FROM THE WOOLLY WEST
BOUND FOR LITTLE OLD NEW YORK;
After that came the big van with Harry driving it.
Now we fellows were supposed to live in the van, but we didn’t do much except sleep in it. Most of the time we were riding in the different cars. A lot of the time I sat with Tom Slade. Mostly the Warner twins rode in the car with Rossie Bent. Charlie Seabury and Westy were in Brent Gaylong’s car a lot of the time. Will Dawson got sleepy a lot so he was in the van mostly. Pee-wee rode in all the different cars at once, but most of the time in the van, on account of that being the commissary department. Wherever you see a commissary department, look for Pee-wee. Commissary is his middle name. Sometimes he was up on top of the van dancing around. He’s awful light on his feet. He came near lighting on his head a couple of times.
So now I’m going to tell you about that trip.
VI—STRANDED
I guess you’ll say this story is a lot of nonsense, but anyway, those big fellows were worse than the rest of us. Harry said it didn’t make any difference if we were foolish, because even a dollar hasn’t as much cents as it used to have—that’s a joke. Anyway Harry had plenty of dollars that Mr. Junkum gave him for expenses. He told us the people who were buying the cars paid part of the money. And anyway, my patrol saved them some money on account of knowing all about camping and cooking and all that. Harry said it was more fun than if we stayed at hotels all the time. Gee whiz, I hate hotels—hotels and spinach. But once I went to a peach of a fire when a hotel burned down. That’s one good thing about hotels, anyway.
Now about noontime that day the road crossed the railroad station at a place called Squash Centre. It crosses it there every day, I guess, Sundays and holidays and all. Anyway, it crossed it there that day. Pee-wee was sitting on the seat beside Harry and he shouted, “Squash Centre; I like pumpkin better.” As soon as he saw the word squash right away he thought about pie.
There were only about six houses there and the railroad station. On the platform were a lot of funny looking people and they had a couple of big dogs tied by ropes. They had a lot of boxes and bags and things standing around them on the platform. Most of the squashes of Squash Centre were standing around a little way off laughing at them. The man that was holding the dogs had on a long black coat and a high hat and he needed to be shaved. His coat didn’t have any cloth on the buttons. He had long hair sticking out from under his hat.