“Yes! let the boy come,” said Mr. Briggs. “If he was a witness to the accident he speaks of, we will need his testimony if we overtake the guilty ones.”
“But my machine?” said Dan, doubtfully.
“Lift it right up here,” commanded Mr. Briggs. “We’ll fasten it on the running board. Then, young man, you get in beside Henri, and we’ll be off.”
Dan was quick to obey these suggestions. His Flying Feather he stood upright on the running board of the car, and he saw that it was fastened securely. In five minutes they were off, after Mr. Polk left word at the sheriff’s office for the officers to watch for the mysterious car and its three occupants.
The auto dashed off along the pike toward Riverdale. There were three cross roads that the offenders against law might have taken, as long as they did not complete their run to Upton Falls. But there were by-roads, too, on which they might have hidden and the deputy sheriff advised stopping to inquire at every farmhouse, and of every teamster whom they met. It was some time, however, ere they picked up the trail of the maroon car, and then they obtained the clue in quite a strange way.
As they came to the lane leading up to a barn, the farmer came running out with a pitch fork in his hand. Before Mr. Polk could speak, the man demanded:
“Ye got ’em, hev ye, Sheriff? Wa’al I’m glad of it! I’ll go right down with ye t’ th’ ’squire’s office, an’ I guess, he’ll make ’em pay a pretty price for their fun. That calf of mine run int’ a barbed wire fence an’ tore herself all up——”
“Hold on, Mr. Jackson!” exclaimed the deputy. “You’re getting your dates mixed, I guess. These gentlemen certainly have done you no harm.”
“No harm!” yelled the farmer. “When they come up through the Indian Bridge road not an hour ago, they skeered my heifer into a conniption fit, and come pretty nigh runnin’ over me when I come out at ’em.”
“Not these gentlemen,” said Polk. “I can vouch for them. One is Mr. Thomas Armitage, whom you ought to know, Jackson.”