Читать книгу Pee-Wee Harris in Darkest Africa - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 8

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Early Saturday morning our missionaries set out for the benighted village. Their departure was shrewdly timed at an early hour to escape the mocking throng headed by Roy Blakeley. Ben had not neglected to decorate his precious old Ford, as only a Ford can be decorated, with slogans and bizarre invitations to Join The Scouts. We are scouting for scouts, one of these read, while another made a direct appeal to the boy’s hunger, reading Joining the scouts is as easy as pie and pie is a feature of scouting. Another advised Don’t get into a stew because time hangs heavy. Get a hunter’s stew into you by joining the scouts. Upon the rattly old hood was the flaunting declaration It’s better to be a hiker than a piker. Join the scouts. Don’t read about adventures—live them, said another. Still another read Hit the scout trail. Campfire yarns are better than apron strings, still another declared. Here’s your chance, don’t miss it. Be a he-boy and join the scouts, was chalked across the rear curtain. From a staff rising above the radiator cap waved the flaunting emblem of the First Bridgeboro Troop resplendent in a steaming spray at times for the radiator of Ben’s Ford had a habit of boiling over for no reason at all.

The contents of this martial chariot baffle description. As for Pee-Wee, he wore every appurtenance known to scouting. In a large canvas bag were his aluminum cooking set and his first aid kit, appropriately carried together so that an unwary victim of our hero’s cooking might be promptly rescued by suitable remedies. Among other instruments of conquest was a battered wash boiler which had been donated to scouting after a long career in the Harris kitchen. This was to demonstrate the difficult art of kindling a fire in a pelting rain. The bottom of it was punched full of holes and the boiler being filled with water and held aloft on a makeshift frame, deposited its contents upon the scout beneath while he triumphed over this artificial shower by kindling and nursing an infant fire amid the downpour. Coiled up within this tin thundercloud of Pee-Wee’s invention was a few feet of dilapidated garden hose used to replenish the shower. The only thunder that he carried was his own voice.

“And I’m going to show them how to tie knots too,” he said, as he climbed into the seat beside Ben; “I got a lot of clothesline. And I’m going to show them about conversation too.” He could certainly do that.

“You mean conservation?” laughed Ben.

“And forest fires and how you don’t start them and put them out—I’m going to.”

“We’ll get ’em,” Ben encouraged.

“Geeeeee whiz, they wouldn’t even let a circus go in that town,” Pee-Wee scorned.

“Well, there’s a circus on its way there,” Ben laughed.

“You mean us?”

“That’s what.”

“We don’t have to have any license,” Pee-Wee said, “because scouts are kind of like officials kind of; a town has got to listen to scouts, hasn’t it?”

“If it isn’t deaf it will,” said Ben. “How about the village green; isn’t that a good place for us to set up? Good central location, huh?”

“Sure that’s dandy because—especially because there’s a pump there so I can give a demonstration.”

The village green did seem the ideal spot. It was a little grassy triangle formed by the crossing of three roads, with Hickson’s village store (conducted by the grandson of the original Josiah) conveniently close at hand. Several large maple trees shaded the spot, on one side of which stood an antiquated pump, relic of a bygone day. But it still worked, pouring forth a crystal stream out of its thin lead pipe nozzle, in obedience to the creaky old handle. A cocoanut shell cup hung on a cord from the unpainted and weatherbeaten old affair, and a leaky, mossgrown horse trough still stood below on its crude rocky foundation. At a corner of the little green, where the Bridgeboro and Tootleville roads crossed was a modest granite memorial to the seven heroes of the village who had served in the World War. Six of them had returned; the other, Daniel Dobbins, was lying at rest somewhere in Flanders Fields, nobody knew where. Every year, on Decoration day, old Garrison Dobbins from the mansion up on the hill came down and laid a wreath on this rough hewn stone with its bronze tablet.

Here it was, on the village green, that our conquering heroes pitched their tent on that bright and momentous Saturday morning. Here it was that Hickson’s Crossroads found them when it came down to Hickson’s General Store to get its mail. They saw the Ford drawn up under one of the spreading maple trees that overhung the old dirt road and noted with rustic curiosity the rope with which the waggish Ben had tied his patient equipage to the old hitching post. One by one they strolled over, attracted by Ben’s rolling blackboard, and gazed upon its garish summonses to scouthood. They walked around the tent and paused before its open flap to read the poster which had inspired Pee-Wee’s mighty enterprise and baffled his equally mighty tongue. “Wot in all tarnation is that there?” inquired Seth Henshaw. “Scoutin’ out Scoutin’—what the dickens is it?”

“We’re scouting out I mean scoutchingly scouting the scouting—scoutish thought—I mean for scouting!” shouted Pee-Wee at the top of his voice. “Can’t you read what it says?”

“I reckon I can but I can’t jes say it,” replied the patient Seth.

“You can’t say it yourself,” spoke up a boy of about fifteen, resplendent in a gingham shirt and suspenders.

“I can be it and that’s better than saying it,” roared Pee-Wee. “There are more scouts outside of scoutish, I mean inside I mean scouts inside outside——”

“Hey there, he says scouts are inside out,” commented a rustic bystander, at which there was a general laugh.

“The one that laughs last is the best,” screamed Pee-Wee. “Do you know what that poster means?”

“Golleys, it’s a tongue twister,” said a man who was honestly striving to master it.

“It means that if you scout a thought,” Pee-Wee yelled, “it means that if you scout a thought——”

“You mean shout a thought,” some one interrupted.

Ben took the stand, which was a grocery box with JOIN NOW printed on it. “We’re here to start—scout—excuse me—We’re here to start a scout troop in this village. I seem to have a slight attack of that poster myself. It’s time you fellows of Hickson’s Crossroads got busy and joined so you can start and have some fun. We’re down here to start a new troop and any fellow that wants to join can step right inside the tent and sign his name and we’ll tell him all about it and what to do next. Just step inside, any fellow that’s between twelve years old and eighteen years old, and take a squint around. You’ll see Indian arrowheads and handicraft work—bird houses and birch bark things——”

“I made a lot of them myself,” Pee-Wee shouted, “and already I ended three patrols and there’s lots of more things to eat in there——”

“Goodness, did he eat those patrols?” a rosy faced country girl asked.

“Step right in,” said Ben, “and see how a scout sleeps and eats——”

“Especially eats!” shouted Pee-Wee. “And I’m going to give a destination, I mean demonstration, how we can start a fire even when it’s raining and I’m going to give out toasted marshmallows so don’t go away. And snakes too, how you don’t have to be afraid of them, and herbs and everything and how you find trails, so don’t go away. Now’s your chance if you want to join the boy scouts and be primitive like Daniel Boone and Buffalo Bill and have a lot of resources so you don’t depend on civilization, and woodcraft and everything, especially going camping in the summer.”

At this point our vociferous missionary espied little Claudius Tibbels standing shyly in the background with two other boys whose gaze was fixed upon Pee-Wee in a kind of awe. The timid little fellow had already won these tentative recruits and had been waiting since early morning for the arrival of the great organizer. Even their astonishment at the tongue-twisting bulletin was diverted by the terrible voice of this militant visitor.

“You got to have civical pride, so you got to start a troop in this town,” Pee-Wee was shouting, “and I got a camera and after I get eight fellows to sign their names I’m going to give out toasted marshmallows and then I’m going to have our picture taken and it’s going to be published in the scout magazine. Even it shows how much scouts amount to, how they got something to say like police and everything because I was mayor of Bridgeboro for a whole day, you can ask this fellow if I wasn’t, because he was in my last patrol. So every fellow that wants to join the scouts, now is his chance and he can go away camping in the summer and everything and trail after wild animals and save scouts from drowning and all like that.” He paused, came up for air.

Most of the grown-ups who had at first been attracted by these unexpected visitors upon the village green had departed, seeing that it was a boy’s affair. A few lingered in a kind of imperturbable astonishment at Pee-Wee’s tirade. One by one these also wandered away until only a dozen boys or so, one frankly skeptical little girl, and an imposing-looking man remained.

This man was clearly not of the Hickson’s Crossroads breed. The gaping boys who stood about seemed awed by his presence and were thus deterred from familiar advances into this enchanted realm of scouting. Ben looked at him rather puzzled, as well he might, for the man, who was short and fat, had an extensive curled mustache and wore a shabby high hat and a vest patterned after a checker-board. His cutaway coat was of blue velvet, decorated with shiny gilt buttons and he wore a watch chain which could have safely held captive a grizzly bear.

Only Pee-Wee faced this sumptuous personage undismayed from his grocery box throne. Being himself a faithful devotee of noise, he was not in the least appalled by the stranger’s motley apparel. Moreover, his own scouting apparel, with its dangling appurtenances, bespeaking the primitive life, was not conceived in the spirit of simplicity.

“Do you want to give some money for the scouts?” he called to this elegant loiterer. “Because you got a right to help them along if you want to. I’m starting a troop, so who wants to join and come tonight and have a campfire dinner and hunters stew and everything?”

Little Claudius Tibbels and his two rather hesitant comrades stepped forward. Not so another boy, somewhat older, whose demeanor was cynical; he had not been impressed by the allurements of hunters’ stew and marshmallows. “It’s a lot of bunk,” said he. Thus encouraged, another boy was moved to observe, “Not me; do you think I want to be dressed up like a Christmas tree?”

What verbal torrent Pee-Wee might have poured out upon this recreant onlooker was stayed by the imposing gentleman who stepped forward with an extremely formal and condescending air, at which Pee-Wee was highly flattered, and grasped the vociferous promoter of scouting by the hand. Standing upon his grocery box he was higher than this gorgeous applicant for favor who shook his hand with such vigorous cordiality that our hero toppled off his throne.