“I didn’t go through the crowd,” laughed Connie provokingly. “I went under it.”
“Alexander!” exclaimed Mr. Conyers, “make a report to the committee at once of where you have been.”
“Very simple,” began Connie. “As we planned, the boys covered me with a heap of cut thistles only a few hundred yards up the road, around the bend. We did it because I calculated all the fellows chasing us would start out on the run and not look around very much just next to the camp.”
“I looked in that pile of thistles,” protested Carrots Compton. “You wasn’t so smart.”
“You were too late,” went on Connie. “You see, I was the first one hid, and I had almost a half hour leeway. It was pretty hot and prickly under the thistles, and I didn’t know if I could stand it. Then while I was movin’ around tryin’ to make a sort of nest, all of a sudden I felt a kind of draft. It was so strong I knew I was near a hole of some kind—and that’s what I was. Just back of where I was lyin’ there was a cave-in in the ground. Some one had laid a few rails acrost it, and then the thistles was piled on there—to keep the stock out, I guess.”
“I seen that hole,” interrupted Carrots. “There wasn’t nothin’ in it but some rails an’ weeds.”
“That was later,” laughed Connie. “The hole was a break in the big three-foot cement tile. When I felt the wind suckin’ in there I knew it was empty, and I could see it was dry. I knew it ran right along the road by the camp an’ ended by the river bank. I took a chance and dropped down into it. Then to make it look as if no one could have done it, I pulled in the rails an’ thistles an’ started for the river.”
“In the ditch tile?” asked Mr. Trevor alarmed.
“Sure!” answered Connie. “It was dark for a long time, and there was things there—something like a water rat I reckon it was, kept runnin’ ahead o’ me. An’ I think there was a snake or two—judgin’ by the sounds—but it didn’t bother me. I could see daylight after a long crawl, an’ then I felt better, ’cause it got cooler. Once some one looked in the open end o’ the drain, but I laid flat an’ still. An’ when I got to the river there wasn’t anyone in sight. I crawled out an’ snook along under the high bank about twenty-five feet an’ crawled up into the tent from the back. So’s to be sure no one would look in an’ see me I crawled under some bedclothes an’ then I went to sleep. That’s all.”