Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Go-As-You-Please Hike - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 6

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So we went along that trail and Pee-wee was as quiet as a mouse. He didn’t want to miss that spring. Anyway, no one said much until we had been walking more than ten minutes.

Then I said, “What I like best about the spring that we didn’t come to yet is that it’s a little more than ten minutes’ walk from the road. One thing, we won’t have to walk a mile for a drink of water.”

“And the water is as cool as anything, I bet,” said Doc. “It’s the most refreshing thing you can drink on a hot day.”

I said, “Maybe it’s hiding somewhere and we could call to it.”

“Maybe you could all keep still till we come to it!” the kid roared. “Everything’s got to be on the minute to satisfy you fellers. I didn’t say it was exactly ten minutes, did I? Gee whiz, lots of people sometimes say a thing will happen in a day or so and they really mean a week.”

“G-o-o-d night magnolia!” I said. “A week! Do you mean to tell me that we’re likely to hike for a week?”

Doc said, “Keep up your courage, Roy. Hikes have been known to last for years hunting for buried treasure and the like. And we’re hunting for something more precious than gold. I’ll leave that to Dub.”

“My father said lots of fellers lost their minds hunting for water in the desert,” Dub said, sort of chuckling.

I said, “You see, kid? This is dangerous business. It’s really more dangerous to hunt for water in the underbrush than in the desert. Maybe we passed the brush that it’s hiding under.”

The kid yelled, “Instead of talking like a lot of fools you ought to keep your eyes open like I am doing. Look for a lot of moss-covered rocks because under that is the spring.”

“To the left or right?” I asked the kid.

“Can I remember for years which side it’s on?” he wanted to know. “I’m just using my eyes like I told you.”

I said, “A smart scout like you ought to be able to walk to it blindfolded. Anyway, we’ll look for a spring with a lot of moss-covered rocks under it.”

“That shows how you listen,” Pee-wee screamed. “It’s under the rocks, not on top of them!”

I said, “All right, I’ll take a demerit for that. Let’s be observant like our little comrade Harris. We’ll now proceed with all diligence to look for a lot with some rocks and moss that has a spring.”

So Doc and Dub and I put our hands over our eyes like people do when they’re looking away in the distance. We made out we were very serious, looking north, south and east and west. Then we began turning over every rock we came to—even little pebbles.

“You’re crazy!” the kid shouted. “The whole bunch of you! Do you think you’ll find a spring under little pebbles and rocks like that? I meant great big ones like part of the mountain or something. You ought to have sense enough to know that.”

“I don’t need sense while you have it,” I said.

“I thought big rocks from little pebbles grew. Deny it if you dare!”

He just gave me a disgusted look and started on again and we followed him. Then we came to a very wide brook that separated the woods from a lot of big fields. Almost ready to fall across the overgrown trail was a great big poplar tree that must have been struck by lightning or broken in a storm. Anyway, it wouldn’t take many whacks with an axe to bring it down.

So I said, “That’s dangerous. It might fall on someone. Even us. If Pee-wee talked too loud the vibration might do it.”

Doc said, “Well, I’m pleased to take it down.”

Dub said, “I’ll help.”

The kid spoke up then and he said, “I betcha none of you know that if I chop that tree a certain way I can make it fall over that brook and we can keep on in the same direction to Catskill. We won’t have to swim across.”

“To Catskill?” I said.

“No, the brook,” he yelled. “I saw Mr. Ellsworth do it once when we were out on a hike and he says boy scouts could do things like that, when it would help strangers because not everybody can swim a brook like that. So I’ll chop it down so it’ll fall right across the brook and we can walk over it like a bridge. Want to see me do it, Dub?”

Dub said, “Sure!”

The reason the kid asked Dub, was because he knew Dub didn’t know him as well as Doc and I and he couldn’t show off in front of us. So I said, “What’s the matter with chopping the poplar tree down anywhere? It wouldn’t hurt any of us to swim across that brook and anyway we’re looking for a drink of water, aren’t we?”

The kid threw me another one of his disgusted looks and he said, “Gee whiz, you haven’t any pioneer instinct at all. While we’re chopping down that tree we might as well make a bridge for prosperity to cross hundreds of years from now. That’s the way the Romans did.”

“Not for prosperity, kid,” Doc said. “For posterity.”

“What difference does it make!” the kid said. “It almost means the same thing and anyway none of you fellers would know just how to notch that tree like I’m going to do because Mr. Ellsworth said I was the only one in the troop he ever showed how to do it.”

“What kind of a tree did he try you out on—a Christmas tree?” I kidded him.

Pee-wee got his axe into action and he said, “You think you’re so funny, you just watch how I do it. I’ll even carve my initials on it so that everybody that crosses here will know it was me that put it there.”

“Prosperity don’t know what they’re going to walk on,” laughed Doc, as we all sat down on the ground to watch the kid labor.

I said, “By the way, what about that spring?” Pee-wee said, “Well, what about it?”

“Do you think it is lost in that brook?” I asked him.

“Don’t talk like a fool,” he said. “It might be along that road through the woods the other side of those fields, I don’t know. It only seemed like ten minutes to me that day I was with Tom Slade but maybe it was longer on account of him and I talking.”

“As long as I know you were talking I won’t worry,” I said. “We’re likely to find it any time between now and January.”