His gaze then wandered to a fence on which he read the astounding words:

PANCAKES FOR HEADLIGHTS

Alas, the ground gla.s.s which should have appeared in place of pancakes did duty beneath the single word EAT on another tree nearby. Eat GROUND GLa.s.s the hungry motorist was blithely advised.

Nor was this the worst. As Pee-wee penetrated deeper into the woods the more terrible was the masquerade of his own enticing signs. His stenciled cards, deserting their lawful mates, had struck up ghastly unions with other cards proclaiming frightful items of refreshment to the appalled wayfarer who was reminded of NON-SKID BANANAS and advised that OUR PEANUT TAFFY STICKS LIKE GLUE. The faithless TIRE TAPE which should have surmounted the STICK LIKE GLUE card was nestling under the fatal EAT, while FRANKFURTERS COLD AND COOLING and ICE CREAM SIZZLING HOT met Pee-wee's astonished gaze. He stood looking at this awful sequel of his handiwork.

Most of the cards were besmeared with mud and one or two in such a freakish way as to give a curious turn to their meaning. On one card a mischievous little rivulet of mud or wetted ink had ingeniously changed a T into a crude R and the travelers read RUBES SOLD HERE.

Pee-wee contemplated this exhibition with dismay. Wherever he looked, on fence or tree, some ridiculous sign stared him in the face. He did not continue on to the post office but retraced his steps to the refreshment parlor which was the subject of these printed slanders.

He and Pepsy were discussing this miscarriage of their exploitation design when a shuffling sound in the distance proclaimed the shambling approach of the advertising department. And if Pee-wee had not made good his flaunting boast to handle the six merry maidens, he at least made amends and regained somewhat of his heroic tradition in his handling of Licorice Stick.

"What did I tell you to do?" he shouted, his face red with terrible wrath. "What did I tell you to do? Do you know the way you put those cards up? You made fools of us, that's what you did!"

"I done gone make no fools of you, no how:" Licorice Stick exclaimed. "I see a sperrit 'n I shakes like dat, I do. As shu I'm stan' here I see a sperrit in dem woods."

From a vivid and terrifying narrative the partners made out that while Licorice Stick was on his way to embellish the wayside in strict accordance with instructions, he had encountered a spirit from the other world in the form of the carnival clown whom we have seen pa.s.s our wayside rest.

The ghostly raiment of this lowly humorist and the motley decoration of his face had so frightened Licorice Stick that he had dropped his cards and retreated frantically into the woods. When the awful apparition had pa.s.sed he hid stealthily shuffled back to the spot and with many furtive glances about him had gathered up the cards with trembling hands, and proceeded to post them in pairs without regard to their proper order.

After this triumphant exploitation feat (which ought to commend him to every lying advertiser in the world) Licorice Stick had shuffled into a new path of glory, going to the carnival, where (not finding the sperrit in evidence) he had accepted a position to stand behind a piece of canvas with his head in an opening and allow people to throw baseb.a.l.l.s at him.

On hearing this Pee-wee desisted from any further criticism. For, as he told Pepsy, "a scout has to be kind and forgiving, and besides when I go to the carnival I can plug him in the face with a baseball two or three times and then we'll be square."

CHAPTER XVII

HARD TIMES

If many people went to the carnival they must have approached it from the other direction. It was a small carnival and probably did not attract much interest outside of Berryville. A few stragglers pa.s.sed Mr.

Quig's farm traveling in buckboards and farm wagons, but they did not come from distant parts and evidently were not hungry.

Some were so unscrupulous as to bring their lunches with them. One reckless farmer, indeed, bought a doughnut and exchanged it for another with a smaller hole.

Altogether the neighboring carnival did not bring much business to Pee-wee and Pepsy. Aunt Jamsiah took their enterprise good-naturedly; Uncle Ebenezer said it was a good thing to keep the children out of mischief. Miss Bellison, the young school teacher, bought ten cents'

worth of taffy each day as a matter of duty, and Beriah Bungel, the town constable, being a natural born grafter, helped himself to everything he wanted free of charge.

So the pleasant summer days pa.s.sed and brought them little business.

Occasionally some lonely auto would crawl along the foliage-arched road, its driver looking for a place to turn around so that he might get back out of his mistaken way.

Most of these were too disgruntled at their mistakes and the quality of the road to heed the voice of the tempter who shouted at them, "Lemonade, ice cold! Get your lemonade here!" They usually answered by asking how they could get to West Baxter. And Pee-wee would answer, "You have to go four miles back, get your hot doughnuts here." Then they would start back but they never, never got their hot doughnuts there.

If Pee-wee's stout heart was losing hope he did not show it, but Pepsy was frankly in despair. In her free hours she sat in their little shelter, her thin, freckly hands busy with the worsted masterpiece that she was working. Pee-wee, at least, had his appet.i.te to console him, but she had no relish for the stale lemonade and melting, oozy taffy which stood pathetically on the counter each night.

One day a lumbering, enclosed auto went by, an undertaker's car it was, and Pepsy was seized with sudden fright lest it be the orphan asylum wagon come to get her. The two dominating thoughts of her simple mind were the fear that she would have to go back to "that place" and the hope that Pee-wee might get the money to buy those precious tents.

She had learned something of scouting, that scouts camp and live in the open, and she had learned something of the good scout laws. She was witnessing now an exhibition of scout faith and resolution, of faith that was hopeless and resolution that was futile. She was soon to be made aware of another scout quality which fairly staggered her and left her wondering.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE VOICE OF THE TAIL-LIGHT

One night after dark, Pepsy and Pee-wee were sitting in their little roadside pavilion because they preferred it to the lamp-lighted kitchen smelling of kerosene where Uncle Ebenezer read the American Farm Journal, his arms spread on the red covered table.

A cheery little cricket chirped somewhere in this scene of impending failure; nearby a katydid was grinding out her old familiar song as if it were the latest popular air. In the barn across the yard the discordant sound of the horses kicking the echoing boards sounded clear in the still night and seemed a part of the homely music of the countryside.

Suddenly a speeding auto, containing perhaps its load of merry, heedless joy riders, went rattling over the old bridge along the highway and the loose planks called out across the interval of woodland to the little red-headed girl in this remote shack along the obscure by-road.

"You have to go back, You have to go back, You have to go back."

Little did those speeding riders know of the voice they had called up to terrify this unknown child. The rattling, warning voice ceased as suddenly as it had begun as the unseen car rolled noiselessly along the smooth highway.

"Don't you be scared of it," Pee-wee said.

"You're as bad as Licorice Stick. Those old boards don't know what they're talking about. I wouldn't be scared of what anything said unless it was alive, that's sure."

"They voted not to build a new bridge for two years because they've got to build a new schoolhouse," said Pepsy. "That's because this county hasn't got much money. I'll be glad when they build it; the floor's going to be made out of stone; like--"

"You mean the bridge?"

"Yes, and I wish they'd hurry up. Every night I hear that and I know boards tell the truth, because if a door squeaks that means you're going to get married."

"All you need is an oil can to keep from getting married then," said Pee-wee, "because if you oil a door it won't squeak. So there; lets hear you answer that argument."

There was no answer to that argument; keeping single was just a matter of lubrication; but just the same that appalling sentence which had become fixed in Pepsy's mind, haunted her, especially when she lay on her feather mattress in the yellow painted bed up in her little room.

She was just about to go in when they were aroused by a sound in the distance. Pee-wee thought it was an auto and he made ready to deliver his usual verbal a.s.sault to the travelers.

Louder and louder grew the sound and suddenly a motorcycle with no headlight went whizzing past in the darkness. It was followed by another, also without any headlight, but this second rider stopped a little distance beyond the shack and got off his machine.

Something, he knew not what, dissuaded Pee-wee from making his customary announcements and he stood in the darkness watching this second speeder who seemed to be delayed by some trouble with his machine. The traveler was certainly too hurried and preoccupied to think of doughnuts.

Meanwhile, the first cyclist had covered perhaps fifty yards and was still going. The little red taillight of his machine shone brightly.

Pee-wee was just wondering why these travelers used no headlights and whether the first cyclist would return to a.s.sist his friend, when he beheld something which caught and held his gaze in rapt concentration.

The little red taillight went out and on four times in quick succession.

There followed an appreciable pause, then two quick flashes. Pee-wee watched the tiny light, spellbound. It appeared for a couple of seconds, then flashed twice with lightning rapidity.

"Hide," Pee-wee repeated to himself and motioned with his hand for Pepsy not to move. Now, in such rapid succession that Pee-wee could hardly follow them, the flashes appeared, tinier as the cyclist sped further away.

"Hide Kelly's barn," Pee-wee breathed.

Presently the second cyclist was on his machine again, speeding through the darkness. Either the first cyclist knew that his friend's trouble was not serious, or time was so precious that he could not pause in any case. Indeed, their flight must have been urgent to speed on such a road without headlights. The whole thing had a rather sinister look.

Pee-wee wondered who Kelly was and where his barn was located.