“You leave them to me,” he said to Pee-wee as they advanced against poor defenseless Bridgeboro.  “They’ll either consent or we’ll shoot up the town, hey, Safety First?  We’re on the rampage to-night; somebody’s been feeding us meat.”

It was not Pee-wee’s custom to leave a thing to somebody else.  He attended to everything—­meals, awards, hikes, ice cream cones, camping localities, duffel lists, parents, everything.  He was the world’s champion fixer.  You can see for yourselves what a triumph he made of not rescuing the wrong car.  That was merely a detail.  If the car had been the right one and no one had stopped him from rescuing it he would have rescued it.  Since everything worked out all right, he was triumphant.  And he was better than glue for fixing things.

“I’ll handle them,” he said.

“Well, well both handle them,” said Scoutmaster Ned.

A little farther along the road Safety First said, “I don’t see why the road was closed off.  It seems to me to be all right.”

Pee-wee was now sufficiently subdued to think and speak calmly, and he said, “That feller with the shirt put it there; he said he read the signal.  I guess he’s crazy, hey?”

“Oh, the fellow with the shirt?” queried Fido Norton, humorously.

“I seem to remember a shirt,” said Nick.

“That was it,” Pee-wee said.

“He was just a little rube,” said Charlie Norris.

“He’s the one that said I was a thief,” said Pee-wee.  “I told him I could prove I was a scout by eating a potato a certain way.”

“And be didn’t take you up?” said Scoutmaster Ned.

“He didn’t have a potato,” Pee-wee said.

“It’s best always to carry potatoes with you,” said Scoutmaster Safety First.

“After this I’m always going to carry five or six,” said Pee-wee.

“The proof of the potatoes is in the eating,” said Nick.

“I know nine different ways to cook them,” said Pee-wee; “and I can eat them raw so that makes ten.  I can eat potato skins too, so that makes eleven.”

“If you could eat potato-bugs that would make twelve,” said Charlie Norris.

“If you eat lightning bugs, that will make you bright,” said Pee-wee; “that’s what Roy Blakeley says; he’s in my troop.  He’s crazy and he says he’s glad of it.  We’ve got three patrols in my troop and I’m a member of the Ravens but I’m kind of in all of them.  I know all about camping and everything.  In the fall you’re supposed to camp east of a hill, do you know why?”

“No, break it to us gently,” said Nick.

“When you said break it, that reminded me that I can break an apple into halves with one hand.”

“Do tell,” said Charlie; “what do you do with the other half?”

“What other half?”

“The other one.”

“If they’re both the same how can there be another one?  I eat them.”

“Really?”