Somebody said, “Oh, I guess the hounds they got on the trail will find the convict, all right, so you boys can jest consider if you’re goin’ to live up to your words or not ’baout doin’ good turns.”
Oh, boy, that was a terrible moment in Pee-wee’s life. I guess Dan Dauntless never had so much to worry about. But that kid has some sense, anyway, and that’s more than that story fellow has. In a couple of seconds I noticed that he was wiping his face with his handkerchief and I saw that he was getting the key sort of rolled up in the cloth at the same time. Then he made believe to put the handkerchief in his back pocket, but really he dropped it through the little window into the van. You couldn’t even hear it drop inside.
Then he said, “The trouble is that this van is locked and we haven’t got the key.” That kid would never have said that while he had the key, because it would have been a lie. And scouts don’t lie, that’s sure.
Jiminy, I don’t know what those people thought; anyway I felt pretty mean. The ladies said anyway they were just as much obliged to us. The men looked kind of as if they didn’t have much use for us, but they didn’t say anything and I had to admit that Pee-wee had got away with it all right.
Then, good night, Sister Anne, what should I see but our old college chum Snoozer from the Uncle Tom’s Cabin show. There he was, right among all those people, pushing them out of the way and sniffing around as if he was half crazy. Pee-wee and I jumped down and pushed past the people who were all crowding around the back of the van, and, good night, there was that pesky actor dog with his feet on the step, sniffing and sniffing at the doors and barking and yelping for all he was worth.
“Chop down them doors!” I heard a man say. “That’s somethin’ wrong here. This here dog is an official bloodhound, and, by gum, he’s tracked that thar convict. That chap paid these youngsters to help him escape, that’s what he has—by thunder! Somebody get an axe out of the Post Office and chop down these here doors. Don’t either one of you youngsters try to run or, by thunder, you’ll drop in your tracks. Good turns, eh? So them’s the kind of good turns you do, hey? Get an axe somebody—quick!”
XXV—BIG EXCITEMENT AT BARROW’S HOMESTEAD
I was kind of excited, but I said to Pee-wee, “Don’t get scared; all they’ll do is arrest him; he’ll get off.”
Then one of the men came up and said to us awful loud and gruff, “Naow, you kids, aout with that key, hand it over!”
I said, “Didn’t you hear my chum say that we haven’t got the key? It shows you don’t know much about scouts if you think they lie. If you want to know where the key is, it’s inside.”