"This is terrible," Westy said; "what do you suppose happened?"

"What's he doing with the curling iron?" Wig whispered.

I just leaned against a tree and shook and shook till my head ached.

I said, "I don't know what he's doing with the curling iron, but I think--wait a minute till I can speak--oh, oh, oh--I _think_ he tripped over the ap.r.o.n while he was trying to flop an omelet and the omelet came down on his head. Don't speak to me!"

"He's suffering from sh.e.l.l shock or something," Connie said.

"Not sh.e.l.l shock, _omelet_ shock," I told him; "this is--gh--gh--astly.

I wonder what became of the ch--ch--ch--icken!"

CHAPTER XVI

UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

Then we all marched in, just as if nothing had happened--you know, kind of careless like.

Westy said, "Good morning, it's a beautiful afternoon this evening. Is dinner ready?"

The girls just couldn't speak, they were laughing so hard. Two of them were trying to pluck the feathers out of a couple of chickens, and by that I knew the worst hadn't happened. But they weren't paying much attention to their work; they were just bending backward and forward and screaming.

"L--l--look at him!" Grace Bentley just blurted out; "it's too _excruciating_!"

I said, "Pee-wee, don't ever quote the handbook to me again. '_A scout is kind._' You have deliberately murdered that poor omelet. Don't ever say you don't believe in frightfulness."

"You make me tired!" he yelled. "Didn't you tell me the way to flip--flop--didn't you say to catch--didn't you say to toss--graceful----"

"I said to toss it up gracefully," I told him, "and to let it turn over in the air and then to catch it _inside_ the pan. But tell me this, _please_, so I can die in peace; what are you doing with the curling iron?"

"He was going to open--he was going to open--a--a--can," the girl they called Billie said, all the while trying not to laugh; "oh, dear me!"

"He wanted us to cut the chicken up to fr--fr--fr--fr--_fry_!" Grace Bentley screamed.

"Oh, he's a regular cut-up," Connie told her.

"He sm--sm--_ashed_ the potatoes so they--oh, just look at them!" one of the others managed to blurt out.

The kettle full of mashed potatoes looked as if a bomb had fallen into it; there were gobs of mashed potatoes all around on the trees and ground for about ten feet. It looked like a snowstorm.

"He flavored the onions with mosquito dope--cit--citronella," Pug Peters shrieked.

"Sure," Wig said; "a scout is resourceful."

"You all make me tired!" Pee-wee yelled; "how can you flip when you trip----"

"Walter," I said, very gentle and kind like, "take off your ap.r.o.n and ask for an armistice. It's your only hope; unconditional surrender.

Here, give me the frying pan; look at the grease all down your leg, you're a sight."

I began gathering up the gobs of omelet from his head and his shoulders, while the girls sat on the ground all around and just laughed and laughed. Honest, I thought Pug Peters would have a fit, she laughed so hard. Grace Bentley nearly had hysterics.

"How can you--tell me this----?" Pee-wee yelled; "how can you trip--flip--if you flop--I mean trip--you make me sick. That could happen----"

"Sure, it could happen to Edison," I said; "you should worry. Get your ap.r.o.n off and your face washed before some of us die."

Poor kid, he was a wreck. We washed him up and brushed and cleaned his suit the best we could and collected all the odds and ends of omelet.

Westy wanted to try to fit them together like a picture puzzle. That omelet looked like the map of Europe after the war. But one thing, the chickens were saved. In another ten minutes, I suppose, odds and ends of chicken would have been flying in the air.

Pug Peters said she was sorry, because she had been wanting to eat some of that omelet to see how it tasted. She said it had maple syrup in it.

_Good night!_ Grace Bentley told us there was peppermint extract in it, too. Anyway, it had an awful death.

From all we heard, about the only thing Pee-wee didn't use for flavoring was fountain pen ink. There was a bottle of glue there and I don't know how he happened to miss that. The mashed potatoes were flavored with strawberry, but they weren't so bad. The onions had a funny taste, too; kind of like pineapple. He had made some fried m.u.f.fins, the same way that I usually did, and Westy and Connie and I had a good game of one o'cat with one of them. Westy knocked a home run and even that didn't break it.

As soon as the girls could manage to talk straight, they got busy plucking the chickens and we cut them up and fried them. Pee-wee retired from his strenuous career of cook and just sat by and watched us. He didn't say much. A scout knows when to keep still.

Maybe you think we didn't have a good dinner, but mm-_mmm_, that chicken was good. We boiled some more onions and added them to the others, so the pineapple flavoring wasn't so strong, and I flopped some flapjacks. I can make a flapjack do three summersaults and catch it. We ate the m.u.f.fins, too, even though they were hard, because scouts are supposed not to be scared of things that are hard. They tasted sweet kind of, like marshmallows, and we decided that Scout Harris had used powdered sugar by mistake, instead of flour. Anyway, he said powdered sugar and flour looked alike. Especially we thought that was what he had done, because the sugar can had flour in it, and we put flour in our coffee. But anyway, it wasn't coffee. It was Indian meal. We should worry.

The girls were awful nice and I guess they were glad of everything that happened, because it made so much fun. Pee-wee didn't lose his pull with them, anyway, that was sure. They said he was _just simply excruciating_. Pug Peters said that anyway, the princ.i.p.al thing was for a scout to know how to eat, and Pee-wee didn't fall down there, you can bet.

A scout is hungry.

CHAPTER XVII

A WILD-CAT RIDE

Now you'd think that after what happened, our young hero, P. Harris, wouldn't go hunting for any more glory for a couple of days. But late that very afternoon, he performed one of his most famous feats. It was an accident, but anyway, he scooped up all the credit. That's always the way it is with Pee-wee; things go his way, and then all of a sudden, zip goes the fillum, he's a boy hero.

After dinner that afternoon, we took a walk through the woods with the girls and helped them get some birch-bark, because they wanted to make birch-bark ornaments. It's dandy taking walks on Sundays. We got some hickory nuts, too. I said we'd climb the trees, because girls couldn't do things like that and scouts could climb. I said, "A scout is a monkey."

"Girls can do lots of things, too," Pee-wee piped up, oh, so nice and gallant; "do you mean to tell me girls aren't monkeys--too?"

"Don't, you'll start my head aching again," I told him.

"Oh, you said we were monkeys," Pug Peters said; "you're perfectly _horrid_."

"I mean, because on account of climbing," he said; "because they know how to climb. I mean, _you_ know, the ones that know how to climb----"

"Baboons," Westy said.

"Sure," Pee-wee piped up; "_No_, not baboons, you make me sick!"