Читать книгу Pee-Wee Harris Turns Detective - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 6

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“Are you going to do it?” Pee-Wee demanded. “If you don’t do it it’s a disgrace to the whole patrol. Even the Local Council is going to be there. So are you absolutely, positively, sure going to do it?”

“Why not?” said Lefty.

“Will you stop balancing that broom and say you’re going to do it?”

Lefty ceased balancing the broom. “Yes, teacher,” said he.

“You’ve only got to-morrow; suppose it should rain.”

“Then I’ll have to take an umbrella.”

“You can’t take a test hike with an umbrella!” Pee-Wee fairly howled, aghast.

“Well then, I’ll go without one.”

“Are you going to try for the Eagle after you get your badge?”

“Sure, that’s pretty good, isn’t it?”

“The Eagle? Sure, it’s the best.”

“The best is none too good,” said Lefty, rather exasperatingly.

“Are you going to row or hike?”

“Hike, unless somebody gives me a boat between now and to-morrow. And if anybody did I wouldn’t use it because I’d drop dead from shock.”

It was just in this good-humored, flippant way that Lefty often spoke of his guardian’s poverty. The boy was a cheerful philosopher in adversity.

“I thought I might stroll over to Little Valley,” he said. “That seems to be just about seven miles on the map.”

“You can get dandy hot dogs there before you start back,” said Pee-Wee.

“I’ll remember that.”

“Will you let me go with you?”

“No, I won’t let you go with me,” Lefty laughed.

“Why not?”

“Well, just because.”

“Do you call that a reason?”

“Well, because I think a feller hikes faster when he’s alone. You might get on the track of a tiger or a grasshopper or something, and we’d end at the North Pole. Business is business.”

This view seemed at least to bespeak a certain resoluteness of determination, and Pee-Wee did not denounce it. Besides, he had a stalking engagement for the next day which, however, he would have been glad to break.

“Do you know the trail through Corrigan’s Woods?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, I’ve been along through there almost to the village. It’s a pretty straight trail.”

“Some places you can hardly see it. Are you going to take a magnifying glass?”

Lefty laughed. “No, I’ll manage to see it,” he said.

“Why don’t you ever go with fellers in the patrol anywhere?” Pee-Wee took occasion to ask.

“Why? Well, I don’t know. Just haven’t happened to, I guess.”

Pee-Wee was by no means reassured. This proficient boy was altogether too casual. To a scout of Pee-Wee’s stirring intensity, the idle balancing of a broom on the eve of glory was not a good omen.

“Is that the way you acted when you graduated from public school?” he asked. For Lefty, as might be supposed, had been an early graduate. He was already in High, or would be when the season opened and he enrolled in Bridgeboro.

“No, I stood on my head,” said Lefty.

A short pause.

“You got to be there at eight o’clock,” warned Pee-Wee. “You got to be back by supper time and you got to go fourteen miles.

“No, I go seven and come back seven,” said Lefty.

“Do you want my field book to write in?”

“To write what in?”

“Don’t you know you got to write a description of it—things you see?”

“No, I’ll take my lunch in a paper bag, and I’ll write on that.”

“Do you want my bugle?”

“What for?”

“In case you get lost—maybe.”

“Have a heart,” Lefty laughed. “If I blew that it would scare everybody away.”

“Have you got matches for a smudge signal, so we’ll know when you get there?”

“Do I have to do that?”

“You don’t have to.”

“I’ll bring back a hot dog to prove it.”

Pee-Wee seemed measurably relieved. At least he launched forth into consideration of the glories presently to dot the path of this first class scout.

“Now you can go in for all the merit badges,” he said. “You don’t have to stick to five, like in the second class. What ones are you going to go for? Artie wants you to go for Canoeing. He wants you to go for Hiking, too. If you get Pathfinding and Astronomy you can stay two weeks up at Temple Camp for nothing. If you get Cooking you can have two desserts all the rest of the season. That’s the Chocolate Drop Award—he’s the colored cook. I got that last summer. And do you know what Artie said? And he knows, too. He says you’re the best paddler he ever saw; he says you got a dandy sweep. So I bet you’ll have the canoe for our patrol in the races, hey?”

“Maybe, if I go up there.”

“What do you mean, if you go up there?”

“Well, you never can tell.”

Lefty’s experience since he had been left an orphan had taught him the wisdom of never counting too much on anything.