Читать книгу Roy Blakeley on the Mohawk Trail - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 6

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After about an hour a flivver came dancing around out of Main Street with the Happy Home Trailer behind it. Gee whiz, that was some trailer. There were two young, kind of grown-up fellows in the flivver and one of them was to drive it back to New York. So that’s the end of his troubles. The other one said he was going with us and he was going to live in the trailer and demonstrate it and throw out circulars about it.

Harry said, “Can you drive a car? That’s the main thing I want to know. We’ve only got two drivers in this outfit and we’ll have to work in shifts because we want to keep the old boat going. We’re not going to stop the engine at all and I want to roll up thirty thousand miles in the shortest time. We’ve got to keep moving.”

The young fellow said, “Listen, when it comes to moving, I’ve got the first of May blushing for shame. I’ll drive whenever you want me to, day or night. They told me at the store to pile right in and help you—that’s me.”

“Happy to meet you,” said Brent.

“What’s your name?” Harry asked him.

“Simon G. Snapp,” the young fellow said.

“I bet your middle name is Ginger!” Pee-wee shouted.

So that was how we happened to start calling him Ginger Snap. He wasn’t very big, but, oh boy, he was full of pep. He had red hair and freckles and he could talk a blue streak about the Happy Home Trailer—all about how camping was made a joy and the dim woods being your own and all like that—he made dandy speeches. He said once he was struck by lightning and that’s what made him so quick—that’s what he told Pee-wee. Gee whiz, he thought a lot of the Happy Home Trailer, that’s one thing.

It was a peach of a thing, that trailer, I’ll say that. It had two wheels in the middle and a shaft that held it to the back of the car. It was kind of like a little house made out of khaki and inside were two nice canvas bunks to sleep on and places for everything. There was an oil-stove all fastened in tight and an oil tank, and knives and forks and spoons and everything all in their right places, and there was a big chest to keep food in, and it had a place for ice in it. Gee whiz, it sure was a regular home, anyway the kitchen and pantry part, and that’s the only part that I care anything about. I’ve got no use for parlors. The part of a house I like best is the outside of it.

Mr. Snapp said we should put all our provisions and stuff in the trailer and he said we should come in it whenever we wanted and make ourselves at home in it. He said it was all stocked up with all kinds of eats by Woods and Fisher—I bet those two men are nice men all right.

So then we started. Harry drove the car and Brent sat alongside him, but Pee-wee and Herve and I stayed in the trailer with Mr. Ginger Snap because on account of wanting to see it and ride in it. It was nice and cosy in there. You could roll up the sides of it just like a tent. After about half an hour we stopped at a railroad crossing to let a train go by—Harry said we should let it go by as long as we couldn’t stop it. So then Herve and I went and got in the car, but Pee-wee stayed in his happy home with Mr. Snapp. That was his favorite place—most all the time we were gone, he was visiting Woods and Fisher.

Everybody stared at us going along the road and whenever a Hunkerjunk car passed the people in it gave us a cheer. After about an hour we got to Tuxedo (my father wears one of those) and then pretty soon we went across the bridge over the Erie tracks and into the Interstate Park—it’s dandy in there. We passed all the lakes where Boy Scouts have their camps and they all shouted at us. Pretty soon we came to the Hudson and went up to Newburgh and we never stopped the engine once all the time from the time we left Bridgeboro till we got to the ferry at Newburgh. Only once we stopped the car and that was where I told you, to let the train go by.

So then we drove onto the ferry-boat just in time and it started across to Beacon. When you get to Beacon, New England is about the two-hundredth turn to your left. On the ferry-boat that’s where our troubles began. A man in a peaked cap came and said to us, “You can’t keep your engine running on the boat.”

Harry said, “It isn’t my engine, it belongs to the Hunk people.”

The man said, “Well, you can’t keep it running on the boat; them’s the rules.”

Harry said, “If I stop it, I can’t start it again, so how are we going to get off the boat? It will block all the traffic on the other side. Because we haven’t got any starter or crank either.”

Brent said very sober like, “You keep your own engines going, don’t you? I can feel the vibration.”

“That’s a dandy argument,” Pee-wee shouted.

“An engine is an engine,” Brent said.

“Sure, it is,” Pee-wee shouted.

The ferryman said, “Now, you looker here, you smart Alecks, do you see that sign there? No engines allowed to be running while the boat is moving. That’s the law of this here state.”

“Which here state?” Brent asked him. “We’re in the middle of the Hudson River; we don’t know what state we’re in. If it’s the law that all engines be stopped, you stop yours downstairs there, and we’ll stop ours. An engine is an engine; the law is no respecter of engines; it doesn’t say what kind of engines. My great grandfather on my second cousin’s side was a lawyer and I know what I’m talking about. That sign doesn’t say anything about automobile engines or marine engines, it just says engines.”

“Good for you,” Pee-wee shouted; “it’s a teckinality.”

Brent said, “It’s a very nice point. I don’t believe anybody ever thought of it before.”

“I was just going to think of it,” Pee-wee shouted.

Harry was leaning over with his head on the steering wheel laughing so hard he was shaking. By that time we were coming near the shore and other people were starting their engines so it was all right.

Brent said, “Now you see what it means to have a shrewd lawyer along. We might have had to push her up the hill and start her by going down the other side in gear. I saved you, Harry.”

Harry said, “Brent, I shall always remember it.”

Then they shook hands very sober like. Gee whiz, they were starting already, those two. They’re both crazy.