SEEING THINGS IN A NEW LIGHT.
“Now tell us what happened to you. We’re all wired up about it,” said
Billy Worth when Gus had gone the rounds and shaken each of his rescuers
most cordially by the hand, as though he meant them to feel that his
gratitude was sincere.
“Yes, you said something that sounded like robbed, and we’ve been trying
to figure out what it meant ever since,” added Monkey Stallings, who was
really a late addition to the troop, though making his way up the ladder
by leaps and bounds, being a lad eager to learn all the things of which
a first-class scout must have a knowledge in order to obtain his badge.
“Well,” began Gusty with a whimsical grin, “it’s just this way. I’ve
been sent up here several times twice a month to carry the money used to
pay the hundred Italians and other foreigners working in our granite
quarries. I guess somebody must have spotted me this time. Two men, who
looked like tramps but who may have been worse than that, lay in wait
for me just below here. They had that sapling fixed so that it crossed
the road, and I couldn’t have got past even if I tried.”
“Gee! what d’ye think of that! And right here within twenty miles of
Oakvale, too?” ejaculated Billy, his face expressing the most intense
interest, “but excuse my interrupting you, Gusty. Please go on. You’ve
got me chained fast. Stopped you on the road did they, and robbed you of
the pay money?”
“When I managed to pull up, I was right on the tree they had thrown
across the road,” continued the other. “At first the tall man pretended
he was a country constable, meaning to arrest me because I was speeding,
though of course, it was silly to think of such a thing away up here in
the mountains. Then the other fellow showed up, and they let me know
that they’d been waiting for me in order to steal the money I carried. I
tried to jump into the runabout again to get hold of the gun dad makes
me carry, but they battered me on the head, and nearly did me as you can
see. In the end they lowered me to that ledge, so that I couldn’t get
anywhere and give the alarm. Oh! I’ve been having the time of my life,
let me tell you! But if they think they’re going to get away with this
job so easy, they’re barking up the wrong tree. Now I’m out of that
hole, I mean to get after them lickety-split.”
“How much of a start have they got?” asked Hugh soberly.
“Really I couldn’t tell you,” came the reply. “You see, that short
rascal snatched my gold watch before they lowered me down the precipice.
It seemed to me as if I must have been there for hours.”
“It was just a little more than an hour and a half ago that you left the
tavern where we were waiting to be called to dinner,” Hugh told him. Gus
expressed the greatest surprise, for he had never known time to drag so
before.
“But let’s talk of what can be done to overtake those men and get back
all they took from me,” he suggested doggedly.
“One of us might turn around and make a run for home to get the police
on the track,” ventured Billy, “though it would be taking big chances to
start me over that course, because I’m a bum rider so far, and apt to
take a header if I get a little rattled.”
“How far away are the quarries you were making for, Gus?” asked Hugh.
“Oh, something like ten miles, I should say,” came the reply. “Too far
to go for help. Besides, what good would a dozen or two of those wild
Italian laborers be in a thief chase? Chances are the men would make a
clean getaway. No, something else will have to be tried if we hope to
bring them up with a round turn.”
“What’s to hinder the lot of us whooping after them, and finding some
chance either to have them arrested, or perhaps do the job as slick as
you please, while they sleep?” demanded Monkey Stallings, who came by
his name through his faculty for doings all sorts of antics, from
climbing greased poles that no other boy could mount, to hanging from
lofty limbs of trees by his toes, and pretending to sleep that way, just
as though he were a simian in truth.
“If you only would, it might turn out to be the grandest thing ever!”
exclaimed the Merrivale boy, his face lighting up with sudden hope as he
contemplated the shining motorcycles nearby, and remembered what
wonderful things they were capable of accomplishing in the right hands.
“You see, we were making our way up to a camp where a few of our fellow
scouts have been spending a week,” Hugh explained. “We declined to go
along because we expected these machines to arrive, and were all fairly
wild to get busy with them. And between ourselves we had secretly
arranged to give the boys a big surprise after all of us got so we could
ride fairly well. But you must know that it is a part of a scout’s
education to give up his own pleasure whenever he can help anyone who is
in trouble; and so, Gus, we will do what we can to assist you to recover
your runabout, as well as the money they took from you.”
“That’s fine of you, Hugh!” declared the other boy, flushing with
pleasure, as well as with shame at the recollection of how he had
misjudged these splendid fellows in the past. “I’m beginning to get my
eyes opened to a lot of things about this scout business, and if only
you can help me out, I reckon I’ll just have to join the troop, no
matter if I start in as the worst tenderfoot you ever saw.”
“Bully for you, Gusty!” cried the explosive Billy. “Take my word for it,
you’ll never have any reason to regret the step if you do hitch up with
the scouts. Fact is you’ll wonder how you ever got any fun in life
before you knocked the scales off your eyes, and saw things everywhere
around you. We know. Lots of us have been through the mill, haven’t we,
Monkey?”
“We sure have, Billy,” answered the other solemnly, “and nothing could
hire me to throw up my present job of gymnastic teacher to the troop. As
to learning things, I’ve found out how to stow away a quarter more
rations every meal by just watching you work your jaws, Billy.”
“We can follow after the runabout without much trouble once we examine
the marks made by its tires in some muddy spot,” Hugh said, speaking
directly to the boy who had been taken from the ledge, “because in
nearly every case you’ll find there’s a distinctive mark about the track
left by a rubber-shod wheel. I can tell the trail my motorcycle makes
among a dozen; both the others have individualities about them that all
of us have learned to recognize. And I expect you may have noticed
something about the marks your car leaves that would tell you which road
it took, in case we came to a fork?”
“Well, I don’t think I ever took the trouble to notice anything like
that,” Gus confessed not without more or less confusion, as though he
might already be beginning to realize how lacking in practical
information his education was, “but now that you speak of it, there was
a patch put on one of the rear tires that I should think would leave an
impression something like a diamond. Of course, though, that wouldn’t
show here where the road is rocky; but at the first chance we could
watch out for it.”
Hugh looked at him with a half smile on his face.
“You talk as though you expected to go along with us, Gusty?” he
observed.
“And to tell the truth I’m hoping you’ll ask me to hang on behind,” the
other instantly replied. “You see, I’ve ridden a motorcycle before and I
guess my shoulder isn’t so lame but what I could keep my seat. Those men
treated me about as mean as they knew how, and I’ve been telling myself
all along that, if only I could have a hand in their apprehension, it’d
go a great way to evening things up. Do you reckon now, Hugh, that if
you took me on behind it would go?”
His whole manner was so imploring that even had the patrol leader felt
inclined to hesitate he must have found it very difficult to disappoint
Gusty. It chanced, however, that Hugh knew more about a motorcycle than
either of his chums, or both together for that matter. And he believed
that if the other boy had the nerve to keep his seat he could take him
along.
“I’m willing to make the try, anyhow, Gusty,” was what Hugh told him.
“Oh! thank you, thank you a dozen times, for you’ve made me feel ever so
happy!” cried the Merrivale boy. Apparently he had made a clean sweep
when he threw that pride of his overboard, for once again he reached out
and shook the hand of Hugh, as though determined to look on him as his
best friend. “And there’s one other thing you ought to know, because it
may cut some figure in the chase.”
“What might that be?” asked Billy, evidently more or less relieved to
know the patrol leader would not be wanting him to head back over their
trail so as to carry the startling news of the hold-up to the
authorities in distant Oakvale.
“I only took on five gallons of juice at the inn, you see,” continued
Gusty, eager to advance any item, however small, that might have a
bearing on the successful pursuit of the two bad men, “and I don’t
believe there could have been much aboard at the time, either. So they
couldn’t run more than twenty miles before it would give out. If they
fail to take on a new stock, perhaps we might find my runabout abandoned
on the road somewhere.”
“Either that, or wrecked,” suggested Monkey, “because every fellow who
thinks he can run a car doesn’t succeed. I know, because it cost an
uncle of mine a pile of hard cash to get his machine saved from the
scrap heap after I’d turned over at the foot of a little hill where
there was a sharp curve and lots of loose sand. See that scar under my
hair—that makes me think of how hard a car can kick, every time I look
at it when I’m brushing my locks.”
“If we mean to start this chase, we’d better be making a move,” Billy
advised.
“The crown of the hill seems to be just a little way off,” said Hugh,
“and so I think we ought to push our machines up the rest of the way,
and mount for a coast down the grade. Once we reach the bottom where
there’s a chance to find some moist clay, we’ll try scout tactics, and
get a clew about that mended tire you spoke of, Gusty. Come on, boys!”
“I tell you fellows I’m feeling two hundred per cent. better already,”
announced the boy who had been rescued from the ledge over the brow of
the precipice. “If only we could lay those ugly scoundrels by the heels,
I’d call it a thousand per cent. Your talking about tracking them by
following the clew of my mended tire makes me see how much I’ve been
missing all this while by thinking scouts were a foolish bunch of
crack-brained boys, running after a leader like sheep after the bell
wether. I guess I’m the chump after all who has allowed his prejudice to
run away with his common sense. That’s all in the past, let me tell you.
I’m beginning to see a great light, and this experience is going to
change a lot of the ideas I’ve been hanging on to, believe me.”
While talking in this strain, the four boys were pushing up the rise.
Just as the patrol leader had remarked, the crown of the hill was in
plain sight only a little distance beyond where Gusty had met with his
strange adventure and passed through an experience he would not be
likely to forget soon.
Under ordinary conditions Gusty might possibly have consented to adopt a
sling for his bruised arm, and even walk around for a day or two while
playing the part of martyr, but there was no time for such nonsense. The
prospect of overtaking the two thieves, and at least making some sort of
effort to recover what they had stolen, gave him unexpected strength to
endure the pain without even a grimace. Why, he stood ready to grit his
teeth, and make light of worse conditions than this while the hope of
turning the tables on those hoboes continued to brighten!
When the boys arrived at the brow of the hill, they could see how the
road was beginning to dip. Hugh asked a few questions of Gusty, who had
been over it a number of times before, and was therefore competent to
give advice. He wished to make sure that no sudden bend would crop out
to serve as a trap for inexperienced riders. When this point had been
settled, Hugh had the fourth boy mount behind him, clasp his arms around
his waist, and then the descent of the hill was begun.