Pee-wee said, “You’re crazy; black is the only color for secrets. Look at that pirate in the movie play. Didn’t it say he kept the dark secret about where the treasure was for years and years?”
“He kept it so long it faded,” I told him. “Dark secrets are all right for old sailing ships, Kid, but when it comes to railroad cars—nix.”
The three of us were sitting on the rock, looking at the old railroad car that had just been moved down to the field for us. Mr. Temple got that old car for us, so we could use it for a troop-room. The men had an awful job moving it from the siding at Bridgeboro Station. They ran it down to the river on movable tracks and brought it up on one of the barges. Getting it off into the field was the worst part. They had to leave it right close to the river. Jimmies, we didn’t mind that; the nearer the better, that’s what I said.
One of the men that moved that car said it was an old timer. Anyway, it wasn’t much good for a car any more, because the springs and the brakes and the couplings were all rusted away, and the roof leaked, only we fixed it with tar paper. Inside there was an old stove in the corner with a clumsy old high pipe railing around it. The windows were awful small and the plush seats were all old-fashioned and worn out. Up above the windows were old-fashioned wire cage things to put baggage in. The doors at the ends were round at the top and the little windows were that way, too. But, anyway, that old car would make one dandy meeting-place, that was one thing sure.
All the rest of the fellows had gone home to supper, and Skinny and Pee-wee and I were just sitting there looking at the car and thinking how we’d have a flag flying on it, and what color we’d paint it when we got money enough. We were thinking about the different things we’d bring down and put in it.
I said, “I wonder how old it is? It’s a ramshackle old pile of junk, but that makes it all the better, for a scout meeting-place.” Because maybe you don’t know it, but scouts don’t like things to be too civilized, like.
“Maybe it has romance,” Pee-wee said.
He got that word out of the movie play that had the old pirate ship in it. There was something in that play about the old ship being a monument of romance. I had to laugh, because it seemed so funny to talk that way about an old ramshackle railroad car.
“I mean adventures,” he said.
“Oh, sure,” I told him; “that car reminds me of an old Spanish Galleon, it’s so different. Maybe some buccaneers used to have their den in it, hey? When I look at that car it reminds me of King Arthur and all those old fellows. You’ve got romances and adventures and things on the brain since you’ve been going down to the Lyric. What’s puzzling me is how we’re going to fix lockers in it for our stuff, and where we’re going to hang our pictures.”