In ten minutes the Kenway car was moving again. Jonas had been put up at
the barn of Mrs. Heard's friends, near which the pony had balked, and
Neale soon whisked them out of sight of the place.
"This--this is just delightful," sighed Mrs. Heard. "Especially after
sitting behind that brute of a pony. I _do_ love an automobile."
"So do I!" Agnes cried. "I'd rather ride in this car than in a golden
chariot--I know I would."
"I don't know how they run chariots, nowadays," said Neale, chuckling;
"whether by horse-power or gas. But sometimes a car balks, you know."
"Not so often as that Jonas," declared Mrs. Heard. "I've been out with
my nephew a lot. His is a nice car. I hope he'll find it."
"Why, of course the thieves will be apprehended," said Ruth. "What good
are the police?"
"When it comes to autos," said Neale, slyly, "the police are mostly good
for stopping you and getting you fined."
"Well, don't _you_ dare drive too fast and get us fined, Neale O'Neil,"
ordered Ruth, sternly.
"No, ma'am," he returned. But Agnes whispered in his ear:
"I don't care how fast you run it, Neale. I love to go fast."
"You'll be a speed fiend, Aggie," he declared. "That's what you'll be."
"Oh! I want to drive. I must learn."
"You'll have to ask Mr. Howbridge about that," Neale told her.
"Oh!"
"Yes, ma'am! He told me that I shouldn't allow anybody to run the car
but a properly qualified person."
"You don't mean it?" gasped the eager girl.
"That's right! A person with a license."
"I can't believe it, Neale O'Neil!" wailed Agnes. "How am I ever going
to learn, then?"
"You'll have to go to the garage as I did and take lessons."
Agnes pouted over this. Mrs. Heard, meanwhile, was saying to Ruth:
"Yes, the stealing of my nephew's auto was an outrage. Politics in this
county are most disgraceful. If we women voted----"
"But, Mrs. Heard! what have politics to do with your nephew's auto being
stolen?" cried Ruth.
"Oh! it wasn't any ordinary thief, or perhaps thieves, who took his car.
He is sure of that. You see, there are some politicians who want the
plans and maps of the new road surveys his office has been making."
"What sort of maps are those?" asked Tess, who was listening. "Like
those we have to outline in the geography?"
"They are not like those, chicken," laughed Ruth. "They are
outlines--drawings. They show the road levels and grades. I guess you
don't understand. Don't you remember those men who came the other day
and looked through instruments on our sidewalk and measured with a long
tape line, and all that?"
"Oh, yes," confessed Tess. "I saw them."
"Well, they were surveyors. And they were working for Mr. Collinger, I
suppose," said Ruth.
"Oh!"
"I saw them, too," proclaimed Dot. "I thought they were
photo--photographers. I went out there and stood with my Alice-doll right
in front of one of those things on the three sticks."
"You did?" cried Agnes, who heard this. "What for, Dottums?"
"To get our picture tooken," said Dot, gravely. "And then I asked the
man when it would be done and if we could see a picture."
"Ho, ho!" laughed Neale O'Neil. "What did he say?"
"Why," confessed the smallest Corner House girl, indignantly, "he said
I'd be grown up--and so would Alice--before that picture was enveloped----"
"'Developed'!" cried Tess.
"No. Enveloped," said Dot, stoutly. "You always get photograph proofs in
an envelope."
Ruth and Mrs. Heard were laughing heartily. Agnes said, admiringly:
"You're a wonder, Dot! If there is a possible way of fumbling a thing,
you do it."
The little girls were not likely to understand all that Mrs. Heard said
about the disappearance of Mr. Collinger's automobile--no more than Dot
understood about the surveyor's transit. But they listened.
"You understand, Miss Ruth," said the aunt of the county surveyor, "that
Phil Collinger is responsible for all those tracings and maps that are
being made in this road survey.
"If it gets out just what changes are to be made in grades and routes
through the county before the commission renders its report, there is a
chance for some of these 'pauper politicians,' as Philly calls them, to
make money."
"I don't see how," said Agnes, putting her oar in. "What good would the
maps do even dishonest people?"
"Because with foreknowledge of the highway commission's determinations,
men could go and get options upon property adjoining the highways that
will be changed, and either sell to the county at a big profit or hold
abutting properties for the natural rise in land values that will
follow."
"I understand what an option is," said Ruth. "It is a small sum which a
man pays down on a place, with the privilege of buying it at a stated
price within a given length of time."
"You talk just like a judge, Ruthie," giggled Agnes. "For my part I
don't understand it at all. But I'm sorry Mr. Collinger lost his car."
"And it was stolen so boldly," said Neale, shaking his head.
"But why did they steal the car, Mrs. Heard?" demanded Ruth, sticking to
the main theme. "What has that to do with the surveyors' maps?"
"Why," said the lady, slowly, "they must have seen Philly come out of
the court house and throw a package into the car. He covered it with a
robe. They knew--or supposed they knew--that he carried the maps around
with him. He could not even trust the safe in his office. It's no better
than a tin can and could be opened with a hammer and chisel."
"Oh, my!" exclaimed Agnes, interested again. "So they stole the car to
get the maps? Just like a moving picture play, isn't it?"
"Maybe it is," sighed the lady. "But it is quite serious for
Philly--whether they got the maps or not."
"Oh! _Didn't_ they?" cried Ruth.
"That--that he won't say," said Mrs. Heard, shaking her head. "I'm sure
_I_ don't know. Philly Collinger can be just as close-mouthed as an
oyster--and so I tell him.
"But everybody thinks the maps were in that package he put in the car
before he ran across the street to get a bite of lunch. And I'm pretty
sure that he isn't worried all _that_ much over the stealing of his car.
Though goodness knows when he can ever afford to buy another. The salary
of surveyor in this county isn't a fortune.
"So, there it is," said Mrs. Heard. "The car's gone, and I guess the
maps and data are gone with it. Somebody, of course, hired the two
scamps that took it to do the trick----"
"Oh, were there two?" asked Neale, who had been running the car slowly
again in order to listen.
"Yes. They were seen; but nobody supposed they were stealing the car, of
course."
"What kind of men were they? How did they look?" asked Agnes.
"What do you want to know for, Miss Detective?" chuckled Neale.
"So as to be on the watch for them. If I see one of them about our car,
I shall make a disturbance," announced the beauty, with decision.
"I don't know much about them," admitted Mrs. Heard, laughing with the
others over Agnes' statement. "But one was a young man with a fancy band
on his straw hat and yellow freckles on his face. I believe he had a
little mustache. But he might shave that," she added, reflectively.
"And change the band on his hat," whispered Neale to Agnes, his eyes
dancing.
"Never mind about his hat-band, Neale O'Neil!" cried Agnes, standing up
suddenly in a most disconcerting way. "What _is_ that ahead?"
Neale promptly shut off the power and braked. Agnes was greatly excited,
and she pointed to a place in the road not many yards in advance.
The way was narrow, with rocky fields on either side approached by
rather steep banks. Indeed, the road lay through what might well be
called a ravine. It was the worst piece of road, too (so the guidebook,
said), of any stretch between Milton and Marchenell Grove.
As the car stopped, Neale saw what Agnes had seen. Right across the
way--directly in front of the automobile--lay something long and
iridescent. It was moving.
"Oh!" shrieked Agnes again. "It's a snake--a horrid, great, big snake!"
"Well, what under the sun did you make me stop for?" demanded the boy.
"I'd have gone right over it."
"That would have been cruel, boy," declared Mrs. Heard, from behind.
"Cruel? Huh! It's a rattler," returned Neale.
"Oh, Neale! It's never!" gasped Agnes, not meaning to be impolite.
"A rattler, Neale?" asked Ruth. "Are you sure?"
"What's a rattler?" asked Dot, composedly. "Is it what they make baby's
rattles out of?"
"Mercy, no!" shivered Tess. "Neale means it's a rattlesnake."
"Oh! I don't like _them_," declared Dot, immediately picking up the
Alice-doll, of which she always first thought in time of peril.
"What shall we do?" demanded Ruth.
"Can't he drive around it?" asked Mrs. Heard, rather excitedly. "I don't
believe at all in hurting _any_ dumb animal--not even a snake or a
spider."
"How about breaking the whip on old Jonas?" whispered Neale to Agnes.
But his girl friend was all of a shiver. "_Do_ get around it, Neale,"
she begged.
"Can't. The road's too narrow," declared the boy, with promptness. "And
I am bound to run over the thing if it doesn't move out of the way. I
can't help it."
"Wait!" cried Mrs. Heard. "Get out and poke it with a stick."
"Why, Mrs. Heard!" exclaimed Ruth, "do you realize that a rattlesnake is
deadly poison? I wouldn't let Neale do such a thing."
"Besides being a suffragist," declared Mrs. Heard, firmly, "I am a
professing and acting member of the S.P.C.A. I cannot look on and see a
harmless beast--it is not doing anything to us--wantonly killed or
injured."
"Good-_night_!" murmured Neale.
Just then the snake--and it was a big fellow, all of six feet long--seemed
to awaken. Perhaps it had been chilled by the coolness of the night
before; it was lethargic, at any rate.
It lifted its head, whirled into the very middle of the road, and faced
the automobile defiantly. In a moment it had coiled and sprung its
rattle. The whirring sound, once heard, is never to be mistaken for any
other.
"Oh, dear! what shall we do?" gasped Agnes. "If you try to run over it,
it may get into the car--or something," said Ruth.
The roadway was narrower here than it had been back where the brown pony
had held the party up. This first trip in their automobile seemed to be
fraught with much adventure for the Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil.