Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Go-As-You-Please Hike - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 7

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So the kid kept on chopping and perspiring while we sprawled on the ground and were nice and cool. Doc said, “Don’t forget to let us know when that tree’s ready to fall over. We want a few seconds to scoot.”

“I told you it was going to fall straight across that brook and it is,” Pee-wee said.

So he kept on and pretty soon he yelled and we all jumped up and the tree started to topple over toward the brook. The kid ran back with us and we watched it go over with a loud crash—kerplunk into the water. It missed the opposite bank by about thirty feet and part of the trunk stuck way out of the water.

The kid stood and looked at the sad spectacle for about two minutes, then he said, “I can’t understand why that didn’t fall right across. ’T’s funny.”

“Prosperity won’t think so,” Doc said. “And they won’t understand it either.”

I said, “Well, now that that’s done we’ll wait till the kid carves his initials in it and then we’ll swim across so we can find that spring.”

Pee-wee looked at me and he said, “It won’t do any good now and another thing, Mr. Ellsworth said if it cracks like that when it falls it’s rotten in the center. So it wasn’t my fault that it was rotten, was it?”

I said, “You mean the way you did it?”

Well, Dub started up a howl, he laughed so. He had to sit down and hold his sides and the kid was getting madder by the minute when all of a sudden we heard a voice say, “Wa’al, ye made some mess on my property, didn’t ye?”

Goodnight, we all looked up and saw a farmer coming along in the brook with a pair of hip boots on. He was walking nearest the opposite bank and he stared at the tree in the water and then up at us again. None of us said a word we were so surprised.

Then the farmer said, “What right have ye to put a obstruction like that inter my property?”

So I found my voice then and I said, “Do you mean to say that brook is part of your property, mister?”

He said, “That’s what. So’s the woods yore standin’ in.”

Doc spoke up and he said, “Well, we weren’t doing any harm—we were ridding your property of an encumbrance. That tree was almost ready to fall and would have killed someone maybe. That’s why we chopped it down.”

“Boy scouts are supposed to do that,” the kid piped up. “They’re supposed to keep the woods clear of en-cum—anyway, they’re supposed to keep the woods clear of them, so do you call that doing harm to your property?”

“When ye throw it inter my brook it’s a-doin’ harm,” the farmer said.

“I didn’t throw it in,” the kid said in a scared voice. “On account of it being rotten inside it fell that way so could I help it? You can ask the scoutmaster of our troop, Mr. Ellsworth, if I could help it!”

The farmer stood there chewing on something in the corner of his mouth and every once in a while he would pull on the strap of his overalls. Jiminy, I thought he’d never talk until finally he looked at the kid and he said, “If ye couldn’t help ’bout that there tree ye still had no right a-trespassin’ on my property. I kin have ye fined for that alone.”

So I said, “Hey, mister, if it’s your property and you don’t want any trespassing why don’t you have a sign up saying so?”

The kid smiled at me and he said, “Yes, why haven’t you a sign up, mister?”

So the farmer chewed some more and then he said, “I have a sign nailed up there if ye want to know it.”

Doc said, “We’re willing to be shown.”

So he started walking downstream and we walked along on the bank and Pee-wee said, “Suppose he has us arrested for trespassing now?”

I said, “You’ll have a chance to carve your initials on paper then. Not everybody has that chance.”

He said, “How can you fool at a time like this?”

“There’s no time like the present,” I said. “We may not even have the chance to cry afterward.”

Dub said like a good sport, “If we have to go to jail there’s one good thing—we’ll all go together.”

I said, “You bet. United we stand....”

“Can’t you think of something else to say?” the kid wanted to know. “It’s all right to be united but who wants to go to jail when you really didn’t mean to trespass or do any harm? Gee whiz, if we do go I hope they’ll let me have a drink of water.”

“Don’t worry about that, kid,” I said. “They’ll even give you bread with it.”

“And a brand new cotton suit and your head shaved off free,” said Doc.

“It’s no joke,” Pee-wee said. “I’m sorry I bothered with the tree at all.”

Just then the farmer stopped and said, “That’s where it....” He was pointing his finger up to a tree on our side of the bank.

We looked up, but we didn’t see anything there and neither did the farmer because he stretched his neck and looked all around but, oh boy, there wasn’t a sign of a sign.

“That’s where ’twas,” he said in a disappointed voice and began wading toward the middle of the brook.

The kid went toward the edge of the bank and was looking over and all of a sudden he stooped over and he yelled, “It’s in the water! That makes a teckinality so we’re not guilty of trespassing or anything!”

Oh boy, but I was glad. I was really scared that he would have us arrested because he looked mean enough even when he knew we weren’t trespassing intentionally. Anyway, the kid nailed it up to the tree it had been on while the farmer looked on as disappointed as anything.

But we should worry. I’ll never make fun of Pee-wee’s teckinalities again. That one kept us out of jail!