CHAPTER IX—MILITARY PLANS
The man put one foot up on the step of the van and said, “Wall, yer see he owns the Fair Grounds. Thar was a crew uv these here scout kids camping over in the grove to one side of it, and not doin’ no manner of harm, I reckon.”
“That’s one good thing about us, we never do any harm,” Pee-wee piped up.
“Wherever they camp the violets spring up,” Rossie said.
“Sure, and dandelions and four-leaf clovers, too,” the kid shouted.
The man said, “Wall, naow, them kids wasn’ doin’ no manner uv harm, just cookin’ and eatin’——”
“Gee whiz, they have to do that!” Pee-wee told him. “That’s one thing about scouts, they always eat.”
“Most always,” Harry said.
“En’ nothin’ would do but he must chase ’em off,” the man said. “Some uv them men who wuz interested in the kids made a rumpus about it, but it weren’t no good; old Grump said off they must go, and off they went. I wuz sorry ter see it too, hanged if I weren’t, because they’re a bright, clever lot, them youngsters. Oft times when I’d go inter th’ Cross-roads with my old mare marketin’, there they’d be in th’ grove right alongside th’ road, sprawlin’ about and onct, when I come away abaout five o’clock in the mornin’, thar they were en’ give my old mare a drink out uv th’ spring.”
“Up early, hey?” Harry said.
“Naow, haow is them kids goin’ ter hinder th’ reunion? That’s what I say. Poked away off in th’ grove right on ter th’ end of the grounds. But the ole major, he says they was nuthin’ but a lot uv loafers; wanted to know what good they ever done. Why, Lor’ bless me, if he’d a made friends with ’em they might uv helped in the reunion, mightn’t they?... Wall, I guess he wuz all piffed abaout the show not bein’ able to get there. Trams east of th’ Cross-roads is runnin’ all right, but out this way thar ain’t been a wheel movin’ in a week, ’cept express trains from the east. If I was you fellers I wouldn’ go a couple of dozen miles out of my way over a pile of rocks what they call by the name of a road, I wouldn’, jus ter do a favor for an old grizzly bear, I wouldn’. Not me.”
Gee whiz, Mr. Abbington looked kind of anxious, because Harry just sat there on the seat whistling to himself as if he were thinking. The rest of us were all standing around.
Brent said, “Well, as long as old Grump is a stickler on military training, what do you say we take Grumpy’s Cross-roads right under his very nose? We’ll make our approach from the west, with our dry-goods delivery van and three five-passenger touring cars. General Harris will have charge of the Commissary. First, the signal corps will communicate with the boy scouts of Grumpy’s Cross-roads and advise them that reenforcements are on the way—in a dry-goods van and three touring cars. The grove on the edge of the parade grounds will be in our hands before night. We’ll have the Civil War veterans down on their knees begging for an armistice.”
“Yes, and maybe—maybe—old Major Grumpy will have to go and live in a castle in Holland, hey?” Pee-wee yelled.
Honest, isn’t that kid a scream?