As soon as Westy gave them the film out of his pocket camera, they lifted a big heavy log across the tracks near the water. They said they thought they could let the car roll easily against that, without any danger of its going on down into the water. You bet we were nervous till we saw them do it, and then we realized that probably those thieves could have done the same thing, except that they didn't care anything about other people's property.
The men thought that the two fellows would cut through the woods and come out at a town named Skunk Hollow. Ozone Valley, that was the new name of it. So we all went in the two cars to that place, because a train stopped there at about half-past eight, and they thought that maybe those fellows would take the train.
I don't know which went faster, the automobiles or Pee-wee's tongue. Anyway, Pee-wee's tongue was running on high. He sat behind me in the big machine, wedged in between two big deputy sheriffs, and he told every heroic act that scouts have done since the movement started. Blamed if I know how he finds those things out, but he does. He gave them Westy's whole history and told how Tom Slade won the gold cross and how burglars and highwaymen weren't safe any more, on account of the Boy Scouts. Every time they told him it was wonderful, he would say, "That's nothing," and come right back with a five reeler. Oh, boy, I thought I'd die, but I guess the sheriffs liked it. Anyway, they laughed a lot.
Pee-wee told them about a scout in the dismal north (that's what he called it) that rescued a maiden. He told them a maiden was something like a girl, "only more kind of pale and weak and helpless, like." I nearly doubled up.
But anyway, he didn't mention cooking.
CHAPTER XXII
RAILROADING
When we got to the Ozone Valley station, there wasn't anything there, but the ozone and a couple of milk cans. The men searched all around in the woods and under the freight platform, but they couldn't find the two fellows.