Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Silver Fox Patrol - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 3

Table of Contents

While I was sitting on a rock down in our field eating a banana, I had a dandy thought, and I was going to begin this story by telling you about it, only now I forget what it was.

Anyway, Mr. Ellsworth says it’s best to begin a story with conversation. He says conversations are even better than bananas to begin with. But, gee whiz, I like bananas. If I began with conversation that means I have to begin it with Pee-wee Harris, because he always does the talking in our troop. He can even talk and eat a banana at the same time.

He said, “Do you mean to tell me a railroad car can’t have a dark past?”

“Sure,” I told him; “maybe it went through a tunnel. Anyway, it’s got a dark enough present with one kerosene lamp in it.”

“I didn’t mean that kind of darkness,” he said; “I mean the kind that secrets are. You know what a dark secret is, don’t you?”

“It’s one that’s all black,” little Alfred McCord said.

“Sure,” I said; “they’re all colors. My sister’s keeping one that’s a kind of pale lavender.”

Pee-wee said, “You’re crazy; black is the only color for secrets. Look at that pirate in the movie play. Didn’t it say he kept the dark secret about where the treasure was for years and years?”

“He kept it so long it faded,” I told him. “Dark secrets are all right for old sailing ships, Kid, but when it comes to railroad cars—nix.”

The three of us were sitting on the rock, looking at the old railroad car that had just been moved down to the field for us. Mr. Temple got that old car for us, so we could use it for a troop-room. The men had an awful job moving it from the siding at Bridgeboro Station. They ran it down to the river on movable tracks and brought it up on one of the barges. Getting it off into the field was the worst part. They had to leave it right close to the river. Jimmies, we didn’t mind that; the nearer the better, that’s what I said.

One of the men that moved that car said it was an old timer. Anyway, it wasn’t much good for a car any more, because the springs and the brakes and the couplings were all rusted away, and the roof leaked, only we fixed it with tar paper. Inside there was an old stove in the corner with a clumsy old high pipe railing around it. The windows were awful small and the plush seats were all old-fashioned and worn out. Up above the windows were old-fashioned wire cage things to put baggage in. The doors at the ends were round at the top and the little windows were that way, too. But, anyway, that old car would make one dandy meeting-place, that was one thing sure.

All the rest of the fellows had gone home to supper, and Skinny and Pee-wee and I were just sitting there looking at the car and thinking how we’d have a flag flying on it, and what color we’d paint it when we got money enough. We were thinking about the different things we’d bring down and put in it.

I said, “I wonder how old it is? It’s a ramshackle old pile of junk, but that makes it all the better, for a scout meeting-place.” Because maybe you don’t know it, but scouts don’t like things to be too civilized, like.

“Maybe it has romance,” Pee-wee said.

He got that word out of the movie play that had the old pirate ship in it. There was something in that play about the old ship being a monument of romance. I had to laugh, because it seemed so funny to talk that way about an old ramshackle railroad car.

“I mean adventures,” he said.

“Oh, sure,” I told him; “that car reminds me of an old Spanish Galleon, it’s so different. Maybe some buccaneers used to have their den in it, hey? When I look at that car it reminds me of King Arthur and all those old fellows. You’ve got romances and adventures and things on the brain since you’ve been going down to the Lyric. What’s puzzling me is how we’re going to fix lockers in it for our stuff, and where we’re going to hang our pictures.”

Just then little Alf piped up in that funny way he has and said, “My mother doesn’t believe in adventures.”

“Well,” I said “she’ll never pull much of a stroke with Scout Harris then.”

“They always end by somebody getting dead,” he said.

“Just the same,” Pee-wee shouted, “I bet that old car is fifty years old. I bet if it could talk it would have a tale to tell——”

“A which?” I said.

“How do we know where it has been?” he kept up. “Why can’t a railroad car have a-what-do-you-call it—a romantic past, just the same as a ship or an old house where—maybe where George Washington used to stay? How do we know?”

“Maybe it’s the very car that George Washington crossed the Delaware in,” I said, just to jolly him along.

“How about an old Indian stage coach?” he piped up.

“Kid,” I said; “old sailing ships and wrecks and Indian stage coaches are one thing, and wheelbarrows and bicycles and lawn mowers and sewing machines and railroad cars are another thing. You see pictures of shipwrecks, but you never see pictures of old railroad cars. You should worry. Come on inside and let’s measure for the lockers and then let’s go home; I’m tired out.”

Inside that car there was a funny kind of a smell like there always is in railroad cars. It was kind of like dust and kind of like plush and kind of like smoke. The floor was awful smooth and shiny, just from so many people walking on it for years and years and years. All the woodwork was walnut and that was a sign of the car being old. A lot of the seats were broken and there was one place where two close together were broken. So we had decided to take them away and build our lockers there.

I had told the fellows in the troop that I would measure for the lockers before I went home, so now I began doing that with the little six-inch rule that I always carry. All of a sudden it slipped out of my hand and fell down between the frame and the plush part of one of those seats.

“Butter fingers!” Pee-wee said; “I’ll get it for you.”

I said, “I guess your fingers are smaller than mine, even if you have a bigger tongue than I have.”

“My fingers are smaller than his,” little Alf said; “I’ll get it for you.”

Gee whiz, his fingers were little enough, and skinny enough, that was sure, because the poor little codger lived down in the slums and I guess he never had much to eat or much fun either, until he got in with us. That’s one thing we’re strong on—eats. Especially desserts.

But our young hero (that’s Pee-wee), brushed us both aside with one hand, while he was digging down between the wood and the plush with the other.

“Got a hairpin?” he shouted.

“What do you think I am? A Camp-fire Girl?” I asked him. “Here, will a lead pencil do?”

He began poking around in there with the lead pencil and pretty soon he managed to lift up the corner of my little steel rule and drew it out with his fingers.

“Bully for you,” I told him.

“There’s something else down in there,” he said. “Wait till I get it. It feels like a paper.”

I said, “Don’t bother; probably it’s a time table.”

“Maybe it’s somebody’s commutation ticket,” he said.

Because that old car had been used as a way station up at Brewster’s Centre until the railroad built a regular station, and I guess he thought that maybe some one might have dropped a ticket down in that crevice in the seat.

With the lead pencil Pee-wee kept pushing around down there between the plush and the wood and waving us away with the other hand, because I was after my pencil.

“Come on, Kid,” I said; “It’s getting late. You should worry.”

Just then a little corner of yellow paper came up with the pencil and slipped down again.

“Now you see,” he said; “I almost had it.”

“What good would an old last month’s commutation ticket be now?” I asked him.

“Shut up,” he said, all the while waving us back and wriggling the pencil up sideways in the crack; “I’ve got it, I’ve——”

“Foiled again!” I said, just as the paper slipped down. “Blackbeard, the pirate chief, refuses to give up the paper telling where the treasure is concealed. Sir Harris gnashes his teeth in rage!” That was just the way it was in the photo-play.

All the while, Pee-wee was very carefully moving the pencil so as to lift the paper, and each time the paper slipped down again. And all the while he kept waving us back. At last he got hold of the corner of it with his fingers and hauled it out.

“Ha, ha!” I said, rolling my voice kind of-you know. “Sir Harris wrenches the tell-tale paper from——”

“It’s dated before you were born!” Pee-wee fairly shouted. “It’s a letter! Now you see! You said it was a time table. Look what it says in it—look!”

Gee whiz, he couldn’t have half read it when he handed it to me. There wasn’t any envelope, only an old sheet of paper, all yellow, and it had been folded so long that it almost fell apart where it was creased. It was filled with writing in lead pencil and it was so old and dirty that I could hardly read what it said. I guess Pee-wee would have stumbled through it himself, except that one thing that his eye happened to hit first of all, knocked him out.

“Now you see!” he said, all out of breath, he was so excited; “now you see! Look there!”

He pointed the pencil to one part of the letter where it said, bags of gold.

“And look there, too,” he panted out, all the while pointing with the pencil, “‘dropped in his tracks with a mortal wound.’ So now; you think you’re so smart, with your wheelbarrows and sewing machines! You don’t—you don’t find bags of gold in time tables and commutation tickets—do you? You make me tired! This is a—a—deep laid plot, that’s what it is. You know what mortal wounds are, I hope!”

“All right, Kid,” I said; “you win. Only don’t stab me a mortal wound with the lead pencil, and give me a chance to read it.”

“If—if—if bags of gold aren’t romance,” he shouted; “then, what is? Tell me that.”

Honest, that kid would find some kind of plots and adventures in a vacuum cleaner.