Neale drove almost recklessly for the first few miles after passing
the roadside store; but the eyes of all three people in the car were
very wide open and their minds observant. Anything or anybody that
might give trace of the truant Sammy were scrutinized.
"He was at that store before noon," Agnes shouted into Neale's ear.
"How long before he would be hungry again?"
"No knowing. Pretty soon, of course," admitted her chum. "But I heard
that storekeeper tell Mr. Pinkney that the boy bought more than he
could eat at once and he carried the rest away in a paper bag."
"That is so," admitted Mr. Pinkney, leaning over the forward seat.
"But he has an appetite like a boa constrictor."
"A _boy_-constrictor," chuckled Neale. "I'll say he has!"
"He would not likely stop anywhere along here to buy more food, then,"
Agnes said.
"He could have gone off the road, however, for a dozen different
things," said the missing boy's father. "That child has got more
crotchets in his head than you can shake a stick at. There is no
knowing--"
"Hold on!" ejaculated Neale suddenly. "There are some kids down there
by that pond. Suppose I run down and interview them?"
"I don't see anybody among them who looks like Sammy," observed Agnes,
standing up in the car to look.
"Never mind. You go ahead, Neale. They will talk to you more freely,
perhaps, than they will to me. Boys are that way."
"I'll try," said Neale, and jumped out of the car and ran down toward
the roof of the old ice-house that the afternoon before had so
attracted Sammy Pinkney--incidentally wrecking his best trousers.
As it chanced, Neale had seen and now interviewed the very party of
boys with whom Sammy had previously made friends. But Neale said
nothing at first to warn these boys that he was searching for one whom
they all considered "a good kid."
"Say, fellows," Neale began, "was this an ice-house before it got
burned down?"
"Yep," replied the bigger boy of the group.
"And only the roof left? Crickey! What have you chaps been doing?
Sliding down it?" For he had observed as he came down from the car two
of the smaller boys doing just that.
"It's great fun," said the bigger boy, grinning, perhaps at the memory
of what had happened to Sammy Pinkney's trousers the previous
afternoon. "Want to try?"
Neale grinned more broadly, and gave the shingled roof another glance.
"I bet _you_ don't slide down it like those little fellows I just saw
doing it. How do their pants stand it?"
The boys giggled at that.
"Say!" the bigger one said, "there was a kid came along yesterday that
didn't get on to that--_till afterward_."
"Oh, ho!" chuckled Neale. "He wore 'em right through, did he?"
"Yes, he did. And then he was sore. Said his mother would give him
fits."
"Where does he live? Around here?" asked Neale carelessly.
"I never saw him before," admitted the bigger boy. "He was a good
fellow just the same. You looking for him?" he asked with sudden
suspicion.
"I don't know. If he's the boy I mean he needn't be afraid to go home
because of his torn pants. You tell him so if you see him again."
"Sure. I didn't know he was running away. He didn't say anything."
"Didn't he have a bag with him--sort of a suitcase?"
"Didn't see it," replied the boy. "We all went home to supper and he
went his way."
"Which way?"
"Could not tell you that," the other said reflectively, and was
evidently honest about it. "He was coming from that way," and he
pointed back toward Milton, "when he joined us here at the slide."
"Then he probably kept on toward--What is in that direction?" and Neale
pointed at the nearest road, the very one into which Sammy had turned.
"Oh, that goes up through the woods," said the boy. "Hampton Mills is
over around the pond--you follow yonder road."
"Yes, I know. But you think this fellow you speak of might have gone
into that by road?"
"He was headed that way when we first saw him," said the boy. "Wasn't
he, Jimmy?"
"Sure," agreed the smaller boy addressed. "And, Tony, I bet he _did_
go that way. When I looked back afterward I remember I saw a boy
lugging something heavy going up that road."
"I didn't see that that fellow had a bag," argued the bigger boy. "But
he might have hid it when he came down here."
"Likely he did," admitted Neale. "Anyway, we will go up that road
through the woods and see."
"_Is_ his mother going to give him fits for those torn pants?" asked
another of the group.
"She'll be so glad to see him home again," confessed Neale, "that he
could tear every pair of pants he's got and she wouldn't say a word!"
He made his way up the bank to the car and reported.
"I don't know where that woods-road leads to. I neglected to bring a
map. But it looks as though we could get through it with the car.
We'll try, sha'n't we?"
"Oh, do, Neale," urged Agnes.
"I guess it is as good a lead as any," observed Mr. Pinkney. "Somehow,
I begin to feel as though the boy had got a good way off this time.
Even this clue is almost twenty-four hours old."
"He must have stayed somewhere last night," cried Agnes suddenly. "If
there is a house up there in the woods--or beyond--we can ask."
"Right you are, Aggie," agreed Neale, starting the car again.
"Sammy Pinkney is an elusive youngster, sure enough," said the
truant's father. "Something has got to stop him from running away. It
costs too much time and money to overtake him and bring him back."
"And we haven't done that yet," murmured Agnes.
The car struck heavy going in the road through the woods before they
had gone very far up the rise. In places the road was soft and had
been cut up by the wheels of heavy trucks or wagons. And they did not
pass a single house--not even a cleared spot in the wood--on either
hand.
"If he started up this way so near supper time last evening, as those
boys say," Mr. Pinkney ruminated, "where was he at supper time?"
"Here, or hereabout, I should say!" exclaimed Neale O'Neil. "Why, it
must have been pretty dark when he got this far."
"If he really came this far," added Agnes.
"Well, let us run along and see if there is a house anywhere," Mr.
Pinkney said. "Of course, Sammy might have slept out--"
"It wouldn't be the first time, I bet!" chuckled Neale.
"And of course there would be nothing to hurt him in these woods?"
suggested Agnes.
"Nothing bigger than a rabbit, I guess," agreed their neighbor.
"Well--"
Neale increased the speed of the car again, turned a blind corner, and
struck a soft place in the road before he could stop. Having no
skidding chains on the rear wheels of course, the car was out of
control in an instant. It slued around. Agnes screamed. Mr. Pinkney
shouted his alarm.
The car slid over the bank of the ditch beside the road and both right
wheels sank in mud and water to the hubs.
"Some pretty mess--I'll tell the world!" groaned Neale O'Neil, shutting
off the engine, while Agnes clung to his arm grimly to keep from
sliding out into the ditch, too.
"Now, you _have_ done it!" shrilled the girl.
"Thanks. Many thanks. I expected you to say that, Aggie," he replied.
"M-mm! Well, I don't suppose you meant to--"
"No use worrying about how it was done or who did it," interposed Mr.
Pinkney, briskly getting out of the tonneau on the left side. "The
question is, how are we going to right the car and get under way
again?"
"A truer word was never spoken," agreed Neale O'Neil. "Come on, Agnes.
We'll creep out on this side, too. That's it. Looks to me, Mr.
Pinkney, as though we should need a couple of good, strong levers to
pry up the wheels. You and I can do that while Agnes gets in under the
wheel and manipulates the mechanism, as it were."
"You are the boss, here, Neale," said the older man, immediately
entering the wood on the right side of the road. "I see a stick here
that looks promising."
He passed under the broadly spreading branches of a huge chestnut
tree. There were several of these monsters along the edge of the wood.
Mr. Pinkney suddenly shouted something, and dropped upon his knees
between two outcropping roots of the tree.
"What is it, Mr. Pinkney?" cried Agnes, running across the road.
Their neighbor appeared, erect again. In his hand he bore the
well-remembered extension-bag which Sammy Pinkney had so often borne
away from home upon his truant escapades.
"What do you know about this?" demanded Sammy's father. "Here's his
bag--filled with his possessions, by the feel of it. But where is the
boy?"
"He--he's got away!" gasped Agnes.
"And we almost had him," was Neale's addition to the amazed remarks of
the trio of searchers.