The four boys stood there on the dusty road in the twilight of that windy November day, and for a full minute seemed unable to express the sense of bewilderment that had overwhelmed them all. Alongside was the white horse attached to the empty wagon; and from the docile manner in which the animal had come to a sudden halt and stood there, he was not at all averse to having a resting spell after having been whipped so steadily that he was in a sweat.
"Well, I'll be jiggered, if that don't beat the Dutch!" Merritt burst out, he being apparently the first to recover his breath.
"Why, they're gone!" ejaculated Tubby. "And say, they went and left their rig with us, don't you see? Well, I must say they are awfully polite. This is more'n we ever expected, isn't it, fellers?"
Rob was laughing, as though secretly amused at the hasty flight of the two men who had been in the wagon.
"Chances are, now, they took us for hoboes meaning to hold 'em up; and that's why they jumped for it!" Andy suggested.
"Well," remarked Rob, "I couldn't say that I'd blame them for thinking anything after hearing all that racket you three scouts made giving the Eagle cry. Most people would jump at the conclusion that a lot of lunatics had broken loose from that asylum down at Amityville. You should have let me say my little say without that heathen noise. It's all very well for a scout in the bush to let another know what patrol he belongs to when he sees another approaching; but ordinary people hardly understand what that racket means."
"But, Rob, do you believe they took us for desperate yeggmen wanting to hold 'em up on the road here, and rob 'em?" asked Andy.
"No, I don't," replied the patrol leader readily. "In the first place, even if it is getting dusk right now, it's still light enough for anybody with eyes to see that we don't happen to be a ragged lot like tramps are pretty much all of the time."
"Then why should they skoot like that, I want to know?" Tubby inquired.
"Like as not they saw our scout uniforms," suggested Merritt at a hazard.