Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Elastic Hike - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 5

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So now I’m going to tell you about our five-mile rule that Pee-wee was always shouting about. I tell you what I’ll do, I’ll go back to the time my patrol was started. I’m the one that started it and I’m going to be the one to finish it if that bunch doesn’t look out.

One day I was taking a walk with Westy Martin. He was my special pal. We walked along the old coach turnpike as far as the old toll-gate; that’s about five miles from Bridgeboro. Oh, boy, that old toll-gate hadn’t been used for about twenty years, I guess. Once upon a time old stage coaches used to go on that road. They don’t use that road any more now on account of the dandy state road.

That old road goes way down through the country and there are old-fashioned houses on it, and farms, and all like that. It’s a peach of a place for hiking. You can get dandy apples along there, and blackberries too. There’s an awful nice man and he lets you pick apples off the ground, only not out of the trees. Gee whiz, I don’t care where they come from, but I know where they go to you can bet.

There’s a place along that road where there used to be a bridge, but it’s all broken down now and you have to get across the stream any way you can. A lot we worried about that. Westy and I made a raft out of a couple of old planks and we reminded ourselves of Washington crossing the Delaware getting across that stream. Then we hiked on to the old toll-gate.

That was the first time we ever saw the old toll-gate. It was about as big around as a cop’s house, only a little bigger, only it wasn’t round, it was octagon shape. In there there used to be a toll-taker long, long, long ago. And you could see where there used to be a bar across the road that the toll-keeper moved around when wagons came. It was a dandy place. We couldn’t get inside, because it was locked, but it had an old stove in it and everything—we could see through the window. I guess the toll-taker used to live in it and I bet it was great away off there on that lonely road with woods all around.

Westy and I sat down on an old board seat outside. There was an old sign, gee whiz, we could hardly read it, but it said five miles to Bridgeboro. I bet Bridgeboro wasn’t so big then, hey?

That was when Westy and I started talking about having a scout patrol, while we were sitting there resting. That’s really where the Silver Foxes started. That’s the Cradle of Liberty—life, liberty, and the pursuit of fun. That’s a kind of a shrine, I mean it was. Maybe some day pilgrims will go to it to see where the Silver Foxes started. I wish them luck—I should laugh. Anyway, our patrol has got a dandy history, only I don’t see anything so dandy about history.

So now you know where the Silver Fox patrol started. That’s the liveliest patrol next to the police patrol.

Westy said while we were sitting there, he said, “What do you say we start a patrol to join the First Bridgeboro Scout Troop? We can get Dorry and Hunt Manners and the Warner team; it ought to be easy.”

“No sooner said than stung,” I said. “We’ll start it right away quick if not sooner. What shall we call it?” He said, “The Laughing Hyenas would be good, because you’re always grinning.”

I said, “The bears would be better, only bears don’t eat anything all winter.”

“Rejected by a unanimous majority,” he said. So then we decided on the Silver Foxes and Westy said I’d have to be patrol leader. I said all right, I would, if the rest of them said so. So that’s how I started patrol leading. Good night, it’s some job.

After that Westy and I cut our initials in that old toll-gate and we said that every fellow who wanted to join the patrol would have to hike to that cradle of the Silver Foxes (that’s what we called it) and cut his initials there to prove he had hiked ten miles, five miles there and five miles back. I guess it’s about fifty miles back, anyway it’s only five miles there.

Pretty soon all the new fellows in the patrol had their initials there. The last one was Warde Hollister. You can’t be a Silver Fox till you cut your initials there; that’s the rule. So that’s why Pee-wee was telling Dinkey Waters about the ten-mile hike. He tells everybody about it. Warde joined my patrol about the time we had our bee-line hike. I guess you read about that. It’s a straight story, that’s a joke. But this story is crazier.

So long, I’ll see you in the next chapter. That’s when things begin to happen. And I’m going to tell you the plain truth, but sometimes it’s kind of fancy like a crazy quilt, only crazier. Believe me when it comes to telling the truth I don’t have to stretch anything in this story, because it stretches itself. And every word of it is true, even the punctuation marks.