“You don’t call that binding a bandit with ropes, do you? With him up at the top of the wheel and you down at the bottom.”
The kid said, “Sure I do, that’s distance binding—you’re so smart. That shows how much you know about scouting. I suppose you don’t know you can signal for miles and miles. Can’t you do other things by distance too?”
“That’s a fine argument,” Warde Hollister said.
“I invented it,” the kid shouted.
That girl said, very sarcastic like, “I must say you were very brave to kill that wooden figure. I’m not afraid of snakes, but I’d certainly be afraid of a wooden figure. Tell me, did you ever kill a rag doll?”
There were two or three girl friends of hers there and they all started to titter.
“Was it our fault if that colored man was made of wood?” Pee-wee said.
She said, “Oh, mercy, no. But when you were binding the poor bandit weren’t you afraid he’d bite you? He was only a hundred feet or so away, you know. Are you afraid of mice, too?”
“No, we’re not afraid of mice,” Pee-wee said. “And we’re not afraid of bugs either. Girls are afraid of June bugs.”