He said, “Well, there isn’t much to it; just a little gypsy and caravan stuff, as you might say. My sister’s husband’s brother, Mr. Junkum, is tearing his hair out and lying awake nights, because he can’t get cars here from the west. He says the customers are standing on line and all that sort of thing and that everything is clogged up at the other end, the railroads are all tied up in a knot, the freight is piled up as high as the Woolworth building and nothing short of a good dose of dynamite will loosen up the freight congestion out west. If it was a matter of Ford cars he could get them through by parcel post, but with these big six cylinder Klucks it’s a different proposition. He’s got three touring cars and a big motor van waiting for shipment out in Klucksville, Missouri, and if he can’t make deliveries in a couple of weeks or so his customers are going to cancel. Poor guy, I’m sorry for him.” That’s just the way Harry talks. He said, “One of those cars, the big enclosed van, is for Jolly and Kidder’s big store in New York.” “That’s where I bought my last scout suit, at Jolly and Kidder’s,” I told him. Then he said, “Junkum wanted me to see if I couldn’t round up two or three fellows and bang out to Klucksville and bring the cars home under their own power. I told him the roads were punk and he said it’s punk to have your business canceled, so there you are.” “Oh, bibbie,” I said, “we’d love to do that only we can’t run cars on account of not being old enough.” Then he said, “I rounded up Tom Slade and he agreed to die for the cause—said his vacation was at my disposal. He drove a motor truck in France and he’s a bug on good turns. Rossie Bent has promised to run one of the touring cars, I’m going to run the van myself and that leaves one touring car. I tried to get Brent Gaylong on the long distance ’phone up at Newburgh to-day, but he wasn’t home—out grouching around, I suppose. His mother said she’d have him call me up or wire me. All I want now is a commissary department and I got a kind of a hunch that maybe you kids could camp in the van and cook for the crowd and make yourselves generally useful. The way I figure it out by the road map there’ll be long stretches of road where we won’t bunk into any towns. I figured on taking Pee-wee along as a kind of a mascot; you know those little fancy jim-cracks they put on radiator caps in autos? I thought he could be one of those, as you might say, and bring us good luck. He’d be a whole commissary department in himself, I suppose, considering the way he eats. But if you can’t you can’t, and that’s all there is about it.” “What do you mean, _we can’t_?” I shouted at him. “You make me tired! Do you suppose Temple Camp is going to run away just because my patrol is a couple of weeks late getting there? You bet your life we’ll go. If you try to sneak off without us, we’ll come after you. We’re coming back in that motor van, so that’s settled. I should worry about Temple Camp.”