“Don’t tell anybody I told him,” Pee-wee whispered to Pepsy, “or you’ll spoil it all and they won’t give him the money.”
“Suppose he tells himself,” Pepsy said.
But Officer Bungel did not tell of the keen eyes and scout skill which had put him in the way of profit and glory. For he was like the whole race of Beriah Bungels the world over, officious, ignorant, contemptible, grafting, shaming human nature and making thieving fugitives look manly by comparison.
Everdoze was greatly aroused by this epoch-making incident. Even a few stragglers from Berryville followed the crowd back as far as Uncle Ebenezer’s farm and Pee-wee tried to tempt them into the ways of the spendthrift with taffy and other delights which cause the reckless to fall. But it was of no use.
“I bet if there was a murder we could sell a lot,” he said. “Motorcycle thief crowds aren’t very big. If the town hall burned down I bet we’d do a lot of business. I wish the school-house would burn down, hey? Murders and fires, those are the best, especially murders, because lots of people come.”
“I like fires better,” Pepsy said. “Lots and lots and lots of people go to fires.”
“Yes, and they get thirsty watching them, too,” said Pee-wee. “That’s the time to shout, ice cold lemonade.”
There was one person in Everdoze, and only one, who neither followed nor witnessed this triumphal march, which had something of the nature of a pageant. This was a little lame boy, very pale, who sat in a wheel chair on the back porch of the lowly Bungel homestead.
The house was up a secluded lane and did not command a view of the weeds and rocks of the main thoroughfare. This frail little boy, whose blue veins you could follow like a trail, had never seen or heard of Pee-wee Harris, scout of the first class (if ever there was one) and mascot of the Raven Patrol. He had indeed heard his father speak of “cuffing a sassy little city urchin on the ear,” but how should he know that this same sassy little urchin had thrown away two hundred and fifty dollars?
Thrown it away? Well, let us hope not. Let us hope that those wonder workers in the big city succeeded in “fixing” him, as indeed they must have done, if they were as good fixers as Scout Harris. Let us hope that Licorice Stick had gotten things wrong (as we have seen him do once before) and that little Whitie Bungel did not die in a rainstorm on a Friday.