ON THE TRAIL
Disappointment showed plainly on the faces of the three motor boys.
They looked at one another, and then at Mrs. Johnson, the housekeeper.
She could not mistake their feeling.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Johnson remarked. “If he had known you were coming to
see him, I’m sure he would have waited for you. But I understood him to
say, when he left here, that he was going to call on you boys, and get
you to go with him.”
“He did call on me,” explained Jerry, “but he left suddenly to make a
search for some specimens, and did not return. We supposed he came back
here.”
“No, he didn’t,” the housekeeper answered, “though he sent me a letter
in which he said he was going to the mountains, and for me not to worry
about him.
“But I always do that, when he’s off on one of his queer trips,” went
on Mrs. Johnson, with a sigh. “I never know what danger he may get
into. I don’t fuss so much when I know he is with you boys, for I know
you’ll sort of look after him. But when he’s by himself he’d just
as soon get wet through and never change his things from one day to
another. He is so thoughtless!
“And now it is such a queer search he is on. A two-tailed lizard! As if
there could be any such thing as that. Oh dear! I don’t know what to
do!”
“Well, the professor has found queerer things than two-tailed lizards,”
remarked Jerry, “so that part is all right. But I can’t understand
about his going away without saying a word to us. That’s what makes it
seem queer.”
“It sure does,” agreed Ned.
“Didn’t he want you to go with him?” Mrs. Johnson wanted to know.
“He didn’t give us a chance to say,” was Bob’s answer. “He
just--disappeared.”
“Have you his address?” asked Jerry of the housekeeper.
“Yes, it’s Hurdtown, but you’ll wait a good while before you can get an
answer from there.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s miles away from a railroad, and in a lonely part of the
mountains. I have written once to the professor since he sent me word
where he was going, but I haven’t heard from him.”
“Hurdtown,” observed Jerry. “I wonder how we could get there?”
“Are you going after him?” the housekeeper wanted to know.
“I think so--yes,” replied Jerry. “I want to see him on important
business.”
“Oh, I’m so glad!” Mrs. Johnson cried. “He just needs you boys, I know
he does! I can’t understand his going away without you. Please find
him, and here--take these dry socks to him. I know he’ll go about with
wet feet.”
Jerry smiled as he took the socks, and then his face grew grave. He was
thinking of the yellow mud of the swamp, and wondering what Professor
Snodgrass would say when asked why he had told Jerry it was worthless,
and why, later, he had indorsed it as of great value.
Mrs. Johnson brought out the professor’s letter. It was short, as his
epistles always were, and merely stated that he had gotten on the track
of a two-tailed lizard. He gave his address simply as Hurdtown, Maine.
“Well, we’ll have to go after him!” decided Ned, “and the sooner we
start the better. I wonder where this place is, anyhow?”
“I looked it up on the map,” said the housekeeper eagerly. “I can show
it to you.”
Hurdtown appeared to be in the northern part of New England, several
hundred miles from Boston, and in a lonely section, poorly supplied
with railroad facilities.
“Yes, we could get there,” decided Jerry, looking at the map. “We could
best make it by road and river, as well as by some lake travel. See,”
he went on, tracing out a route with a pencil. “We could go up that far
in the auto, leave the car there, and make the rest of the trip in the
motor boat. That river would take us nearly to Hurdtown, and we could
finish up with a lake trip.”
“Shall we do it?” asked Bob.
“I’m willing, if you are,” assented Jerry. “I sure do want to have a
talk with the professor.”
“Well, it will be an all-right jaunt; merely as a trip,” said Ned
slowly, “and of course we’ll stand by you, Jerry. But I don’t see how
we’re going to do any water traveling--not with our motor boat, anyhow.
We can’t haul it along behind the auto very well.”
“No, but we could ship it on in advance, and have it waiting for us at
the head of Silver River. Then we can go down that to Lake Mogan and so
on to Hurdtown. It will be quite a trip, but maybe we’ll enjoy it.”
“Enjoy it! I should say we would!” cried Bob. “We can take along a lot
of things to eat, and----”
He stopped as he saw his chums smiling at him. A flicker of amusement
also came into the face of Mrs. Johnson.
“Well, I certainly will be glad if you boys can locate the professor,”
she said. “Tell him I was quite worried about him. But then I don’t
s’pose that will do any good--he’ll do just the same thing next
time--or worse. But you can send me word how he is when you find him,
and that’s more than he’d do. When he writes all he thinks about is his
bugs, and he’ll write and tell me how many of such-and-such an insect
he has. He gives them their Latin names, and he might just as well talk
Italian to me. But you boys will look after him; won’t you?”
“We sure will!” exclaimed Jerry. In spite of the feeling he had that
Dr. Snodgrass had not played fair with him, the tall lad could not
forget the affection he had for the absent-minded scientist.
“Well, if we’re going to make that long trip we’d better set about it,”
spoke Ned. “We’ll have to go home and make preparations, I suppose.”
“Oh, sure!” broke in Bob. “It’ll take a lot of grub----”
“Can’t you think of anything else, Chunky?” asked Jerry, with a smile.
“Of course we’ll have to make some plans,” he went on, “and arrange to
ship the motor boat. We’d better get busy, I guess.”
They said good-bye to Mrs. Johnson, and, a little later, were on their
way back home in the auto. The visit to the professor’s house had
detained them somewhat, as Mrs. Johnson insisted that they stay to
dinner.
“We can’t make Cresville by night,” observed Ned, looking at his watch,
when they were on the road. Ned was at the wheel.
“No, we’ll stay at a hotel until morning, after we cover as much ground
as we care to,” decided Jerry. “No use taking any chances with night
travel.”
They had said nothing to Mrs. Johnson about their reasons for wanting
to see the professor, and to his original one, of merely desiring an
explanation about the yellow clay, Jerry had added another.
“Fellows,” he said, “I’m not so sure but what mother could claim that
she was fraudulently induced to sell that land. It wasn’t a square
deal, anyhow, and maybe the professor, unless he’s too friendly with
that Universal Plaster Company, could give evidence in our favor.”
“What good would it do?” asked Bob.
“Why, if we could prove that the sale of the land was brought about by
fraud, the transfer would be set aside,” Jerry said. “Mother could
have her property again, and get a profit from the medicated mud. I
only hope it will turn out that way.”
“And you think the professor can help you?” asked Ned.
“He may be able to. I can’t believe that he’s gone back on me
altogether, though it does look so.”
Discussing this subject made the time pass quickly for the boys, and
soon they had arrived at a hotel where, once before, they had put up
over night.
“We’ll stay here,” decided Jerry, “and go on in the morning.”
At supper that evening Bob called Jerry’s attention to an advertisement
in the paper, extolling the virtues of the yellow clay for rheumatism
and other ills.
“Don’t take my appetite away, Chunky!” begged Jerry. “I don’t want to
think about it until I have to. And yet, with it all, I can’t believe
the professor has betrayed us.”
“Me either,” chimed in Ned.
Mrs. Hopkins, after some thought, consented to the plans of her son and
his chums.
“I know you will be careful,” she said, “though I have not much hope
that you will accomplish anything. I haven’t the least idea that
Professor Snodgrass is at fault. He is not that sort of a character.
There has been some mistake, I am sure. But the trip may do you good,
even if you don’t get my land back, Jerry,” and she smiled at her
impulsive son.
“Well, I’ll give the professor a chance to explain, anyhow,” the tall
lad remarked. “One funny thing about it is that he hasn’t sent for the
things he left here. I should think he’d want them. There are some
specimens, and his clothes. I wonder----”
Jerry was interrupted by a ring at the door. A servant came back with a
note.
“Great Scott!” cried Jerry, as he noted the writing on the envelope,
“it’s from Professor Snodgrass himself!”
“Maybe he’s coming back!” added Ned.
“Or maybe it’s an explanation,” said Bob.
But it was neither, as Jerry discovered when he opened it. It was
merely a request that the professor’s possessions at the Hopkins house
be sent to an address he gave.
“I am off after a two-tailed lizard,” the scientist wrote. “I’ll see
you boys later. No time to come and say good-bye.”
“Humph! He was in something of a hurry,” observed Jerry.
The note thus delivered was the one Professor Snodgrass had written at
the instigation of Fussel and his fellow conspirator, who had used
the scientist for their own ends. They had held back his communication
until it pleased them to have it delivered. They now thought they had
matters in their own hands. Of course Jerry and his chums had no means
of knowing this.
“Well, we’ll send his things, of course,” Jerry decided. “Or, rather,
we’ll take them to him ourselves. We can do it as quickly as they would
go to him by express. Come on, boys, let’s hustle and get on the trail.”
The motor boat was sent by freight to the headwaters of Silver River,
and then the boys spent a few days getting their own outfit ready to
take with them in their auto.
“Say, I wish you’d take me!” cried Andy Rush, when he heard something
of the prospective trip. “I’d help--do the cooking--bring the
water--rustle the wood--stand guard--Noddy Nixon might try some of his
funny tricks--I’d stand him off--take me along--I need a vacation--I’ll
pump up the tires--whoop!”
“You’ve got enough hot air--that’s sure--to pump up a dozen tires,
Andy,” said Jerry. “But it can’t be done!”