I said, “Pardon us, but we never studied drawing so we don’t know anything about drawbridges. Do you mean this thing in the floor that looks like the head of a bolt?”
“Right therrre at yourrr feet,” she said.
On the floor about three feet from the lever was a kind of a round iron plate that looked like the top of a big bolt. It was just a kind of a plug and it lifted out. All we had to do was to haul the lever out and put it in there and push. There was a kind of reverse gear that made the bridge go back. And all the while we had been pushing and pushing and trying to make that pesky old bridge keep going around like a merry-go-round. But that wasn’t the way it worked. The end of it that belonged at the north had to go back to the north; the bridge only went half-way around.
It wasn’t hard closing it again when we got it started. It moved back very slowly until the ends of it fitted the ends of the road. The little girl just stood there kind of disgusted with us. Pee-wee didn’t say a word.
As soon as the way was open the cow started across, the little girl after her. She looked back two or three times as if she didn’t know what to make of us. Once the cow looked back, kind of puzzled like; that’s the way it seemed to me.
CHAPTER XVII
WE COOK THE DUCK
“Rescued by a brave, heroic little girl,” I said, as we went tramping off into the road.
“Let’s be sure that we’re headed in the right direction,” Warde said. “After what happened I don’t trust myself at all. Is this the end of the bridge we got on at, or is it the other end?”
“It’s one end or the other,” I said.
“One end’s as good as the other if not better,” Hervey said. “Come on, follow your leader——”