With a solemn and knowing look Marshal Wellock made a few inquiries concerning the car which had just passed out of sight and its occupants. Then he made some mysterious entries in a pocket memorandum, the generally soiled appearance of which was not at all unlike his own. These movements alone were enough to make a deep impression upon the crowd which had now collected; but accompanied as they were by Mr. Wellock's knowing and extremely mysterious air, the whole effect was to produce in the minds of those gathered near the profound conviction that the four strange boys were nothing short of bank-robbers in disguise.
Men exchanged looks of deep significance as if saying, "I told you so." Women nodded their heads to one another in a way that plainly indicated their certain knowledge of the guilt of the young strangers, whatever might be the crime laid at their door.
Observing the unlimited notice he was attracting, Marshal Wellock's importance increased. Preserving still his deeply mysterious air, he walked on to the telegraph office and went in. What he learned there apparently did not cause him to change his very good opinion of himself and of the great power vested in him, for he was more darkly mysterious than ever as he returned. Indeed, his whole bearing was such as to make him decidedly red in the face, as he frowned savagely, in keeping with his idea of the great personage which he himself felt and, he believed, everyone else must undoubtedly consider him to be. What he thought he knew about the four boys would have made a long story. What he did know could have been told in a dozen words and none of them to the lads' discredit.
Meanwhile the Thirty still sped on westward. The afternoon was waning and the road was growing bad. Sagersgrove lay far in the rear.
"Don't look to me as if this could be the main route," said Phil Way, thoughtfully noting the brush-grown fields and the poor character of the farmhouses and buildings, becoming more and more infrequent as they progressed.
"Oh, it's the road all right. It'll be better going soon," MacLester answered; and as the latter himself had obtained the information respecting the route, Phil said no more.
Mile after mile slipped to the rear, but slowly now, for the road was a constant succession of deep ruts, miniature mountain chains and great, half-dried holes of mud. The late June sun was going down. Blackbirds flew in noisy flocks from one to another of the dense thickets growing in frequent and extensive patches as far as eye could reach over the low land at either side of the wretched way.
"Well, if this is the road, we better go where it isn't," muttered Billy Worth, his arms beginning to feel the effects of driving over the painfully distressing course.
"Oh, stop your growling!" Dave answered a little savagely. "This road will be all right when we get to the high ground where the trees are yonder! And by the Old Harry! Why should you hold me responsible? Never knew it to fail, anyhow, that whoever it is that half breaks his neck and nearly gets left behind, to dig up the road statistics for a trip or any part of one, is from that minute blamed right and left for every hole that's found and for every stone that's struck."
In which observation young Mr. MacLester was not at all wrong. Identically the same weakness of human nature crops out in so many places that none can fail to recognize it. Phil Way saw and felt the truth of Dave's remarks at once.