EVERY WHICH WAY

At last they came to a cross-road and turned to the right. Simon believed that this would bring them into the hill road again. And so it would have if it had gone straight. It was odd how this familiar road, where he had gone black-berrying many a time, had not one familiar thing about it now. He did not know it for a road that he had traveled over every time that he had gone to the creamery. Nor could either he or Pee-wee see how it curved gradually.

Thus it brought them to another road which they thought was the hill road. After they had gone a mile or so on this they realized that it was not. The first cross-road had curved around till it was parallel with the hill road; it was no longer a cross-road. Thus when it crossed another road the boys thought this was the main road and would take them straight home.

In point of fact it was just another cross-road. Soon an unfamiliar house informed Simon that they were not on the main road. They were not as badly off as he thought they were, but he did not know this. A fog is a very funny thing and plays strange pranks with one in one’s own neighborhood.

“We’re lost,” Simon said, stopping the oxen and looking perplexed.

“Wait till I look at my compass,” Pee-wee said.

Extracting this from where it had been dangling in the folds of limp, wet bunting, Pee-wee found to his consternation that already the cheap tin case had little specks of fresh rust on it. And worse than that the paper dial within curled up like a dried leaf. The all pervading, insinuating fog seemed to have penetrated even this trusty little guide. With the aid of his trusty flashlight, Pee-wee saw the havoc wrought upon the delicately balanced needle. The glue behind the dial had melted and oozed up and gummed the pivot. Even the magnetic pole (which Pee-wee had always regarded as his friend, and which showed him the way home from school) was helpless now, or thoroughly embarrassed by glue.

“Wait till I hold up my finger,” Pee-wee said.

He held up his finger, but even his potent imagination could not fancy the wind blowing from any particular quarter. There was no wind, only a clammy, stifling calm. And if there had been any wind it is hard to say how that would have helped him.

Simon was disinclined to try to turn their lumbering caravan in that narrow road, particularly since one direction seemed as good as another now.

“We’ll just keep going,” he said, “and maybe we’ll come to some house or something that I know. It must be late because I’m getting hungry.”

“It’s about—it’s—it’s twenty minutes to nine,” Pee-wee said. “That’s what it is by my appetite.” He could tell time at least and that was fortunate.

“If there wasn’t a fog I could tell the way home by the stars,” Pee-wee announced.

“If there wasn’t a fog I could get home without looking at the stars,” said simple Simon.

“You’re supposed to go by the stars if you’re a scout,” Pee-wee said disdainfully.

“What are you supposed to go by in a fog?” Simon asked innocently.

Pee-wee thought for a moment, then “handled” the situation. “They’re supposed to get lost,” he said; “you have to get lost sometimes. Gee whiz, what’s the good of being a scout if you don’t?”

This seemed to convince Simon for he said no more. If getting lost was indeed part of the game, Pee-wee was running true to the scout program, for he was lost with a vengeance. Not a scout sign was there to help him, nor were any of the tried and true wrinkles of the least avail in that damp, enshrouding waste.

Neither one of our doughty adventurers had the slightest idea where they were. They paused at another cross-road and Pee-wee made a vain search for moss, but it had all gone to bed. He ventured a few yards from the road in quest of a woodchuck hole for he knew that woodchucks always burrowed in a southerly direction. But the woodchucks seemed all to have taken their burrows in on account of the dampness.

He did find one hole near the roadside which went straight down, and this seemed to reflect on the well known sagacity of the woodchuck, until Simon lifted the reproach from that lowly creature by proving that the hole had been made for the accommodation of a fence post. The well known characteristic of fence posts of standing upright, settled the matter once and for all.

“If there were beavers here I could tell,” said Pee-wee.

They turned into this side road and continued going; there seemed nothing else to do. They were in a strange world and there was nothing to give them the least clue as to where they were. The oxen seemed willing enough to take any road; they had no theories or prejudices.

“We’re somewhere,” Pee-wee said, “that’s sure.” This seemed probable enough but the knowledge was not hopeful or reassuring....