Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Wild Goose Chase - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 8

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We had a dandy ride going the wrong way. They gave us some eats before we got up to that grove, so we could start right off as soon as the boat landed. Anyway, we didn’t want to be hanging around with a lot of girls all day. A lot of them were going to pick flowers and press them in books. But, oh boy, they fell for Pee-wee.

So then we started all over again for Claverack. I guess we were about ten miles upstream. But anyway we had got across the river.

“That’s one good thing,” I said; “we did what we wanted to do, we got across the river. Now all we have to do is to go back down.”

“You call that one good thing?” the kid shouted. “How we go miles and miles and miles and miles north, when all the time we want to go east!”

“That’s a good argument of Pee-wee’s,” Warde said. “We really have more miles than we need.”

“It’s good to have plenty,” I said. “When you start on an important and serious hike, you should have a lot of miles in case you run short of them.”

“You should have some sense, too,” the kid said, as he was hiking along with us with a scowl all over his face. “You shouldn’t be a lot of idiotic, insane idiots. Gee whiz, especially when you start out with a serious mission.”

“Where’s the mission?” Will asked him.

“It’s in Claverack!” the kid yelled at him.

“Then we didn’t start out with it,” Warde said.

“You make me sick,” said Pee-wee.

“Warde is right,” I said; “you do it by long division. If you already have a mission there’s no use going to one. This hike is superfluous.”

“You got that word out of a book!” the kid screamed at me. “You try to make fellers think you’re smart when you write a lot of nonsense and call it a story.”

I said, “When better hikes are built Roy Blakeley will build them. Ask the boy who reads one.”

“They don’t even have any pilots,” Pee-wee said, very disgusted. “And this is like all the rest of them just like I knew it would be. I was a big fool when I came with you.”

“We’re on a mission of mercy,” Warde said.

“Sure, we’re bringing joy to the sick. We remind ourselves of Pershing—Edgar Chase, we are here.”

“You better wait till we get there,” the kid grouched.

All the time we were hiking south on a road along the river. Gee, I guess we hiked for about a couple of hours. We passed through a couple of villages. Then after a while we came to the highway that goes east and west. That is the road we would have hiked on if we had gone straight across in the boat. All of a sudden along came a car going east. It was a bakery car and it said on it,

PETERSON’S PIES

CLAVERACK

N.Y.

So I called out and said, “Hey Peterson’s Pies, will you give us a ride to Claverack?”

Warde said, “We have no business to get hitch hikes from people we don’t know.”

I said, “It’s all right, I’m well acquainted with pies. And they’re no strangers to Pee-wee either.”

The man said, “Hop in; you goin’ to Claverack?”

So then we all got in and I said, “Sure we are, if we don’t change our minds.”

“You mean if we don’t lose our minds,” Pee-wee piped up. “Absolutely, positively, surely, definitely, I’m not going to get out of this car till it gets to Claverack—gee whiz, I’m tired walking.”

“That’s the way to talk,” the man said—he was an awful nice man, I suppose on account of being with pies all the time. He said, “I’m the baby to get you there.”

“We’re in luck,” Warde said.

All the time Pee-wee didn’t say anything at all,—I guess he was kind of sore on account of us kidding him. I guess he was tired, too; I know I was. He and Will were sitting with the man, and Warde and I were in back sitting on a crate.

After a while the railroad tracks started running alongside the road and I said to Pee-wee, “Hey kid, a good idea would be for us to get out and walk the rest of the way on one of the rails, and the first one that goes off has to buy ice-cream cones when we get there.” Gee, I said it to him two or three times and he didn’t pay any attention.

Warde said, “How about it, kid?”

“Absolutely, positively, surely, definitely I’m not going to get out of this car till it gets to Claverack,” the kid said, very sure and dignified like. “So you needn’t start any of your nonsense. And when we get there I’m going to have something more to say, too, before we get to that feller’s house. You needn’t think I’m going to see you start a lot of that stuff in front of him. We’re going to be serious, like you said. And you got to promise, too. So do you promise, cross your heart, that when we get there you’ll have some sense so he won’t think scouts are crazy? Like you said before you started—will you?”

I said, “Absolutely, we’re visiting the sick.”

“Gee whiz,” he grouched, “you said we were going to have a serious hike for once, and not a lot of crazy stuff, going on a serious mission.”

I said, “Just you wait and see how I act when we get to Claverack, kid; just you wait and see. You’ll think I’m a cross red nurse going to visit the sick. Hey Warde?”

“Sure,” Warde said, “from now on we’re going to be sensible.”

All of a sudden, standing ahead of us were a lot of cars; they were alongside the road. And there were a couple of men with badges on, stopping cars as they came along. The bakery man said, “Good night, it’s the inspectors, and I ain’t got my license cards.”

So then we had to stop. They were making every driver show his cards and if he didn’t have them he had to leave his car there and go and get them. Anyway that’s what the bakery man had to do. Some of them that lived way far off got tickets.

“You mean I got to hoof it all the way to the village?” he asked the inspector.

The inspector said, “That’s what; you’re supposed to carry your cards with you.”

Oh, but that driver was good and sore, but anyway he had to go. He said he was sorry for us because now we’d have to walk. Anyway, he got a hitch with a man in a Ford. He said he was going to have his lunch before he came back.

I said, “It’s too bad, we might get a hitch too, only on account of Pee-wee’s solemn vow. A boy scout’s honor is to be toasted; we have to stay in this car till it gets to Claverack.”

“You’re crazy!” Pee-wee shouted.

“If a scout gives his word that he’s going to do a thing, he does it, I’ll leave it to Warde and Will,” I said.

Warde said very sober like, “Absolutely; we have to stay in this car till it gets to Cloverdale.”

So then we started making up rhymes and singing them like we always do to get Pee-wee’s goat. He just sat there with a scowl all over his face, not saying a word. All the while we were singing crazy stuff like this:

“We’re going to Claverack

And we never will get back.

We’ll have a good long tramp

Before we get to camp.”

Jiminies, everybody around there was laughing at us, even the inspectors.