“That’s the way I understand it,” another one said.
CHAPTER XVIII
WAITING
“Jiminies,” I said to Dub, “I’d like to see those Indians if they’re real, wouldn’t you?”
“Look,” he said.
We all looked where the boy movie hero was going, with Pee-wee alongside him. The three young men just sat where they were, in a row—they didn’t seem so much interested. As long as they didn’t follow those two, we didn’t either. I guess maybe we were afraid they would think it wasn’t fair. Maybe we were so surprised that we didn’t, I don’t know. Anyway we just stood there watching. Dub sat down on a rock, then Sandy and I did, too. The three young men were talking to each other. Jiminies, I didn’t know what to make of it all. But anyway I wasn’t worrying because I knew Pee-wee could do anything that Daredevil Daraway Bravado of the Demon Deep, or whatever his name was, could do. “Don’t worry,” I said to Dub and Sandy. “They’re not going to do anything so very wonderful, he’s just kidding Pee-wee.”
I’ll tell you how it was in that end of the chasm. It was wide where that camp was. But just beyond that it was very narrow with the sides straight up and down. If you’ll look at the map you’ll see how it was. At the east end of the chasm, that’s where you should look. Where the brook comes in do you see where it goes to a point? Well that’s where I mean. Near that point it’s very narrow and high. If you go up on top there and drop a stone it makes a funny sound, a kind of an echo. That’s where they went, those two. It’s easy to go up where the chasm is wide.
We could see the two of them standing up on top right near the edge. I don’t know how wide it is up there—maybe it’s about seven or eight feet wide. Maybe ten, I don’t know. Tom Slade says the higher up you are the narrower a place like that seems. He says you have to be careful with your calculations when you’re high up. I should worry, I guess he knows. Anyway about maybe ten feet below the top of that place, there’s a crazy tree growing out from one side—it’s all crooked like. It looks all bushy. I guess brush and stuff like that fell down on it from the top, maybe. Way up there, even, we could hear Pee-wee shouting away. When he gets excited it always seems as if he’s mad. I heard him say something about Silver-plated Foxes (that’s my patrol) and Sandy thought he was telling that other fellow he was only a silver-plated hero, because that’s the way he talks.
All of a sudden I noticed those three grown up fellows—they were talking excited together. Just then a couple of them jumped up and came out in the middle of the chasm and one shouted, but the fellows up on the top didn’t pay any attention. Pee-wee was waving his hands and talking as loud as he could and all the while the grown up fellow down in the chasm was shouting trying to make the two of them listen. Then the other one jumped up and started running for all he was worth. He ran up where it was wide and not so steep and all the while he was shouting, “Cut it out, don’t let him do that.”
Anyway it was too late. All of a sudden Pee-wee backed away so he could get a head start and good night, if he didn’t go running to the edge! It seemed to me as if he tripped. Anyway he jumped and he just missed the other side of the precipice. I felt kind of hollow—sort of cold like when you’re in an elevator and it stops short. Then the three of us went running pell-mell into the narrow part of the chasm. The two grown up fellows ran there too. But Pee-wee wasn’t on the ground there. I almost stepped on a little bird without any feathers on it that was sprawling around on the rocks. Then I saw another one flopping around.
“Look,” Sandy said. He was holding a little branch of a tree with a nest on it. And then I knew that the whole business had broken off from the tree that stuck out away up above us. I could hear a voice up there calling help, help, but it didn’t sound like Pee-wee. All of a sudden a rotten piece of a branch fell on my head and we heard a crackling sound up there.