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Pee Wee Harris

<h2> CHAPTER VI </h2> THE WAY OF THE SCOUT Pepsy's right name was Penelope Pepperall and Aunt Jamsiah had taken her out of the County Home after the fire episode, by way of saving her from the worse influence of a reformatory. She and Uncle Ebenezer had agreed to be responsible for the girl, and Pepsy had spent a year of joyous freedom at the farm marred only by the threat hanging over her that she would be restored to the authorities upon the least suspicion of misconduct. She had done her work faithfully and become a help and a comfort to her benefactors. She had a snappy temper and a sharp tongue and was, indeed, something of a tomboy. But Aunt Jamsiah, though often annoyed and sometimes chagrined, took a charitable view of these shortcomings and her generous heart was not likely to confound them with genuine misdoing. So the stern condition of Pepsy's freedom had become something of a dead letter, except in her own fearful fancy, and particularly when that discordant voice of the bridge spoke ominously of her peril. Pepsy had been trusted and had proven worthy of the trust. She had never known any mother or father, nor any home save the institution from which Aunt Jamsiah had rescued her, and she had grown to love her kindly guardians and the old farm where she had much work but also much freedom. "Chores will keep her out of mischief," Aunt Jamsiah had said. Wiggle's ancestry and social standing were quite as much a mystery as Pepsy's; he was not an aristocrat, that is certain, and having no particular chores to do was free to devote his undivided time to mischief; he concentrated on it, as the saying is, and thereby accomplished wonders. He was Pepsy's steady comrade and the partner of all her adventurous escapades. Pepsy was not romantic and imaginative, her freckled face and tightly braided red hair and thin legs with wrinkled cotton stockings, protested against that. She had a simple mind with a touch of superstition. It was a kind of morbid dread of the institution she had left which had conjured that ramshackle old bridge up on the highway into an ominous voice of warning, She hated the bridge and dreaded it as a thing haunted. Pee-wee soon became close friends with these two, and from a rather cautious and defensive beginning Pepsy soon fell victim to the spell of the little scout, as indeed everyone else did. Pepsy did not surrender without a struggle. She showed Pee-wee the woodchuck hole and Pee-wee, after a minute's skillful search, showed her the other hole, or back entrance, under a stone wall. "There are always two," he told her, "and one of them is usually under a stone wall. They're smart, woodchucks are." "Are they as smart as you?" she wanted to know. "Smarter," Pee-wee admitted, generously; "they're smarter than skunks and even skunks are smarter than I am." "I like you better than skunks," she said. Wiggle seemed to be of the same opinion. "I like all the scouts on account of you," she said. No one could be long in Pee-wee's company without hearing about the scouts; he was a walking (or rather a running and jumping) advertisement of the organization. He told Pepsy about tracking and stalking and signaling and the miracles of cookery which his friend Roy Blakeley had performed. "Can he cook better than you?" Pepsy wanted to know, a bit dubiously. "Yes, but I can eat more than he can," Pee-wee said. And that seemed to relieve her. "I can make a locust come to me," he added, and suiting the action to the word he emitted a buzzing sound which brought a poor deluded locust to his very hand. At such wonder-working she could only gape and stare. Wiggle appeared to claim the locust as a souvenir of the scout's magic. "You let it go, Wiggle," Pee-wee said. "If you want to be a scout you can't kill anything that doesn't do any harm. But you can kill snakes and mosquitoes if you want to." Evidently it was the dream of Wiggle's life to be a scout for he released the locust to Pee-wee, wagging his tail frantically. "You have to be loyal, too," the young propagandist said; "that's a rule. You have to be helpful and think up ways to help people. No matter what happens you have to be loyal." "Do you have to be loyal to orphan homes?" Pepsy wanted to know. "If they lick you do you have to be loyal to them?" Here was a poser for the scout. But being small Pee-wee was able to wriggle out of almost anything. "You have to be loyal where loyalty is due," he said. "That's what the rule says; it's Rule Two. But, anyway, there's another rule and that's Rule Seven and it says you have to be kind. You can't be kind licking people, that's one sure thing. So it's a technicality that you don't have to be loyal to an orphan home. You can ask any lawyer because that's what you call logic." "Deadwood Gamely's father is a lawyer," Pepsy said, "and I hate Deadwood Gamely and I wouldn't go to his house to ask his father. He's a smarty and I hit him with a tomato. Have I got a right to do that—if he's a smarty?" Here was another legal technicality, but Pee-wee was equal to the occasion. "A—a scout has to be a—he has to have a good aim," he said. <h2> CHAPTER VII </h2> A BIG IDEA They had been driving the cows home during this learned exposition on scouting. Two things were now perfectly clear to Pepsy's simple mind. One, that she would be loyal at any cost, loyal to her new friend, and through him to all the scouts. She knew them only through him. They were a race of wonder-workers away off in the surging metropolis of Bridgeboro. She could not aspire to be one of them, but she could be loyal, she could "stick up" for them. The other matter which was now settled, once and for all, was that it was all right to throw a tomato at a person you hated provided only that you hit the mark. Aunt Jamsiah had been all wrong in her anger at that exploit which had stirred the village. For to throw a tomato at the son of Lawyer Gamely was aiming very high. The son of Lawyer Gamely had a Ford and worked in the bank at Baxter City and was a mighty sport who wore white collars and red ties and said that "Everdoze was asleep and didn't have brains enough to lie down," and all such stuff. Pee-wee let down the bars while the patient cows waited, and Scout Wiggle (knowing that a scout should be helpful) gave the last cow a snip on the leg to help her along. Here, at these rustic bars, ended Pepsy's chores for the day and in the delightful interval before supper she and Pee-wee lolled in the well house by the roadside. Wiggle, with characteristic indecision, chased the cows a few yards, returned to his companions, darted off to chase the cows again, deserted that pastime with erratic suddenness, and returned again wagging his tail and looking up intently as if to ask, "What next?" Then he lay down panting. Mr. Ellsworth, Pee-wee's scoutmaster, would have said that Wiggle lacked method. ... "If I had a lot of money," Pepsy said, "you could teach me all the things that scouts know and I'd pay you ever so much. Once I had forty cents but I spent it at the Mammoth Carnival. I paid ten cents to throw six balls so I could get a funny doll and I never hit the doll and when I only had ten cents left I made believe the doll was Deadwood Gamely and I hated and hated with all my might while I threw the ball the last six times but I couldn't hit the doll." "You can't aim so good when you're mad," Pee-wee said, "so if you want to hit somebody with a tomato or an egg or anything like that you just have kind thoughts about the person that you're aiming at, only you're not supposed to throw tomatoes and eggs and things because you can have more fun eating them. I wouldn't waste a tomato on that feller because anyway you've got your tongue." "You can't sass him," said Pepsy, "because he uses big words and he's such a smarty and he makes you feel silly and then you begin to cry and get mad. When he says I'm an orphan and things—and things—Wiggle hates him, too, don't you, Wiggle?" The girl was almost crying then and Pee-wee comforted her. "Do you think I don't know any long words?" he said. "I know some of the longest words that were ever invented and—and—even I can make special ones myself. Once I—don't you cry—once I was kept in school and Julia Carson was kept in too, because she wriggled in her seat—you know how girls do. I had to choose a word and write it a hundred times and I didn't want to get through too soon, because I wanted to get out the same time she did. So I chose the word incomprehensibility, and I—" "Is that girl pretty?" Pepsy wanted to know. "She's got a wart on her finger. It's the best one I ever saw," Pee-wee said. "She's afraid to get in a boat, that girl is." "I hate her," Pepsy said. "What for?" Pee-wee inquired. "Because she has a wart? Don't you know it's good luck to have warts?" "Because—because she was bad and had to stay after school," Pepsy said. "That shows how much you know about logic," Pee-wee said, "because I had to stay too and I was worse than she was. So there." "I wouldn't be afraid to get in a boat," Pepsy said proudly. "I never said she was like you," Pee-wee declared. "She's not a tomboy." Pepsy seemed comforted. "You leave that feller to me," Pee-wee said. "I can handle Roy Blakeley and all his patrol and they're a lot of jolliers—they think they're so smart." "I like you better than all of them," Pepsy said. "Sometimes I'm kept after school too, you can ask Miss Bellison." "One thing sure, I like you well enough to be partners with you," Pee-wee said. "Do you want me to tell you something? I thought of a way to make a lot of money, and if I do I'm going to buy three new tents for our troop. Do you want to go partners with me? We'll say the tents are from both of us and we'll have a lot of fun." "I had a dollar once and I sent it to the heathens," Pepsy said, "and I'd rather help you than the heathens, because I like you better." "Heathens are all right," Pee-wee said, "and I'm not saying anything against heathens, especially wild ones, but we're just as wild. You ought to go to Temple Camp and see how wild we are." He did not look very wild as he sat upon the narrow seat with his knees drawn up and his scout hat on the back of his head showing his curly hair. The girl gazed at his natty khaki attire, the row of merit badges on his sleeve, the trophies of his heroic triumphs. She was not the first to feel the lure of a uniform. But it was the first uniform she had ever seen at close range, for in the wartime she had been in that frowning brick structure which still haunted her. "I'll help you because you can do everything and you know a lot," she said. In the fullness of her generosity and loyalty to Pee-wee's prowess she never reminded him or even thought of the things she could do which he could not. She would not do her little optional chore of milking a cow for fear he might perceive her superiority in this little item of proficiency. Poor girl, she was a better scout than she knew. "If you think it up I'll do all the work, and then we'll be even," she said. So Pee-wee told her of the colossal scheme which his lively imagination had conceived. "It all started with a hot frankfurter," he said. "If I hadn't bought a hot frankfurter I wouldn't have thought of it. So that shows you how important a frankfurter is—kind of. Maybe a person might get to be a millionaire just starting with a frankfurter, you never can tell. ..." <h2> CHAPTER VIII </h2> MAKING PLANS "I bought that frankfurter at a shack up on the highway and while I was eating it I just happened to think that as long as there's lots of fruit and things here and as long as you know how to make fudge, we'd start a shack right here in this well house and sell lemonade and fruit and fudge and cookies and things, and if we make lots of money I'd go up to Baxter City and buy some auto accessories like spark plugs and tire tape and things and we'd sell those, too. We'd put signs on the trees along the road telling people to stop here and I know how to make up signs so as to get people good and hungry. You have them say that things are hot in the pan and you have to have drinks with names like arctic and all like that. I know how to make them hungry and thirsty and I've got a balloon that I can blow up—see? And we'd print something on it and tie it to Wiggle's tail and make him walk up and down the road. What do you say? Isn't it a peachy scheme? Will you help me?" No dream of Pee-wee's could be impossible of fulfillment. With him, to try was to succeed, according to Pepsy's simple and unbounded faith. The plan must be all right, and wondrous in its possibilities. It was all inspiration—born of a frankfurter. It was not for poor Pepsy to take issue with this master mind. Yet she did venture to say, "Not very many autos come down here, only a few that go through to Berryville. Licorice Stick—" "That's a dandy name," Pee-wee said. "He goes by a dozen times a day, but he hasn't got any money, and Mr. Flint goes by but he's a miser and Doctor Killem goes by in his buggy and he says people eat too much—" "He's crazy!" Pee-wee shouted. "And that's everybody that goes by except a few when they have the town fair in Berryville." For a moment Pee-wee paused, balked but not beaten. "There's going to be an Uncle Tom's Cabin show in Berryville," he said, "and the town fair, that's two things. Let's start in and maybe later there'll be some summer boarders in Berryville. We'll have waffles—I can make those. And we'll have lemonade and fruit and all kinds of things and when you're doing your chores I'll tend counter. We'll make a lot of money, you see if we don't." In her generous confidence, Pepsy was quite carried away by Pee-wee's enthusiasm. She knew (who better than she?) that strangers never came along that lonely by-road. But she believed that somehow they would come when the scout waved his magic wand. "And I'll make cookies," she said, "and all the things to eat and you can print the signs—" "And shout to the people going by," Pee-wee concluded enthusiastically. "You have to yell ALL HOT! THEY'RE ALL HOT! Just like that." Few could resist this, Pepsy least of all. "Let's go and ask Aunt Jamsiah about it right now," she said. "Let me do it, I know how to handle her," said Pee-wee. And Pepsy deferred to the master mind, as usual. <h2> CHAPTER IX </h2> IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE Permission to use the well house once secured, preparations for the vast enterprise progressed rapidly. The very next day, while Pepsy was at her chores, Pee-wee built a counter in the shack and sitting at this he printed signs to be displayed along the woody approaches to this mouth-watering dispensary. Neither the gloomy predictions of his uncle nor the laughing skepticism of his aunt dimmed his enterprising ardor. The signs which he printed with his uncle's crate stencil, procured from the barn, bespoke the variety of tempting offerings which existed so far only in his fertile mind. He was somewhat handicapped in the preparation of these signs by the largeness of the perforated letters of the stencil and the limited size of the cards. He had preferred cards to paper because they would not blow and tear and Aunt Jamsiah had given him a pile of these, uniform in size, on one side of which had been printed election notices of the previous year. It was impossible, therefore, for Pee-wee to include all of each tempting announcement on one card, so he used two cards for each reminder to the public. Thus on one card he printed FRANKFURTERS and on its mate intended for posting just below, the palate-tickling conclusion, SIZZLING HOT. FRANKFURTERS SIZZLING HOT —> This is how the sign would appear upon some fence or tree. It would be a knockout blow to any hungry wayfarer. Another two—card sign, intended for warmer weather, read: ICE CREAM <— COLD AND COOLING Other signs originating in Pee-wee's fertile mind and covering the range of food and drink and auto accessories were these: PEANUT TAFFY SWEET AND DELICIOUS —> OUR TIRE TAPE <— STICKS LIKE GLUE NON SKID CHAINS —> FRESH <— BANANAS DRINK SWEET CIDER —> MAGIC <— CARBON REMOVER There were many others, enough to decorate the road for miles in both directions. If Pepsy as chef could live up to Pee-wee's promises the neighborhood would soon become famous. That was her one forlorn hope, that the fame of their offerings would get abroad and lure the traffic from its wonted path. But Pee-wee's enthusiasm and energy carried all before them like a storming column and she was soon as hopeful and confident as he. When her chores were finished that afternoon she hurried to their refreshment parlor, where Pee-wee sat behind the new counter like a stern schoolmaster, cards strewn about him, his round face black with stencil ink, still turning out advertising bait for the public. "I don't care what they say," she panted; "we're going to make a lot of money and buy the tents. I tripped on the third step in the house just now and that means surely we'll have good luck and I can help just as much as if I was a really truly scout, can't I? Aunt Jamsiah says if I make a lot of doughnuts you'll just eat them all and there won't be any to sell. We mustn't eat the things ourselves, must we?" "That shows how much she knows," Pee-wee said; "we might have to do that to make the people hungry. If they see me eating a doughnut and looking very happy, won't that make them want to buy some? We have upkeep expenses, don't we?" "Yes, and I'm sorry I didn't tell her that," Pepsy said, "but I never thought of it. You always think of things. I'm going to wash the ink off your face, so hold still." She dipped her gingham apron under the trapdoor in the flooring where the clear, cool water was, and taking his chin in her coarse little freckly hands, washed the face of her hero and partner. And meanwhile Wiggle tugged on her apron as if he thought she were inflicting some injury upon the boy. So blinded was Pee-wee by this vigorous bath and so preoccupied the others that for the moment none of them noticed the young fellow of about twenty who, with hat tilted rakishly on the side of his head and cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth, stood in the road watching them. <h2> CHAPTER X </h2> DEADWOOD GAMELY TALKS BUSINESS Deadwood Gamely was the village sport and enjoyed a certain prestige because his father was a lawyer. He was also somewhat of an object of awe because he went to Baxter City every day, and worked in the bank there. His ramshackle Ford roadster was considered an evidence of the terribly reckless extravagance of his habits, but it was really nothing more than a sort of pocketbook, since all his money went into it, and a very shabby one at that. He had a cheap wit and swaggeringly condescending air which he practiced on the simple inhabitants of Everdoze, and in his banter he was not always kind. Yet notwithstanding that he was tawdry both in dress and speech the villagers did not venture much into the conversational arena with him because they knew that they were not his equals in banter and retort. "Hello, little orphan Annie," he said. "Bungel was telling me the wagon is coming for you pretty soon. Over the hill to the poorhouse. Ever hear that song? What's that you've got there, a soldier? Watcher doing with him? Lucky kid, I'd like to be a soldier." "What were you, a slacker?" Pee-wee shouted. This was not the kind of retort that Deadwood Gamely was accustomed to hearing and he gave a quick look at the small stranger in khaki who sat behind the counter like a judge on the bench staring straight at him. "Don't get him riled," Pepsy whispered. "He likes to get me riled so's just to make me feel silly; it's—it's Deadwood Gamely. He's always togged out swell like that," she added fearfully. "The only thing that's swell about him is his head," said Pee-wee in his loudest voice. "Don't you be scared of him, I'm here." "What's that?" said the young man in a tone intended to be darkly menacing. "You'd better put your hat on the top of your head or it'll blow off," said Pee-wee. "I said that I'm here. Let's hear you deny it. If I was a crow I might be afraid of you." Slightly taken aback by his ready retorts, the young man could only say, "If you were a crow, hey?" He stepped a little closer to the counter but the ominous advance did not alarm Pee-wee in the least. He sat behind his card-strewn counter holding the stencil brush like a sort of weapon ready to besmear that face of sneering assurance if its owner ventured too near. "So I'm a scarecrow, eh?" Mr. Gamely said with a side glance at Pepsy. He was not going to have her witness his discomfiture at the hands of this glib little stranger. Moreover, a slur at his personal splendor was a very grave matter and not to be overlooked. "I don't like fresh kids," said Mr. Deadwood Gamely, advancing with an air of veiled menace. "Sometimes they get so fresh they have to be salted a little. Don't you think you'd better take that back?" Pepsy waited, fearful, breathless. "Sure I will," said Pee-wee; "the next scarecrow I meet I'll apologize to him." Deadwood Gamely paused. His usual procedure in an affair of this kind would have been to advance quickly, ruffle his victim's hair in a goading kind of swaggerish good humor and send him sprawling. He would not really have hurt a youngster like Pee-wee but he would have made him look and feel ridiculous. But a glance at Pee-wee's gummy stencil brush reminded Mr. Gamely that discretion was the better part of valor. A dexterous dab or two of that would have put an end to all his glory. Pee-wee left no doubt about this. "This summer-house is on private land," he said, "and I'm the boss of it. If you try to get fresh with me I'll paint you blacker—blacker than a—than a tomato could—I will. You come ten steps nearer, I dare you to." Gamely paused irresolute, at which Pepsy, under protection of her partner's terrible threat, set up a provoking laugh. Wiggle, appearing to sense the situation, began to bark up-roariously. There was nothing for the baffled village sport to do but retreat as gracefully as he could. <div class="fig"> <ANTIMG alt="p052 (125K)" src="images/p052.jpg" width-obs="100%" /> </div> "Can't you take a joke?" he said weakly. "Do you think I'd hurt you?" "I know you wouldn't," said Pee-wee; "you wouldn't get the chance. You think you're smart, don't you, talking about the wagon coming to get her and getting her all scared." Deadwood Gamely broke into a very excessive but false laugh. "No harm intended," he said, vaulting on to the fence and sitting discreetly at that distance. "What's all this going on here? Going to have a circus or play store or something?" Pee-wee was always magnanimous in victory. Abiding enmity was a thing he knew not. So now he laid down his stencil brush (within easy reach) and said, "We're going to start a refreshment shack and sell fruit and lemonade and waffles and things and maybe auto accessories and souvenirs." Pepsy seemed a bit uncomfortable as Pee-wee said this, perhaps just a trifle ashamed. She was afraid that this clever, sophisticated young fellow would ridicule their enterprise, as indeed there was good reason to do. Yet she felt ashamed, too, of her momentary faithlessness to Pee-wee. "Maybe some people will pass here when they have the carnival at Berryville," she said, half apologetically. To her surprise Deadwood Gamely, instead of emitting an uproarious, mocking laugh, appeared to be thinking. "Bully for you," he finally said, looking all about as if to size up the surroundings. "Right on the job, hey? I'd like to buy some stock in that enterprise. Whose idea is it? Yours, kiddo?" "We're going to make money enough to buy three tents for the scout troop I belong to," Pee-wee said. "Visiting here, hey?" "I live in Bridgeboro, New Jersey; I'm here for the summer." Deadwood Gamely sat on the fence still looking, about him and whistling. Then, instead of bursting forth in derisive merriment as Pepsy dreaded he would do, he made an astonishing remark. "I tell you what I'll do," he said. "You kids take care of the place and furnish the fruit and stuff and I'll put up the coin for all the stuff you have to buy—chewing gum, and accessories, and souvenirs and junk that has to be got in the city, and we'll share even. I'll put up the capital and be a silent partner. How does that strike you? You two will be the active partners. We'll make the thing go big. I mean what I say." "What's a silent partner?" Pee-wee demanded. "Oh, that's just the fellow that puts up the money and keeps in the background sort of, and nobody knows he's interested." "I'd rather be a noisy partner," Pee-wee said. "I wouldn't be silent for anybody, I wouldn't." Deadwood Gamely paused a moment, smiling. "No, but you could keep a secret, couldn't you?" he asked. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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