PEE-WEE HARRIS IN CAMP
CHAPTER I—HE OPENS THE DOOR, THEN OPENS HIS MOUTH
“I’m going to brand a horse with a hot iron! I’m going to brand a double cross on him! I’m going to brand it on his hip! I’m going to get ten dollars!”
These were strange words to issue from the lips of a boy scout. Yet they were uttered by no less a scout than Pee-Wee Harris, the scout of scouts, the scout who made scouting famous, the only original scout, the scout who put the rave in Raven Patrol. They were uttered by Scout Harris who was so humane that he loved butterflies because they reminded him of butter and who would not harm a piece of pudding-stone because it aroused his tender recollections of pudding.
“I’m going to brand him to-morrow night!” he repeated cruelly. “Is there any pie left in the pantry?”
What act of inhuman cruelty he meditated against the poor, defenseless pie only his own guilty conscience knew. Before his mother was able to answer him from upstairs he had branded a piece of pie with his teeth.
Pee-wee’s mother did not come down, but she put her foot down.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she called, “but you’re not going to do it. There is one piece of pie in the pantry unless you have eaten it already.”
Pee-wee ascended the stairs armed with a dripping slice of rhubarb pie which left a scout trail up the wild, carpeted steps and through the dim, unfathomed fastnesses of the upper hall.