Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Wild Goose Chase - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 9

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We just kept sitting there for about fifteen minutes till Pee-wee started to boil over. He was so mad he wouldn’t even look at us. All the time we kept talking to each other, not paying any attention to him at all.

I said, “It’s a fine thing, the Boy Scout movement, how if a scout says he’ll do a thing he does it no matter what.”

“Sure, it’s a fine movement only it hasn’t got much movement to it,” Warde said.

Will said, “We may be here for years. Anyway, we’ve got plenty of pies, we won’t starve.”

Pretty soon another man that had to show his license card called to us and asked us if we were going to Claverack, so then we got a ride to the village. All the while Pee-wee was good and mad. As soon as we got out of the auto in Claverack he said, “I give you fair warning if you start anything crazy in front of that feller we’re going to see, I’m going to start away and hike home by myself.”

“Is that a promise?” I asked.

“It’s a fair warning,” he shouted.

We went in the post-office and asked the man where Edgar Chase lived, and he told us in a white house up the road that had a picket fence around it and a well on the front lawn and a big stone for a carriage step. When we got up there, there was a feller sitting on that carriage step eating a banana.

I said, “Pardon me, excuse me, will you please tell us if this is a white house with a well on the lawn.”

Pee-wee kept nudging me to have some sense, but what did I care?

The feller said, “What color do you think it is?”

“How do I know?” I said. “I go to night school and I can’t see in the daytime. I bet your name is Edgar Chase; is it?”

He said, “Sure it is.”

I said, “I’m Roy Blakeley that you wrote a letter to and I came to tell you that I’m alive; if you don’t believe it you can ask these fellers. Two of them belong in my patrol and this other one is Pee-wee Harris, known as the Bridgeboro giant, otherwise the animal cracker of Temple Camp, ex-leader of the Chipskunk Patrol. Do you want us to kid him along for you?”

Oh boy, I wish you could have seen that feller stare! I guess when he wrote that letter he thought he’d never hear from me. He just sat there gaping at us.

Pee-wee said, “Maybe if you’re all well again you’d like to join the scouts, and I can tell you all about it, how you track and stalk and everything and you needn’t pay any attention to these fellers because they’re crazy.”

All of a sudden that feller jumped up and said, “Wait a minute,” and he ran in the house.

Pee-wee said, “Now if you don’t look out you’ll spoil it all. He’s an awful nice feller and maybe we can get him into the scouts. Maybe he’ll come out and have a kind of a little hike with us and we can show him all about stalking and pathfinding and everything—I bet he’s a dandy feller. Do you want him to think we’re a lot of lunatics? Gee whiz, maybe here’s our chance.”

“Listen to who’s starting a new patrol,” I said.

Just then out came the feller again and his mother was with him, smiling all over. She said, “So this is really Roy Blakeley and his friends, and you’re real live boys. And Edgar tells me you’ve hiked all the way from camp to see him. Isn’t that wonderful? And he’s so glad that he wrote to you. You know he’s just recovered from an accident and he’s so happy to be out.”

“I like your crazy hikes,” Edgar said, “I like all the crazy things you do. Will you let me go with you on a hike if I bring a goose?”

“You mean a cooked one—to eat?” Pee-wee asked him.

I said, “You must please excuse our young friend, he was born during a famine, he thinks every day is Thanksgiving. He has a couple of appetites, and when one is satisfied he uses the other; he’s never without one. If you could bring a couple of roast pigs we might let you come.”

The lady said, “Well, I guess we’ll have to test your appetites with lemonade and cake.”

So then she went in the house and we all sat around talking while we were waiting. He was an awful nice feller, that Edgar Chase. And, oh boy, but he was glad to see us. He just kind of kept staring at us as if he didn’t know if we were real or not. He said he never really thought that he’d ever see us. Pretty soon his mother came out with lemonade and cake and she said she knew that boy scouts always liked refreshments. She said she thought it was good and funny of us hiking there on account of her son’s letter. She said we should stay and get acquainted with him. After she went in the house we started talking about hikes. He said he liked crazy ones like we have. Oh boy, you should have seen Pee-wee. He said, “You mean you like nonsensical nonsense?”

“Sure I do,” Edgar Chase said. “All the while I was sick in bed with my shoulder I was trying to think up crazy hikes. I thought of one where you walk backwards. But anyway will you take a hike with me this afternoon? You just came at the right time because I’ve got to take a gander to a farm about three miles through the woods. We raise geese here and Farmer Quackenbush bought a big gander and I’m going to take it to him. Will you go with me?”

“Goodnight,” I said, “how are you going to carry a goose? You mean it’s alive?”

“Sure it’s alive,” he said; “it’s a dandy great big one. I’m going to take it in my cart, and it’s not much fun going alone.”

“Sure, we can carry a goose,” Pee-wee said. “Sure, we’ll go and help you because, gee whiz, that’s doing a good turn.”

Warde said, “We can carry a goose outside of us or inside, it doesn’t make any difference.” Jiminies, but I had to laugh. That hit my funny-bone about all going on a hike to deliver a goose to somebody. Edgar Chase said his father was going to take it only he had to go on his route selling eggs. He said that the farmer bought it a couple of weeks ago and nobody took it to him all that time. Edgar said, “Wouldn’t that maybe be a kind of a hike like yours?”

We all said, “Sure, come on, we’ll go with you.”

So then he took us out to the barnyard and chased the goose around. Gee it was fun watching him. Oh boy, but it was a great big goose. Sometimes it wouldn’t run when he chased it and it fought back so he couldn’t catch hold of it. All the while it kept quacking. We just sat there on the fence laughing.

All of a sudden Will Dawson said, “We’ll call it a wild goose chase, hey?”

“That’s a dandy inspiration,” shouted Pee-wee.

So right now I tell you that’s the name of this true story—Roy Blakeley’s Wild Goose Chase. And believe me it was wild enough even for Pee-wee. And it was dangerous too, you’ll see, because a lot of times we were face to face with death, we nearly died laughing.

After a little while Edgar Chase got the goose into a corner and it ran out between his legs, all the time quacking. Then it came running over toward us with its neck stuck out very brave like; oh boy, it was full of fight. Even we lifted up our legs kinder scared of it. Then it went chasing Edgar with its head stuck way up in the air—one sure thing, it wasn’t afraid. We just sat there on the fence, laughing. Even Pee-wee will laugh, as long as you don’t make fun of scouting.

Anyway, after a little while Edgar got it into a corner again and he made a grab for it and caught it. Some quacking! So then we all helped him put it in the box of his little cart. That was one of those two wheel carts that you push. I guess Edgar made it himself. The body of it was a grocery box and the wheels were made out of the round heads of kegs that nails come in, that’s what he said. It had a long handle, I guess it was a rake handle—some chariot!

So then we nailed a couple of strips of wood across the top of the box so the goose couldn’t get out. But he could stand up nice and comfortable in the box and stick his neck out. That sure did look funny, his neck sticking up and poking around every which way while he kept quacking.

I said, “I’ve got a peach of an idea for a crazy hike; it’s a couple of insulations or inspirations or whatever Pee-wee calls them. We’ll go whatever way the goose points his neck—east, west, no matter where. It’ll be kind of like a compass, only different. And we’ll see what happens.”

“Now you’re starting that stuff!” Pee-wee shouted. “Even before you start I can tell you what will happen—we’ll never get anywhere. If you’re going to start that kind of an idiotical hike I’m not going to go.”

“That’s another good thing about it,” I said.

All the while Edgar Chase was sitting on a feed barrel laughing and kicking his legs against the barrel. That’s what he liked, seeing us have a mortal comeback with Pee-wee. That’s when I started liking him, when I saw how he laughed.

Warde and Will just kind of winked at him as if pretty soon he’d see some fireworks.

I said, “It would be a true scout hike. Maybe I’ll decide to call it the Rubberneck Hike. But no joking, I understand that a goose always sticks his head to the north because his bill is attracted by the North Pole. So we can always tell which way to go in case we don’t want to go there. That shows how many things scouts know about nature.” Warde said, “Sure, it’s like a balloon. If it follows a flag pole it’s sure to go up in the air. I read that in a book about unnatural history.”

I said, “That would be a dandy hike for Pee-wee—a balloon hike—he’s always going up in the air.”

Oh bibbie, I had to laugh! Will said to Edgar, “If you want to join the boy scouts you have to know all the facts about nature, how a turtle always goes towards the water, and a squirrel always builds on the north side of a tree, and a cat always goes where there are cat-tails growing, and you find tigers where there are tiger lilies, and how when a woodchuck starts digging his hole he always starts at the bottom and digs up so he won’t leave any earth outside and——”

“Will you shut up!” Pee-wee hollered. “Don’t you pay any attention to him,” he said to Edgar, “those ain’t facts of nature at all! They’ve got nothing to do with natural history.”

“Listen who’s talking about history,” I said. “Do you know what Pee-wee told a scout in Temple Camp? He told them that George Lincoln and Abraham Washington were both born on holidays, I’ll leave it to Warde. Talk about woods lore and facts of nature! A lot he knows about scouting!”

“Now you see what they are! Now you see what they are!” Pee-wee shouted at Edgar Chase. “Right away when they get a chance to go with you on a sensible hike to do an errand that even your father wants you to do—even your father—right away they start a lot of crazy stuff and call it scouting and if you do it you’ll never get home—maybe even for years you won’t get home—hiking the way a goose pokes his neck! Geeeeee whiz! And besides it ain’t a fact of nature at all. It’s a fact of crazy Silver Foxes that everybody in camp says are loony. So now you better do what your father wants you to do and don’t let them make a fool out of you. Geeeeee whiz, that’s what they call hikes!”

Edgar Chase just kept on laughing, and kicking his legs against the barrel. Gee, I guess he was enjoying it. Pee-wee thought we were on a mission to see a poor sick feller that broke his collar button and he was going to tell him all about scouting, and here he was up against the craziest hike we ever had!

I said, “Goodnight, how can I be serious going on a hike with a goose?”

“I kind of have a hunch it’s going to be good,” Warde said.

Will said, “I think from the look in that goose’s face that things are going to happen.”

I said, “We should worry, come on, let’s start.”