XXIV—SNOOZER SETTLES IT
That was a home-run all right I said, all flabbergasted. “You see, the only trouble is I’m not an experienced driver and these are—they’re pretty rough roads—and—eh—”
“That’s one thing about us,” Pee-wee piped up; “we’re not as smart as we look. Maybe it seems as if we could do most anything, but we can’t. That’s one thing about a scout, he has to admit it if he doesn’t know everything. He has to—he has to—eh—he has to safeguard the lives of others. See? Suppose we ran into a ditch and upset the car and everybody got killed. They wouldn’t thank us, would they?”
One of the ladies said, “Oh, isn’t he just too funny for anything!”
The man said, kind of slow and drawly like, he said, “Wall, yer could drive slow en’ thar ain’t no ditches.”
“Even one ditch would be enough,” the kid said. “Isn’t there just one?”
Jiminetty, I could hardly keep a straight face. There were all those people crowding around the van and saying how nice it would be if we would take a group to the reunion and how we had plenty of room. I thought of Brent sitting on the grocery box inside, and I bet he was laughing.
I said under my breath to Pee-wee, “All right, you got us into this with your good turns; now you can get us out.”
Then a man said, “A couple of boys who are going to have an eye out to recapture a convict, like this here little feller says, they ought to be smart enough and kind enough, I reckon, to give some of these here disappointed souls a lift. Jest you boys open these here doors and let the youngsters pile in, so they can go see Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
“That—that show isn’t going to be much good,” Pee-wee said; “and I can tell you one thing, it’s pretty stuffy in that van. That’s one thing scouts believe in—fresh air.”
By that time he was fidgeting around on the seat and some of the people were laughing and some of them looked surprised.
“That’s just it,” Pee-wee said; “if you were boy scouts and you were going to try to capture a criminal, you wouldn’t want a lot of children along, would you? And ladies? Ladies are a-scared of criminals; gee, I don’t blame them.”
Somebody said, “Oh, I guess the hounds they got on the trail will find the convict, all right, so you boys can jest consider if you’re goin’ to live up to your words or not ’baout doin’ good turns.”
Oh, boy, that was a terrible moment in Pee-wee’s life. I guess Dan Dauntless never had so much to worry about. But that kid has some sense, anyway, and that’s more than that story fellow has. In a couple of seconds I noticed that he was wiping his face with his handkerchief and I saw that he was getting the key sort of rolled up in the cloth at the same time. Then he made believe to put the handkerchief in his back pocket, but really he dropped it through the little window into the van. You couldn’t even hear it drop inside.
Then he said, “The trouble is that this van is locked and we haven’t got the key.” That kid would never have said that while he had the key, because it would have been a lie. And scouts don’t lie, that’s sure.
Jiminy, I don’t know what those people thought; anyway I felt pretty mean. The ladies said anyway they were just as much obliged to us. The men looked kind of as if they didn’t have much use for us, but they didn’t say anything and I had to admit that Pee-wee had got away with it all right.
Then, good night, Sister Anne, what should I see but our old college chum Snoozer from the Uncle Tom’s Cabin show. There he was, right among all those people, pushing them out of the way and sniffing around as if he was half crazy. Pee-wee and I jumped down and pushed past the people who were all crowding around the back of the van, and, good night, there was that pesky actor dog with his feet on the step, sniffing and sniffing at the doors and barking and yelping for all he was worth.
“Chop down them doors!” I heard a man say. “That’s somethin’ wrong here. This here dog is an official bloodhound, and, by gum, he’s tracked that thar convict. That chap paid these youngsters to help him escape, that’s what he has—by thunder! Somebody get an axe out of the Post Office and chop down these here doors. Don’t either one of you youngsters try to run or, by thunder, you’ll drop in your tracks. Good turns, eh? So them’s the kind of good turns you do, hey? Get an axe somebody—quick!”