THE GYPSY VAN
Jake jumped ashore; Burk followed, and pushed the canoe far out, so that
it floated empty on the face of Lake Wallis.
Never had Jake Utway taken a paddle in such a wild canoe race! It was
impossible that the two fugitives should still be at liberty. The boy
had given up hope long before they had reached the lake and taken the
canoe; their furious progress across the half-mile of water had seemed
the despairing effort of a dream; but here they were, miraculously
ashore again, and for the moment still free. Yet the dream feeling still
persisted; Jake moved his body as if he were wrapped in the twining
coils of a nightmare, when horrors beset the sleeper and all efforts to
escape the menacing shapes in pursuit are of no avail.
“Tired, partner?” asked Burk. The man seemed to be made of whipcord; he
had taken the stern paddle in their mad dash, yet his set face showed no
trace of anything but determination.
“I can keep going,” Jake managed to say.
“We’ll have to get somewhere else pretty quick.” Burk pointed toward the
far shore from which they had come. “Look over there! See that little
motorboat just pushing out? Well, I’m pretty sure that the people in it
won’t take long to get over here and pick up our trail again. We’re in
for it again—but at least we’ve got a few minutes’ start.”
“I’m ready. Which way?”
Burk shook his head. “We’ve just got to trust to our luck now. They’ve
driven us out into the open; I’m not much good down here near town.
There’s only one way we can go.”
They had landed on a little spit of gravel on the east side of Lake
Wallis, almost directly across from the town. There must have been
people over on the wharf who had seen them desert the canoe, who would
put their pursuers on the track at once; even now, hostile eyes might be
watching their every move.
“Don’t run—somebody may be watching us, and get suspicious,” warned the
man, and set the example by walking rapidly away from the border of the
lake. Jake, following, tried to smile; he felt that he couldn’t run even
if his life depended upon it. They climbed a bushy slope, came out above
in a little glade aglow with maple and sumach. Burk darted a look
backward; the motorboat was already well on its way across, coming
toward them with a feather of spray on either side of its bows.
“The state highway runs along here on this side somewhere,” remarked
Burk. “We’ll have to keep away from it; it’s dangerous for us right
now.”
He swerved to the right to avoid crossing the ribbon of asphalt that cut
through the woods, and the two walked parallel to the files of telegraph
wires lining the highway. For five minutes or so they followed a course
which brought them ever nearer to Wallistown; and each of those passing
minutes, they knew, brought the net of capture ever closer.
Suddenly Burk gave a sharp exclamation, and pointed. “Something funny
ahead!” he said warningly.
It was too late to turn back. A few yards before them, the highway bent
toward them in a sharp angle. They stopped in their tracks, and looked
on a strange scene.
The queerest vehicle Jake had ever seen was tilted drunkenly at the side
of the road at the outer corner of the bend. “Half flivver, half covered
wagon,” the boy described it to himself. Two little seats huddled behind
the steering-wheel; the remainder of the chassis was roofed over by a
spreading arc of canvas, patched and weatherworn, stretched over hoops
fastened in the truck-like body of the car, from the rear of which hung
down a few narrow steps. The right-hand wheel at the rear was firmly
bedded in the ditch; the opposite wheel in front was raised several
inches from the road. Two quaint figures stood mournfully gazing at the
ditched wheel. One of these was a short, very fat woman of middle age.
She stood with her stout arms akimbo, and with such a downcast look on
her dark face that Jake almost burst out laughing. Her arms glittered
with several bracelets, and large rings dangled from her ears. The man
at her side was also short and fat, and also wore earrings, and in one
hand swung a spreading black hat which, when worn, must have given him
the appearance of an Italian bandit in a stage melodrama. With his other
hand he was scratching among his graying locks with a perplexed air.
He must have heard Burk and Jake approaching, for he wheeled about on
his toes, and flashed a dazzling display of white teeth at them.
Jake had taken in the situation in an instant.
“We’ll help you get back on the road, Mister!” he said. “Come on,
partner—let’s give them a hand!” He gripped the ditched wheel, and tried
to lift it.
The little man danced about on his toes, while his wife swung back and
forth until her bracelets and bangles tinkled in delight.
Burk was now at the front of the car. He pulled back the emergency brake
lever, and Jake felt the strange vehicle starting to roll farther down
into the ditch. He put all his strength against the tailboard; the
little dark man was at his side. “Poosh—that’s right!” The boy heaved,
his face red with exertion; Burk had gripped the spokes of the wheel in
the ditch, and was bending all his effort to force the car from its
lodgment. The united strength of the three of them slowly shoved the
strange little vehicle up the slanting grade, and in half a minute the
car was back on the road again, headed toward Wallistown, no worse for
its plunge.
“Many, many thanks—many!” the dark man cried happily. He clapped his
villainous-looking hat on his head, and scrambling into the seat, worked
the levers and steering-wheel back and forth to see that no damage had
been done. “You help fine! Come up, Maria!”
“Yes, you help fine!” the little man repeated. “Now we go. You go, too?”
“We’re going the same way you are,” said Jake quickly. “You—you couldn’t
give us a lift, could you?”
“For sure! For sure!” Their new acquaintance was all smiles. “You help
me fine! I help you a little bit maybe.”
They needed no second invitation and darted around to the tiny set of
steps that hung from the tailboard, sprang one after the other through
the slit in the canvas at the back, and tumbled into the body of the
caravan. An alarming pop-popping sounded in front; the wheels began to
move, and the car rattled down the highway at the breath-taking speed of
twenty miles an hour.
Jake looked around the interior of the strange van. Overhead arched the
canvas roof, filtering the sunshine and splashed with moving shadows as
the car journeyed down the road. He found himself sitting on the edge of
a bunk built across the floor of the car, directly back of the driver’s
seat now occupied by the ridiculous couple whom they had helped. In one
corner was a small charcoal stove. The interior was heaped with all
sorts of things: a little tin trunk, cooking pots, a cage with a canary
chirping inside, bundles of clothing; from hooks swung more clothing, a
lantern, a jangling bucket, a spare tire. “A regular house on wheels!”
he told himself. “Wonder if these people are sure-enough gypsies?”
The little dark man’s head appeared as if by magic through an opening
cut in the front of the canvas, his teeth showing white against his
sweeping mustachios. “That ees right! Make yourselfs like at home, eh?”
“How far are you going?” Burk asked him. “To Wallistown?”
The car bumped and shook dangerously; the head was withdrawn and the
machine put back on its course again. Then the rolling black eyes were
turned on them once more. “What town ees that?”
“The one just down the road there.”
“We do not like the towns. We just go on, and then go on some more.
Maybe we see nice place, we stop, eh? Maybe not.” A teeth-rattling lurch
of the car again demanded his full attention, and the conversation was
cut off.
Burk shook his head. “I don’t know whether we’ve done the right thing or
not,” he said in a low tone. “These people seem to be going our way; but
it remains to be seen whether we’re any better off than we were.”
“But, Burk—those people from the lake would have found us in no time if
we hadn’t got this lift! And now we’re going south, even if it’s not
very fast. And we’re hidden here under this cover, so that nobody will
see us, even if the police have sent out a description.”
Burk nodded soberly. “I guess so. But you can be sure this highway is
the first place they’ll watch.” He peeped out through the flap in the
back of the caravan. “Look; we’re almost into Wallistown; if he stops
here, I might as well be back in my cell at the prison right now. I know
this was the only thing we could do; but maybe we’ve jumped out of the
frying pan into the fire.” The hunted man had never been at his ease
among crowds of people; now, he felt doubly unsure.
Jake tried to reassure him. “Cheer up! We’re snug enough here for a
while, and it’ll give us time to think up a plan. We’ll make it yet, old
timer! Now, if I only knew where Jerry was, I think I’d feel pretty
good.”
The creaking van shivered to a halt; bumped forward again. Burk chanced
another look outside. “We’ve crossed the main street of town,” he
whispered. “Looks like we’re going south after all.”
“Sure! That’s the stuff!” Jake replied. “You see—it was a lucky thing we
were able to help out these gypsies, or whatever they are. If the cops
can find us here in this travelling house, they’re pretty good. Keep a
stiff upper lip, and we’ll make Canoe Mountain before dark!”