ON WATCH
“Oh, Dan! what is it?” cried Mildred, dismounting from her own
motorcycle, and running to the gap in the wall through which the lad was
leaning, seeking to peer into the gulf. “What has happened?”
“Somebody has knocked down our derrick. I hope the auto has escaped,”
muttered Dan.
He ran back to his machine, lifted off the storage battery lamp, and
came with it to the verge of the precipice again. Its bright ray flashed
into the depths revealed one thing at least—the auto was still wedged in
the tree limbs. The heavy timbers had missed it in their fall.
“Oh, Dan! the car is there,” cried Mildred, “And can you ever get it up
to the roadway—do you believe you can?”
“We won’t be able to get it up here if many such tricks as _this_ are
played on us,” grunted Dan. “Ah! here’s Billy.”
The remainder of the party came up swiftly and stopped their cycles.
“What’s happened?” cried Billy, first to reach his brother’s side.
Dan pointed to the post, chopped off at the ground. All could see it.
“The car—is it hurt?” questioned Billy.
“I don’t think so,” replied his brother.
“The rascal! I’d like to pitch him over that wall myself,” declared the
younger Speedwell, in a passion.
“Who is it? Who did it, Billy? Do you know?” were the questions fired at
the impulsive lad.
Dan touched his brother’s arm, and Billy accepted the warning.
“I won’t say anything more—now,” Billy said, mysteriously. “But you can
see what a mean trick it is—just as we got the derrick in place, too.”
“I believe you!” cried Jim Stetson. “I skinned a knuckle and pretty near
broke my back helping you. I’d give something to get hold of the fellow
who did it, myself.”
“Couldn’t be old Somes, could it?” asked Wiley Moyle. “He was almost mad
enough to bite you fellows, to-night.”
“Nonsense! Josiah wouldn’t do such a thing. He has too much respect for
the law,” said Monroe Stevens.
“I think it is very fortunate,” put in Mildred Kent, earnestly, “that
the person—whoever he was—did not manage to utterly ruin the automobile.
Suppose he comes here before you can get the derrick erected again, and
throws these boulders down upon the car?”
“He’ll not do that!” declared Dan, firmly.
“How do you know?”
“Because either Billy or I will be on this spot until we get the car out
of the place. We have too much money invested in the machine to have it
wrecked.”
“Right, Dannie!” declared his brother. “And I’ll stay here now. You go
on home, ask father to help you with the milk in the morning, and then
come down with the team and another post as early as you can. If there’s
any way of getting the car up, we’ll get at it without further delay.”
It was so arranged, and Billy sat down beside the break in the wall
while the others motored away. His own machine he carefully hid in a
clump of bushes, and proposed to keep awake until morning so that the
mean-spirited person whom he suspected of cutting down the pole, should
not return and do any damage to the motor car.
Billy heard dogs barking in the distance—they seemed to start far down
the road toward the Mayberry farm at which he and his young friends had
spent such a pleasant evening. First one dog, and then another, joined
the chorus, the sound of which drew nearer.
“Somebody coming along the road,” thought the lad. “They’re coming fast
and stirring up a racket as they come. Somebody is traveling fast, for
the houses are a good way apart, and the dogs join each other in hailing
the passer-by in one, two, three order.”
“Ha! an auto, I bet,” pursued Billy. “Coming at a stiff pace. There’s
the hum of her! No other sound. Gee! she’s spinning the miles behind
her. Hear her purr!”
Billy rose to his knees and peered down the road. He was still in the
shadow and could not be seen. There was a flash of light at the far
bend—but it was no lamp. Billy knew a car had turned the corner, but it
had not a single headlight lit.
Then, to his amazement, he saw that there were figures in the car—one at
the wheel, the other in the tonneau. And it was a somewhat larger car
than Billy had expected.
A car without a light had no business on the road in the first place;
that fact was suspicious. And when the car halted directly before the
crouching boy, Billy was indeed amazed.
“Is this the spot?” asked the man on the front seat, turning to speak
over his shoulder.
“I—don’t—know,” returned the other, in a low voice. “It looks so
different by night.”
“Hang it! you and I were past here on Saturday.”
“Well! we went so fast that I couldn’t tell what the place looked like.
I know that Sudds lives here somewhere. Ha!”
“What’s the matter?” asked the man at the wheel, whom Billy noticed was
rather small.
“I believe this is the spot where that auto went over the bank; eh?”
The chauffeur stood up, evidently trying to peer into the darkness
beside the road. Billy’s heart beat loudly. He was so near that he could
have almost reached out his hand and touched the rear wheel of the car.
There was something about this automobile that awoke in Billy Speedwell
a feeling of suspicion. It was too dark for him to see the color of the
automobile exactly; but he was apprehensive.
“Sudds’ place is farther along,” exclaimed the chauffeur, sitting down.
“_He_ ought to be on the lookout somewhere. We’ll run on slow, and then
back again if we don’t pick him up.”
“All right,” growled the second man.
They were both looking forward and away from Billy. The boy, shaking
with nervousness, but willing to risk much to prove to himself that his
suspicion was right, crept out of the shadow behind the car. The machine
started and Billy leaped lightly up behind, and clung to the back of the
large, folded canopy top of the tonneau.
The car rolled on smoothly—almost silently; her engine throbbed
steadily. They turned the bend and Billy knew that the dwelling of Abram
Sudds, a granite mansion set high on the bank beside the road, was in
sight, although he could not see it.
The car purred on. Billy clung desperately, afraid to drop off now, for
he would be revealed the instant he came out of the shadow of the
automobile’s folded-back top. Impulsively he had jumped into trouble,
and without a thought for the wrecked auto he was watching, and in which
his brother and himself had invested five hundred dollars!
But the mystery of this car, and the men in it, had taken hold of him
strongly. As they ran slowly past the Sudds property Billy glanced about
for the man whom the two in the car evidently expected.
There was no one in the road. They ran on to the next house and there
the chauffeur turned slowly. There was a street light here and its dim
radiance shone for an instant on the side panels of the car as it
turned. Billy, craning his neck around the corner of the car to look,
saw the light flash upon the shiny varnish.
The car was painted maroon! There had been _two_ maroon cars in the
neighborhood of Riverdale within the past few days. Billy was very sure
indeed that this car did not belong to Mr. Briggs!