CHAPTER XXIII
“GETTING WARM”
It was well on towards midnight when Pep and Vic reached Brinton. There had been two changes to make and the village was asleep when they got off the cars at the little railroad depot. Its door was locked, they were the only passengers who had left the train and they stood looking about them in a cheerless, undecided way.
Brinton was decidedly a way-back, one-horse town. When they traced the only light visible to its source, the boys found that it hung over the doorway of a little restaurant. Across this there was a sign reading: “Hotel.”
They had to knock long and loud to arouse a frowsy appearing old man, who opened the door and viewed them with a sleepy and unfriendly eye.
“What do you want?” he challenged, holding the door open about two inches.
“A room, if you’ve got it,” was Pep’s prompt reply.
Somewhat grudgingly the old man finally admitted them. He waited until they had produced a dollar, which was his demand for a double-bedded room. Then he led them to the apartment.
The boys made a very fair shift in getting comfortably landed in beds that sagged at one end and bumped up in the center.
They were supplied with a capital breakfast in the morning, to their surprise this being included in the one dollar paid in advance.
“Now then—what?” inquired Vic, as they came out upon the street.
“Why, my idea is to see the express agent here. It was by express that the film we saw at the New Idea came. It was stamped as coming from here. We’ll make for the depot first.”
The boys came across the man in charge of the railroad depot. He was a loose-jointed, lazy-acting man who pottered about as if he was tired of living.
“Are you in charge here, mister?” inquired Pep.
“Yes, depot agent, telegraph operator, real estate, loans and insurance on the side, baggage master——”
“Stop there,” said Pep. “That’s where we want you. We are looking up some packages that have been sent from here to the New Idea, a picture show in Boston.”
“Hello!” exclaimed the man with a start—“you’re the second one.”
“Second one, what?” propounded Pep.
“To come here, asking about them packages. Yes, there’s been two we sent—‘John Smith’ to the ‘New Idea.’ Don’t believe that’s his right name, though. He sent two of the packages, as I say. About a week ago he stopped sending ’em. Haven’t seen him since.”
“About a week ago?” ruminated Pep. “I can guess that Slavin sent him a warning. Where did the man come from?” he asked.
“Dunno, and no one else. A man who was here a few days since asked me that same question. I gave him a description of the man. He went out searching for him, but he came back and took the train for Boston next morning, looking sort of discouraged, so I reckon he didn’t find out much.”
“The detective Frank Durham hired, I’ll bet,” whispered Vic to Pep.
“Likely enough,” replied the latter. Then he said to the station agent: “Describe the man to us, too; will you, mister?”
The agent did so, “John Smith” was tall, dark and wore a light suit. He had come to the depot on two occasions on horseback, and, it looked, from some distance.
“You’d know that hoss if you saw him,” declared the man. “He was a succus hoss.”
“Oh, a circus horse?” guessed Pep.
“That’s what I said—all mottled like a zebra. And spotted—brown and white. Say, is there something wrong about that fellow that so many people are looking after him?”
“Nothing that you are mixed up in,” assured Pep. Then he learned the direction the shipper of the packages had come from, and he and Vic went outside and held a brief consultation.
“South,” decided Pep, “and that road,” and he pointed in the direction the man they were seeking had taken when last seen by the express agent. “Now then, my opinion is this man comes from some movies camp probably quite a distance from Brinton and in an isolated spot. The railroad map shows no railway to the west for thirty miles. We will follow this road till we strike that line. Then we will make inquiries at the stations we reach if we don’t strike a clew before then.”
“I hope we may do that, Pep,” sighed Vic. “This looks like a dreadful tangle.”
“We’re here to untangle things; aren’t we?” demanded Pep. “Here’s the programme: You take one side of the road, and I’ll take the other. We must make inquiries at every farm house we come to about a tall dark man and a piebald circus horse.”
That was tedious work. At noon they came to a little village some ten miles from their starting point. It had a few houses only and a small general store. The boys bought some crackers and cheese and rested for an hour while they compared notes. Altogether they had found five persons who recalled seeing the mottled horse. They had only casually noticed it, however, and had no idea of where it came from or where it was going.
“Well,” commented Pep, “we’re only sure of one thing.”
“What’s that?” inquired Vic.
“That the man we are looking for came this far, homeward bound on this road.”
“Yes, that’s so,” agreed Vic, “for the people in the last house you called at saw the horse, and that was less than a mile away.”
During the next two hours they found only one more person, a field hand, who had seen the circus horse and its rider. Then they seemed to have lost the trail. There were many confusing cross roads, and the boys were uncertain as to which they should pursue. It was fairly dusk, when dusty, travel worn and tired out, they entered a farm yard and put their usual question to a man refreshing himself at the pump after a hard day’s work.
“We’ll put up here till morning, if they can accommodate us,” Pep told Vic. “Say, mister,” he added, advancing to the farmer, “have you seen anything of a man and a horse—” and Pep rattled off the tiresome formula comprising a description of man and beast.
“A piebald horse!” fairly snorted the man, looking both interested and suspicious—“no, I haven’t; but I’d give a dollar to anyone who has.”
“Is that so?” spoke Pep, pricking up his ears and believing he was going to find out something of value. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m looking for jest sech an animal,” was the spirited reply. “Night afore last someone drove into my orchard over by the field gate with a wagon and a sheet. He lifted one of my bee hives, stand and all, wrapped it in the sheet and scooted.”
“But you didn’t see who did it?” queried Vic, eagerly.
“No, but a neighbor boy coming home late did. That’s how I know about the horse being a piebald one. He saw the sheet tied around the hive and got scared. Thought at first it was a ghost.”
“We are looking for just that horse,” Pep advised the farmer.
“Oh, robbed you, too?”
“No, sir, the people who own that horse did worse than that. We’ve been hunting for them the last twenty miles.”
“You won’t find that horse, I’m thinking,” said the farmer. “The animile is a total stranger to these parts. Never heard none such in the country. My boys spent a hull day trying to run down the varmints.”
“Well, we are on the track of the thieves,” said Pep, “and we’ve got to run them to cover. Can you put us up for to-night, mister?”
The farmer looked the boys over critically. Pep had taken out his pocketbook and that had some influence.
“I calculate I can,” he said. “How do I know, though, that you hain’t in cahoots with the crowd that took that bee hive, come to get hold of something more?”
“I guess I haven’t got as honest a face as you have,” replied Pep naively. “If I had, you’d trust me. Here,” and he extended the pocketbook. “There’s over a hundred dollars there. You can keep it as security until morning to feel safe that we won’t make away with your property.”
“Put it up, put it up,” said the farmer, hastily, shamed by the boyish appeal of Pep and a glance at the wistful, appealing eyes of Vic. “I was only fooling. You can stay, and if you’ll agree to let me know if you get track of them robbers it’ll cost you nothing.”
“Oh, we will surely do that,” promised Pep, “but we want to pay for what we eat.”
“None of that—I’ve said my say,” retorted the farmer. “Just sit down on the stoop till I shut up the tool house and I’ll take you in to marm.”
“What are you thinking of, Pep?” at once inquired Vic, as left alone with him his companion’s face was crossed by a reflective smile.
“I’m thinking that we’re ‘getting warm,’” replied Pep, briskly. “No regular thief would drive away with only one bee hive. He’d take two or a dozen. To my way of thinking, that mottled horse we are after carted away that bee hive to some movies camp near here to get up ‘an educational film.’”
“I’ll bet you’ve hit it!” cried Vic Belton, hopefully.
“Of course I have,” declared Pep. “The horse this farmer describes is the very horse we’ve been trying to run down; isn’t it?”
“Yes, that is sure,” assented Vic.
“Those movies fellows wouldn’t rummage all over the country to steal a bee hive,” continued the confident Pep. “They would naturally select the nearest point where they could find one. They weren’t after honey, or they would have brought a tub and robbed the whole line of hives. Why, it’s clear as crystal to me. They wanted the material for a bee film.”
“Say, Pep, you’re just smart, the way you figure things out so quick and right,” commended Vic, who had come to like his new comrade so greatly that he considered him the cleverest fellow in the world. “That movies crowd must have a regular hideout, though, to be able to come and go with no one able to find out where they have their camp.”
“Yes, they seem to have fixed themselves right in getting out of the way when they want to,” admitted Pep. “You see, though, this district isn’t very well filled up and it would take a long time to go all over it. I think we are ‘getting warm,’ though, as I told you. There’s something in the back of my head tells me we are closer to them than we have been before. We’ll take a fresh start in the morning and see what we can make out.”
“Say, there’s where I can help!” exclaimed Vic, suddenly, and he darted away to where two boys were driving some cows from pasture into a shed.
“I’ve got my twelve quarts fair and square,” announced Vic triumphantly, at the end of fifteen minutes, and he lifted his pail foaming nearly to the brim. “Why, you’re ages behind me,” he rallied his competitors.
The incident made the quartette quite chummy. They went in to an excellent supper. Vic was in high spirits over the exercise and excitement of his exploit. He jollied his rivals in true farm boy fashion. Finally Pep brought up the bee hive incident, and the farm boys learned of his interest in the despoilers who had visited them.
“I say, Pep,” observed one of them, “you ought to try my plan of trailing that stolen hive. I read about it in a farm paper and maybe there’s something to it.”
“What was that?” asked Vic, curiously.
“Why, yesterday I noticed that the bees in the next hive to the stand where the hive was stolen were gone all day. They didn’t go near the clover field. This morning there were only about half the regular bees in that hive. The others didn’t come back.”
“Why,” queried Pep, animatedly, “you don’t think they’ve gone after the stolen bees?”
“Yes, sir, that’s just what I do think,” insisted the lad who had spoken. “Some of ’em couldn’t find the other hives, maybe, and came back; but where are the missing ones?”
“Say,” exclaimed Vic, “that’s a great idea! If you could only follow them——”
“Pshaw!” dissented the farmer, “what do the newspapers know about bees? They just make up all kinds of ridiculous things to fill up their columns.”
“Well, I believe they know something about it in this case,” declared his son. “Why don’t you let me try it, Pop? The papers says to sprinkle the bees with fine flour and keep sight of them for miles and miles.”
“Rubbish!” retorted the self-opinionated father, but after a general discussion of the situation he agreed “to fool away the time on the nonsensical experiment,” as he called it.
Bright and early in the morning both Pep and Vic were down at the breakfast table. The farmer’s boys had already attended to the flouring of the bees and told them about it. They took their guests to the orchard and showed them the hive they had doctored. Then they had to start for their work in the fields.
“I declare, you’ve been right good and entertaining,” declared the farmer, as Pep and Vic came to the house to say good-bye. “None of that!” he roared, as Pep started to take out his pocketbook. “You let us have the news if you find out anything, hey?”
“We will do just that, you can depend upon it,” promised Pep.
Then the boys went back to the orchard. The bees had begun to come out of the hive. They fluttered around, shook their wings, rolled into the grass and seemed working to get the foreign substance from their bodies. Some of them returned to the hive, some followed the denizens of other hives to the clover field. Then one by one, until they comprised quite a floating cloud, a great many of them headed down the road.
“There’s our start,” announced Vic, triumphantly. “All we’ve got to do is to follow them; eh, Pep?”
“Oh, of course we must do that,” was the answer. “As to keeping them in sight, though, that is another question.”
After that they tramped several miles, coming across single bees resting in flowers as if they had given up the task of going any further. Then, too, some bees headed back in the direction of the farm. The trailers were so tired out and hungry by about eleven o’clock that they sat down in a little thicket, and decided to rest for an hour and eat the generous lunch the farmer’s wife had provided for them.
Both dozed for a spell. Pep nudged his snoozing companion at length and started to wrap up the remnants of their feast. As he stooped over to do this, he drew back suddenly with the sharp sudden hail:
“Come here, Vic—quick!”
“What is it?” inquired his comrade, rising to his feet and approaching.
“Look there. See, where the sugar off those cookies has littered the paper.”
“Why, there’s half a dozen bees—our floured ones, too.”
“That’s right,” said Pep. “Now then, try and keep them in sight,” and he gave the newspaper a smart flip, scattering the sugar into the grass. Instantly the intruders arose, circled about in the air and then made a true bee-line away from the spot.