He walked on, keeping in the shadows, until he was about a mile from the house, having traveled in an opposite direction to that in which the village was situated.
“I’d better make out a plan of campaign, the way Cæsar did,” he said. “Queer I should think of that old warrior, when I hate Latin so, but then he knew a good deal about battles, though I don’t remember that he ever ran away much.
“Let’s see,” he went on musingly. “If I go this way I’ll reach Cloverdale in about an hour. They have a regular uniformed force there, and probably they’ve been warned by telephone to look out for a boy with a dress-suit case. If I bear off to the left I’ll get to Pendleton in two hours. There are only a couple of constables there, and I don’t believe they’ll be on the watch for me. From Pendleton I can take a train to some other place.”
Jack thought matters over a little more. He wanted to be sure and make no mistake, as this was a very important period in his life. He recalled several stories he had read of boys running away, but none of them seemed to fit his case.
“The trouble is, I don’t know just where to go,” he thought. “I don’t want to go to sea, I don’t care about going out west to fight Indians or dig for gold, and there’s no special kind of work I can do. The only thing I would like to do would be to find my folks. Maybe I can, some time, though when I’ll have money enough to go to China I’m sure I don’t know. I wonder where I’d better go after I get to Pendleton?”
Jack thought hard. It was quite a problem for the lad. There were so many things to consider. First of all, of course, was to keep out of the clutches of a policeman.
“I think I’ll go to Rudford,” he announced to himself. “That’s quite a town, and it’s far enough off so that the professor will not think of telephoning to it. It will take almost all my money to get there, but when I arrive I’ll have a better chance to get a job than I would have in these small towns. I’ll go to Rudford. There’s a train from Pendleton to Rudford about three o’clock. I can just make it.”
Off he trudged once more, proceeding faster, now that he had a definite plan before him. It was rather lonesome, walking along the deserted country road at night, but Jack had no fears. The worst he could meet with would be tramps, and he did not worry about them.
Still, as he came to a stretch where the road ran through a rather dense patch of woods, he was a little nervous, especially when he heard something stirring in the forest close to the highway. He stood still, and he could feel his heart pounding against his ribs.
“Maybe that’s a crowd of tramps,” he thought, for, of late, several members of that road fraternity had been committing petty depredations in the vicinity.