XXII—SILENCE!
I said to Pee-wee, “Now all we have to do is to go straight about our business and keep our mouths shut and we’ll get out of this burg all right. Just keep silence. Nobody’s going to stop us as long as people don’t get suspicious. I can drive the car till we get out of town and I don’t think any one will stop me. All you have to do is to keep silence.”
“How long do I have to keep it?” he wanted to know.
I said, “Oh, keep it till it’s all used up, and then I’ll give you some more. Believe me, you can’t have too much of it just now.”
“We’ll have to use up a lot of it, hey?” he said.
“More than you ever used before,” I told him.
“Anyway,” he said, “an innocent man has nothing to fear.”
“You got that out of the movies,” I told him. “An innocent man with his hair cropped and a convict suit on has a whole lot to fear.”
“Innocence is a shield,” he said; “it’s in my copy book.”
“Yes?” I said. “Well, an enclosed van is a better shield.”
“Our lips will be sealed, hey?” he said. I guess he got that out of the Dan Dauntless Series; he eats those books alive.
I felt kind of shaky driving that van, but I knew I had to do it, and if a scout has to do a thing he does it. Gee whiz, I like things that are hard—except licorice jaw breakers. You get three of those for a cent. Even I can eat those if I have to, but I like marshmallows better. I like peanut brittle too. But anyway that hasn’t got anything to do with driving a car.
For maybe an eighth of a mile there weren’t any houses, because where we stopped was really on the edge of the village. Anyway that village didn’t have much of an edge to it. Pretty soon the houses began to get near together. I guess they were always just as near together but they—you know what I mean.
Pee-wee didn’t say a word; he just sat straight up beside me like a little tin soldier. It was a shame to see him wasting so much silence.
Pretty soon we came to the Post Office. There were a lot of people standing around the Post Office and they were talking about the railroad strike. I knew that if we once got past the Post Office we’d be all right. Because post offices in the country are where sheriffs and constables and other people that haven’t got anything to do hang out. It wasn’t much of a post office. I guess they called it a post office because there was a post out in front of it. There was one of those signs tacked to that post.
I said to Pee-wee, “This is a young reviewing stand. Look straight ahead, keep your mouth shut, and look kind of careless—you know—carefree.”
Good night, you should have seen the look he put on!
“Is that what you call care free?” I whispered to him. “You look like an advertisement for tooth powder.”
“That’s the scout smile,” he whispered.
Honest, you’d have laughed to see him; he was looking straight ahead and grinning all over his face.
“Look natural,” I whispered to him. “Look as if there wasn’t a convict in the van. Look as if you never saw a convict.”
“How can any fellow look as if he never saw a convict?” he whispered. “Most everybody has never seen a convict.”
“Well, look like them, then,” I told him. “Look the same as a person would look if he wasn’t helping a convict to escape.”
He put on another kind of a smile and then he whispered to me, “I bet now those people will say I’m not helping a convict to escape, hey?”
“Sure,” I told him; “you look as if you were on the track of an ice cream soda. Keep still and the worst will soon be over.”