X—THE SIGNAL CORPS AT WORK
First, Harry asked if the telegraph office was open, but it wasn’t open. The reason was, because there wasn’t any there. If that place had been a little smaller we might have run over it without seeing it and punctured one of our tires.
Then Brent said, “Well then, you don’t happen to have a nice hill handy, do you? We’ll return it in good condition when we get through with it.”
They didn’t happen to have any hills in that village—they were out of most everything. Brent said he guessed hills were hard to get. So we started off again and hit into the road that went to Grumpy’s Cross-roads. Gee whiz, if Major Grumpy’s temper was anything like that road, good night! That was what we all said. But we should worry about the road as long as we had all our plans made. Harry said the Kluck car could eat up the miles all right, but, oh, Sister Anne, if one of them tried eating the miles on that road it would have indigestion, all right. Even Pee-wee couldn’t have eaten those.
After we had gone maybe about nine or ten miles we came to a dandy; it was a kind of a young mountain. Now, on the way along, we had been making up a message that we would send by smudge signal, because we thought that if those other scouts got it, it would be a feather in their cap and we were thinking about them more than we were about ourselves. Because a scout is brother to every other scout, see?
So this is the smudge signal that we decided to send, and, good night, little we knew what it would lead to. Pretty soon you’ll see the plot beginning to get thicker.
Uncle Tom show will be given as announced.
Deny rumors to contrary.
Boy Scouts of America.
Brent said, “If those kids are up as early as old what’s-his-name said they were, they ought to see a smudge signal up on the top of a hill like this, and they can notify old Grump. Then later we’ll give him the knockout blow. He’ll look like a pancake when we get through with him.”
That started Pee-wee off—the word pancake. “We’ll go riding into the village, and we’ll kind of have our clothes torn, and we’ll look all what-d’ye-call-it—weary and footsore—and we’ll have all the Uncle Tom’s Cabin company sitting in the touring cars,” he said, “and we’ll have a big sign that says Boy Scouts on the Job, hey? And maybe we’ll give a parade.”
Harry said, “Well, the best thing for us to do now is to parade up this hill and send the message. You see, although assaults are usually made unknown to the enemy, in this case we’ll make a big hit if we start some propaganda along ahead of us. It pays to advertise, as Jolly & Kidder would say.”
Now it was a pretty steep climb up to the top of that hill, all woods and jungle. We left the cars down on the road and most of the actor people stayed in them, because they were tired and sleepy. Westy stayed down there so as to cook them some breakfast.
For quite a long distance up that hill we went through thick woods, then we came out into an open place where we could look down and see the road. The autos looked small down there. We could see a little thin line of smoke going up where Westy was starting a fire. The sun was getting brighter and it made Jolly & Kidder’s van look all shiny on account of the bright paint on it. It seemed funny to see a department store car away out there in that lonesome country.
Pretty soon we got into more woods and Harry said he guessed there must be a trail. But we couldn’t find any.
He said, “This is a forsaken wilderness up here.”
“I bet the foot of white man never trod it,” Pee-wee said; “I bet it’s unknown to civilization up here.”
“Well, I guess we’re not likely to bunk into any movie shows,” Brent said.
Jiminetty, but it was some wild place, all right. We had to go single file and tear away the brush so that we could get through. Tom Slade went ahead, because he can find a trail if there is one, and even if there isn’t he always knows how to go. The farther up we went, the worse it got. We couldn’t see the road at all on account of the thick woods below us. Gee, it was so still up there that it was sort of spooky.
“I guess no white man ever trod this solemn wilderness before, as our young friend Scout Harris observed,” Harry said; “it gets worser and worser.”
Just then Tom Slade stopped and we all stopped in his path. In about a jiffy he was down on the ground. Gee whiz, I knew what that meant, for I knew Tom Slade.
“It’s a footprint,” he said.
Just then we heard a sound right near us, just like branches crackling, and in a couple of seconds one of those bloodhounds from the Uncle Tom’s Cabin show came dashing up through the bushes. He pushed Tom Slade right out of the way and began sniffing that footprint. He was so excited that he didn’t notice us.