"You'll be pushed over backwards if you crack another one like that," I
told him.
"Look at Pee-wee," Dorry said.
I had to laugh at the kid. There he sat right in the middle, straight
upright, with his hand up making the full scout salute as the train came
along. He looked like a little radiator ornament for an automobile. I
guess he felt very proud being part of an ad.
As the train went past all the passengers looked out of the windows,
laughing. The more they laughed the straighter Pee-wee sat. All of a
sudden, _good night_, over he went backwards, kerflop, into the marshy
land just underneath the sign. All the people in the train howled.
He came up the ladder, with mud and grass all over him, just in time
for the people in the last two cars to get a look at him. They just
screamed. They even came out on the back platform of the last car,
cheering him and laughing at him.
"I--I bet I sold as many as a hundred hats doing that," he said.
I said, "Good night, was that a part of the ad? You look more like an ad
for bathing suits than for hats."
He climbed back into his place pulling the wet grass from his face and
clothes.
"That's the time you weren't on top," I said. "I hope Mr. Wild Bull
didn't see you."
"Here comes a man across the field," Dorry said.
I looked around behind me and saw a man with a great big straw hat and a
shirt like a checker-board coming across the field. It seemed as if he
was all shirt and hat and suspenders.
"I think there's going to be something doing," Westy said. "I can feel
it in the air."
"Thank goodness, we're on top," I said.
CHAPTER XXXV
LOGIC
The man came around in front of the sign and looked up and said, "Well,
now, what do you youngsters think you're doing here?"
I said, "Well, we're not so sure but we _think_ we're sitting here."
He said, "Anybody give you permission to come on this land?"
Westy said, "No, but we know lots of people cross here and we thought it
was all right. We always heard this was a short-cut to Addison."
Then he asked us if we were going to Addison.
Westy said, "No, but it's just the same crossing your land in one place
as another. You can't blame us for thinking it was all right."
The man said, "Well, 'tain't right, by no manner o' means. You're
trespassin', that's what you're doing."
Dorry said, "We're sorry."
The man said, "Well, so'm I, because I'm goin' to make an example of
you, that's what I'm goin' to do. I'm goin' to learn you a lesson."
I said, "No lessons, this is vacation."
He said, "Haow?"
Westy said, "We're sorry, we can't do any more than say that. We thought
it was all right. I don't see what harm we do."
"Well, you'll find out," the man said, good and cross.
All of a sudden Pee-wee shouted down at him, "Anyway, we're not on your
land, we're on this sign. Has the sign got a right here?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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