Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Happy-go-lucky Hike - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 4

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He said, “What dog is that—is it yours?”

I said, “I think it’s Tin-can-tin from Hollywood, the famous moving picture dog. If he don’t get out of the way of the lawn mower he’ll be a sausage; that’s the kind of dogs you like best.”

The dog started jumping up on Pee-wee. “There’s a new member for your patrol,” I told him. “Go on, take him away from here so I can mow the lawn.”

“Where did you get him?” the head Chipmunk wanted to know.

“I didn’t get him, he just showed up,” I said. “Do you want him?”

All of a sudden the kid started shouting, “I know that dog, I know where he belongs! He belongs in Little Valley! Do you know that big white house with a sort of—kind of a—roof——”

“The one with the roof?” I said. “Sure, I know it; it has sides to it too; I think it has four sides. Anyway it has an inside and an outside; I know the one you mean. It stands on the ground. Is that the one you mean?”

“It’s right near the Little Valley railroad station,” he said. “And that shows how much of an observant scout I am because about a week ago I was coming by that house and I saw this dog there with a black place around his eye. It’s the same black place, I can tell.”

“Sure, he brought it with him,” I said. “Did you think he’d leave it behind?”

“You can talk crazy all you want to,” Pee-wee said. “But anyway that’s the same dog that belongs in that big white house in Little Valley and I bet the people there are rich, and I bet they’d give us a reward for taking him back—because I know positively sure it’s the same dog. Positively sure, I can recognize him.”

“Go ahead and recognize him,” I said, “only please get him away from this lawn mower or believe me you won’t recognize him.”

All the time the dog kept jumping up on both of us; he kept dancing around from one to the other. Then he’d start sniffing the lawn mower and jumping back away from it, waiting for me to start. Gee, I guess he thought he was playing a game.

“Let’s take him back, hey?” Pee-wee said. “Let’s hike over there today, and I’ll be the one to say I observed him with my scout observation and if they give us a reward we’ll divide it up. I’ll show you just the house where he belongs and that’s the kind of things that boy scouts are supposed to do. Gee whiz, we have no right to keep him because you have no right to keep a thing—even if it’s a diamond ring, you haven’t—that comes to you even of its own accord, if it belongs to somebody else, I can prove it.”

“You mean you can prove that a diamond ring was running along the street?” I asked him.

“I can prove that you’re crazy,” he shouted. “Will you hike over to Little Valley and take that dog back to its lawful owners without any crazy nonsense or not?”

“Not without crazy nonsense,” I told him. “I should worry about the dog. Please take him away so I can mow the lawn, if you like him so much. I’ve got a date to go on a hike this afternoon with Wig Weigand and Vic Norris if I ever get through here; this dog is crazy.”

“Why can’t the four of us hike to Little Valley with him?” the kid said. “They’d give us a reward and I’ll buy some eats for all of us and then we can hike back. Because I saw that dog with my own eyes, he was standing on the porch of that big white house with a man and he was smoking a cigar——”

“That’s enough for me,” I told him. “I don’t want anything to do with dogs that smoke, not even if you saw him with somebody else’s eyes. Will you please call him away, and go and take a hike with him or something? Take him around to your house, why don’t you?”

“Because he belongs to somebody else,” Pee-wee shouted, “and as long as we know that we’ve got to return him—you ask Mr. Ellsworth. If we don’t we’re just like—like thieves.”

“Worse than that,” I told him. “If you don’t get him away from here I’ll be just like a murderer. He hasn’t got sense enough to keep away from in front of the lawn mower. I guess he thinks it’s a sausage machine and he wants to get into it.”

“What difference does it make where you hike to?” the kid wanted to know. “The kind of hikes that you take, they’re not hikes at all anyway, flopping around the way you do. You walk about half a mile and then lie down on the grass and start jollying each other and then you come home and call it a hike—gee whiz! Even you write all about it so all the fellers all over the country will know how crazy you are, even in Canada they know it. Now you’ve got a chance to do a good turn and to do a service and you won’t do it.”

“Are scouts supposed to take money for a service?” I asked him. “You look in the handbook and see.”

“If somebody is going to give a reward you can take it,” he shouted. “If you return a dog to a great big house where there are rich people, won’t they give you a reward? That shows how much you know. And you got a right to take it too. Didn’t Lindbergh get a reward for getting to Paris? He got twenty-five dollars, I mean thousands—so there! Sure we’ve got a right to take it. And I’ll buy the eats, I’ll buy them for the four of us. So will you ask Wig and Vic if they’ll go?”

“Gee, you’re more of a pest than the dog,” I told him, “with your good turns and your big white house. Yes, if you’ll take him away from here a little while so I can mow the lawn, I’ll ask Wig and Vic if they’ll go. We were going to hike up along the river to see them working on the new bridge and now you come along with your good turns!”

“You get dandy big sandwiches in Little Valley,” the kid said.

I said, “All right, take the dog home with you and we’ll stop for you about two o’clock. And I hope some day you get lost and nobody offers a reward for you, and believe me, I’ll do a good turn by not finding you. I wish you’d go camping in the Sahara Desert and get kidnapped by a sheik who’s starting off for Mars in an airplane. Will you please take the dog away before he eats up the lawn mower!” The only way to get rid of Pee-wee is to take him along.

Pee-wee went over to where the sidewalk is and started whistling and kind of running away and the dog went about half way over to him and then kind of he didn’t know which way to go, and he just kept dancing, sort of. So then I picked up a piece of a flower pot and chucked it at him and he ran after it toward Pee-wee. I guess he thought it was roast beef. So then he decided to stay with Pee-wee. Jiminy crinkums, if I couldn’t make up my mind what I wanted to do easier than that dog could—good night!

So long, I’ll see you at one o’clock up at Pee-wee’s.