Pee Wee Harris on the Trail by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

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"All right, turn it again."

There was no light, and the two scouts stood baffled and heavy hearted
in the lonely darkness.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE MESSAGE

"I'm a dumb-bell!" said Nick in a quick inspiration. "Go down and turn on
the main switch; it's in a box on the wall in the vestibule; just pull
the handle down and push it in below. We'll never get any juice up here
with that turned off. Hurry up."

Norton descended the ladder and with lighted matches found his way to
the vestibule where the switch-box was. Here was the big switch on which
all other switches in the building depended. As he pulled it down one
lonely bulb in the meeting-room brightened and cast a dim light in the
musty, empty place. It was evidently the only bulb in which the
individual switch was turned on. Norton went through the meeting-room
and turned this off. The place smelled for all the world like a
school-room.

When he reached the ladder it was bathed in light. Nick was pointing a
shaft of dazzling brightness downward. It revealed spiders and split
rungs on the ladder and all the litter at its foot. All the rotting
framework of the place and all the disorder were drawn into the light of
day. A pile of old law books became radiant, dry and dull as they were.

"We've got it," called Nick, "hurry up, this blamed thing will reach to
the isle of Yap. What's S? Wait, I'll give 'em the high sign first."

A long, dusty column swept across the dark sky.

"Attention everybody," said Nick. "What's S?"

"Three dots," said Norton.

"Three flashes it is. How's that? I'm forgetting my A, B, C's. What's
T?"

"One dash."

"Is three seconds long enough?"

"Three for dashes and one for dots."

"O."

The long column swung slowly to right, then slowly back to left again,
then slowly back to right.

"P's a hard one; here goes." "Good for you, _some_ handwriting."

In five minutes or less, Nick had sprawled across the open page of the
heavens the words, "STOP BLUE CAR 50792 EAGLE ON FRONT." He paused about
half a minute then repeated the message.

That long, accusing arm crossed stars as it swayed and flashed. It
filled the limitless sky like a rainbow. A giant spectre it was, swaying
in the unknown depths, crossing clouds, and piercing realms of darkness,
and speaking to those who could understand. A sick child, somewhere or
other, saw it, and the watchful mother carried the little one to a
window the better to see this strange visitant.

"It's a search-light," she said. But to them it had no meaning. A merry
party returning home in the wee hours paused and watched it curiously
but it spoke to them not. At Knapp's Crossroads they saw it, just as the
harvest festival was breaking up, and Hank Sparker and Sophia Coyson
lingered on their way home to watch it. But it spoke not their language.

Did it speak to any one, this voice calling in the dark? Did any one
understand it? Were there no telegraph operators in any of the stations
along the line? They would understand. Was there no one?

No one?...

CHAPTER XIX

PAGE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FOUR

If Pee-wee had stolen a glimpse from the buffalo robe at about the time
that he was writing under difficulties his momentous message to the
world, he might have noticed a little old-fashioned house nestling among
the trees along the roadside.

At that time the house was dark save for a lamp-light in a little window
up under the eaves. Little the speeding hero knew that up in that tiny
room there sat a boy engrossed with the only scout companion that he
knew, and that was the scout handbook. It had come to him by mail a few
days before.

This boy lived with his widowed mother, Mrs. Mehetable Piper. His name
was Peter, but whether he was descended from the renowned Peter Piper
who picked a peck of pickled peppers, the present chronicler does not
know. At the time in question he was eating the handbook alive. The
speeding auto passed, the mighty Bridgeboro scout pinned his missive to
his remnant of sandwich and hurled it out into the dark world, the boy
up in the little room went on reading with hungry eyes, and that is all
there was to that.

Peter belonged to no troop, for in that lonely country there was no
troop to belong to. He had no scoutmaster, no one to track and stalk and
go camping with, no one to jolly him as Pee-wee had. Away off in
National Headquarters he was registered as a pioneer scout. He had his
certificate, he had his handbook, that is all. It is said in that book
that a scout is a brother to every other scout, but this scout's
brothers were very far away and he had never seen any of them. He
wondered what they looked like in their trim khaki attire. He could
hardly hope to see them, but he did dare to hope that somehow or other
he might strike up a correspondence with one of them. He had heard of
pioneer scouts doing that.

In his loneliness he pictured scouts seated around a camp-fire telling
yarns. He knew that sometimes these wonderful and fortunate beings with
badges up and down their arms went tracking in pairs, that there was
chumming in the patrols. He might sometime or other induce Abner Corning
to become a pioneer scout and chum with him. But this seemed a Utopian
vision for Abner lived seven miles away and had hip disease and lived in
a wheel-chair.

Peter had a rich uncle who lived in New York and took care of a building
and got, oh as much as thirty dollars a week. The next time this rich
uncle came to visit he was going to ask him if he had seen any real
scouts with khaki suits and jack-knives dangling from their belts and
axes hanging on their hips.

Peter experimented with the axe in the woodshed but it was so long that
the handle dragged on the ground and he could sit on it. He had likewise
pinned a Harding and Coolidge button on his sleeve and pretended it was
a signalling badge. _A signalling badge!_ He did not tell his mother
what he was pretending for she would not understand. Out in the small
barn he had presented himself with this, with much scout ceremony, and
he had actually trembled when he told himself (in a man's voice) to
"step forward and receive this token...."

The car in which Scout Harris was being carried reached the lake and
still Peter Piper poured over his scout handbook by the dim, oily
smelling lamp, up in that little room. The two scoutmasters rowed across
and were greeted by their noisy troops and still Peter Piper read his
book. The scout of scouts, W. Harris of the nifty Bridgeboro outfit, was
nearly suffocated, then escaped and stood triumphant over the ruins of
the West Ketchem school, and still Peter Piper's smarting eyes were
fixed upon that book. They were riveted to page two hundred and
eighty-four and he was reading the words "Scouts should thoroughly
master these two standard...."

He read it again and again for his strained eyes were blinking and the
page seemed all hazy. He paused to rest his eyes, then read on. But he
did not turn the page. For an hour his gaze was fixed upon it. Just on
that one page....

CHAPTER XX

STOP

Suddenly something, it seemed like a shadow, crossed the window outside.
If Peter's little room had been downstairs he might have thought that a
spectre of the night was passing. He looked up, startled, dumbfounded.
And while he gazed the tall dusky apparition passed back across the
window again.

Half frightened and very curious he raised the little sash and looked
out. The night was dark but the sky was filled with stars. Not a light
of man's making was there in all the country roundabout. He concentrated
his gaze along the back road and tried to pick out the spot where
Peace-justice Fee's house was, thinking that perhaps some sign
thereabout would furnish the key to this ghostly mystery. But there was
not the faintest twinkle there, nor any sound of life. Only solemn,
unanswering darkness. Somewhere in the woods a solitary screech owl was
hooting its discordant song.

"Is--is--anybody here?" Peter asked, his voice shaking. There was no
answer, nothing but silent, enveloping darkness.

Peter groped behind him for the old piece of broomstick which propped
the window open, and with this in place, he leaned far out and gazed
toward the little graveyard where his father and his grandfather and all
the simple forbears of the lonely neighborhood had gone to their rest.
Not a sound was there in that solemn little acre. He strained his eyes
and tried to identify the place by Deacon Small's tall, white tombstone,
but he could not make it out.

Suddenly, just above that silent, hallowed little area, a tall gray
thing appeared, then disappeared as suddenly.

Peter trembled, yet gazed in fascination. He was fearful of he knew not
what. Yet he could not withdraw his eyes from that spot. Had
someone--some _thing_ from that little graveyard come to his window and
gone back again to its musty rest? Was it--_could_ it be--?

Hardly had he the chance to think and conjure up some harrowing fear,
when the dusky column appeared again, then disappeared, then appeared
again. Then darkness.

Whatever put it into Peter Piper's head he never know, but quick like
those very flashes occurred to him the very words that he had been
saying over and over to himself but a few minutes before--saying over
and committing to memory. "Three dots or flashes--S, three dots or
flashes--three dots or flashes--"

Again it arose, that ghostly apparition, and filled the dark sky above
the little graveyard. This time it remained, for one, two, three, four
seconds.

Peter's hand trembled now from a new kind of excitement, as he groped
behind him for his one poor scout possession, the handbook. Then he
reached for the lamp, but the night wind blew it out just as the tall
thing came again, and stayed for several seconds.

Peter groped for the little box of safety matches which always lay near
the lamp. These were the chief ornaments of his little room, the lamp
and the safety matches. He held a match close over page two hundred and
eighty-four while he divided his gaze between this and the next
lingering visitation of that strange, long, shadowy thing over the
graveyard. He struck match after match, as each blew out. Yes, that was
what three short flashes meant--S. And one long flash meant T.

Suppose--_suppose_ there should be three _long_ appearances now? That
would be O. Were these signs, expressed in ghostly strangeness, just the
figments of Peter's excited imagination? Just the Morse Code haunting
him and coloring his fancy? He put his finger on the black symbol on the
page and waited.

--Two--three--then a pause.

S--T--O

His finger held upon the page trembled as he lighted another match and
still another and moved his finger to another printed symbol on the
page. And the long, dusty column over beyond the graveyard, came and
went, now for a second, now for several, now for several again, then for
one short second.

"STOP!" said Peter, his voice shaking as if indeed some ghostly spectre
were upon him. Somebody, somebody was talking to him! Some scout, in
real khaki attire, out in the great world?

Peter did not know where to place his waiting finger next. A mighty hand
had been raised in the black, solemn night, and had said _Stop_. Had
sprawled it across the open page of the heaven. Peter waited, as one
waits for a spirit to give some sign. He kept his eyes riveted upon the
general service code, lighting match after match and throwing them on
the floor as the fickle things went out. Some day, _some day, maybe_,
Peter would have a _real_ flashlight with a switch button, a flashlight
of shiny nickel that he could polish, such a flashlight as he had seen a
picture of in _Boy's Life_. A flashlight that would not blow out.
Sometime he would--maybe....

CHAPTER XXI

SEEIN' THINGS

Stop-blue-car-five-o-seven-nine-two-eagle-on-front.

Out of the solemn darkness, someone, somewhere, had called to Peter
Piper of Piper's Crossroads; had stolen like a silent ghost to his
little window and bidden him watch.

Far away that arresting voice may have been, away off in the big world,
and none could say how far or near, or where or how it spoke, calling in
the endless wilderness of night. But it spoke to Peter Piper, of Piper's
Crossroads, to Peter Piper, pioneer scout.

And Peter Piper, with the aid of the only scout companion that he had,
read it and was _prepared_, as it is the way of a scout to be.

He did not dare to hope that he was being drawn into the actual circle
of scouting; he would not know how to act among those natty strangers.
Wonderful as they were, with their pathfinding and all that, they could
hardly penetrate to his humble, sequestered little home. Peter Piper of
Piper's Crossroads was not going to allow himself to dream any
extravagantly impossible dreams. The nickel flashlight and a
correspondence with some unknown "brother," that was as far as his hopes
carried.

He had still a lingering and persistent feeling that this whole amazing
business was unreal; that he had been dreaming it or at least reading a
meaning where there was none. He knew that he could see trees and the
stars in Hawley's pond when there were none there. Might not this be the
same? He had expected sometime or other to make a signal fire and give
this scout voice a try-out with some simple word. He had not expected to
be aroused and called to service by its spectral, mysterious command.

What should he do? Set it down to his own deceiving fancy and go back to
his handbook? Return to the wholesome realities of stalking and trailing
which filled those engrossing pages? Poor Peter Piper felt that he had
made a sort of bold excursion from Piper's Crossroads into the realm of
miracles and that he had better not let that weird apparition over
beyond the graveyard dupe and mock him. Perhaps he had been "seein'
things." Yet there were the long and short flashes and they had spelled
that warning message, or else he had gone out of his senses or been
dreaming. He hardly knew what to think, now that he had time to think.

His credulity soon gained the upper hand, he began to doubt his own
eyes, and he was just a bit ashamed of what he was resolved to do. At
all events he would have the delight of doing it, and no one would know.
He would act just as a _real_ scout would _really_ act if the message
was _real_ and _true_.

Stealing down the creaky, boxed-in stairs, he got a lantern from the
kitchen and lighted it. The actual performance of this practical act
made his experience of the last few minutes seem fanciful, unreal. He
was no longer under the spell of that ghostly column and he was not so
sure that he believed in it. To bestir himself upon the authority of
such an uncanny warning seemed rather foolish. He almost found it
easier, now, to believe that he had seen some spectral thing in the
graveyard.

As he emerged from the house the familiar things about him seemed to
mock his vision of a warning message in the sky. The startled chickens
in the little hen-house resettled themselves comfortably on their
perches as if not to be disturbed by such nonsense. The calf resting at
the end of his pegged rope arose, looked about him and lay down again as
if he would not be a party to poor Peter's absurd nocturnal enterprise.
The darkness and the vastness of the wooded country seemed to chill
Peter's hopes. Now that the gripping spell was over he hardly knew what
to think....

With his jack-knife he cut a piece from the rope which held the calf and
moved the peg nearer to the animal which looked curiously on at this
unexpected abridgment of its sphere of freedom. It almost seemed to
Peter that the calf was laughing at him.

This piece of rope he stretched across the road, fastening one end to
the rotten gate-post, long deserted by its gate, the other to a tree.
Then he hung the lantern midway of this line. This seemed as much as his
waning hope justified, but on second thought he stole into the house,
took a black tomato crate marker from the kitchen shelf and on a paper
flour-bag printed the words DANGER ROAD CLOSED. This he hung upon the
rope near the lantern. Then he sat down on the old carriage block where
they used to stand the milk cans and waited. He felt rather foolish
waiting there and he wondered what he should do if a big car with the
number 50792 and an eagle on it should really come along....

The night was pitch dark; somewhere in the lonely woods hard by the
screech owl was still calling, and the brisk autumn wind, freshening as
the night advanced into the wee hours, conjured up strange noises in the
loose hanging sticks of the old ramshackle fence along the roadside.
Dried leaves, driven by the fitful gusts of wind, sounded like someone,
or some _thing_, hurrying by.

Now, indeed, Peter's fine hopes melted away as he waited there in the
darkness. To be sure, this was a main road, as likely a route as any
thereabouts for autos, and in the daytime many passed there. But as he
waited now in the deep, enveloping night, and heard no sound save the
haunting voices caused by the wind and the low, monotonous singing of
the forest life, it seemed unthinkable that any thrilling sequel of his
singular experience in his little room could occur. Everything was the
same as usual, the crickets chirping, the owl calling, the little
graveyard down the road wrapped in darkness.... Glory was not going to
knock on the humble door of Peter Piper of Piper's Crossroads....

Peter glanced down the dark road toward the graveyard; he had always
hurried past that spot when coming home from the crossroads at night.
Once he had seen a ghostly figure on the stone wall, which, on more
careful inspection the next morning, proved to be the sexton's shovel
with his hat on top of it. The little church was around the bend of the
road, within the hallowed acre.

Suddenly, as Peter glanced in the direction where the old leaning
gravestones were wrapped in darkness, he saw something which harrowed
his very soul and made his blood run cold. One of those stones was
bathed in a dim, shadowy light. It was startling to see just one stone
and no others. It was not a light so much as an area of gossamer
brightness that enveloped it, a kind of gauze shroud. Peter gazed,
unable to stir, his breaths coming short and fast. Then this dim shroud
left the tombstone and glided slowly through the graveyard, shedding its
hovering brightness upon a small area of the stone wall as it crossed,
and came steadily, steadily over toward Peter Piper.

CHAPTER XXII

HARK! THE CONQUERING HERO COMES

"What the dickens is this, anyway; a cemetery?" said Mr. Swiper, poking
the finding light this way and that as the car of a thousand delights
came slowly up toward the bend. "It's some rocky road to Dublin, all
right."

He cast the light along the dark road behind them and looked
apprehensively back as far as he could see. Evidently there was no cause
for fear there and he dropped the car of a thousand delights into second
gear and picked his way along the narrow, rocky way, below the bend. "I
guess it will be better when we get around here," he said; "we have to
watch our step in this jungle. Nice place to build a church, huh?" He
threw the finding light upon the little edifice ahead and brightened the
small stained-glass window, casting a soft reflection upon Deacon
Small's slanting marble slab nearby.

The small figure in a gray sweater with a rather tough look, cap drawn
over his round face, who sat huddled up alongside the driver seemed not
to partake of the delights which the big car claimed to furnish. He
seemed chilled and very much worried. He looked wistfully ahead at the
graveyard where the strange, soft, reflected light shone.

"The people around here haven't got any 'phones," he said. "Anyways
what's the use 'phoning Mr. Bartlett because he'll only be in bed. If
we're going straight to Bridgeboro, gee whiz, what's the good of
'phoning? What's the use waking people up around here, even if they have
got 'phones? Gee whiz, you're acting awful funny. Why didn't you ask me
to 'phone when we were passing through a village?"

"You're going to get out and 'phone when I tell you to; see?" said our
friend, the manual training teacher. "And you ain't going to give me no
sass neither, understand? I don't let kids tell me my business."

"You just want to get rid of me, that's what," said Pee-wee. "Gee, you
might as well say what you mean, I'm not scared."

"Oh, ain't you? Well you do as I tell you and you'll be all right. You
do as I tell you if you want to get a ride home; see? Mr. Bartlett and
me are grown-up men, we are, and we know what's the right way to do.
When a kid is told to do something he's gotter do it. You know so much
about them scout kids; don't you know that?"

"I'll take care of this here car of Mr. Bartlett's. The next house we
come to I'm going to stop and let you out a little way past it and
you're going to show what you can do; you're going to go back and 'phone
to tell Mr. Bartlett we're on our way, and I'll wait for you."

"You wanted me to do that at a house that was empty and where there
wasn't any 'phone; I could tell because there weren't any wires. Do you
think scouts can't see things? You just want to get rid of me, that's
all. You want to get rid of me where there aren't any 'phones or people
or anything. Gee, maybe I'm not as strong as you, but anyway I know what
you're up to, that's one sure thing."

"Are you going to do as I tell you?"

"I'm a scout and I'm not going to get out till you put me out, so
there."

Slowly the big car moved up the rocky hill and around the bend and
the finding light which had been focused on the church shifted its area
of distant brightness until Mr. Swiper turned it off just as the two big
headlights threw their glare along the straight level road.

[Illustration: "THE ROAD IS CLOSED," SAID PETER.]

The small figure in the shabby gray sweater and tough looking cap was
nervous and apprehensive and angry with a righteous anger. But he did
not tremble like the poor little lonely figure waiting in the darkness
with eyes fixed upon those two dazzling, glaring eyes.
Five-o-seven-nine-two. There it is, Peter; read it again as the car
draws nearer to make sure. Yes, that is a _five_. Five-o-seven-nine-two.
Don't you see the little gilt eagle on the radiator? He trembled, oh how
he trembled.

"Looker here, you kid," said the driver to the huddled up figure beside
him; "I once croaked a boy scout that didn't do what I told him. Do you
see? I _croaked_ him. No scout kid can put anything over on me; I won't
have any kids interfering with my plans--"

Oh yes you will, Mr. Swiper. You may have escaped from jail, the
authorities of a dozen states may be after you. But just the same you
are going to stop when a little trembling pioneer scout in homespun
pantaloons tells you to. Look ahead, where that dim light is, Mr.
Swiper, with the cropped hair. Do you see something shining there, held
in a little trembling hand? That is a knife, Mr. Swiper. The trembling
hand that holds that knife belongs to a soul possessed, Mr. Swiper. He
is crazed with a high resolve. See how he shakes? Oh he is not thinking
of _you_. He is thinking of the car, Mr. Swiper. He is not himself at
all and he is going to slash your tires if you pass that rope, Mr.
Swiper. So you see?

For it is said that opportunity knocks once at everyone's door, Mr.
Swiper. It came to you on the ruins of that old school. And it has come
away down here, Mr. Swiper, and knocked on the door of Peter Piper,
pioneer scout, of Piper's Crossroads.

CHAPTER XXIII

PETER FINDS A WAY

"What's all this?" asked Mr. Swiper, as the car came to a stop before
the rope.

With hand shaking and heart thumping, but borne up by a towering
resolve, Peter took his stand beside one of the front wheels. "The--the
road is--it's closed," he said, his voice trembling. The hand which held
the knife stole below the shiny mud-guard and rested on the smooth,
unyielding rubber. "The road is closed," he repeated.

Mr. Swiper climbed down out of the car, muttering an oath. He looked
apprehensively back along the road and being sure of no danger there he
crossed the rope and advanced a few yards along the road to inspect it.

Peter was in the grip of terrible fear, fear at his own boldness. His
whole form trembled. He did not stop to think, he knew that if he were
going to do anything effectual it must be in those few brief moments.
There are many ways to cripple an auto without damaging it, but Peter
knew nothing of autos except that they went by gasoline.

In an emergency he would have slashed a tire even while the machine
moved. Now that he had a little time in which to think he hurried behind
the auto and crawling beneath it turned on the outlet of the gas tank.
He knew that the tank was in back and that there must be a pipe leading
from it. He had intended to wrench the thin pipe away, when his groping,
trembling fingers stumbled on the outlet cock. This he turned on with as
much terror as if he were setting fire to the universe.

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