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Read Ebook: Roy Blakeley: Lost Strayed or Stolen by Fitzhugh Percy Keese Hastings Howard L Howard Livingston Illustrator
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Ebook has 1036 lines and 42842 words, and 21 pages
Ralph Warner , he said, "I promised my mother I'd never run away from home."
"That's a teckinality," Pee-wee shouted; "they use those in courts."
"How are we going to move, that's what I'd like to know?" Dorry Benton shouted.
"Maybe Mr. Bennett will be able to give us a suggestion," the kid shouted.
"There you go again," I told him. "Will you forget about Bennett's and get down to business? How are we going to get this meeting place over to Van Schlessenhoff's field?"
"I was the one who made him say all right!" the kid piped up. "I made him laugh!"
"You're enough to make a weeping willow laugh," I told him. "You secured the field and it's nearly a half a mile away."
"All we've got to do is to get the car there," he said.
"Sure, that's all," I told him.
"The track is good," Westy said.
"How about motive power?" Doc wanted to know.
"How about which?" they all shouted.
I said, "If you don't keep still a minute, I'll make a couple of motions and you'll land under one of the seats. I want suggestions. If we can only manage to get this old car across Willow Place, the rest will be easy. It's down hill all the way across the Sneezenbunker land right down to the marsh. If we get her as far as the marsh we'll get her across all right."
"The track down there wouldn't hold a locomotive," Westy said.
"We should worry about a locomotive," I told him; "there are other ways. But how are we going to get her by Tony's? And how about Slausen's on Willow Place? Do you think they're going to get out of the way if we toot a horn? Tony's lunch wagon is all boarded up underneath, and you know what an ugly old grouch he is."
"Diplomacy is what governments do," Connie Bennett said. "Do you mean to say that England would do anything for the United States just because we bought a frankfurter for King George?"
"You're crazy!" Pee-wee shot back at him. "Diplomacy is when you're very nice and polite so as to get something you want."
"Like two helpings of dessert," I told him.
"But anyway, I know something better than diplomacy," he shouted; "and that's strategy."
I said, "All right, as long as everybody's shouting at once and we're not getting anywhere, let's go over to Tony's and if we can't dip him maybe we can strat him."
So that's the way it was, the first thing we did to get that car moved was to go over to Tony's and each buy a frankfurter. There were twenty-four of us in there at once. Twenty-four frankfurters are a good many for one fellow--I don't mean for one fellow to eat, but for one fellow to sell.
After that we asked Tony if he would just as soon let us take the boards away from underneath his wagon so that he could move the wagon away from over those old sunken, rusty tracks, just about seven or eight feet or so.
He said, "No mova. Gotta de license. No mova."
Gee whiz, if that's what you call diplomacy, I like arithmetic better, and that isn't saying much.
The next night Mr. Ellsworth came out early from the city so he could follow that track with us over to the river and say if he thought there was any chance of getting the car to the shore.
Tom Slade went with us. Before he was grown up he was in the Elk Patrol, but he's assistant scoutmaster now. He doesn't say much--he's like Pee-wee, only different. He started the Elk Patrol, I started the Silver Foxes, and I'll finish them, too, if they don't look out. Gee, you can't keep that bunch quiet. The Silver Fox Patrol is all right, only it hasn't got any muffler.
Mr. MacKeller went with us, too, that night. He's County Engineer. He's got dandy apple trees up at his house. He went so he could decide if the track was safe over the marsh. Because, gee whiz, we didn't want to break down and have our summer home in among a lot of cat-tails. I hate cats anyway. My sister has two of them.
We all met Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. MacKeller at the station and then we started following the old track. Some places we could hardly find the rails at all. We didn't stop at Tony's because Mr. Ellsworth said buying frankfurters wouldn't do any good. He said Tony's wasn't the worst part of our trouble; he said Slausen's Auto Repair Shop was worse, because it was a regular building.
After we got by Slausen's, the tracks were buried in the earth across the Sneezenbunker land. Some places they were as deep as an inch under the ground. But where that land began to slant down into the marsh the track came out good and plain. Before it got right into the marsh it ran along on an old kind of rotten trestle, and it ran all the way across the marsh on that. I guess that trestle was about three or four feet above the marsh. It's there yet, only you can't see it from the town on account of the high cat-tails all around.
That marsh sort of peters out into Van Schlessenhoff's field, right close to the river, and there the track is flat on the land again and in some places it's away under the grass.
Mr. MacKeller said he didn't know how we'd get the car over there, but he guessed the trestle across the marsh would hold it all right. He said even if it collapsed there probably wouldn't be much damage, only the car would be broken and we'd never get it away from there, and if we camped in it we'd be eaten up by mosquitoes.
"Good night," I told him; "if there's any eating to be done we want to be the ones to do it."
He said that getting Tony's lunch wagon and Slausen's Auto Repair Shop out of the way wasn't the kind of work for an engineer. "That's a job for a strategist," he said.
Honest, I was afraid he'd tumble off the trestle into the marsh.
Westy Martin , he said, "The only way to do is to go to work systematically."
"Sister what?" Pee-wee shouted.
"Systematically," I told him; "that means without any help from our sisters. Now shut up."
"About forty-eight hours and three months," I said. "If you'll give Westy a chance to speak, maybe he'll give us an idea."
We were all walking back up to town after our inspection of the old sunken tracks, and I could see that Westy was kind of silent; I mean I could hear that he was silent; I mean--you know what I mean--I should worry. Maybe you can't hear a fellow being silent. You can never hear Pee-wee being silent, that's one sure thing.
Westy was frowning just as if it was the end of vacation, and I knew he was thinking some thinks.
Pretty soon he said, "The two hardest things are getting the car past Tony's Lunch Wagon and past Slausen's Auto Repair Shop. After that it will be clear sailing--I mean rolling. I say let's have a big scout rally in Downing's lot. Let's have games and races and everything, and ask all the scout troops for miles and miles around, and everybody'll have to be good and hungry."
"That's easy!" Pee-wee shouted.
"Sure," Connie Bennett piped up. "We'll have the East Bridgeboro Troop over because there's a fat scout in that troop."
"I know the one you mean," Hunt Ward said. "He's shaped like a ferry boat."
I said, "Sure, and here's our own dear Pee-wee; he's a whole famine in himself. He wouldn't dare to look Hoover in the face."
"But what's the idea?" Dorry wanted to know.
"You started an argument and you haven't got any premises."
"Some highbrow," I told him.
"Sure, Downing's lot is the premises," our young hero piped up. "Premises is a place."
"I've hiked all over but I've never been to that place," I told him. "Can you get ice cream cones there?"
"Premises is the basis of an argument," Westy said. "You choose your premises and stand on it."
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