CHAPTER XXVII—ON OUR WAY
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.”