HE GOES TO CONQUER

Thus it befell that on the second day after the receipt of this letter Pee-wee Harris was sitting beside Charlie, the chauffeur, in the fine sedan car belonging to Doctor Harris, advancing against poor, helpless Everdoze.

He traveled in all the martial splendor of his full scout regalia, his duffel bag stuffed to capacity with his aluminum cooking set and two extra scout suits. His diminutive but compact and sturdy little form was decorated with his scout jack-knife hanging from his belt, his compass dangling from his neck, and his belt ax dragging down his belt in back.

A suggestive little dash of the culinary phase of scouting was to be seen in a small saucepan stuck in his belt like a deadly dagger. Thus if danger came he might confront his enemy with a sample of scout cookery and kill him on the spot.

His sleeves were bedecked with merit badges; from the end of his scout staff waved the flaunting emblem of the Raven Patrol; his stalking camera was swung over his shoulder like a knapsack; his nickel-plated scout whistle jangled against the saucepan; and in his trousers pockets were a magnifying glass, three jawbreakers, a chocolate bar, a few inches of electric wiring, and a rubber balloon in a state of collapse.

The highway from Bridgeboro was a broad, smooth road, a temptation and a delight to speeders, where motorcycle cops lurked in the bushes hardly waiting for cars with New York licenses.

It was late in the afternoon when they reached Baxter City and here they turned into such a road as Charlie vowed he had never seen before. Scarcely had they gone a mile over rocks and ruts when the dim woods closed in on either side, imparting a strange coolness. It was almost like going through a leafy tunnel. Projecting branches brushed the top of the car and mischievously grazed and tickled their faces. The voices of the birds, clear in the stillness, seemed to complain at this intrusion into their domain.

“I’d like to know how I’m going to get back through this jungle after dark,” Charlie said. “I wonder what anybody wanted to start a village down here for?”

“Maybe—maybe they did it kind of absent-mindedly,” Pee-wee said. “I never started a village so I don’t know.”

“Well, you’ll startle one anyway,” Charlie said. “I guess the village isn’t much bigger than you are.”

The road took them southward through the valley. They were not far west of the highway but the low country and the thick woods obscured it from view. They could hear the tooting of auto horns over that way and sometimes human voices sounding strange across the intervening solitude.

“I don’t see why they didn’t set the village down over at the highway; it’s not more than a mile or so,” Charlie said. “Maybe they were afraid the autos would run over it; safety first, hey? Nobody’ll run over it here, that’s one sure thing.”

Pee-wee took the last bite of a hot frankfurter he had bought at a roadside shack on the highway and was now more free to talk.

“Listen,” he said, “what’s that?”

It was a distant rattling sound which began suddenly and ended suddenly. They both listened.

“There must be a bridge up there along the highway,” Charlie said; “that’s the sound of cars going over it. Loose planking, hey?”

Pee-wee listened to the rattling of the loose planks as another car sped over the unseen structure, little dreaming of the part that bridge was destined to play in his young life. The commonplace noise of the neglected flooring seemed emphasized by the quiet of the woodland. That reminder of human traffic, so near and yet so far and out of tune with all the gentler sounds of the valley, presented a strange contrast and jarred even Pee-wee’s stout nerves.

“There goes another,” Charlie said; “we must be nearer to the highway than I thought.”

They had, indeed, inscribed a kind of loop and having passed its farthest point from the main road were traveling toward it again and would have emerged upon it just beyond the bridge but for the wood embowered and sequestered village which was their destination. The first sign of this village was a cow standing in the middle of the grass-grown road as if to challenge their approach. Perhaps she was stationed there as a sort of traffic cop....