The Auto Boys' Vacation Part 1

The Auto Boys' Vacation.

by James A. Braden.

CHAPTER I

AGAIN THE LONELY SOUTH FORK ROAD

"You can't hide anything from the chief," observed Willie Creek, when Chief Fobes had left his garage, the scene of the mystery related in _The Auto Boys' Big Six_.

"Well, he didn't seem to be a whole lot interested to find out who broke in here--who killed our dog," replied Billy Worth, severely.

"You don't _know_ him," returned Mr. Creek. "You just show him the fellow that done the deed and he'll arrest him mighty quick."

"Maybe if we'd see a man robbing a bank here, then called Fobes so he could see, too, that the man _was_ robbing the bank, he'd do something,"

remarked Billy, as the lads returned to the hotel.

"I'll tell you what _he'd_ do," growled Paul Jones. "He'd say--'now from the standpoint of the law, maybe that man is going to commit a crime.

From the standpoint of the law, he better go a little careful or I'll tell his mother on him.'"

All of which might be taken to indicate that Chief Fobes was not as great a man in the minds of the four boys as he was in his own. Still, something might be said on both sides of this subject, quite as Phil Way now remarked, but the conversation was abruptly dropped.

"No news yet?" asked Mr. Wagg. The lads had just reached the hotel again.

"None of the car, but--" and then they told the landlord of the killing of Scottie. Confidentially they intimated their belief that John Smith or "Pickem" might know something of the affair.

"Very strange," mused Mr. Wagg. "He checked out--paid his bill and left--last night. He said he was leaving on the ten o'clock train east.

Seemed put out because the party he had been expecting in to see him had not come. But he left no word--no address for mail, or anything."

The hotel proprietor was not at all pleased with the indifference of Chief Fobes. The boys had told him of all that took place at the garage.

"Yet of course," said he, "it might make a difference if you lived here.

There'd be quite a little expense to find out who killed the dog and, besides, the thieves, if it was thieves who did it, didn't get anything.

It doesn't seem to me, now really, that this new trouble has anything to do with your lost automobile, and I take it that that's the main thing, after all."

To this the boys agreed and, eager to put into execution Phil's plan to telephone to all the larger cities east and west, to get some trace of the Big Six, if possible, they started for the telephone office.

"But we can't all telephone," said Phil. "Who will look after burying Scottie? And who will go to Ferndale in the Torpedo and take back the pick and shovel to the blacksmith? Even if he did say we might have them as long as we liked, they should be toted home to-day."

Billy and Paul volunteered for the work mentioned. With the cold, stiff body of poor Scottie covered over with muslin in the tonneau, they started the stray automobile again toward the lonely South Fork and Ferndale. Where the dog's burial place should be had been a problem.

Willie Creek suggested a wooded knoll where some evergreens grew, not far beyond the branching of the road. This place the two boys reached in due time. It seemed to be quite what they sought.

Overhead the always green branches would sing a gentle requiem in the breeze the whole year through. The thick, emerald foliage would protect the little grave below, both from the violence of winter's storms and the heat of the summer sun.

The solemn task was not a pleasant one. They wrapped the clean, new muslin around the body that in life had been so lithe, so strong, so active and so handsome, and gently placed it in the soft, cool ground.

After the beautiful custom of the Grand Army of the Republic they put bits of evergreen in the grave, in token of unceasing remembrance of their dead comrade. Slowly they filled in the earth.

"We'll come back some day--some day when we've at last got out of this awful ocean of bad luck we seem to be in, and we'll put up a little stone to mark the grave," said Billy. "If ever a dog deserved it, Scottie does. I only wish we knew to whom he rightly belonged before Mr.

Knight ever saw him. They'd like to hear, I think, that he was a hero, whether they cast him off or not, or even if he was a runaway."

Going on toward Ferndale, the little town two or three miles beyond where the Big Six was ditched, Billy and Paul again deeply felt the lonely influence of the unfrequented road. Even in the bright suns.h.i.+ne the old mill-pond, the mill, the big, empty icehouse, the weeping willows near them--all seemed to tell of that dreadful tragedy of many years ago. The boys both noticed as they pa.s.sed how the road's bank sloped down, and their active imaginations plainly pictured the frightened horses, the overturned carriage and the flood of the great, dark pond closing over the young man and his mother, whose sad story Willie Creek had told them.

Farther on, at the spot where all their own troubles had had their beginning, the two lads stopped. Filled with vain regrets they looked again all about the place where the Six went down. But if they expected to make any new discovery, they were disappointed. The road was dry now.

The broken fence rails still lay at the foot of the embankment. The trampled gra.s.s and weeds still told of what had happened, but no one had been near; no human creature, it was to be believed, had visited the scene since the boys last saw it.

Returning to their car, the friends soon reached the house where they had stopped to make inquiry that first day of their trouble--the house where lived the lonely, old man, all his thoughts in the days of long ago. They now knew the story of the faded dwelling, the crumbling condition of every structure. Curiously they glanced about, thinking they might see the lonely, old gentleman and give him a friendly salute--just a hand thrown up for an instant--as they pa.s.sed.

Ah, there he was! Seated in the kitchen doorway, he saw the machine even before Paul and Billy saw him. Their wave of a hand seemed to please him, and he waved a beckoning signal in return. Billy jumped down and walked up to see if something was wanted.

"No, no!" the old man replied, far more pleasantly than at that former time. He meant only to acknowledge their greeting, he said. Then he asked if the owner of the runaway car had been found.

This led Billy to tell all about the misfortune that had followed the picking up of the strange automobile. The farmer ruefully shook his head. There were many days together that no vehicle went along this road, in these latter years, he said. He could hardly understand how so strange a thing should happen almost at his door. And he had been disturbed in other ways. Only last night, as he sat in the kitchen door, he had seen a crouching figure in the moonlight slip from one tree to another. It was after midnight. Visitors he little expected to have at any time, much less at such an hour. So he called out, "h.e.l.lo, there!"

The figure hastened away and he saw it no more.

"It fretted me some," said the old gentleman slowly, "but I didn't see anything more, clean to daylight."

Somehow the picture of the aged, unhappy man sitting all night in the kitchen door, as his imagination presented it, touched Billy's sympathies deeply. He asked if Mr. Peek would not like to take a little ride in the car to Ferndale. They were coming back at once. It would take but a little while, he urged.

With something more like a smile than had been seen on his face for many a year, the old man said he never had ridden in an automobile, and would be glad to go. He climbed up to the front seat beside Paul. Billy told him it was the more comfortable place to ride. And plainly Mr. Peek enjoyed the trip. He was quite silent but his deep, pain-marked eyes lighted up noticeably.

"It's a grand thing to be young," said he, at last.

Neither blacksmith nor storekeeper at Ferndale had heard the slightest inquiry for the runaway automobile, which was not a runaway at all at the time it pa.s.sed through that village the previous Friday. Nor had they heard anything which might cast light upon the theft of the Big Six.

"You'll find that whoever had this Torpedo car is the same party that hooked your machine," said the blacksmith. "Stands to reason. Wherever could he have disappeared to, if it ain't so?"

"I'm afraid you're on the wrong track," smiled Billy, a little sadly.

"Chief Fobes, at Griffin, says positively that the two things--this lost machine on the one hand, and the stealing of our car on the other--have no connection with each other."

"Matter of opinion!" spoke the blacksmith warmly. And then as if he scarcely endorsed Willie Creek's high opinion of Mr. Fobes' ability, he added: "And I'll put my judgment against his'n any day."

Arranging with their friends to telephone them at the American House immediately should there be any development at Ferndale concerning either car, the two boys turned toward Griffin. They stopped at his lonely, cheerless home to leave Mr. Peek. His thankful appreciation of the ride made them glad of the little kindness they had been able to show him. Neither lad thought to attach importance to the old man's account of his being disturbed by prowlers. It was Phil who saw significance in this story as, at dinner, Billy and Paul told all that had taken place with them.

"It's a mighty mysterious business," declared Way. "Don't you see it?

Here's an automobile,--quite likely a stolen automobile, at that--abandoned and left to run itself on a lonely road. No one can discover what became of the driver of that car. He was certainly driving when the machine left Ferndale. Three miles further on, and near the old Peek place, he is missing. Now isn't it likely that the same man is still sneaking around in that neighborhood?"

"Well, anyhow, we're getting off the main track again," Billy returned.

"We'd like to know where the Torpedo belongs, but it's a heap more important that we keep on the trail of our own machine."

"Yes, that's so," Phil soberly a.s.sented. "It's certainly strange that all my telephoning went for nothing. The police and all the big garages from Albany to Buffalo, I should say, have a description of our car, and yet not a sign of her has been discovered any place."

"There's a long distance telephone call for Mr. Way," announced the voice of Mr. Wagg, the landlord.

CHAPTER II