IN HOT PURSUIT.
TOBY and Nat stared, first at Elmer, and then at each other. Plainly
they could not understand what he meant by these strange words.
"Er--d'ye mean you forget just where you left it, Elmer?" asked Toby.
"I tell you it's gone, vanished completely, disappeared!" said the scout
leader, with a show of anger in his usually steady voice.
"Great goodness, Nat, he means somebody's swiped it!" ejaculated Toby,
his mouth opening in his astonishment.
Nat looked all around him, and then, not seeing a single trace of the
fine motorcycle, he began "barking," as Toby called it, after his own
peculiar way.
"Gee, whiz, now what d'ye think of that for a hummer! The old story over
again of the traveler on the highway falling among thieves. My stars,
Elmer, now who under the sun do you think would be so mean as to run off
with your machine!"
"I don't know--yet; but I'm going to find out," replied Elmer, setting
his teeth in a way he had when greatly aroused.
They saw him bend down again, and start to examine the ground near a
tree, against which he evidently had leaned the motorcycle at the time
he hurried to the rescue of his comrades in distress.
"Get next to him, would you, Toby?" remarked Nat, as he watched the
mysterious actions of the one who had been robbed.
"Why, sure, I can understand what he's doing easy enough," the other
declared.
"Then for goodness' sake put me wise, won't you please?" cried Nat.
"He's examining the tracks left by the chap who got away with his
machine while he was working with your old ice wagon!" observed Toby,
proudly.
"Well, now, I guess that's just what he is doing, sure as you're born.
And don't I just hope he gets on to him! How is it, Elmer?" as the scout
leader started to move away.
Toby and Nat followed as close to his heels as they could, considering
that he immediately moved into the woods; and they were compelled to
trundle their heavy machines along, no easy task under the best of
conditions.
"He went this way, all right. I only hope he won't think to smash the
thing when he finds we're after him," said Elmer over his shoulder.
He was keeping his head bent low, and following the trail with apparent
readiness. The lessons he had learned when on that ranch in the Canadian
Northwest were undoubtedly coming in "pat" just now; though really the
trail was so very plain that even a novice might have followed it.
"Who d'ye thing could have done it, Toby?" asked Nat, as he pushed his
motorcycle through the scrub with a desperate intention not to be left
behind.
"Well, Elmer hasn't said a thing yet; but all the same I can give a
pretty good guess," returned the other.
"Go on and do it, then, for I'm all in the dark and up a stump. Put me
wise, Toby."
"Huh, reckon you forget mighty soon!" grunted the other, who was
struggling manfully to rush his heavy wheel along and did not have any
spare breath, to tell the truth.
"Oh, slush, now I'm on!" cried Toby. "You mean them Fairfield chaps that
came out here to break up Lil Artha's great winning streak?"
"Sure!" Toby grunted again, beginning to conserve his breath when
possible.
"They flagged us, and saw a chance to put us on the blink!" exclaimed
Nat who, like Lil Artha, was more or less addicted to present-day slang,
though otherwise he was known to be a clean fellow, with no serious
faults.
"That's it!" snapped Toby, gritting his teeth as though even the thought
made him furious.
"It's a punk deal, that's what," Nat went on. "They just believe that if
Elmer's out of the running the game is in their hands. But he can have
my machine, if he wants to go ahead. If anybody can make it behave,
Elmer can."
"Or mine either," declared Toby.
Now Elmer, of course, heard all this talk, even though he seemed to be
devoting himself wholly to the business in hand. And at this juncture he
beckoned to his comrades.
"He wants us to pick up, and get even with him," declared Toby.
"Sure thing. Guess Elmer is going to take us at our word, and borrow a
mount," observed Nat, cheerfully.
Accordingly they put on an extra spurt, and managed to gain enough
ground so as to come alongside.
"I heard what you were saying, boys," Elmer immediately remarked, as
soon as he saw that they were up with him; "but you're away off in your
calculations. It isn't one of those Fairfield fellows at all who's
jumped my claim with that borrowed motorcycle!"
"W--w--what's that?" gasped Toby.
"I said that it wasn't a Fairfield fellow who ran off with my machine,"
repeated Elmer, more positively than before.
"Well, you make me feel like thirty cents," observed Nat; "now, what
under the sun would one of _our_ boys want with a motorcycle when, if he
rides on it, for even a minute, he's disqualified in the race?"
"It wasn't one of our scouts either," said Elmer.
"Then for goodness' sake tell us who it could be, Elmer!" cried Toby.
"I haven't even glimpsed him once yet, though he's only a little way
ahead of us right now," the scout leader said; "but judging from the
fact that his shoes are all broken out, I'm almost dead sure he's some
Wandering Willie."
"He means a hobo, a common tramp!" exclaimed Toby in astonishment.
"Tell me about that, will you!" cried Nat. "Just to think of a four
flusher like that making off with Elmer's motorcycle, when he needs it
the worst kind to block that nasty little game of the envious Fairfield
dubs! Oh, it's a cruel world!"
"But we're goin' to get it back, don't you forget that!" Toby
insinuated.
"You never spoke truer words, Toby," laughed Elmer; though there was
little of mirth in the sound; for the boy was tremendously aroused by
this new calamity that threatened to upset all his calculations.
"Hurry, hurry! I can go a bit faster, now that I know what's on!"
declared Toby, although his manner of gasping belied his words.
"Oh, there he is right now! Look, look, Elmer!" cried Nat.
All of them caught a glimpse of some moving object that was pushing at
top speed through the scrub ahead. Undoubtedly it was the party who had
run away with Elmer's motorcycle. They had gained on him constantly, and
were now surely overtaking the rascal.
"We're just bound to get him, fellows!" said Toby.
"That's so, Toby; it looks good to me," remarked Nat, as he strained
every muscle to keep alongside the others.
Elmer, being free to make a sprint, since he had no machine to trundle
along, suddenly left his chums in the lurch. They saw him leaping
through the low underbrush as might a deer.
"Hurrah! He'll get him!" shouted Toby.
"Twenty-three for yours, Mr. Wandering Willie!" added Nat.
"Don't I wish Elmer would just hold him till we come up," added the
other, with a threat in his manner that hardly became a scout; but then
Toby had been a boy long before this scout movement was dreamed of, and
the natural instinct is very hard to repress.
"Hey, do we drop our wheels, and make a spurt, so as to be in at the
finish?" demanded Nat.
"You can, if you want to," replied his mate; "but something tells me a
machine may come in handy yet, even if it is an old huckleberry
makeshift like mine."
"Gee, yes! I didn't think of that," Nat muttered, still clinging to his
motorcycle. "The hobo might strike the road again, you mean?"
"Yep, that's what, Nat."
"And go skeetering off on Elmer's wheel?"
"Just what I meant," replied Toby. "He's been making a sorter curve all
along, like he wanted to strike the road; I noticed that, Nat."
"So did I. Don't like the job of pushing that machine through the scrub
any too much, I reckon," Nat remarked, panting from his own exertions.
"And say, do you blame him?" Toby asked.
"Listen!" and Nat cocked his head as though he could hear better in that
position.
"What was it? Did you catch a shout for help? Perhaps Elmer's caught up
with him, Nat!"
"I thought I heard somebody call out, or laugh," Nat began, when he was
interrupted by a shout.
"Toby--Nat, hurry along with your wheels!"
"That's Elmer!" gasped Toby, as he tried to add a little more speed to
his forward progress.
"Perhaps he's got him under his knee, and is holding him for us,"
suggested Nat.
"That's silly," returned the other, immediately. "It won't hold water,
Nat. Whatever would he tell us to bring our machines, if he had the
hobo? Tell you what, I reckon he's made off along the road with Elmer's
motorcycle, that's a fact!"
"And he wants one of ours to chase him with! Oh, I wish I could fly
right now, so's to hurry!" Nat cried.
"A fine mess _you'd_ make of it, if even a fellow like me, that's up to
snuff, don't seem able to get it down pat," sneered Toby.
"I see Elmer, and he's waving his hand to us like fun!" exclaimed Nat,
without appearing to take any notice of the slur cast upon his abilities
in the line of aviation.
Elmer came bounding toward them just then, as though meaning to lend all
the assistance in his power toward getting the machine he fancied, if
there was any choice in the matter, to the road near by.
He clutched hold of Toby's motorcycle, possibly believing that its
recent regeneration might prove fairly lasting.
So they came upon the edge of the road again, after making all that half
circle through the woods and scrub.
Toby's first act was to stretch his neck, and stare along the road. A
moving object caught his eye, which he had no difficulty in making out
to be a motorcycle, upon which a ragged specimen of a tramp was seated,
and which he was working at a great rate _with his feet on the pedals_!
"He don't know beans about how to run the engine!" Toby exclaimed, with
sudden delight, as he saw this plain fact.
The road just there was as straight as a rule, for at least a couple of
miles; and the fellow had not gotten more than a quarter of a mile away.
He happened to turn his head to look back just then, while the machine
"yawed" at an alarming rate, threatening to dispose of the tramp in the
bushes. To the indignation of Toby and Nat, the latter having also
managed to reach the spot by this time, the Wandering Willie jauntily
waved a hand toward them, as though bidding them a fond adieu.
There was a sudden sputter, and a rattling volley. Then away sped Elmer,
mounted on Toby's old machine, which seemed about to redeem itself in
this momentous crisis.
"Wow! Watch his smoke, will you!" shrieked Nat.
"Now will you be good, Mr. Hobo!" cried Toby; hoping in his heart that
the pursuing machine might not take a notion to perform any of its
frequent tricks and betray its new master.
The man on the stolen wheel must have heard that rattle as of artillery
behind him, for Elmer never bothered using the hush pedal, such was his
desire to speed up and overtake the thief who was running off with his
mount.
They saw him look back over his shoulder as if in sudden alarm. Then his
legs began to work faster than they could possibly have done in ten
years, as he endeavored to pedal his stolen property at a rate of speed
that would take him beyond reach of the relentless pursuer. But like a
meteor shooting across the sky, Elmer bore down on the hobo motorcycle
thief.