We spent about an hour in the woods near the road, sitting around the
fire and telling all about our adventures since the time we had seen
each other before. Those fellows were on an auto trip, the same as we
were, and they had a camping kit and everything. They were just starting
to follow the Old Forge road north and wriggle around through the
Adirondacks, that’s what Brent said. But he said as long as we were
going in search of treasure, they’d go with us. He said that treasure
was his middle name.
Harry said, “Well, you seem to be something of a dabster with engines;
suppose we all go back into the village and maybe you can get our old
boat started. Then we’ll hit the trail for the next berg and see if we
can get a place to bunk until morning.”
“We bunk in the woods,” one of those little fellows sung out.
Harry said, “Yes, but you’re good scouts; you came prepared to do that.”
Brent said, “All right, pile in as many of you as want to.”
“We’ll walk with Harry Donnelle,” little Willie-Wide-Awake shouted.
So that was the way we fixed it—Pee-wee and Grove and Skinny and I went
ahead with Brent Gaylong in the Ford, and Brent’s patrol followed along
with Harry.
“Where is the old scow, anyway?” Brent called to Harry.
“Go right up the village street,” Harry said, “and turn into a road
branching off. You’ll see it standing near a house; it’s a new
Cadillac—seven-passenger—nineteen twenty. We’ll be there long before you
get it started.”
“You’ll know it, because the headlights are the only two lights in the
whole village,” I said to Brent; “we ought to charge them for
illuminating the town.”
“The lights are dimmed,” Pee-wee said.
“It isn’t an old scow,” Skinny piped up, in that funny way of his; “it’s
a new scow.”
“Well, I’ll bet a Canadian dime I get it started,” Brent said. “Harry’s
all right on adventure and he’d give you the coat off his back, but I
think he’s a punk mechanic.”
“He understands engines!” little Skinny sang out. “Don’t you say
anything against him, because he understands everything; he sewed a
button on for me.”
“Bully for you, Alf,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t say he doesn’t understand engines,” Brent said; “but I
think that engines don’t understand _him_—they don’t appreciate him.”
“He understands _everything_,” Skinny shouted.
“Well, he understands how to get on the right side of scouts,” Brent
began laughing.
Pretty soon we got into the village and came to the place where the road
branched off the main street.
“This the place where I turn?” Brent asked us.
“Yes,” Pee-wee said.
“No—wait a minute,” Grove spoke up.
“Go a little further,” I said, “and you’ll see a road—wait a
minute—where are we?”
“This is a fine outfit of scouts,” Brent said; “you’d get lost in a
department store. Guess again.
“You turn in this road,” Pee-wee shouted.
“No, you don’t,” Grove said; “wait a minute, yes, you do.”
“_Oh, goody, goody, goody!_” I began shouting. “Everybody’s wrong, as
usual, except me—I mean I. There’s the machine now; look between those
two houses. A scout is observant.”
In the dark we could see across a lawn between two houses, and there was
the car, sure enough.
“Go up to the next road,” I said, “and turn in.”
“Anything you say,” Brent laughed.
“For a minute I didn’t know where I was at,” Grove said.
He drove around into the road where the car was standing and right up to
it and then got out. The flivver looked awful funny alongside it.
“Some Cadillac!” he said.
“Isn’t it a peachy car?” Pee-wee asked him. “Isn’t it a beaut? Look at
those shock-absorbers. Feel the leather on those seats—boy, boy!” Gee
whiz, you’d think the kid was trying to sell the car.
“Very snifty,” Brent said.
“It’s only four months old,” Pee-wee said.
“Maybe that’s the reason it hasn’t learned to walk yet,” Brent told him.
“Well, we’ll take a squint.”
Brent opened the hood while the rest of us piled into the car.
“You can’t make it go,” Skinny piped up; “if Harry couldn’t, _you_
can’t.”
“What do you bet?” Brent said.
“You can’t,” Skinny said.
I don’t know what Brent did to the motor, but pretty soon he closed the
hood, whistling to himself all the while, and got into the car. All of a
sudden, br, br, br, br, br, she was purring away like an old cat.
“What do you say now?” he began laughing. Poor little Skinny didn’t have
anything to say.
“What did you do to it?” I asked.
“Just smiled at it,” Brent said; “the scout smile always wins.”
Believe me, we were all too surprised to speak.
“Any of you kids know how to run a Ford?” Brent asked us.
“Sure, Grove does,” we said. Because they have a flivver at Grove’s
house.
“I haven’t got any license,” Grove said.
“All right, hop in there and follow us,” Brent told him; “we’ll move
along and meet them and save them a walk.”
So we swung into the woods road, with Grove coming along behind us in
the flivver, and just as we reached the place where the woods began, we
met Harry and Brent’s patrol, hiking along.
“All right, hop in,” Brent said.
“Well—I’ll—be—jiggered,” Harry began.
“Hop in,” Brent said, “and don’t stand there talking, if you want a
place to sleep to-night. You couldn’t even run a carpet-sweeper.”
“You’re a wonder, old man,” Harry said; “what was the matter with her? I
tried everything.”
“Did you say _please_?” Brent asked him.
“No, but I said about everything else,” Harry said.
“Do you want to run that Ford or shall I?” Brent asked him.
“Stay where you are,” Harry said. “I’ll run the Ford. Go ahead, we’ll
follow.”
Some of the kids piled into the small car and the rest of them came in
with us. We were all separated together.
“This treasure-hunt is developing into a parade,” Brent said. “Look
behind, will you? He can’t even get the flivver started.”
But pretty soon we saw them coming along, quite a distance behind us.
I looked at the clock alongside the speedometer and saw that it was
nearly two o’clock in the morning. “Time flies,” I said.
Grove said, “Sure, it should be arrested for speeding.”