“Read this,” the kid whispered. “I didn’t see it till after I threw the clothes away and they floated down the brook. Dangers thicken—look at this.” He got those words out of the movies, dangers thicken.
Brent and I read the printing on the paper and this is what it said:
ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD
Offered for information leading to the recapture of Mike Donovan, alias Rinky, escaped from Indiana State Prison. Was serving term of fifteen years for burglary and child murder. Slender of stature. Five feet nine inches in height. Is supposed to have relations in the east. Age about nineteen. Is known to be a desperate character, having served terms in New York and Pennsylvania for burglary and highway robbery.
There was some more, about who to notify and all that, but I can’t remember the rest. Brent took the paper from me and sat there on the grocery box in the dim light with the doors closed, reading it. It seemed awfully dark and secret, kind of, in there.
He said, “Larceny, child murder, burglary, and highway robbery. That isn’t so bad, is it? That’s really more than I expected. I haven’t lived in vain.”
“You’ll live in a jail, that’s where you’ll live,” Pee-wee whispered. “What are we going to do?”
“You ought to know,” I told him, “a scout is resourceful.”
CHAPTER XX—WE CONSIDER OUR PREDICAMENT
(THAT’S PEE-WEE’S HEADING)