Ben Maxwell. Ben was one of Pee-Wee’s real discoveries, a tall, easy-going, humorous boy who had tried to keep the outlandish Chipmunk Patrol in order and had constituted himself a sort of advisor to its despotic leader. He had derived a good deal of quiet amusement from this self-sacrificing task. He had never appeared in the least embarrassed at being affiliated with these bewildered youngsters, nor in the least discouraged when the patrol evaporated. “Well, that’s that,” he had said to Pee-Wee when the mother of the Jansen twins had summarily withdrawn them from the patrol because one of them had eaten the root of a stinkwood upon Pee-Wee’s representation that it was a nourishing Indian herb much relished by lost and starving wanderers in the wilderness. “The trouble with Mrs. Jansen is that she is too much civilized,” Ben had said.

It was to this solitary and loyal survivor of the lost patrol that Pee-Wee now betook himself with his new enterprise. For Pee-Wee knew that people always took Ben seriously; he had conferred dignity on more than one of Pee-Wee’s astonishing undertakings. When grown people (parents in particular) frowned upon his bizarre endeavors the redoubtable little scout could point to Ben Maxwell, who indeed had often acted as official intermediary between him and troublesome guardians. But best of all Ben had a Ford which was now to be commandeered in the cause of scouting.

“Listen,” Pee-Wee said before he had even crossed the threshold of the beautiful Maxwell home where he was always welcome. “Didn’t I tell you we’d get even a better patrol started—didn’t I? Do you remember that officious poster at scout meeting last night?”

“That—oh, you mean the official poster? Sure, it’s a good one. I’ve been lying awake trying to say the blame thing——”

“I can say it,” Pee-Wee interrupted; “a sproutish I mean a scoutish scout flouts I mean scouts the unscoutlyish thought that he can’t scoutishly scoutch out scoutish scoutch—I mean scout out—scoutishly—for scouting scouts——”

“Perfect,” said Ben, “and when are we going to start scoutching them?”

“You have to bring your car and I’ve got a tent,” vociferated Pee-Wee, “and we’re going to Hickson’s Crossroads on Saturday very early so you have to get up early and we’re going to camp there all day and I’m going to get a whole patrol, you see, I’m going to get anyway six fellows because there are no scouts in that village and already I’ve got one—his father is a farmer. So that makes only five I have to get because you and I and that fellow make up eight. Then I’m going to write to National Headquarters and tell them how I went by the posters and I bet they’ll print my picture and I bet I’ll be one of the scouts to go on the Martin Johnson Expedition to Africa because, geee whiz, they’ll have to listen to me then. So don’t you think it’s a good idea?—and I invented it. Only we have to think up some things to do that are kind of wild so they’ll see what scouts are. And we’ll take some frankfurters and cook them too, hey—and waffles.”

“Do you think that waffles would be wild enough, kid?”

“I can make pudding out of moss, maybe that would be better, only we have to have some milk out of thistles to put on it. So then they’ll see how we don’t depend on civilization.”

“I a little lean toward waffles, kid.”

“So will you go?” Pee-Wee besought anxiously. “And we’ll get that bulletin and hang it up outside the tent, hey? And I want you to be there so in case Roy Blakeley hikes down there with a lot of his crazy nonsense interfering with us, you can help me handle him. Geeeeee whiz, I had enough of that patrol, telling me there was a bat up in a tree and I climbed up and it was a baseball bat that was stuck up there when Dorry Benton threw it up to knock down apples—do you call that scouting? So will you go down there with me on Saturday and stay all day? Maybe we’ll camp over night, hey?”

“We’ll stay till Hickson’s Crossroads surrenders, kid.”

“Because if I start a patrol in a town where there never were any scouts, then I’m kind of like—sort of kind of like Columbus, hey? Maybe that’ll start a lot of troops there, hey?”

“Come around about seven o’clock Saturday morning and I’ll be ready,” said Ben; “we’ll carry the gospel to the heathens.”

“And I’ll bring my cooking set too, hey? And shall I bring my megaphone?”

“Absolutely.”

“Maybe we’ll get enough fellows for two patrols, hey? It’s a dandy big megaphone.”

“That would be thirteen boys,” said Ben, “that’s an unlucky number. We’d better watch our step.”

“Geeeee whiz, we should worry,” said Pee-Wee. “Didn’t I eat thirteen wheat cakes at Temple Camp and even I didn’t have any bad luck, maybe it was because I ate two more so as to get away from thirteen—safety first, hey?”

“Then it wasn’t thirteen at all, it was fifteen,” Ben laughed. “All right, kid, be around here good and early Saturday morning and I’ll be ready for you. I’ll have Lizzie all cleaned up.”

“Won’t that be a good stunt, starting a couple of patrols in a town where there aren’t any scouts at all?” Pee-Wee enthused. “We’ll put Hickson’s Crossroads on the Scout map all right, you bet, won’t we?”

“That’s what we will.”

“I’m the one that discovered Hickson’s Crossroads,” Pee-Wee continued, his hopeful enthusiasm mounting. “Even they’re so slow there that they wouldn’t let a circus come to the town even. They dassen’t give a show there because the mayor won’t let them have a permit, so that shows what they are.”

“Well, we’ll try to make up for the circus,” said Ben. “We’ll have a one-scout circus.”

“And I’ve got a dandy idea,” said Pee-Wee excitedly. “I’m going to have you fall out of a tree or something and kind of not exactly really break your arm only just hurt it, and then I’m going to give them a demonstration of first aid and I’ve got a medal that says Join the Scouts and we can stamp it on toasted marshmallows and give them out for souvenirs that we toasted over a forest fire so they can see how we’re kind of primitive—how we can light a fire without matches.”

It never occurred to Pee-Wee that the printing on the medal would appear wrong way around when impressed upon the marshmallows. But then everything was wrong way around with Pee-Wee. He was going to South Africa by way of Hickson’s Crossroads. His disasters were all triumphs. When he got on the wrong train it took him straight to Paradise. It made no difference where he fell since he always landed right side up. Once he tried to jump across a chasm and missed it, alighting in a peach tree at the bottom. He was the only scout at Temple Camp who proved without the corroborative testimony of a companion that he had hiked to Bee-hive Tree in the woods (the first-class test destination) by returning with the stings of seven bees upon his round countenance. Such conclusive evidence could not be ignored. Even the bees were his witnesses and friends.