He couldn’t sit down or lean against anything on account of the tar all over his clothes, so he took them off and I handed them out to Pee-wee and told him to throw them in the grove. Then Brent put on the convict’s suit, and he looked awful funny in it with his dirty face and his hair all cut short.
He said, “At last the dream of my young life has come true; I am a criminal. The only thing is I haven’t committed my crime yet.”
I said, “Oh, you needn’t be in any hurry about that.”
He said, “But it seems sort of false for me to be wearing a convict’s suit when I haven’t committed any crime. It seems like deceiving people. It troubles my conscience. And I haven’t really escaped either. What would you do if you were me? I don’t want to disgrace the uniform I wear. I wish I could think of some nice easy crime. I feel nice and clean in these things, anyway. But my conscience is black. Do you suppose there’s a bank in this burg, and a jail? I was thinking if I could just let myself down by a rope. Only it would be just my luck to have a cell on the ground floor.”
I said, “The best cell for you is right in this little old van, at least till we get out of town. You leave the rope business to Douglas Fairbanks. If anybody in this place should see you, good night, Sister Anne! And it isn’t any joke, either. Now you’ve got your wish, you’ll see it isn’t going to be as much fun as you thought it was.”
Brent sat down on an old grocery box that we had inside the van, and, jiminetty, I had to laugh, he had such a funny way about him. He looked awful tough, sort of, without his hair. He said, “Well, I appoint you my keeper. I hope I’m not such a cheap sort of a criminal as to try to escape from a delivery van. A stone dungeon or nothing for me.” Gee whiz, that fellow’s particular.
Just then the plot grew thicker—oh, boy! One of the doors of the van opened and Pee-wee squeezed in. He had a big piece of paper in his hand. He said, “I went up the road a little way—shh!”
I said, “I thought it was kind of quiet outside.”
He said, “Shh, look at this; it was tacked to a tree. We’re in desperate peril——”
Brent said, “In which?”