Gee whiz, I don’t know what I would have done if my father had insisted
on my telling all about it. What would _you_ have done? If there are two
scout laws and you have to break one in order to obey the other, what
can you do about it? There’s a sticker for you.
But, anyway, one good thing, my father has a lot of respect for Mr.
Ellsworth. And when he saw how Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Martin stood, oh,
boy, he was with us. But, gee whiz, I felt sorry for my mother on
account of her having a convict for a son. She cried and hugged me and
everything when we started away, and my sister made a big fuss, too.
That was because I had never been a convict before.
Now I’ll tell you what I think. I don’t how much Mr. Ellsworth knew, and
I don’t know how much Mr. Martin knew, but they knew something about
Charlie Slausen. I mean they knew what kind of a fellow he was. Maybe
they thought he had something to do with the fire, and maybe they
thought the facts would come out. I don’t know what they thought. All I
know is what happened.
Down at the station we were held for a hearing the next day. They didn’t
keep us there, but they patrolled us or paroled us or whatever you call
it, in the custody of our parents. We agreed that we wouldn’t run away.
Gee whiz, why should we run away? There’s plenty of fun in Bridgeboro.
As soon as Westy and I were alone together I said, “What are we going to
do? We have to tell when the case comes up. We can’t refuse to tell the
judge what we were there for.”
He said, “Maybe it would be all right for us to say we saw Charlie
Slausen there. We needn’t say what we went there for.”
“Then they’ll say _he_ set fire to the place,” I said, “and I don’t
believe he did. Just because everybody always thinks the worst about
him, that isn’t saying that he’d do a thing like that, he’s always
needing money, that fellow is, and right away they’ll say he started the
fire maybe to get the insurance on his car.”
“He doesn’t own it,” Westy said.
“Maybe he does,” I told him. “How do _we_ know? I’m not going to tell
anybody he was there unless I have to. Let them find it out.”
“We’ll have to tell everything to-morrow,” Westy said.
I said, “I’m not thinking of to-morrow. I’m thinking of to-day. If we
have to tell he was there, it will look bad for him. If he tells himself
it won’t look so bad.”
Westy said, “A tall chance we stand of getting him to tell.”
I said, “Well, if they force it out of us it will look bad for him.”
“How do you think the fire started?” Westy asked me.
“How do I know?” I said. “Maybe he dropped a match or something. But he
isn’t so bad that he’d burn the place down on purpose, I know that. I’d
like to know what your father and Mr. Ellsworth think. I bet they think
he did it. I bet the reason they were willing for us not to talk to-day
was because they think that if nobody says anything yet, they can prove
something against him. Hey? I bet they’ve got some plans for to-morrow.”
“What are we going to do this afternoon?” Westy wanted to know.
“I’m going to help clear away the stuff,” I told him.
“Good idea,” he said. “Let’s round up all the troop.”
We called up most of the fellows and we went to see those who didn’t
have ’phones, and we fixed it up to all go up to Willow Place in the
afternoon and help. That was some afternoon. The wreckage of the shop
was all over the sidewalk and the place looked like Thanksgiving dinner
when Pee-wee Harris gets through with it. We started helping the men to
haul boards and stuff, and parts of cars, away from the walk, and raking
out the middle of the streets so as not to leave any nails and broken
window glass for autos to run over. We might better be doing that than
be out hiking in the woods, that’s what I told them.
About the middle of the afternoon Charlie Slausen came over. He seemed
awful worried, kind of. He called Westy and me aside and asked us if we
had told anybody about the night before.
I said, “No, we haven’t. We got away with it so far, lucky for us, but
when the judge starts asking us questions to-morrow, we’ll have to tell.
We can’t lie to him. If they ask us if we saw anybody at the shop we’ll
have to say we did, and they can make us tell everything that happened
if they want to.”
He said, “You didn’t tell them anything about seeing me?”
“No,” I told him, “because I thought they’d start thinking you set fire
to the place and we know you didn’t.”
“My father thinks you did,” he said.
“Let him think so,” I told him; “we should worry. All I’m afraid of is
that they’ll make us tell about meeting you here, and then they’ll say
it’s funny you didn’t come out right away after the fire and say so
yourself. We’ve got things fixed till to-morrow, but everything will
come out then.”
He said, “You kids are a couple of bully little scouts. Come over here;
I want to talk to you.”
“I don’t mind,” I said.