Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Pee Wee Harris Adrift
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Percy Keese Fitzhugh >> Pee Wee Harris Adrift
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PEE-WEE HARRIS ADRIFT
by
PERCY KEESE FITZHUGH
Author of
The Tom Slade Books
The Roy Blakeley Books
The Pee-Wee Harris Books
Illustrated by H. S. Barbour
[Frontispiece: Pee-wee rowed his customers to Alligator Island.]
Published with the approval of
The Boy Scouts of America
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers : : New York
Made in the United States of America
Copyright, 1922, by
Grosset & Dunlap
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I ALONE
II SATURDAY MORNING
III CASTLES IN THE AIR
IV KEEKIE JOE
V A QUESTION OF DUTY
VI THE MISSIONARY
VII APPLE BLOSSOM TIME
VIII PEE-WEE EXPLORES THE ISLAND
IX THE LOOKOUT SEES A SAIL
X THE OTHERS ARRIVE
XI PLANS
XII THE DISCOVERER RETURNS
XIII "STOP"
XIV "GO"
XV LIFE ON THE UNKNOWN SHORE
XVI BEFORE THE PARTY
XVII THE SCENE IS SET
XVIII EVERY WHICH WAY
XIX THE EARTHLY PARADISE
XX GONE
XXI FOILED
XXII IN THE GLARE OF THE SEARCH-LIGHT
XXIII THE DREAM OF KEEKIE JOE
XXIV THE MISSIONARY LANDS ON FOREIGN SHORES
XXV RETURN OF THE HERO
XXVI SHORT AND TO THE POINT
XXVII SETTLED AT LAST
XXVIII IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE
XXIX THE RACE
XXX ABSENCE MAKES THE ISLAND QUIET
XXXI A PROMISE
XXXII VENGEANCE
XXXIII KEEKIE JOE, SCOUT
XXXIV THE STORY CLOSES AND SCHOOL OPENS
ILLUSTRATIONS
Pee-wee rowed his customers to Alligator Island.
Keekie Joe interview Pee-wee.
The boys hold the island in spite of old Trimmer's protest.
Pee-wee becomes a sandwich man.
PEE-WEE HARRIS ADRIFT
CHAPTER I
ALONE
When Pee-wee Harris returned from Temple Camp in the fall, he found
himself a scout without a patrol. He had indulged in a colossal
speculation and lost out.
Forsaking the Raving Ravens, he had set forth to mobilize all the
small, unattached boys at camp into the Pollywog Patrol, but the
Pollywog Patrol had proved about as substantial as the shifting sand.
Like the beloved Black Lake it had both an inlet and an outlet. As
fast as one boy entered it another had to go home, so that conducting
the Pollywog Patrol was like pouring water into a leaky pail. Pee-wee,
with all his flaunted efficiency, could not be at both ends of this
patrol at the same time.
As soon as some miniature scout from New York had been duly initiated,
some previously initiated scout from Chicago found that his time was
up, and Pee-wee's time was chiefly occupied in rushing frantically
about trying to keep pace with this epidemic of resignations.
At last the epidemic reached an acute stage and the Pollywog Patrol,
after a glorious career of nine days, was struck a mortal blow, never
to be heard of again except in the pages of history. Its three
remaining members were summoned to their several homes simultaneously;
one new scout was hastily secured but on learning that he could not be
patrol leader he tendered his resignation and was soon called home to
attend his sister's wedding. Scout Harris faced a cruel world alone.
Meanwhile, Billy Simpson had been called to Temple Camp from Bridgeboro
to fill (if anyone could fill) the enormous space left vacant in the
Raven Patrol by the withdrawal of its enterprising genius.
"Never mind," said Mr. Ellsworth, the troop's scoutmaster, "there are
plenty of fish in the sea--to say nothing of Pollywogs. Bridgeboro is
full of permanent material. You have all this winter to round up a new
patrol."
"Only don't round up any snow men because they melt," said Roy
Blakeley, leader of the Silver Foxes; "and don't bother with shadows
because you can't depend on them. And when you get a scout put a paper
weight on him so he won't blow away."
"If you'll give me some of the biscuits you make, I'll use them for
weights," Pee-wee shouted.
"You mean you'll eat them," Roy said. "What are you going to name the
new patrol? Why don't you name it the Canned Salmon? Then they can't
get away from you."
"Sure, you can have a can-opener for your emblem," said Dorry Benton.
"Maybe we'll call ourselves the Airedales because scouts like fresh
air," Pee-wee said. "I got a lot of ideas."
"He thinks Airedales are named after the air," said Doc Carson.
"Sure, just the same as Pennsylvania is named after the Pennsylvania
Railroad," Roy said.
"You make me tired!" Pee-wee shouted disgustedly. "You leave it to me,
I'll think up a name. I know four fellers already that'll join. Maybe
I'll decide to start a whole new troop and not bother with this one."
"Why don't you start a whole new scout movement?" Roy asked. "Call it
the Boy Scouts of Pee-wee Harris. Discharge the Boy Scouts of America
altogether."
"I'll start something all right, you leave it to me," Pee-wee announced
darkly. "You think you're smart just because you write stories about
your adventures and you always make out that you're the hero. You
always make out that I get the worst of it. Gee whiz, if I ever write
any stories, I'll get my just deserts."
"Did I ever say you didn't get plenty of desserts?" Roy shot back at
him. "I gave you three helpings in every story and that's all the
thanks I get. You think so much about desserts that you're going to
desert the troop. We should worry."
"If I write any stories I'll write them good and loud," Pee-wee shouted.
"Open the cut-out of your fountain pen," Roy said, "and be sure to turn
to the right whenever you come to the end of a page and look out you
don't skid."
"Maybe I'll write my remittances," Pee-wee said darkly.
"He means his reminiscences," said Arrie Van Arlen.
"I think," said Mr. Ellsworth, "that Scout Harris will be quite busy
enough forming the new patrol, and when it is formed I hope he will
present it to the First Bridgeboro Troop, B. S. A."
"That's us," said Westy Martin.
"I don't see how Pee-wee can get out of the troop," Mr. Ellsworth
laughed, "because strictly speaking, he has never been in the troop; on
the contrary the troop has been in him, as one might say."
"_Good night_, did he swallow that too?" said Roy. And he rolled
backward off the troop-room table on which he had been sitting.
CHAPTER II
SATURDAY MORNING
Though Pee-wee was without a patrol he was by no means without a troop.
He still held his position of troop mascot and official target for the
mirthful Silver Foxes. He was a whole patrol in himself and held his
own against raillery and banter, his stock of retaliatory ammunition
seeming never to be exhausted.
"I can handle them with both hands tied behind my back," he boasted,
which is readily enough believed since it was mainly his tongue that he
used.
But recruits did not flock to Pee-wee's standard. Perhaps this was
partly because of the fall and winter season when the lure of camping
and roughing it was in abeyance. Perhaps it was because he was so
small that boys were fain to think that scouting was a thing for
children and beneath their dignity.
Once or twice during the winter, Pee-wee piloted some half-convinced
and bashful subject to the troop-room, which was an old railroad car
(of fond memory) down by the river. Here, in the cosy warmth of the
old cylinder stove, the troop played checkers and read and jollied
Pee-wee, which was about all there was to do on winter nights. The
visitors, unimpressed with these makeshift diversions of the off
season, did not return, and so the good old springtime found Pee-wee
still a scout indeed (with something left over) but a scout without a
patrol.
And now the sturdy little missionary began to feel this keenly. Patrol
spirit is usually not much in evidence during the winter; the several
divisions of a troop intermingle and form a sort of club in which an
odd member is quite at home. But with the coming of spring the patrol
spirit becomes aroused. It is a case of "united we stand, divided we
sprawl," as Roy Blakeley was fond of saying. Each patrol goes
separately about its preparations for camping and hiking, does its
shopping, repairs its tents, denounces and ridicules its associate
patrols, and troop unity gives way somewhat to patrol unity. This is
well and as it should be.
It was very much so with the well organized Bridgeboro troop. With the
first breath of spring the Ravens became Ravens, the Elks foregathered
and were Elks and nothing else, and the Silver Foxes began a series of
exclusive meetings at Camp Solitaire under a big shady elm on Roy's
lawn.
The Silver Foxes, imbibing the mirthful spirit of their leader, were
all pretty much alike, and the Ravens were thankful that they were not
like them, and the Elks congratulated themselves that they had more pep
than the Ravens. "The Elks say the Ravens are no good and the Ravens
say the Elks are no good and they're both right; we should worry," said
Roy. "There's one good thing about the Elks and that is that they're
not Ravens, and there's one good thing about the Ravens and that is
that they're not Elks. They both have everything to be thankful for if
not more so. They're in luck."
"Do you call that logic?" Pee-wee demanded in the tones of an
earthquake. "If one thing is better than another thing how can that
other thing be better than the other thing? You're crazy!"
"Goodness gracious, look who's here?" said Hunt Manners, who was
sorting out some fish-hooks. "The whole Canned Salmon Patrol."
Pee-wee stood outside the tent, breathing hard after his long tramp up
the hill to the Blakeley place.
"Don't you know this is private land?" Warde Hollister said, rather
heedless of the possible effect of his remark.
"I didn't come in the tent, did I?" Pee-wee retorted wistfully.
"Come ahead in, Kid," said Roy. "Are you hungry? Here's some
fish-hooks."
"No, I'm not hungry," Pee-wee said. He had been so touched by Warde's
thoughtless remark that he held himself aloof from Roy's hospitality.
"I only came up to tell you that the thunderstorm up the river did a
lot of damage; a house was struck by lightning in North Bridgeboro and
a lot of trees were blown down." This was not what he had come up for,
though indeed the news was true, but his pride was touched by that
remark of Warde's and he would not now admit that he had tramped up
there just to visit them.
"Gee whiz, do you think I don't know that eight's a company, nine's a
crowd with patrols?" he said. "Do you think I don't know that?
Anyway, if I wanted to go and hang out with any patrol I'd go with the
Ravens, wouldn't I? I only came up to tell you that, because I thought
you'd like to know. Do you think I'm trying to find out your secrets?
Gee whiz!"
"Come ahead in, Kid," said Roy; "Warde didn't mean that."
"I will not."
"What's the matter with you anyway?" Will Dawson asked.
"I'm not in your patrol," Pee-wee said.
"What's the big idea?" Westy Martin asked. "You weren't in it when you
went on the bee-line hike with us either, were you?"
"That's different," Pee-wee said. "Anyway I was a scout then, because
I was in the Ravens and anyway I've got to go to the store."
Before they realized it he was gone.
"What the dickens did you want to say that for?" Roy asked Warde.
"Oh, it just jumped out of my mouth," Warde said; "I didn't think he'd
be so touchy. Wait, I'll call him back."
But the sturdy little figure trudging down the hill paid no attention
to Warde's call. And the Silver Foxes, friendly and sympathetic as
they were, were too preoccupied to think much about this trifling
affair. Perhaps they had just a little disinclination to having
visitors, even the little mascot, participating in their private
councils just then.
The point of the whole matter was that Pee-wee had been unintentionally
eliminated; it was a sort of automatic process attributable to the
springtime. And he found himself alone. He was not out of the troop,
but he was not in any of the patrols, and in spite of all his
spectacular missionary work he had not been able to form a patrol.
Pee-wee's pride was as great as his voice and his appetite, and he
would not sponge on the patrols which had a full membership and were
busy with their own concerns. The rock on which he had stood all
winter had split in three and there was no place for him on any of the
pieces.
On Saturday morning the Silver Foxes went into the city to buy some
camping things and to see a movie show in the afternoon. The Ravens
went off for a hike. A Saturday spent alone was more than the soul of
Pee-wee could endure, so he conquered his foolish pride and went up to
Connie Bennett's house to find out what the Elks were going to do. He
would not join in with the Elks, he told himself, but he would pal with
any single Elk, or even with two or three. That would be all right as
long as he did not foist himself upon a whole patrol. "Eight's a
company, nine's a crowd, gee whiz, I have to admit that," he said to
himself. "It's all right for me to go with one feller even if he's a
scout but a patrol's different."
It was a wistful and rather pathetic little figure that Mrs. Bennett
discovered upon the porch.
"Connie? Oh gracious, he's been gone an hour, dear," she said. "They
all went away with Mr. Collins in his auto. I told him he must be back
for supper. How is it you're not with them, Walter?"
"I--I ain't in that patrol," said Pee-wee; "it goes by patrols. Anyway
I'm sorry I troubled you."
He turned and went down the steps and picking up a stick drew it across
the slats of a fence as he went up the street. The outlandish noise
seemed to act as a balm to his disappointment and to keep him company.
CHAPTER III
CASTLES IN THE AIR
The lonesomeness of Robinson Crusoe on his desert island was nothing
compared to the lonesomeness of Pee-wee on that Saturday morning. He
might have attached himself to any of the three patrols and had a day's
pleasure, but his pride had stood in the way.
He had always been something of a free lance in the troop and been
regarded as a troop institution. But there had always been his
official place among the Ravens waiting for him whenever it suited his
wanton fancy to return like a prodigal to the fold. Now, in the
pleasant springtime with the troop divided for the summer rivalries, he
found himself quite isolated.
No one was to blame for this; a scout must be in one patrol or another,
and if all patrols are full then he must make himself the nucleus of a
new one. That is what Mr. Ellsworth had told Pee-wee.
"Gee whiz, nucleuses aren't so easy to be, that's one thing," Pee-wee
muttered to himself as he bent his aimless way in the direction of
Barrel Alley. "Maybe he thinks it's easy to be a nucleus. Nucleuses
are hard to be, I'll tell the world. Anyway I can be a pioneer scout,
that's one thing. You don't have to be a nucleus or anything to be one
of those. They don't have to bother with patrols, they don't, they're
lucky."
He ambled along kicking a stone before him in a disconsolate,
disgruntled way. He followed it wherever it went, ever and again
kicking it back onto the sidewalk; the simple pastime seemed to afford
him infinite relief. And meanwhile, glowing visions arose in his mind,
such visions as no one but a poet or a lonely boy on a Saturday morning
in the springtime could possibly have.
No one had injured him in the least, he was liked by all, he was simply
the unhappy victim of circumstances. But in a mood of heroic
retaliation against the troop he pictured himself as a pioneer scout
residing aloof in a grim tower, surrounded by wireless apparatus and
covered with merit badges. Scouts from all over the world would make
pilgrimages to his obscure retreat for a timid glimpse of the
mysterious hero.
The glowing vision was somewhat marred by his conception of himself
eating a huge sandwich as he looked down from his parapet upon the
worshipping throng below. Roy Blakeley would be down there among the
others, his jollying propensity subdued by a feeling of awe as he gazed
at the great scout hermit, the famous pioneer scout who sent messages
to lesser scouts the world over. They would whisper, "he looks just
like his pictures in _Boys' Life_," and he would smile down on them
and . . .
_Plunk_! The pioneer scout had collided with a man on the sidewalk and
he returned to Bridgeboro with a suddenness that surprised even himself.
"Excuse me," he said.
"Certainly," said the man.
Pee-wee recovered his rock, and began kicking it along the sidewalk
again. "I'll show them," he said moodily.
He was about to ascend his scout throne again and engage in the
gracious pastime of receiving delegations of common, ordinary scouts in
his dim, wooded domain when he found himself at the edge of a region
which was not in the least like the romantic wilderness of his vision.
This was Barrel Alley, the habitat of Jimmy Mattenburg and Sweet
Caporal and the McNulty twins.
Barrel Alley was the slum neighborhood of Bridgeboro and it was not
very large. But it was large enough. Pee-wee explored the crooked,
muddy, sordid street, gazing wistfully here and there for possible
recruits. But no human material was to be seen. The older boys were
playing craps in Dennahan's lot and the smaller boys were watching
them. One lonely sentinel was perched on the fence scanning the
horizon for cops. For this he received the regular union pay of a
stale apple-core.
He was an unkempt urchin with an aggressive and challenging
countenance, but he had solved several problems in economy. One of
these was the entire elimination of stockings and garters. This was
accomplished by the use of a pair of trousers with legs of such ample
diameter and of such length as to render stockings altogether
superfluous. This released both garters for more important duties,
they being tied end to end, thus constituting a sort of single strand
suspender which at its junction with his trousers in front was securely
held by a large nail. His hair presented an appearance not unlike the
negligent architecture of an eagle's nest, which is of the bungalow
type in its loose irregularity. He had not the slightest reason for
supposing that Pee-wee was equipped with commissary stores, but on
general principles he said,
"Give us a hunk of candy, will yer?"
As luck would have it, this random shot, fired at every strange boy
from the upper world, hit the mark, to his unspeakable astonishment.
Pulling out of his pocket a licorice jaw-breaker of vast dimensions,
Pee-wee sent it shooting in a bee-line at the face of the stranger.
Never before in all his checkered history had Keekie Joe ever received
any edible of any character whatever in response to his menacing
demands. He had always assumed that boys who were well dressed had
fruit or candy in their pockets. He had sometimes required them to
verify their denials by an exhibition of the interior of these
receptacles. His invariable demand had become a habit with him.
Therefore the little sugared black brick which now hit him in the eye
came as an unprecedented surprise. For a moment he did not know
whether to construe it as a propitiatory gift or a warlike missile.
"What's the matter with you, can't you catch?" Pee-wee demanded.
CHAPTER IV
KEEKIE JOE
It required but a few seconds for Keekie Joe to decide to run true to
form. The situation was an unusual one, the missile was a delicious
morsel, and was nothing more nor less than what he had demanded. But
still it had been thrown at him and Keekie Joe elected to consider it
as a shot fired by the enemy.
"Whatcher chuckin' things at me fer?" he demanded, descending from the
fence and approaching Pee-wee with a terrible look of menace. He had
been careful, however, to pick the jawbreaker up and put it in his
mouth.
"Didn't you say you wanted one?" Pee-wee asked. "Didn't you just put
it in your mouth?"
"Never you mind wot I done," said Keekie Joe. "D'yer think yer cin
sass me?"
"I'll show you how to catch if you'll say you'll be a scout," Pee-wee
answered. There could be no better illustration of his desperation as
a scout missionary than this artless proposition to the sentinel of
Barrel Alley.
"Who can't catch?" Keekie Joe demanded.
"You can't."
"Me?"
"Yes, you."
"Yer dasn' say it again."
"You can't catch, you can't catch, you can't catch," said Pee-wee.
There seemed nothing left now but to break off diplomatic relations
altogether. The issue was clear. But Keekie Joe did not plunge his
outlandish person into war.
"If I didn' have ter lay keekie I'd slam yer one," he announced.
"What's the use of giving you candy if we can't be friends?" Pee-wee
said. "Gee whiz, I wouldn't care how much candy fellers threw at me;
the more the merrier. They can throw mince pies at me for all I care,"
he added. "If you want to be a scout I'll show you how and we can
start a patrol maybe."
[Illustration: Keekie Joe interviews Pee-wee]
The word patrol seemed to suggest something ominous to Keekie Joe, for
he glanced furtively up and down the alley, and then waved his hand
reassuringly to the group in the middle of the field.
Pee-wee perceived now that the scene of the crap game had been selected
with keen military wisdom, affording a safe avenue of precipitate
retreat in any direction. Disaster could have resulted only from a
surrounding host. Officer McMahon, the tyrant on this squalid beat,
was large. But he was not large enough to surround the camp.
The crap-shooters of Barrel Alley had been surprised in every nook and
corner of their neighborhood until they had hit upon the bold expedient
of playing in an open lot, reposing their trust in a sentinel. It
would not have been well for the sentinel to relax his vigilance.
"What I want ter join them scout kids fer?" Keekie Joe inquired. "Der
yer call me a sissy?"
"Do you call the scouts sissies?" Pee-wee inquired angrily. "They have
more fun than you do, that's one sure thing. If you don't want to join
you don't have to but you don't have to get mad about it. Gee whiz,
you're always mad, kind of. I guess you got up out of the wrong side
of the bed, that's what _I_ think."
This was not true, for indeed Keekie Joe did not sleep in a bed at all;
he slept on a heap of old inner tubes in Ike Levine's tire repair shop.
He was about to resent this slander from Pee-wee with a glowering look
and a threat, when suddenly something happened, which precipitately
terminated his performance of his official functions. His father
called him from a tenement across the street, accompanying his summons
with such dismal predictions of what would happen if he did not obey
that the official sentinel had no choice but to desert his post.
"If I have ter come over there'n git yer," the father said, "I'll----"
Poor Joe glanced at his father in the window, then at the gamesters in
the field. It was evident that chastisement of the severest character
awaited him in any case. For a moment he had a wild notion of making a
spectacular retreat along the street, crawling through a broken part of
the fence beyond the range of parental vision, and resuming his duties
of sentinel at another vantage point. Such a maneuver would at least
postpone a reckoning with his father and enable him to be faithful to
his trust. A very unworthy trust it may have been but his one thought
was to be faithful to it. And there you have Keekie Joe in a
nutshell . . .
CHAPTER V
A QUESTION OF DUTY
Pee-wee's advice to Joe in this predicament was rather singular, and the
scout law on which he based it covered a rather larger field of
obligation than was necessary in the circumstances.
"Go ahead over," he whispered; "you have to obey your parents and all
other duly constituted authorities. I'll lay keekie for you while you're
gone; go ahead over, I'll keep watch."
"Yes, you will!" said Joe incredulously. "I know youz guys, y'll put one
over, that's what y'll do. Wat'd'yer mean, constute--con--authorities?
Yes yer will, _not_!"
"That shows how much you know about scouts," Pee-wee said, always ready
to explain the ins and outs of scouting. "Do you think I'd cheat? Gee
whiz, I've got to be faithful to a trust, haven't I? If I say I'll do a
thing I'll do it. You go ahead over and I'll keep watch and if I don't
do it you can punch me in the eye the next time you see me."
It was not so much this proffer of indemnity as a supplementary threat
from the window across the way which decided Keekie Joe. He did not
believe in Pee-wee for he did not believe in anybody. But he was a bit
puzzled at this self-possessed little stranger from another world. There
was a straightforward, clear look in the little scout's eyes which
bespoke both friendliness and sincerity and Keekie Joe did not understand
this. The emergency decided him to repose faith in the strange boy but
it was not in him to do this graciously.
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