Here the motor boys were left, McGlory sinking disconsolately into one of the chairs, while Matt roamed around, making himself as familiar as possible with the situation.
From the grated windows he could look off for half a block to the railroad station. The station building was about as large as a good-sized packing case, and there was one spur track, running between the main track and the rear of the hardware store, with a lonely flat car on the rails.
“Here’s a go!” wailed McGlory. “Jugged! Jugged by a country constable, just when a telegram might save the day for us in New York! Sufferin’ cats! Can’t we do something, pard? We’re not going to let a couple of hayseeds knock us out like this, are we?”
Matt was trying the bars at the windows. The ends of the bars were set into the wood of the casing, and the casing was old, and partly decayed.
“We can break out,” said Matt, “but what good will that do us, Joe? We’d be apprehended by the villagers before you could get to the telegraph office. It won’t be possible to send a message from here.”
“How can we send it from anywhere,” cried the cowboy, “if we don’t get away from this place?”
“Jail-breakers are apt to have quite a hard time of it.”
“I’ll take my chances on the hard time if we can make a getaway.”
“The only thing for us to do, so far as I can see, is to wait till the judge gets back from his fishing trip. We can talk to him, and he’ll have to listen to us.”
Matt sat down, and McGlory, grumbling his disgust, started up and went to one of the windows. Laying hold of a bar he gave it a wrench, breaking the end completely out of the wood. A gap was left, through which the boys might squeeze their way to liberty—if it seemed advisable.