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Other documents randomly have
different content
“But anyway, I know something better than diplomacy,” he shouted;
“and that’s strategy.”
I said, “All right, as long as everybody’s shouting at once and we’re
not getting anywhere, let’s go over to Tony’s and if we can’t dip him
maybe we can strat him.”
So that’s the way it was, the first thing we did to get that car moved
was to go over to Tony’s and each buy a frankfurter. There were
twenty-four of us in there at once. Twenty-four frankfurters are a
good many for one fellow—I don’t mean for one fellow to eat, but
for one fellow to sell.
After that we asked Tony if he would just as soon let us take the
boards away from underneath his wagon so that he could move the
wagon away from over those old sunken, rusty tracks, just about
seven or eight feet or so.
He said, “No mova. Gotta de license. No mova.”
Gee whiz, if that’s what you call diplomacy, I like arithmetic better,
and that isn’t saying much.
 CHAPTER V—WE GO OVER THE GROUND
The next night Mr. Ellsworth (he’s our scoutmaster) came out early
from the city so he could follow that track with us over to the river
and say if he thought there was any chance of getting the car to the
shore.
Tom Slade (he works in Temple Camp office) went with us. Before
he was grown up he was in the Elk Patrol, but he’s assistant
scoutmaster now. He doesn’t say much—he’s like Pee-wee, only
different. He started the Elk Patrol, I started the Silver Foxes, and I’ll
finish them, too, if they don’t look out. Gee, you can’t keep that
bunch quiet. The Silver Fox Patrol is all right, only it hasn’t got any
muffler.
Mr. MacKeller went with us, too, that night. He’s County Engineer.
He’s got dandy apple trees up at his house. He went so he could
decide if the track was safe over the marsh. Because, gee whiz, we
didn’t want to break down and have our summer home in among a
lot of cat-tails. I hate cats anyway. My sister has two of them.
We all met Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. MacKeller at the station and then
we started following the old track. Some places we could hardly find
the rails at all. We didn’t stop at Tony’s because Mr. Ellsworth said
buying frankfurters wouldn’t do any good. He said Tony’s wasn’t the
worst part of our trouble; he said Slausen’s Auto Repair Shop was
worse, because it was a regular building.
After we got by Slausen’s, the tracks were buried in the earth across
the Sneezenbunker land. Some places they were as deep as an inch
under the ground. But where that land began to slant down into the
marsh the track came out good and plain. Before it got right into the
marsh it ran along on an old kind of rotten trestle, and it ran all the
way across the marsh on that. I guess that trestle was about three
or four feet above the marsh. It’s there yet, only you can’t see it
from the town on account of the high cat-tails all around.
That marsh sort of peters out into Van Schlessenhoff’s field, right
close to the river, and there the track is flat on the land again and in
some places it’s away under the grass.
Mr. MacKeller said he didn’t know how we’d get the car over there,
but he guessed the trestle across the marsh would hold it all right.
He said even if it collapsed there probably wouldn’t be much
damage, only the car would be broken and we’d never get it away
from there, and if we camped in it we’d be eaten up by mosquitoes.
“Good night,” I told him; “if there’s any eating to be done we want to
be the ones to do it.”
He said that getting Tony’s lunch wagon and Slausen’s Auto Repair
Shop out of the way wasn’t the kind of work for an engineer. “That’s
a job for a strategist,” he said.
Oh, boy, you should have heard Pee-wee shout. “What did I tell you?
What did I tell you?” he began hollering.
Honest, I was afraid he’d tumble off the trestle into the marsh.
 CHAPTER VI—SCOUT STRATEGY
Westy Martin (he’s in my patrol; he’s my special chum), he said,
“The only way to do is to go to work systematically.”
“Sister what?” Pee-wee shouted.
“Systematically,” I told him; “that means without any help from our
sisters. Now shut up.”
“How long is it going to take to move that car all the way from the
station over to the river? That’s what I’d like to know,” he shouted.
“About forty-eight hours and three months,” I said. “If you’ll give
Westy a chance to speak, maybe he’ll give us an idea.”
We were all walking back up to town after our inspection of the old
sunken tracks, and I could see that Westy was kind of silent; I mean
I could hear that he was silent; I mean—you know what I mean—I
should worry. Maybe you can’t hear a fellow being silent. You can
never hear Pee-wee being silent, that’s one sure thing.
Westy was frowning just as if it was the end of vacation, and I knew
he was thinking some thinks.
Pretty soon he said, “The two hardest things are getting the car past
Tony’s Lunch Wagon and past Slausen’s Auto Repair Shop. After that
it will be clear sailing—I mean rolling. I say let’s have a big scout
rally in Downing’s lot. Let’s have games and races and everything,
and ask all the scout troops for miles and miles around, and
everybody’ll have to be good and hungry.”
“That’s easy!” Pee-wee shouted.
“Sure,” Connie Bennett piped up. “We’ll have the East Bridgeboro
Troop over because there’s a fat scout in that troop.”
“I know the one you mean,” Hunt Ward said. “He’s shaped like a
ferry boat.”
I said, “Sure, and here’s our own dear Pee-wee; he’s a whole famine
in himself. He wouldn’t dare to look Hoover in the face.”
“But what’s the idea?” Dorry wanted to know.
“You started an argument and you haven’t got any premises.”
“Some highbrow,” I told him.
“Sure, Downing’s lot is the premises,” our young hero piped up.
“Premises is a place.”
“I’ve hiked all over but I’ve never been to that place,” I told him.
“Can you get ice cream cones there?”
“Premises is the basis of an argument,” Westy said. “You choose
your premises and stand on it.”
“A stepladder is good enough for me,” I said.
“Premises is real estate!” the kid fairly yelled. “Everybody knows
that.”
“I don’t know it,” Punk Odell said, “and I’m everybody.”
“You mean you think you are,” Pee-wee shot back.
“Well,” I said, “what’s the difference whether it’s real estate or
imitation estate? That isn’t finding out how we’re going to get the
car past Tony’s, is it? Give Westy a chance to speak. Let’s have a
large chunk of silence.”
That’s always the way it is with us. We never can decide anything
because we all talk at once and we jump from one subject to
another. Especially when Pee-wee’s along. Mr. Ellsworth (he’s our
scoutmaster, he’s got a dandy dog), he says that silence is golden.
But believe me, the Silver Foxes don’t bother about things that are
golden. Speech is silver, and Pee-wee is Sterling.
Let’s see, where was I? Oh, I know. I was just starting to keep still
so Westy could talk.
He said, “We’ll have a big rally and we’ll have signs up all around the
field. All the scouts will have to be good and hungry.”
“That’s easy!” Pee-wee shouted.
Westy said, “We’ll have signs up all around saying A SCOUT IS
HUNGRY, and things like that. We’ll have some poetry on big planks
——”
“And when Tony sees all that,” Connie Bennett piped up, “and finds
that we won’t go over and buy any eats from him, why, then he’ll
move his wagon over to the lot and we’ll have a chance to move the
car. It’s a bully idea if Pee-wee doesn’t weaken and spoil it all.”
“What are you talking about?” Pee-wee yelled. “I can go without
anything to eat for—for an hour, if I have to!”
So we decided that we’d force Tony to move his lunch wagon by the
force of our appetites. Maybe you’ve seen exhibitions of things that
scouts can do by the power of deduction and all that, and how they
can do things by united strength, and everybody admits they can
make a lot of noise when they sing together. But I bet you never
saw what they can do by concerted appetite—that means all being
hungry at the same time.
You can move a house that way. Anyway, you can move a lunch
wagon.
 CHAPTER VII—THE INVITATION
Now this is the way we planned it out. We decided that if we could
get the way cleared as far as the Sneezenbunker land it would be
easy from there, because the car would roll down the grade and
maybe all the way across Cat-tail Marsh. Then we’d have to think of
some scheme to get it to the river.
“We won’t cross our bridges till we come to them,” Westy said.
“We’re not going to take it across the river,” the kid shouted.
“Crossing bridges is an expression,” I told him. “It’s the same as
premises, only different.”
So the next thing we had to think of was how to get the car past
Slausen’s Auto Repair Shop, because repair shops can’t be moved
like lunch wagons. And strategy doesn’t go with men who keep
garages.
So the next thing we did was to go and ask Mr. Slausen if he’d be
willing to let us take down a few boards from his ramshackle old
building just above where the tracks went through if we promised to
put them up again.
“Maybe my father’s going to get a flivver,” Pee-wee piped up, “and
maybe if I run it I’ll have a smash-up, and I’ll get you to fix it.”
But that didn’t go with Mr. Slausen. He said, very gruff like, “You kids
better go home and study your lessons and not be trying to move
railroad cars.”
I said, “Scouts always keep their word, Mr. Slausen, and if we say
we’ll put the boards back up again, we will.”
He said, “Well, I guess we won’t take down any boards, so you
better run along.” And then he started to talk to a man and didn’t
pay any more attention to us.
Just as we were going out Connie Bennett said, “Well, we’ll have to
think of another way, that’s all. It’s got to be did somehow.”
“Sure,” I said; “scouts can always think of a way.”
Mr. Slausen must have heard us, for he turned around and shouted
after us, very cross, “I want you youngsters to keep away from here.
Understand?”
Westy said, “Yes, sir.”
“I don’t know anything we can do,” Dorry Benton said to me as we
were going out.
“We’ll think of a way,” I said; “don’t worry.”
Now that’s all there was to our call on Mr. Slausen, and it wasn’t
much, and nobody said anything important enough to remember,
but what we said made a lot of trouble for us just the same. You’ll
see.
“All we’d have to do would be to move his vulcanizing table,” Westy
said, “and we could run the car right through.”
“Well, we should worry,” I said. “We’ll move Tony’s Lunch Wagon,
vulcanizing table and all, and then we can think about the next
step.”
“What do you mean, vulcanizing table?” Pee-wee shouted.
“The counter where he puts the inner tubes in doughnuts,” I told
him.
So then, as long as it was Saturday and we couldn’t do any more
that day, we decided to go up to my house and send invitations to
all the troops in the different towns near Bridgeboro. Pee-wee
wanted to go around like Paul Revere and notify them all, but I said
no, because I knew he’d only end up in some candy store miles and
miles from home.
This was the invitation we sent. It’s kind of crazy, but what did we
care, because in my patrol we’re all crazy anyway. We ought to be
called the Squirrels instead of the Silver Foxes, because we’re all
nutty.

Scouts, Attention!

Shoulder your trusty appetites and march to Bridgeboro

on Saturday next, April 17th, to reënforce your brother
scouts of the 1st Bridgeboro troop in a daring enterprise.
Come hungry! Don’t eat on the way! Rally in Downing’s
lot near Bridgeboro Station at 10 A. M.

Ask not the reason why

Here’s but to do or die.
Hark to the battle-cry
Failure or apple pie!
Come, valiant comrades!

I guess when they got these invitations they thought we were all
maniacs from Maine, hey? What did we care? Not in the least, quoth
we.
After we got the invitations mailed we decided to forget the moving
problem and go to the moving pictures. After that we went to the
station and sat in the car a little while and talked. As long as we
were so near we thought we might as well go over to Bennett’s for
cones, and as long as we were in there for cones we thought we
might as well get some gumdrops. And as long as we were getting
some gumdrops we thought we might as well get some molasses
taffy for our young hero so as to stop him from talking. Believe me,
that’s one thing I like. I don’t mean talking, I mean molasses taffy.
I’m stuck on it. So is the tissue paper that comes around it. We got a
nickel’s worth of lemondrops, too, because yellow is our patrol color.
We’re always thinking of our patrol, that’s one good thing about us.
 CHAPTER VIII—RECONNOITERING
Now nothing happened the next week except going to school, and,
gee whiz, there’s no adventure in that. The best thing about school
is Saturday because there isn’t any. You can talk about Good Friday,
but good Saturdays are good enough for me. Anyway, it’s funny how
great men always get born on holidays, like Washington and Lincoln.
That’s the thing I like best about those men—their birthdays. That’s
one thing I’m thankful for about Thanksgiving, too; it always comes
on a holiday. But one thing I hate, and that is hop-toads.
So now that school is over for the week I’ll tell you about the big
rally. Wasn’t that a quick week? Believe me, when I’m writing stories
I take a hop, skip and a jump from one Saturday to another. Except
in vacation.
That rally was a big success. By ten o’clock on Saturday morning
there were seven troops, not counting our own, in Downing’s lot
ready to do or die. One came from East Bridgeboro, two came from
Ennistown, one came from Northvale, one came from Little Valley,
and two came from Sloan Hollow. There were seven troops and
nineteen patrols. We have three patrols, so that makes twenty-two.
There were a hundred and seventy-nine appetites altogether.
They all wanted to know what was the big idea, so I got up on a
grocery box and made a speech. General Blakeley inspiring his
troops. Oh, boy!
I said, “Scouts, that old railroad car over near the station belongs to
us. It’s our trooproom. It has to be moved on this old track down to
the river. Tony Giovettioegleirotti, who keeps that lunch wagon, has
defied us. We bought twenty-four frankfurters from him and he
wouldn’t move his wagon. So what are we going to do about it?”
“Foil him!” Pee-wee shouted.
“We haven’t got any tinfoil,” someone else hollered.
“Listen,” I said; “everybody keep still. We’re going to have games
and scout pace races and things, but nothing to eat. Every scout has
to promise that no matter how hungry he is, he won’t go over and
buy anything from Tony. I’m going to appoint a committee to go
over there and keep smacking their lips, but——”
“I’ll be on that committee!” Pee-wee shouted.
“You’ll be on the ground if you don’t keep still!” I told him. “You
fellows are supposed to go over there in small detachments, kind of,
and hang around, and jingle the money in your pockets, and act as
if you were hungry——”
“I can act that way!” Pee-wee shouted.
“Sure, just act natural,” I told him. “You’ve had practice enough
being hungry.”
“What’s the big idea?” somebody called out.
“The big idea is to mobilize all our appetites,” I said. “When Tony
sees this whole bunch of scouts—a hundred and seventy-nine
appetites—and finds out that none of us is going to go over there
and buy a single sandwich from him; when he finds that we spurn
his pie, what will he do? He’ll move his wagon over here. That’s high
strategy. It’s so high you have to use a stepladder to get up to it.
The scout appetite, when it acts in, what d’you call it, unison can
move anything!”
“Sure it can!” they all yelled.
“But how are you going to move the car?” some scout or other
wanted to know.
“You leave that to me,” I told him. “What you’re supposed to do is to
get the way cleared. You’re supposed to re—what d’you call it?—
reconnoiter around Tony’s and read the bill of fare that’s pasted on
the door, and jingle your money and kind of maybe smack your lips
and look like the poor starving children in Europe. But don’t buy
anything! If you were to buy anything, even a single cheese
sandwich, you’d be—you’d be Benedict Arnold——”
“Did he eat cheese sandwiches?” one of the crowd wanted to know.
“He was a traitor!” I shouted at him. “I don’t know what he used to
eat. Shut up.”
“He was in favor of Switzerland, he ate Swiss cheese sandwiches,”
Brick Warner yelled.
“Will you shut up?” I hollered.
“It says in my History he swallowed his pride and wrote to
Washington——”
“Some appetite!” one of those fellows from East Bridgeboro yelled.
“Now I don’t know what I was talking about,” I said.
“You never did,” a scout shouted at me.
I said, “Will you listen? If you all act in the right way and Tony finds
that you’re not going to buy anything from him, he’ll move his
wagon over here. Let him know you won’t buy anything except on
scout territory. See? He’ll come across, you wait and see. All we
have to do is hold out. The afternoon milk——”
“We don’t want any milk,” they all began screaming. “What do you
think this is? A baby show?”
“I’m talking about a train,” I shot back at them; “a milk train. Didn’t
you ever hear of a milk train?”
“I never knew milk came from a milk train,” Hunt Manners shouted.
“I thought it came from the milkman,” another fellow called.
I said, “Oh, sure, it comes from the Milky Way, just the same as
germs come from Germany. You’re all so bright you ought to have
dimmers.”
“Dinners——” Pee-wee yelled.
“There you go again,” I told him. “No, not dinners—dimmers! Listen,
will you? The afternoon milk train gets here——”
“To-morrow morning,” a kid from Little Valley yelled.
“It isn’t as slow as they are in Little Valley,” I said; “it’ll be here at
about four-sixty——”
“Five o’clock,” a scout piped up.
“Right the first time,” I said. “How did you guess?”
“What about it?” a lot of scouts wanted to know.
“This about it,” I said; “if the tracks are clear by that time Mr.
Jenson, who is engineer on that train, is going to push the car——”
“He must be a strong man,” somebody shouted.
“Oh, sure,” I told him; “he’s so strong he wasn’t even born on a
weak day. Now will you keep still a minute? He’s going to push the
car with the locomotive over to this field while the train is being——”
“While it’s being milked,” another kid hollered.
Honest, that crowd was so crazy that a crazy quilt would turn green
with envy, I said.
“Please listen and then everybody can talk at once. Your job is to
inveigle——”
“What do you mean, inveigle?” somebody hooted.
“Keep still,” I said; “inveigle is Latin for luring; you know what that
is, don’t you? Your job is to get that lunch wagon over to this field
by fair means or rainy means or any old means——”
“He doesn’t know what he means,” somebody yelled.
“And I’ll do the rest,” I told them. “Only you have to have the tracks
clear by five o’clock this afternoon.”
“How are you going to get the car past that old garage?” somebody
wanted to know.
“That’s another story,” I said. “You should worry about how we’re
going to do that. We’ll find a way. Scouts are resourceful. There’s
more than one way to kill a cat——”
“Scouts are supposed to be kind to animals,” one fellow shouted.
“I’m not talking about a real cat,” I said; “that’s just an expression.
I’m talking about Mr. Slaus——”
Good night! Just then while I was talking I happened to look over to
Slausen’s and there was Mr. Slausen standing in the back doorway
watching us and listening. Gee whiz, I guess he heard everything I
said. Anyway, I should worry, because I didn’t say anything that I
was ashamed of. But just the same he had an awful funny look on
his face.
 CHAPTER IX—NAPOLEON AND WATERLOO
Now as long as you couldn’t be there to have any of the eats there’s
no use telling you about it. Because a scout is supposed to be kind.
Anyway, I wouldn’t want you to buy this story just because
refreshments go with it. Because actions speak louder than
frankfurters and pie and things, but, anyway, Tony came across just
as I said he would. And that was when the plot began to get thicker.
We had running matches and jumping matches and sulphur matches
and all kinds of games, and a lot of girls came and watched us, and
Main Street was full of people watching us.
But nobody went over to Tony’s. Sometimes scouts would kind of
stroll over that way and look at the list of things pasted on the door
and sort of jingle their money and then stroll back again. The field
was all full of people just like at a carnival, and we put boards on
grocery boxes for the girls to sit on and watch the big events. Pee-
wee went over and told the girls about how he was a martyr like
Nathan Hale because he couldn’t eat any frankfurters and things—I
mean Pee-wee. And they said he was noble and that they were all
on our side.
Pretty soon, good night, over came Fritzie from Bennett’s with
popcorn and ice cream cones and things, and everybody began
buying them, and that was too much for Tony. He wasn’t going to
stand there and see Germany conquer the world. So just then, oh,
boy, Italy began getting ready to come into the war.
I called all the scouts together and I said, “Sh-h! We’ve won the day,
only we have to beware of strategy. Tony is coming over here with a
lot of sandwiches and things in a basket. Don’t buy anything. Stand
firm. Leave him to me.”
Pretty soon over he came with a big basket under his arm, shouting,
“All-a hotta, all-a hotta, fiver de cents, all-a hotta.”
I went up to him and I said, “Have you got any soup?”
He said, “Buy-a de frank; all-a hotta.”
Everybody began crowding around and asking for soup. I said, “You
haven’t got any counter for us to eat at. Some of us want soup.
Others want soup. Still others prefer soup. Nothing doing.”
He said, “All-a fresh-a.”
I said, “I’m sorry, but we’re tired and we want to eat sitting down.
We can’t eat soup out of brown paper.”
After a while he saw there wasn’t any use trying to peddle things
around the field, so he went away and in a little while we saw him
and his brother pulling down the boards from underneath the
wagon. Oh, boy, but weren’t we glad! He wasn’t going to miss that
chance. I guess he knew what we wanted all right. All the scouts
began shouting, “We’ve won, we’ve won!” And the fellows in my
troop went around telling all the others how they had done us a
good turn. They all began calling me General Blakeley because I had
managed it.
But one thing, girls are smarter than fellows, I have to admit that.
Just you wait and see. Because something terrible is going to
happen.
Pretty soon Tony’s old lunch wagon came lumbering over toward us.
There were about seven or eight men pushing it and Tony was
holding onto the shaft to steer it. When we saw that, we all began
shouting and yelling and a scout from East Bridgeboro jumped up on
a grocery box and tied his scarf on the end of his scout staff and
began calling:
“Hurrah, for General Blakeley! Hurrah for the young Napoleon of
Bridgeboro! Three cheers for the hero of the battle of Downing’s lot!
All hail the conqueror of Tony Spaghetti! Three cheers for the
greatest strategist of the age! The car shall pass!”
Believe me, we didn’t do a thing but lay waste to that conquered
territory! I bought three frankfurters to start. Vic Norris bought two
slices of lemon pie, just to begin. Dorry Benton bought a whole
cake. The counter inside that wagon was lined with victorious
scouts, and others were waiting outside for their turns. Our young
hero was opening his program with a ham sandwich and a piece of
custard pie, and a cup of coffee. That was just the prologue.
Pretty soon over came the girls and one of them wanted to know
what we were all shouting about. I know that girl; she’s Professor
Skybrow’s daughter and she wears big spectacles. She’s too smart to
live, that girl is. She was in my class last term and she took all the
merits in sight. She’d have taken the whole school if it hadn’t been
fastened down.
Pee-wee went up to her and tried to speak. He was trying to hold his
cup of coffee and sandwich and his pie in two hands, and there was
custard all over his face. He looked as if he’d been through a war.
“We’ve—we’ve won the war,” he was trying to say. “Roy Blakeley
planned the whole thing—he——”
“I’m the modern Napoleon,” I said. “I’ve got General Pershing
tearing his hair.”
She said, “Did you ever study the battle of Waterloo?”
I said, “This is the battle of coffeeloo. We like that better than water.
Will you have a piece of pie?”
She just stared at me and said, “And you consider yourself a
strategist!”
“He’s—he’s the great mil—mil——” Pee-wee began, trying to talk and
eat a piece of pie at the same time. “He’s the greatest military
genius of the age.”
She just looked through those big glasses, very smart and superior
like, and she said, “If I were a general I wouldn’t be so stupid as to
forget all about my reinforcements.”
“W-a-a—what d’ y’ mean—reinforcements?” Pee-wee blurted out,
while the coffee and custard were trickling down off his chin. “Wha’
d’ y’ mean?”
She just said, “When is that train going to arrive that you are waiting
for?”
“At exactly four-sixty—five o’clock,” I told her.
She said, “Well, then, Mr. Smarty, you timed your battle wrong. You
made a blunder——”
“The pleasure is mine,” I said.
“And in order to hold this wagon here and keep the track clear till
your friend Mr. Jenson comes, you have got to keep on eating for
exactly two hours and forty minutes. If you can hold the fort that
long you can move your car. But you’ll have to keep eating all the
time.”
There was a dead silence.
“We—can—d-d-d-wit,” Pee-wee managed to blurt out, all the while
spilling his coffee and munching his pie. “Scoutscam——”
Good night! I just stood there, and that girl kept looking right at me
through those big glasses. She got ninety-nine in arithmetic, that girl
did, and she wrote a poem that was in the newspaper, too.
Then she said, “You see, General Napoleon, you didn’t figure your
campaign properly. If you had gotten the Girl Scouts to help you,
perhaps you wouldn’t have found yourselves in this ghastly
predicament.”
Those are just the words she used—ghastly predicament.
CHAPTER X—MINERVA SKYBROW TAKES COMMAND
“Hurrah for Joan of Arc!” one scout began shouting.
“What do we care?” Pee-wee managed to blurt out.
“We care a good deal,” Westy said. “Our glorious leader is all right
on the field of battle, but when it comes to planning a strategical
move——”
“We can’t go on eating for nearly three hours,” a scout from the East
Bridgeboro troop said. “We’ve got to get home sometime.”
Minerva Skybrow (that was her name), she just looked at us and she
said, “Oh, doubtless you’ll think of a way; scouts are so smart.
They’re so resourceful.”
One of the other girls said, “Yes, and they can do anything with their
appetites, you know.”
“Up to a certain point,” Westy said.
“Upstrn put in—vncble,” Pee-wee blurted. “Bth not insrmtble——”
I said, “Don’t try to manage a cup of coffee, a sandwich and a piece
of pie and the word insurmountable at the same time. It can’t be
did.”
“I—cnsrmntble cern pnt——”
“Shut up,” I said; “this is no time for words; this is a time for
actions.”
Gee whiz, I saw we were in a tight place and there was that girl just
standing there staring at us through her big glasses. I bet she was
just the kind of a girl that likes algebra. There were the old rusty
railroad tracks clear at last right across the field as far as Slausen’s.
And there was Tony’s Lunch Wagon a couple of hundred feet away
from where it always stood. We knew he’d move it right back to its
old place again as soon as there wasn’t anything more doing in the
field, because on account of his regular trade there, and besides
there was a little flight of wooden steps built over there which just
fitted in front of the door. And all his boards and things were there
besides. There was a kind of a bulletin board there, too, with all the
eats and things marked up on it. Jimmies, if he had been able to talk
English maybe we could have argued with him, but we couldn’t get
anything into his head, not even with a crowbar.
Everybody knows that scouts have good appetites, and I can prove
it by the cook up at Temple Camp, but gee williger, no scout can go
on eating for over two hours; even Pee-wee couldn’t. I saw the
terrible mistake I had made. It was a military blunder.
I said to Tony, “How soon you go back?”
“Sooner no more de biz,” he said.
“I’ll have one more sandwich,” said Westy.
“Can you make it two for the sake of the cause?” I asked him.
“Give me another plate of chowder,” Connie Bennett said. “You don’t
hear a train in the distance, do you?”
One of the girls said, “Oh, mercy, it won’t be here till five o’clock.
We’ll stay and let you know when it comes. Because, you know we
really have nothing to do. We can’t run and jump and play ball, you
know. We’re only girls, aren’t we, Minerva?”
I said, “Well, there’s only one thing for us to do. We’ve got to hold
the fort——”
“Can we hold the food? That’s the question,” some fellows shouted.
“Absypostvly,” Pee-wee blurted out. “Hip, hip——”
“Shut up,” I told him. “There’s only one thing for us to do and that is
to work in platoons. Scouts will go into the wagon four at a time and
eat at the counter. Nothing must be eaten except at the counter. As
they come out they’ll be relieved by others. Don’t eat too fast. The
train will be here in two hours. We can hold out. There is nothing
else to do. The lunch wagon must be held. Somebody go over to the
station and find out if the milk train is on time. Keep busy. Chowder
is recommended, but scouts must use their judgment. On to victory.
We can eat forever!”
“Make th wrld safe fr dmcrcy!” Pee-wee yelled.
“Forever!” a lot of them shouted.
“What’s two hours?”
“We can eat forever! Hurrah!”
Just then one of those Little Valley scouts came running back from
the station. “The milk train is an hour and a half late!” he said.
“Oh, isn’t that just too exasperating?” said Minerva Skybrow.
 CHAPTER XI—WE FIND A WAY
I said, “Good night, that ends it for us. We can’t keep this up for
three hours and a half. There’s no use trying. We’re beaten.”
“Scouts beaten!” one of the girls said.
“Just the same way as Napoleon was beaten,” I said. “You think
you’re so smart. Maybe you don’t know he was beaten because his
reinforcements didn’t show up.”
“Don’t let’s give up,” Pee-wee shouted, just as he finished his last
mouthful of pie.
Minerva Skybrow said, “Isn’t it nice how much you know about
history?”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s just too cute. But my favorite studies are the
multiplication table and the dining table. You’re so smart, maybe you
can suggest something. You don’t expect to go on eating for three
hours, do you? Even—even—General—even Foch couldn’t do that.
And he’s greater than I am, I guess.”
She just said, “Oh, is he, really?”
“And so is Washington,” I said. Because I was good and mad.
“You mean he was,” she said. “He’s dead, you know.”
“If you can get us out of this scrape,” I said, “let’s see you do it.”
She just said, “Well, of course, if you admit that your appetites have
failed you, and if you really want the Girl Scouts to tell you what is in
your own handbooks, I’ll remind you of the value of mushrooms.”
“Oh, is that so?” I said. “I know all about mushrooms and I can tell a
mushroom from a toadstool or a footstool or a piano-stool or any
other kind of a stool. But that’s not going to keep this blamed wagon
here, is it?”
She said, “Oh, isn’t it?”
“Well,” I said, “you’re so smart, you were always getting E plus in
Miss Harrison’s class and you wrote a poem for the High School
paper and all that, let’s see you keep this wagon here for three
hours. Do you mean to tell me you and the rest of these girl scouts
could go on eating for three hours?”
“No, but we could use our brains for three seconds,” she said.
“Maybe you think it’s easy to argue with a wop that doesn’t
understand ten words of English. What would you do? You’re so
smart. What would you do?”
She said, “Well, of course we’re only girls and we haven’t had the
advantages of a Temple Camp, and we can only eat raspberry
sundaes and banana splits. But if I were a smart, wonderful boy,
head of a scout patrol and had my face on the covers of a lot of
books, and knew all about the boy scout handbook, I’d try to make
this man understand that that dark spot underneath where his
wagon stood is simply filled with mushrooms. I’d try to make him
understand that the best mushrooms grow in the dark and damp
places. And I’d tell him (because you know scouts know everything)
that mushrooms are worth about seventy-five cents a pound. I’d do
him a good turn. I’d show him how to dig them all up so as to get
the spawn and everything, and I’d show him how to plant them in
boxes. Then he’d have two beds of them. Perhaps all that would
occupy him for the rest of the afternoon, and of course the wagon
——
“But then, I’m only a girl, and I can’t eat my way to power and
world dominion.” That’s just the way she talked. Honest.
I said, “Minerva Skybrow, you’ve got Joan of Arc beaten about ’steen
dozen ways. I know that about mushrooms in the handbook; it
comes right after Woodcraft. When I used to see you in Assembly I
thought you were stuck up, and I know I’m always making fun of
the girl scouts. But you’ve done us a good turn. Gee whiz, I always
hated Miss Harrison, didn’t you? Because she kept us in till five
o’clock. I guess she didn’t have any home. But, anyway, I have to
admit you can play on the piano all right.
“And another thing I know about you, too: you started taking Italian
in the Academic course. I bet you can speak Italian. I know the girl
that used to sit next to you before you went to the High School; I
pulled her on a sled once. You know the girl I mean. She was always
eating chocolate. Believe me, I have to admit that you’ve got more
sense than we have, and if you’ll help us to keep this blamed wagon
out of our path of glory till the milk train comes we’re going to give a
big racket in your honor when we get our car down to the field near
the river, if we ever do.
“Honest, Minerva, to tell you the truth, we can’t eat another thing,
and I see that what counts most in the world is brains—brains and
mushrooms. But, gee whiz, I like ice cream, too.”
 CHAPTER XII—THE GRAND DRIVE BEGINS
The next minute that girl started talking Italian to Tony, and, oh,
boy, you should have seen him. Right away he got excited and
wanted to dig up the whole earth. I guess she told him there was a
gold mine where his wagon had been standing.
I don’t know if you know much about mushrooms, but they’re easy
to raise and you can get a lot of money for them, and that’s
something that most scouts don’t know about. All you need is a
place that’s kind of damp and dark, like under a car or a wagon or in
a cellar that hasn’t got any heat. It’s a lot of fun raising them. Maybe
that’s why they call them fungi. Anyway, Minerva Skybrow put the
fun in fungi for us all right, because now we have a dandy little
mushroom patch under our car down by the river and the only
competition we have in Bridgeboro is from Tony. We should worry.
Every Saturday morning people come down to Van Schlessenhoff’s
field to buy mushrooms from us. Only you’ve got to be careful,
because if you eat the wrong kind of mushrooms, the first thing you
know some fine day you’ll wake up and find yourself dead. So you
better read what the handbook says about them.
The kind we raise are dandy big ones and we call them the Skybrow
mushroom, and they’re known far and wide—all the way up as far as
Main Street.
Now for the rest of that afternoon we helped Tony dig up
mushrooms and plant them in boxes and spread more of them in the
space where his wagon belonged, and Minerva Skybrow managed
the whole business. I guess it must have been after six o’clock when
we heard the milk train whistling, and, believe me, we were all
pretty tired when it pulled into the station.
Minerva said, “Now isn’t that better than just eating? You’ve won the
day, you’ve kept the tracks clear, and you’ve done something worth
while. You’ve done a good turn in the bargain.”
“And when we start raising mushrooms ourselves,” Pee-wee piped
up, “we’ll have something more to eat, too. Hey?” Jiminy, that’s all
that kid thinks about.
I said to Minerva, “You’re so smart, maybe you can think of a way
for us to get past Slausen’s Repair Shop. Believe me, that’s going to
be some Hindenburg line. Maybe we can tell him to plant rubber
bands and automobile tires will grow up. We should worry; we’ve
done enough for one day.”
Mr. Jenson, who is engineer on that milk train, was mighty nice. He
said that scouts did him a good turn once, and so he was going to
pay them back. While the men were loading the milk cans onto the
train he ran his locomotive very slowly onto those old rusty tracks
and the first thing we knew, plunk, he bunked right into our old car.
Gee whiz, it looked good to see it move. It just gave a kind of a jerk.
Then he called down to us and said, “Now where do you want me to
leave this de luxe Pullman Palace car?”
I said, “We want you to push it across Main Street, past where the
lunch wagon usually stands, and right about to the middle of the
field. That’s as far as we can go to-day.”
“You planning to go farther than that?” he asked us.
“Yes, but we have to think of a way,” Westy called up to him.
Mr. Jenson began laughing and he said, “You kids’ll have to do some
tall thinking to get past that old building.”
“That’s all right,” Westy said; “the human mind can move anything.”
Mr. Jenson just said, “All right, over she goes.”
Some of us got on the car and the others walked along and the girls
stayed around, laughing. A couple of them got on the car, but most
of them were kind of afraid, I guess. Maybe they thought it would
never stop. Some men stood around watching and laughing, too.
What did we care?
The locomotive pushed the car so slow that we could walk ahead of
it. It hardly moved. We felt pretty important when we saw the gates
go down across Main Street and people and automobiles waiting till
we got past. Most of the scouts who had come from other towns
had gone home and only our own troop and the girls and a few
others were there. But a whole lot of people were standing around
watching and laughing at our old ramshackle car. It went right over
Tony’s new mushroom farm, and then Mr. Jenson’s fireman came
down and we helped him haul a big piece of timber across the tracks
about in the middle of the field, because the brakes on that car
weren’t much good.
Pretty soon the locomotive stopped and our old car just moved so
slow that it hardly moved at all. Then, kerplunk, the wheels ran
against the piece of timber, and the first stage of our what-d’you-
call-it, memorable journey, was over.
After that we helped Tony get his lunch wagon back to where it
belonged, and we all gave Mr. Jenson three cheers when the milk
train pulled out. The boy scouts are all right, and you can see for
yourself that you can do a lot by concerted appetite. But you need
brains, too. And if it hadn’t been for the Girl Scouts and the Erie
Railroad, where would we be, I’d like to know? So that’s why my
favorite heroes are the Girl Scouts and the Erie Railroad. Maybe
they’re both kind of slow—I’m not saying—but good turns are what
count.
 CHAPTER XIII—AFTER THE BATTLE
So there we were with the first hard part of our big enterprise over,
and the hardest part staring us in the face.
“We’re past the first trench line, anyway,” Westy said.
“Yes, but I’d like to know how we’re going to get past that old repair
shop,” Connie put in. “That’s what I’d like to know.”
We were all sitting in the car resting before going home.
“You leave that to me,” I said. “Where there’s a will there’s a way.
I’ve got an idea.”
“Have you got it with you?” Dorry Benton wanted to know.
“I’m not going to bother with that old grouch, Mr. Slausen,” I said.
“He’s worse than a rainy Sunday, that man is.”
“I’m glad I’m not his son,” one of the fellows said.
“Believe me,” I told them, “when it comes to picking out fathers I
picked out a good one.”
“Well, what’s the idea?” one of them wanted to know.
“This is the idea,” I said. “Two or three of us will go and see Mr.
Downing, who owns the field and the blamed old garage and
everything, and we’ll tell him all about it and maybe he can make Mr.
Slausen let us take down a few boards where the track runs
through. Mr. Downing’s a mighty nice man, I know that, because he
gave a hundred dollars in the scout drive.”
“Well, and suppose that fails?” Westy wanted to know.
I said, “Well, then, it means a lot of trouble; maybe we’ll have to all
get to work and take up the tracks and lay them to the left of the
garage where they cross Willow Place.”
“That will take us all summer,” Charlie Seabury said.
“Well,” I said, “we’ve got this far and will find a way to get the rest
of the distance, that’s sure. Where there’s a will there’s a way.”
Just then in came Mr. Slausen, all of a sudden, kind of angry like.
“All tickets, please,” I said. Because he made me think of a
conductor.
He said, “Now see here, what are you youngsters doing here in this
car?”
I said, “Is it a conundrum? How many guesses do we have? We’re
sitting in it.”
“You’ll have to clear out of here with this thing,” he said. “You’ll be in
the way, and this is private property, you know.”
“So is this car private property,” I said.
“Well, it’s on private land,” he said.
“That’s all right,” I told him; “it’s private property just the same.
Even if it were on the moon it would be private property. It belongs
to us. And the field doesn’t belong to you, either. It belongs to Mr.
Downing.”
Just then several of the fellows started singing an old tune that we
used to fit words to when we were travelling around the country in
that car.
“We’re on our way to the river,
We’re on our way to the river,
We’d rather have this than a flivver.

We’ll get there never fear,

And when we get there, we’ll be there
And while we’re here, we’re here.”
“Well, you’ll have to clear out of here with this thing,” he said. “I’ll
see your parents about it. I’ll notify the police. I use all this land, you
can’t stay here.”
“We don’t intend to stay here,” I said. “We’re going to move down to
the river, into Van Schlessenhoff’s field. We’re just stopping here.
You should worry.”
“Well, you’ll have to have this thing moved back,” he said, very
cross.
“Scouts don’t move back,” I said; “they move forward. The only
thing that will stop us is the river. Excelsior! That’s our middle name.”
“That’s what you pack china in,” Pee-wee shouted.
“It means Forward,” I said. “It’s what somebody or other had on a
banner, in a poem. Scouts don’t have any reverse movement.”
“Now you boys know you can’t get past here,” Mr. Slausen said.
“What are you up to? How do you expect to get past here?”
“We should worry our young lives about how we’re going to get
past,” I said. “Italy stood in our way—you saw what happened. This
is the Berlin to Bagdad Railroad—branch of the Erie. We’re going to
subdue all the land between here and the river. We should sneeze at
the Sneezenbunker land. We’re going to make all the cats in Cat-tail
Marsh pay an indemnity. Maybe you think you’re more important
than Belgium, but we’ll go through you all right. You leave it to us.
Food won the war so far, didn’t it? Posolutely, quoth he.
“We haven’t opened our next campaign yet, but, anyway, we’re not
too proud to fight. Please don’t bother us now; we’re planning our
next big drive. We’re going to make the world safe for the boy
scouts. If the police and our parents know what’s best for them
they’ll stay neutral.”
“Do you want to make a treaty with us?” Connie piped up. “Come on
over to Bennett’s and we’ll treat you to a treaty.”
Then we all began singing.
 We’re here because we’re here,
We are not in despair;
And when we are no longer here
Why, maybe we’ll be there.
Mr. Slausen just went out and slammed the door. Gee whiz, that man
can’t take a joke.
 CHAPTER XIV—SOMETHING MISSING
Now I’m going to tell you all about what happened that night. Before
dark Westy rode up to my house on his bicycle, because I had told
him that I’d help him clean it up. We weren’t thinking about the car,
because we had decided that we’d go and see Mr. Downing the next
morning; that would be Sunday.
We knew Mr. Downing took a lot of interest in the scouts, and we
weren’t worrying, because we thought he would fix things for us.
The way we talked to Mr. Slausen is the only way you can talk to a
man like that, because he’s an old grouch. Everybody knows him.
Now out by the road in front of my house is a carriage step, and
Westy and I sat on that while we cleaned up his bike and oiled it and
greased it. We kept working there till it was nearly dark. He has a
dandy big flashlight and we used that to light up places that we
couldn’t see very well.
Pretty soon the bike was all clean and the dirt was all on us. So we
went in to wash up. I was the first to get through, so I went out on
the porch and lay down on the swing seat.
Now there’s a wide lawn between our house and the road. I ought
to know because I mow it every week. That’s where my sister and
Harry Donnelle play tennis. He’s a big fellow.
It was pretty nearly dark and I was waiting for Westy to come out.
He was going to stay to supper at my house. My mother likes him a
lot. But that night we didn’t feel much like supper. While I was lying
there an automobile passed along the road and stopped right in
front of the house and somebody got out. I thought whoever it was
was coming up to the house when I saw that person get in the car
and ride away again.
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