Thus the returning legion was divided, Pee-wee and the float constituting one division, and Simon and the oxen the other.
CHAPTER XIX
GOING DOWN
Down, down, down, rolled the float, with its shaft bobbing after it. It plunged into hollows, it surmounted hubbies, it swayed and lurched, and groaned and creaked. It halted, it swerved, it almost stopped, then thought better of it, and plunged forward again. Scout Harris could see nothing but a milky whiteness all about him. The fog lay so heavy in this lower land that the runaway float seemed actually to cut a path through it.
Suddenly it struck something and there was a medley of startled but familiar voices, the cackling of hens. The advancing caravan must have run down a lowly coop and trampled it under its gorgeous, imperial wheels. The released prisoners seemed to be scattering in panic all about. Then a board walk loomed up just ahead, the speed of the truant vehicle slackened, and it bumped into this obstacle, projecting the astonished Pee-wee forward upon the straw-covered floor inside.
On that memorable late afternoon, Tony Sigliatto was sitting within his humble domestic establishment eating spaghetti, when suddenly the plate went sliding off the table, accompanied by a resounding crash, and the spaghetti was spread upon the floor. His first thought was that he was the victim of a concerted attack by the Black Hand and he looked about him for the remains of a bomb.
Then he stole cautiously outside and beheld a sight which puzzled him but confirmed his worst suspicions. There stood Pee-wee, his bunting turban utterly demolished and streaming off his head, which gave him a rakish and abandoned look. But worst of all he was still gripping the patrol staff which he had reached for at the moment of his descent and from the end of this hung the pennant of the Raven Patrol, with its ominous black namesake printed with spreading wings upon it. And more darkly suggestive than that was the brown canteen with its ominous looking nozzle which Pee-wee always carried full of stale water.
Tony gave one look at this infernal engine of destruction and poured forth the torrents of his wrath.
“Hey, whata you do here? You getta de bomb! Hey, where de rest of you?” he inquired in great agitation, glancing fearfully into the wagon and then cautiously around the corner.
“The rest of me is up there,” said Pee-wee. “I don’t know where it is—”