“That’s right!” agreed Larry. The two, who were concealed from observation by a stack of bean poles, watched the tramps a few minutes longer, until they saw the preparations for the meal well under way. Several of the crowd of men had now come from the house and were seated about the fire.
“Is it far to your brother-in-law’s house?” asked Larry, as he followed the farmer through the bean patch.
“About a mile. There’s several neighbors near him that we can get. They’re all truck farmers like me, and I guess we can take care of them tramps.”
Larry’s heart was beating high with hope. All at once he saw his search ended successfully, and the stolen boy recovered. He saw, in fancy, the glad mother, and while the young reporter would willingly have worked for her interests alone, as well as that of her son, he was glad over the prospect of a big exclusive story. That was one reason why he did not care to have the New York police mixed up in the case. With them making the raid it was likely that the story would “leak” to other newspapers.
By a lucky chance Bob Nestor was found at home. He was properly excited over the prospect of raiding the tramps, and recovering a kidnapped boy.
“I’ve been wanting some exercise for some time,” he said, as Larry and Mr. Meldron told their stories, “and this looks like I was going to get it. I’ll just pin on my badge, and take a couple of pairs of handcuffs along. Likely I’ll need more, but we can just handcuff the most desperate ones, and the rest we can hold until we get ’em to the nearest jail. Guess we’d better take ’em to Whitfield,” he said to his relative, naming a small town nearby. Mr. Meldron agreed.
By using the telephone, a number of neighboring truck-growers were communicated with, and they readily agreed to come over and help raid the tramps.
“Say, this’ll be exciting all right!” exclaimed one burly man over the wire. “I wouldn’t miss it for a good deal!”
In about an hour the posse had assembled at the constable’s house. Some of them carried old-fashioned muzzle-loading guns, and one man had a pitchfork. Others had caught up heavy clubs.
“This looks like business,” remarked Larry, who had been introduced to the men. They greeted him kindly, and some were not a little awed by the fact that, as one of them whispered, “He’s writ lots of pieces for th’ papers,” while another recalled Larry’s part in the great bank mystery.