THREE OF A KIND

The pigeon-holes in the station at Westover were not sufficiently numerous, nor varied in their contents, to send an aimless pilgrim to any great distance. Tickets for points along the main line and along the several branches were to be had there. By the grab-bag device one might find himself at the seashore or at some remote mountain hamlet. He could not go through to South Africa or to the island of Yap without change.

But this made no difference to Pee-wee. He included the heaven above and the earth beneath and the waters under the earth in his preparations. He was not going to take any chances of finding himself in the Klondike without snow shoes, so he devised a pair out of two old tennis rackets.

He built a camp-fire and got a huge tin can and stewed up an odorous concoction, following a recipe for mosquito dope which he had seen printed in a camping booklet. This was for use in the tropics. A scout must be prepared. It would probably have driven all the tropical pests to cover for it certainly drove all the Goodale guests in from the porch. They barricaded themselves in the sitting room and closed the windows.

Pee-wee seemed to go on the principle that the less junk he carried in his brain the more he should carry in his duffel bag and dangling from his person. This stuff was all thoroughly edited by his two friends on the momentous day of their departure, and when they started, Pee-wee carried with him nothing but thirty-five dollars and a safety-pin. With this latter his mother pinned the bills within his shirt for safe-keeping. By pulling his shirt out from his neck he could look down and see that his fortune was all right.

“It’s too bad we know we’re going to Westover, hey?” he said. “But, gee whiz, you’ve got to know something to get started, or we’d just kind of keep going round and round the house maybe, like you did at that lake.”

“That’s the idea,” said Ray; “we leave all our plans and knowledge at the nearest station; from that point we go where the wind blows us.”

“I can tell which way the wind is blowing,” Pee-wee said.

“Don’t, it would be fatal,” said Fuller. “One little scrap of knowledge might spoil all.”

“I’ve got a lot of little scraps,” Pee-wee said; “but I won’t bother with them, hey? I won’t even look up at the stars because I can tell which way I’m going by the stars. I wouldn’t look at the dipper—I wouldn’t even look at it if I was lost and famished—that’s the same as starving. Maybe we’ll get into, way into the woods, hey? Because up around Temple Camp if you count three houses, gee whiz, that might take you miles and miles and miles where the foot of white man never trod, it might. That’s how far apart they are. Maybe when we get out at somewhere or other the third house will be a hermit’s cave, hey? Gee whiz, you never can tell.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” said Fuller Bullson. “I went on a bee-line hike,” Pee-wee vociferated, keeping up a running fire of talk as he trudged along, straining a cautious look down his neck occasionally, “and we had to make a resolution to go straight, and gee whiz, that resolution was a nuisance, because we were all the time thinking about it.”

“You should have left it home,” said Ray.

“Gee, I’ll never take one with me again,” said Pee-wee.

“You see,” said Fuller, “if you are lost you can’t get lost. Can you?”

“Sure you can’t,” Pee-wee agreed enthusiastically.

“If you don’t care where you go you can’t go to the wrong place,” said Ray. “Places aren’t wrong or right. How can places be wrong or right?”

“Gee whiz, they can’t,” Pee-wee agreed. “Anybody can see that.”

“A place can’t be incorrect,” said Fuller Bullson as if laying down a fundamental proposition. “What’s another place? Why, it’s the place you don’t go to, that’s all. Am I right?”

“Sure you are,” vociferated Pee-wee.

“And if you go to it,” said Ray, “why then the other place is the other place. So no place can be wrong. The mistake is in your head in wanting to go to a particular place when really there is no particular place. It’s like the fountain of perpetual youth. You’ve heard of that, haven’t you?”

“Maybe we’ll find it, hey?” said Pee-wee, excitedly. “Gee, I hope we get to a station that’s on the edge of a—a—a trackless wilderness. Don’t you? Did you ever discover anything wonderful—by not knowing where you were going?”

“Positively, we discovered you,” said Fuller.

“And you didn’t know where you were going that night you discovered us,” said Ray.

“That’s a dandy argument,” Pee-wee said. “Suppose—suppose we get to the edge, kind of, of a forest and there are no houses for—for fifty miles—”

“That’s us,” said Ray.

“Just keep going,” said Fuller.

“One thing sure, I like you,” said Pee-wee.

“Three of a kind,” said Ray.

“Maybe it’ll be a desert, hey?” Pee-wee suggested. “Gee, I kind of hope we land at a fishing village, only I like deserts, too. Suppose—suppose,” he added in sudden terror. “Suppose we land at a school! But anyway I don’t care, because right near a school is usually a candy store and maybe it’ll be the third house, hey? Because I’m always lucky, that’s sure.”