Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Go-As-You-Please Hike - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 10

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“That’s what you get for talking with a mouthful of blackberries,” I said. “That driver thought you said Cornville, I bet.”

“Where’s Catskill then?” he wanted to know.

“You better get pioneerish again and find out,” I said. “Don’t ask for any more lifts. We’re likely to get out in Texas.”

“Anyhow, first I’m going to walk back to that rut and find out if I dropped those tickets anywhere around there,” he said.

“Go ahead,” I said. “The better the sooner. We’ll take a rest while we’re waiting.”

He said, “Won’t you come with me?”

I said, “I’m afraid the rut will disappear like the spring did.”

He said, “You’re a fine bunch of fellers for a hike. If I’m pleased to go back to that rut aren’t you supposed to be pleased too?”

Doc said, “In other words, it’s a go-as-Pee-wee-pleases hike, eh?”

“This is the first time I said I was pleased,” the kid yelled. “And if I found those tickets again you’d be pleased enough to say you were pleased too.”

I said, “Away, Sir Harris. Track down thy mistake while we rest under yonder tree.”

The poor kid was so rattled that he walked away. Then he looked back at me and he said, “You can’t deny it wasn’t my fault that the truck bounced.”

I looked at Doc and Dub and I said, “Who is pleased to look for the rut?” They both said aye so we started after Pee-wee.

We had walked quite a little way when we saw an old fashioned buggy and a gray horse. An old man was driving the horse along like a snail. So I asked him, “Mister, how many cubic feet do we have to hike before we get to Catskill?”

“Whoa, Elmer!” said the man to the gray horse. Then he looked at me. “Want ter know the way ter Catskill?”

I said, “Yes. We were looking for a spring and here we are, lost, lone and weary.” I read that in a magazine once about some pigs that wandered away from a sty. That’s how they felt.

Doc said, “He’s right, mister. The spring we were looking for sprung a leak and now it’s springing up in some other spring.”

The man looked at us as if we were all going crazy. He said, “Ye be a-goin’ the wrong way naow.”

“That’s on account of me,” the kid piped up. “We’re looking for something I lost.”

“It’s not his head, mister,” I said. “He lost that when he organized the Chipmunk Patrol.”

The man just stared and he said, “If ye want ter go ter Catskill yer hev ter git back the way yer jest came ’bout one mile. The road yuh come ter first on yer right is the road ter Catskill.”

“How many miles is it, mister?” Pee-wee asked him.

“’Bout fifteen mile. Giddap, Elmer!” said the man and he drove away.

“Bye-bye, Elmer,” said Dub, breaking out in hysterics again.

I said, “Well, after all it’s just a little hop to Catskill from here—in an airplane.”

Pee-wee said, “Gee whiz, how did we get so far away?”

“Ask me another,” I said.

“Which way shall we go?” the kid wanted to know.

“Foodward,” quoth I.

“Aye,” said Doc. “The sun is high in the heavens.”

“Anyway,” said Pee-wee, “Cornville isn’t far and we can eat there.”

“And phone there,” I said. “We better tell Mr. Ellsworth that on account of meeting Pee-wee we didn’t find a spring and we met a mean farmer and on account of him we’re fifteen miles from Catskill. I’ll tell him if we have to walk we’ll be back by Labor Day.”

So then we came to the rut but we didn’t find any tickets. Each one hunted in a different part of the road and the kid looked in the ditch. All of a sudden he let out a yell and he stooped and picked up something.

I said, “Is it them?”

“No,” he said. “It’s something better. Gee whiz, don’t say I’m not lucky! I found four good tickets to the carnival in Cornville and today is Royal Order of Lions Day for the benefit of Better Babies. They’re the ones who sold these tickets. I bet it will be peachy.”

“The carnival or Cornville?” Doc asked him.

“The carnival,” he said, still reading the tickets. “It says ticket entitled bearer to be admitted by the R. O. O. L.”

“Do we have to have a lion admit us?” I said.

“It’s no time for nonsense,” he said. “C’mon, we’ll hurry and eat first. Then we’ll spend all afternoon there.”

Doc said, “How are we going to get back to camp by night?”

I said, “We should worry about that. We’ll leave that to Pee-wee, too. He has lots of dandy ideas—for making mistakes.”