Other editions of book Pee-Wee Harris on the Trail

The night was bleak and cold. All through the melancholy, cheerless day, the first chill of autumn had been in the air. Toward evening the clouds had parted, showing a steel-colored sky in which the sun went down a great red ball, tinting the foliage across the river with a glow of crimson. A sun full of rich light but no heat. The air was heavy with the pungent fragrance of burning leaves. The gutters along Main Street were full of these fluttering, red memorials of the good old summer-time. But there were other signs that the melancholy days had come. Down at the Bridgeboro station was a congestion of trunks and other luggage bespeaking the end of the merry play season. And saddest of all, the windows of the stationery stores were filled with pencil-boxes and blank books and other horrible reminders of the opening of school.

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Excerpt: ... won't get out of the car and I won't desert it," he heard the small stranger announce sturdily. "Didn't you say you were with me?" "I did, but I--" "Then shut up. The road's all right; there's nothing the matter with it; this is some kind of a frame-up. Did you come along this way when you copped it before; I mean you and that pair?" "I don't know, I was under the buffalo robe." They were thieves all right; Peter knew it now. And his assurance on this point gave him courage. The strangers would be no safer to deal with, but at least Peter knew now that he had the right on his side. In a sudden burst of impulsive resolution he stepped around and in a spirit of utter recklessness spoke up. His own voice sounded strange to him. "I--I know what you are--you're thieves," he said. "I can--I can tell by the way you talk--and--and you--you can't take the car--even an inch you can't--because all the gasoline is gone out of it and I did it and I don't care--and you--you can kill me if you want to only you can't take the car. And--and--pretty soon Ham Sanders will be along with the milk cans and he's not afraid of you--" "What did you say about ham?" Pee-wee shouted down at him. "Ham Sanders," Peter called back defiantly. "I though you said ham sandwich," Pee-wee retorted. "He can--he's even--he can even handle a bull," shouted Peter, carried away by excitement. "All the--the--gasoline is gone--it is--because now I can hear it stop dripping--so--now--now what are you going to do? So?" CHAPTER XXIV DESERTED Mr. Swiper lost no time upon hearing Peter's startling announcement. Rushing to the back of the car he confirmed the information by a frantically hurried inspection, keeping up a running fire of curses the while. For a manual training teacher he was singularly profane. Nor did he tarry to administer any corporeal rebukes, more than to send poor Peter reeling as he brushed him aside with imprecations in his flight. Since the auto had been so generously...