"Bright boy," said Tom.
"Oh, I'm a regular feller, I am," said Roy. "I knew that engine would stop when there wasn't any more gasoline—I just felt it in my bones. But what care we!
'Oh, we are merry mountaineers,
And have no carking cares or fears—
Or gasoline.'
So they got out the oars and with the aid of these and a paddle succeeded in making the shore where they tied up to the dilapidated remnants of what had once been a float.
"There must be a village in the neighborhood," said Tom, "or there wouldn't be a float here."
"Sherlock Holmes Slade is at it again," said Roy. It would have been a pretty serious accident that Roy wouldn't have taken gayly. "Pee-wee, you're appointed a committee to look after the boat while Tomasso and I go in search of adventure—and gasoline. There must be a road up there somewhere and if there's a road I dare say we can find a garage—maybe even a village. Get things ready for supper, Pee-wee, and when we get back I'll make a Silver Fox omelet for good luck."
The spot where they had made a landing was at the foot of precipitous hills between which and the shore ran the railroad tracks. Tom and Roy, carrying a couple of gasoline cans, started along a road which led around the lower reaches of one of these hills. As Pee-wee stood upon the cabin watching them, the swinging cans were brightened by the rays of the declining sun, and there was a chill in the air as the familiar grayness fell upon the heights, bringing to the boy that sense of loneliness which he had felt before.
He was of the merriest temperament, was Pee-wee, and, as he had often said, not averse to "being jollied." But he was withal very sensitive and during the trip he had more than once fancied that Tom and Roy had fallen together to his own exclusion, and it awakened in him now and then a feeling that he was the odd number of the party. He had tried to ingratiate himself with them, though to be sure no particular effort was needed to do that, yet sometimes he saw, or fancied he saw, little things which made him feel that in important matters he was left out of account. Roy would slap him on the shoulder and tousle his hair, but he would ask Tom's advice—and take it. Perhaps Roy had allowed his propensity for banter and jollying to run too far in his treatment of Pee-wee. At all events, the younger boy had found himself a bit chagrined at times that their discussions had not been wholly three-handed. And now, as he watched the others hiking off through the twilight, and heard their laughter, he recalled that it was usually he who was appointed a "committee to stay and watch the boat."
This is not a pleasant train of thought when you are standing alone in the bleakness and sadness and growing chill of the dying day, with tremendous nature piled all about you, and watching your two companions as they disappear along a lonely road. But the mood was upon him and it did not cheer him when Roy, turning and making a megaphone of his hands, called, "Look out and don't fall into the gas tank, Pee-wee!"