THE COVERED WAGON
"What makes you so sure it belonged to him?" Fred asked.
"Oh! I know it as well as I do my own cap," replied Bristles. "It's a
queer mixture, you can see; and here's the place where Colon shot that
arrow through it one day, when he asked me to throw it up in the air for
him."
"And I ought to know it too, Fred," remarked the short legged cousin of
the missing boy. "Because I bought it for Chris. You see, I lost his
other for him, and I had to spend some of my hard-earned cash to get him
a new one. I found that at Snyder's Emporium; and I thought he'd kick
like fun because it was so odd; but say, he just thought it the best
thing ever! That's Colon's headgear, all right."
"Then we'll consider that point settled," Fred went on to say. "The next
thing on the program to decide is, how does it happen to be lying here
in this ditch? As I remember it, there wasn't much of a wind last night
when I went to bed, and it doesn't seem then that it could have blown
off his head when he was running."
"There wasn't a ripple in the leaves of the trees," declared Bristles.
"And if it did blow off, wouldn't he have stopped to look for it in the
moonlight?" remarked Sid Wells.
"Colon is too careful of his things not to make a hunt for his cap,"
came from Semi-Colon, who ought to know if any one did, about the
peculiarities of his own cousin.
"Well, the cap was here," Fred said; "and we found it; now why was it
lying in the ditch as if it had been thrown there, or knocked off in a
scuffle?"
"Wow! now perhaps we ain't gettin' down to brass tacks!" ejaculated
Bristles.
Fred bent over to examine the road, along the edge of the ditch.
"Looks like somethin' might have been going on here," Corney suggested.
"You're right," Sid added, excitedly. "Why, anybody with one eye could
see there'd been a scramble around here. Look at the scrapings in the
dust; would you? just like a pack of fellows had set on one; and the
bunch were jumping around him, trying to get away, and the others
holding on. Fred, here's where it must have happened, sure!"
"I think so myself," returned the leader of the five boys, gravely
surveying the tell-tale marks in the dust of the road.
"Eureka! ain't we the handy boys, though, to get on the track of the
kidnappers so quick?" exclaimed Bristles, proudly.
"Go slow," advised Fred; "we've only made a start as yet. Even if it
happened here we don't know who jumped on Colon, and captured him. It
might have been those Mechanicsburg fellows; or the three tramps who
searched the Masterson farmhouse; and then again, why, perhaps some of
our own Riverport boys may have been having a little fun, as they would
call it, giving the rest of us a bad scare, just to have the laugh on
us."
"Say, do you think Buck Lemington and his bunch would get down as low as
that?" demanded Bristles.
"I didn't mention his name," replied Fred; "but you all knew what was on
my mind. Well, from what I've seen of Buck, it strikes me he'd never
stop one minute if the idea once came into his mind. Perhaps some of you
noticed that he wasn't running around like the rest of the fellows. Buck
was watching the row, and I thought once I saw him grin as if he might
be enjoying something."
"And Fred," spoke up Corney just then, "you just ought to have seen the
ugly look he gave you when you happened to pass. Buck's never gotten
over it because when you dropped into Riverport his star began to set.
It's been going lower all the time, and he keeps nursing his ugly
feeling for you. Some fine day he means to get you when you're not
thinking, and even up all scores. Look out for him, Fred."
"I used to think Buck hated me about as bad as he could anybody,"
remarked Sid; "but lately I've changed my mind. I never gave him
one-half the cause to feel ugly that Fred has."
"You don't say," remarked the one mentioned, looking surprised; "what
have I done to Buck that is so dreadful? I've tried to mind my own
business, and never went out of my way a single step to bother with
him."
"But it just _happened_," ventured Sid, "that your way was Buck's own
road in some cases. Now, time was, and every fellow here will bear me
out in what I say, when Buck used to take a certain pretty girl to lots
of places. They squabbled more or less; but Buck wouldn't allow any
other fellow to be Flo's escort. All that is changed these days. She
cuts him dead; and every time she turns him down he grins and grits his
teeth, and I reckon thinks of you kindly--not."
"Oh! well, that's ancient history," remarked Fred, smiling. "And it
cuts no figure in what we're trying to find out now. If Colon was
waylaid here, and made a prisoner, how can we discover who did the job?"
As he spoke he once more threw himself down on hands and knees as if
bent upon closely examining the dusty road.
"I can see a plain footprint here, that has a mark I'd know again," he
presently exclaimed. "Do any of you happen to know whether Colon is
wearing a shoe with plain patch on the sole running diagonally across
about half way down?"
Bristles spoke up immediately.
"He wasn't last night, and that's a cinch. Because he had on his running
shoes, and they were new this season. I know, for he showed me where he
meant to have a little extra sewing done on each shoe to-day, for fear
something might happen in the races, and he has only the one pair. I
handled both, and the soles didn't have a sign of a patch, Fred."
"Then that settles one thing," remarked the other; "we've got a clue to
the first of his enemies, whoever he proves to be. And wherever we go
we'll keep a sharp lookout for that shoe with the patch on the sole. Get
down here, fellows, and take the measure of it right now."
While they were doing this Fred was looking around; and no sooner had
his four chums regained their feet than he was ready with a new
proposition.
"There's a house over yonder," he said; "now, it's possible we might
learn something if we asked questions. No harm trying it, anyway, so
come along, boys."
A woman stood in the doorway. She seemed to be a farmer's wife, and she
had been watching the actions of the five boys, puzzled to account for
their queer behavior.
Thinking that the quickest way to enlist her sympathy would be to relate
what a peculiar thing had happened on the preceding night, Fred politely
accosted her, and as quickly as he could find words to do so, told the
story of Colon's vanishing.
"Now, you see, ma'am," he went on, after he had aroused her interest in
this way, "we've reason to believe that they jumped on our chum right
over where you noticed us examining the ground. And seeing you standing
here, with your house so near the place, I thought that perhaps you
might have heard something last night."
"Well, that's just what I did," the farmer's wife replied, thrilling the
boys who had clustered around the doorway where she stood.
"Do you happen to know about what time it might have been?" asked Fred.
"Along about half after ten, I should say," she answered.
Fred looked at his chums, inquiringly.
"Just to the dot," declared Bristles, "Mebbe you remember that I said it
was some time after ten when Colon broke away. Then we stood talkin' at
the gate a little bit; and when he got this far on his mile dash up to
the graveyard, it must have been close to the half hour. That tallies
fine, Fred."
"What was it you heard, ma'am?" Fred continued, after the talkative
Bristles had had his say, and subsided again.
"Why, I'd gone to bed long before. My man is as deaf as a post, and
never hears a thing. I thought I caught a shout, like a boy whooping.
We've got a few trees of fine Baldwin apples back here, and twice now,
boys from Riverport have raided the orchard; so I'm on the watch to fire
a gun out of the window to give 'em a scare."
"And you thought they were in your trees again; did you?" asked Fred,
when the woman paused.
"That's what struck me at first," she went on; "but as soon as I got up
I knew better; because all the noise came from up the road there. I
stayed by the window listening and heard a lot of shouting. Then it was
all still, and pretty soon a covered wagon went past the house."
"Which way; toward Riverport or in the other direction?" Fred inquired.
"Oh!" the woman replied, "it was going up toward the graveyard; but then
I didn't think that so strange, because I've seen that same limpy white
horse, and the covered wagon, go by here lots of times for years now."
"That is, you knew it, and could even tell it in the moonlight?" the boy
asked.
"It belongs to old Toby Scroggins," she replied. "The hoss limps, and
you can always hear Toby saying 'gad-up! gad-up!' every ten feet, right
along."
"I know him, and what she says is so," remarked Sid. "Why, years ago he
had the same old crowbait of a horse, and the boys mocked him when he'd
keep using the whip, and telling the beast to get along."
"Did you hear Toby talking to his limping nag last night, ma'am?" asked
Fred.
"Why, lands! no, I didn't, now you mention it," she answered; "but then
sometimes he goes to sleep on his wagon, returning from market, where he
buys corn for his hogs, 'stead of raisin' it like the rest of us. And he
lives a long way up the road, you see."
Fred turned upon his companions.
"What do you think, fellows," he asked; "was that wagon filled with corn
last night, or had it a lot of boys under the cover when it passed
here, one of them being our missing chum, Colon?"
"I reckon you've struck pay dirt, Fred," declared Corney.
"My opinion too!" echoed Semi-Colon.
"Count me in on that, and make it unanimous!" Bristles remarked.
"And what about you, Sid?" asked Fred, turning on his nearest chum.
"H'm! I not only agree to all you say, Fred, but I reckon I know right
now where they've got Colon shut up. He's in the haunted mill, boys!"