The Corner House Girls on a Tour / Where they went, what they saw, and what they found

Sammy Pinkney had procured several smooth pebbles of about the size of hen’s eggs, and now approached the contending parties. Tom Jonah, too, stood beside Neale and began to show his remaining fangs.

“What are you going to do with those stones, Sammy Pinkney?” demanded Agnes.

“Goin’ to give some of ’em to Neale if he wants ’em,” declared the youngster, with a grin.

Neale O’Neil laughed at that. “I guess we won’t come to blows, Sammy,” he said. “We’ll just get in the car and have our lunch. This constable can’t keep us from eating on the county road, that is sure. Get out the alcohol lamp, folks, if you want your tea.”

They put up the board, and unlimbered the lamp and soon had the kettle boiling; but the constable sat down near by and watched them—and with no pleasant face—the while. Evidently, although they had obeyed his command, he was not wholly satisfied.

It was while they were still eating their lunch that the sky became overcast.

“It really looks as though we should have a tempest, and we ought to get under cover,” remarked Mrs. Heard.

“Oh, yes, do!” said Agnes, eagerly. “I dislike getting drenched.”

They were some distance on the road to Tailtown, however, before the first flash of lightning assured them that the storm was going to overtake them before they could reach any haven.

Neale stopped immediately and put up the top and drew the curtains on either side. He made Agnes get back into the tonneau, although that crowded the others somewhat. But under the rubber blanket in front there was scarcely room for Sammy, Neale, and Tom Jonah.

The rain began drumming on the top of the car before they started again. They were in a locality where there seemed to be no farms. At least they had not passed a barn within the hour that promised shelter for the car. So it was better to go ahead and risk it, than to run back.

CHAPTER XVIII—A VERY ANNOYING SITUATION

“I can’t, Neale. I don’t mean to jump—and I wouldn’t if it wasn’t for that old thunder. I know the bolt of lightning I see won’t hit me—my dad told me that. I guess if I was deaf so I wouldn’t hear the thunder, I’d keep as still as still!”

Not much was said by the girls, and Tom Jonah merely hung his pink tongue out like a flag, whining sometimes when the thunder rolled; for, like Sammy, he was mostly disturbed by it.

The narrow road ahead, as they swooped down into a hollow, seemed to be flooded. The shallow gutters could not contain the amount of water which had fallen, and the wheels of the automobile rolled through a brown stream of sand and water. At the bottom of this hill was a sharp turn; but Neale saw this in plenty of time. However, what lay beyond was completely hidden by an outthrust bank. The water in the driveway deepened as they descended. Despite the hard going the automobile gained momentum from the descent, and Neale steered carefully.

“Just like riding through a river, ain’t it, Neale?” shrieked Sammy.

Tom Jonah, as excited as Sammy himself, barked. Neale punched the horn, although he did not expect to meet anybody or anything in such a storm and in such a lonely place. He slipped in the clutch at the bottom of the hill, turning out slightly to make the turn. He could not foresee the result of this last move; but he realized his mistake in just ten seconds—when it was too late.

The rear wheels skidded a little, and then the car, on the right side, slumped down into the mud and water, hub deep, and stopped dead!

The girls screamed, and Mrs. Heard, too, was frightened by the sudden jolt and the way the car tipped over. It did seem for a moment or two as though there might be a complete overturn.

“Now you’ve done it, Neale O’Neil!” cried Agnes, in her excitement.

“I s’pose I made it rain, too,” sniffed Neale, in disgust. “You give me a pain, Aggie.”

“What nonsense to blame Neale,” Ruth, the fair-minded, hastened to put in. “What shall we do?”

“Stay where we are and keep dry,” Mrs. Heard declared, with decision.

“But Neale can’t get the car out of the mud with us in it,” Agnes cried.

“Nor with you out of it, I reckon,” said the boy, crossly; “wait till I see.”

He crawled out with some difficulty to look the situation over, having to drive back Sammy and Tom Jonah with decision. “I don’t want you two ramping around out here,” he growled.

Neale had put on his slicker when the downpour began, and it was well he had, for this was no ordinary rain. The rush of water had filled the gutter with sand in solution, and there was now a regular quagmire where the wheels of the automobile stood. The fury of the storm had somewhat relaxed, but the rain fell steadily. Even should the rain stop, the water would not run out of this spot for hours. It did not take “half an eye,” as Neale himself said, to see that they were stuck.

“And this is a nice place to spend the night in,” complained Agnes.

“Can nothing really be done, Neale?” asked Mrs. Heard, much worried.

“I can’t get her out without help,” admitted the boy, in a discouraged tone.

Tess and Dot were crying a little, and Sammy looked at them scornfully. “Aw, you kids make me sick,” he said. “You don’t see me bawling, do you? S’pose you was in a pirate ship, ‘way out in the ocean, and she was wrecked?”

“I don’t want to be a pirate—so there!” sobbed Dot.

Tess said, solemnly: “Wait till you get hungry, Sammy Pinkney.”

This silenced Sammy—for the time being, at least.

Suddenly Agnes cried aloud: “Oh, dear me! here it comes again.”

It certainly sounded as though the tempest were returning, there was such a rattling and jangling behind them on the hill. Neale ran around the automobile to look.

A big wagon with a tarpaulin over it, making it look as large as a load of hay, and drawn by a pair of drenched horses, came rattling down the hill. There were two figures in slickers and rubber hats on the seat under the hood.

“A tin peddler’s outfit, sure as you live,” he cried.

“Oh, dear, Neale,” said Ruth, “maybe they will be rough men and will not help you.”

“I reckon they’ll help us if we make it worth their while,” said the boy, with assurance, peering through the rain to try to make out the faces of the two on the wagon seat.

“Be careful, boy,” said Mrs. Heard. “Don’t show them much money. We don’t know what sort of men they may be. Peddlers——”

Neale reached back into the car and seized a heavy wrench. “Nothing like ‘preparedness,’” he said, with a grin.

“My goodness!” exclaimed Agnes, giggling suddenly, “they’ll think you are a highway robber.”

“I’m going to hold them up all right,” returned Neale O’Neil, with assurance.

The wagon was evidently hung with a large supply of tinware and the like, but all under the canvas cover. Yet it came down the hill at such a pace that the horses must not have found their load a heavy one to draw.

Of course the two strangers saw Neale, and the stalled car could not be overlooked, either. The one driving pulled in his team. Neale could make out the features of neither, for the turned-down brims of their hats hid their faces.

But the one driving called out in a very pleasant and unexpectedly cultivated voice:

“Hello there! What’s the matter? In a hole?”

“That’s just what we are in,” Neale responded, and immediately tossed the wrench back into the car. He knew they had nothing to fear from a man with a voice like that.

“Is she in deep?” asked the stranger.

“You can see how she’s bogged down,” Neale returned. “No chance of my humping her out under her own engine, that’s sure.”

“You need something more—about two-horse power, eh?” said the driver of the peddler’s cart, with a laugh.

“It must be a very annoying situation,” said the second person on the seat of the cart.

Neale fairly jumped. It was a most astonishing thing, and he gaped impolitely for a moment up into the speaker’s face. It was a girl!

Neale O’Neil was sure that she laughed at his surprise. But the young man said nothing further as he wrapped the lines around the whipstock and began to climb down.

By this time the Corner House girls were peering out of the curtains of the automobile, very much interested. The young man, when he got upon the ground, appeared to be about twenty-one, and his face was keen and pleasant, if not handsome. It seemed very queer indeed to find two young people of this character driving a tin peddler’s wagon through the country.

“It is a girl!” whispered Agnes, shrilly. “Goodness me! what fun!”

“And a nice girl, too,” murmured Ruth. “That man looks like a college student.”

“Do you s’pose they are on their honeymoon?” suggested the romantic Agnes.

“For pity’s sake don’t ask them till you are a little better acquainted,” begged Ruth.

Mrs. Heard asked the strange girl: “Won’t you get wet up there?”

“Oh, no; I’m quite dry, thanks. And then I can go inside the wagon if it gets too rough.”

Not only Mrs. Heard, but the girls expressed their surprise at this statement.

“You see,” explained the girl, “we have the cart fixed like a van inside. We can sleep in it if we don’t want to put up our tent. It’s very cozy indeed.”

“Why,” said Mrs. Heard, “this seems to be an entirely new idea. And do you really peddle tinware?”

“Oh, yes. Just like other peddlers. Only the country people would rather trade with us, for we look honest,” and she laughed merrily. “Besides, we did it last summer, too, and almost everybody remembers us in this country.”

“I should think it would be splendid!” cried Agnes, with her usual enthusiasm over anything new.

“Oh, yes; it’s fine. And we are having a nice vacation, Luke and I. Luke is my brother. Luke Shepard. I am Cecile.”

Ruth at once gave in turn the names of the automobile party. Meanwhile Dot said to Tess:

“I guess she knows how to be a wild girl better’n you and me did,” and Tess agreed, though with a whispered protest over her sister’s grammar.

Neale and young Mr. Shepard had finally decided that the only way to get the car out of the mire was to unhitch the team from the peddler’s wagon and use that “two horse power engine.”

“You’ll all have to get out while it’s being done, too,” said Neale to his party. “There’ll be weight enough for one pair of horses, at best.”

At once Cecile Shepard hopped down from the seat of the cart, and while the boys unhitched the horses, she got an umbrella and took Mrs. Heard first from the automobile to the rear of the van. There were steps and a door which gave entrance to the strange vehicle; and a lamp was quickly lighted inside. Then Cecile came back with the umbrella for the girls, and the entire touring party, save Neale and Tom Jonah, but including Sammy, were soon cozily ensconced in the peddler’s wagon.

The Corner House girls were delighted with the way the van was arranged—and they were delighted with the cheerful, intelligent Cecile Shepard, too. They had a very talkative time while the boys worked hard to get the stranded automobile out of the mud.

The rain thundered down upon the huge tarpaulin that covered the van. A sweet breath of damp air blew through the wagon from the opening in front to the open door behind. Cecile told them something of the experiences of herself and her brother as tin peddlers.

Luke had a rope long enough to surround the body of the stalled automobile, so that the strain could be properly distributed. He and Neale tackled on the horses and carefully started them.

At the second trial the automobile wheels came out of the mud, and she rolled out upon the harder center of the road.

“Whoop—ee!” yelled Neale. “Now we’re all right. And—and the rain is stopping! What do you know about that?”

CHAPTER XIX—THE TIN BADGE OF THE LAW

“How’s that?” asked Neale, curiously. “Not in that party-wagon of yours? We’d sure be a ‘close corporation.’”

“Oh, no!” and the other laughed. “We’re going to Alonzo Keech’s barn. It’s up a side road a piece—just around this turn. That’s where sis and I were heading for. You see,” Luke Shepard further explained, “we have established a regular route for our wares, and we have been here before—and put up at Keech’s barn, too.”

Meanwhile Cecile Shepard had suggested the same thing to Mrs. Heard and the Corner House girls. They all agreed to this, for to the automobile touring party it was “any port in a storm.”

The boys rehitched the span of very good horses to the peddler’s wagon, Luke got on the driver’s seat and the girls and Sammy returned to the automobile, and the procession started, the peddler’s wagon going ahead to lead the way.

Neale was very careful to keep in the middle of the road thereafter; for although the rain had ceased, as Luke foretold, the roads were still rivers. The branch road they turned into led back in the same general direction from which the tourists had come; but that made no difference now. It was shelter for the night they wanted, and in the on-coming darkness and the storm they all felt only too glad to be led without question.

In a half hour or so, they came out of the woods, after surmounting a hill, and found open fields all about them. The sky remained overcast and it was a dark night; but it was better here in the open than in the woods where the accident to the automobile had happened. There was not a gleam of lamplight anywhere; and when the peddler’s wagon stopped finally in front of a great hay barn, Luke Shepard assured them that the dwelling of the owner of the farm was beyond a patch of woods and could not be seen even in daylight.

“I hope he will not object to our stopping here,” Mrs. Heard said, when she climbed down from the van, in which she had stayed for the ride to the barn.

“Yes. We have had one experience with the natives,” Agnes said, laughing, “that was not pleasant.”

“Oh! Mr. Keech will not object,” Cecile assured them. “We have found the people around here very nice indeed.”

“So have we—for the most part,” Ruth hastened to say. “Nobody could be nicer than the people we stayed with last night”; and she told the Shepards about the blacksmith and “Mother.”

“Oh, we know them! They are the salt of the earth!” cried Cecile.

“Then that constable that wouldn’t let us eat our lunch in the woods over yonder must be the pepper,” said Neale, with a grin.

Luke and Cecile had to be told about that. But they did not recognize the officious constable.

“He must be a new one, and feels his oats,” said Luke.

“I think he was a cheap grafter and wanted to be tipped,” said Neale O’Neil. “That’s what I think.”

“But of course he was an officer of the law,” Mrs. Heard said. “He wore a badge.”

“‘The tin badge of courage,’” said Luke with a laugh. “I don’t know who he could be. But this Mr. Keech who owns this place is the county sheriff. So we have the law on our side while we stop here. Mr. Keech is our friend. We shall stop at his house to-morrow and spend most of the day. We always do when we get around this way.”

The door of the barn was found unbarred, and with the automobile lights and Luke’s lanterns, the party “made camp” very nicely indeed. The automobile was backed in on the floor of the barn, and the big doors left open. The Shepards’ tent—a very good wall tent—was erected on a well-drained piece of ground. It was decided that Mrs. Heard and the girls should sleep in the tent and in the van, while the male members of the two parties put back the motor car cover and made themselves comfortable on the cushioned seats of the car.

Of course, supper came before this scheme of retiring had been adjusted. And a delightful time they had getting the meal and eating it. The food was mostly supplied by the “tin peddlers,” as Agnes insisted upon calling Luke and Cecile Shepard.

“I shall lay in some condensed foods myself just as soon as we find a town again,” declared Mrs. Heard. “These chances of being caught in lonely places without anything to eat come too frequently. Touring the country in a motor car is not very different from being cast away on a desert island!”

The children, of course, thought the experience quite as exciting as anything that had previously occurred.

“I like it better than the Gypsy camp,” said Dot, warmly. “That cart we are going to sleep in is just the cutest thing.”

“Just the same, I am glad Tom Jonah is with us this time,” Tess said. “Everything is so sort of open around here.”

The presence of the big dog made them all feel safer when the time to retire came, although the Shepards were used to camping out, and had never yet been molested in their two years’ experience.

The two parties gave each other full personal particulars. The brother and sister had friends in Milton, whom the Corner House girls knew. And then, there was another bond between Luke and Cecile Shepard and the four Corner House girls. They were all orphans.

Luke was in his sophomore year at college. Cecile was attending a preparatory school, and was going to have a college education, too. But they had partly to work for it, for their only relative was a maiden aunt who could help them but little, and there had been only money enough left by their mother to partly educate the brother and sister.

“And we get a nice vacation and lots of fun and some money by going out with our van for three months each year,” Cecile explained. “The rest of the year we rent the horses and van and the route to a man who has a little restaurant business at the shore in the summer. So we do pretty well.”

Tom Jonah, as watchman, made no sound all night long. The weather gradually cleared, and at daybreak there was every promise of a beautiful day, with everything washed clean by the rain.

The motoring party decided to make an early start—and without breakfast. The Shepards knew just where there was a good roadside hotel only twenty miles away, and Neale was sure they would get there in season for breakfast.

Their host and hostess, however, insisted upon their having coffee before they started, and when the automobile got under way, the Corner House girls and their party felt, as they had the morning previous, that they were leaving some very good friends behind. They hoped to meet Luke and Cecile again on their return trip; if not, Cecile was to write to Ruth. The “tin peddlers” had also promised to make the old Corner House, in Milton, a visit during the next winter.

“Dear me suz!” sighed Agnes, as they wheeled away, using one of Mrs. MacCall’s exclamations, “isn’t this just delightful? I think touring the country in this way, and meeting folks, and making friends, is just delightful.”

“Not so delightful last night when that storm was beating down upon us,” Mrs. Heard reminded her.

“And you did your share of the kicking then, all right all right,” put in Neale O’Neil. “Oh, you did squall, Aggie.”

“Horrid thing!” exclaimed Agnes. “Don’t remind me of unpleasant things this morning. I feel—I feel as happy as a big sunflower.”

Just then they turned a curve in the level road and saw a lanky man in a drooping-brimmed hat, standing in the middle of the way.

“Hul-lo!” ejaculated Neale, slowing down.

“Is the man deaf?” demanded Mrs. Heard.

Neale punched the horn a couple of times, and the man merely turned to face them and held up a warning hand.

“Oh, cracky!” cried Neale. “Another tin-badger.”

“And he’s holding one of those tin watches on us, too,” said Agnes, in despair.

“Say!” observed Sammy, the sharp-eyed. “That’s the cop that wouldn’t let us build the fire yesterday.”

“It certainly is,” gasped Ruth. “Now what shall we do?”

“I feel like bumping him,” growled Neale. Nevertheless, he shut off the engine as the constable seemed to have no intention of moving out of the road.

“Wal!” said the tall man, finally facing them completely and snapping the case of his watch shut in a very business-like way. “Got ye that time, I swan! Comin’ fifty mile an hour if ye was an inch——”

Suddenly he discovered that he was not entirely a stranger to the touring party. His mouth sagged open for a moment and he did not continue his remarks before Neale got in a word or two.

“You are very much mistaken, constable,” he said. “I could not drive this car on this road at the speed you state—and if you knew anything about an auto you’d know it, too.”

“Oh, don’t, Neale!” whispered Ruth, from behind.

“So! I’ve seen ye before, have I, young cock o’ the walk?” snarled the constable. “You was running over speed, an’ don’t you fergit it. And I’m goin’ to take ye all back to Tuckerville and let Jedge Winslow tell ye sumpin’.”

“Oh, dear me!” moaned Agnes. “And we haven’t had breakfast!”

Mrs. Heard here put in her word—and she spoke sternly:

“You are making a grave mistake, Mr. Officer. We do not drive our automobile at any time faster than the law allows. And certainly we were not doing so now. How do you know how fast we were coming? You could not even see us until we came around that curve.”

“Oh, I’ve had experience, I have, ma’am,” said the fellow with a mean grin on his homely face.

“This is a regular hold-up!” exclaimed Neale, in wrath. “Why didn’t you pull a gun and tell us to hold up our hands while you went through our pockets? It wouldn’t be any worse.”

“I’m likely to pull me a good switch an’ wear it out on ye, ye fresh Ike!” declared the constable. “Don’t you hand me no more sass—now I warn ye.”

“But to go away back to Tuckerville!” groaned Ruth.

“And not a hotel there,” Agnes said.

“I do not believe any justice of the peace will uphold this fellow if we do appear before him,” Mrs. Heard said.

“If ye don’t want to go,” said the constable, whose ears seemed to be as preternaturally keen as they were unnaturally large—“if ye don’t want to go back to Tuckerville, ye kin pay yer fine right here—ten dollars. That’ll be about right, unless I add on a coupla dollars more to pay for this boy’s sass.”

“What did I tell you?” exclaimed Neale, to the others. “It’s a hold-up!”

CHAPTER XX—EXCITEMENT

“Very well,” said the lady. “I disapprove of such a thing, but it at least will relieve us of this man’s presence——”

“Here comes another car,” cried Tess, who was not wholly attentive to the argument.

“Now you’ll get a chance to sting another party,” snapped Neale, glaring at the constable.

But the latter made him no reply. In fact, he had suddenly changed his attitude. Instead of standing boldly before the machine, he cringed along to the tonneau door with his hand held out for the money Mrs. Heard was selecting from her bag.

“Hold on!” exclaimed Neale, suddenly. “Don’t pay that fellow too quickly. Let’s have witnesses. Here comes the car.”

“You pay me now, or ’twill be too late,” cried the constable, angrily.

Just then the coming car appeared around the curve—a heavy roadster. The plainly frightened constable gave the single occupant of the car one glance, and instantly turned without the money and ran.

“Hi! stop that fellow!” shouted the man in the car.

“With all my heart,” responded Neale O’Neil, joyfully, and, scrambling out of his seat, he gave chase to the lanky man.

The fellow did not keep long to the road, but vaulted a rail fence and started across a muddy field. Neale, protected by his leggings, did not mind the mud, and kept on after the rascal. He had a pretty well defined idea that this fellow who had tried to collect money from Mrs. Heard had merely played constable and was nothing more than a cheap robber. Neale was so angry that he was determined not to let the fellow get away.

He heard the second automobile stop, and supposed the man in it was following, too; but he did not glance back to see. Just then he felt that he could master the lanky man alone, if need be.

And that is exactly what happened. The fellow got to the other side of the field with Neale gaining on him at every jump. Once in the woods there, however, the Milton boy feared the fugitive would be able to hide from him. So Neale increased his pace, sprinting for the last few rods, and caught the fellow just as he reached the fence. Neale tackled low, in true football fashion, and brought the long-legged man down with a crash. There they both rolled on the muddy ground, Neale clinging to the fellow’s knees, and the latter clawing and snarling like a wildcat.

Sammy Pinkney had followed the chase as far as the top rail of the roadside fence, where Mrs. Heard had commanded him in no uncertain tone to stop. There the little fellow stood, waving his cap and yelling encouragement to Neale O’Neil, while the stranger from the second automobile strode across the field at a rapid gait.

“Good boy!” shouted this stranger, heartily. “Hang on to him.”

Neale hung. His face was scratched and his clothing muddy; but the long-legged fellow could not do him very much harm before help came. Indeed, when he once saw that he was bound to be captured he stopped struggling and began actually to blubber.

“I was only foolin’,” he whined. “Lemme up, boy. I wouldn’t hurt ye.”

“I know you won’t hurt me,” snapped Neale. “I won’t let you—that’s why.”

“Hold on to him!” shouted the other man again.

Neale let the rascal up; but he hung to his coat-collar with both hands.

“I was just a-foolin’,” repeated the captive, and he actually shook with terror. “Ye know, Sheriff, I’m always foolin’.”

Neale looked then with increased interest upon the big man who was approaching. This must be Sheriff Keech, Luke Shepard’s friend.

“So you got the ornery critter, did you?” demanded the county officer, panting from his exertions. “Good boy.”

“Aw, say, now, Sheriff! you know I’m only foolin’,” almost wept the captive.

“Oh, I know you’re the town cut-up, Abe,” growled the sheriff. “But this time you’ll have a chance to think it over in jail. Why!” he added, to Neale, “I knew who this must be the minute Luke Shepard told me about him; and as I saw him come down the road about an hour ago, I had a hunch I’d just about catch him at his capers.”

“Aw, Sheriff,” begged the fellow. “Don’t you be too hard on me. I jest found that star——”

“You are a rascal!” snapped the county officer. “You sent off to a mail-order house and bought that bum badge and just couldn’t keep from flirting around with it. Showing what you thought you’d do if you was a constable. Oh, I’ll put you where the dogs won’t bite you.”

“I—I never collected no money from ’em,” whined the would-be constable.

“No. That’s because I came along just a little too soon. I wish you had got the money. Then I would have had you to rights, sure enough,” declared the sheriff, bitterly.

“Oh, let him go, young man. He won’t run now; for if he does he’ll be resisting arrest, and that’ll fix him with the judge for sure.”

“Why, say, he isn’t right in the head, is he?” demanded Neale O’Neil, wonderingly. “Making out to be a constable, and robbing people, and all that?”

“He’s one of these half-baked critters you find once in so often that take correspondence school courses to learn to be detectives, and all that sort of mush. Ugh!”

“Abe” was a very forlorn looking creature as he came out to the road. Sammy on the fence waved his cap again and cheered.

“I tell you, Neale, you’re some runner,” declared the boy, enthusiastically. “What are you going to do—hang him?”

“That horrid child!” exclaimed Agnes. “I never heard of such a bloodthirsty boy before.”

But the rest of the party were inclined to feel that the punishment to be meted out to the fellow who had posed as constable could not be too harsh.

Sheriff Keech ordered Abe to get into his car, and seemed to have no fear that the mean-spirited fellow might try to run away again.

“I know Abe,” he said to Mrs. Heard, when she suggested this possibility. “He hasn’t any more character than a dishrag. He’s arrested now, and he knows it. He wouldn’t dare run away from me once I’ve put my hand on him.

“Now, ma’am, tell me all about it.”

Mrs. Heard had plenty of help in relating the circumstances surrounding the touring party’s two adventures with this Abe. Everybody wanted to tell what he or she thought of the fellow, even to Dot. The latter said, with conviction:

“He is not a nice man at all, and I’m awfully glad he doesn’t live anywhere near our house.”

“I don’t know that any neighborhood would give Abe a bonus for moving into it,” chuckled Mr. Keech. “Well! I won’t detain you. I can scare him bad enough as it is. And thirty days in jail will do Abe a world of good. I won’t keep you folks as witnesses; you’ve had trouble enough.”

So the matter was settled very amicably, and the touring party from Milton hastened on to the Wayside Rose Inn, at Brampton, for breakfast.

“One thing we never thought about,” Agnes said to Neale, when they had bidden Sheriff Keech good-bye.

“What’s that?”

“Why, about Mr. Collinger’s car and that Joe Dawson fellow. My! what mean people we do manage to meet.”

“And a little while ago you were thinking what good folks we had met,” laughed Neale. “But you are mistaken, Aggie. I spoke to the sheriff about Saleratus Joe and his mate and the lost car. Nothing doing. I’ve asked everybody else we have talked with—the blacksmith and Luke Shepard and all—about that bunch.”

“Oh! have you, Neale?” cried Mrs. Heard. “And has nothing come of it?”

“Well, Mrs. Heard,” said the boy, “all trace of that car and those fellows seems to have ended right there at the Higgins’ farm—where the Gypsy king saw them for the last time. That’s the way it looks to me.”

“Oh, dear me!” sighed Agnes. “I wish you’d have let me hunt in that barn for the car.”

“Or me,” put in Sammy, with confidence.

“Say! you two give me a pain,” cried Neale, and refused to talk about it any further.

They made a fine run that day, getting on good roads again, and they spent the night with friends of Mrs. Heard’s who had been on the lookout for them for two days. A letter was waiting for the chaperone from her nephew, stating that the police were looking for Saleratus Joe and another man in connection with the disappearance of the Maybrouke runabout, and that the information she had sent might aid in the arrest of the automobile thieves.

“Well,” said Agnes, “of course I hope the police catch them; but it would be fun if we could bring about their arrest and find the machine, too, Neale.”

“Don’t let it worry you, Aggie,” he advised. “There isn’t any reward offered, so you’d have your work for your pains.”

Just the same, neither of them forgot the matter, and it was a topic of conversation between them, now and then, throughout the entire tour.

They went on as far as Fort Kritchton, and spent the week-end at the Monolith Hotel there, to which their trunks had been forwarded. The car needed some slight repairs, and the girls found pleasant friends. This point was to be the farthest they expected to travel from Milton.

Neale found a party of boys camping up in the woods above the hotel, and he enjoyed himself, too; but he had to take Sammy along with him most of the time, and he declared to Agnes that if he ever went anywhere again and had his choice of taking Sammy or a flea, he would choose the flea!

“You have no more idea of where to find him from one moment to another than a flea,” growled the older boy. “I’m coming to the old bachelor’s belief in the treatment and bringing up of boys.”

“What is that?” asked the amused Agnes, who had had her own experiences with Sammy Pinkney.

“Why, the crabbed old bachelor, who had six small nephews, declared he believed all boys should be taken at about three years of age and put in barrels, the heads nailed on, and that they should be fed through the bungholes.”

“Goodness!” laughed Agnes. “And when they grew up?”

“‘Drive in the bungs,’” declared Neale, seriously. “That was his creed and I am about ready to subscribe to it.”

Sammy, however, had a good time. He confided to Mrs. Heard and Ruth that he had never had such a good time in his life. He got letters and money from his mother and father, just as the Corner House girls did, likewise, from home; and he was actually growing sturdy looking as well as brown.

“Whether this tour does anybody else good or not, Sammy P. is being helped,” declared Mrs. Heard.

“‘Sammy P. Buttinsky,’” sniffed Agnes. “Such a plague. I believe his mother will lose ten years of her age in appearance during this time of Sammy’s absence. She certainly ought to be our friend for life.”

After all, however, they none of them could really be “mad at” Sammy, as Tess said. He was a plague; but there was something really attractive about him, too.

“He is the most un-moral child I ever heard of,” Ruth said. “He seems to have stepped right out of the stone age.”

Mrs. Heard smiled at that statement. “My dear girl,” she said, “most boys are that way. Philly Collinger was—and look at him now,” for Mrs. Heard was very proud indeed of the county surveyor. “I think there is one very helpful thing that you Corner House girls are missing.”

“What is that, Mrs. Heard?” asked Ruth, in curiosity.

“You have missed having a brother or two. They are great educators for the feminine mind,” laughed the lady.

However, Sammy behaved himself pretty well—considering—all the time the touring party remained at the Monolith Hotel. The little girls whom Tess and Dot played with looked somewhat askance at Sammy, for his boasted intention of following in the sanguinary wake of Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, and Sir Henry Morgan, set him as a creature apart from the rest of boykind. In fact, among the little folk, Sammy Pinkney was quite the sensation for several days. Then little Eddie Haflinger developed a carbuncle on the back of his neck and Sammy’s swashbuckling tendencies rather paled before the general interest in Eddie’s stiff neck.

However, everybody had a good time at Fort Kritchton; but the “call of the wild,” as Agnes expressed it, was the stronger. They had had so many adventures—pleasant as well as disconcerting—on the road, that even Mrs. Heard was glad when the time came to leave the resort.

“Let’s send our trunks right back to Milton,” Agnes said. “No more ‘Fluffy Ruffles’ for mine till we get home. Let’s rough it.”

Their bags in the automobile really did contain all they would need, so it was agreed to live in plain and serviceable garments for the rest of the trip.

“If we run short of clean linen and handkerchiefs,” said Ruth, “we shall have to stop and do our washing in a brook. How about that?”

“I suppose you’ll want to stretch lines over the auto and dry your clothes as we travel,” growled Neale O’Neil. “Then if we meet some fidgety old farmer-woman with a more fidgety horse—good-night!”

“I wish,” Agnes declared, “that we had brought a tent with us—a nice one like the Shepards have. Wouldn’t it have been fun to camp out every night—just like those Gypsies?”

“How about it when it rained?” asked Ruth.

“Well, we’ve been out in one rainstorm—and we’re neither sugar nor salt,” said her sister, sticking to her guns.

“But never again—if I can help it,” cried Mrs. Heard. “It is all right for you young folks; but my blood is not so young as yours; nor is my appetite for adventure and what you call ‘fun’ quite so keen as it used to be.”

It was a fact. The young folks only laughed at that memorable experience when they were overtaken by the storm. It was all what Agnes called “fun.”

The touring party planned a roundabout way home to Milton, in order to see a part of the country that they had not before driven through.

“And we’ll take the good roads, too. I understand more about this map and guide book than I did,” proclaimed Neale O’Neil.

However, at one point they agreed to leave the better traveled roads so as to spend another night with the crossroads blacksmith and “Mother.” And they half hoped to meet the Shepards near there, also.

“That’ll bring us around past the Higgins farm, too,” Neale said, thoughtfully.

“Oh, Neale! I want to take a look into that barn myself,” cried Agnes.

“Pshaw!” responded her boy friend. “If that car of Mr. Collinger’s was ever there, Saleratus Joe and his chum have got it away long since, of course.”

But Agnes was hopeful. She usually was of a sanguine mind.

CHAPTER XXI—THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS

They had stopped beside the road for lunch, as they almost always did, and as soon as they had eaten the children were anxious to explore.

The almost dry bed of a water-course attracted their attention, and as they could step from rock to rock, and so keep their feet dry, they started up this ravine. Sammy, of course, led and recklessly leaped from rock to rock with the assurance of a goat. The little girls were agile enough; but Tess gave much attention to Dot, and the latter had to be sure that the Alice-doll got into no difficulty.

“You mustn’t go so fast, Sammy,” urged Tess. “You know we haven’t got to catch a train. And do go away, Tom Jonah! You’re all wet. When you shake yourself I’d just as lief be walking close behind a sprinkling-cart.”

Both the boy and the dog laughed at her; but Dot, realizing that Alice’s best gown might be ruined, almost fell off her stepping-stone as Tom Jonah deliberately shook himself again and she tried to shield her doll’s finery.

“Oh, bully!” shouted Sammy, suddenly. “There’s blackberries.”

The bushes were overhanging the steep wall of the ravine on one side. Tess looked doubtfully up the rocky slope.

“They’re mostly red, Sammy,” she objected. “Or green.”

“Some of ’em’s black enough,” declared the boy. “Come on! Let’s get some.”

Sammy scrambled up the rough side of the gully. Tom Jonah bounded after him and then looked back at his little mistresses to see if they were coming too.

“Well! I won’t be beaten by a boy,” said Tess, with sudden decision. “Let’s go too, Dot.”

It was a rather hard pull for the little girls; and Dot got her knees “scrubby,” although she saved the Alice-doll’s dress. They came to the top of the height all but breathless and with flushed faces.

Sammy was coolly picking the best berries and cramming them into a mouth which betrayed to all who might behold his greediness. “You better hurry up,” he advised, with a lofty detachment from all chivalry, “or there won’t be any left. There ain’t many ripe ones, after all.”

“Well, I do declare!” exclaimed Tess. “You aren’t very polite, Sammy Pinkney.”

“You—you might have saved us some!” protested Dot.

The little girls looked all about. They did not see any other blackberry bushes in the vicinity. But Tess sighted something else.

“Oh, Dot! Roses! Lovely, pink, wild, roses! Did you ever see so many?”

There was a veritable hedge of the pretty, fragrant, delicate flowers at the far side of this little field. The two girls raced over to them at once, forgetting both Sammy’s greediness and the berries. Tom Jonah bounded after them, and rushed through a gap in the rose hedge. Instantly there was excitement on the far side of the hedge, just out of sight.

An angry and excited voice rose in a familiar: “Bla-a-a-t! bla-a-a-t!”

“Oh, my! what’s that?” asked Dot, startled.

“It sounds just like Billy Bumps,” said Tess.

Again it sounded: “Ba-a-a! bla-a-a-t!” Tom Jonah barked. Sammy came running over to them.

“Hear that old Billy goat?” he shouted. “I bet Tom Jonah’s treed him!”

He dived through the break in the hedge and perforce, because of their curiosity, the little Corner House girls were drawn after him. There they found both Tom Jonah and the boy dancing about a rather savage-looking black-faced ram that had been tied to a stump and that was now so wound up in his rope that he could do little but stamp his hoofs and shake his horns at his tormentors.

“Oh, Sammy! don’t worry the poor goat,” begged Dot.

“Come here, Tom Jonah!” commanded Tess sternly, and the dog obeyed if the boy did not.

“Aw, what’s the odds? He can’t get at us,” said Sammy, careless of both his grammar and the ethics of the case. “And he’s only an old goat.”

“That is just horrid of you, Sammy Pinkney!” declared Tess. “Suppose it was our own poor Billy Bumps?”

The girls, no more than the boy, did not recognize the difference between the goat they knew well and the ram that they had never seen before. The black-faced rogue had been tied because it was not safe to let him run loose with the herd.

“We must help him,” declared Tess, having made Tom Jonah go to the rear. “We can’t leave him tied here to suffer—and all wound up in that rope. If Neale were only here——”

“Oh, yes!” agreed Dot. “Neale would fix it all right.”

“Say,” declared Sammy, spurred to the quick, “I ain’t afraid. If Neale could do it, I guess I can. But just the same, I bet if we let him loose he’ll chase us.”

“Oh, no! he wouldn’t do that, would he?” cried Dot.

“He wouldn’t be so ungrateful,” said Tess severely.

“Poor, poor old Billy,” cooed Dot, putting out her hand to the ram.

“He—he doesn’t look just like our goat; but I know he’s suffering,” Tess declared.

The noise the ram made would naturally lead one to think that he was suffering. If not urged on by this appearance, Sammy desired to make a certain impression upon his companions. He walked boldly up to the stump to which the ram was tethered. Things began to happen immediately! That black-faced ram had no more idea of gratitude than a rattlesnake.

Sammy got two loops of the rope off the stump, and another off the ram’s hind leg. The beast immediately put down its head and bumped Sammy just as hard as he possibly could.

“Ow! Ouch!” yelled Sammy. “Get out, you mean thing!”

“Bla-a-at!” said the ram, and tried to charge again. Sammy attempted to scramble out of the way; the little girls screamed; Tom Jonah began to bark and to jump about the excited party.

The ram ran several times around the stump in the right direction to unwind his rope; but in so doing he got Sammy and the rope entangled. In a moment more the modern pirate was lashed to the post, yelling vigorously, while the ram was brought to a stop again on too short a rope to do the boy any damage with his ugly horns, although he threatened Sammy continuously.

The screams of the three children and the barking of Tom Jonah was bound to raise the neighborhood. A shout soon replied, and the screaming of other youthful voices. Into the field at its far end came a man, running, and close upon his heels several ragged and bare-legged children, both boys and girls.

“What are ye doin’ there, ye little imps?” roared the man, bearing down on the little Corner House girls and their unfortunate champion in a very ugly way.

“Oh, do help Sammy!” begged Tess, with clasped hands, of the ugly man.