“Oh, something like ten miles, I should say,” came the reply. “Too far to go for help. Besides, what good would a dozen or two of those wild Italian laborers be in a thief chase? Chances are the men would make a clean getaway. No, something else will have to be tried if we hope to bring them up with a round turn.”
“What’s to hinder the lot of us whooping after them, and finding some chance either to have them arrested, or perhaps do the job as slick as you please, while they sleep?” demanded Monkey Stallings, who came by his name through his faculty for doings all sorts of antics, from climbing greased poles that no other boy could mount, to hanging from lofty limbs of trees by his toes, and pretending to sleep that way, just as though he were a simian in truth.
“If you only would, it might turn out to be the grandest thing ever!” exclaimed the Merrivale boy, his face lighting up with sudden hope as he contemplated the shining motorcycles nearby, and remembered what wonderful things they were capable of accomplishing in the right hands.
“You see, we were making our way up to a camp where a few of our fellow scouts have been spending a week,” Hugh explained. “We declined to go along because we expected these machines to arrive, and were all fairly wild to get busy with them. And between ourselves we had secretly arranged to give the boys a big surprise after all of us got so we could ride fairly well. But you must know that it is a part of a scout’s education to give up his own pleasure whenever he can help anyone who is in trouble; and so, Gus, we will do what we can to assist you to recover your runabout, as well as the money they took from you.”
“That’s fine of you, Hugh!” declared the other boy, flushing with pleasure, as well as with shame at the recollection of how he had misjudged these splendid fellows in the past. “I’m beginning to get my eyes opened to a lot of things about this scout business, and if only you can help me out, I reckon I’ll just have to join the troop, no matter if I start in as the worst tenderfoot you ever saw.”
“Bully for you, Gusty!” cried the explosive Billy. “Take my word for it, you’ll never have any reason to regret the step if you do hitch up with the scouts. Fact is you’ll wonder how you ever got any fun in life before you knocked the scales off your eyes, and saw things everywhere around you. We know. Lots of us have been through the mill, haven’t we, Monkey?”
“We sure have, Billy,” answered the other solemnly, “and nothing could hire me to throw up my present job of gymnastic teacher to the troop. As to learning things, I’ve found out how to stow away a quarter more rations every meal by just watching you work your jaws, Billy.”
“We can follow after the runabout without much trouble once we examine the marks made by its tires in some muddy spot,” Hugh said, speaking directly to the boy who had been taken from the ledge, “because in nearly every case you’ll find there’s a distinctive mark about the track left by a rubber-shod wheel. I can tell the trail my motorcycle makes among a dozen; both the others have individualities about them that all of us have learned to recognize. And I expect you may have noticed something about the marks your car leaves that would tell you which road it took, in case we came to a fork?”
“Well, I don’t think I ever took the trouble to notice anything like that,” Gus confessed not without more or less confusion, as though he might already be beginning to realize how lacking in practical information his education was, “but now that you speak of it, there was a patch put on one of the rear tires that I should think would leave an impression something like a diamond. Of course, though, that wouldn’t show here where the road is rocky; but at the first chance we could watch out for it.”
Hugh looked at him with a half smile on his face.