Pee-Wee Harris on the Trail

<h2> <SPAN name="chp_19" id="chp_19"></SPAN>CHAPTER XIX </h2> <h3> PAGE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FOUR <br/> <br/> </h3> <p>If Pee-wee had stolen a glimpse from under the buffalo robe at about the time that he was writing under difficulties his momentous message to the world, he might have noticed a little old-fashioned house nestling among the trees along the roadside.</p> <p>At that time the house was dark save for a lamp-light in a little window up under the eaves. Little the speeding hero knew that up in that tiny room there sat a boy engrossed with the only scout companion that he knew, and that was the scout handbook. It had come to him by mail a few days before.</p> <p>This boy lived with his widowed mother, Mrs. Mehetable Piper. His name was Peter, but whether he was descended from the renowned Peter Piper who picked a peck of pickled peppers, the present chronicler does not know. At the time in question he was eating the handbook alive. The speeding auto passed, the mighty Bridgeboro scout pinned his missive to his remnant of sandwich and hurled it out into the dark world, the boy up in the little room went on reading with hungry eyes, and that is all there was to that.</p> <p>Peter belonged to no troop, for in that lonely country there was no troop to belong to. He had no scoutmaster, no one to track and stalk and go camping with, no one to jolly him as Pee-wee had. Away off in National Headquarters he was registered as a pioneer scout. He had his certificate, he had his handbook, that is all. It is said in that book that a scout is a brother to every other scout, but this scout's brothers were very far away and he had never seen any of them. He wondered what they looked like in their trim khaki attire. He could hardly hope to see them, but he did dare to hope that somehow or other he might strike up a correspondence with one of them. He had heard of pioneer scouts doing that.</p> <p>In his loneliness he pictured scouts seated around a camp-fire telling yarns. He knew that sometimes these wonderful and fortunate beings with badges up and down their arms went tracking in pairs, that there was chumming in the patrols. He might sometime or other induce Abner Corning to become a pioneer scout and chum with him. But this seemed a Utopian vision for Abner lived seven miles away and had hip disease and lived in a wheel-chair.</p> <p>Peter had a rich uncle who lived in New York and took care of a building and got, oh as much as thirty dollars a week. The next time this rich uncle came to visit he was going to ask him if he had seen any real scouts with khaki suits and jack-knives dangling from their belts and axes hanging on their hips.</p> <p>Peter experimented with the axe in the woodshed but it was so long that the handle dragged on the ground and he could sit on it. He had likewise pinned a Harding and Coolidge button on his sleeve and pretended it was a signalling badge. <i>A signalling badge!</i> He did not tell his mother what he was pretending for she would not understand. Out in the small barn he had presented himself with this, with much scout ceremony, and he had actually trembled when he told himself (in a man's voice) to "step forward and receive this token...."</p> <p>The car in which Scout Harris was being carried reached the lake and still Peter Piper poured over his scout handbook by the dim, oily smelling lamp, up in that little room. The two scoutmasters rowed across and were greeted by their noisy troops and still Peter Piper read his book. The scout of scouts, W. Harris of the nifty Bridgeboro outfit, was nearly suffocated, then escaped and stood triumphant over the ruins of the West Ketchem school, and still Peter Piper's smarting eyes were fixed upon that book. They were riveted to page two hundred and eighty-four and he was reading the words "Scouts should thoroughly master these two standard...."</p> <p>He read it again and again for his strained eyes were blinking and the page seemed all hazy. He paused to rest his eyes, then read on. But he did not turn the page. For an hour his gaze was fixed upon it. Just on that one page.... <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />