CHAPTER IX—NAPOLEON AND WATERLOO

Now as long as you couldn’t be there to have any of the eats there’s no use telling you about it. Because a scout is supposed to be kind. Anyway, I wouldn’t want you to buy this story just because refreshments go with it. Because actions speak louder than frankfurters and pie and things, but, anyway, Tony came across just as I said he would. And that was when the plot began to get thicker.

We had running matches and jumping matches and sulphur matches and all kinds of games, and a lot of girls came and watched us, and Main Street was full of people watching us.

But nobody went over to Tony’s. Sometimes scouts would kind of stroll over that way and look at the list of things pasted on the door and sort of jingle their money and then stroll back again. The field was all full of people just like at a carnival, and we put boards on grocery boxes for the girls to sit on and watch the big events. Pee-wee went over and told the girls about how he was a martyr like Nathan Hale because he couldn’t eat any frankfurters and things—I mean Pee-wee. And they said he was noble and that they were all on our side.

Pretty soon, good night, over came Fritzie from Bennett’s with popcorn and ice cream cones and things, and everybody began buying them, and that was too much for Tony. He wasn’t going to stand there and see Germany conquer the world. So just then, oh, boy, Italy began getting ready to come into the war.

I called all the scouts together and I said, “Sh-h! We’ve won the day, only we have to beware of strategy. Tony is coming over here with a lot of sandwiches and things in a basket. Don’t buy anything. Stand firm. Leave him to me.”

Pretty soon over he came with a big basket under his arm, shouting, “All-a hotta, all-a hotta, fiver de cents, all-a hotta.”

I went up to him and I said, “Have you got any soup?”

He said, “Buy-a de frank; all-a hotta.”

Everybody began crowding around and asking for soup. I said, “You haven’t got any counter for us to eat at. Some of us want soup. Others want soup. Still others prefer soup. Nothing doing.”

He said, “All-a fresh-a.”

I said, “I’m sorry, but we’re tired and we want to eat sitting down. We can’t eat soup out of brown paper.”

After a while he saw there wasn’t any use trying to peddle things around the field, so he went away and in a little while we saw him and his brother pulling down the boards from underneath the wagon. Oh, boy, but weren’t we glad! He wasn’t going to miss that chance. I guess he knew what we wanted all right. All the scouts began shouting, “We’ve won, we’ve won!” And the fellows in my troop went around telling all the others how they had done us a good turn. They all began calling me General Blakeley because I had managed it.

But one thing, girls are smarter than fellows, I have to admit that. Just you wait and see. Because something terrible is going to happen.

Pretty soon Tony’s old lunch wagon came lumbering over toward us. There were about seven or eight men pushing it and Tony was holding onto the shaft to steer it. When we saw that, we all began shouting and yelling and a scout from East Bridgeboro jumped up on a grocery box and tied his scarf on the end of his scout staff and began calling:

“Hurrah, for General Blakeley! Hurrah for the young Napoleon of Bridgeboro! Three cheers for the hero of the battle of Downing’s lot! All hail the conqueror of Tony Spaghetti! Three cheers for the greatest strategist of the age! The car shall pass!”

Believe me, we didn’t do a thing but lay waste to that conquered territory! I bought three frankfurters to start. Vic Norris bought two slices of lemon pie, just to begin. Dorry Benton bought a whole cake. The counter inside that wagon was lined with victorious scouts, and others were waiting outside for their turns. Our young hero was opening his program with a ham sandwich and a piece of custard pie, and a cup of coffee. That was just the prologue.

Pretty soon over came the girls and one of them wanted to know what we were all shouting about. I know that girl; she’s Professor Skybrow’s daughter and she wears big spectacles. She’s too smart to live, that girl is. She was in my class last term and she took all the merits in sight. She’d have taken the whole school if it hadn’t been fastened down.

Pee-wee went up to her and tried to speak. He was trying to hold his cup of coffee and sandwich and his pie in two hands, and there was custard all over his face. He looked as if he’d been through a war.

“We’ve—we’ve won the war,” he was trying to say. “Roy Blakeley planned the whole thing—he——”

“I’m the modern Napoleon,” I said. “I’ve got General Pershing tearing his hair.”

She said, “Did you ever study the battle of Waterloo?”

I said, “This is the battle of coffeeloo. We like that better than water. Will you have a piece of pie?”

She just stared at me and said, “And you consider yourself a strategist!”

“He’s—he’s the great mil—mil——” Pee-wee began, trying to talk and eat a piece of pie at the same time. “He’s the greatest military genius of the age.”

She just looked through those big glasses, very smart and superior like, and she said, “If I were a general I wouldn’t be so stupid as to forget all about my reinforcements.”

“W-a-a—what d’ y’ mean—reinforcements?” Pee-wee blurted out, while the coffee and custard were trickling down off his chin. “Wha’ d’ y’ mean?”

She just said, “When is that train going to arrive that you are waiting for?”

“At exactly four-sixty—five o’clock,” I told her.

She said, “Well, then, Mr. Smarty, you timed your battle wrong. You made a blunder——”

“The pleasure is mine,” I said.

“And in order to hold this wagon here and keep the track clear till your friend Mr. Jenson comes, you have got to keep on eating for exactly two hours and forty minutes. If you can hold the fort that long you can move your car. But you’ll have to keep eating all the time.”

There was a dead silence.

“We—can—d-d-d-wit,” Pee-wee managed to blurt out, all the while spilling his coffee and munching his pie. “Scoutscam——”

Good night! I just stood there, and that girl kept looking right at me through those big glasses. She got ninety-nine in arithmetic, that girl did, and she wrote a poem that was in the newspaper, too.

Then she said, “You see, General Napoleon, you didn’t figure your campaign properly. If you had gotten the Girl Scouts to help you, perhaps you wouldn’t have found yourselves in this ghastly predicament.”

Those are just the words she used—ghastly predicament.

CHAPTER X—MINERVA SKYBROW TAKES COMMAND

“Hurrah for Joan of Arc!” one scout began shouting.

“What do we care?” Pee-wee managed to blurt out.

“We care a good deal,” Westy said. “Our glorious leader is all right on the field of battle, but when it comes to planning a strategical move——”

“We can’t go on eating for nearly three hours,” a scout from the East Bridgeboro troop said. “We’ve got to get home sometime.”

Minerva Skybrow (that was her name), she just looked at us and she said, “Oh, doubtless you’ll think of a way; scouts are so smart. They’re so resourceful.”

One of the other girls said, “Yes, and they can do anything with their appetites, you know.”

“Up to a certain point,” Westy said.

“Upstrn put in—vncble,” Pee-wee blurted. “Bth not insrmtble——”

I said, “Don’t try to manage a cup of coffee, a sandwich and a piece of pie and the word insurmountable at the same time. It can’t be did.”

“I—cnsrmntble cern pnt——”

“Shut up,” I said; “this is no time for words; this is a time for actions.”

Gee whiz, I saw we were in a tight place and there was that girl just standing there staring at us through her big glasses. I bet she was just the kind of a girl that likes algebra. There were the old rusty railroad tracks clear at last right across the field as far as Slausen’s. And there was Tony’s Lunch Wagon a couple of hundred feet away from where it always stood. We knew he’d move it right back to its old place again as soon as there wasn’t anything more doing in the field, because on account of his regular trade there, and besides there was a little flight of wooden steps built over there which just fitted in front of the door. And all his boards and things were there besides. There was a kind of a bulletin board there, too, with all the eats and things marked up on it. Jimmies, if he had been able to talk English maybe we could have argued with him, but we couldn’t get anything into his head, not even with a crowbar.

Everybody knows that scouts have good appetites, and I can prove it by the cook up at Temple Camp, but gee williger, no scout can go on eating for over two hours; even Pee-wee couldn’t. I saw the terrible mistake I had made. It was a military blunder.

I said to Tony, “How soon you go back?”

“Sooner no more de biz,” he said.

“I’ll have one more sandwich,” said Westy.

“Can you make it two for the sake of the cause?” I asked him.

“Give me another plate of chowder,” Connie Bennett said. “You don’t hear a train in the distance, do you?”

One of the girls said, “Oh, mercy, it won’t be here till five o’clock. We’ll stay and let you know when it comes. Because, you know we really have nothing to do. We can’t run and jump and play ball, you know. We’re only girls, aren’t we, Minerva?”

I said, “Well, there’s only one thing for us to do. We’ve got to hold the fort——”

“Can we hold the food? That’s the question,” some fellows shouted.

“Absypostvly,” Pee-wee blurted out. “Hip, hip——”

“Shut up,” I told him. “There’s only one thing for us to do and that is to work in platoons. Scouts will go into the wagon four at a time and eat at the counter. Nothing must be eaten except at the counter. As they come out they’ll be relieved by others. Don’t eat too fast. The train will be here in two hours. We can hold out. There is nothing else to do. The lunch wagon must be held. Somebody go over to the station and find out if the milk train is on time. Keep busy. Chowder is recommended, but scouts must use their judgment. On to victory. We can eat forever!”

“Make th wrld safe fr dmcrcy!” Pee-wee yelled.

“Forever!” a lot of them shouted.

“What’s two hours?”

“We can eat forever! Hurrah!”

Just then one of those Little Valley scouts came running back from the station. “The milk train is an hour and a half late!” he said.

“Oh, isn’t that just too exasperating?” said Minerva Skybrow.

CHAPTER XI—WE FIND A WAY

I said, “Good night, that ends it for us. We can’t keep this up for three hours and a half. There’s no use trying. We’re beaten.”

“Scouts beaten!” one of the girls said.

“Just the same way as Napoleon was beaten,” I said. “You think you’re so smart. Maybe you don’t know he was beaten because his reinforcements didn’t show up.”

“Don’t let’s give up,” Pee-wee shouted, just as he finished his last mouthful of pie.

Minerva Skybrow said, “Isn’t it nice how much you know about history?”

“Sure,” I said. “It’s just too cute. But my favorite studies are the multiplication table and the dining table. You’re so smart, maybe you can suggest something. You don’t expect to go on eating for three hours, do you? Even—even—General—even Foch couldn’t do that. And he’s greater than I am, I guess.”

She just said, “Oh, is he, really?”

“And so is Washington,” I said. Because I was good and mad.

“You mean he was,” she said. “He’s dead, you know.”

“If you can get us out of this scrape,” I said, “let’s see you do it.”

She just said, “Well, of course, if you admit that your appetites have failed you, and if you really want the Girl Scouts to tell you what is in your own handbooks, I’ll remind you of the value of mushrooms.”

“Oh, is that so?” I said. “I know all about mushrooms and I can tell a mushroom from a toadstool or a footstool or a piano-stool or any other kind of a stool. But that’s not going to keep this blamed wagon here, is it?”

She said, “Oh, isn’t it?”

“Well,” I said, “you’re so smart, you were always getting E plus in Miss Harrison’s class and you wrote a poem for the High School paper and all that, let’s see you keep this wagon here for three hours. Do you mean to tell me you and the rest of these girl scouts could go on eating for three hours?”

“No, but we could use our brains for three seconds,” she said.

“Maybe you think it’s easy to argue with a wop that doesn’t understand ten words of English. What would you do? You’re so smart. What would you do?”

She said, “Well, of course we’re only girls and we haven’t had the advantages of a Temple Camp, and we can only eat raspberry sundaes and banana splits. But if I were a smart, wonderful boy, head of a scout patrol and had my face on the covers of a lot of books, and knew all about the boy scout handbook, I’d try to make this man understand that that dark spot underneath where his wagon stood is simply filled with mushrooms. I’d try to make him understand that the best mushrooms grow in the dark and damp places. And I’d tell him (because you know scouts know everything) that mushrooms are worth about seventy-five cents a pound. I’d do him a good turn. I’d show him how to dig them all up so as to get the spawn and everything, and I’d show him how to plant them in boxes. Then he’d have two beds of them. Perhaps all that would occupy him for the rest of the afternoon, and of course the wagon——

“But then, I’m only a girl, and I can’t eat my way to power and world dominion.” That’s just the way she talked. Honest.

I said, “Minerva Skybrow, you’ve got Joan of Arc beaten about ’steen dozen ways. I know that about mushrooms in the handbook; it comes right after Woodcraft. When I used to see you in Assembly I thought you were stuck up, and I know I’m always making fun of the girl scouts. But you’ve done us a good turn. Gee whiz, I always hated Miss Harrison, didn’t you? Because she kept us in till five o’clock. I guess she didn’t have any home. But, anyway, I have to admit you can play on the piano all right.

“And another thing I know about you, too: you started taking Italian in the Academic course. I bet you can speak Italian. I know the girl that used to sit next to you before you went to the High School; I pulled her on a sled once. You know the girl I mean. She was always eating chocolate. Believe me, I have to admit that you’ve got more sense than we have, and if you’ll help us to keep this blamed wagon out of our path of glory till the milk train comes we’re going to give a big racket in your honor when we get our car down to the field near the river, if we ever do.

“Honest, Minerva, to tell you the truth, we can’t eat another thing, and I see that what counts most in the world is brains—brains and mushrooms. But, gee whiz, I like ice cream, too.”

CHAPTER XII—THE GRAND DRIVE BEGINS

The next minute that girl started talking Italian to Tony, and, oh, boy, you should have seen him. Right away he got excited and wanted to dig up the whole earth. I guess she told him there was a gold mine where his wagon had been standing.

I don’t know if you know much about mushrooms, but they’re easy to raise and you can get a lot of money for them, and that’s something that most scouts don’t know about. All you need is a place that’s kind of damp and dark, like under a car or a wagon or in a cellar that hasn’t got any heat. It’s a lot of fun raising them. Maybe that’s why they call them fungi. Anyway, Minerva Skybrow put the fun in fungi for us all right, because now we have a dandy little mushroom patch under our car down by the river and the only competition we have in Bridgeboro is from Tony. We should worry.

Every Saturday morning people come down to Van Schlessenhoff’s field to buy mushrooms from us. Only you’ve got to be careful, because if you eat the wrong kind of mushrooms, the first thing you know some fine day you’ll wake up and find yourself dead. So you better read what the handbook says about them.

The kind we raise are dandy big ones and we call them the Skybrow mushroom, and they’re known far and wide—all the way up as far as Main Street.

Now for the rest of that afternoon we helped Tony dig up mushrooms and plant them in boxes and spread more of them in the space where his wagon belonged, and Minerva Skybrow managed the whole business. I guess it must have been after six o’clock when we heard the milk train whistling, and, believe me, we were all pretty tired when it pulled into the station.

Minerva said, “Now isn’t that better than just eating? You’ve won the day, you’ve kept the tracks clear, and you’ve done something worth while. You’ve done a good turn in the bargain.”

“And when we start raising mushrooms ourselves,” Pee-wee piped up, “we’ll have something more to eat, too. Hey?” Jiminy, that’s all that kid thinks about.

I said to Minerva, “You’re so smart, maybe you can think of a way for us to get past Slausen’s Repair Shop. Believe me, that’s going to be some Hindenburg line. Maybe we can tell him to plant rubber bands and automobile tires will grow up. We should worry; we’ve done enough for one day.”

Mr. Jenson, who is engineer on that milk train, was mighty nice. He said that scouts did him a good turn once, and so he was going to pay them back. While the men were loading the milk cans onto the train he ran his locomotive very slowly onto those old rusty tracks and the first thing we knew, plunk, he bunked right into our old car. Gee whiz, it looked good to see it move. It just gave a kind of a jerk.

Then he called down to us and said, “Now where do you want me to leave this de luxe Pullman Palace car?”

I said, “We want you to push it across Main Street, past where the lunch wagon usually stands, and right about to the middle of the field. That’s as far as we can go to-day.”

“You planning to go farther than that?” he asked us.

“Yes, but we have to think of a way,” Westy called up to him.

Mr. Jenson began laughing and he said, “You kids’ll have to do some tall thinking to get past that old building.”

“That’s all right,” Westy said; “the human mind can move anything.”

Mr. Jenson just said, “All right, over she goes.”

Some of us got on the car and the others walked along and the girls stayed around, laughing. A couple of them got on the car, but most of them were kind of afraid, I guess. Maybe they thought it would never stop. Some men stood around watching and laughing, too. What did we care?

The locomotive pushed the car so slow that we could walk ahead of it. It hardly moved. We felt pretty important when we saw the gates go down across Main Street and people and automobiles waiting till we got past. Most of the scouts who had come from other towns had gone home and only our own troop and the girls and a few others were there. But a whole lot of people were standing around watching and laughing at our old ramshackle car. It went right over Tony’s new mushroom farm, and then Mr. Jenson’s fireman came down and we helped him haul a big piece of timber across the tracks about in the middle of the field, because the brakes on that car weren’t much good.

Pretty soon the locomotive stopped and our old car just moved so slow that it hardly moved at all. Then, kerplunk, the wheels ran against the piece of timber, and the first stage of our what-d’you-call-it, memorable journey, was over.

After that we helped Tony get his lunch wagon back to where it belonged, and we all gave Mr. Jenson three cheers when the milk train pulled out. The boy scouts are all right, and you can see for yourself that you can do a lot by concerted appetite. But you need brains, too. And if it hadn’t been for the Girl Scouts and the Erie Railroad, where would we be, I’d like to know? So that’s why my favorite heroes are the Girl Scouts and the Erie Railroad. Maybe they’re both kind of slow—I’m not saying—but good turns are what count.

CHAPTER XIII—AFTER THE BATTLE

So there we were with the first hard part of our big enterprise over, and the hardest part staring us in the face.

“We’re past the first trench line, anyway,” Westy said.

“Yes, but I’d like to know how we’re going to get past that old repair shop,” Connie put in. “That’s what I’d like to know.”

We were all sitting in the car resting before going home.

“You leave that to me,” I said. “Where there’s a will there’s a way. I’ve got an idea.”

“Have you got it with you?” Dorry Benton wanted to know.

“I’m not going to bother with that old grouch, Mr. Slausen,” I said. “He’s worse than a rainy Sunday, that man is.”

“I’m glad I’m not his son,” one of the fellows said.

“Believe me,” I told them, “when it comes to picking out fathers I picked out a good one.”

“Well, what’s the idea?” one of them wanted to know.

“This is the idea,” I said. “Two or three of us will go and see Mr. Downing, who owns the field and the blamed old garage and everything, and we’ll tell him all about it and maybe he can make Mr. Slausen let us take down a few boards where the track runs through. Mr. Downing’s a mighty nice man, I know that, because he gave a hundred dollars in the scout drive.”

“Well, and suppose that fails?” Westy wanted to know.

I said, “Well, then, it means a lot of trouble; maybe we’ll have to all get to work and take up the tracks and lay them to the left of the garage where they cross Willow Place.”

“That will take us all summer,” Charlie Seabury said.

“Well,” I said, “we’ve got this far and will find a way to get the rest of the distance, that’s sure. Where there’s a will there’s a way.”

Just then in came Mr. Slausen, all of a sudden, kind of angry like.

“All tickets, please,” I said. Because he made me think of a conductor.

He said, “Now see here, what are you youngsters doing here in this car?”

I said, “Is it a conundrum? How many guesses do we have? We’re sitting in it.”

“You’ll have to clear out of here with this thing,” he said. “You’ll be in the way, and this is private property, you know.”

“So is this car private property,” I said.

“Well, it’s on private land,” he said.

“That’s all right,” I told him; “it’s private property just the same. Even if it were on the moon it would be private property. It belongs to us. And the field doesn’t belong to you, either. It belongs to Mr. Downing.”

Just then several of the fellows started singing an old tune that we used to fit words to when we were travelling around the country in that car.

“Well, you’ll have to clear out of here with this thing,” he said. “I’ll see your parents about it. I’ll notify the police. I use all this land, you can’t stay here.”

“We don’t intend to stay here,” I said. “We’re going to move down to the river, into Van Schlessenhoff’s field. We’re just stopping here. You should worry.”

“Well, you’ll have to have this thing moved back,” he said, very cross.

“Scouts don’t move back,” I said; “they move forward. The only thing that will stop us is the river. Excelsior! That’s our middle name.”

“That’s what you pack china in,” Pee-wee shouted.

“It means Forward,” I said. “It’s what somebody or other had on a banner, in a poem. Scouts don’t have any reverse movement.”

“Now you boys know you can’t get past here,” Mr. Slausen said. “What are you up to? How do you expect to get past here?”

“We should worry our young lives about how we’re going to get past,” I said. “Italy stood in our way—you saw what happened. This is the Berlin to Bagdad Railroad—branch of the Erie. We’re going to subdue all the land between here and the river. We should sneeze at the Sneezenbunker land. We’re going to make all the cats in Cat-tail Marsh pay an indemnity. Maybe you think you’re more important than Belgium, but we’ll go through you all right. You leave it to us. Food won the war so far, didn’t it? Posolutely, quoth he.

“We haven’t opened our next campaign yet, but, anyway, we’re not too proud to fight. Please don’t bother us now; we’re planning our next big drive. We’re going to make the world safe for the boy scouts. If the police and our parents know what’s best for them they’ll stay neutral.”

“Do you want to make a treaty with us?” Connie piped up. “Come on over to Bennett’s and we’ll treat you to a treaty.”

Then we all began singing.

Mr. Slausen just went out and slammed the door. Gee whiz, that man can’t take a joke.

CHAPTER XIV—SOMETHING MISSING

Now I’m going to tell you all about what happened that night. Before dark Westy rode up to my house on his bicycle, because I had told him that I’d help him clean it up. We weren’t thinking about the car, because we had decided that we’d go and see Mr. Downing the next morning; that would be Sunday.

We knew Mr. Downing took a lot of interest in the scouts, and we weren’t worrying, because we thought he would fix things for us. The way we talked to Mr. Slausen is the only way you can talk to a man like that, because he’s an old grouch. Everybody knows him.

Now out by the road in front of my house is a carriage step, and Westy and I sat on that while we cleaned up his bike and oiled it and greased it. We kept working there till it was nearly dark. He has a dandy big flashlight and we used that to light up places that we couldn’t see very well.

Pretty soon the bike was all clean and the dirt was all on us. So we went in to wash up. I was the first to get through, so I went out on the porch and lay down on the swing seat.

Now there’s a wide lawn between our house and the road. I ought to know because I mow it every week. That’s where my sister and Harry Donnelle play tennis. He’s a big fellow.

It was pretty nearly dark and I was waiting for Westy to come out. He was going to stay to supper at my house. My mother likes him a lot. But that night we didn’t feel much like supper. While I was lying there an automobile passed along the road and stopped right in front of the house and somebody got out. I thought whoever it was was coming up to the house when I saw that person get in the car and ride away again.

Just then Westy came out and I said, “Somebody got out of a car down at the road.”

He looked kind of funny for a second, then he said, “Let’s go down.”

His bicycle was leaning against the carriage step and a few tools and things were on the step.

I said, kind of anxious, “Are they all there?”

“I don’t see my flashlight,” he said.

I said, “Let’s look around in the grass.”

But we couldn’t find it anywhere.

Gee, I didn’t think anybody in an automobile would be so mean as to stop and pick up a thing like that. Maybe it was worth two or three dollars.

I said, “We shouldn’t have left the things out here, but, jiminies, I never thought anybody would be so mean as to stop and take a thing like that. If he had taken the bicycle it wouldn’t have seemed so bad.”

“Let’s run,” Westy said.

“I’m with you,” I told him.

He said, “It’s got my initials on, that’s one thing.”

We gathered up the stuff in a hurry and wheeled the bicycle in to the porch and then started along the road, going scout pace. We couldn’t use the bicycle because the tires were flat. There was one machine quite a way ahead of us. It turned into Main Street and we caught up with it a little because it had to go slow there.

About two blocks down Main Street it turned into Willow Place. If you look at the map I made you’ll see where that is. It went faster now and we were falling behind all the time.

Pretty soon Westy panted, “I know that car.”

“Whose is it?” I asked him.

“Wait a minute; you’ll see,” he said.

Just then it turned in and crossed the sidewalk and disappeared. Westy and I just stopped and stood there panting and staring at each other.

“What—do—you—know—about—that?” I just blurted out.

“Slausen’s,” he said, all out of breath.

“Sure,” I said; “that’s Charlie Slausen.”

CHAPTER XV—A SCOUT'S HONOR

I knew that fellow in school and I never had much use for him. He graduated when I was in the primary. At recess he used to take our marbles, just to make us mad. And after we started our troop he used to call us the boy sprouts. I guess he thought he was funny. Harry Domicile hasn’t got much use for him either, and you bet your life Harry Domicile knows.

“Gee, I didn’t think he’d do that,” Westy said.

“Come ahead,” I told him; “he won’t get away with it anyway.”

We went right up to the garage and I walked straight inside. The men had gone home and it was all dark except for the headlights on Charlie’s car. It wasn’t his, it was his father’s. But he told all the girls it was his. He was just stepping out and I went right up to him, because Westy was so kind of ashamed that any one would do such a thing that he just couldn’t speak of it. He’s a dandy fellow, Westy is.

I said, “Will you please give us the flashlight that you took?”

“Hello, sprouts,” he said; “what’s troubling you now?” And he gave me a kind of a push, you know, just as if he was jollying me.

I said, “Will you please give me the flashlight you took?”

“Light? What light?” he said, very innocent like.

“The one you took from in front of my house,” I said. “You’ll either give it to me or I’ll have you arrested. If you think I’m afraid of you, you’re mistaken. And you can keep your hands off me, too. You better button your coat or you’ll be stealing your own watch next.”

He just began laughing.

“That’s all right,” I said; “I mean what I say.”

He took the flashlight out of the car and said, “You don’t mean this, do you?”

“Yes, I mean that,” I said; “it’s got this fellow’s initials on, so you needn’t try to make us think it’s yours.”

He just gave me a poke with it and kept on laughing. Gee, I was mad.

“Your hands remind me of tanglefoot flypaper,” I said.

“Yes?” he just laughed. “Well, here’s your old light. What’s the matter with you kids? Can’t you take a joke? I just wanted to see if you were good at tracking. You claim to be such great Buffalo Bills——”

I said, “Yes? Well, you’ve got Jesse James looking like a Sunday School teacher.”

“I see you’re all right at trailing,” he said; “here take your light. I was giving you a test. What’s the matter with you?”

He was very easy and offhand like, but I could see he was kind of nervous.

He said, “And I suppose you’ll be telling the whole town about your great stunt.”

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’d be ashamed to remind the town that there’s such a fellow as you here. All we want is what belongs to us.”

He began digging down in his pocket, all the while saying, “Well, we’ll just keep it a little secret between ourselves and——”

I guess just then he found he didn’t have any money. Because he finished up by saying, “And we’ll have some ice cream sodas the first time I meet you on Main Street. Now how’s that?”

“Sure,” I said, “and we’ll put the spoons in our pockets when we get through.”

“Well, now, you’re not going to go round shouting, huh?” he said, kind of anxious.

Then for the first time Westy spoke. He said, “We promise not to tell anybody, if that’s what you mean. So you needn’t worry about that.”

“How about you, Kiddo?” Charlie Slausen asked.

“Oh, I promise,” I said.

“Well, then, let’s see if you’re as good at keeping your word as you are at tracking,” he said. “I thought you’d find me. Now it’s a go, is it? Not a word?”

“That’s what we told you,” I said. Gee whiz, I was so disgusted I could hardly speak to him.

“Climb out through that window,” he said.

Then for the first time I noticed that he had closed the big door.

“Go ahead,” he said; “I’ll come out after you.”

He was such a blamed peculiar kind of a fellow that we didn’t have any idea what he was up to. Whatever he did seemed to be kind of on the sly.

The window was on the side of the garage. After we had climbed through we started back up Willow Place. Pretty soon we saw a dark figure going across the street very quietly and we thought it must be him.

“I guess he doesn’t want his father to know he was using the car,” Westy said. “That’s why he sneaks out.”

“He had to come in with it, though,” I said.

Westy said, “Sure, but that isn’t any reason for him not watching his step when he goes away. He wasn’t going to show himself on Willow Place till he was sure no one was there.”

“Well, there’s no harm done,” I said. “We’ve got the flashlight.”

“Yes, and he’s got our promise,” said Westy.

“He needn’t lose any sleep over that,” I said. “A scout’s honor is to be trusted—Law one, page thirty-four. Correct. Let’s go over and get a couple of sodas.”

CHAPTER XVI—TWO—SEVEN!

I went to bed early that night because I was good and tired. I don’t know how long I had been asleep, but all of a sudden I was wide awake listening to the fire whistle. I guess it must have been the fire whistle that awakened me. I heard four blasts, because I counted them. That would mean the fire was ’way down South Bridgeboro. Then it started again, and I realized that I had only heard the end of it. I counted all the blasts this time. There were two, then seven. I said to myself, “That’s somewhere near the station.” I could hear the engine siren a long way off. Then I went to sleep again.

The next day was Sunday, and as long as I live I will never forget it. When I went down to breakfast there were my mother, father and sister Marjorie at the table. The sun was shining right through the bay window, and that made it seem like Sunday, because on Sundays we don’t have breakfast till about the time the sun gets around there. It made it seem like Sunday, too, because my father had his smoking jacket on.

As soon as I sat down my father said, kind of offhand, “Did you hear the fire whistle last night, Roy?”

“Sure,” I said; “I think it was near the station.”

He said, “You didn’t get up and go to it, eh?” He said that because I always go to fires. I stayed up all night when the High School burned down.

I said, “Have a heart. I was dead to the world all night. We had some job getting our car moved.”

My mother said, “Why, of course.”

Then my father said, kind of funny like, he said, “You got it moved all right, eh?”

“You bet we did,” I said.

“And what’s the next move?” he asked me, very nice and pleasant.

“To get it across Willow Place to the Sneezenbunker land,” I told him. “I guess maybe we can do that next Saturday.”

I don’t know, but something in the way he looked made me feel awful funny. Then he pushed back his chair and looked straight at me and said, “Roy, Mr. Slausen’s repair shop was burned to the ground last night. Did you boys have any altercation with Mr. Slausen yesterday?”

Gee, you could have knocked me down with a feather. “Burned to the ground?” I just stammered out.

He said, “Yes; nothing left of it.” He looked awful funny.

My sister said, “I’m glad of it; he’s an old grizzly bear.”

“You had some words with him?” my father asked me.

“I guess there’s nobody in town who hasn’t had words with him,” my sister said.

“Just let me talk to Roy,” my father told her.

I said, “We were jollying him along because he was mad on account of our car being in the field. It wasn’t near his building, that’s one sure thing.”

“And you boys were planning to get the car past his building? You asked him if you could take some boards down?”

“Yes, we did,” I said; “and he said no.”

“Of course,” said my sister; “what did you expect him to say?”

“And you told him you’d think up some other way?” my father asked me.

Then I began to see what he was driving at I said, “If he thinks we had anything to do with his old shanty burning down, let him think so. Gee whiz, it wouldn’t make a decent bonfire. We got the car over to the field all right, and we’ll get it the rest of the way. I told him we’d think of a way, and we will.”

My father said, “Yes, but I don’t see what sort of plan you could make to get a railroad car through a building.”

I said, “Do you think I had anything to do with that old place burning down?”

He said, “No, of course I don’t. Such a thought is absurd. That is not the way of scouts.”

“You said it,” I told him.

Then he said, “Westy’s father called me up this morning, Roy, and told me about this fire. He said that Mr. Slausen had just called on him with another man who claimed to have seen you and Westy climbing out through a side window of the garage after dark last night.”

“What did Westy say?” I asked my father.

“Westy wasn’t home this morning,” my father said; “and that’s why his father called me up. He seemed to be very much concerned, but I told him, of course, that it was all nonsense, that you hadn’t done any such thing. I told him that if you had climbed out through a window you could doubtless explain it, but that he needn’t worry, because you hadn’t done any such thing. I’m afraid Mr. Slausen has lost his sense of reason——”

“He never had any,” my sister said.

“I should think not,” my mother put in, “Climbing out through the side window after the place had been closed! Who ever heard of such nonsense? The man is crazy.”

I just sat there and I didn’t say a word.

My father said, “Well, I believe Mr. Slausen is coming up here with this stranger this morning. I understand he has appealed to the police.”

“Why doesn’t he call out the army?” my sister wanted to know.

I said, “You mean I have to be arrested?” My father just laughed and said, “Why, certainly not. I’m very glad they’re coming——”

“I hope Duke bites them,” Marjorie said. Duke is our Airedale.

“I don’t see that that would do any good,” my father said, kind of smiling. “All Roy will have to do is to deny this, and I’ll do the rest. I just want you to say, Roy, that you didn’t climb out of any window of Mr. Slausen’s shop after dark or at any other time. I want you to face these gentlemen——”

“They’re not gentlemen,” my sister said; “they’re hyenas!”

My father just went on and said, “I want you to tell Mr. Slausen and anybody else who comes here with him that you didn’t do that and that you weren’t near his place. There’s nothing to be afraid of if you tell the truth.”

My sister said, “I hope you’re not going to let those men come in the parlor. Ugh!”

I just sat there, kind of saying parlor, parlor, parlor to myself. I didn’t know what to say. My father looked at me kind of funny.

Then I said, “I don’t see what it’s got to do with us, anyway, because the fire didn’t happen till two or three hours after——”

Then I stopped.

“After what, Roy?” my father said.

“After the time he said we were in there,” I kind of blurted out.

My father said, “That hasn’t anything to do with it. The point is that you weren’t there at all. There’s the beginning and the end of it. This man thinks you boys did the only thing you could do to get his old shop out of the way. He doesn’t know anything about scouts. There was a motive. That’s enough for him. And he thinks a couple of you sneaked into his place after dark and set fire to it. Now you didn’t, did you?”

“No, we didn’t,” I said, good and loud.

“Well, then,” my father said, “that’s all there is to it.”