Strange as it may seem, Hugh and Billy were given a chance to take part in the chase of the man in the buggy, who had made such a clean sweep of the jewelry establishment.
They were walking home when the big police automobile hove in sight. Several policemen were aboard and the car was moving at a pace that accorded with their haste.
The two scouts stepped aside to let it pass, meaning to give the men a rousing cheer, when the chief said something to the chauffeur, and suddenly the machine stopped alongside the chums.
“Hop in, Hugh, if you care to go along with us,” the police head called out. “Yes, there’s room enough for you to squeeze in, too, Billy, though you take more than your share of space. I thought that, since your information proved valuable to us, it was only right you boys went along. You’ll enjoy seeing how we get our man.”
“How about it, Hugh? Let’s go,” urged Billy eagerly.
“Pile in!” said Hugh without ceremony; and in another second they had found places among the officers who occupied the tonneau of the car.
Aside from the exciting purpose of the trip, the boys knew that they would enjoy speeding along over the country roads in the fast machine. That would be something of a picnic in itself.
Perhaps the Chief was only showing his gratitude by offering the boys this chance for a run, but he may have looked further. Doubtless he remembered that these scouts had proven themselves well able to follow a trail on an earlier occasion, and he may have foreseen a similar emergency. The fugitive thief might abandon the buggy and take to the depths of the woods afoot, on finding himself hotly pursued, and in that case the boys’ services would be most welcome.
That was exactly what happened. The buggy was found, abandoned, and the occupants of the big car, leaving one man to guard it, proceeded to follow the thief’s trail.
From that time on, it would have been difficult to coax either one of the two boys to turn back, so intensely interested did they become in everything that pertained to this actual application of their tracking game. Hugh quickly realized that the police knew next to nothing about following a woods’ trail. Had they been alone, they would surely have been all at sea at the point where the wily rascal had taken to running the length of fallen tree-trunks, jumping off at the ends into thickets of brush, or on flat rocks where there would be no trail left to betray his course.