“Now we’re in for it,” Westy said. “Now you put your foot in it.”
“Put my foot in what?” I asked him.
“A lot we can do between now and ten o’clock to-morrow morning,” he
said; “even if it’s true that somebody set fire to the place. How are we
going to solve the thing between now and tomorrow morning? He doesn’t
take any stock in that and I don’t blame him. I bet he’ll beat it
to-night.”
“I bet he won’t,” I said. “He didn’t have money enough last night to buy
us a couple of sodas. I’d like to know where he’ll beat it to.”
“He’s good and sore at us,” Westy said.
“I should worry,” I told him; “he knows we won’t tell till we’re asked.
How could we promise to refuse to tell if the judge makes us? A lot you
know about courts. The only court you know anything about is a tennis
court. If we don’t answer questions we’ll get in trouble ourselves, and
how is that going to help him? He didn’t do it, I could see that. Only
he can’t afford to have people know he was there. He’s in bad with
everybody. Probably now they’re trying to trace his movements yesterday.
Even Mr. Ellsworth thinks he’s no good. We don’t know what they’re up
to.”
“Well, how do we know anybody set fire to the shop?” Westy wanted to
know.
“How do we know who left these match ends all around the floor of this
car—and these cigarette butts?”
You ought to have seen Westy stare.
“I don’t smoke and you don’t smoke and none of us fellows smoke. Well
then, how did these ends of cigarettes get here? Somebody was in this
car last night. Don’t you suppose I noticed that before I asked him
about how the fire started? Believe me, I’m not taking Charlie Slausen’s
word for much. But I’ll tell you this, he isn’t as bad as people think
he is. What do you suppose Chief O’Day cares who he sends to jail as
long as his name gets into the newspapers? _‘Clever catch by
Bridgeboro’s chief’_ that’s all _he’s_ thinking about. He isn’t smart
enough to catch cold, even.”
“Well, what are we going to do?” Westy asked me.
“Now you’re talking,” I said. “First we’re going to go over and help the
rest of the fellows. When we get through and they have all gone home,
we’re coming back here. Then we’re going to start. We don’t want any one
to know about this but ourselves.”
By about five o’clock all the members of the troop had gone home and
Westy and I went back over to the car.
I said, “As long as we know there was some one here last night the next
thing to do is to see if we can find any footprints.”
In the ground, just at the foot of the step, we found a couple printed
there just as plain as day.
“This is a cinch,” Westy said.
“Easier than keeping our mouths shut,” I told him.
Now those footprints went in a straight line over to where the shop had
stood and there we lost them on account of the stuff that was all strewn
around there. But under where the window had been we found a lot of
footprints. I guess some of them were our own. But there weren’t any
except right there, and I suppose that was on account of the sidewalk on
Willow Place being so near.
Westy said, “If anybody sneaked into the shop I bet he didn’t go along
the street when he came out, especially if the fire was already
started.”
I said, “Well then, he must have crossed the street and hit into the
Sneezenbunker land. If you look at the map I made you’ll see how
everything was around there.”
So then we went across the street and looked at the edge of the field
where it ran along by the sidewalk. Westy was standing in the field
right between the two rusty old tracks and he called, “Here’s a
footprint good and plain.”
Good night, we were in luck. Somebody had started walking the tracks
toward the river. We couldn’t find footprints in the hard earth between
the tracks, where they ran across the Sneezenbunker land, but when the
tracks began getting into the low, damp ground toward Cat-tail Marsh, we
could see the prints just as plain as writing.
Over the marsh the old tracks run on a kind of trestle and we had to
walk the ties. There were no footprints, exactly, on the ties, but there
were little chunks of mud on some of them. We were on the track of
somebody, all right.
There were no more footprints when we got to Van Schlessenhoff’s field
because the tracks run through the grass there. But there was no place
to go down that way except to the river, and there wasn’t any building
anywhere about except the little shack that the men use when they go
rail shooting in the fall. That little shack is on Mr. Van
Schlessenhoff’s field and I guess it’s about a couple of hundred feet
from the tracks. It’s right close by the river.
We stopped where we were on the tracks and Westy said, “What shall we
do? Go over to the shack?”
It was beginning to get dark now and it seemed pretty lonesome down
there. It’s a dandy spot, down there by the river. The town seems a long
distance away. You can only just see the top of the High School through
the trees. I should worry, I wouldn’t care if I couldn’t see any of it.
I was glad we were going to have our old car down there. It was awful
still, except for the frogs croaking, and the crickets in the field.
I didn’t exactly want to go over to that shack and I guess Westy felt
the same way. I’m not afraid of tramps but, gee whiz, I’m not especially
stuck on bandits. And there were a lot of those around lately, shooting
up automobiles.
“Well, we’re here and we’ve got to go over,” I said, “or else what was
the use of coming down here? There’s somebody in that shack, I bet.”
We went over toward the shack, and tiptoed when we got close to it, so
as not to make a bit of noise. The door was shut and there wasn’t any
window. We came right close to the boards and held our breath and
listened....