Pee-Wee Harris Adrift Part 2

"You can't."

"Me?"

"Yes, you."

"Yer dasn' say it again."

"You can't catch, you can't catch, you can't catch," said Pee-wee.

There seemed nothing left now but to break off diplomatic relations altogether. The issue was clear. But Keekie Joe did not plunge his outlandish person into war.

"If I didn' have ter lay keekie I'd slam yer one," he announced.

"What's the use of giving you candy if we can't be friends?" Pee-wee said. "Gee whiz, I wouldn't care how much candy fellers threw at me; the more the merrier. They can throw mince pies at me for all I care,"

he added. "If you want to be a scout I'll show you how and we can start a patrol maybe."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Keekie Joe interviews Pee-wee]

The word patrol seemed to suggest something ominous to Keekie Joe, for he glanced furtively up and down the alley, and then waved his hand rea.s.suringly to the group in the middle of the field.

Pee-wee perceived now that the scene of the c.r.a.p game had been selected with keen military wisdom, affording a safe avenue of precipitate retreat in any direction. Disaster could have resulted only from a surrounding host. Officer McMahon, the tyrant on this squalid beat, was large. But he was not large enough to surround the camp.

The c.r.a.p-shooters of Barrel Alley had been surprised in every nook and corner of their neighborhood until they had hit upon the bold expedient of playing in an open lot, reposing their trust in a sentinel. It would not have been well for the sentinel to relax his vigilance.

"What I want ter join them scout kids fer?" Keekie Joe inquired. "Der yer call me a sissy?"

"Do you call the scouts sissies?" Pee-wee inquired angrily. "They have more fun than you do, that's one sure thing. If you don't want to join you don't have to but you don't have to get mad about it. Gee whiz, you're always mad, kind of. I guess you got up out of the wrong side of the bed, that's what _I_ think."

This was not true, for indeed Keekie Joe did not sleep in a bed at all; he slept on a heap of old inner tubes in Ike Levine's tire repair shop.

He was about to resent this slander from Pee-wee with a glowering look and a threat, when suddenly something happened, which precipitately terminated his performance of his official functions. His father called him from a tenement across the street, accompanying his summons with such dismal predictions of what would happen if he did not obey that the official sentinel had no choice but to desert his post.

"If I have ter come over there'n git yer," the father said, "I'll----"

Poor Joe glanced at his father in the window, then at the gamesters in the field. It was evident that chastis.e.m.e.nt of the severest character awaited him in any case. For a moment he had a wild notion of making a spectacular retreat along the street, crawling through a broken part of the fence beyond the range of parental vision, and resuming his duties of sentinel at another vantage point. Such a maneuver would at least postpone a reckoning with his father and enable him to be faithful to his trust. A very unworthy trust it may have been but his one thought was to be faithful to it. And there you have Keekie Joe in a nutsh.e.l.l . . .

CHAPTER V

A QUESTION OF DUTY

Pee-wee's advice to Joe in this predicament was rather singular, and the scout law on which he based it covered a rather larger field of obligation than was necessary in the circ.u.mstances.

"Go ahead over," he whispered; "you have to obey your parents and all other duly const.i.tuted authorities. I'll lay keekie for you while you're gone; go ahead over, I'll keep watch."

"Yes, you will!" said Joe incredulously. "I know youz guys, y'll put one over, that's what y'll do. Wat'd'yer mean, constute--con--authorities?

Yes yer will, _not_!"

"That shows how much you know about scouts," Pee-wee said, always ready to explain the ins and outs of scouting. "Do you think I'd cheat? Gee whiz, I've got to be faithful to a trust, haven't I? If I say I'll do a thing I'll do it. You go ahead over and I'll keep watch and if I don't do it you can punch me in the eye the next time you see me."

It was not so much this proffer of indemnity as a supplementary threat from the window across the way which decided Keekie Joe. He did not believe in Pee-wee for he did not believe in anybody. But he was a bit puzzled at this self-possessed little stranger from another world. There was a straightforward, clear look in the little scout's eyes which bespoke both friendliness and sincerity and Keekie Joe did not understand this. The emergency decided him to repose faith in the strange boy but it was not in him to do this graciously.

"You keep yer eyes peeled till I git back, and giv'm the high sign, d'yer hear?" he said with insolent skepticism, "or the first time I see yer on Main Street I'll black up both yer eyes fer yer, d'yer see?"

"That's one thing I like about you," said Pee-wee; "gee whiz, you obey scout laws without even knowing them. That shows you're a kind of a scout and you don't know it."

Keekie Joe did not look much like a scout, as he shuffled across the street; he did not even look like the rawest of raw scout material. But statues are carved out of hard rock. And Keekie Joe was a very hard rock indeed.

Pee-wee vaulted up onto the ramshackle fence, placed one of those granite bricks known as a licorice jaw-breaker in his mouth, and prepared for his indefinite vigil. He was not thinking of the "const.i.tuted authorities,"

he was not thinking of the c.r.a.p-shooters either; his back was turned to them and his all seeing eye was fixed on the distant street corner. He was thinking of Keekie Joe and of how Keekie Joe had tried to obey one of the good scout laws by being faithful to a trust. And there you have Pee-wee Harris in a nut-sh.e.l.l . . .

The game in the middle of the large field must have become exciting, for its votaries were gathered into a close group. None of the players seemed able now to spare so much as a cautious glance toward the street.

Once, during his intense preoccupation, Slats Corbett gave a quick, furtive glance afar, but it was only in a sort of sub-consciousness that he glimpsed a figure sitting on the fence, its back toward him. That was enough.

The group gathered closer, voices were heard in excited altercation, there were long intervals of silence. The group had shrunken and become compact. All were stooping. Their preoccupation seemed intense. They had forgotten all about the lookout. Occasionally some civilian pa.s.sed along the distant alley and guilty instinct caused one or another of the group to glance thither to give a hasty appraisal of his mission and character. And so the wicked game went on. And the sports of Barrel Alley never knew that their stronghold had been invaded by the boy scouts.

Then around the distant corner appeared two figures in civilian clothes, strangers in Barrel Alley. They were County Detectives Slippett and Spotson. They strolled down the alley innocently. Keekie Joe, whose activities were chiefly local, knew them not. But Pee-wee Harris, Scout, knew them. On one of his long hikes he had seen them arrest a motorist in Northvale. He had seen them loitering in the post office at Little Valley.

They did duty in the various munic.i.p.alities of the county where the familiar faces of the local officials were a stumbling block to the apprehension of wrongdoers. They were going to break up this ring of gambling rowdies, and so forth and so forth and so forth . . .

Pee-wee's first impulse was to shout, but on second thought it occurred to him that the army of invasion consisting of two, one of them might make a flank move on hearing his warning voice, and that one detective could thus drive the criminals into the very arms of the other, as they pa.s.sed through the back yard of Chin Foo's laundry. Chin Foo's back yard was a sort of trap.

So instead of shouting he descended from the fence with lightning agility and ran across the field as fast as his legs would carry him, and pell-mell into the group.

"Two detectives are coming down the alley," he panted. "Beat it over that way and then you'll _sure_ not run into one of them because they've got--got--a lot of strat--strat--strat--strat--egy--they have--you'd better hurry up."

The time it required for the group to disperse can not be indicated by any word in the English language. They were there and then they were not there. As Pee-wee stood amid scattered coins and dice he was conscious of distant forms scaling fences, wriggling through holes, and of one pair of legs disappearing majestically over a dilapidated roof. As a disorderly retreat it was a masterpiece.

It was not in Pee-wee's nature to run from anything or anybody. So there he stood amid the telltale mementoes of the dreadful game while Detectives Slippett and Spotson strolled into the field. They were just in time to behold a fleeting vision of forms wriggling through fences, gliding around buildings, and scrambling over roof tops.

County Detective Spotson was quick to sense the situation. Taking Pee-wee roughly by the shoulder he demanded in that sophisticated voice and manner which all detectives acquire and which sometimes pa.s.ses for shrewdness, "What's the big idea, huh? Tipped them on, did you? Well, you're a very clever kid, ain't you?" He removed his big hand from Pee-wee's shoulder and injected his fingers down the back of the boy's neck, grabbing him by the collar and gathering it so that it almost choked him.

This terrifying grip, which is always intended to be considered as the preliminary of arrest, did not frighten Pee-wee as it would have frightened Keekie Joe, but it touched his pride and enraged him, and he wriggled frantically. There is no indignity which can be put upon a boy like this bullying, official grip of his collar.

"You let me go," he said excitedly; "I wasn't playing here and you didn't see me do anything wrong; you let me go, do you hear!" His utter helplessness, despite every contortion, to free himself from this degrading kind of grasp, drove him distracted and he kicked with all his might and main. "_You let me go, do you hear!_" he shouted.

"Well, what were you doing here then, huh?" the officer asked gruffly.

"Yer gave'm the tip, didn't yer?"

"You let go, I'm not going to run away," Pee-wee said. "Do you think I'm scared of you? You let me go!"

"Do yer know what an accessory is?" Detective Spotson demanded, loosening his grip somewhat.

"It's something you buy to put on an automobile," Pee-wee said. "You let go, I'm not going to run."

Detective Spotson, like Keekie Joe, trusted n.o.body. But since he had no intention of arresting Pee-wee and since the diminutive captive seemed rather angered than frightened, he released his hold. By a series of wriggles and contortions, Pee-wee adjusted his clothing and settled his neck in his stretched neckband. "Why don't--why--why don't you take a--a--a feller your size?" he half cried and half panted.