“You’ll have to put in some water,” said Tom. “They’ll be charging for water pretty soon, I’m thinking, if this blamed weather keeps up.”
Tom’s suddenly revised plan was to go to Temple Camp for the night. He wanted to visit camp and so far as Whalen was concerned a day one way or the other wouldn’t make any difference. Then, as he got to thinking, he realized the dilemma he was in. How could he go back up the mountain? He certainly wouldn’t accompany the detectives there and witness the arrest of his friend. Yet he had not said that he would not return. Was he, then, to be like all the other irresponsible, undependable recruits who had deserted Ferris?
Well, anyway, he would spend the night at Temple Camp, then in the morning he would go down to Kingston by train and call at police headquarters there. He would feel fresh in the morning. And so on and so on....
He was aroused out of his musing by his companion’s voice, “I came near getting held up on this road one night, came near being touched for three hundred bills. But I got by with Lizzie all right. I had to laugh; they got a blow-out. Did I duck! I thought it was a gun.”
“I guess there are a lot of hold-ups,” Tom said. His interest was only passive, his mind preoccupied and troubled.
The young fellow rattled on, “There was a big truck along here last night—broke down. Some load of hootch, oh boy!”
“Yes?” said Tom in a way of half-interest.
“I’ll say so. One case was all over the road—puddles, broken glass—I gave ’em the lend of a wrench.”
“Did you report them?” Tom asked.
“Naaah, I should worry. I wouldn’ do the bulls out of a job. I never kidnap nobody else’s job.”