At one o’clock on Saturday the driver pulled his truck up in front of the Lee homestead. Just inside the picket fence stood two cane-seated chairs. The fact that hind-legs were missing was not apparent to a casual observer, but that is why they had been in the loft for several years.
The moment the truck was seen to stop, May and her father ran from the house, carrying paper bundles piled high in their arms. Eliza followed with a brass banquet lamp minus a globe. Handing this to the driver, she hurried back for odds and ends of dishes and pans. May made a second trip for some pictures in broken frames—also a washtub and old tools that had been found in the loft.
The second stop was made at the Bentley’s house. Their donation consisted of a table with three legs; a small wash-stand bureau with bottomless drawers; an old-fashioned towel-rack and a rocker with a very lame back; in fact, the back might be called crippled and helpless. But then they added a goodly stock of groceries.
At the Allison’s house the driver took on a kitchen table with one drop-leaf gone and the other hanging by one hinge. A small family album-stand from the parlor of long ago. An old hair-cloth sofa with broken springs and the filling most gone; a straw mattress and a spiral spring that had not been used for years, so the Allisons thought it might as well go to the camp as to be left in the attic. Foodstuff was the last but not least of this donation.
When the truck reached the Vernons’ house, where the sister-in-law was waiting, many cumbersome and heavy items were added to the collection. By this time the jitney party had been picked up one after another, and now all arrived at the Vernons’ house for the last passenger.
The truck and jitney then started for Dandelion Camp, the happy givers picturing how delighted the scouts would be to receive the shower of furniture.
At Freedom the surprise party found their girls had gone back to camp, and the injured man with them. Lemuel Saunders was such a personage in the public eye since the man-hunt on the mountain that he could be seen strutting up and down Main Street, telling people all about the Great Deed. Thus it was that the families from Elmertown heard the tale first-hand—with all its trimmings.
As the truck started up the trail for the camp Mr. Bentley turned to Mr. Lee and Mr. Allison and said: “According to Lemuel, he did the whole trick. If our girls played so little a part in the capture, why should they have had the reward?”
But further conversation was rendered impossible by the deep ruts worn in the trail by the many wagons that had recently traveled the road. People from Freedom and other villages nearby wanted to see the girl scouts who had shown so much sense as to trap two convicts.
Finally the truck halted, and the jitney traveled on a few hundred feet in advance before it, too, had to stop. Each member of the party then took a piece of furniture and, carrying the load, started for camp.