“I wonder if we had better take somebody along?” remarked Roger, when they were about to leave. “We might get a constable, or somebody like that.”
“I think we had better make this search on our own hook,” answered our hero. “Outsiders might be more in the way than anything else.”
“I wish we had brought along some sort of disguises, Dave. They might come in handy.”
“We can put on our auto goggles and pull our caps down pretty well over our foreheads and button our dust-coats tight up around our necks, just as Jasniff did. That will help to disguise us.”
A little while later found them on the road to Cullomburg. The highway was a winding one, passing a number of farms, where, however, the houses sat back a considerable distance from the road. Here and there they had to pass through patches of woods, and at one point they crossed a rickety bridge that spanned a small mountain torrent.
“That bridge isn’t any too good for a heavy auto,” announced Roger, after they had rattled over it. “Some day some fellow with a heavy load will break through.”
So far they had met nobody on the road, but now they heard the rattle of a wagon, and presently a sleepy-looking farmer, drawing a load of hay, appeared. He was willing enough to stop and talk, but could give them no information concerning the battered touring-car.
“I belong on the other side of Cullomburg, an’ I don’t git down on this end o’ the road very much,” he explained.
“Do automobiles use the road on the other side of Cullomburg?” questioned Roger.
“They do when they don’t know where they’re at,” answered the farmer, with a chuckle. “A feller from Boston come through that way this spring, an’ he vowed he’d never come ag’in. He got stuck in the mud twice, an’ he cut two tires all to pieces on the rocks, an’ I guess it was too expensive fer ’im.”