“I’ll buy every blamed doughnut they’ve got in the place,” somebody shouted. “We won’t leave a thing for the rest of the cars that have to plow through this jungle. I suppose this is what motorists will be up against for six months. What do you know about that? This eats merchant ought to clear a couple of million. I’ll dicker with him for everything hot that he’s got, I’m starving.”
“Same here!” another shouted.
Frantically, like a soldier waving his country’s emblem in the last desperate moment of forlorn hope, Scout Harris clambered over the counter and grasped the jar containing two peppermint sticks.
“Peppermint sticks! Peppermint sticks!” he shouted at the advancing column. “Get your peppermint sticks! They quench thirst and—and—and satisfy your hunger! They’re filling! They warm you up! Peppermint is hot! Oh, get your peppermint sticks here!”
CHAPTER XXIX
INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS
Pee-wee emerged safely, if not triumphantly, from this ordeal amid much laughter, and was just congratulating himself upon his skillful handling of “the trade” in a period of acute shortage when he received a knockout blow. In depositing the trifling price of the peppermint sticks in his trousers pocket, he discovered there four gumdrops glued together and clinging so affectionately that nothing could part them.
At the moment of this discovery, Scout Harris, thus driven into a corner and standing at bay with nothing but one huge, consolidated gumdrop for defense, heard the unmistakable sound of another car crawling over the rocks and hubbles of that outlandish road in second gear. On, on, on, it came like some horrible British tank.
And now again he heard voices, “We can eat about twenty of them in my patrol; y-mm. Are we hungry? Oh, no! Hot frankfurters! Oh, boy, lead me to them. I could even eat the sign, I’m so hungry. Put her in high. What do we care about the road?”
Pee-wee listened and waited in terrible suspense. Scouts! He knew something about the scout capacity. Then, upon the fresh morning air there floated another voice calling a sentence which he knew too well; it was the good scout motto.