CAMPING ON A STRANGE ROAD
Jubilant and expressive though it may have been, Paul Jones' "wow," was
very far from being all the Auto Boys had to say concerning the telegram
received. In general they shared Paul's mirthful feelings. With a very
human kind of pleasure they let their minds dwell upon Gaines' sullen
wrath and Pickton's chagrin and disappointment.
The condition of bewilderment and utter discomfiture which would be
natural to Freddy Perth was also easily imagined. In short, it was with
real delight that the boys pictured the Trio confronted by the discovery
that they had been out-generaled; left like a squad of raw recruits
hopelessly drilling around the field, looking for the beginning of the
battle that was all over long ago.
"Oh, I guess maybe they don't find _their_ cake is dough, and they
couldn't eat it if they kept it," chuckled Paul, blithely, but really
somewhat twisted as to the quotations he meant to employ. "But anyhow,
the thing for us to do is keep moving. We're getting too much noticed.
It'll lead to more advertising than we'd really like to have."
This reference to a considerable number of pairs of eyes now
scrutinizing the travel-stained car, its touring and camp equipment and
the owners thereof, caused Billy, now at the wheel, to drive slowly up
the street.
Dave MacLester, who had gone into a livery stable close by to inquire
about the roads to the westward, came out just in time to see the
machine move off. Not guessing Billy's intentions, which were to go only
to the next corner above, as a good place to turn, he dashed frantically
after the car. He sprang aboard and climbed into the tonneau
breathlessly.
"Don't seem to be in any hurry at all!" he ejaculated, witheringly. "Go
straight ahead. Turn at the first corner. It's the best road west. Other
one's all torn up for four miles out, they said."
Billy had put on speed at once, when Dave was safely in, and now he let
the speedometer mark up to twenty-five on a fine stretch of brick
pavement, clear of car tracks and broken by few intersecting streets, a
speedway not to be resisted.
The net result of the flying start and apparent haste was not a little
comment on part of those who had gathered near the car. Even the men in
the livery stable ran out to see and learn what the commotion was all
about and the town marshal sauntered up just a moment later.
Now the marshal of Sagersgrove was a self-important old fellow named
Wellock. His uniform consisted principally of a badge of great size and
a greasy blue coat with brass buttons. He wore old and rusty black
trousers, very baggy at the knees and much frayed around the bottom.
With a solemn and knowing look Marshal Wellock made a few inquiries
concerning the car which had just passed out of sight and its occupants.
Then he made some mysterious entries in a pocket memorandum, the
generally soiled appearance of which was not at all unlike his own.
These movements alone were enough to make a deep impression upon the
crowd which had now collected; but accompanied as they were by Mr.
Wellock's knowing and extremely mysterious air, the whole effect was to
produce in the minds of those gathered near the profound conviction that
the four strange boys were nothing short of bank-robbers in disguise.
Men exchanged looks of deep significance as if saying, "I told you so."
Women nodded their heads to one another in a way that plainly indicated
their certain knowledge of the guilt of the young strangers, whatever
might be the crime laid at their door.
Observing the unlimited notice he was attracting, Marshal Wellock's
importance increased. Preserving still his deeply mysterious air, he
walked on to the telegraph office and went in. What he learned there
apparently did not cause him to change his very good opinion of himself
and of the great power vested in him, for he was more darkly mysterious
than ever as he returned. Indeed, his whole bearing was such as to make
him decidedly red in the face, as he frowned savagely, in keeping with
his idea of the great personage which he himself felt and, he believed,
everyone else must undoubtedly consider him to be. What he thought he
knew about the four boys would have made a long story. What he did know
could have been told in a dozen words and none of them to the lads'
discredit.
Meanwhile the Thirty still sped on westward. The afternoon was waning
and the road was growing bad. Sagersgrove lay far in the rear.
"Don't look to me as if this could be the main route," said Phil Way,
thoughtfully noting the brush-grown fields and the poor character of
the farmhouses and buildings, becoming more and more infrequent as they
progressed.
"Oh, it's the road all right. It'll be better going soon," MacLester
answered; and as the latter himself had obtained the information
respecting the route, Phil said no more.
Mile after mile slipped to the rear, but slowly now, for the road was a
constant succession of deep ruts, miniature mountain chains and great,
half-dried holes of mud. The late June sun was going down. Blackbirds
flew in noisy flocks from one to another of the dense thickets growing
in frequent and extensive patches as far as eye could reach over the low
land at either side of the wretched way.
"Well, if this _is_ the road, we better go where it isn't," muttered
Billy Worth, his arms beginning to feel the effects of driving over the
painfully distressing course.
"Oh, stop your growling!" Dave answered a little savagely. "This road
will be all right when we get to the high ground where the trees are
yonder! And by the Old Harry! Why should you hold me responsible? Never
knew it to fail, anyhow, that whoever it is that half breaks his neck
and nearly gets left behind, to dig up the road statistics for a trip or
any part of one, is from that minute blamed right and left for every
hole that's found and for every stone that's struck."
In which observation young Mr. MacLester was not at all wrong.
Identically the same weakness of human nature crops out in so many
places that none can fail to recognize it. Phil Way saw and felt the
truth of Dave's remarks at once.
"Does look better on ahead. Can't expect good going all the time," he
said. It was a way of his. He had turned aside and prevented storms
which might have grown to serious proportions among the four in just
such manner time upon time.
Nevertheless, the promised improvement did not come with the higher
places to which the rough trail in due time led. Two parallel ruts among
the grass and low underbrush were all that now remained to indicate a
road of any sort. Now, too, a thick woods, without so much as a fence
between, bounded the course on both sides. The sun was lost to view, the
late twilight of a June night was closing in. For nearly two hours not a
human habitation had been seen.
Away to the east stretched the swampy brush-grown country that had
bordered the line of progress for many miles. To the west there appeared
only the scarcely passable path leading deeper and deeper into the
forest, hemming in the course on north and south.
Billy had brought the car to a halt. Unmistakably the Auto Boys were as
nearly lost as one can well be on a public highway--(but there are many
just such)--of a prosperous and wealthy commonwealth.
"Anyhow it makes me think that I always was fond of white meat,"
chirped Paul Jones, trying to put a cheerful countenance upon a truly
depressing situation.
"If you don't mind a suggestion, Jones, I'd say that it's better not to
talk of what you aren't likely to get," put in Phil Way, a little
soberly. "Just some of that ham and bread and butter and beans sounds
good to me. So if Billy will make some coffee we can go into camp pretty
comfortably right here. In the morning we can go back, if we can't do
anything else."
"Gee! I always did like chicken, though!" persisted Jones, as if
Melancholy had marked him for her own, and there was no remedy for his
feelings but the refreshment he mentioned.
"Here, too! If we had a good supper, it would brace us all up," Worth
put in.
"Shucks! We'll _have_ a good supper," remonstrated Phil, impatiently.
"Who'll get some water? Wish I knew where. Come on, Dave! Likely there's
a good, clear creek just over this rise of ground. You make the fire,
Paul."
So Way and MacLester started off with a bucket while Chef Billy set to
work with his provisions. In five minutes Jones had a bright fire
blazing beside an old log, where an open, grassy place offered
comfortable seats upon the ground, then he began unloading such baggage
as would probably be needed. Yet every minute or two he would trot
around to where Worth's supper preparations were in progress, sniffing
the air, and smiling in a most delighted state of anticipation. "And
won't Way be surprised!" he said. "Just listen to me when he comes
back."
At last Phil and Dave did come. They had been obliged to go a long way
to reach the valley and the stream they knew must be there, and it was
now quite dark.
The embers of the fire glowed brightly, offering a truly comfortable
sense of companionship. In the bright glow's midst stood the big coffee
pot which had seen service many times before, also a tightly covered,
black roasting-pan. The two boys put down the bucket, borne between them
on a short pole and Way at once busied himself in opening up a big bale
of bedding.
"All-I-wants-is-my-chicken," half sang, half chanted Paul Jones.
"Oh, forget it!" drawled Phil, impatiently, creating a laugh--perhaps
because it was not often he descended to plain, unvarnished slang.
"You've been talking chicken all day. My! that coffee smells good," he
added, just to take the rough edge off his speech.
"A nice drumstick and a slice or two of white meat. U-m-m!" sighed
Jones, as if he certainly would expire directly if his wish were not
gratified.
An impatient growl from Phil elicited another laugh in which Jones
joined with greatest merriment. Then in another moment--
"Come on, here! Get your festal board ready!" commanded Chef Billy and
directly he drew the black, covered pan from the coals and lifted the
lid. Ah, what savory smell was that! Chicken--roast chicken, and
positively no mistake about it.
"Say!" This ejaculation, his face lighted up bright as the blazing
coals, was all Phil could muster.
"Well, I guess maybe we're no wizards! No, we're no wizards--nothing
like that at all," chirped Paul Jones in his peculiarly happy way. "No!
Don't take a wizard to do these little tricks! Don't think it for a
minute!"
"Where ever _did_ you get that chicken?" demanded Phil, completely
puzzled. "This is what your talking about white meat meant, is it?"
Then they told him how Mrs. Tyler Gleason, whose good friendship they
had won out on the farm the year before, sent the chicken, all nicely
roasted, expressly for the expedition. All four lads had been at the
farm and at the "Retreat" in the ravine on Sunday afternoon and in
confidence told Mr. and Mrs. Gleason of their plan to start their
journey on Monday. The unexpected but very welcome contribution to their
stock of provisions arrived but an hour before the car was loaded. Phil
being so busily engaged in putting the blinders over the eyes of the
too-confident Trio, had not, of course, known of the gift. The others
saved the fowl for supper purposely to surprise him.
"Nothing to do but warm it up, and way off here on the edge of nowhere,
we have as fine a roast chicken as ever came down the pike," quoth Billy
Worth. And although it must be admitted that any roast chicken pursuing
its way upon the pike, or any other roadway, would be nothing short of
extraordinary, the fact remains that Mrs. Gleason's offering was all
that could be desired.
Always master of ceremonies in such matters, Billy did the carving and a
good-sized thimble would have contained all that remained of the roast
fowl, apart from the dismembered skeleton, when supper was over. The
best way to pick a bone really right up to the last shred, inclusive,
never was with knife and fork, anyway.
Ample quantities of coffee, bread and butter and the other good things
the regular store of the cheese-box larder afforded, made the entire
supper so successful that, on the whole, the boys contemplated their
situation with no serious misgivings as they gathered about the
campfire. The croaking of the frogs in the broad expanse of swamp and
marsh land to the east, the profound quiet, and intense darkness in the
woods on either side, the flickering lights and shadows of the blaze
before them, were well calculated to inspire dread and apprehension if
not downright fear; but so used to depending upon themselves--so
self-reliant, therefore, were these four friends that the thought of
being fearful or allowing themselves to be uncomfortable on account of
their lonely surroundings, lost though they practically were, did not
occur to one of them. So much, then, for the worth of a clear conscience
and the habit of self-confidence.
And again, notwithstanding their somber surroundings and the annoying
lack of knowledge as to their precise whereabouts, the four friends were
by no means without equipment to make themselves quite comfortable. Long
winter evening discussions, plans and preparations had not been for
nothing. Even to rubber-covered sleeping bags which, just as an
experiment, perhaps, would have made a pouring rain something to be
invited rather than feared, the camp and touring outfit was complete.
Just for one night it was not worth while to put up the tent or to
unpack a large part of the car's load, but blankets to spread upon the
ground, others for covering, and a tarpaulin for the car, were all
within easy reach.
Drowsiness came early, under the influence of the fire's genial warmth
and in the midst of Paul's voluble discourse on the probable extent of
time lost, due to losing the road, the other boys drew their blankets
over them and with a laugh bade him good-night. There being "nothing
else for P. Jones, Esquire, to do," as he himself expressed it, he, also
"sought the arms of Morpherus Nodinski."
Again quoting the words of "P. Jones, Esquire," it must be "that frogs
sleep all day, for how else can they stay up to holler all night?"
Certainly there was little diminishing of the weird clamor from the
marshes as the night advanced. All else was still as death. Not even an
owl disturbed the forest's dark solitude.
And the Auto Boys slept on. The greater part of the night had passed,
but no glimmer of dawn had yet appeared when there came suddenly like a
wail of dire distress, louder far than the frogs' deep croaking, a long
drawn-out cry--"Help!" And again and yet again, "Help! Help!"
Dave was the first awakened. The second call completely roused him and
he had the whole camp astir in another five seconds. Once more, and
thrice repeated, came the wailing, drawn-out cry.