i said, “let’s sit down and think it over and figure it out by geometry; let’s not get excited. three things were in a bee-line, the cooking shack and the house and we ourselves. deny it if you can. the smoke died and we hiked straight for the house. didn’t we? now here we are almost at the house and the smoke is there again, and it’s the same chimney and it’s way out north of us and we’ve been hiking southwest. what’s the answer?”
“it’s all because hervey willetts is leading us,” pee-wee shouted. “if that fellow started to go across the street he’d end at—at—at south africa—he would.”
“are we going to get lost again?” little willie cook piped up.
“again?” i said. “excuse me while i laugh. we’ve got the babes in the woods beaten twenty-eleven ways. i wish we had a compass.”
“i wouldn’t believe one if you had it,” pee-wee shouted.
“let’s hustle and follow the smoke while it’s still going up,” warde said.
“it’s dying down!” pee-wee shouted.
“let it die,” i said. “i’m going to find out what happened. if the earth is off its axis we ought to know it.”
“we’ll have to hike to the north pole,” hervey said.
“oh sure, start off,” i told him; “we’ll follow you.”
“i want to know how a bee-line got bent,” bert said.
“i never knew temple camp to do such a thing before as long as i’ve known it,” i said. “i’m surprised at temple camp. i don’t understand it. it’s trying to escape us.”
“we’ll foil it yet,” hervey said. “when it comes to hide-and-seek that’s my middle name. i intend to go to temple camp now just for spite. we’ll each go in a different direction and surround it and close in on it. what do you say?”
“suppose we start east again?” i said. “maybe that’ll take us there because temple camp is north. we’ll make a flank move.”
pee-wee said, very dark and determined like, “i’m going to follow that chimney. the rest of you can go where you want to.”
“first let’s go to the house and get a drink of water,” warde said.
so then we went on till we came to the road, and g-o-o-d night, there we stood on the edge of the embankment, staring.
“well—what—do—you—know—about—that?” one of the fellows just blurted out.
“i knew it all the time,” i said; “that house is not to be trusted. i’ll never trust another house as long as i live, i don’t care if it’s a sunday school even. i wouldn’t trust a public school.”
the rest of them were laughing so hard they just couldn’t speak. there in the road just below us was a great big wagon with a kind of a trestle on it. and on that wagon was a little house. there were four horses hitched to the wagon and a funny looking man was driving them. he wasn’t driving them exactly because they were standing still. one of the wheels of the wagon was ditched alongside the road. that house had been pulled quite a long way south along the road while we were asleep. take my advice and never use a house for a beacon.
i called, “hey, mister, where are you going with the house?”
we all sat on the high bank and looked at it. the horses were straining and trying to pull the wagon out. the house was so wide it filled up the whole road.
“it’s a portable garage,” warde said.
i said, “hey, mister, is that a portable garage?” the man called back, “no, can’t you see it’s a load of hay?”
“no sooner said than stung,” i said.
“maybe you don’t know we’ve been following that house,” i said.
the man said, “well, if you follow it you’re not likely to get far.”
hervey said, “oh we don’t care, we’d just as soon be here as anywhere. it’s all the same to us.”
“we’re glad you didn’t get any farther with it,” warde said. “we’ve been trying to go west by following the roof of that thing while it was going south.”
the man said, “i’m sorry if i led you astray. i seem to have reached the end of my journey.”
“you’re lucky,” i said. “we’ve been going around and around like the mainspring of a watch all day.”
the man said, kind of laughing, “you seem to be wound up.”
“sure, we go for eight days,” garry said. “what are you going to do with the garage?”
“well, i’m going to sell it for a chicken-coop if you must know,” the man said. “pretty soon you’ll know as much as i do, won’t you?”
“where did you come from?” pee-wee shouted down.
“i came from ireland,” the man said.
“i mean to-day,” pee-wee called back.
the man said, “oh, to-day i came from gooseberry centre.”
“i don’t blame you,” hervey said; “i was there the other day. if i were a garage i wouldn’t stay there; not if i were a portable one.”
“the land i had was sold over my head,” the man said.
“you mean under your feet,” pee-wee shouted.
the man just looked up kind of laughing and he said, “well, since you seem to be so smart and clever maybe you can think of a way to get me out of this hole.”
“sure we can,” hervey said. “where do you want to go?”
i called, “just say where you want to go and he’ll take you somewhere else.”
“anyway,” pee-wee shouted, “do you claim that chickens are as important as boy scouts?” gee whiz, i didn’t know what he was driving at.
