ike to know how I'm going to get back through this jungle after
dark," Charlie said. "I wonder what anybody wanted to start a village
down here for?"

"Maybe--maybe they did it kind of absentmindedly," Pee-wee said. "I
never started a village so I don't know."

"Well, you'll startle one anyway," Charlie said.

"I guess the village isn't much bigger than you are."

The road took them southward through the valley. They were not far west
of the highway but the low country and the thick woods obscured it
from view. They could hear the tooting of auto horns over that way and
sometimes human voices sounding strange across the intervening solitude.

"I don't see why they didn't set the village down over at the highway;
it's not more than a mile or so," Charlie said. "Maybe they were afraid
the autos would run over it; safety first, hey? Nobody'll run over it
here, that's one sure thing."

Pee-wee took the last bite of a hot frankfurter he had bought at a
roadside shack on the highway and was now more free to talk.

"Listen," he said, "what's that?"

It was a distant rattling sound which began suddenly and ended suddenly.
They both listened.

"There must be a bridge up there along the highway," Charlie said,
"that's the sound of cars going over it. Loose planking, hey?"

Pee-wee listened to the rattling of the loose planks as another car sped
over the unseen structure, little dreaming of the part that bridge
was destined to play in his young life. The commonplace noise of the
neglected flooring seemed emphasized by the quiet of the woodland. That
reminder of human traffic, so near and yet so far and out of tune with
all the gentler sounds of the valley, presented a strange contrast and
jarred even Pee-wee's stout nerves.

"There goes another," Charlie said; "we must be nearer to the highway
than I thought."

They had, indeed, inscribed a kind of loop and having passed its
farthest point from the main road were traveling toward it again and
would have emerged upon it just beyond the bridge but for the wood
embowered and sequestered village which was their destination. The first
sign of this village was a cow standing in the middle of the grass-grown
road as if to challenge their approach. Perhaps she was stationed there
as a sort of traffic cop.

CHAPTER V

ENTER PEPSY

It will be seen by a glance at the accompanying sketch that the village
of Everdoze was about opposite the bri