"You"re a raving Raven," Westy began, laughing.
"Do you think a raving Raven--I"m _not_ a raving Raven," Pee-wee just yelled, he was so excited; "you think you"re funny, don"t you? Do you think I"m a big baby?"
"Not so very big," Connie said.
Pee-wee just stood there, yelling at us, "If _you_ want to send word home, go ahead. You admit yourself you"re somewhere--don"t you?"
"Shout a little louder and they"ll hear you in Bridgeboro," Wig said; "and then we won"t have to wire them."
"It isn"t up to us, is it?" Pee-wee yelled. "Some train or other brought us here. When they find out they made a mistake, let them take us away again. What do we care? It"s none of our business. It"s up to the colonel, I mean the general or whatever you call him, of railroads. We can get along all right; we"re scouts, aren"t we?"
"How about school?" Westy said.
"How are they going to get the school here, all the way from Bridgeboro?" Pee-wee shouted.
"That settles it," Connie said.
"Sure it settles it," Pee-wee shouted; "and besides, Monday is Columbus Day--and Monday night, too. That"s a holiday."
"There are a lot of Knights of Columbus, but there"s only one Columbus Day," Westy shouted at him.
"They"ll find out where we are in three days, won"t they?" Pee-wee screamed. "_I_ say let"s stay here. _I_ say let"s be too proud to send for help."
"Sure, we should worry," I said.
"That"s what _I_ say," Connie shouted.
"Scouts don"t ask for help, do they?" Pee-wee yelled at the top of his voice.
I said, "No, but believe me, scouts like to eat. I know one scout that does, anyway. What are we going to eat between now and next Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday?"
"We"ll find a way," Pee-wee shouted. "Maybe they"ll pick us up to-night, you can"t tell. Anyway, I"m not going to be a quitter. Whenever I have to do anything I can always find a way. We can have a movie show, can"t we? We can charge ten cents. We can have it to-night. You needn"t sign _my_ name to any telegrams."
"How can we have a movie show when there isn"t any town here?" Westy wanted to know.
"We"ll find the town," Pee-wee shouted; "it must be somewhere."
Connie said, "Oh, it"s probably somewhere."
"Sure it is," Pee-wee hollered; "and I"ve got that Temple Camp film in the machine. Remember about those scouts that were lost for a week in the Maine woods? We"re not as bad off as they were, are we?"
"Sure we"re not," I said; "this is only the main line. Maybe it"s only a branch line."
"Do you mean to tell me that scouts can"t get along when they"re lost on a branch line?" he wanted to know. "Scouts can do anything, can"t they?
If I have to do something, I just do it. If I can"t do it, I do it anyway. I can find a way, all right."
"Bully for you! Hurrah for P. Harris!" we began shouting.
"Do you think I"m going to starve?" he screamed.
"Gee whiz, it never looked that way to me," I said.
"Why should we go home while we"re waiting?" he yelled at us.
"Look out, you"ll fall off the seat," Connie said.
"We"re here because we"re here, you can"t deny that!" the kid fairly screeched, all the while hanging onto one of those cage things they put bundles in, so he wouldn"t fall off. "And I say we just stay here until they take us back in what-do-you-call-it--triumph--and put us where we belong. This is our station. No matter where it is, it"s our station.
We"re good at tracking. If there"s a town we"ll trail it."
"If it"s hiding we"ll find it," I shouted; "hip, hip and a couple of hurrahs for P. Harris, scout!"
CHAPTER VI
THE BIG B
So we decided that we wouldn"t send any telegrams or anything, and that we"d stay right there in Brewster"s Centre Station till the railroad took us away and put us where we belonged. We said it was up to them.
Westy"s mother knew he had his "eats" outfit along, and I guess all our families knew about there being a stove and coal in the car. Anyway, you can bet that scouts" mothers don"t worry about them when they"re away.
Gee whiz, my mother worries more about me when I"m home, because I always eat a lot of pie and cake when I"m home. And I"m always using the "phone.
We all said it would be a lot of fun to camp out in that car and to just not pay any attention to what had happened. When we got home, we"d be home. We decided on some poetry that we"d send to the Bridgeboro _News_ when we got back. It isn"t much good, but anyway, this is it:
We started out to wander, We didn"t mean to roam.
We"re here because we"re here, And when we"re home we"re home.
We hope they"ll come and get us, But we"re not in a hurry.
We"ve got forty-two cents and a movie outfit, We should worry.
That isn"t much good, is it? Anyway, we decided that the next thing to do was to find out if there was a town anywhere around. There wasn"t any railroad station, that was sure. Now all the time that we were having that rumpus in the car, those men stood over there on the platform in front of that store, staring and staring and staring.
Pretty soon they all came over and the man with one suspender said, "Thar be"nt no growed-up man along o" you youngsters, be there?"
Westy told him no.
Then he looked us all over, very easy like, and he said, "Yer chorin" on the railroad?"
I said, "We"re boy sprouts and this is Brewster"s Centre."
He said, "Brewster"s Centre? Whar?"
I said, "Right here in this car."
He just looked all around and then he said, "They haint cal"latin" on changin" the name of this here taown ter Brewster"s Centre, be they?"
""Cause that won"t go here," another one of the men said. "We wuz promised a station, but we haint goin" ter have no changin" of names.
The railroad folks tried that down ter Skunk Hollow, settin" up a jim-crack station, all red shingles and fancy roof, and callin" it Ozone Valley. But they can"t come any of that business up here."