Jake pulled up at a hitching post in front of Pine Top’s grocery store.
“It won’t take me long,” he said.
Penny climbed down in the bottom of the sled, rearranging her blankets so that only her eyes and forehead were exposed to the cold. She had been sitting there for some minutes when her attention was drawn to a man who was approaching from far down the street. Recognizing him as Ralph Fergus, she watched with interest.
At the drugstore he paused. As if by prearrangement, Benny Smith came out of the building. Penny was too far away to hear their exchange of words, but she saw the boy give all of his newspapers to Ralph Fergus. In return, he received a bill which she guessed might be of fairly high denomination.
“Probably five dollars,” she thought. “The boy sells all his papers to Fergus because he can make more that way than by peddling them one by one. And he’s paid to keep quiet about it.”
Penny was not especially surprised to discover that the hotel man was buying up all the papers, for she had suspected he was behind the trick.
“There’s no law against it,” she told herself. “That’s the trouble. Fergus and Maxwell are clever. So far they’ve done nothing which could possibly get them into legal trouble.”
Presently Jake came out of the grocery store, carrying a large box of supplies which he stowed in the sled.
“I’ll get the papers and then we’ll be ready to start.”
“Don’t bother,” said Penny. “There aren’t any. I just saw Ralph Fergus buy them all from the boy.”