with us over to the river and say if he thought there was any chance of getting the car to the shore.

Tom Slade (he works in Temple Camp office) went with us. Before he was grown up he was in the Elk Patrol, but he’s assistant scoutmaster now. He doesn’t say much—he’s like Pee-wee, only different. He started the Elk Patrol, I started the Silver Foxes, and I’ll finish them, too, if they don’t look out. Gee, you can’t keep that bunch quiet. The Silver Fox Patrol is all right, only it hasn’t got any muffler.

Mr. MacKeller went with us, too, that night. He’s County Engineer. He’s got dandy apple trees up at his house. He went so he could decide if the track was safe over the marsh. Because, gee whiz, we didn’t want to break down and have our summer home in among a lot of cat-tails. I hate cats anyway. My sister has two of them.

We all met Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. MacKeller at the station and then we started following the old track. Some places we could hardly find the rails at all. We didn’t stop at Tony’s because Mr. Ellsworth said buying frankfurters wouldn’t do any good. He said Tony’s wasn’t the worst part of our trouble; he said Slausen’s Auto Repair Shop was worse, because it was a regular building.

After we got by Slausen’s, the tracks were buried in the earth across the Sneezenbunker land. Some places they were as deep as an inch under the ground. But where that land began to slant down into the marsh the track came out good and plain. Before it got right into the marsh it ran along on an old kind of rotten trestle, and it ran all the way across the marsh on that. I guess that trestle was about three or four feet above the marsh. It’s there yet, only you can’t see it from the town on account of the high cat-tails all around.

That marsh sort of peters out into Van Schlessenhoff’s field, right close to the river, and there the track is flat on the land again and in some places it’s away under the grass.

Mr. MacKeller said he didn’t know how we’d get the car over there, but he guessed the trestle across the marsh would hold it all right. He said even if it collapsed there probably wouldn’t be much damage, only the car would be broken and we’d never get it away from there, and if we camped in it we’d be eaten up by mosquitoes.

“Good night,” I told him; “if there’s any eating to be done we want to be the ones to do it.”

He said that getting Tony’s lunch wagon and Slausen’s Auto Repair Shop out of the way wasn’t the kind of work for an engineer. “That’s a job for a strategist,” he said.

Oh, boy, you should have heard Pee-wee shout. “What did I tell you? What did I tell you?” he began hollering.

Honest, I was afraid he’d tumble off the trestle into the marsh.

CHAPTER VI—SCOUT STRATEGY

Westy Martin (he’s in my patrol; he’s my special chum), he said, “The only way to do is to go to work systematically.”

“Sister what?” Pee-wee shouted.

“Systematically,” I told him; “that means without any help from our sisters. Now shut up.”

“How long is it going to take to move that car all the way from the station over to the river? That’s what I’d like to know,” he shouted.

“About forty-eight hours and three months,” I said. “If you’ll give Westy a chance to speak, maybe he’ll give us an idea.”

We were all walking back up to town after our inspection of the old sunken tracks, and I could see that Westy was kind of silent; I mean I could hear that he was silent; I mean—you know what I mean—I should worry. Maybe you can’t hear a fellow being silent. You can never hear Pee-wee being silent, that’s one sure thing.

Westy was frowning just as if it was the end of vacation, and I knew he was thinking some thinks.

Pretty soon he said, “The two hardest things are getting the car past Tony’s Lunch Wagon and past Slausen’s Auto Repair Shop. After that it will be clear sailing—I mean rolling. I say let’s have a big scout rally in Downing’s lot. Let’s have games and races and everything, and ask all the scout troops for miles and miles around, and everybody’ll have to be good and hungry.”

“That’s easy!” Pee-wee shouted.

“Sure,” Connie Bennett piped up. “We’ll have the East Bridgeboro Troop over because there’s a fat scout in that troop.”

“I know the one you mean,” Hunt Ward said. “He’s shaped like a ferry boat.”

I said, “Sure, and here’s our own dear Pee-wee; he’s a whole famine in himself. He wouldn’t dare to look Hoover in the face.”

“But what’s the idea?” Dorry wanted to know.

“You started an argument and you haven’t got any premises.”

“Some highbrow,” I told him.

“Sure, Downing’s lot is the premises,” our young hero piped up. “Premises is a place.”

“I’ve hiked all over but I’ve never been to that place,” I told him. “Can you get ice cream cones there?”

“Premises is the basis of an argument,” Westy said. “You choose your premises and stand on it.”

“A stepladder is good enough for me,” I said.

“Premises is real estate!” the kid fairly yelled. “Everybody knows that.”

“I don’t know it,” Punk Odell said, “and I’m everybody.”

“You mean you think you are,” Pee-wee shot back.

“Well,” I said, “what’s the difference whether it’s real estate or imitation estate? That isn’t finding out how we’re going to get the car past Tony’s, is it? Give Westy a chance to speak. Let’s have a large chunk of silence.”

That’s always the way it is with us. We never can decide anything because we all talk at once and we jump from one subject to another. Especially when Pee-wee’s along. Mr. Ellsworth (he’s our scoutmaster, he’s got a dandy dog), he says that silence is golden. But believe me, the Silver Foxes don’t bother about things that are golden. Speech is silver, and Pee-wee is Sterling.

Let’s see, where was I? Oh, I know. I was just starting to keep still so Westy could talk.

He said, “We’ll have a big rally and we’ll have signs up all around the field. All the scouts will have to be good and hungry.”

“That’s easy!” Pee-wee shouted.

Westy said, “We’ll have signs up all around saying A SCOUT IS HUNGRY, and things like that. We’ll have some poetry on big planks——”

“And when Tony sees all that,” Connie Bennett piped up, “and finds that we won’t go over and buy any eats from him, why, then he’ll move his wagon over to the lot and we’ll have a chance to move the car. It’s a bully idea if Pee-wee doesn’t weaken and spoil it all.”

“What are you talking about?” Pee-wee yelled. “I can go without anything to eat for—for an hour, if I have to!”

So we decided that we’d force Tony to move his lunch wagon by the force of our appetites. Maybe you’ve seen exhibitions of things that scouts can do by the power of deduction and all that, and how they can do things by united strength, and everybody admits they can make a lot of noise when they sing together. But I bet you never saw what they can do by concerted appetite—that means all being hungry at the same time.

You can move a house that way. Anyway, you can move a lunch wagon.

CHAPTER VII—THE INVITATION

Now this is the way we planned it out. We decided that if we could get the way cleared as far as the Sneezenbunker land it would be easy from there, because the car would roll down the grade and maybe all the way across Cat-tail Marsh. Then we’d have to think of some scheme to get it to the river.

“We won’t cross our bridges till we come to them,” Westy said.

“We’re not going to take it across the river,” the kid shouted.

“Crossing bridges is an expression,” I told