Read Ebook: Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts by Bailey Roy Rutherford

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Ebook has 667 lines and 33368 words, and 14 pages

"Suddenly up went the silver trumpets, and the trumpeters blew a mighty blast. Let me tell you, it was enough to send the shivers down your spine, that trumpet call was! It seemed as if I never had climbed a longer flight of steps. But at last I found myself bowing before the King and Queen. The King, who wore a brand new uniform, just like this one I have on, beckoned a herald to his side.

"'Now hark to his words,' he said to me, 'and say if he speaks the truth.' And then the herald read aloud from a long white scroll, with scarlet seals on it, the story of how I had saved the young chap from the chariot that noon, and all about the cabin boy and the fat old banker I'd helped on my way home!

"'Does the herald speak truly?' asked the Borderland King. And all the rest strained their ears for my answer.

"'Sure pop, Your Majesty!' I replied before I knew what I was saying. At that he pulled from his finger a new signet ring, inked it with some magic ink, and motioned for me to hold out my right hand. How do I know it was magic ink? Why, it must have been, for the print it made has never faded. Look!"

Bob and Betty looked at the little scout's right hand, which he held up again like the crossing policeman downtown. And this is what they saw:

"'Hold it up,' commanded the King, 'where all can see!' And then the trumpets sounded again.

"'Long live Colonel Sure Pop, the Safety Scout!' cried the herald. The court wizard stepped forward, waved his hand and mumbled a few magic words over me, and--what do you think!--I found myself dressed in a brand new scouting uniform, the only one just like the King's!"

ADVENTURE NUMBER THREE

THE WOMAN AND THE WIZARD

Sure Pop, the Safety Scout, drew a long breath and watched the automobiles whirling recklessly down the busy street. "But say, haven't you twins had enough stories for one day?"

"Not much we haven't! What did the King do next?"

No doubt about the twins' being thirsty for adventure! Sure Pop smiled.

"Well, a single wave of the King's hand dismissed his people. Looking very sorrowful, he opened the great book in which he keeps the record of everything that happens over here in the New World.

"I looked where he pointed, and trembled. For this was what I read:

"'UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

'Fathers and mothers and boys and girls killed by accidents last year.... 'Injured, blinded, crippled, and maimed...'

"He ran his finger across the page to the totals, and I saw that the first total ran clear up into the thousands--and the second one into the millions!

"'Colonel Sure Pop,' said the King, 'if only the thought you put into the mind of that lad you saved this noon, might be put into the mind of all America!'

"'Your Majesty means--Safety First?' I asked.

"The King nodded. 'All the lives lost in all our battles,' he said grimly, 'are but a drop in the sea as compared with the slaughter of a single year in a single land!'

"'Oh, Your Majesty, let me go and teach them Safety First--now, before another life is thrown away!'

"'No, Colonel. Not yet. The time is not yet ripe. But--perhaps we can make a beginning. Come to me again tomorrow night, at midnight, and we shall see.'

"The next night I went to the throne room and found the King studying a big map. He had a red pencil and a blue one in his hand, and he pointed to a lot of red rings he had drawn on the map.

"'Those,' he told me, 'are America's great mills. In them and the other factories, thousands upon thousands of workmen are killed by accident every year--by accident, Colonel, not in battle.

"That was too much for me. I pleaded with him to let me come straight to America and help end that awful suffering. But the King shook his head.

"'The more haste, the less speed, Colonel. Before you can help America, you must help yourself; and the quickest way to do that is first to teach Safety to our own people. Let me see you win your spurs here in the Borderland, and then--to America you go!'

"'Teach Safety to our own people?' I repeated, a bit puzzled. 'How ought I to go about it, Sire?'

"'Go through all the Borderland,' said the King, 'and muster an army of Safety Scouts. Train them to know signs that spell DANGER, as an Indian scout reads the signs of the trail. Teach them to report every danger signal they see--and they will teach their neighbors, and so the knowledge will spread. But above all, be sure your Safety Scouts are well chosen.'

"'But how?' I asked. 'Shall I pick out wise people?'

"'Colonel of the Scouts,' said the King, shrewdly, 'the wisest are not always the safest. Have you never thought why it is "bad luck to go under a ladder"?'

"'Never,' I owned up. 'I've always thought of it as just a proverb.'

"'True. But proverbs without reason would be like trees without roots. Stop and think: sometimes a ladder breaks or slips, which is bad for the climber--and bad for any one who happens to be under that ladder just then. And sometimes a painter's heavy paintpot falls--and woe to him who walks under the ladder then, be he the wisest man in the kingdom. Now go, and one moon from tonight bring me a full regiment of Safety Scouts.'

"So out through the Borderland I went, saying over and over to myself, 'It is bad luck to go under a ladder,' and waiting for the King's meaning to be made plain.

"First I went to the home of a great wizard, the wisest man in the Borderland. As I neared the house, the door opened and the wizard came out, a heavy book of wisdom under his arm.

"He had a long black pipe in his mouth. Pulling out a match, he lighted his pipe, threw the burning match over his shoulder, and hurried on toward the city.

"I started to run after him, when a flicker of light caught my eye. There in the straw that littered the roots of the ivy vines by the steps, a little tongue of flame was lapping up the tangle of leaves!"

Bob jumped to his feet as if he had heard the clang of a fire bell. "Good enough for him, the old fossil! Did it burn his house down?"

"Came mighty near it," said Sure Pop, looking at the scars on his hands. "He had a sick wife in there all alone, and if I hadn't happened along just then--

"Well, anyway," he went on cheerfully, "I got the fire out at last. And the King's meaning was made plain--it is one thing to have wisdom and another thing to use it. So I didn't ask the wizard to join the Safety Scouts, after all."

"Well, the next idea I had was to ask mothers, for mothers give up much of their time, anyhow, to keeping children out of harm's way. I found one whose house looked so trim and neat, and her children so clean and happy, that I had almost made up my mind to invite her to join--when my eye fell on a shining butcher knife hanging beside the kitchen table, where even the baby could reach it without half trying.

"And that wasn't all I saw. There was a saucer of fly poison on the window sill! Then I saw the mother starting to carry out a pail of water to scrub the steps, when the brass knocker on the door gave a thump, and she left that hot water right there in the middle of the floor while she talked to a peddler!

"What's a skull and crossbones, Sure Pop?" broke in Betty.

"Poison sign!" explained Bob, shortly. "Don't interrupt! Go on, Sure Pop!"

"Like a flash," said Sure Pop, "I bounded to the baby's side and snatched the bottle away. I tell you, I did some earnest thinking as I left that house. I realized that it would never do to ask that mother to join our army of Safety Scouts, for until she herself had formed the Safety habit, she could hardly be expected to teach Safety to others. The adventure of the baby and the poison bottle had opened my eyes to the real meaning of the King's words about finding Scouts who could read the little signs that spell DANGER.

"But how can they be made different in shape?" asked Betty. "What shape, Sure Pop?"

"Three-cornered, probably. That certainly would be a life-saving law, if he could only get it passed. Just think! There were several thousand deaths in the United States last year from that one cause alone--just from mistaking bottles of poison for other medicine."

"Betty, you've hit the nail right on the head. Now that's why we must fix things so safety won't depend on level heads or time to think. The danger signal must pop right into our heads from force of habit. The sooner American boys and girls--yes, and the grown-ups, too--get the Safety habit, the sooner 'Safety First' will change from phrase into fact.

ADVENTURE NUMBER FOUR

THE PERSISTENT PIGMY

"Say, Sure Pop!" burst out Bob, as the Safety Scout paused in his story. "A whole regiment--did you realize that was a lot of Scouts to get together in one month?"

"Sure--sure pop!" Bob broke in again. "But how did you ever get a whole regiment together in one month? You simply couldn't disappoint the King, you know."

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