Pee-Wee Harris on the Trail Part 4

CHAPTER X

A RACE WITH DEATH

In close confinement it is all over in a minute in these cases. The victim is poisoned and suffocated like a rat in a hole. Surprising as it may seem, this deadly poison works faster than its victim can act. And with darkness for its ally the only hope lies in presence of mind and quick action.

Pee-wee Harris was a scout. Laugh at him and make fun of him as you will, he was a scout. He was at once the littlest scout and the biggest scout that ever scouting had known. He boasted and bungled, but out of his bungling came triumph. He fell, oh such falls as he fell! But he always landed right side up. He could save the world with a blunder. And then boast of the blunder.

He was not a motorist, he was a scout. Wrong or right (and he was usually wrong), he was a scout. He was a scout with something left over. Like a flash of lightning he jumped into the car and shut off the switch, but the imprisoned air was already heavy with the deadly fumes and his head swam. Shutting off the switch would not save him; nothing would save him unless his mind and body acted together with lightning swiftness.

Say that he made a "bull" of it in starting the engine, and you are welcome to say that of him. But after that the spirit and training of the scout possessed him. _You_, with all respect to you, would have died a frightful death in that black prison.

Pee-wee Harris, scout, tore his handkerchief from around his cut finger, unscrewed the cap of the radiator, dipped his handkerchief into the hole, bit off two small pieces of the warm, dripping cloth, and stuffed them into his ears. The wet handkerchief he stuffed into his mouth. And so Scout Harris gained a few precious moments, _only a few_, in which to make a desperate effort to find a way out!

You would have forgotten about the radiator full of water, I dare say....

Roy Blakeley (Silver Fox Patrol and not in this story, thank goodness) said, long after these adventures were over, that a handkerchief stuffed in Pee-wee's mouth was a good idea and that it was a pity it had been removed. But Pee-wee Harris was a scout, he was a couple of scouts, and he saved his life by scout law and knowledge. And there you are.

Acting quickly he now groped his way around to the rear of the car. It was odd how quickly his mind worked in his desperate predicament. His eyes stung and his throat pained him and he knew that he had won only the chance of a race with death. But what more does a scout want than a fighting chance? His wits, spurred by the emergency, were now alert and he recalled that the men who had stolen the car had rolled one door shut and slammed another. So perhaps the rolling door had been barred inside.

Where the small door was he did not know, and there was no time now to make a groping exploration of the sides. The rolling door must be in back of the car, he knew that.

He was dizzy now and on the point of falling. His wrists tingled and his head ached acutely. Only his towering resolve kept him on his feet.

Groping from behind the car he touched the boards and felt along them for some indication of the door. Presently his hand came upon an iron band set in a large staple through which was inserted a huge wooden plug. This he pulled out and hauling on the staple slowly rolled open a great wide door.

A fresh gust of autumn wind blew in upon him, a cleansing and refres.h.i.+ng restorative, as if it had been waiting without to welcome the st.u.r.dy little scout into the vast, fragrant woods which he loved. And the bright stars shone overhead, and the air was laden with the pungent scent of autumn. It seemed as if all Nature, solemn and companionable, was there to greet the little mascot of the Raven Patrol, First Bridgeboro Troop, B.S.A.

The car of a thousand delights had so far afforded very few delights to Pee-wee Harris.

CHAPTER XI

A RURAL PARADISE

Pee-wee looked about him at an enchanted scene. He seemed to have been transported to a region made to order for the Boy Scouts of America.

That a pair of auto thieves should have brought him to this rural Paradise seemed odd enough.

As he gazed about and looked up at the quiet star-studded sky his fears were all but dispelled. For were not the friendly woods and water near him? They seemed like rescuing allies now. In the soft, enveloping arms of those silent woods he would find safety and shelter, and so he should find his way home through their dim concealment.

The building in which the car had been left was an old weather-beaten shack, which, judging from the sawdust all about, might once have been used as an ice-house. This seemed likely, for it stood near the sh.o.r.e of a placid lake in the black bosom of which shone a myriad of inverted stars and through which was a golden path of flickering moonlight. The ice-house, or whatever it was, had never been painted and the grain stood out on the shrunken wood like veins in an aged hand.

At a respectable distance from the woods near the sh.o.r.e where Pee-wee stood was a sizable village, or young town, big enough to have traffic signs and parking zones and a main street and a movie show and such like pretentious things. Between this town and the sh.o.r.e were a few outlying houses, but mostly spa.r.s.e woodland. To the north the woods were thicker.

The lights of this neighboring town formed a cheery background to the dark, silent lake sh.o.r.e. This town was West Ketchem and the chief sensation in West Ketchem during the last few years had been the destruction by fire of the public school, a calamity for which every boy went in mourning.

Across the lake, Pee-wee could see other and fewer lights. These belonged to a smaller village in which nothing at all had ever happened, not even the burning of its school. Far from it. The school stood there in all its glory, under the able supervision of Barnabas Wise and Birchel Rodney, the local board of education.

About in the center of the lake, Pee-wee saw a small red light.

Sometimes there seemed to be two lights, but he thought that one was the reflection of the other in the water. The light seemed very lonely, yet very inviting out there. He supposed it was on a boat Perhaps some one was fis.h.i.+ng....

But in all this surrounding beauty and peacefulness, Pee-wee saw no sign of the murder of any captive maiden. His eagle eye _did_ see where a boat had been drawn up on sh.o.r.e, and if any "shoves" and other cruel and abusive "handling" had been administered by those scoundrels with seventy pistols, it must have been to that poor defenseless boat. Or perhaps they were out in the middle of the lake at that very minute sinking their victim.

Anything might happen--in the mind of Scout Harris.

CHAPTER XII

ENTER THE GENUINE ARTICLE

At another time Pee-wee would have delighted to linger in this scout's Utopia. But his chief thought now was to take advantage of his fortunate escape. He had not the faintest idea where he was, more than that he was a full two hour's ride from home. That would be a long and lonely hike, even if he could find his way in the darkness.

He tried to recall the names of the various lakes in New Jersey and in the neighboring state of New York, and he recalled a good many, but that did not help him to identify this one. So he started up toward the town in the hope of identifying that.

The village petered out toward the lake; there were but a few houses. It was about eleven or twelve o'clock or after and the good people in the straggling cottages thereabout had put out their lights and retired to slumber before that wicked hour.

There was a stillness and gloom about these uninviting, dark houses; a cheerlessness not to be found in the densest woods. They made Pee-wee feel lost and lonesome, as the dim, silent wilderness could never do.

Soon he reached the town, and there in the center of a s.p.a.cious lawn was something which, in his loneliness and uncertainty, seemed the picture of gloom. The ruin of a building which had been burned to the ground.

What a fire that must have been to witness! Better far than The Bandit of Harrowing Highway! Over a partly fallen arch, under which many reluctant feet had pa.s.sed, Pee-wee could just make out the graven words: WEST KETCHEM PUBLIC SCHOOL.

West Ketchem. So that was where he was. But he had never heard of West Ketchem. The fame of this lakeside metropolis had not penetrated to surging Bridgeboro. At least it had' not penetrated to the surging mind of Scout Harris. He tried to recall West Ketchem on the map of New Jersey in his school geography.

But evidently West Ketchem had scorned the geography. Or else the geography had scorned West Ketchem.

Undecided what to do, Pee-wee lingered a few moments among the ma.s.s of charred timbers, and desks ruined and laid, low, and broken blackboards, all in an indiscriminate heap.

"I bet the fellers that live here are glad," he said to himself. "That isn't saying they have to believe in fires, except camp-fires, but anyway after it's all over they've got a right to be glad."

The situation of the school seemed to have been a sort of compromise between the claims of the lake and the claims of the town. It was not too far from the town and not too far from the lake. Perhaps it had been built within sight of the lake so that the West Ketchem student body could see it while at their lessons. A kind of slow torture.

Pee-wee had never before seen the familiar realities of school life thus brought low and lying in inglorious disorder at his feet. It gave him a feeling of triumph and had a fascination for him. Damp smelling books were here and there among the ruins, histories, arithmetics, algebras and grammars. He could tread upon these with his valiant heel. A huge roll call book (ah, how well he knew it even in the darkness) lay charred and soggy near the a.s.sembly-room piano. Junk heaps had always had a fascination for Pee-wee and had yielded up some of his rarest treasures. But a school, with all its disciplinary claptrap reduced to a junk heap! He could not, even in this late hour and strange country, tear himself away from it.

But another influence caused him to hesitate. What should he do? There were hardly any lights in the town now. He was a scout and he could not reconcile himself to the commonplace device of going to someone's house and asking for shelter. His scout training had taught him self-reliance and resource, and here was the chance to apply them, to go home, to find his way without anyone's help. The lonely road called to him more than the dark houses did.

But how about the car? Mr. Bartlett's stolen car? Would it be the way of a scout to go home and tell about that? He had come in the car, Providence had made him its guardian, and he would take it back again and say, (or words to this effect) "Here is your super six Hunkajunk car, Mr. Bartlett; they tried to steal it but I _foiled_ them! I was disguised as a buffalo robe."

There was only one difficulty in the way of this heroic course and that was that he could not run the car. Never again would he touch one of those frightful nickel things on the instrument board. So, wis.h.i.+ng to handle this harrowing situation alone, with true scout prowess and resource, he kicked around among the ruins of that tyrannous and fallen empire, and tried to devise some plan.

Suddenly he heard a sound near him. He paused in the darkness, his scout heel upon a poor, defenseless crumpled spelling book. Thus he stood in mingled triumph and agitation, his heart beating fast, every nerve on edge.