WHAT HAPPENED ON THE ROAD.
The four boys stood there on the dusty road in the twilight of that
windy November day, and for a full minute seemed unable to express the
sense of bewilderment that had overwhelmed them all. Alongside was the
white horse attached to the empty wagon; and from the docile manner in
which the animal had come to a sudden halt and stood there, he was not
at all averse to having a resting spell after having been whipped so
steadily that he was in a sweat.
"Well, I'll be jiggered, if that don't beat the Dutch!" Merritt burst
out, he being apparently the first to recover his breath.
"Why, they're gone!" ejaculated Tubby. "And say, they went and left
their rig with us, don't you see? Well, I must say they are awfully
polite. This is more'n we ever expected, isn't it, fellers?"
Rob was laughing, as though secretly amused at the hasty flight of the
two men who had been in the wagon.
"Chances are, now, they took us for hoboes meaning to hold 'em up; and
that's why they jumped for it!" Andy suggested.
"Well," remarked Rob, "I couldn't say that I'd blame them for thinking
anything after hearing all that racket you three scouts made giving the
Eagle cry. Most people would jump at the conclusion that a lot of
lunatics had broken loose from that asylum down at Amityville. You
should have let me say my little say without that heathen noise. It's
all very well for a scout in the bush to let another know what patrol he
belongs to when he sees another approaching; but ordinary people hardly
understand what that racket means."
"But, Rob, do you believe they took us for desperate yeggmen wanting to
hold 'em up on the road here, and rob 'em?" asked Andy.
"No, I don't," replied the patrol leader readily. "In the first place,
even if it is getting dusk right now, it's still light enough for
anybody with eyes to see that we don't happen to be a ragged lot like
tramps are pretty much all of the time."
"Then why should they skoot like that, I want to know?" Tubby inquired.
"Like as not they saw our scout uniforms," suggested Merritt at a
hazard.
"That's just what they did," Rob hastened to add with emphasis; "and
from the shock the sight of the same gave the parties, I'm thinking they
must have guessed we were soldiers who meant to arrest a couple of men
driving a white nag!"
"Oh! I wonder now if that would explain the queer stunt?" Tubby ventured
to say.
"Sounds pretty good to me, Rob," was what the corporal of the troop
remarked as he stood there and stared at the spot where the pair of
alarmed men had left the road and plunged into the thicket. "And maybe
some of the rest of you noticed as I did that the taller one of the pair
limped, as though he might have a bad leg or a sprained ankle."
"Yes, I noticed that, Merritt, and was waiting to see if any of the rest
of you had used your eyes to advantage," Rob told him.
"I did, cross my heart if I didn't!" reported Tubby.
"And I would have seen the same only the rest of you happened to be in
my way," the fourth scout struck in, not wanting to have it appear that
he was the only fellow to be so dazed by what had happened that he had
failed in his duty as a scout to observe every little detail.
"And I want all of you to take notice," continued the patrol leader,
"that just where they left the road and disappeared from our sight,
there happens to be growing a white birch tree that hangs out at an
angle of twenty-five degrees. Birches are not so plentiful around here
but what we could easily find that same one again in case we wanted to
try and follow up the tracks of the men."
"To give 'em back their rig, you mean, Rob?" hinted Tubby.
"Either that or for some other reason," replied the other shortly.
"Well, I don't hear any scrambling now," remarked Andy. "Probably they
are so far away the sounds don't carry."
"But how about that ride to town?" demanded Tubby anxiously. "Do we get
cheated out of that just because a pair of sillies chose to get cold
feet at sight of scout uniforms, and skedaddled like a dog with a tin
can tied to his tail?"
"Yes, how about it, Rob?" continued Merritt. "Do we leave this horse and
wagon on the road here, doing no good at all, while we trudge along
over two miles of ground, carrying this heavy sack of shellfish? If you
asked me now, I would say let's borrow the outfit, and give thanks!"
"Ditto here!" exclaimed Tubby eagerly.
"Count me in," said Andy, "and that makes it three affirmatives; how do
you vote, Rob? Say 'yes,' and make it unanimous, won't you?"
The patrol leader laughed again at the appeal, and glanced around at the
faces of his three chums.
"Well, it would be like looking a gift horse in the mouth to let this
fine chance slip past us," he went on to say, much to the delight of his
companions; for Tubby immediately threw up his campaign hat to signify
his joy, while the others nodded their heads and looked pleased.
"Good for you, Rob," Merritt said, as he proceeded without more ado to
pick up the sack of oysters, and, stepping over to the tail end of the
wagon, toss them aboard. "So far as I can see, I don't believe we'll
have any trouble about taking the rig, even if the men turn out to be
honest, which I'm right sure they won't. We can say they abandoned it on
the road, and we thought we ought to fetch it into town to turn it over
to the police; which we mean to do, remember, fellows."
"Sure, we'll only be doing the right thing to deliver the outfit to the
Chief," Tubby went on record as saying. "My Uncle Mark was telling me
about something that happened to him as near like this as two peas; and
it turned out that the men in the rig were a pair of desperate bank
burglars, making off with the stuff they'd hooked from a town not far
away. That was how he got his first thousand dollars, he says, that
started him along the road to success, years and years ago. And Merritt,
did you take a good look to see if there is any mysterious little
package in that same wagon? Wouldn't it be a queer thing now if history
took to repeating itself, and this time Uncle Mark's nephew was one of
the bunch that recovered the stolen plunder? Anything doing, Merritt?"
"Well, you'll have to make up your mind to being disappointed this time,
Tubby," observed the corporal. "This wagon hasn't a thing in it except a
handful of hay, and I've pulled that around to make sure it didn't hide
anything. But we didn't calculate to discover any jewelry or bank
funds; the best we asked for was a chance to ride to Hampton; and we've
got it. Pile in, fellows. This horse has come some way, and has been
made to travel right lively, too. Why, he's reeking with sweat! Somebody
must have been in a hurry!"
They lost no time in clambering into the wagon. Tubby, being the slowest
to get up, found the seat fully occupied.
"Where do I come in?" he asked rather plaintively, after the fashion of
the unfortunate one who was usually being left out.
"Plenty of room back there in the wagon, Tubby!" chuckled Rob.
"Use the sack of oysters for a seat if you want to!" added Andy.
"Can't you move over and make room for one more?" pleaded the fat scout.
"We might if it was for a Living Skeleton, but not for the Fat Boy of
the Side Show," was Merritt's reply. And so Tubby was compelled to climb
into the body of the wagon, and sit down as best he could on the hard
bed.
"Please don't make the nag gallop, boys," he asked as a particular
favor; "because if you do he'll swing the wagon around every-which-way,
and there's no telling what would happen to me. I guess I've got
feelings, if I do happen to measure a little more around the waist than
anybody else present."
"A little!" jeered Andy. "You must mean as much as the whole three of us
put together, don't you, Tubby?"
"Forget it," mumbled the other; for already the vehicle had begun to
move. As Merritt whipped the tired horse, it gave a jump forward that
caused Tubby to roll over on his back the first thing, and then clutch
wildly at the sides of the wagon, as though in mortal terror lest he be
tossed out and left there on the road to walk home.
"This is something like a treat, after tramping along for a whole mile,
and with that heavy sack into the bargain," Rob declared, as they began
to make fair progress in the direction of the home town.
"Talk to me about your good luck," ventured Andy, who sat on the other
end of the seat from the driver, "it seems to me the Eagles are always
having things happen to them that never would come to other fellows."
"But not all of the same are favors by a long sight, Andy," Merritt
reminded him. "Don't forget how we had that boat spring a leak; and if
the accident had occurred when we were out in the middle of the bay,
chances are we'd have had to swim for the shore. The good luck came in
its happening near land."
"Well, that's what I mean, of course," persisted the other. "If we do
have to run up against a snag, why something always turns up to help us
out. Look back at lots of things that have come our way, and you'll say
I'm right. And you three fellows especially have had luck chase after
you more than a few times."
"I guess that is about right," sang out Tubby from the rear; showing
that although he might be having the time of his life holding on to the
sides of the wagon as it clattered along the road, all the same he kept
his ears wide open.
"Well," remarked Rob, with a laugh, "any lot of scouts who can have a
rig like this handed to them without the asking, when they have several
miles over a dusty road to tramp, ought not to complain. We're on what
they call 'Easy Street' right now. And who knows but there may be a few
dollars' reward offered for the recovery of a stolen outfit? It
wouldn't surprise me very much; because the way those men scuttled at
sight of our suits makes me believe they couldn't have been strictly
honest. No decent party need fear the khaki uniform, whether of a
soldier or a Boy Scout!"
"Look! what was it that flashed ahead there in the bushes?" suddenly
exclaimed Andy. Half unconsciously, Merritt at the same time started to
pull at the reins, so that the horse no longer galloped headlong as
before, much to the relief of poor knocked-about Tubby.
The boy in the back of the wagon was just about to try and scramble to
his knees in order to look beyond his mates on the seat, when, without
the slightest warning, a very gruff voice full of authority called out:
"Pull in there and throw up your hands, every one of you, d'ye hear?
You're all under arrest!"
Moving figures sprang out upon the white road, and the horse, finding
his forward progress blocked, gladly came to a full stop. The occupants
of the wagon sat there, hardly knowing what to make of this new
happening.
One man caught the horse close to the bits, and two others hastened to
advance to the wagon, as if to make sure that none of those who occupied
the vehicle made a flying leap from the back and took to their heels.