Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Elastic Hike - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 9

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So pretty soon we were out of Bridgeboro, hiking along the old turnpike. One good thing about the houses along that road, there aren’t any. Anyway there aren’t very many. It’s all woods on both sides.

We took our time because why should we be in a hurry? Oh, boy, the first days of vacation are great! We just kind of wandered along talking a lot of nonsense and getting into arguments and jollying Pee-wee, you know the way we always do. We saw how far we could kick stones without their going off the road and all things like that. Dinkey Waters was awful funny after he kind of got to know us. First he was sort of bashful, but after a while he got to be not like that. He jumped over a puddle and he said he was good at doing cross-road puddles.

Whenever Pee-wee and I got started in mortal comeback he started laughing.

After a little while the head Chipmunk said, “These are pretty long miles, geeeeeee whiz!”

I said, “In the warm weather they expand, in the winter they contract. That’s why a mile is always longer in the summer than in the winter.”

“That shows how much you know,” Pee-wee screamed at me. “A mile is a mile anyway.”

“Fancy that,” Warde said.

“Anyway, I’m tired,” the kid said, “and I’m getting hungry too. I know where we can get some apples; apples don’t count as eats.”

“No, you drink them,” I said.

“You absorb them,” Dinkey said.

I said, “Before we get to the apples we have to cross the stream where the bridge isn’t and Dinkey has to do that without anybody telling him how he should do. He can swim it or get across any way he wants to, only he can’t use the log bridge Westy and I built, because that’s only for fellows who have found out a way of their own to get across. That log bridge is there, but new fellows are not supposed to see it. It’s like Pee-wee in his patrol, he’s in it only he isn’t.”

“I guess I can think of a way if all the other fellows did,” Dinkey said.

“You’ve got to show how you’ve got resources,” Pee-wee told him.

Dinkey asked me, “How wide is it?”

I said, “It isn’t so wide as it is narrow; it’s maybe about twelve feet narrow. The width is a different matter. Anyway, the stream has two sides to it.”

“Can’t you answer a sensible question?” Pee-wee yelled. “Can’t you tell one of your own patrol when he wants to know something?”

“He’s not supposed to want to know anything,” I said. “Silver Foxes don’t know anything, do they, Warde? We brought you with us, that proves we have no sense.”

“You don’t have to prove it,” Pee-wee said. Dinkey said, “Well, if it’s about ten feet I couldn’t jump it without a long pole——”

“That’s one dandy idea,” I said. “That shows you’re going to make a scout——”

“If you only had a decent patrol,” Pee-wee said.

Dinkey said, “The Silver Foxes are good enough for me.”

“And you’re good enough for them,” Warde said.

“And I discovered him too,” Pee-wee shouted.

I said, “Sure, when it comes to discovering Columbus doesn’t count any more, not with you, even if he did discover Columbus Circle.”

“Do you know why he called it Columbus Circle?” Warde said.

“Because he went around so much before he discovered it,” I said. “Ask me any answer and I’ll tell you the question to it.”

“Columbus Circle was only started about, maybe about, fifty years ago,” the kid said. “I guess you don’t even know Columbus is dead.”

“I didn’t know he was sick,” I told him. “Will you please keep still and let me give some instructions to my new recruit?” I said. Pee-wee would be all right if he had his tongue bobbed.

So that’s the way we kept talking as we hiked along, taking our time kind of happy-go-lucky through the woods.

Warde said, “You could vault across a long pole if you found one there, but you wouldn’t have a right to bring a pole or a rope or anything like that from Bridgeboro. You’re supposed to cross the stream just as if you happened to come to it and never knew it was there; see?”

Dinkey said, “It would be all right to swim it, wouldn’t it?”

“Sure it would,” I said, “only you’d have to stop and dry your clothes on the opposite side. And anyway you have to carry your own lunch, that’s the rule, and if you swam across you’d get it wet——”

“And you’d have to drink it or absorb it,” Warde said.

“And if you ate your lunch before you swam across you’d be breaking the Silver Fox rule,” I said, “because you’re supposed not to eat your lunch till you get to the toll-gate. And you’d be breaking a Temple Camp rule too, because a scout is supposed not to go in swimming for two hours after eating. And if you ate your lunch and then waited two hours before you swam across you’d be breaking another Silver Fox rule, because we made a rule that a fellow can’t hang around at that brook.”

“You make me tired!” Pee-wee yelled.

Dinkey started laughing and he said, “Yes, but I’ve got you beaten, because I couldn’t break a scout rule without being a scout and I’m not a scout till I’m a Silver Fox and I’m not a Silver Fox till I cut my initials in the old toll-gate. So the rules don’t count on the way there and on the way back you can bet I won’t be worrying about my lunch.”

“That’s a dandy argument,” Pee-wee shouted. “It’s a teckinality—the Silver Foxes, they think they’re so smart! That shows we can all eat our lunches any time we want to. I’ll leave it to Warde.”

“Follow your leader,” I said, “and stop shouting about eats.” Then I started along the road scout pace singing a crazy rime that I made up like some of those that Hervey Willetts was always singing in the Funny-bone Hike.

That rule is a good one as every Fox knows,

Don’t twist it or bend it or kick or oppose;

Get over the river wherever it flows,

Then follow your leader wherever he goes.