Neale O'Neil may not have been very wise in talking so plainly in the
hearing of the mean-spirited fellow; but he could not be blamed for
being indignant. It was positive that the Corner House girls' automobile
had not been speeding when the man with the badge stopped it. And now
his demand for ten dollars showed plainly that his petty mind was
interested only in getting money easily rather than in enforcing the
law.
"You'd better keep a civil lip on you, young man," said the constable,
scowling at Neale. Then to Mrs. Heard he added: "Come now, lady, you can
pay the fine to me and drive on; or you can go back to Tuckerville under
arrest and pay it to Jedge Winslow. Take yer ch'ice."
"Oh, dear me!" whispered Agnes. "Let's give him the money and go on to
the hotel Cecile Shepard told us about. Tuckerville, they say, is an
awful place."
"Yes. Pay him the ten dollars--do, Mrs. Heard," Ruth urged the chaperone.
"Very well," said the lady. "I disapprove of such a thing, but it at
least will relieve us of this man's presence----"
"Here comes another car," cried Tess, who was not wholly attentive to
the argument.
"Now you'll get a chance to sting another party," snapped Neale, glaring
at the constable.
But the latter made him no reply. In fact, he had suddenly changed his
attitude. Instead of standing boldly before the machine, he cringed
along to the tonneau door with his hand held out for the money Mrs.
Heard was selecting from her bag.
"Hold on!" exclaimed Neale, suddenly. "Don't pay that fellow too
quickly. Let's have witnesses. Here comes the car."
"You pay me now, or 'twill be too late," cried the constable, angrily.
Just then the coming car appeared around the curve--a heavy roadster. The
plainly frightened constable gave the single occupant of the car one
glance, and instantly turned without the money and ran.
"Hi! stop that fellow!" shouted the man in the car.
"With all my heart," responded Neale O'Neil, joyfully, and, scrambling
out of his seat, he gave chase to the lanky man.
The fellow did not keep long to the road, but vaulted a rail fence and
started across a muddy field. Neale, protected by his leggings, did not
mind the mud, and kept on after the rascal. He had a pretty well defined
idea that this fellow who had tried to collect money from Mrs. Heard had
merely played constable and was nothing more than a cheap robber. Neale
was so angry that he was determined not to let the fellow get away.
He heard the second automobile stop, and supposed the man in it was
following, too; but he did not glance back to see. Just then he felt
that he could master the lanky man alone, if need be.
And that is exactly what happened. The fellow got to the other side of
the field with Neale gaining on him at every jump. Once in the woods
there, however, the Milton boy feared the fugitive would be able to hide
from him. So Neale increased his pace, sprinting for the last few rods,
and caught the fellow just as he reached the fence. Neale tackled low,
in true football fashion, and brought the long-legged man down with a
crash. There they both rolled on the muddy ground, Neale clinging to the
fellow's knees, and the latter clawing and snarling like a wildcat.
Sammy Pinkney had followed the chase as far as the top rail of the
roadside fence, where Mrs. Heard had commanded him in no uncertain tone
to stop. There the little fellow stood, waving his cap and yelling
encouragement to Neale O'Neil, while the stranger from the second
automobile strode across the field at a rapid gait.
"Good boy!" shouted this stranger, heartily. "Hang on to him."
Neale hung. His face was scratched and his clothing muddy; but the
long-legged fellow could not do him very much harm before help came.
Indeed, when he once saw that he was bound to be captured he stopped
struggling and began actually to blubber.
"I was only foolin'," he whined. "Lemme up, boy. I wouldn't hurt ye."
"I know you won't hurt me," snapped Neale. "I won't let you--that's why."
"Hold on to him!" shouted the other man again.
Neale let the rascal up; but he hung to his coat-collar with both hands.
"I was just a-foolin'," repeated the captive, and he actually shook with
terror. "Ye know, Sheriff, I'm always foolin'."
Neale looked then with increased interest upon the big man who was
approaching. This must be Sheriff Keech, Luke Shepard's friend.
"So you got the ornery critter, did you?" demanded the county officer,
panting from his exertions. "Good boy."
"Aw, say, now, Sheriff! you know I'm only foolin'," almost wept the
captive.
"Oh, I know you're the town cut-up, Abe," growled the sheriff. "But this
time you'll have a chance to think it over in jail. Why!" he added, to
Neale, "I knew who this must be the minute Luke Shepard told me about
him; and as I saw him come down the road about an hour ago, I had a
hunch I'd just about catch him at his capers."
"Aw, Sheriff," begged the fellow. "Don't you be too hard on me. I jest
found that star----"
"You are a rascal!" snapped the county officer. "You sent off to a
mail-order house and bought that bum badge and just couldn't keep from
flirting around with it. Showing what you thought you'd do if you _was_
a constable. Oh, I'll put you where the dogs won't bite you."
"I--I never collected no money from 'em," whined the would-be constable.
"No. That's because I came along just a little too soon. I wish you had
got the money. Then I would have had you to rights, sure enough,"
declared the sheriff, bitterly.
"Oh, let him go, young man. He won't run now; for if he does he'll be
resisting arrest, and that'll fix him with the judge for sure."
"Why, say, he isn't right in the head, is he?" demanded Neale O'Neil,
wonderingly. "Making out to be a constable, and robbing people, and all
that?"
"He's one of these half-baked critters you find once in so often that
take correspondence school courses to learn to be detectives, and all
that sort of mush. Ugh!"
"Abe" was a very forlorn looking creature as he came out to the road.
Sammy on the fence waved his cap again and cheered.
"I tell you, Neale, you're some runner," declared the boy,
enthusiastically. "What are you going to do--hang him?"
"That horrid child!" exclaimed Agnes. "I never heard of such a
bloodthirsty boy before."
But the rest of the party were inclined to feel that the punishment to
be meted out to the fellow who had posed as constable could not be too
harsh.
Sheriff Keech ordered Abe to get into his car, and seemed to have no
fear that the mean-spirited fellow might try to run away again.
"I know Abe," he said to Mrs. Heard, when she suggested this
possibility. "He hasn't any more character than a dishrag. He's arrested
now, and he knows it. He wouldn't dare run away from me once I've put my
hand on him.
"Now, ma'am, tell me all about it."
Mrs. Heard had plenty of help in relating the circumstances surrounding
the touring party's two adventures with this Abe. Everybody wanted to
tell what he or she thought of the fellow, even to Dot. The latter said,
with conviction:
"He is not a nice man at all, and I'm awfully glad he doesn't live
anywhere near _our_ house."
"I don't know that any neighborhood would give Abe a bonus for moving
into it," chuckled Mr. Keech. "Well! I won't detain you. I can scare him
bad enough as it is. And thirty days in jail will do Abe a world of
good. I won't keep you folks as witnesses; you've had trouble enough."
So the matter was settled very amicably, and the touring party from
Milton hastened on to the Wayside Rose Inn, at Brampton, for breakfast.
"One thing we never thought about," Agnes said to Neale, when they had
bidden Sheriff Keech good-bye.
"What's that?"
"Why, about Mr. Collinger's car and that Joe Dawson fellow. My! what
mean people we _do_ manage to meet."
"And a little while ago you were thinking what good folks we had met,"
laughed Neale. "But you are mistaken, Aggie. I spoke to the sheriff
about Saleratus Joe and his mate and the lost car. Nothing doing. I've
asked everybody else we have talked with--the blacksmith and Luke Shepard
and all--about that bunch."
"Oh! have you, Neale?" cried Mrs. Heard. "And has nothing come of it?"
"Well, Mrs. Heard," said the boy, "all trace of that car and those
fellows seems to have ended right there at the Higgins' farm--where the
Gypsy king saw them for the last time. That's the way it looks to me."
"Oh, dear me!" sighed Agnes. "I wish you'd have let _me_ hunt in that
barn for the car."
"Or _me_," put in Sammy, with confidence.
"Say! you two give me a pain," cried Neale, and refused to talk about it
any further.
They made a fine run that day, getting on good roads again, and they
spent the night with friends of Mrs. Heard's who had been on the lookout
for them for two days. A letter was waiting for the chaperone from her
nephew, stating that the police were looking for Saleratus Joe and
another man in connection with the disappearance of the Maybrouke
runabout, and that the information she had sent might aid in the arrest
of the automobile thieves.
"Well," said Agnes, "of course I hope the police catch them; but it
would be fun if _we_ could bring about their arrest and find the
machine, too, Neale."
"Don't let it worry you, Aggie," he advised. "There isn't any reward
offered, so you'd have your work for your pains."
Just the same, neither of them forgot the matter, and it was a topic of
conversation between them, now and then, throughout the entire tour.
They went on as far as Fort Kritchton, and spent the week-end at the
Monolith Hotel there, to which their trunks had been forwarded. The car
needed some slight repairs, and the girls found pleasant friends. This
point was to be the farthest they expected to travel from Milton.
Neale found a party of boys camping up in the woods above the hotel, and
he enjoyed himself, too; but he had to take Sammy along with him most of
the time, and he declared to Agnes that if he ever went anywhere again
and had his choice of taking Sammy or a flea, he would choose the flea!
"You have no more idea of where to find him from one moment to another
than a flea," growled the older boy. "I'm coming to the old bachelor's
belief in the treatment and bringing up of boys."
"What is that?" asked the amused Agnes, who had had her own experiences
with Sammy Pinkney.
"Why, the crabbed old bachelor, who had six small nephews, declared he
believed all boys should be taken at about three years of age and put in
barrels, the heads nailed on, and that they should be fed through the
bungholes."
"Goodness!" laughed Agnes. "And when they grew up?"
"'Drive in the bungs,'" declared Neale, seriously. "That was his creed
and I am about ready to subscribe to it."
Sammy, however, had a good time. He confided to Mrs. Heard and Ruth that
he had never had such a good time in his life. He got letters and money
from his mother and father, just as the Corner House girls did,
likewise, from home; and he was actually growing sturdy looking as well
as brown.
"Whether this tour does anybody else good or not, Sammy P. is being
helped," declared Mrs. Heard.
"'Sammy P. Buttinsky,'" sniffed Agnes. "Such a plague. I believe his
mother will lose ten years of her age in appearance during this time of
Sammy's absence. She certainly ought to be our friend for life."
After all, however, they none of them could really be "mad at" Sammy, as
Tess said. He was a plague; but there was something really attractive
about him, too.
"He is the most un-moral child I ever heard of," Ruth said. "He seems to
have stepped right out of the stone age."
Mrs. Heard smiled at that statement. "My dear girl," she said, "most
boys are that way. Philly Collinger was--and look at him now," for Mrs.
Heard was very proud indeed of the county surveyor. "I think there is
one very helpful thing that you Corner House girls are missing."
"What is that, Mrs. Heard?" asked Ruth, in curiosity.
"You have missed having a brother or two. They are great educators for
the feminine mind," laughed the lady.
However, Sammy behaved himself pretty well--considering--all the time the
touring party remained at the Monolith Hotel. The little girls whom Tess
and Dot played with looked somewhat askance at Sammy, for his boasted
intention of following in the sanguinary wake of Captain Kidd,
Blackbeard, and Sir Henry Morgan, set him as a creature apart from the
rest of boykind. In fact, among the little folk, Sammy Pinkney was quite
the sensation for several days. Then little Eddie Haflinger developed a
carbuncle on the back of his neck and Sammy's swashbuckling tendencies
rather paled before the general interest in Eddie's stiff neck.
However, everybody had a good time at Fort Kritchton; but the "call of
the wild," as Agnes expressed it, was the stronger. They had had so many
adventures--pleasant as well as disconcerting--on the road, that even Mrs.
Heard was glad when the time came to leave the resort.
"Let's send our trunks right back to Milton," Agnes said. "No more
'Fluffy Ruffles' for mine till we get home. Let's rough it."
Their bags in the automobile really did contain all they would need, so
it was agreed to live in plain and serviceable garments for the rest of
the trip.
"If we run short of clean linen and handkerchiefs," said Ruth, "we shall
have to stop and do our washing in a brook. How about that?"
"I suppose you'll want to stretch lines over the auto and dry your
clothes as we travel," growled Neale O'Neil. "_Then_ if we meet some
fidgety old farmer-woman with a more fidgety horse--_good_-night!"
"I wish," Agnes declared, "that we had brought a tent with us--a nice one
like the Shepards have. Wouldn't it have been fun to camp out every
night--just like those Gypsies?"
"How about it when it rained?" asked Ruth.
"Well, we've been out in one rainstorm--and we're neither sugar nor
salt," said her sister, sticking to her guns.
"But never again--if I can help it," cried Mrs. Heard. "It is all right
for you young folks; but my blood is not so young as yours; nor is my
appetite for adventure and what you call 'fun' quite so keen as it used
to be."
It was a fact. The young folks only laughed at that memorable experience
when they were overtaken by the storm. It was all what Agnes called
"fun."
The touring party planned a roundabout way home to Milton, in order to
see a part of the country that they had not before driven through.
"And we'll take the good roads, too. I understand more about this map
and guide book than I did," proclaimed Neale O'Neil.
However, at one point they agreed to leave the better traveled roads so
as to spend another night with the crossroads blacksmith and "Mother."
And they half hoped to meet the Shepards near there, also.
"That'll bring us around past the Higgins farm, too," Neale said,
thoughtfully.
"Oh, Neale! I want to take a look into that barn myself," cried Agnes.
"Pshaw!" responded her boy friend. "If that car of Mr. Collinger's was
ever there, Saleratus Joe and his chum have got it away long since, of
course."
But Agnes was hopeful. She usually was of a sanguine mind.