Читать книгу Roy Blakeley. Lost, Strayed or Stolen - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 11

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Now as long as you couldn’t be there to have any of the eats there’s no use telling you about it. Because a scout is supposed to be kind. Anyway, I wouldn’t want you to buy this story just because refreshments go with it. Because actions speak louder than frankfurters and pie and things, but, anyway, Tony came across just as I said he would. And that was when the plot began to get thicker.

We had running matches and jumping matches and sulphur matches and all kinds of games, and a lot of girls came and watched us, and Main Street was full of people watching us.

But nobody went over to Tony’s. Sometimes scouts would kind of stroll over that way and look at the list of things pasted on the door and sort of jingle their money and then stroll back again. The field was all full of people just like at a carnival, and we put boards on grocery boxes for the girls to sit on and watch the big events. Pee-wee went over and told the girls about how he was a martyr like Nathan Hale because he couldn’t eat any frankfurters and things—I mean Pee-wee. And they said he was noble and that they were all on our side.

Pretty soon, good night, over came Fritzie from Bennett’s with popcorn and ice cream cones and things, and everybody began buying them, and that was too much for Tony. He wasn’t going to stand there and see Germany conquer the world. So just then, oh, boy, Italy began getting ready to come into the war.

I called all the scouts together and I said, “Sh-h! We’ve won the day, only we have to beware of strategy. Tony is coming over here with a lot of sandwiches and things in a basket. Don’t buy anything. Stand firm. Leave him to me.”

Pretty soon over he came with a big basket under his arm, shouting, “All-a hotta, all-a hotta, fiver de cents, all-a hotta.”

I went up to him and I said, “Have you got any soup?”

He said, “Buy-a de frank; all-a hotta.”

Everybody began crowding around and asking for soup. I said, “You haven’t got any counter for us to eat at. Some of us want soup. Others want soup. Still others prefer soup. Nothing doing.”

He said, “All-a fresh-a.”

I said, “I’m sorry, but we’re tired and we want to eat sitting down. We can’t eat soup out of brown paper.”

After a while he saw there wasn’t any use trying to peddle things around the field, so he went away and in a little while we saw him and his brother pulling down the boards from underneath the wagon. Oh, boy, but weren’t we glad! He wasn’t going to miss that chance. I guess he knew what we wanted all right. All the scouts began shouting, “We’ve won, we’ve won!” And the fellows in my troop went around telling all the others how they had done us a good turn. They all began calling me General Blakeley because I had managed it.

But one thing, girls are smarter than fellows, I have to admit that. Just you wait and see. Because something terrible is going to happen.

Pretty soon Tony’s old lunch wagon came lumbering over toward us. There were about seven or eight men pushing it and Tony was holding onto the shaft to steer it. When we saw that, we all began shouting and yelling and a scout from East Bridgeboro jumped up on a grocery box and tied his scarf on the end of his scout staff and began calling:

“Hurrah, for General Blakeley! Hurrah for the young Napoleon of Bridgeboro! Three cheers for the hero of the battle of Downing’s lot! All hail the conqueror of Tony Spaghetti! Three cheers for the greatest strategist of the age! The car shall pass!”

Believe me, we didn’t do a thing but lay waste to that conquered territory! I bought three frankfurters to start. Vic Norris bought two slices of lemon pie, just to begin. Dorry Benton bought a whole cake. The counter inside that wagon was lined with victorious scouts, and others were waiting outside for their turns. Our young hero was opening his program with a ham sandwich and a piece of custard pie, and a cup of coffee. That was just the prologue.

Pretty soon over came the girls and one of them wanted to know what we were all shouting about. I know that girl; she’s Professor Skybrow’s daughter and she wears big spectacles. She’s too smart to live, that girl is. She was in my class last term and she took all the merits in sight. She’d have taken the whole school if it hadn’t been fastened down.

Pee-wee went up to her and tried to speak. He was trying to hold his cup of coffee and sandwich and his pie in two hands, and there was custard all over his face. He looked as if he’d been through a war.

“We’ve—we’ve won the war,” he was trying to say. “Roy Blakeley planned the whole thing—he——”

“I’m the modern Napoleon,” I said. “I’ve got General Pershing tearing his hair.”

She said, “Did you ever study the battle of Waterloo?”

I said, “This is the battle of coffeeloo. We like that better than water. Will you have a piece of pie?”

She just stared at me and said, “And you consider yourself a strategist!”

“He’s—he’s the great mil—mil——” Pee-wee began, trying to talk and eat a piece of pie at the same time. “He’s the greatest military genius of the age.”

She just looked through those big glasses, very smart and superior like, and she said, “If I were a general I wouldn’t be so stupid as to forget all about my reinforcements.”

“W-a-a—what d’ y’ mean—reinforcements?” Pee-wee blurted out, while the coffee and custard were trickling down off his chin. “Wha’ d’ y’ mean?”

She just said, “When is that train going to arrive that you are waiting for?”

“At exactly four-sixty—five o’clock,” I told her.

She said, “Well, then, Mr. Smarty, you timed your battle wrong. You made a blunder——”

“The pleasure is mine,” I said.

“And in order to hold this wagon here and keep the track clear till your friend Mr. Jenson comes, you have got to keep on eating for exactly two hours and forty minutes. If you can hold the fort that long you can move your car. But you’ll have to keep eating all the time.”

There was a dead silence.

“We—can—d-d-d-wit,” Pee-wee managed to blurt out, all the while spilling his coffee and munching his pie. “Scoutscam——”

Good night! I just stood there, and that girl kept looking right at me through those big glasses. She got ninety-nine in arithmetic, that girl did, and she wrote a poem that was in the newspaper, too.

Then she said, “You see, General Napoleon, you didn’t figure your campaign properly. If you had gotten the Girl Scouts to help you, perhaps you wouldn’t have found yourselves in this ghastly predicament.”

Those are just the words she used—ghastly predicament.