CHAPTER XX
I didn’t know what to make of it. Mark wasn’t the kind of er fellow to run away and leave me to face Batten and Bill; but, all the same, he was gone. Not a sign could we see. He must have sneaked off while the men were looking for the engine in the cave. One thing I was sure of, he hadn’t carried the turbine away with him. Maybe both of us together could have lifted it, but we certainly couldn’t have carried it up the hill.
I reached down and pinched myself to see if I was awake. There was getting to be so many mysteries and disappearances and such-like that it got to seeming like a dream where things pop in and out without any reason or excuse. But it wasn’t a dream, for there was Batten and Bill, scowling as ferocious as a couple of wolves. (I never saw a wolf scowl, but if he does it must be ferocious.) No, sir, it wasn’t any dream—not a bit of it. What I remembered about getting back the turbine, and the night on the rattlesnake island, and getting the turbine up-hill to the cave really happened. The engine had been in the cave, because I helped put it there. According to what I figured out, it must be there yet. It couldn’t have gotten out. But it was out! When a thing happens that you know positively can’t happen it sort of shakes you up. It made me feel pretty creepy.
I had been around the cave ever since we put the turbine in, except for the little while I was spying on Batten and Bill when they almost caught me; and Mark had been sitting right before the door all of that time. Nobody could have taken it out without his seeing it, and he hadn’t said a word to me about anything happening while I was gone. It was too much for me. One thing I knew, though, and that was that the only time that engine could have gotten away was while I was gone. The only reasonable way to explain it was that Mark had carried it away; but, then, Mark couldn’t have lifted it alone. And there you are! What would anybody expect a fellow to make of such a mess?
Batten came and stood over me, threatening-like. “Boy,” says he, “where’s that engine?”
“Mr. Batten,” says I (I thought it was best to be sort of polite), “I wish I knew.”
“It was in that cave, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” says I; “it was in there, all right, and how it ever got out beats me.”
“Do you mean to say you didn’t know it was gone?”
“Honest, Mr. Batten,” says I, “I thought it was there till you yanked off the sheets.”