FOILED!

Most of the people went back to the park with the police department. That girl had been listening to Westy telling the policeman about everything and so now she said to our young hero:

“You don’t call that binding a bandit with ropes, do you? With him up at the top of the wheel and you down at the bottom.”

The kid said, “Sure I do, that’s distance binding—you’re so smart. That shows how much you know about scouting. I suppose you don’t know you can signal for miles and miles. Can’t you do other things by distance too?”

“That’s a fine argument,” Warde Hollister said.

“I invented it,” the kid shouted.

That girl said, very sarcastic like, “I must say you were very brave to kill that wooden figure. I’m not afraid of snakes, but I’d certainly be afraid of a wooden figure. Tell me, did you ever kill a rag doll?”

There were two or three girl friends of hers there and they all started to titter.

“Was it our fault if that colored man was made of wood?” Pee-wee said.

She said, “Oh, mercy, no. But when you were binding the poor bandit weren’t you afraid he’d bite you? He was only a hundred feet or so away, you know. Are you afraid of mice, too?”

“No, we’re not afraid of mice,” Pee-wee said. “And we’re not afraid of bugs either. Girls are afraid of June bugs.”

“That’s because they’re black,” she said.

“Scouts aren’t afraid of anything, they don’t care what color it is——”

“Purple or lavender or pale white or dark black, what do we care?” I said.

“Do you see that hill away over there in the east?” the kid shouted at her. “That’s Blakeley’s Hill. That’s miles away. We came from there in a bee-line. Do you think that we let anything stand in our way? We’re—we’re—invincible. Houses—we go right through them. Even the movie people followed us, so now you can tell. Rivers—do you think that river stopped us? Do you know what the points of the compass are? We came straight west, just as straight as an arrow. Now we’re going up on that ridge, where that big tree is. If you want to follow us, you can. Then you can see just how we do it. You’ll see us—you’ll see us go right through houses. I’m not blaming girls that they don’t have adventures——”

She said, “Oh, isn’t that too sweet?”

“And who are you going to kill next?” another one of those girls wanted to know. “Some terrible black man?”

“The blacker the better,” I said.

“Do you see that tree off there on the ridge?” Pee-wee asked her. “We have to climb right up that. There are snakes up there.”

She said, “Oh, isn’t that terrible?”

“I’m not saying you can’t do things,” the kid said; “because girls know how to sew and cook, I have to admit that. But when it comes to——”

“To being invincible?” she said.

“Now you just shut one eye and look at that big tree up there,” Pee-wee said. “Do you notice the house right at the edge of this green? Do you see how it’s right in a bee-line with that tree? We’ve got to go right through that house. Do you think we’d go around it? We’ll go right plunk through the middle of it, no matter what. That’s what a bee-line hike means. That’s why we had the police department come to us instead of our going to him. See?”

All the girls began to laugh. Dora Dane Daring said, “Isn’t that just wonderful?”

“That’s nothing,” Pee-wee said. “We do harder things than that.”

They all began to laugh again.

I said, “Well, as long as we can’t take this village with us we’ll have to leave it here, I suppose. I hope it will be here when we get back.”

“Maybe if you bound it with ropes——” one of those girls said.

“It would just be a waste of good rope,” I said. “We’ll stand a rock on the town and that will hold it here. Come on, official staff,” I said, “get busy. You fellows fall into line. The next assault is on that house that Pee-wee pointed out. Am I right?”

They all lined it up with the tree so as to make sure.

“Now you watch us,” I said to the girls.

“Oh, we’ll watch you,” one of them said. Then they all began to laugh again.

I said, “If you have patrols in the Girl Scouts, yours ought to be called the Laughing Hyenas. What’s the idea?”

They didn’t answer, only just stood there giggling. They ought to have a merit badge for giggling in the Girl Scouts.

“We think you’re so funny,” one of them said; “especially that little boy.”

“Your village isn’t so big if it comes to that,” Pee-wee said.

“No, but it hasn’t got coffee-pots and frying pans and old phonographs hanging all over it,” one of them said, laughing all the while. “He looks like an ash wagon.”

“That shows how much you know about scouting,” the kid shouted. “Don’t you know that scouts are supposed to cook their own meals?”

“And play their own music?” Dora Dane Daring said. “Do you take victrola lessons?”

I said, “He plays the shoe horn, also the gas pipe. He can even play on Boys’ Life; that’s the scouts’ official organ.”

She said, “Most canary birds are musical.”

“Yes,” I said, “and parrots can laugh, too.”

She said, “You ought to call it an A.B.C. hike instead of a B hike. If you’re going to tear down any houses we’d like to see you do it.”

“Everybody falls for the scouts—in all the houses,” Pee-wee yelled.

That Daring girl just giggled and said, “Oh, isn’t that just wonderful?”

So then I rounded up my army of invasion and I shouted, “Scouts and sprouts, I have squinted yonder tree with my trusty right eye and I find we have to cross neutral territory again. We have to go through that house over there——”

“The one with the roof of——” Pee-wee shouted.

I said, “That’s the one, the one with the roof. Take a good look at that house; you’ll see it has an inside as well as an outside.”

“I can’t see the inside,” Dorry shouted.

“Can you see the outside?” I asked him. “Well, the inside is just inside of the outside. If you took the outside away there wouldn’t be any inside. You can do that by algebra.”

I said, “There are two stories in that house and we have to put some adventure into those stories.”

Pee-wee shouted, “I’ll go ahead and ring the bell and tell them we want to go through, hey? Because I know what to say.” Then he said to the girls, “You can watch me if you want to. Maybe some time you’ll be on a bee-line hike and want to go through a house and then you’ll know just how to do.”

One of them said, “Oh, thank you so much.”

“The pleasure is ours,” I told her. “If the civilized population wants to follow us, what do we care?”

Then I said, “Ready—go!”

We all marched across the green with Pee-wee ahead of us and those girls coming along behind, laughing. You couldn’t blame them because the kid looked awful funny—very brave and bold. We all stopped on the walk in front of the house. It was a dandy big house; it looked like one of those houses that has a hall running straight through to the back. That’s the kind of neutral territory I like.

The kid marched straight up to the steps and up onto the porch and pushed the button. “That’s one thing you have to learn when you’re a scout,” he called down, “not to be afraid.”

All of a sudden the front door opened and, g-o-o-d night, magnolia! There was the biggest colored man I ever saw. He was about six feet tall and eight feet in circumference, or maybe it was the other way round, I don’t know which. His face was so black that it would make a blackboard look pale. You could have written on that man’s face with chalk, dandy. He had on a kind of a uniform with brass buttons and his elbows stuck out on each side of him.

“Good night,” Hunt said; “that’s one mountain we didn’t figure on.”

I said, “I guess that’s one of the Black Hills. I wonder how it got out of my geography.”

Pee-wee looked like a kewpie doll in front of that man. The man just glared at him and then he said, good and loud, “Whatchue want here, you?”

Pee-wee said, “We—eh—we—does Mr. Smith live here—please?”

The big man said, “No, he don’t. Whatchue want here?” He just glared down at the poor kid as if he were going to eat him.

Pee-wee said, kind of hesitating, “If—if we’d be willing to wipe our feet—maybe—would you be willing to let us go through this house—maybe?”

The big man glared down at him and then he said in a great big deep voice, “Looker here, you youngster! You want to get arrested, do you? You clear out of this! Whatchue mean comin’ to folks’ houses and say you like to go through, eh? You clear out of here, double quick, or I’ll have you in de lockup!”

He banged the door shut and there stood Pee-wee trying to get his breath, I guess. Then he started down the steps again, the stuff in his big megaphone rattling like a junk wagon.

“Foiled!” I said.

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