Roy Blakeley's Camp on WheelsFitzhugh, Percy Keese
General
Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels
Fitzhugh, Percy Keese
Boy Scouts of America -- Juvenile fiction
I was all flabbergasted. "Mr. _Pedro_!" I just blurted out.
"I thought I'd pay you back, that's all," he said.
Oh, boy, couldn't that man imitate a train!
CHAPTER XXXV
THE PROFITEERS
When we went out in the morning the surprise was mutual. Gee, it was
_especially_ mutual. There was a crowd outside the car, staring up at
it. It must have looked funny standing there with BREWSTER'S CENTRE
sprawled all over it. There were all kinds of people in that crowd. One
of them was a woman who was a fortune teller. She had on a dress with
all spangles on it. Her name was Princess Mysteria. I wanted to ask her
when the train would come for us and if we'd have any more adventures,
but Westy wouldn't let me, because it cost twenty-five cents. He said
he'd rather spend the twenty-five cents for licorice jaw-breakers and
then we'd _know_ what was happening to us. Gee whiz, you don't need any
fortune teller after eating licorice jaw-breakers.
All around in that place men were opening booths and putting up tents
and getting counters ready, so they could sell peanuts and lemonade and
ice-cream cones and canes and fancy glass jars and other things to eat
and drink--not canes and glass jars. There was a merry-go-round, too,
and it had an organ that played _We're on our way_.
"Jiminies," Westy said; "I don't know where anyone would expect to get
to, riding on a merry-go-round."
Pretty soon a man came up to us and asked us how we got there. I guess
he was one of the head men of the Carnival.
I said, "Isn't this Flimdunk Siding? We're supposed to stay here until a
train picks us up."
He said, "Yes, but this car has no business inside the fence; this is
the old ice-house freight siding. They should have left you standing out
near the main line."
I said, "Yes, but this car has something to say about it, too, and it
wouldn't stop, so here we are. Don't blame us, blame the car. That's the
way it is with railroads, they don't care about anybody's rights."
"That ain't the main entrance you came through," he said; "that gate was
open so stuff could be brought in on the freight cars."
"It's all the same to us," I told him; "we're here, because we're here."
He said, "Well, you'll have to pay your admission or be put out."
Connie said, "How are you going to put this car out? If you once get it
started it may roll all the way back onto the main track and we'll die a
horrible death."
"Yes, and then you'll be sorry," Pee-wee said.
The man said, "Well, this car hasn't got any right on the grounds,
that's all."
I said, "Mister, I don't know what we can do, unless we get a couple of
those elephants from the merry-go-round to drag it away."
Pretty soon two other men came along and they all stood there talking
about what they had better do, and we sat on the steps of the platform,
listening to them.
"You seem to be live wires, leastways," one of them said.
"Sure," I told him; "we were struck by lightning when we were kids."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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