Читать книгу Roy Blakeley. Lost, Strayed or Stolen - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 6

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I made a map. It isn’t much good and it doesn’t show all the streets in our town, but it shows the streets that old track crosses. On Main Street, almost opposite the station, is Bennett’s. I put that in because I thought maybe you’d like to know where it is. It hasn’t got anything to do with our adventures in this story, but it’s in the story a lot, just the same.

When that old track was new I guess there wasn’t any Willow Place; I guess Main Street didn’t amount to much either. There wasn’t any building where Slausen’s is, that’s sure. And Tony’s Lunch Wagon wasn’t there, that’s sure. They didn’t have any big grammar school in Bridgeboro then. Those were the happy days.

Now the first night after we got home after our wild ride, we had a troop meeting to see if we could think up any way to get our car from the station over to Van Schlessenhoff’s field. Because what’s the use of having a home if you haven’t got any place to put it? Be it never so humble, you’ve got to have a place to put your home.

We had that meeting right in the car near the station. Pee-wee said that he’d be a committee to go out and look at the tracks. All he wanted was a chance to go over to Bennett’s.

I said, “This is no time for ice cream cones with the transportation problem staring us in the face. It’s bad enough to be put out of your home, but to have your home put out, that’s worse. You don’t suppose the railroad is going to leave this car here, do you?”

“We’ll be convicted,” Pee-wee shouted. He meant evicted.

“We won’t leave our home, we’ll take it with us!” two or three of them began shouting.

“Those tracks are good all the way across Cat-tail Marsh,” El Sawyer said, “because I walked the ties right down to the river.”

“If they held you they ought to hold the car,” I said. Crinkums, that fellow weighs about a ton. Then Hunt Ward (he’s in the Elks) began singing:

I love, I love, I love my home,

But what’ll we do with it?

Ralph Warner (he’s in my patrol, he’s got red hair), he said, “I promised my mother I’d never run away from home.”

“But you didn’t promise her that you wouldn’t run away in your home, did you?” Doc wanted to know.

“That’s a teckinality,” Pee-wee shouted; “they use those in courts.”

“You mean technicality,” I told him; “shut up unless you’ve got a suggestion to make. We’re here to decide how we’re going to get somewhere else. There are a lot of obstacles. I move——”

“How are we going to move, that’s what I’d like to know?” Dorry Benton shouted.

“Maybe Mr. Bennett will be able to give us a suggestion,” the kid shouted.

“There you go again,” I told him. “Will you forget about Bennett’s and get down to business? How are we going to get this meeting place over to Van Schlessenhoff’s field?”

“I was the one who made him say all right!” the kid piped up. “I made him laugh!”

“You’re enough to make a weeping willow laugh,” I told him. “You secured the field and it’s nearly a half a mile away.”

“All we’ve got to do is to get the car there,” he said.

“Sure, that’s all,” I told him.

“The track is good,” Westy said.

“How about motive power?” Doc wanted to know.

“How about which?” they all shouted.

“I make a motion——” Pee-wee began screaming.

I said, “If you don’t keep still a minute, I’ll make a couple of motions and you’ll land under one of the seats. I want suggestions. If we can only manage to get this old car across Willow Place, the rest will be easy. It’s down hill all the way across the Sneezenbunker land right down to the marsh. If we get her as far as the marsh we’ll get her across all right.”

“The track down there wouldn’t hold a locomotive,” Westy said.

“We should worry about a locomotive,” I told him; “there are other ways. But how are we going to get her by Tony’s? And how about Slausen’s on Willow Place? Do you think they’re going to get out of the way if we toot a horn? Tony’s lunch wagon is all boarded up underneath, and you know what an ugly old grouch he is.”

“Maybe if we bought a lot of frankfurters from him,” our young hero said, “maybe then he’d—kind of—— That’s what you call diplomacy.”

“Diplomacy is what governments do,” Connie Bennett said. “Do you mean to say that England would do anything for the United States just because we bought a frankfurter for King George?”

“You’re crazy!” Pee-wee shot back at him. “Diplomacy is when you’re very nice and polite so as to get something you want.”

“Like two helpings of dessert,” I told him.

“But anyway, I know something better than diplomacy,” he shouted; “and that’s strategy.”

I said, “All right, as long as everybody’s shouting at once and we’re not getting anywhere, let’s go over to Tony’s and if we can’t dip him maybe we can strat him.”

So that’s the way it was, the first thing we did to get that car moved was to go over to Tony’s and each buy a frankfurter. There were twenty-four of us in there at once. Twenty-four frankfurters are a good many for one fellow—I don’t mean for one fellow to eat, but for one fellow to sell.

After that we asked Tony if he would just as soon let us take the boards away from underneath his wagon so that he could move the wagon away from over those old sunken, rusty tracks, just about seven or eight feet or so.

He said, “No mova. Gotta de license. No mova.”

Gee whiz, if that’s what you call diplomacy, I like arithmetic better, and that isn’t saying much.