“Yeah,” Skippy answered, “I think so.” He could feel Nickie Fallon looking at him curiously. Suddenly he felt the boy move closer to him.
“Say, lissen, kid,” he whispered, “d’you feel funny ’bout this Frost an’ Baker?”
“Gee,” said Skippy, not a little startled, “I—I dunno.... I—whadda you mean, huh?”
Fallon’s lips almost touched Skippy’s ear. “Listen kid,” he confided, “I ain’t been doin’ what I done, an’ not learnin’ that guys don’t do nothin’ for love. How come, they been takin’ all this trouble for some kids they ain’t never laid eyes on ’fore today, hah?”
“Whadda you s’pose?” Skippy whispered timidly.
“We ain’t tippin’ off Shorty or Biff, but between you’n me, kid, I think these guys got some job for us what they can’t do themselves—see? A little job, mebbe.”
“Yeah, an’ if they have, it’s all right, huh?” Skippy retorted making a brave effort to measure up as one of Nickie’s kind.
“Sure, only if it’s bigger’n we can do an’ we get grabbed—we’re outa luck. That’d mean double time. Aw, it ain’t no use worryin’. If they let us put the feed bag on regular an’ give us bunks, it’s worth doin’ ’em a favor.”
Skippy nodded but did not answer. He was too intent on watching the number of turns that Frost had made within the past few moments. They had already made three off the wooded road and now with the fourth one they were in a dense woods and proceeding very slowly along a road little wider than a footpath. Then suddenly they rolled into a clearing and stopped. Frost chuckled and switched on his headlights.
A house, square-roofed and dingy, loomed up before them. Its shingles were so devoid of paint that it was impossible to say what color they had originally been painted. Blistered and peeling from long years of neglect and with its shutters closed like so many pairs of sleeping eyes the structure presented a picture of abject loneliness.