“Mr. Hawkins,” said Matt, attempting to argue the matter, and show
the constable the error of his way, “you’re a little mistaken in this
matter.”
“’Way wide of the trail,” chipped in McGlory.
“You can’t teach me no law,” scowled the constable. “I know my
business.”
“Of course you do,” went on Matt, signing to McGlory to let him do the
talking. “I’m not saying that you don’t know all about the law, or are
not trying to do your duty. It’s the fellow at the other end of the
line who has started you wrong.”
“D’you own this car?” demanded Hawkins, slapping the broken hood.
“No, but----”
“Didn’t you run away with it?”
“Yes, but if you’ll let----”
“I calculate that’s a-plenty,” cut in Hawkins, with a triumphant look
at Hiram. “We’ll hop in an’ show ye the way to the jail.”
“I want to explain this,” cried Matt.
“Oh, ye do!” gibed the constable. “I can tell, just by the look of you,
you’re a pair of scalawags. You can’t do any explainin’ that’ll help
your case any.”
“Take us before a justice,” pleaded Matt.
“The jedge is away, fishin’, an’ he won’t hold court till this
arternoon. I’ll haul ye up in front o’ him, soon enough, an’ if he
don’t hold ye to a higher court to answer for the larceny of one
benzine buggy, I’ll miss _my_ guess. Hiram,” and the constable turned
to his comrade, “I’ll git in with ’em, so’st to make sure they don’t
run, then you take down the chain, an’ git in, too.”
“You bet I will,” assented Hiram, with great alacrity.
“Is there a telegraph office in town?” asked Matt, while Hiram was
removing the chain.
“’Course there is,” replied Hawkins. “We got a railroad, too, and an
op’ry house, and everythin’ else that makes a town worth livin’ in.”
“We want to stop at the telegraph office and send a message,” said Matt.
“No, ye don’t! You fellers can’t play any shenanigin tricks on Bill
Hawkins. I’m too old a hand to be come over by two younkers like you.”
“Sufferin’ jaybirds!” growled McGlory. “Say, constable, this message
we want to send is mighty important. If we can get it through, it will
prevent a ten-thousand-dollar robbery in New York.”
Bill Hawkins laughed.
“You’re funnier’n a Joe Miller joke book,” said he. “Jest as though ye
could make me swaller a yarn like that. Git in, Hiram,” he added. “You
drive this automobile right down Main Street till I tell ye to stop,”
he finished, addressing Matt.
“Will you let me send that telegram?” pleaded McGlory. “It will only
take a minute.”
“Well, I guess not,” said the constable, snapping his lean jaws
decisively. “Start the car,” he ordered sternly.
Matt took two five-dollar bills from his pocket, offering one to each
of the men.
“You can read the telegram, Mr. Hawkins,” said Matt. “It’s important.”
Hawkins went up on his toes and fairly bristled.
“Say,” he snorted, “you ain’t got money enough to bribe me from doin’
my duty. Now I _know_ ye’re crooked. Tryin’ to bribe Bill Hawkins!
Well, by jing! What d’ye think o’ that, Hiram?”
“Scand’lous!” gurgled Hiram, horror-stricken.
McGlory leaned toward Matt.
“Put on full speed, pard,” he whispered excitedly, “and let’s snake ’em
out into the country.”
But Matt shook his head and started the car slowly into the village.
All the inhabitants of the place, Matt judged, had been drawn to the
scene of the “arrest.” Men, women, children, and dogs clustered around
the car, and proceeded with it as it took its melancholy way along the
street.
“There’s the place,” said Hawkins, pointing, “that two-story red
buildin’ on the right. Hardware store on the first floor and the jail’s
upstairs.”
Matt steered for the curb, and halted the car at the edge of the walk,
then Hawkins took him in charge, Hiram looked after McGlory, and the
motor boys were led toward an outside stairway by which they were to
climb to the “jail.”
The cowboy, halting at the foot of the stairs, renewed his desperate
attempt to get permission to send his telegram. Hiram spoke harshly,
Hawkins put in a few warm words, and the crowd jeered. Then McGlory
gave up, and followed Hawkins and Matt as they climbed the stairs.
The second floor of the building was partitioned into two rooms. A
sign proclaimed that the front room was occupied by a “Justice of the
Peace,” while another sign, bearing the one word, “Jail,” set forth the
uses to which the rear room was put.
Matt and McGlory, it appeared, were the only occupants of the jail. The
room was meagrely furnished, with a table, a cot, and two chairs, and
there were two grated windows overlooking the rear of the premises.
Here the motor boys were left, McGlory sinking disconsolately into one
of the chairs, while Matt roamed around, making himself as familiar as
possible with the situation.
From the grated windows he could look off for half a block to the
railroad station. The station building was about as large as a
good-sized packing case, and there was one spur track, running between
the main track and the rear of the hardware store, with a lonely flat
car on the rails.
“Here’s a go!” wailed McGlory. “Jugged! Jugged by a country constable,
just when a telegram might save the day for us in New York! Sufferin’
cats! Can’t we do something, pard? We’re not going to let a couple of
hayseeds knock us out like this, are we?”
Matt was trying the bars at the windows. The ends of the bars were set
into the wood of the casing, and the casing was old, and partly decayed.
“We can break out,” said Matt, “but what good will that do us, Joe?
We’d be apprehended by the villagers before you could get to the
telegraph office. It won’t be possible to send a message from here.”
“How can we send it from anywhere,” cried the cowboy, “if we don’t get
away from this place?”
“Jail-breakers are apt to have quite a hard time of it.”
“I’ll take my chances on the hard time if we can make a getaway.”
“The only thing for us to do, so far as I can see, is to wait till the
judge gets back from his fishing trip. We can talk to _him_, and he’ll
have to listen to us.”
Matt sat down, and McGlory, grumbling his disgust, started up and
went to one of the windows. Laying hold of a bar he gave it a wrench,
breaking the end completely out of the wood. A gap was left, through
which the boys might squeeze their way to liberty--if it seemed
advisable.
“There’s a shed under the window,” reported McGlory. “We could get out
on the shed and reach the ground too easy for any use.”
“That part of it is all right,” returned Matt, “but how could we get
out of town without being seen? There’s the rub, Joe. Be guided by me,
and let’s wait for the justice.”
“There’s no telling when he’ll get here. Why, right now, this minute,
Tibbits may have his pals at the bank!”
Urged on by his frantic thoughts, the cowboy began hoisting the window.
In a few moments, a path to freedom, through the bars and over the shed
roof, lay open to the motor boys.
“Let’s make a try of it, pard,” pleaded McGlory. “We can reach the
spur track, crawl along it through the bushes, and maybe get out of
the town. Then we can hoof it to the next town, drop in at a telegraph
office----”
“And find a telegram from Leeville asking the authorities to capture
and hold us as jail-breakers,” said Matt.
“We haven’t done anything we ought to be jugged for, have we?” demanded
McGlory.
“Of course not.”
“Then it’s right for us to get away if we can, isn’t it?”
“Certainly, Joe, but I don’t see how we can manage it.”
Just at that moment a distant whistle was heard.
“A train!” exclaimed McGlory. “If it stops here, Matt, why can’t
we----”
Matt caught the inspiration of his chum’s words. Again fortune was
favoring him and McGlory. There was a chance to escape, but they would
have to be quick if they took advantage of it.
“Crawl through the window, Joe!” whispered Matt. “Be wary! The jig’s up
if we’re seen.”
The cowboy began at once crowding himself through the bars. He
succeeded, and alighted on the roof of the shed on hands and knees.
Matt followed, made his way carefully over the top of the shed, dropped
from the edge of the roof, and found himself beside his chum at the
rear of the hardware store.
The train was just pulling into the station. Without losing a moment,
the boys scrambled over a fence, skirmished onward under the screen
of the flat car, dodged beneath it, raced across the narrow stretch
separating the spur from the main track, and climbed aboard the forward
coach of the train.
The station was on the other side of the cars, and, so far as the boys
could discover, not an inhabitant of the village had seen them.
Where the train was going they did not know; but they did know that it
would halt at a more friendly town than Leeville, that there would be a
telegraph office in the town, and that they could forward their message
to New York.
“In and out of Leeville,” murmured the cowboy, as he and Matt sank
breathlessly into a seat. “I reckon old Bill Hawkins will have another
guess coming, eh?”