REEL ADVENTURE

“All right. Good.” I heard the voice say.

We all looked around and standing there on the lawn was Mr. Copley smiling and right beside him a fellow about twenty-five years old, I guess. He had an awful nice smile, with a regular good-natured, open face. Right beside him was a camera, and down on the ground was a big kind of a leather box with a handle to it. On that box was printed:

COPLEY FILM CORPORATION
THE WEEKLY ANIMATED NEWS
ALL THE WORLD IN PICTURES.

“G-o-o-d night!” I said. “We’re pinched. We’re in the movies!”

Mr. Copley said, “Boys, this is Mr. Tom Gilligan, of the Animated News. Our young friend of the megaphone is now famous. He will appear on the same film with President Harding leaving the White House in an automobile. Now we’re going to give the people of the United States and Canada a glimpse of an amusing novelty, a scout bee-line hike. The next picture shows the young heroes climbing over a house which happens to be in their path.”

So that’s how it happened that part of our bee-line hike got on the screen. Most movie stars get a lot of money, but anyway we got a lot of cookies. And that’s how it was that people away out in California could see our young hero lassoing a wild and woolly wicker table and massacring a whole tribe of cookies. We came right after President Harding. He was lucky because if we’d come along about ten seconds sooner on that film we’d have been climbing over the top of the White House. Just after us on that film came a railroad train that had been wrecked. That was one thing we escaped on our hike anyway.

Mr. Tom Gilligan was a nice fellow. He went around the country taking pictures of all sorts of things, famous men smiling and shaking hands, and houses burning down and people being crushed by falling buildings and everything. He said Pee-wee lassoing cookies was one of the best things he ever took. He said he’d like to take Pee-wee again.

I said, “Take him for all we care; you’re welcome to him. Only don’t bring him back.”

It wasn’t hard climbing over that house, but Tom Gilligan made us do a lot of fancy things. He said people would like that. So we had Pee-wee roll down the shed in back of the house and spill all the stuff out of his megaphone. It’s worth thirty cents and the war tax to see that. You’ll see me standing up on the peak of the house hugging the chimney, and holding my hand above my eyes and scanning the distant country to the West. This is what it said on that picture: “Scout Blakeley picking out the bee-line to the West, guided by his distant beacon.”

It was easy sliding down the roof in back; we just slid down onto the back porch and down to the ground.

In back of that house is Monument Park. It isn’t very big, you can put it in your pocket. Tom Gilligan said he’d go a little farther with us to see what we ran into next.

Now from Monument Park we could see the big poplar tree good and plain. The reason for that was partly on account of the park being so open and partly on account of the land beyond being low, because all the while we were going down toward the river. West of the park there aren’t so many houses because in Bridgeboro a lot of people don’t like to live too near the river. Some people are crazy. The houses down that way are not so big and they’re not so close together.

The only thing that stood in our way in the park was the big wooden fence, sort of, with all the soldiers’ names on it. It wasn’t so very long and we might have gone around it only I decided that our path was right about through the middle of it. So we crawled under it.

Then right ahead of us was River Road, crossing our path. We stopped and took a squint and used our compass and decided that our path was between two houses.

Tom Gilligan said, “I think it’s right through that house on the left.”

I said, “No, sir, it’s right across the lawn between the two houses. You just want us to get into some trouble so you can show the whole of the United States and Canada. I know you.”

He said, “You kids take another look at that tree. Your bee-line is just—exactly—precisely—across the side porch of that house with the brown shingles. Now you see.”

I said, “You’re right. I’ve got to send my official staff to that house for permission to cross neutral territory.”

But when I looked around for my official staff, there he was standing stark still about ten yards behind us.

I said, “Come ahead, official staff. What’s the matter with you?”

He said, “Do you know whose house that is? I didn’t know because I never came toward it this way before. It’s Warde Hollister’s house. I can tell by the bay window.”

“That suits me,” I said.

“You’ll—you’ll have to use diplomacy,” Pee-wee said. “I know that fellow.”

“Believe me,” I said, “I’ve got the diploma for diplomacy. You fellows camp right here and leave that fellow to me. Here’s where we not only cross neutral porches, but here’s where we take a prisoner, too. In about ten minutes I’ll have the enemy eating out of my hand.”

“What?” Pee-wee just blurted out.

“Eating out of my hand,” I said. “You know what eating means, don’t you?”

“S——sure I do,” the kid said.

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