We knew well enough he’d sleep all night.
“I kind of like him,” Westy said while we were on our way home; “I don’t know what it is but there’s something about him I kind of like. I wish he didn’t have to go back to Willisville.”
“He’s a funny little duffer,” I said. “There’ll be some surprise when we stand him up in front of Recorder Van Wort in the morning.”
“Maybe they’ll send him up for being a firebug,” Westy said.
“A fire-bug?” I said. “He’s a whole menagerie.”
He said, “Well, I’m going to cut up through Terrace Place. I’ll be at the car at seven o’clock to-morrow morning. You be there as soon as you can get there.”
“I’ll be there by eight,” I told him. “You stop on your way and get him some breakfast from Tony’s.”
On the way up the hill to my house (we live up on Blakeley’s Hill, it’s dandy up there) I began to find out what people were thinking about the fire. Maybe you think just on account of the Silver Fox Patrol being so famous in the history of the world that Bridgeboro (that’s where I live) is a great big place. Believe me, it isn’t big enough to hold the Silver Fox Patrol. If Hoboken was about the size of an elephant, Bridgeboro would be about as big as Pee-wee. So that shows you. There are only two candy stores in Bridgeboro and one of them is no good. Bridgeboro is so slow and tired it has to be sitting down all the time; that’s why they call it the county seat.
So everybody knows all about everybody else in Bridgeboro. They’re good scouts, they’re observant. Harry Donnelle says it takes a song three years to get from New York to Bridgeboro, even if it’s fast music. Anyway we’ve got a dandy river in Bridgeboro only it doesn’t stay there, it just passes through. Gee, I don’t blame it.
Mr. Dallman, he was standing in front of his drug store (don’t ever buy a soda in there whatever you do), he said to me, “Well, you kids have got yourselves in trouble, haven’t you? What’s the matter? Young Slausen been using you?”
From that I saw that people were suspecting him and not us. Gee whiz, that’s the way it is when you have a bad name.
I said, “Westy Martin and I were the ones who had to go to the station. We’re the ones that are accused if anybody is.”
“Yes, but you kids never started that fire,” he said. “You’re just protecting somebody. They’ll have young Slausen behind the bars by this time to-morrow. He and Bert Waring are a good pair. I guess young Waring wanted to see his Buick burned up all right. Charlie’ll clear up a couple of hundred dollars or so on his little flivver. I hope he’ll pay me the three dollars he owes me when he gets his insurance. What were you kids doing in there, anyway?”
I said, “If I tell you will you promise not to tell anybody?”
“It’s none of my concern,” he said.
“Well, we were standing in there,” I said. “So now you know what we were doing in there.”
He kind of laughed and he said, “Well, you youngsters want to be careful and tell the truth or Chief O’Day will have the whole lot of you in the lockup.”
“Is that so?” I said, kind of mad. “If I couldn’t find out who did a thing any better than he does I’d get a job as commander-in-chief of a kindergarten. He’s a regular Sherlock Nobody Holmes.”
“He’ll put young Slausen where he belongs,” Mr. Dallman said; “he sees through this whole business.”
“Oh, sure,” I said, “he sees so fine that he can’t even see three hundred dollars right under his feet. Good night, I’m going home.”
I guess it was about nine o’clock when I got to the house. I was kind of anxious because I didn’t know what to say about where I had been to supper. There wasn’t anybody around and I was just starting upstairs when I heard my father call me. I went down again and I saw him in the library. He was sitting there in the dark. I felt awful funny, kind of, because it seemed as if he was feeling bad. I kind of knew it was on account of me. He was just sitting in the big leather chair by the library table. He was smoking a cigar and the light in that cigar was all the light there was.
He said, “You’ve been at Westy’s, I suppose?” Because I often stay there Sunday nights to tea.
I said, “I had supper with Westy.” And right away I was kind of sorry because it was true the way I meant it but it wasn’t true the way he meant it.
I said, “Where’s Mamsy and Marjorie?” (That’s what I call my mother—Mamsy.)
He said, “They went to church and then to some meeting. Sit down, Roy.”
Then he didn’t speak for about a minute. The big clock out in the hall sounded awful loud.
I didn’t know what to say so I said, “Are you waiting for them?”
He said, “No, I was waiting for you, Roy. I wanted to speak to you.” Then he said how I never made him worry any but how he had been worrying that day. He said, “I was hoping you would be here to take a little stroll this afternoon.”
I said, “I was helping clear up—at Slausens.” Lots of times I go for a walk with him Sundays, because he doesn’t care about the machines.
Then he said how he had been worrying a lot because nobody belonging to him had ever been arrested. He said that morning was the first time he had ever seen inside the police station and it made him feel ashamed. He said, “You know you’re under arrest, you and Westy, just the same as if you were in a cell.” He said, “You understand that, don’t you, Roy?”
I said, “Yes, sir.”
He said, “It’s only because I’m a rich man and they know who I am and trust me that you have been free to-day. The same with Westy.” He said, “I would rather have bought Mr. Slausen’s shop, I would rather have bought the whole field from Mr. Downing, than to think that you——”
“You don’t think that, do you?” I asked him.
He said, “I do not, Roy. I would rather have thrown up a bungalow for you scouts down by the river than to think so. And you know I would have done it, too, gladly. No son of mine needs to burn down property——”
I said, “Then why do you talk about it?” I just started to cry, I couldn’t help it. “It isn’t a question of needing to,” I said. “We wouldn’t do it, anyway—we wouldn’t.”
He said, “I’m glad to hear you say that, Roy.”
“Mr. Ellsworth knows we wouldn’t,” I said. “Fellows that have good names don’t need to worry,” I told him. “They’re safe. It’s only in crazy stories that scouts get suspected of committing crimes and things. We should worry. It’s the people that haven’t got good names that have to look out. Suppose I told you a lie once, then you’d think I was telling you one now, and that wouldn’t be fair.”
He said, “It would be natural, Roy.”
I said, “Well, if a fellow doesn’t tell lies, then people have got a right to believe him, haven’t they? Like Mr. Ellsworth does. If you say I have to tell what we were doing in the garage, then I have to tell. Gee, I admit that. But I’ve got a reason not to tell and you’ll know tomorrow. Chief O’Day isn’t as smart as he thinks he is, I know that much.”
For about a minute my father didn’t say anything and I could hear the big clock ticking. I could hear the crickets outside, too, so that’s a sign school would be closing soon. No wonder everybody likes crickets.
Then my father said, “Roy, I want you to know I trust you.” He said, “I waited here for you to tell you that.” Then he said how I never told him a lie and how that was like putting money in the bank, kind of. Because now I could draw on that. He said now he had to believe me and believe everything was all right, just because I had a right to be trusted. And he said when I asked for him to let me keep still about it, he had to say yes because my credit was good. He said he had to trust me and believe me now. He said even if he wanted to know why we were in Slausen’s, still he’d have to do the way I wanted, and let me keep still, because I had kind of like a lot of honor saved up. When he talked like that it made me feel awful sorry for Charlie Slausen. But anyway, one thing, my father wouldn’t think a fellow ought to get in trouble for something he didn’t do, even if that fellow wasn’t much good. He’s fair and square, my father is.
He said, “I’m going to leave everything to you, Roy, because we’ve always been on the square with each other.” That’s just what he said. Then he said, “Only I want you to remember that you must tell the full truth to Judge Van Wort.” He said, “You will be under oath. You must tell all you know. To try to protect the guilty is a crime. You know that, don’t you?”
Gee whiz, I wondered how much he knew about Charlie Slausen. Everybody in town seemed to have it in for him.
Then my father said, “You and Westy will clear yourselves, of course. I’m not worrying about that. But I want you to stand up bravely and tell everything you know. I don’t want you to be nervous. I’ll be there. I couldn’t go to the city till this thing is settled.”
“It’ll be settled all right,” I told him.
He said, “Remember, you must tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
I said, “Believe me, they’ll get the biggest dose of the truth they ever had.”
Then he said he was going to bed and that he wasn’t going to worry about it at all, and he wasn’t going to think about it, because I was a scout and maybe I knew what was best, and anyway he knew I’d tell the truth, so he should worry about that.
But just the same he stayed downstairs there in the dark for a couple of hours. Because a long time after, I could hear him winding the big grandfather’s clock down in the hall. Then I could hear his footsteps on the stairs. He came up awful slow like.
If all the lessons in algebra were like that hearing, or whatever you call it, I’d be satisfied, because there wasn’t any. That was the day that Westy and I got sentenced to three hundred dollars’ reward. So if you were looking forward to seeing us get sent to prison for four or five years, you get left. I bet you’re sorry.
Anyway I’ll tell you about it. Good and early Westy and I went down to the submarine to get the inventor. He was the one that invented sleep all right, that kid. He was sprawled all over the floor under one of the seats, dead to the wicked world.
Westy said, “He’s sleeping even sounder than when we left him last night.”
“Why shouldn’t he?” I said. “Look at the practice he’s had all night. Look where his feet are; all over the plush seat of our slightly used twin six Packard touring car.”
Westy said, “You mean slightly abused. What shall we do? Wake him up? Get hold of his neck, will you, and haul him out?”
We hauled him out but it didn’t do any good.
“Roll him up the aisle,” I said.
We tried that and it didn’t do any good.
“You get hold of his legs,” Westy said, “and I’ll get hold of his neck and we’ll swing him like a hammock.”
“That only rocks him to sleep more,” I said. “There’s nothing to do but wait for the next earthquake.”
“That may be a hundred years,” Westy said. “Maybe when we move the car across Willow Place he’ll wake up. We’ll tell Mr. Jenson to give it a good hard bump.”
“That will be next Saturday,” I said. “Maybe if the kid were only awake he could invent a way to wake himself up.”
“Let’s try once more,” I said. “Scouts never give up.”
“They never wake up, you mean,” Westy said.
“You don’t call this a scout, do you?” I asked him. “If he is he ought to be in the dormouse patrol. They’re always supposed to be asleep.”
“If we get him started once,” Westy said, “there’ll be an epidemic of scouting up in the Willisville Home. It’s the only kind of an epidemic they haven’t had up there.”
I began poking him and shouting, “Wake up, inventor, Skyhigh Sam is waiting to shoot you through his new patented million dollar cannon.”
Pretty soon he opened one eye and shut it again. “If he opens it again prop it open,” I said. “Pull on his leg, that’s right.”
After a while we brought him to, little by little.
I said, “Did you have a good sleep? Sleepy Hollow hasn’t got anything on you. Get up and eat. Don’t you want to go and see Recorder Van Wort? He’s the bandit that takes all the money away from automobile speeders that come here with New York licenses. He lives in a cave in the Court House.”
He said, “Where’s my matches?”
I said, “Never mind, after this we’re going to have you carry a gasoline torch to light you to bed when you sleep in cotton waste. Stand up and pull your belt down from your neck. Here, pull your jacket down, too. Now you look like the Wayhighman of Willisville. If Skyhigh Sam could see you now he’d go and invent a moving stairway for the equator just for spite. Are you hungry?”
He wasn’t exactly hungry, but he drank two cups of coffee and ate three boiled eggs from Tony’s just to show he wasn’t mad. Then he was ready to go after the bandits.
“What would they do if we jumped our patrol?” I asked Westy.
He said, “You mean parole. I suppose they’d jump after us.”
I said, “I wouldn’t jump it. I’d scout pace it if I did anything.”
He said, “The Bridgeboro Record will have the whole thing to-night. I bet they have me down as Roy Martin and you as Westy Blakeley. That’s the way they usually do.”
The kid said, “Are we going to see that bandit? Has he got a sword?”
I said, “You stick to us and maybe you’ll grow up to be a nice train robber.”
He said, “We’ll rob mail cars, hey?”
“Sure,” I said, “and female cars, too. All kinds, take your pick.”
He said, “If we live on that car can I be the captain of it?”
I said, “You can be the brakeman. That’s the man that breaks all the windows.”
“If Mrs. Carlson, from the Home, comes we’ll take her a prisoner, hey?” he said.
Poor little kid, I felt sorry for him because he didn’t seem to think he was ever going back to the Home, and all the while we knew he’d have to. It made us feel kind of mean.
I said, “I never started a world war against a Boys’ Home, inventor, but now that we’re friends we’ll stay friends, you can bet.”
“Maybe I’ll give you that box of matches,” he said.
I said, “Thanks. Give me the book, too, and we’ll start a bonfire.”
He said, “We’ll blow up that Court House.”
I said, “We’re more likely to get blown up ourselves when we get there if we don’t hustle.”
It was about quarter to ten and we were on our way to the Court House. It seemed awful funny to be away from school; there weren’t any fellows around at all. The rest of the scouts in our troop were all in school.
I said to Westy, “If we don’t have to go to the penitentiary, maybe we’ll be out in time to go to school this afternoon—out of the frying pan into the fire.”
“I haven’t given up hope of the penitentiary,” Westy said.
“While there’s life there’s soap,” I said. “We’ll have to get our mothers to write us notes to our teachers, saying we had to stay away on account of being accused of a crime, and that we’ll try not to be late the next time.”
“What do you mean? The next time we commit a crime?” he wanted to know.
I said, “The next time I’m out on patrol—I mean parole—I hope it will be on a Wednesday on account of matinee at the Lyric.”
The inventor said, “I haven’t got any mother, so maybe if I have to have a letter maybe one of your mothers will write it, hey?”
Gee whiz, I just looked at Westy and he just kind of looked at me, but neither one of us said anything.
“Don’t you worry, inventor,” I said; “we’ve got mothers enough to go round; never you mind.”
He said, “Maybe if they don’t like me they wouldn’t give me a letter, hey? Maybe they won’t.”
Now comes the big court scene. It’s short, that’s one good thing. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I guess that’s why they called it a hearing. No wonder you couldn’t hear it, because there wasn’t anything to hear.
Recorder Van Wort sat behind a desk up on a platform and he was hammering with a mallet. He said everybody should keep still.
I whispered to Westy, “That’s a good idea, having that mallet. I think I’ll get one for our patrol meetings.”
“You’d better get an ax,” he said, under his breath.
Recorder Van Wort was making a man pay twenty-five dollars for stopping his automobile in the wrong place in front of a fire hydrant.
I whispered to Westy, “That would be a good place for the inventor to park, in front of a fire hydrant.”
Westy kind of giggled and Recorder Van Wort began pounding with his mallet.
I said, “Keep still; the first thing you know he’ll throw it at you.”
That room was full of people and I could see my father sitting with Mr. Martin. I could see Mr. Slausen, too, sitting on the other side of the room, and Charlie alongside of him. One thing, I was glad Charlie hadn’t run away. But he looked mighty scared and nervous as he sat there. No wonder, because he knew that as soon as we told about seeing him in the garage every one would suspect him. I guess he knew no one would believe him if he denied he had been there. I guess he was afraid of what might happen after Recorder Van Wort got through with us. We weren’t afraid on account of ourselves, but I felt awful sorry for that fellow.
Westy and I and the inventor sat down in the back seat, and it made me feel as if I had failed in arithmetic. That’s what Miss Munson calls a punishment. Gee whiz, in the movies that’s the seat I like best. Mr. Ellsworth came over and spoke to us, very serious. He didn’t know the kid was with us. I guess he couldn’t see him on account of not having a telescope. In the seat the poor little kid looked about as big as Bridgeboro on the map of the world.
Mr. Ellsworth whispered, “Boys, you mustn’t be afraid; you mustn’t be afraid of the recorder——”
I said, “Do you think I’m afraid of him just because he’s got a mallet? I should worry. I’m sorry I didn’t wear my belt-ax.”
He didn’t laugh, he just put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Your fathers and I have trusted you. We know that you’re not guilty——”
“Yes, and you think you know who is,” Westy whispered.
“Sh-h,” I said.
“You boys, you scouts, wouldn’t shield a guilty man?” Mr. Ellsworth whispered.
I had to laugh when I thought of the inventor as a man.
Mr. Ellsworth whispered, “You needn’t be afraid, just tell the truth. Tell why you were there and who you saw, if anybody, and—and—if it should appear that that person——”
Just then he had to stop whispering on account of the judge pounding with his mallet. Anyway, from what he said I knew that they were trying to wish that fire on Charlie Slausen, and I knew that poor fellow would be in a dickens of a fix when they began to ask him a lot of questions. Maybe they couldn’t send him to jail yet, but, anyway, they could hold him for the grand jury. Gee, I wouldn’t want to be held for that jury, I don’t care how grand it is. One thing, if they found out Charlie was in there and knew that there were match ends near the cotton waste, that would look pretty bad for him, because he knew enough about that place not to throw match ends into the cotton waste.
I guess it was about ten minutes before our case was called, because Judge Van Wort delivered a lecture and told all about what he was going to do to people who broke the law. He said he was going to put a stop to a lot of things. I whispered to Westy that he ought to be on the High School nine, he was such a good shortstop.
Pretty soon, oh, boy, he said something to Jack Morse (he’s a cop), and Mr. Morse called out:
“Wesleigh Martin and Roy Blakeley! Step down.”
Gee whiz, then I felt kind of nervous. I knew everybody was looking at us. I could just feel my father looking at me. Recorder Van Wort, he didn’t seem to care; he just started reading some papers.
“Come ahead,” I whispered to the kid; “nobody’s going to hurt you.” He looked awful funny and little as he went down front with Westy and me.
There were a couple of cops down there in front of the desk. Mr. Brownell was down there, too. He’s public persecutor, or whatever they call him. His son’s in my class. The recorder just kept on reading the papers while we all stood there. The kid was good and scared, I guess.
Pretty soon the recorder laid down the papers and said, “Are you Roy Blakeley?”
I said, “Yes, sir.” Gee, I was trembling a little.
Then he said, “Are you Wesleigh Martin?”
Westy said, “Yes, sir.”
Then he looked kind of funny and he said. “And who is this boy?”
I was kind of nervous, all right, but I spoke up. I said, “This is the one who set fire to Mr. Slausen’s repair shop. He didn’t do it on purpose, so——”
The judge said, “What do you mean?”
I pulled out of my pocket the big box of matches and the book about Sam and his submarine, and I laid them on the judge’s desk. All around I could just kind of feel people staring and moving in their seats.
I said, “We found traces of him in our car—we found match ends and cigarettes. And we tracked him to Mr. Slausen’s shop.”
“So that’s what you were doing there, eh?” Mr. Brownell said.
The judge just said, “Let him tell his story.” I said, “We tracked him to the shop and from there we tracked him to the river. We found him asleep in the shack down there. That big box of matches belongs to him, so does the book. He admits he fell asleep in the shop, on the cotton waste, and he struck a match there——”
“Do I have to get hung?” the poor little kid cried.
I said, “He comes from the Willisville Home. He’s the kid they’ve been offering three hundred dollars’ reward for, but he’s worth more than that, that’s one sure thing——”
Then everybody began to laugh and the judge started pounding with his mallet. He said, to the kid, “Is all this true?”
“And I’m going to invent a submarine and get a thousand dollars,” the kid piped up. “These boys said I could be their partner.”
Then the judge started to ask him questions, nice and kind sort of, so as not to scare him. And everybody craned their necks and listened. I could see Charlie Slausen and he was smiling; he smiled right straight at me. I guess he saw the worst was over now, no matter what happened.
Gee whiz, nobody could say they didn’t believe that little fellow. He didn’t know how to lie, and besides he didn’t even seem to know it was wrong what he had done. So that way the judge got out of him the whole story, how he had bunked under Tony’s Lunch Wagon and all. The kid said, “So now can I be a bandit?”
The judge just said, “Well, here’s the cause of the fire, and that’s all there is to it.”
I said, “And if Chief O’Day had started to find out the way we did, he’d have been the one to discover it instead of us. You have to look for signs before you look for people. You’re supposed to make up your mind when you get through and not before you start.”
The judge said, kind of laughing, “But you must remember the chief isn’t a boy scout, so you’ll have to forgive him. And you boys will get three hundred dollars, it seems.”
“A lot we care about that,” I said. “We want this little fellow to stay with us. Findings is keepings; everybody knows that’s the rule. We’ve got a lot of room up at our house. I should worry about three hundred dollars. And we’ve got a private alarm and fire extinguishers and everything, so it’s all right. And my sister likes kids, too, but she hates caterpillars. Most everything I want——”
Good night, that was as far as I got. All of a sudden, who should I see but my mother, right there, putting her arms around me, and all that, and giving the inventor a good hug. She said he should go home with her and be a bandit—that’s just what she said. Gee whiz, I guess the kid thought a cyclone struck him.
Mr. Brownell said, “Look out for the matches.”
My mother said, “He shall have an electric light.”
“Will it have a handle to turn it out?” the kid piped up.
The judge said he didn’t know but he would remand (that means put) the inventor in the custody of my mother till they heard from the Home. Gee whiz, I never even knew my mother was there until that minute.
The kid said to my mother, “And I’ll take you in my new car down in the field.”
“Good night,” I said to Westy; “the bandit has taken the car.”
Outside a whole lot of people crowded around and wanted to get a look at the inventor. He was some famous inventor, all right. He was clutching his box of matches in one hand and Submarine Sam in the other, and he looked about as big as a speck. My father was there, and, oh, gee, but he looked happy. He said, “We’d have a famous inventor and a famous discoverer in the house.” Maybe he meant my mother, hey?
There were a lot of ladies around our auto, and gee, but that old Cadillac looked big on account of the inventor looking so little. He sat in the middle of the back seat with my mother. Everybody was crazy about him. That’s the way it is with girls—they’re crazy about people who have had adventures.
I said to Westy, “The inventor started as a poor boy under Tony’s Lunch Wagon, and now look, he has the world at his feet. They go crazy about bandits.”
“Look,” Westy whispered to me.
I was just going to step into the car when I looked where he pointed, and there, standing all by himself, quite a ways off, was Charlie Slausen. He looked as if maybe he was waiting to speak to us, only didn’t dare to come up where all the people were.
“Go ahead,” I said to our chauffeur; “we’ll walk up. You’ve got a heavy enough load with the inventor.”
After the car had started off we went over to where Charlie was standing. He looked awful funny, his eyes kind of, I don’t know——
I said, “Well, what they don’t know won’t hurt them. We didn’t get you in dutch, did we? Didn’t I tell you to leave it to us?”
He just began patting me on the shoulder and he kind of put his other arm around Westy’s shoulder.
“We were lucky they didn’t ask us anything more,” Westy said.
I said, “We’re always lucky, we are. We were born on the seventh day of the seventh month, and we always eat seven helpings of dessert.”
He started across the way with his arms over our shoulders, and, gee whiz, we had to go.
“Where are we going?” Westy wanted to know.
“We’re going to get those sodas,” Charlie said. “How about it?”
“Nobody can stand up and say he ever saw me refuse a soda,” I said.
So that’s the story of how the inventor came into our young lives, matches, Submarine Sam and all. He gave up smoking the day after he started it; I guess it interfered with his inventions. Anyway, it was only an experiment, that’s what my father says, and he says all great inventors have to make experiments. His right name that we got from the Home was Alexis Alexander Sparks. It was so long that we decided to cut it up and use it in pieces. My mother called him Alexis, my sister called him Al, Harry Domicile called him Madam X, and most of the troop called him Sparksey. Mr. Ellsworth called him A.A.S.—always after submarines. My mother is a matron of that Home and she fixed it so we could send him back when we wanted to. But we never wanted to. The only person in Bridgeboro who calls him by his full name is Minerva Skybrow, because it reminds her of the history of Greece. Gee whiz, I don’t want to be reminded about that. History and practical bookkeeping—good night. I like unpractical bookkeeping better. Anyway, Alexander the Great conquered Bridgeboro, and as long as we’re talking about wars and things, I’ll tell you about the Siege of Cat-tail Marsh. That’s what comes next, and you don’t get it in school. Don’t you care.
Now before I tell you about the horrible things that happened in our innocent young lives I’ll get rid of the two other patrols in our troop so we won’t have to be bothered with them. One patrol is enough, that’s what I say. Especially the Silver Fox Patrol—that’s mine. But one scout from the raving Ravens we got wished on us and that was Pee-wee Harris. I guess you know him. If you don’t you’re lucky.
But first I have to get you across Willow Place over to the Sneezenbunker land. The next Saturday Mr. Jenson’s locomotive gave our car another shove right across where the repair shop had stood, and it went across Willow Place fine and dandy, because we had dug the old tracks out and sort of cleared the way. Mr. Jenson said he wouldn’t push the car any further because he thought the trestle over the marsh wasn’t safe. He said he wasn’t going to take any chances. We said, “All right, every little bit counts.” So there was our home sweet home on the Sneezenbunker land, and the Sneezenbunkers didn’t care, because there weren’t any of them any more anyway. They were all dead. The Trust Company owns that land, and I said I guessed they’d trust us there because that was their business. They told my father it would be all right. But, gee whiz, we wanted to get down by the river. I said, “Foiled again, but what care we? We’ll stay here till something happens.”
The next thing that happened the Ravens and the Elks (they’ve got forty-two merit badges, the Elks), they started up to Temple Camp; that’s where we always go in the summer. My patrol decided to stay home until August, anyway, and camp in the old car and try to get it moved down to the river. Pee-wee is in the Ravens, but he’s got about as much patrol spirit as a stray cat. He belongs everywhere, especially where there are eats. No one patrol can hold that kid. He said he was going to stay with us.
I said, “You can’t do that on account of your patrol; they’ll have to vote on it.”
They voted on it all right, and every single one of them voted for him to stay. Elected by a large unanimity, hey? It wasn’t a vote; it was a census.
I said, “What do you fellows think the Silver Fox Patrol is? A Salvation Army Home? Haven’t we got enough on our hands with Alexander the Great?”
That’s all they cared about. Jiminies, my patrol is easy.
So the ones that were left in Bridgeboro were the following, only they weren’t much of a following, because every one of them goes his own way:
First comes me—I mean I—correct. I’m patrol leader. If you want to know what I look like, look on the cover of this book. Maybe you think I’m always happy like that, but, believe me, if you had to manage that bunch you’d look sad. That picture was taken just after I got through subduing a strawberry sundae. Life is not all joy, quoth he; that’s what I say.
If I should die Westy Martin would inherit my throne. He’s kind of sober, that fellow is. He’s got eleven merit badges. He’s assistant. Next comes Dorry Benton. I wouldn’t say anything against him only he’s very saving. He does six good turns every Monday, and then he doesn’t have to bother for the rest of the week. His favorite fruit is mashed potatoes. Next comes Huntley Manners—Bad Manners, that’s what we call him. He’s got the bronze cross. They’ve got a parrot up at his house. Gee whiz, I guess the parrot doesn’t get a chance to talk much with him there. Then comes Charlie Seabury. Then comes Brick Warner, he’s got red hair. Ralph Warner is his brother—it isn’t his fault. They’re twins. Last but not least comes Alexis Alexander Sparks, S. B.—scout bandit.
Then comes Pee-wee Harris, last but the most of all. But he isn’t in my patrol. Thank goodness for that.
So now you know the brave warriors who stood the Siege of Cat-tail Marsh and took possession of the Bridgeboro River. You can just imagine us sitting there in the car, after the other two patrols have started for camp. Little we knew what was going to happen. And a lot we cared.
We had some fun in that car while it was on the Sneezenbunker land, and two or three of the fellows said maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to keep it there. That was because it wasn’t so far from Bennett’s. But most of them said it was too near the center of civilization. Gee whiz, that was the first time I ever heard anybody call Main Street, Bridgeboro, the center of civilization.
I said, “I vote for Van Schlessenhoff’s field down near the river.”
Dorry Benton said, “I vote for it, too. But how are we going to get the car down there? That’s the question.”
“We can carry it by a vote,” Hunt Manners said.
“We ought to be able to carry a vote, we’ve got two platforms,” I told him.
Westy said, “Maybe if Mr. Jenson thinks the old trestle isn’t strong enough, still he might be willing to give the car a start if we’re not in it. It isn’t the car he’s thinking about, it’s we fellows. Then we can walk down afterwards.”
Gee whiz, I had never thought of that before. We got kind of used to having our meeting place there on the Sneezenbunker land, and it wasn’t so bad. But now that we got to thinking about the river, good night, we couldn’t get the idea out of our heads.
I said, “Let’s go down to the river and look around and decide how we’ll have things down there, in case we can get the car moved. Maybe we can use the shack where we found the inventor, as a kind of a branch headquarters.”
“Can we catch fish down at that river?” the kid wanted to know.
I told him, “Sure, we can catch canned salmon and fishballs and baseballs and everything. When we go down there we’ll let the fish know we’re coming, we’ll drop them a line.”
So then we all started along the tracks down to the river to kind of look around down there and make plans.
I said, “I hope the field is still down there; I hope Mr. Van Schlessenhoff didn’t put it in the market. Anyway, the river won’t be there.”
“What are you talking about?” Pee-wee yelled..
“I’m talking about whether ice cream should be fried or roasted,” I said.
“You’re crazy,” he shouted.
“I admit it,” I told him. “If I wasn’t I wouldn’t be talking to you.”
“Why won’t the river be there?” he began shouting.
“Because it flows past Bridgeboro,” I told him. “Did you ever hear of a river staying in one place? It takes an east-westerly course and flows into New York Bay. You learn that in the third grade.”
“You’re so smart—where does it rise?” he yelled.
I said, “It rises in the morning, that’s more than you do.”
“What do you mean, in the morning?” he fairly yelled.
“In the northwestern part of the morning,” I said. “That’s why a river has a bed. You rise from your bed, don’t you? Posilutely. That shows your ignorance. I suppose you don’t even know that Great Neck is south of Rubber Neck.”
“You’re crazy!” he yelled. “You think you’re funny, don’t you?”
Gee whiz, that’s my favorite outdoor sport, jollying Pee-wee.
Now that afternoon that we followed the tracks down to the river it wasn’t so easy as it was on that Saturday that Mr. Ellsworth went with us, nor on that Sunday that Westy and I followed the old rails down there, tracking the inventor. The reason for that was that it was a couple of months later, and a couple of months make a big difference with cat-tails, because they grow even faster than cats. Now pretty soon you’ll see how the cat-tails turned out to be tales of adventure—you just wait and see.
That Saturday when we first followed the old tracks across the marsh the cat-tails were not so high and we could see, kind of, how the trestle was built underneath the tracks. The tracks were just high enough to be out of the marsh. And the cat-tails were just a little above the tracks. They grow awful thick, cat-tails do. I know all about them, because we pick them and dry them and sell them for punk sticks to drive mosquitoes away. We get a nickel a bunch for them—no war tax.
Now where the old tracks go across the marsh they are on a wooden trestle part way, and the rest of the way the trestle is sort of solid. Some places you can look down and see the marsh underneath and some places it’s solid so you can’t do that. It’s a kind of a ramshackle thing, because it was never used for passengers, but only to haul lumber and stuff that came up the river in scows and barges.
Even in the beginning I guess the whole thing was just kind of thrown together. Anyway, the old tracks were all half rusted away. The old line was just about good enough to support that old-fashioned car of ours and that’s about all, except in the place where the trestle was solid; I guess it was stronger there. Anyway, the mosquitoes down there are strong enough. Don’t say a word. They carry machine guns, those mosquitoes. But in the field close to the river it’s dandy.
So now I’m going to start another chapter. I bet you think the trestle is going to break down under our car—I bet you’re hoping it will.
Just you wait.
The afternoon that I’m telling you about was a couple of weeks after the other two patrols went up to Temple Camp. They went on the Fourth of July. They went off on the Fourth, that’s what we said.
By that time the cat-tails down in the marsh were all grown up thick and tall, and when we got past the Sneezenbunker land where the marsh begins, we had to just push our way through them because the trestle was sort of buried in them. They were so tall that they were up to our heads. Where the trestle was open they grew right up between the tracks, and we had to watch where we were going to keep from walking off the trestle.
Now that framework trestle ran down about as far as the middle of the marsh, where the marsh was deepest, and there the wood under the tracks was solid. There was marshy stuff, like moss, kind of, growing between the cracks in the boards, and the cat-tails were close in all around so we could hardly see what was under us. It was like that for maybe five hundred feet or so, and then the tracks were on a trestle again till they ran onto the solid land of Van Schlessenhoff’s field.
We spent a couple of hours down there in Van Schlessenhoff’s field, digging the earth away from the old tracks. Now those tracks ended right close to the river.
But we didn’t want the car to go quite as far as that, so we spent the rest of the day fixing up a kind of a thing to stop the car. We dug holes and planted big heavy beams, and then put other beams down slantingways, just the way bumpers are built in the terminal of the railroad.
The next afternoon we waited for the milk train. I said to Mr. Jenson, “We’ve got the tracks all cleared and dug out for our car and we want you to give it a shove,” I said. “We built a bumper down by the river so as to be sure the car will stop if the brakes don’t work, because the brakes are not much good.”
He said, “Suppose the trestle collapses?”
I said, “That’s up to us. We’ll stay off the car till it stops. Safety first. If we lose the car it will be our fault and we won’t blame you.”
He said, “I haven’t got much faith in that old trestle. It’s all up and down like a scenic railroad in an amusement park. It’s all spongy underneath it.”
I said, “But we’ll promise to stay off the car till it stops.”
He said, “Well, and suppose the marsh should flood like it always does in the summer. What then? You’ll be under water.”
“We’ll shut the windows and the doors,” Alexis piped up; “and we’ll have a tube going up to the top.”
“Sure,” I said, “we’ll take a couple of tubes of tooth paste with us.”
“Twenty thousand leagues under the marsh,” Charlie Seabury shouted.
I said, “When we once get past the marsh everything will be all right. The tracks go a little up hill through the field, and that field is never flooded. We’ll be high and dry there.”
“It was under water three years ago in the spring freshets,” Mr. Jenson said.
“It wasn’t up to our knees,” Westy told him. “And it went down in a couple of days.”
I said, “We should worry about Van Schlessenhoff’s field being flooded. The water would never come up to the floor of the car anyway. Besides, the freshets aren’t as fresh as they used to be. They wouldn’t put anything like that over on us.”
Mr. Jenson just laughed and he said, “They’d put it over you because you’d be underneath. There are a lot of floods up the line this summer.”
“Let them stay there,” I said. “Only will you please give our car a shove for us?”
Then we all started to shout, “Ah, please, Mr. Jenson.” “Go ahead, Mr. Jenson.” “We’ll do something for you some day, Mr. Jenson.”
He just sat there in the window of his locomotive kind of laughing, as if he couldn’t make up his mind. We kept shouting at him good and loud, because the men were making so much racket loading milk cans onto the train.
After a while he said, “Well, if you’ll promise not to yell if the trestle breaks down, and if you’ll stay off the car till it stops, I’ll give it a shove for you.”
I said, “Give it a good shove so it will go all the way. We built a bumper down there to stop it, so it’s all right.”
He said, “Well, we won’t trust too much to the bumper. If your car goes into the river, that’s an end of it.”
“We’ll start a mermaid patrol,” Pee-wee shouted.
So then Mr. Jenson sent a brakeman over to see if the brakes on the car were any good. We knew they were kind of broken; I guess that’s why they called them brakes. We couldn’t tell whether they’d stop the car, because the car was already stopped. We’d have to start it to find out whether they’d stop it. The brakeman said maybe they’d work all right on slight momentum.
“Slight momentum—what’s that?” Pee-wee shouted.
“It’s Latin for going slow,” I told him; “it’s the way your tongue goes—not.”
“Slight momentum means not much headway,” Westy said. Some highbrow.
I said, “If it means going slow I should think it would be footway and not headway.”
“Maybe it will be downway instead of upway,” Dorry Benton said.
“We should worry,” I told him. “We’ll never save any money with the car as near Bennett’s as this.”
Westy said, “Nothing ventured, nothing had.”
“All right,” we all shouted, “let’s go!”
So that was the beginning of the big adventure. Before so very long we had Alice in Wonderland tearing her hair from jealousy. We had Submarine Sam beaten twenty ways. We had the Arabian Nights knocked out in the first inning. We were lost, strayed or stolen. Also mislaid, misled, mishapped, misguided, mistaken and a few other things. Anyway, we were missed.