Pretty soon Westy came running back down the hill.
“Did you get it?” I asked him, but, of course, I knew he did. He was so much out of breath that he couldn’t answer and even after he stopped he had to pant it out, kind of.
“It wasn’t there,” he said.
“Wasn’t there?” I said; “you’re crazy. Sure it was there. Where did you look?”
“I looked just where you said,” Westy panted, “and all around besides. First, I felt all around with my hand and I lifted the oar-lock and it wasn’t underneath it.”
“Maybe you got the wrong oar-lock,” I said, all excited; “there are two of them.”
“The other one was hanging up,” he said; “I found your flashlight on the duffel-bag and poked the light all around and I saw the other oar-lock hanging up. I threw the light on the ground, too, because there’s a pretty strong breeze up there.”
“How could the breeze blow it away when it was under the oar-lock?” I said. “It was a new two dollar bill.”
“Well, it wasn’t there, anyway,” he said.
Then for a minute we both stood there and neither one of us said anything. I know what I was thinking, but I didn’t want to say it. I guess Westy was thinking the same thing, too. We both sat down beside the road and after a couple of minutes, he said: “Maybe a tramp took it, hey?”