CHAPTER XVIII—WE ARE IN SUSPENSE
Cracky, that’s one thing I’m crazy about—lemon meringue pie. Mm—mm!! There’s only one thing I like better than a piece of lemon meringue pie, and that’s two pieces. My mother says you shouldn’t eat the crust, but she doesn’t know the rule about a scout being thorough. Always leave your camp site clean. It’s the same with your plate.
Most of the time we were at that house, Harry Donnelle was talking with Elsa West. Gee whiz, I bet she liked him a lot, hey? He told her he couldn’t play the victrola, because he had never taken any victrola lessons; that fellow’s crazy.
Anyway, they were sorry when we started off, and Elsa said she hoped we’d find the buried gold. She said that was one thing she’d like to be-a boy. Gee whiz, I couldn’t blame her, because anyway, we have a lot of fun. She said she wasn’t afraid of rain.
We left the auto there in charge of the constable, and he said he’d call up the Department of Motor Vehicles and find out who had the license number that was on that car. Because one thing sure, it didn’t belong to those thieves. Harry said we should worry about it and that we might as well let that constable do something to earn his salary. I guess it took him the rest of that day to get over his shock. I guess he thought we were crazy when he saw we wouldn’t take the reward, but that’s the way it is with us. But, of course, we don’t count eats. You can give us all the eats you want to.
Harry said, “Well, as long as we’ve been mixed up with burglars, let’s take our machine to a garage and get up against some real robbers. They’ll probably tell me I need everything renewed except the smell. Come ahead.”
We had to get somebody to tow us to the nearest robbers’ den and then we found that Harry’s machine needed a “complete overhauling.” That’s what they always tell you. But anyway, they didn’t get away with it, and in about an hour we were rolling along the road for Utica.
“Do you know what I’d like to do to you?” Pee-wee shouted at Harry.
“No, break it to me gently,” Harry said.
“I’d like to hit you a good rap on the—— Why didn’t you let me do the talking from the start?”
“If you hit me and I should ever find it out——” Harry said.
“You don’t know how to talk to a judge’s family,” Pee-wee said; “you have to use logic. Do you know what that is?”
“No, what’s that?” Harry asked him.
“It’s where you prove a thing by showing how one thing matches with another—kind of,” the kid said.
“Well, suppose you get in the wrong automobile; is that logic?” Harry asked him.
“If there’s stolen goods in it, yes,” the kid shouted.
“All right,” Harry said, “here’s another. What’s the difference between a shock-absorber?”
“You make me tired,” Pee-wee yelled.
“What’s the difference between a pirate and a garage keeper?”
“None!” we all yelled.
It was about five o’clock in the afternoon when we got back to Utica. It looked just the same as before; all the buildings were there and everything. Harry said it hadn’t changed a bit.
Now if we had followed the road from Utica to Syracuse, we wouldn’t have had the adventure that I’m going to tell you about. I bet you’re glad we took another road, hey? Anyway, this is how it happened. In the restaurant where we stopped to get some eats in Utica, we met some moving picture men with a camera. Gee, that’s the way it is with Harry Donnelle—he gets acquainted with everybody.
Those men said that they had just come from a place named Lurin, where there were a lot of cliffs and things. They said they had been making part of a photo-play up there. I bet they have a lot of fun, those men. They told us that if we didn’t mind a couple of steep hills, that would be the shortest way to get to Watertown, because it cut off a corner.
One thing about Harry Donnelle, he always wants to do things different from the regular way. Believe me, if you’re in an auto the best way is always to follow the state road. But Harry said that if we hit into the road north through Alder Creek and Boonville, we’d be able to get to Watertown that night.
“I bet it’s a rocky road to Dublin,” Grove said.
“Will we fall off the cliffs?” poor little Skinny piped up.
“Not afraid are you, Alf?” Harry said, nice and pleasant like.
I didn’t say anything, because we had no camping outfit and it costs a lot of money at hotels, and if we could cut out Syracuse and get to Watertown that night, I saw it would be a good thing. Only we didn’t know anything about the road.
Harry said, “Well, the only way we can know is to find out.” That was just like him. If you tell him a thing is risky, he wants to do it right away.
So about six o’clock we turned into the road going north, that isn’t marked on the tour map. The first thing we did was to get onto the wrong road and bunk our noses into Rome.
I said, “If we meet Julius Caesar, we’ll ask which is the road for Watertown.” There was a dandy ice-cream store in Rome, so Harry said we might as well do as the Romans do, and have some ice cream. Rome didn’t look very ancient, but good night, the road out of it was ancient enough.
We went back to Deerfield and hit the road north, and the next thing we ran plunk into Old Forge.
“Everything around here is out of date,” Harry said; “Ancient Rome and Old Forge. I long for New York.”
By that time it was dark. We followed the road south again to Alder Creek, and then hit into the other road north, and went through Boonville, so then we knew we were all right. Anyway, we were on the right road, only the road was all wrong. Believe me, that cow-path had some nerve calling itself a road. After about an hour we passed Lurin and then, good night, some hill! Up, up, up, up, till pretty soon we could look down off to the east and see little bits of lights; I guess it was a village.
Anyway, the road ran right along the edge of a steep precipice with only a kind of a rough fence between. Pretty soon, Harry stopped the car. Skinny was fast asleep.
“Looks pretty bad ahead there, doesn’t it?” Harry said to the rest of us.
By the glare of the headlights I could see that for quite a long way ahead, the road was closer to the edge than it ought to be.
“There’s a strip of fence gone,” Harry said.
“I think the land has broken away there, that’s what I think,” I told him.
“Well, safety first,” he said; “guess we’d better investigate. It may be just the shadow that makes it look that way, but that road looks too blamed near the edge to suit me.”
“Safety first is right,” Grove said.
Harry was just starting to get out and I was just going to tell him that I’d go, when all of a sudden Pee-wee was outside the car, shouting “I’ll take a squint.” And before anyone else could get out, he was walking along the road ahead of us.
“Watch your step,” Harry called after him, “and don’t mistake a hole for a shadow.”
“Don’t you worry,” Pee-wee shouted back.
We could see him moving along very carefully.
“Don’t move the car,” he called back; “keep the lights still—just where they are.”
We all sat there waiting, and I remember just how Harry looked, leaning forward with his arms folded on the steering wheel. It was so still that I could hear Skinny breathing, asleep.
“Watch your step,” Harry called; “how about it?”
Pee-wee was out of sight now; he answered, but we couldn’t make out what he said. Then Harry called.
“All right? Shall we come ahead?”
That time there wasn’t any answer.
Grove said, “Did you hear a sound like a branch crackling?”
“It was the wind, I guess,” I said.
“How about it, Kiddo?” Harry shouted good and loud.
But there wasn’t any answer, and I felt kind of funny. While we waited, I could hear Skinny breathing in his sleep, all the while.