The Auto Boys' Vacation Part 12

"Let me help you down, miss," said Phil, who never forgot his manners, springing back towards the young couple climbing down to the roadway.

Danny, like many brothers, having scrambled down unaided, went to his father's aid, though aid was now unnecessary. Phil soon helped Nan down, the weight of her plump young body convincing him that she must be several years older than Dan.

"I'm mightily obliged, sir," she lisped, with an upward glance at the boy as he landed her squarely on her feet, not bare like her brother's but clad in fairly dainty footwear. "I don't know what we'd 'a' done but for you."

"Pshaw, that's nothing! I'm sure glad we were on hand, Miss--" He hesitated. "Is there anything more we can do?"

Nothing, apparently; but before starting the car again, Paul called out:

"Say, Mister! How far is it to the nearest town on this road?"

"Ten mile, I reckon. We live three miles beyond."

As the car started Phil waved a hand from the auto, whereat a white handkerchief fluttered back an answering signal.

Dave turned back to Way, saying:

"Blame if I don't believe you've made a regular mash on that girl--hey, Paul?" Paul, now at the wheel, was too busy to reply.

"Wonder what they were doing so far from home with a load of hay?" said Dave.

"It's past haying time now," was Worth's comment. "Must be taking it off somewhere to sell. If so, that explains why the girl was dressed so nicely."

"How about the man and boy?" asked Paul. "They looked like real hayseeds."

"How'd you want 'em to look?" This from Dave. "When you're selling hay you can't load or unload in your Sunday go-to-meeting clothes."

"Well," remarked Phil, "whoever and whatever they are, we tried to be decent to them. I reckon they're all right."

"Especially the girl, eh?" laughed Paul. "Oh, you Nan! Wasn't that her name, Phil? You ought to know."

Phil pa.s.sed this by without reply, as he talked about other matters.

Little did any of them then think that they had not seen the last of those three whom they had saved from possible accident and bodily danger by giving them the safest side of the road.

From then on for half an hour the car glided smoothly through a rich farming section where the houses and barns looked prosperous and the numerous stacks of grain and hay and the sleek herds of cattle betokened that the owners or tenants were by no means on the wrong side of prosperity. Then the timbered tracts increased, and a series of low, rugged hillsides opened up until at a sudden bend they saw the town whose smoke had been for some time indicative of this break in the hitherto uninterrupted rural expanse of their morning's ride.

It was not a big town, being off the railroad lines, which were a mile or so to one side, but it looked prosperous and was doubtless the center of the rural trade activities for some miles around. It being now about the noon hour, the car stopped before a modest hotel for a noonday lunch. There were two larger hostelries on the main street, but from motives of prudent economy the boys preferred the less expensive taverns.

"Yes, we will have dinner ready in a few minutes," remarked a comfortable looking woman who seemed to be in charge of the tiny office.

"Make yourselves at home. Why, are you lads from Lannington?" This after reading the register.

"That is our home town, madam," replied Phil. "Do you know the place?"

"Well, I should say I did!" The woman smiled. "I was raised there. Been off here ever since I married."

"Lannington is where we live," remarked Worth, after inscribing his name on the register with a flourish. "We're on a vacation trip, ma'am."

"It might be that you knew our folks when you lived there," was Dave's contributing remark, for he saw that she was reading their names and smiling more broadly than before.

"Why, yes, I do know some of them. I knew Dr. Way, and there was his friend Lawyer Dilworth, and the MacLesters. I feel as if I knew you all right now."

And she offered her plump hand, which was cordially shaken as the boys explained more about their folks, then added:

"My name now is Ewing. I'm known as the Widow Ewing round here. My husband has been dead three years or so. Before that, in Lannington, I was a McKnight. One of my brothers runs a garage there. Know him?"

"Well, rather! Hey, Phil? We got this car mainly through his aid.

McKnight & Wilder--they're some punkins when it comes to automobiles!"

After this all was plain sailing for the boys. Mrs. Ewing insisted that they should remain until the morrow.

"Won't cost you much. We'll cut the regular bill in half, for you're home folks, aren't you?"

And it may be said that she had her way. The Big Six was put in the hotel garage and the boys were made comfortable in two adjoining rooms; and in the morning even Phil was astonished at the exceedingly small bill which they had to pay. He could only thank the comely widow, who laughed it off with:

"If you boys are simply on a vacation trip, you're bound to spend more than you think you will. I'd gladly keep you for nothing, but times are hard and I have to make some charge."

Cautious inquiries by Phil resulted in learning that there had been, and still might be further on an old inn of the pre-railroad days. But it was off the main road, in the roughest, heaviest wooded section, somewhere about eight or ten miles off to the east. That region, it appeared, was poor, swampy, and so inferior to other land lying all about that hardly anyone lived there, even though in the midst of a thickly settled country.

In the privacy of their rooms the four lads concluded that they would say nothing directly referring to the railroad robbery or the hiding of supposed treasure. They were so near the scene that any revival of that now old-time tragedy might cause annoying inquisitiveness even if nothing more resulted.

After breakfast, while the boys were making a few purchases and taking on a generous supply of gasoline, they learned from Mrs. Ewing that "Dan and Nan, with their Daddy, old Pat Feeney," had just gone by.

"And who are they?" queried Phil carelessly, though with a shrewd suspicion in his mind at the time.

"Oh, he's an Irishman and lives three or four miles from here on the edge of some marshland where he pretends to farm. But I guess the most of his farming consists in cutting the marsh-gra.s.s during the summer and selling it for hay to those who don't know what good hay really is."

"I guess we must have met him some ten or twelve miles back. We had quite a time pa.s.sing him, for it was where the road runs along a side hill, with the bluff on one side and a steep embankment on the other. We stopped our car for his team was scared and after some delay they pa.s.sed. They seemed to appreciate what we did, instead of rushing by and probably scaring the whole outfit into the ditch. The girl was rather pretty."

"Ah, you boys!" The widow smiled shrewdly. "Always an eye out for the girls! But don't you allow yourselves to think that what a girl looks, so she always is underneath the surface."

"Are you coming back this way?" the widow finally asked, as the car was about to start. "If you don't stop, I--I will feel hurt. I'm homesick at times for the town where I was raised."

"Tell you what," said Billy after the car had left the small but busy town a mile or two in their rear, "Mrs. Ewing treated us bang up, but she's a keen one, after all. I'm glad we saw her. It will be something to tell McKnight when we get home. Do you reckon those Feeneys are the ones we pa.s.sed?"

"What if they are or if they ain't?" demanded Paul. "We won't be likely to meet 'em again, will we?"

"Oh, you shut up, Jonesy. There's no one interested in 'em but Phil, and the best way to define that is by a lesson in spelling." Here Billy made a comical face as he began: "N-a-n, Nan. That, translated into plain lingo, means pretty girl--ouch! Quit, Phil!" For Phil, seated in the tonneau with Worth, had administered a decided pinch.

On sped the Big Six, easily showing what she could do along an increasingly rough road that might once have been a much traveled highway but now showed ample signs of the neglect of later years. The wooded tracts increased, growing larger in area; the half cultivated fields evinced even more of the neglect and s.h.a.gginess that wait on lands wholly or in part abandoned by man. Sundry denizens of the woods such as rabbits, squirrels, even a stray fox, together with many birds, and upflying broods of quail, also indicated that nature was gradually replacing human inactivity in her own way.

"By the way," remarked Worth, "didn't that man with the hay say he lived some three miles from that town we stopped in--what's the confounded name?"

"Midlandville, stupid!" This from P. Jones, Esq., with a superior air.

"That was one of the first things I heard."

"Coster's paper didn't mention that burg, did it?" asked Dave.

"Reckon not. But on this envelope," here Phil took out the pencilled sc.r.a.p, "there's a dot with the word 'town' beside it that I take to mean the same thing. Here runs the railroad, going east and west. Look at this line running due southeast. Somewhere along that line I figure there ought to be signs of the old tavern. I guess we've left that town at least six or eight miles behind."