Roy Blakeley's roundabout hikeFitzhugh, Percy Keese
General
Roy Blakeley's roundabout hike
Fitzhugh, Percy Keese
Adventure stories; Boy Scouts of America -- Juvenile fiction; Hiking -- Juvenile fiction
One of the men said, “Never mind that, keep your eyes peeled up there
and when you move, whatever you do don’t trip on these blamed rocks.” He
kicked some of the brush we had laid there out of the way so his feet
wouldn’t catch in it.
It made me feel kind of cold and kind of funny in my throat, the way the
four of them stood there waiting and just looking up.
CHAPTER XIX
THE FIXER
I couldn’t just stand there not doing anything so I ran into the wide
part and up the side where it was easy to go up. I guess maybe I was
kind of kidding myself that I could do something up there. I guess I
didn’t want to see Pee-wee come falling down. If I could have helped I
would have stayed there. But as long as I wasn’t doing anything I
couldn’t keep still.
Up on the edge of the precipice there was only just that one grown up
fellow kneeling down and looking over. I had never been up to that place
before. Up there it didn’t look like a chasm, it was just a wide
gap--you’d call it a cleft I guess.
I said kind of frightened like, “Did he say he was going to fall--the
kid? Did he say that?” I guess I was trembling all over. “I heard him
call he was coming down,” I said.
“That wasn’t him,” the man said. “Keep back.”
But a lot I cared what he told me to do. He waved his hand for me to
keep back but I didn’t pay any attention. _Geee whiz_, he didn’t own the
place and wasn’t Pee-wee my friend. Maybe you’d never think so, the way
we were always at it, but just the same he was. I kneeled down and crept
up to the edge and looked over. The tree was sticking out maybe about
ten feet down. It was all rocky there and the tree was growing out from
between rocks.
I called out and said, “Hey kid, they’re ready to catch you down there,
so don’t be scared.” But all the while I knew they’d be mighty lucky if
they could just catch him.
Just then I saw a head down there in the tree and then that fellow,
Daraway Bravado or whatever they called him, crawled out from all that
bunch of leaves and branches. There was blood trickling down his face.
He was right close in by the precipice--I guess he was standing on the
trunk of the tree.
“Is it solid?” the man called down to him.
“Yep, guess so,” he answered back.
I asked something but they didn’t pay any attention to me. I had to look
way over to see that boy. I was lying down flat looking way over. I
could hear the fellows down on the bottom calling but the young man up
near me didn’t seem to hear them--anyway he didn’t bother with them.
That moving picture boy, the way it seemed to me, he was standing on the
trunk close in and his two arms were tight around a crooked rock that
stuck out. I didn’t see how he could hold on to it, that’s the way it
looked to me. But anyway he did. I heard him say, “Come on, and be
careful.”
Then I saw Pee-wee--jiminies, he looked terrible! He was all blood and
his clothes were torn and his face was white.
[Illustration: THEN I SAW PEE-WEE----JIMINIES, HE LOOKED TERRIBLE!]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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