Pee-Wee Harris Adrift Part 3

The officers now began to have some glimmerings of the fact that here was a boy who did not belong in Barrel Alley. They were a little taken aback by the exhibition of so much pride and spirit. The customary, ominous grip of the collar had not worked.

"What were you doing down here, Sonny?" Detective Slippett asked.

"I came down to hunt for fellers to start a scout patrol," Pee-wee said, "and one feller was laying keekie for cops and he had to go home so I took his place, because he had to keep his word with those fellers, didn't he? Maybe you wouldn't promise fellers to do that but, gee whiz, if you did promise them you'd have to keep your word, wouldn't you? If he sees I help him maybe he'll get to be a scout, won't he? Do you mean to tell me it isn't more important to be a scout than it is to let fellers get to be arrested? Even--even Roosevelt said the scouts were important, but he didn't say it was important you should catch fellers, did he?"

"That's some argument," Detective Slippett said, half smiling.

"I know even better arguments than that," Pee-wee boasted.

"Well," said Detective Spotson rather more gruffly, "you'd better look out how you try to interfere with the law, young feller, 'cause first thing you know you'll find yourself in jail. And you'd better keep away from this outfit down here, too. Now you chase yourself back to where you belong--see?"

"You thought you were going to scare me, didn't you?" Pee-wee said.

CHAPTER VI

THE MISSIONARY

Pee-wee retraced his steps back across the field feeling righteous and triumphant. To him the interests of the Boy Scouts of America superseded every other interest and like the true missionary he did not scruple overmuch as to means employed.

As he emerged Into the alley, Keekie Joe, looking frightened and apprehensive, appeared out of the surrounding squalor. It was a characteristic of Keekie Joe that he always appeared without warning.

A long habit of sneaking had given him this uncanny quality. Suddenly Pee-wee, in the full blush of his heroic triumph, was aware of the poor wretch shuffling along beside him.

"Wot'd they say ter yer? Wot'd yer tell 'em?" he asked fearfully.

"I didn't tell them anything," Pee-wee said. "As long as the fellers got away they won't blame you. Anyway, if you'd have been there they'd have been caught, because you didn't know those detectives because they're strangers around here."

"How'd _you_ know them?" Keekie Joe inquired.

"Gee, scouts are supposed to know everything," Pee-wee informed him.

Keekie Joe gave a side glance at Pee-wee as he shuffled along at his side. He was rather interested in a cla.s.s of boys who knew all officials on sight; here indeed was something worth knowing. "Yer spotted 'em?" he asked incredulously.

"_Sure_ I did," said Pee-wee with great alacrity; "because scouts are supposed to be observant, see? I saw them in Northvale once. But, believe me, I didn't holla. _Oh, no_! I ran over and told the fellers and they all got away, so as long as you didn't leave them in the lurch it was all right. So now will you join the scouts? They always carry licorice jaw-breakers in their pockets," he added as a supplementary inducement; "anyway _I_ do--lemon ones too, and strawberry ones."

"How many is in your gang?" Joe asked.

"n.o.body yet," said Pee-wee, "because I haven't got it started. But if you'll join in with me we'll start one. You're supposed to hike and run a lot but if you want to run after fire engines and ambulances it's all right." He said this because of the favorite outdoor sport of Barrel Alley of trailing fire engines and ambulances. "So will you join?" he added.

They paused on the frontier of Joe's domain in the rear of the big bank building which fronted on Main Street. Here was the makeshift sidewalk of barrel staves whence the alley derived its name. "You have to be, kind of, you have to be a sort of a--kind of wild and reckless to join the scouts," Pee-wee pleaded. "Maybe you're kind of scared on account of thinking that you have to be civilized, but you don't; you don't even eat off plates," he added with sudden inspiration. "We cook potatoes just like tramps do, right out in the woods; we hold them on sticks over the fire. So now will you join? If you will you'll be elected patrol leader because there's only one to vote for you and I'm the one and I'm a majority. See? So if you come in right now you'll be sure to have a majority and I'll buy some Eskimo pies, too."

"Der yez swipe de pertaters?" Joe asked.

"We don't exactly kind of what you would call swipe them," Pee-wee was forced to confess. "But we get them in ways that are just as good.

They taste just as good as if they were swiped, honest they do," he hastened to add. "So will you come down by the river with me? That old railroad car down there is our meeting place and it's got a stove in it and everything and there won't be any one there to-day except just you and me and we'll have an election and I'll vote for you and you can vote for yourself and so you'll be sure to be elected patrol leader. And after that I'll show you what you have to do and most of it is eating and things like that. So will you say yes?"

Keekie Joe was not to be lured by promises of "eats," though he was curious about the old railroad car. His answer to Pee-wee was characteristic of him. "I woudn' join 'em, because they're a lot of sissies," he said, "but yer needn' be ascared ter come down here because I woudn' leave no guy hurt yer; I woudn' leave 'em guy yer because yer a Boy Scout. If any of 'em starts guyen yer he'll get an upper cut, see?"

Pee-wee went on his way thoroughly disappointed and disheartened. His thought was not that he had made a friend, but that he had lost a possible recruit. He had cherished no thought of reforming the wicked and uplifting the lowly in his effort to enlist this outlandish denizen of the slums. He was not the goody-goody little scout propagandist that we sometimes read about. He had simply been desperate and had lost all sense of discrimination. Anything would do if he could only start a patrol. What this st.u.r.dy little scout failed to understand was that in this particular enterprise the Boy Scouts had lost out but that Pee-wee Harris had won.

CHAPTER VII

APPLE BLOSSOM TIME

Pee-wee stopped in Bennett's Fresh Confectionery and regaled his drooping spirit with a chocolate soda. Then he continued his stroll up Main Street. He had always advertised his conviction that things invariably came his way but nothing came his way on this lonely Sat.u.r.day morning.

He paused here and there gazing idly into shop windows, he stood gaping at a man who was having trouble with his auto, and at last he wandered into the public library. The place seemed like a tomb on that Sat.u.r.day morning in the springtime. Not a boy was there to be seen. "Gee whiz, they've got something better to do than read books," he thought to himself.

There at the desk sat the librarian, silent, preoccupied. In the reading room were a few scattered readers intent on newspapers and magazines. The place, familiar and pleasant enough to Pee-wee at other times, seemed alien and uninviting at a time of day when he was usually too busy to call upon its quiet resources of treasure.

On this balmy holiday it seemed almost like school; it had a booky, studious atmosphere which turned him against it. And to complete this impression and make the place abhorrent to him there sat Miss Bunting, the history teacher, in a corner of the reference room with several books spread about her. To Pee-wee on Sat.u.r.day morning this seemed nothing less than an insult.

He approached a shelf near the librarian's desk above which was a sign that read BOOKS ESPECIALLY RECOMMENDED. Here were always a few old time favorites, worth while books made readily available. From these Pee-wee half-heartedly drew out a copy of Treasure Island and took it to a table. He knew his Treasure Island. In a disgruntled mood he sank far down in his chair and opened the book at random. He was too familiar with the enthralling pages of the famous story to seek solace in it now, but there was nothing else to do and he was too out of sorts to search further. Presently he was idly skimming over the page before him.

The appearance of the island when I came on deck next morning was altogether changed. Although the breeze had now utterly failed, we had made a great deal of way during the night, and were now lying becalmed about half a mile to the southeast of the low eastern coast.

Gray-colored woods covered a large part of the surface. This even tint was indeed broken up by streaks of yellow sandbreak in the lower lands, and by many tall trees of the pine family, out-topping the others--some singly, some in clumps; but the general coloring was uniform and sad.

The hills ran up . . .

Pee-wee blinked his eyes, yawned, then suddenly drew himself up into an erect sitting posture and pushed the book from him. "Gee whiz," he mused, "that's what I'd like, to go off to a desert island. They don't have any desert islands now; that's one thing I don't like about this century. Hikes and camping and all that make me tired; I'd like to be on a desert island, that's what _I'd_ like to do. I'd like to be marooned. Gee whiz, we only kid ourselves trying to make ourselves think we're doing things that are wild. I guess all the desert islands are discovered by now; oh boy, there were lots and lots of them in the seventeenth century; that's my favorite century, the seventeenth, on account of buried treasure and desert islands."

Indulging these disconsolate spring musings, Pee-wee sank down in his chair again, a frowning, dreamy figure, and floated out of the library and away from all the sordid environments of Bridgeboro toward a desert island situated in the south-eastern part of the seventeenth century.

It was a long, long way off and he had to cross the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to get to it. He was no longer a pioneer scout now, nor a scout at all, but a doughty explorer about to set foot for the first time on soil that white man had never trod before.

He sank farther down in his chair as he voyaged afar. He was soon out of sight of land and almost out of sight of the few readers in that drowsy old library. He continued to sink lower and lower in his chair as if he had sprung a leak. Only his round, curly head was above the table. The island which he reached was a delectable spot, an earthly Paradise, with trees laden with fruit which came down like summer showers when he shook the trees. He wandered about on the enchanted sh.o.r.es, and ate so much fruit that oddly he felt that he was himself a tree and that some one was trying to shake fruit out of him. . . . He sat up with a start and found himself confronting the smiling countenance of Miss Warden, the librarian, who had been shaking him not unkindly.

"Where have you been?" she asked, laughing.

"To a desert island," said Pee-wee.

He roused himself and wandered out into the balmy air and down toward the river, a lonesome little figure. A broad field bordered the stream and crossing this he approached the old car which was the troops'

headquarters. But before he reached it he was aware of something which caused him to rub his eyes and stare. As sure as he lived, there in front of him was the seventeenth century, F. O. B. Bridgeboro, with all appurtenances and accessories. He stood gaping at a little island out in the middle of the stream, which had no more business there than Pee-wee had had to be dozing in the library.

Pee-wee stood stark still in the middle of the field and rubbed his eyes to make sure that he was awake. There was not the slightest doubt that what he saw was very real. The river at that point was quite wide and its opposite sh.o.r.e was bordered with spa.r.s.e woodland.

Pee-wee had bathed and fished and canoed in this neighborhood almost as long as he could remember and he was perfectly certain that there had never been an island there. He knew an island when he saw one and nothing was more certain than that this one was a stranger in the neighborhood.

Yet it seemed to be perfectly at home out there in the middle of the stream, just as if it had been born there and had grown up there.

There was nothing fugitive looking about it at all. In the true spirit of the twentieth century, which is all for time saving and convenience, it had voyaged to Pee-wee, thereby saving him the time and perils of an extended cruise. It had, as one might say, been delivered at his door.

This was certainly an improvement over the old, out-of-date method of desert island exploration. Such patent, adjustable islands would bring the joys of adventurous pioneering "within the reach of all" as advertis.e.m.e.nt writers are so fond of declaring, just as the phonograph, has brought music into every home.

"That's funny," said Pee-wee, pausing in amazement. "That wasn't here yesterday, because I was down here yesterday. Anyway as long as no one's here I'm going to be the one to go and discover it. Findings is keepings; it's just the same with islands as it is with everything else."