Chapter XXV: Bedlam

That Pee-wee Harris, the only original boy scout, positively guaranteed, should be pronounced _not_ a scout! Why that was like saying that water was not wet or (to use a more fitting comparison) that mince pie was not good.

To say that Pee-wee Harris was in the scouts would not be saying enough. Rather should it be said that the scouts were all in Pee-wee Harris. The Scout movement had not swallowed _him_, he had swallowed it, the same as he swallowed everything else. He had swallowed it whole. He was the boy scout just as much as Uncle Sam is the United States, except that he was much greater and more terrible than Uncle Sam. Oh, much. He was just as much a boy scout as the Fourth of July is a noise. Except that he was more of a noise.

And here was a shabby, eager-faced boy, with pantaloons like stovepipes almost reaching his ankles and a ticking shirt with a pattern like a checker-board; a quaint, queer youngster, living a million miles from nowhere, telling him that he was no scout, that he was a thief.

"Hey, mister," Pee-wee shouted to Ham Sanders who drove up, "I'm rescuing this automobile from two men that stole it and I got another one to help me and he was trying to steal it and it belongs to a man I know where I live and I was at the movies with him, and that feller said he'd take it back and this feller says I'm a thief and I'm good and hungry."

Ham Sanders gave one look at him and said, "Oh, is that so?"

"It's more than so," Pee-wee shouted, "and I'm going to stick to this automobile, I don't care what. If you say I'm not a scout I can prove it."

"You needn't go far to prove it," said Ham; "we can see you're not. Maybe you're pretty wide awake--"

"I'm not, I'm sleepy," Pee-wee shouted. "Have you got anything to say around here?"

"Well, I _think_ I have, I'm constable," said Ham.

"Then why aren't you sure?" Pee-wee retorted. "Just because I don't know where I am it doesn't say I don't know what I'm talking about, does it? Will you help me drive this automobile back? You'll get some money if you do. I had an adventure with a couple of thieves and I foiled them; they've got seventy pistols. I was watching The Bandit of Harrowing Highway--"

"You got into bad company, youngster," said Ham, surveying Pee-wee's rakish cap and lawless looking sweater. "You ought to be thankful you got a chance to get rid of that sort o' company. You're kinder young, I reckon, ain't you? Gosh, I calculate you ain't more'n four foot high. Kinder young to be mixed up in stealings."

"You're the one that's mixed up," Pee-wee shouted, "and anyway size doesn't count. You can--you can steal things if you're--you're only a foot high--if you want to and--"

"How about all this, Peter?" asked his friend confidentially.

"I'll tell you," Pee-wee shouted; "I had a lot of adventures, I know two men that have, _shh_, they have _dead ones to their credit_! I circum--what d'you call it--vented them, and that man that just ran away, he was a traitor, but I can--"

"Can you keep still a second? One look at you is enough," said Ham Sanders.

"I've--I've got--three scout suits," Pee-wee began.

"Like enough you stole 'em," said Ham. "You're one of them runners for crooks, that's what you are. I know the kind; they have you to climb in the windows for 'em and all that. Now you keep still a minute if you know what's best for you."

In a brief and threatened few moments of silence Peter told in a whisper how he had seen the signal and read it and stopped the car, and of the flight of the head thief, as he called him. Between these two excited youngsters Ham hardly knew what to believe. He certainly did not believe in talking lights appearing over graveyards. Nor did he credit Pee-wee's vehement and choppy account of bandits with seventy pistols.

"Whar are these here dead ones?" he asked, rather confused. "Over yonder in the graveyard?"

"How do I know where they are?" Pee-wee shouted. "Do you know what blackjacks are?"

"Dots and dashes, you can do it with lights too," said Peter; "they tell the truth. If he says signals lie that shows he isn't a scout anyway, and anybody can see he isn't. I stopped them, I did it by myself."

"That's nothing," Pee-wee shouted from the seat, "I nearly got suffocated, I'm more of a hero than you are. That man that ran away he--he--_duped_ me. This car--will you listen--this car--"

"It's stolen; _I_ know," said Peter.

"It _was_ stolen but it _isn't_ stolen," Pee-wee fairly screamed. "Can't a thing be stolen and then not stolen? It's being--being rescued--"

"It's being stolen, the other thief ran away," Peter persisted. "He--he admits he was friends with a thief! He's a thief too, he is."

"Maybe Jim disguised--kind of--as a thief," Pee-wee conceded.

"He's trying to be disguised as a scout," poor Peter said.

"I was a scout before you or anybody else was born," Pee-wee shouted.

"He isn't," said Peter.

"I am," said Pee-wee.

Ham Sanders scratched his head, looking from one to the other, then looked appealingly at his familiar milk cans. Perhaps he expected to see them dancing around in this Bedlam.

"I'm gonter hev both of you youngsters before the peace justice," he finally said; "we'll soon find out what's wrong here. Climb down out o' that car, you, and come along with me, the both of you."

"Do you think I'm scared of him?" Pee-wee demanded as he climbed down.

"You _will_ be scared of him, he's got a big book," said Peter.

"I ain't scared of big books," Pee-wee announced; "I know bigger books, camp registers; I bet it isn't as big as a map book."

"You'll see," said Peter, darkly.