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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Oakdale Affair, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Oakdale Affair
+
+Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
+
+Release Date: July 8, 2008 [EBook #363]
+Last Updated: March 14, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OAKDALE AFFAIR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Judith Boss
+
+
+
+
+
+THE OAKDALE AFFAIR
+
+
+By Edgar Rice Burroughs
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter One [And only chapter ED.]
+
+
+The house on the hill showed lights only upon the first floor--in
+the spacious reception hall, the dining room, and those more or less
+mysterious purlieus thereof from which emanate disagreeable odors and
+agreeable foods.
+
+From behind a low bush across the wide lawn a pair of eyes transferred
+to an alert brain these simple perceptions from which the brain deduced
+with Sherlockian accuracy and Raffleian purpose that the family of the
+president of The First National Bank of--Oh, let's call it Oakdale--was
+at dinner, that the servants were below stairs and the second floor
+deserted.
+
+The owner of the eyes had but recently descended from the quarters of
+the chauffeur above the garage which he had entered as a thief in
+the night and quitted apparelled in a perfectly good suit of clothes
+belonging to the gentlemanly chauffeur and a soft, checked cap which was
+now pulled well down over a pair of large brown eyes in which a rather
+strained expression might have suggested to an alienist a certain
+neophytism which even the stern set of well shaped lips could not
+effectually belie.
+
+Apparently this was a youth steeling himself against a natural
+repugnance to the dangerous profession he had espoused; and when, a
+moment later, he stepped out into the moonlight and crossed the lawn
+toward the house, the slender, graceful lines which the ill-fitting
+clothes could not entirely conceal carried the conviction of youth if
+not of innocence.
+
+The brazen assurance with which the lad crossed the lawn and mounted
+the steps to the verandah suggested a familiarity with the habits and
+customs of the inmates of the house upon the hill which bespoke long and
+careful study of the contemplated job. An old timer could not have moved
+with greater confidence. No detail seemed to have escaped his cunning
+calculation. Though the door leading from the verandah into the
+reception hall swung wide to the balmy airs of late Spring the prowler
+passed this blatant invitation to the hospitality of the House of Prim.
+It was as though he knew that from his place at the head of the table,
+with his back toward the great fire place which is the pride of the
+Prim dining hall, Jonas Prim commands a view of the major portion of the
+reception hall.
+
+Stooping low the youth passed along the verandah to a window of the
+darkened library--a French window which swung open without noise to his
+light touch. Stepping within he crossed the room to a door which opened
+at the foot of a narrow stairway--a convenient little stairway which
+had often let the Hon. Jonas Prim pass from his library to his second
+floor bed-room unnoticed when Mrs. Prim chanced to be entertaining the
+feminine elite of Oakdale across the hall. A convenient little stairway
+for retiring husbands and diffident burglars--yes, indeed!
+
+The darkness of the upper hallway offered no obstacle to this familiar
+housebreaker. He passed the tempting luxury of Mrs. Prim's boudoir, the
+chaste elegance of Jonas Prim's bed-room with all the possibilities of
+forgotten wallets and negotiable papers, setting his course straight
+for the apartments of Abigail Prim, the spinster daughter of the First
+National Bank of Oakdale. Or should we utilize a more charitable and at
+the same time more truthful word than spinster? I think we should, since
+Abigail was but nineteen and quite human, despite her name.
+
+Upon the dressing table of Abigail reposed much silver and gold and
+ivory, wrought by clever artisans into articles of great beauty and some
+utility; but with scarce a glance the burglar passed them by, directing
+his course straight across the room to a small wall safe cleverly hidden
+by a bit of tapestry.
+
+How, Oh how, this suggestive familiarity with the innermost secrets of a
+virgin's sacred apartments upon the part of one so obviously of the
+male persuasion and, by his all too apparent calling, a denizen of that
+underworld of which no Abigail should have intimate knowledge? Yet,
+truly and with scarce a faint indication of groping, though the room was
+dark, the marauder walked directly to the hidden safe, swung back the
+tapestry in its frame, turned the knob of the combination and in a
+moment opened the circular door of the strong box.
+
+A fat roll of bills and a handful of jewelry he transferred to the
+pockets of his coat. Some papers which his hand brushed within the safe
+he pushed aside as though preadvised of their inutility to one of his
+calling. Then he closed the safe door, closed the tapestry upon it and
+turned toward a dainty dressing table. From a drawer in this exquisite
+bit of Sheraton the burglar took a small, nickel plated automatic, which
+he slipped into an inside breast pocket of his coat, nor did he touch
+another article therein or thereon, nor hesitate an instant in the
+selection of the drawer to be rifled. His knowledge of the apartment of
+the daughter of the house of Prim was little short of uncanny. Doubtless
+the fellow was some plumber's apprentice who had made good use of an
+opportunity to study the lay of the land against a contemplated invasion
+of these holy precincts.
+
+But even the most expert of second story men nod and now that all seemed
+as though running on greased rails a careless elbow raked a silver
+candle-stick from the dressing table to the floor where it crashed
+with a resounding din that sent cold shivers up the youth's spine and
+conjured in his mind a sudden onslaught of investigators from the floor
+below.
+
+The noise of the falling candlestick sounded to the taut nerved
+house-breaker as might the explosion of a stick of dynamite during
+prayer in a meeting house. That all Oakdale had heard it seemed quite
+possible, while that those below stairs were already turning questioning
+ears, and probably inquisitive footsteps, upward was almost a foregone
+conclusion.
+
+Adjoining Miss Prim's boudoir was her bath and before the door leading
+from the one to the other was a cretonne covered screen behind which
+the burglar now concealed himself the while he listened in rigid
+apprehension for the approach of the enemy; but the only sound that came
+to him from the floor below was the deep laugh of Jonas Prim. A profound
+sigh of relief escaped the beardless lips; for that laugh assured the
+youth that, after all, the noise of the fallen candlestick had not
+alarmed the household.
+
+With knees that still trembled a bit he crossed the room and passed out
+into the hallway, descended the stairs, and stood again in the library.
+Here he paused a moment listening to the voices which came from the
+dining room. Mrs. Prim was speaking. “I feel quite relieved about
+Abigail,” she was saying. “I believe that at last she sees the wisdom
+and the advantages of an alliance with Mr. Benham, and it was almost
+with enthusiasm that she left this morning to visit his sister. I am
+positive that a week or two of companionship with him will impress upon
+her the fine qualities of his nature. We are to be congratulated, Jonas,
+upon settling our daughter so advantageously both in the matter of
+family and wealth.”
+
+Jonas Prim grunted. “Sam Benham is old enough to be the girl's father,”
+ he growled. “If she wants him, all right; but I can't imagine Abbie
+wanting a bald-headed husband with rheumatism. I wish you'd let her
+alone, Pudgy, to find her own mate in her own way--someone nearer her
+own age.”
+
+“The child is not old enough to judge wisely for herself,” replied Mrs.
+Prim. “It was my duty to arrange a proper alliance; and, Jonas, I will
+thank you not to call me Pudgy--it is perfectly ridiculous for a woman
+of my age--and position.”
+
+The burglar did not hear Mr. Prim's reply for he had moved across the
+library and passed out onto the verandah. Once again he crossed the
+lawn, taking advantage of the several trees and shrubs which dotted it,
+scaled the low stone wall at the side and was in the concealing shadows
+of the unlighted side street which bounds the Prim estate upon the
+south. The streets of Oakdale are flanked by imposing battalions of elm
+and maple which over-arch and meet above the thoroughfares; and now,
+following an early Spring, their foliage eclipsed the infrequent
+arclights to the eminent satisfaction of those nocturnal wayfarers
+who prefer neither publicity nor the spot light. Of such there are few
+within the well ordered precincts of law abiding Oakdale; but to-night
+there was at least one and this one was deeply grateful for the gloomy
+walks along which he hurried toward the limits of the city.
+
+At last he found himself upon a country road with the odors of Spring
+in his nostrils and the world before him. The night noises of the open
+country fell strangely upon his ears accentuating rather than relieving
+the myriad noted silence of Nature. Familiar sounds became unreal
+and weird, the deep bass of innumerable bull frogs took on an uncanny
+humanness which sent a half shudder through the slender frame. The
+burglar felt a sad loneliness creeping over him. He tried whistling in
+an effort to shake off the depressing effects of this seeming
+solitude through which he moved; but there remained with him still the
+hallucination that he moved alone through a strange, new world peopled
+by invisible and unfamiliar forms--menacing shapes which lurked in
+waiting behind each tree and shrub.
+
+He ceased his whistling and went warily upon the balls of his feet, lest
+he unnecessarily call attention to his presence. If the truth were to
+be told it would chronicle the fact that a very nervous and frightened
+burglar sneaked along the quiet and peaceful country road outside of
+Oakdale. A lonesome burglar, this, who so craved the companionship of
+man that he would almost have welcomed joyously the detaining hand of
+the law had it fallen upon him in the guise of a flesh and blood police
+officer from Oakdale.
+
+In leaving the city the youth had given little thought to the
+practicalities of the open road. He had thought, rather vaguely, of
+sleeping in a bed of new clover in some hospitable fence corner; but
+the fence corners looked very dark and the wide expanse of fields beyond
+suggested a mysterious country which might be peopled by almost anything
+but human beings.
+
+At a farm house the youth hesitated and was almost upon the verge of
+entering and asking for a night's lodging when a savage voiced dog
+shattered the peace of the universe and sent the burglar along the road
+at a rapid run.
+
+A half mile further on a straw stack loomed large within a fenced
+enclosure. The youth wormed his way between the barbed wires determined
+at last to let nothing prevent him from making a cozy bed in the deep
+straw beside the stack. With courage radiating from every pore he strode
+toward the stack. His walk was almost a swagger, for thus does youth
+dissemble the bravery it yearns for but does not possess. He almost
+whistled again; but not quite, since it seemed an unnecessary
+provocation to disaster to call particular attention to himself at this
+time. An instant later he was extremely glad that he had refrained, for
+as he approached the stack a huge bulk slowly loomed from behind it;
+and silhouetted against the moonlit sky he saw the vast proportions of a
+great, shaggy bull. The burglar tore the inside of one trousers' leg and
+the back of his coat in his haste to pass through the barbed wire fence
+onto the open road. There he paused to mop the perspiration from his
+forehead, though the night was now far from warm.
+
+For another mile the now tired and discouraged house-breaker plodded,
+heavy footed, the unending road. Did vain compunction stir his
+youthful breast? Did he regret the safe respectability of the plumber's
+apprentice? Or, if he had not been a plumber's apprentice did he yearn
+to once again assume the unharried peace of whatever legitimate calling
+had been his before he bent his steps upon the broad boulevard of sin?
+We think he did.
+
+And then he saw through the chinks and apertures in the half ruined wall
+of what had once been a hay barn the rosy flare of a genial light which
+appeared to announce in all but human terms that man, red blooded and
+hospitable, forgathered within. No growling dogs, no bulking bulls
+contested the short stretch of weed grown ground between the road and
+the disintegrating structure; and presently two wide, brown eyes were
+peering through a crack in the wall of the abandoned building. What they
+saw was a small fire built upon the earth floor in the center of the
+building and around the warming blaze the figures of six men. Some
+reclined at length upon old straw; others squatted, Turk fashion. All
+were smoking either disreputable pipes or rolled cigarets. Blear-eyed
+and foxy-eyed, bearded and stubbled cheeked, young and old, were the men
+the youth looked upon. All were more or less dishevelled and filthy; but
+they were human. They were not dogs, or bulls, or croaking frogs. The
+boy's heart went out to them. Something that was almost a sob rose in
+his throat, and then he turned the corner of the building and stood in
+the doorway, the light from the fire playing upon his lithe young figure
+clothed in its torn and ill fitting suit and upon his oval face and his
+laughing brown eyes. For several seconds he stood there looking at the
+men around the fire. None of them had noticed him.
+
+“Tramps!” thought the youth. “Regular tramps.” He wondered that they had
+not seen him, and then, clearing his throat, he said: “Hello, tramps!”
+
+Six heads snapped up or around. Six pairs of eyes, blear or foxy,
+were riveted upon the boyish figure of the housebreaker. “Wotinel!”
+ ejaculated a frowzy gentleman in a frock coat and golf cap. “Wheredju
+blow from?” inquired another. “'Hello, tramps'!” mimicked a third.
+
+The youth came slowly toward the fire. “I saw your fire,” he said, “and
+I thought I'd stop. I'm a tramp, too, you know.”
+
+“Oh,” sighed the elderly person in the frock coat. “He's a tramp, he is.
+An' does he think gents like us has any time for tramps? An' where might
+he be trampin', sonny, without his maw?”
+
+The youth flushed. “Oh say!” he cried; “you needn't kid me just because
+I'm new at it. You all had to start sometime. I've always longed for
+the free life of a tramp; and if you'll let me go along with you for a
+little while, and teach me, I'll not bother you; and I'll do whatever
+you say.”
+
+The elderly person frowned. “Beat it, kid!” he commanded. “We ain't
+runnin' no day nursery. These you see here is all the real thing. Maybe
+we asks fer a handout now and then; but that ain't our reg'lar way. You
+ain't swift enough to travel with this bunch, kid, so you'd better duck.
+Why we gents, here, if we was added up is wanted in about twenty-seven
+cities fer about everything from rollin' a souse to crackin' a box and
+croakin' a bull. You gotta do something before you can train wid gents
+like us, see?” The speaker projected a stubbled jaw, scowled horridly
+and swept a flattened palm downward and backward at a right angle to a
+hairy arm in eloquent gesture of finality.
+
+The boy had stood with his straight, black eyebrows puckered into a
+studious frown, drinking in every word. Now he straightened up. “I guess
+I made a mistake,” he said, apologetically. “You ain't tramps at all.
+You're thieves and murderers and things like that.” His eyes opened a
+bit wider and his voice sank to a whisper as the words passed his lips.
+“But you haven't so much on me, at that,” he went on, “for I'm a regular
+burglar, too,” and from the bulging pockets of his coat he drew two
+handfuls of greenbacks and jewelry. The eyes of the six registered
+astonishment, mixed with craft and greed. “I just robbed a house in
+Oakdale,” explained the boy. “I usually rob one every night.”
+
+For a moment his auditors were too surprised to voice a single emotion;
+but presently one murmured, soulfully: “Pipe de swag!” He of the frock
+coat, golf cap, and years waved a conciliatory hand. He tried to look at
+the boy's face; but for the life of him he couldn't raise his eyes above
+the dazzling wealth clutched in the fingers of those two small,
+slim hands. From one dangled a pearl necklace which alone might have
+ransomed, if not a king, at least a lesser member of a royal family,
+while diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds scintillated in the
+flaring light of the fire. Nor was the fistful of currency in the other
+hand to be sneezed at. There were greenbacks, it is true; but there were
+also yellowbacks with the reddish gold of large denominations. The Sky
+Pilot sighed a sigh that was more than half gasp.
+
+“Can't yuh take a kid?” he inquired. “I knew youse all along. Yuh can't
+fool an old bird like The Sky Pilot--eh, boys?” and he turned to his
+comrades for confirmation.
+
+“He's The Oskaloosa Kid,” exclaimed one of the company. “I'd know 'im
+anywheres.”
+
+“Pull up and set down,” invited another.
+
+The boy stuffed his loot back into his pockets and came closer to the
+fire. Its warmth felt most comfortable, for the Spring night was growing
+chill. He looked about him at the motley company, some half-spruce in
+clothing that suggested a Kuppenmarx label and a not too far association
+with a tailor's goose, others in rags, all but one unshaven and all
+more or less dirty--for the open road is close to Nature, which is
+principally dirt.
+
+“Shake hands with Dopey Charlie,” said The Sky Pilot, whose age and
+corpulency appeared to stamp him with the hall mark of authority. The
+youth did as he was bid, smiling into the sullen, chalk-white face and
+taking the clammy hand extended toward him. Was it a shudder that
+passed through the lithe, young figure or was it merely a subconscious
+recognition of the final passing of the bodily cold before the glowing
+warmth of the blaze? “And Soup Face,” continued The Sky Pilot. A battered
+wreck half rose and extended a pudgy hand. Red whiskers, matted in
+little tangled wisps which suggested the dried ingredients of an
+infinite procession of semi-liquid refreshments, rioted promiscuously
+over a scarlet countenance.
+
+“Pleased to meetcha,” sprayed Soup Face. It was a strained smile
+which twisted the rather too perfect mouth of The Oskaloosa Kid, an
+appellation which we must, perforce, accept since the youth did not deny
+it.
+
+Columbus Blackie, The General, and Dirty Eddie were formally presented.
+As Dirty Eddie was, physically, the cleanest member of the band the
+youth wondered how he had come by his sobriquet--that is, he wondered
+until he heard Dirty Eddie speak, after which he was no longer in doubt.
+The Oskaloosa Kid, self-confessed 'tramp' and burglar, flushed at the
+lurid obscenity of Dirty Eddie's remarks.
+
+“Sit down, bo,” invited Soup Face. “I guess you're a regular all right.
+Here, have a snifter?” and he pulled a flask from his side pocket,
+holding it toward The Oskaloosa Kid.
+
+“Thank you, but;--er--I'm on the wagon, you know,” declined the youth.
+
+“Have a smoke?” suggested Columbus Blackie. “Here's the makin's.”
+
+The change in the attitude of the men toward him pleased The Oskaloosa
+Kid immensely. They were treating him as one of them, and after the
+lonely walk through the dark and desolate farm lands human companionship
+of any kind was to him as the proverbial straw to the man who rocked the
+boat once too often.
+
+Dopey Charlie and The General, alone of all the company, waxed not
+enthusiastic over the advent of The Oskaloosa Kid and his priceless
+loot. These two sat scowling and whispering in the back-ground. “Dat's
+a wrong guy,” muttered the former to the latter. “He's a stool pigeon or
+one of dese amatoor mugs.”
+
+“It's the pullin' of that punk graft that got my goat,” replied The
+General. “I never seen a punk yet that didn't try to make you think he
+was a wise guy an' dis stiff don't belong enough even to pull a spiel
+that would fool a old ladies' sewin' circle. I don't see wot The Sky
+Pilot's cozyin' up to him fer.”
+
+“You don't?” scoffed Dopey Charlie. “Didn't you lamp de oyster harness?
+To say nothin' of de mitful of rocks and kale.”
+
+“That 'ud be all right, too,” replied the other, “if we could put the
+guy to sleep; but The Sky Pilot won't never stand for croakin' nobody.
+He's too scared of his neck. We'll look like a bunch o' wise ones, won't
+we? lettin' a stranger sit in now--after last night. Hell!” he suddenly
+exploded. “Don't you know that you an' me stand to swing if any of de
+bunch gets gabby in front of dis phoney punk?”
+
+The two sat silent for a while, The General puffing on a short briar,
+Dopey Charlie inhaling deep draughts from a cigarette, and both glaring
+through narrowed lids at the boy warming himself beside the fire
+where the others were attempting to draw him out the while they strove
+desperately but unavailingly to keep their eyes from the two bulging
+sidepockets of their guest's coat.
+
+Soup Face, who had been assiduously communing with a pint flask, leaned
+close to Columbus Blackie, placing his whiskers within an inch or so
+of the other's nose as was his habit when addressing another, and
+whispered, relative to the pearl necklace: “Not a cent less 'n fifty
+thou, bo!”
+
+“Fertheluvomike!” ejaculated Blackie, drawing back and wiping a palm
+quickly across his lips. “Get a plumber first if you want to kiss
+me--you leak.”
+
+“He thinks you need a shower bath,” said Dirty Eddie, laughing.
+
+“The trouble with Soup Face,” explained The Sky Pilot, “is that he's got
+a idea he's a human atomizer an' that the rest of us has colds.”
+
+“Well, I don't want no atomizer loaded with rot-gut and garlic shot
+in my mug,” growled Blackie. “What Soup Face needs is to be learned
+ettyket, an' if he comes that on me again I'm goin' to push his mush
+through the back of his bean.”
+
+An ugly light came into the blear eyes of Soup Face. Once again he
+leaned close to Columbus Blackie. “Not a cent less 'n fifty thou, you
+tinhorn!” he bellowed, belligerent and sprayful.
+
+Blackie leaped to his feet, with an oath--a frightful, hideous oath--and
+as he rose he swung a heavy fist to Soup Face's purple nose. The latter
+rolled over backward; but was upon his feet again much quicker than one
+would have expected in so gross a bulk, and as he came to his feet a
+knife flashed in his hand. With a sound that was more bestial than human
+he ran toward Blackie; but there was another there who had anticipated
+his intentions. As the blow was struck The Sky Pilot had risen; and
+now he sprang forward, for all his age and bulk as nimble as a cat, and
+seized Soup Face by the wrist. A quick wrench brought a howl of pain to
+the would-be assassin, and the knife fell to the floor.
+
+“You gotta cut that if you travel with this bunch,” said The Sky Pilot
+in a voice that was new to The Oskaloosa Kid; “and you, too, Blackie,”
+ he continued. “The rough stuff don't go with me, see?” He hurled Soup
+Face to the floor and resumed his seat by the fire.
+
+The youth was astonished at the physical strength of this old man,
+seemingly so softened by dissipation; but it showed him the source of
+The Sky Pilot's authority and its scope, for Columbus Blackie and Soup
+Face quitted their quarrel immediately.
+
+Dirty Eddie rose, yawned and stretched. “Me fer the hay,” he announced,
+and lay down again with his feet toward the fire. Some of the others
+followed his example. “You'll find some hay in the loft there,” said The
+Sky Pilot to The Oskaloosa Kid. “Bring it down an' make your bed here by
+me, there's plenty room.”
+
+A half hour later all were stretched out upon the hard dirt floor upon
+improvised beds of rotted hay; but not all slept. The Oskaloosa Kid,
+though tired, found himself wider awake than he ever before had been.
+Apparently sleep could never again come to those heavy eyes. There
+passed before his mental vision a panorama of the events of the night.
+He smiled as he inaudibly voiced the name they had given him, the right
+to which he had not seen fit to deny. “The Oskaloosa Kid.” The boy
+smiled again as he felt the 'swag' hard and lumpy in his pockets. It
+had given him prestige here that he could not have gained by any other
+means; but he mistook the nature of the interest which his display of
+stolen wealth had aroused. He thought that the men now looked upon
+him as a fellow criminal to be accepted into the fraternity through
+achievement; whereas they suffered him to remain solely in the hope of
+transferring his loot to their own pockets.
+
+It is true that he puzzled them. Even The Sky Pilot, the most astute
+and intelligent of them all, was at a loss to fathom The Oskaloosa Kid.
+Innocence and unsophistication flaunted their banners in almost every
+act and speech of The Oskaloosa Kid. The youth reminded him in some ways
+of members of a Sunday school which had flourished in the dim vistas of
+his past when, as an ordained minister of the Gospel, he had earned the
+sobriquet which now identified him. But the concrete evidence of the
+valuable loot comported not with The Sky Pilot's idea of a Sunday school
+boy's lark. The young fellow was, unquestionably, a thief; but that he
+had ever before consorted with thieves his speech and manners belied.
+
+“He's got me,” murmured The Sky Pilot; “but he's got the stuff on him,
+too; and all I want is to get it off of him without a painful operation.
+Tomorrow'll do,” and he shifted his position and fell asleep.
+
+Dopey Charlie and The General did not, however, follow the example of
+their chief. They remained very wide awake, a little apart from the
+others, where their low whispers could not be overheard.
+
+“You better do it,” urged The General, in a soft, insinuating voice.
+“You're pretty slick with the toad stabber, an' any way one more or less
+won't count.”
+
+“We can go to Sout' America on dat stuff an' live like gents,” muttered
+Dopey Charlie. “I'm goin' to cut out de Hop an' buy a farm an' a
+ottymobeel and--”
+
+“Come out of it,” admonished The General. “If we're lucky we'll get as
+far as Cincinnati, get a stew on and get pinched. Den one of us'll hang
+an' de other get stir fer life.”
+
+The General was a weasel faced person of almost any age between
+thirty-five and sixty. Sometimes he could have passed for a hundred
+and ten. He had won his military title as a boy in the famous march of
+Coxey's army on Washington, or, rather, the title had been conferred
+upon him in later years as a merited reward of service. The General,
+profiting by the precepts of his erstwhile companions in arms, had never
+soiled his military escutcheon by labor, nor had he ever risen to the
+higher planes of criminality. Rather as a mediocre pickpocket and
+a timorous confidence man had he eked out a meager existence, amply
+punctuated by seasons of straight bumming and intervals spent as the
+guest of various inhospitably hospitable states. Now, for the first time
+in his life, The General faced the possibility of a serious charge; and
+his terror made him what he never before had been, a dangerous criminal.
+
+“You're a cheerful guy,” commented Dopey Charlie; “but you may be right
+at dat. Dey can't hang a guy any higher fer two 'an they can fer one
+an' dat's no pipe; so wots de use. Wait till I take a shot--it'll be
+easier,” and he drew a small, worn case from an inside pocket, bared
+his arm to the elbow and injected enough morphine to have killed a dozen
+normal men.
+
+From a pile of mouldy hay across the barn the youth, heavy eyed but
+sleepless, watched the two through half closed lids. A qualm of disgust
+sent a sudden shudder through his slight frame. For the first time he
+almost regretted having embarked upon a life of crime. He had seen
+that the two men were conversing together earnestly, though he could
+over-hear nothing they said, and that he had been the subject of their
+nocturnal colloquy, for several times a glance or a nod in his direction
+assured him of this. And so he lay watching them--not that he was
+afraid, he kept reassuring himself, but through curiosity. Why should
+he be afraid? Was it not a well known truth that there was honor among
+thieves?
+
+But the longer he watched the heavier grew his lids. Several times they
+closed to be dragged open again only by painful effort. Finally came a
+time that they remained closed and the young chest rose and fell in the
+regular breathing of slumber.
+
+The two ragged, rat-hearted creatures rose silently and picked their
+way, half-crouched, among the sleepers sprawled between them and The
+Oskaloosa Kid. In the hand of Dopey Charlie gleamed a bit of shiny steel
+and in his heart were fear and greed. The fear was engendered by the
+belief that the youth might be an amateur detective. Dopey Charlie had
+had one experience of such and he knew that it was easily possible for
+them to blunder upon evidence which the most experienced of operatives
+might pass over unnoticed, and the loot bulging pockets furnished a
+sufficient greed motive in themselves.
+
+Beside the boy kneeled the man with the knife. He did not raise his
+hand and strike a sudden, haphazard blow. Instead he placed the point
+carefully, though lightly, above the victim's heart, and then, suddenly,
+bore his weight upon the blade.
+
+Abigail Prim always had been a thorn in the flesh of her stepmother--a
+well-meaning, unimaginative, ambitious, and rather common woman. Coming
+into the Prim home as house-keeper shortly after the death of Abigail's
+mother, the second Mrs. Prim had from the first looked upon Abigail
+principally as an obstacle to be overcome. She had tried to 'do right by
+her'; but she had never given the child what a child most needs and most
+craves--love and understanding. Not loving Abigail, the house-keeper
+could, naturally, not give her love; and as for understanding her one
+might as reasonably have expected an adding machine to understand higher
+mathematics.
+
+Jonas Prim loved his daughter. There was nothing, within reason, that
+money could buy which he would not have given her for the asking; but
+Jonas Prim's love, as his life, was expressed in dollar signs, while the
+love which Abigail craved is better expressed by any other means at the
+command of man.
+
+Being misunderstood and, to all outward appearances of sentiment and
+affection, unloved had not in any way embittered Abigail's remarkably
+joyous temperament. She made up for it in some measure by getting all the
+fun and excitement out of life which she could discover therein, or
+invent through the medium of her own resourceful imagination.
+
+But recently the first real sorrow had been thrust into her young life
+since the half-forgotten mother had been taken from her. The second
+Mrs. Prim had decided that it was her 'duty' to see that Abigail, having
+finished school and college, was properly married. As a matchmaker
+the second Mrs. Prim was as a Texas steer in a ten cent store. It was
+nothing to her that Abigail did not wish to marry anyone, or that the
+man of Mrs. Prim's choice, had he been the sole surviving male in the
+Universe, would have still been as far from Abigail's choice as though
+he had been an inhabitant of one of Orion's most distant planets.
+
+As a matter of fact Abigail Prim detested Samuel Benham because he
+represented to her everything in life which she shrank from--age,
+avoirdupois, infirmity, baldness, stupidity, and matrimony. He was a
+prosaic old bachelor who had amassed a fortune by the simple means of
+inheriting three farms upon which an industrial city subsequently had
+been built. Necessity rather than foresight had compelled him to hold on
+to his property; and six weeks of typhoid, arriving and departing, had
+saved him from selling out at a low figure. The first time he found
+himself able to be out and attend to business he likewise found himself
+a wealthy man, and ever since he had been growing wealthier without
+personal effort.
+
+All of which is to render evident just how impossible a matrimonial
+proposition was Samuel Benham to a bright, a beautiful, a gay, an
+imaginative, young, and a witty girl such as Abigail Prim, who cared
+less for money than for almost any other desirable thing in the world.
+
+Nagged, scolded, reproached, pestered, threatened, Abigail had at last
+given a seeming assent to her stepmother's ambition; and had forthwith
+been packed off on a two weeks visit to the sister of the bride-groom
+elect. After which Mr. Benham was to visit Oakdale as a guest of the
+Prims, and at a dinner for which cards already had been issued--so sure
+was Mrs. Jonas Prim of her position of dictator of the Prim menage--the
+engagement was to be announced.
+
+It was some time after dinner on the night of Abigail's departure that
+Mrs. Prim, following a habit achieved by years of housekeeping, set
+forth upon her rounds to see that doors and windows were properly
+secured for the night. A French window and its screen opening upon the
+verandah from the library she found open. “The house will be full of
+mosquitoes!” she ejaculated mentally as she closed them both with a bang
+and made them fast. “I should just like to know who left them open. Upon
+my word, I don't know what would become of this place if it wasn't for
+me. Of all the shiftlessness!” and she turned and flounced upstairs. In
+Abigail's room she flashed on the center dome light from force of habit,
+although she knew that the room had been left in proper condition after
+the girl's departure earlier in the day. The first thing amiss that
+her eagle eye noted was the candlestick lying on the floor beside the
+dressing table. As she stooped to pick it up she saw the open drawer
+from which the small automatic had been removed, and then, suspicions,
+suddenly aroused, as suddenly became fear; and Mrs. Prim almost dove
+across the room to the hidden wall safe. A moment's investigation
+revealed the startling fact that the safe was unlocked and practically
+empty. It was then that Mrs. Jonas Prim screamed.
+
+Her scream brought Jonas and several servants upon the scene. A careful
+inspection of the room disclosed the fact that while much of value had
+been ignored the burglar had taken the easily concealed contents of the
+wall safe which represented fully ninety percentum of the value of the
+personal property in Abigail Prim's apartments.
+
+Mrs. Prim scowled suspiciously upon the servants. Who else, indeed,
+could have possessed the intimate knowledge which the thief had
+displayed. Mrs. Prim saw it all. The open library window had been but a
+clever blind to hide the fact that the thief had worked from the inside
+and was now doubtless in the house at that very moment.
+
+“Jonas,” she directed, “call the police at once, and see that no one,
+absolutely no one, leaves this house until they have been here and made
+a full investigation.”
+
+“Shucks, Pudgy!” exclaimed Mr. Prim. “You don't think the thief is
+waiting around here for the police, do you?”
+
+“I think that if you get the police here at once, Jonas, we shall find
+both the thief and the loot under our very roof,” she replied, not
+without asperity.
+
+“You don't mean--” he hesitated. “Why, Pudgy, you don't mean you suspect
+one of the servants?”
+
+“Who else could have known?” asked Mrs. Prim. The servants present
+looked uncomfortable and cast sheepish eyes of suspicion at one another.
+
+“It's all tommy rot!” ejaculated Mr. Prim; “but I'll call the police,
+because I got to report the theft. It's some slick outsider, that's
+who it is,” and he started down stairs toward the telephone. Before he
+reached it the bell rang, and when he had hung up the receiver after the
+conversation the theft seemed a trivial matter. In fact he had almost
+forgotten it, for the message had been from the local telegraph office
+relaying a wire they had just received from Mr. Samuel Benham.
+
+“I say, Pudgy,” he cried, as he took the steps two at a time for the
+second floor, “here's a wire from Benham saying Gail didn't come on that
+train and asking when he's to expect her.”
+
+“Impossible!” ejaculated Mrs. Prim. “I certainly saw her aboard the
+train myself. Impossible!”
+
+Jonas Prim was a man of action. Within half an hour he had set in motion
+such wheels as money and influence may cause to revolve in search of
+some clew to the whereabouts of the missing Abigail, and at the same
+time had reported the theft of jewels and money from his home; but in
+doing this he had learned that other happenings no less remarkable in
+their way had taken place in Oakdale that very night.
+
+The following morning all Oakdale was thrilled as its fascinated eyes
+devoured the front page of Oakdale's ordinarily dull daily. Never had
+Oakdale experienced a plethora of home-grown thrills; but it came as
+near to it that morning, doubtless, as it ever had or ever will. Not
+since the cashier of The Merchants and Farmers Bank committed suicide
+three years past had Oakdale been so wrought up, and now that historic
+and classical event paled into insignificance in the glaring brilliancy
+of a series of crimes and mysteries of a single night such as not even
+the most sanguine of Oakdale's thrill lovers could have hoped for.
+
+There was, first, the mysterious disappearance of Abigail Prim, the
+only daughter of Oakdale's wealthiest citizen; there was the equally
+mysterious robbery of the Prim home. Either one of these would have been
+sufficient to have set Oakdale's multitudinous tongues wagging for days;
+but they were not all. Old John Baggs, the city's best known miser, had
+suffered a murderous assault in his little cottage upon the outskirts
+of town, and was even now lying at the point of death in The Samaritan
+Hospital. That robbery had been the motive was amply indicated by the
+topsy-turvy condition of the contents of the three rooms which Baggs
+called home. As the victim still was unconscious no details of the crime
+were obtainable. Yet even this atrocious deed had been capped by one yet
+more hideous.
+
+Reginald Paynter had for years been looked upon half askance and yet
+with a certain secret pride by Oakdale. He was her sole bon vivant in
+the true sense of the word, whatever that may be. He was always
+spoken of in the columns of The Oakdale Tribune as 'that well known
+man-about-town,' or 'one of Oakdale's most prominent clubmen.' Reginald
+Paynter had been, if not the only, at all events the best dressed man
+in town. His clothes were made in New York. This in itself had been
+sufficient to have set him apart from all the other males of Oakdale.
+He was widely travelled, had an independent fortune, and was far from
+unhandsome. For years he had been the hope and despair of every Oakdale
+mother with marriageable daughters. The Oakdale fathers, however, had
+not been so keen about Reginald. Men usually know more about the morals
+of men than do women. There were those who, if pressed, would have
+conceded that Reginald had no morals.
+
+But what place has an obituary in a truthful tale of adventure and
+mystery! Reginald Paynter was dead. His body had been found beside
+the road just outside the city limits at mid-night by a party of
+automobilists returning from a fishing trip. The skull was crushed back
+of the left ear. The position of the body as well as the marks in the
+road beside it indicated that the man had been hurled from a rapidly
+moving automobile. The fact that his pockets had been rifled led to the
+assumption that he had been killed and robbed before being dumped upon
+the road.
+
+Now there were those in Oakdale, and they were many, who endeavored to
+connect in some way these several events of horror, mystery, and crime.
+In the first place it seemed quite evident that the robbery at the Prim
+home, the assault upon Old Baggs, and the murder of Paynter had been
+the work of the same man; but how could such a series of frightful
+happenings be in any way connected with the disappearance of Abigail
+Prim? Of course there were many who knew that Abigail and Reginald were
+old friends; and that the former had, on frequent occasions, ridden
+abroad in Reginald's French roadster, that he had escorted her to
+parties and been, at various times, a caller at her home; but no less
+had been true of a dozen other perfectly respectable young ladies
+of Oakdale. Possibly it was only Abigail's added misfortune to have
+disappeared upon the eve of the night of Reginald's murder.
+
+But later in the day when word came from a nearby town that Reginald had
+been seen in a strange touring car with two unknown men and a girl,
+the gossips commenced to wag their heads. It was mentioned, casually of
+course, that this town was a few stations along the very road upon which
+Abigail had departed the previous afternoon for that destination which
+she had not reached. It was likewise remarked that Reginald, the two
+strange men and the GIRL had been first noticed after the time of
+arrival of the Oakdale train! What more was needed? Absolutely
+nothing more. The tongues ceased wagging in order that they might turn
+hand-springs.
+
+Find Abigail Prim, whispered some, and the mystery will be solved. There
+were others charitable enough to assume that Abigail had been kidnapped
+by the same men who had murdered Paynter and wrought the other lesser
+deeds of crime in peaceful Oakdale. The Oakdale Tribune got out an extra
+that afternoon giving a resume of such evidence as had appeared in the
+regular edition and hinting at all the numerous possibilities suggested
+by such matter as had come to hand since. Even fear of old Jonas Prim
+and his millions had not been enough to entirely squelch the newspaper
+instinct of the Tribune's editor. Never before had he had such an
+opportunity and he made the best of it, even repeating the vague
+surmises which had linked the name of Abigail to the murder of Reginald
+Paynter.
+
+Jonas Prim was too busy and too worried to pay any attention to the
+Tribune or its editor. He already had the best operative that the best
+detective agency in the nearest metropolis could furnish. The man had
+come to Oakdale, learned all that was to be learned there, and forthwith
+departed.
+
+This, then, will be about all concerning Oakdale for the present. We
+must leave her to bury her own dead.
+
+The sudden pressure of the knife point against the breast of the
+Oskaloosa Kid awakened the youth with a startling suddenness which
+brought him to his feet before a second vicious thrust reached him. For
+a time he did not realize how close he had been to death or that he had
+been saved by the chance location of the automatic pistol in his breast
+pocket--the very pistol he had taken from the dressing table of Abigail
+Prim's boudoir.
+
+The commotion of the attack and escape brought the other sleepers to
+heavy-eyed wakefulness. They saw Dopey Charlie advancing upon the Kid,
+a knife in his hand. Behind him slunk The General, urging the other on.
+The youth was backing toward the doorway. The tableau persisted but for
+an instant. Then the would-be murderer rushed madly upon his victim, the
+latter's hand leaped from beneath the breast of his torn coat--there was
+a flash of flame, a staccato report and Dopey Charlie crumpled to the
+ground, screaming. In the same instant The Oskaloosa Kid wheeled and
+vanished into the night.
+
+It had all happened so quickly that the other members of the gang,
+awakened from deep slumber, had only time to stumble to their feet
+before it was over. The Sky Pilot, ignoring the screaming Charlie,
+thought only of the loot which had vanished with the Oskaloosa Kid.
+
+“Come on! We gotta get him,” he cried, as he ran from the barn after
+the fugitive. The others, all but Dopey Charlie, followed in the wake of
+their leader. The wounded man, his audience departed, ceased screaming
+and, sitting up, fell to examining himself. To his surprise he
+discovered that he was not dead. A further and more minute examination
+disclosed the additional fact that he was not even badly wounded. The
+bullet of The Kid had merely creased the flesh over the ribs beneath his
+right arm. With a grunt that might have been either disgust or relief he
+stumbled to his feet and joined in the pursuit.
+
+Down the road toward the south ran The Oskaloosa Kid with all the
+fleetness of youth spurred on by terror. In five minutes he had so far
+outdistanced his pursuers that The Sky Pilot leaped to the conclusion
+that the quarry had left the road to hide in an adjoining field. The
+resultant halt and search upon either side of the road delayed the chase
+to a sufficient extent to award the fugitive a mile lead by the time the
+band resumed the hunt along the main highway. The men were determined
+to overhaul the youth not alone because of the loot upon his person but
+through an abiding suspicion that he might indeed be what some of them
+feared he was--an amateur detective--and there were at least two among
+them who had reason to be especially fearful of any sort of detective
+from Oakdale.
+
+They no longer ran; but puffed arduously along the smooth road,
+searching with troubled and angry eyes to right and left and ahead of
+them as they went.
+
+The Oskaloosa Kid puffed, too; but he puffed a mile away from the
+searchers and he walked more rapidly than they, for his muscles were
+younger and his wind unimpaired by dissipation. For a time he carried
+the small automatic in his hand; but later, hearing no evidence of
+pursuit, he returned it to the pocket in his coat where it had lain when
+it had saved him from death beneath the blade of the degenerate Charlie.
+
+For an hour he continued walking rapidly along the winding country road.
+He was very tired; but he dared not pause to rest. Always behind him he
+expected the sudden onslaught of the bearded, blear-eyed followers
+of The Sky Pilot. Terror goaded him to supreme physical effort.
+Recollection of the screaming man sinking to the earthen floor of the
+hay barn haunted him. He was a murderer! He had slain a fellow man.
+He winced and shuddered, increasing his gait until again he almost ran
+--ran from the ghost pursuing him through the black night in greater
+terror than he felt for the flesh and blood pursuers upon his heels.
+
+And Nature drew upon her sinister forces to add to the fear which the
+youth already felt. Black clouds obscured the moon blotting out the soft
+kindliness of the greening fields and transforming the budding branches
+of the trees to menacing and gloomy arms which appeared to hover with
+clawlike talons above the dark and forbidding road. The wind soughed
+with gloomy and increasing menace, a sudden light flared across the
+southern sky followed by the reverberation of distant thunder.
+
+Presently a great rain drop was blown against the youth's face; the
+vividness of the lightning had increased; the rumbling of the thunder
+had grown to the proportions of a titanic bombardment; but he dared not
+pause to seek shelter.
+
+Another flash of lightning revealed a fork in the road immediately
+ahead--to the left ran the broad, smooth highway, to the right a dirt
+road, overarched by trees, led away into the impenetrable dark.
+
+The fugitive paused, undecided. Which way should he turn? The better
+travelled highway seemed less mysterious and awesome, yet would his
+pursuers not naturally assume that he had followed it? Then, of course,
+the right hand road was the road for him. Yet still he hesitated, for
+the right hand road was black and forbidding; suggesting the entrance to
+a pit of unknown horrors.
+
+As he stood there with the rain and the wind, the thunder and the
+lightning, horror of the past and terror of the future his only
+companions there broke suddenly through the storm the voice of a man
+just ahead and evidently approaching along the highway.
+
+The youth turned to flee; but the thought of the men tracking him from
+that direction brought him to a sudden halt. There was only the road to
+the right, then, after all. Cautiously he moved toward it, and at the
+same time the words of the voice came clearly through the night:
+
+        “'... as, swinging heel and toe,
+
+     'We tramped the road to Anywhere, the magic road
+
+           to Anywhere,
+
+     'The tragic road to Anywhere, such dear, dim years
+
+           ago.'”
+
+The voice seemed reassuring--its quality and the annunciation of the
+words bespoke for its owner considerable claim to refinement. The youth
+had halted again, but he now crouched to one side fearing to reveal his
+presence because of the bloody crime he thought he had committed; yet
+how he yearned to throw himself upon the compassion of this fine voiced
+stranger! How his every fibre cried out for companionship in this night
+of his greatest terror; but he would have let the invisible minstrel
+pass had not Fate ordained to light the scene at that particular instant
+with a prolonged flare of sheet lightning, revealing the two wayfarers
+to one another.
+
+The youth saw a slight though well built man in ragged clothes and
+disreputable soft hat. The image was photographed upon his brain for
+life--the honest, laughing eyes, the well moulded features harmonizing
+so well with the voice, and the impossible garments which marked the man
+hobo and bum as plainly as though he wore a placard suspended from his
+neck.
+
+The stranger halted. Once more darkness enveloped them. “Lovely evening
+for a stroll,” remarked the man. “Running out to your country place?
+Isn't there danger of skidding on these wet roads at night? I told
+James, just before we started, to be sure to see that the chains were on
+all around; but he forgot them. James is very trying sometimes. Now he
+never showed up this evening and I had to start out alone, and he knows
+perfectly well that I detest driving after dark in the rain.”
+
+The youth found himself smiling. His fear had suddenly vanished. No one
+could harbor suspicion of the owner of that cheerful voice.
+
+“I didn't know which road to take,” he ventured, in explanation of his
+presence at the cross road.
+
+“Oh,” exclaimed the man, “are there two roads here? I was looking for
+this fork and came near passing it in the dark. It was a year ago since
+I came this way; but I recall a deserted house about a mile up the dirt
+road. It will shelter us from the inclemencies of the weather.”
+
+“Oh!” cried the youth. “Now I know where I am. In the dark and the storm
+and after all that has happened to me tonight nothing seemed natural.
+It was just as though I was in some strange land; but I know now. Yes,
+there is a deserted house a little less than a mile from here; but you
+wouldn't want to stop there at night. They tell some frightful stories
+about it. It hasn't been occupied for over twenty years--not since the
+Squibbs were found murdered there--the father, mother, three sons, and
+a daughter. They never discovered the murderer, and the house has stood
+vacant and the farm unworked almost continuously since. A couple of men
+tried working it; but they didn't stay long. A night or so was enough
+for them and their families. I remember hearing as a little--er--child
+stories of the frightful things that happened there in the house where
+the Squibbs were murdered--things that happened after dark when the
+lights were out. Oh, I wouldn't even pass that place on a night like
+this.”
+
+The man smiled. “I slept there alone one rainy night about a year
+ago,” he said. “I didn't see or hear anything unusual. Such stories are
+ridiculous; and even if there was a little truth in them, noises can't
+harm you as much as sleeping out in the storm. I'm going to encroach
+once more upon the ghostly hospitality of the Squibbs. Better come with
+me.”
+
+The youth shuddered and drew back. From far behind came faintly the
+shout of a man.
+
+“Yes, I'll go,” exclaimed the boy. “Let's hurry,” and he started off at
+a half-run toward the dirt road.
+
+The man followed more slowly. The darkness hid the quizzical expression
+of his eyes. He, too, had heard the faint shout far to the rear. He
+recalled the boy's “after all that has happened to me tonight,” and he
+shrewdly guessed that the latter's sudden determination to brave the
+horrors of the haunted house was closely connected with the hoarse voice
+out of the distance.
+
+When he had finally come abreast of the youth after the latter, his
+first panic of flight subsided, had reduced his speed, he spoke to him
+in his kindly tones.
+
+“What was it that happened to you to-night?” he asked. “Is someone
+following you? You needn't be afraid of me. I'll help you if you've been
+on the square. If you haven't, you still needn't fear me, for I won't
+peach on you. What is it? Tell me.”
+
+The youth was on the point of unburdening his soul to this stranger
+with the kindly voice and the honest eyes; but a sudden fear stayed his
+tongue. If he told all it would be necessary to reveal certain details
+that he could not bring himself to reveal to anyone, and so he commenced
+with his introduction to the wayfarers in the deserted hay barn. Briefly
+he told of the attack upon him, of his shooting of Dopey Charlie, of the
+flight and pursuit. “And now,” he said in conclusion, “that you know I'm
+a murderer I suppose you won't have any more to do with me, unless you
+turn me over to the authorities to hang.” There was almost a sob in his
+voice, so real was his terror.
+
+The man threw an arm across his companion's shoulder. “Don't worry,
+kid,” he said. “You're not a murderer even if you did kill Dopey
+Charlie, which I hope you did. You're a benefactor of the human race.
+I have known Charles for years. He should have been killed long since.
+Furthermore, as you shot in self defence no jury would convict you.
+I fear, however, that you didn't kill him. You say you could hear his
+screams as long as you were within earshot of the barn--dead men don't
+scream, you know.”
+
+“How did you know my name?” asked the youth.
+
+“I don't,” replied the man.
+
+“But you called me 'Kid' and that's my name--I'm The Oskaloosa Kid.”
+
+The man was glad that the darkness hid his smile of amusement. He knew
+The Oskaloosa Kid well, and he knew him as an ex-pug with a pock marked
+face, a bullet head, and a tin ear. The flash of lightning had revealed,
+upon the contrary, a slender boy with smooth skin, an oval face, and
+large dark eyes.
+
+“Ah,” he said, “so you are The Oskaloosa Kid! I am delighted, sir,
+to make your acquaintance. Permit me to introduce myself: my name is
+Bridge. If James were here I should ask him to mix one of his famous
+cocktails that we might drink to our mutual happiness and the longevity
+of our friendship.”
+
+“I am glad to know you, Mr. Bridge,” said the youth. “Oh, I can't tell
+you how glad I am to know you. I was so lonely and so afraid,” and he
+pressed closer to the older man whose arm still encircled his shoulder,
+though at first he had been inclined to draw away in some confusion.
+
+Talking together the two moved on along the dark road. The storm had
+settled now into a steady rain with infrequent flashes of lightning and
+peals of thunder. There had been no further indications of pursuit; but
+Bridge argued that The Sky Pilot, being wise with the wisdom of the owl
+and cunning with the cunning of the fox, would doubtless surmise that a
+fugitive would take to the first road leading away from the main artery,
+and that even though they heard nothing it would be safe to assume that
+the gang was still upon the boy's trail. “And it's a bad bunch, too,”
+ he continued. “I've known them all for years. The Sky Pilot has the
+reputation of never countenancing a murder; but that is because he is a
+sly one. His gang kills; but when they kill under The Sky Pilot they
+do it so cleverly that no trace of the crime remains. Their victim
+disappears--that is all.”
+
+The boy trembled. “You won't let them get me?” he pleaded, pressing
+closer to the man. The only response was a pressure of the arm about the
+shoulders of The Oskaloosa Kid.
+
+Over a low hill they followed the muddy road and down into a dark and
+gloomy ravine. In a little open space to the right of the road a flash
+of lightning revealed the outlines of a building a hundred yards from
+the rickety and decaying fence which bordered the Squibbs' farm and
+separated it from the road.
+
+“Here we are!” cried Bridge, “and spooks or no spooks we'll find a
+dry spot in that old ruin. There was a stove there last year and it's
+doubtless there yet. A good fire to dry our clothes and warm us up
+will fit us for a bully good sleep, and I'll wager a silk hat that The
+Oskaloosa Kid is a mighty sleepy kid, eh?”
+
+The boy admitted the allegation and the two turned in through the
+gateway, stepping over the fallen gate and moving through knee high
+weeds toward the forbidding structure in the distance. A clump of trees
+surrounded the house, their shade adding to the almost utter blackness
+of the night.
+
+The two had reached the verandah when Bridge, turning, saw a brilliant
+light flaring through the night above the crest of the hill they had
+just topped in their descent into the ravine, or, to be more explicit,
+the small valley, where stood the crumbling house of Squibbs. The purr
+of a rapidly moving motor rose above the rain, the light rose, fell,
+swerved to the right and to the left.
+
+“Someone must be in a hurry,” commented Bridge.
+
+“I suppose it is James, anxious to find you and explain his absence,”
+ suggested The Oskaloosa Kid. They both laughed.
+
+“Gad!” cried Bridge, as the car topped the hill and plunged downward
+toward them, “I'd hate to ride behind that fellow on a night like this,
+and over a dirt road at that!”
+
+As the car swung onto the straight road before the house a flash of
+lightning revealed dimly the outlines of a rapidly moving touring car
+with lowered top. Just as the machine came opposite the Squibbs' gate a
+woman's scream mingled with the report of a pistol from the tonneau
+and the watchers upon the verandah saw a dark bulk hurled from the
+car, which sped on with undiminished speed, climbed the hill beyond and
+disappeared from view.
+
+Bridge started on a run toward the gateway, followed by the frightened
+Kid. In the ditch beside the road they found in a dishevelled heap the
+body of a young woman. The man lifted the still form in his arms. The
+youth wondered at the great strength of the slight figure. “Let me help
+you carry her,” he volunteered; but Bridge needed no assistance. “Run
+ahead and open the door for me,” he said, as he bore his burden toward
+the house.
+
+Forgetful, in the excitement of the moment, of his terror of the horror
+ridden ruin, The Oskaloosa Kid hastened ahead, mounted the few steps to
+the verandah, crossed it and pushed open the sagging door. Behind him
+came Bridge as the youth entered the dark interior. A half dozen
+steps he took when his foot struck against a soft and yielding mass.
+Stumbling, he tried to regain his equilibrium only to drop full upon the
+thing beneath him. One open palm, extended to ease his fall, fell upon
+the upturned features of a cold and clammy face. With a shriek of horror
+The Kid leaped to his feet and shrank, trembling, back.
+
+“What is it? What's the matter?” cried Bridge, with whom The Kid had
+collided in his precipitate retreat.
+
+“O-o-o!” groaned The Kid, shuddering. “It's dead! It's dead!”
+
+“What's dead?” demanded Bridge.
+
+“There's a dead man on the floor, right ahead of us,” moaned The Kid.
+
+“You'll find a flash lamp in the right hand pocket of my coat,” directed
+Bridge. “Take it and make a light.”
+
+With trembling fingers the Kid did as he was bid, and when after much
+fumbling he found the button a slim shaft of white light fell downward
+upon the upturned face of a man cold in death--a little man, strangely
+garbed, with gold rings in his ears, and long black hair matted in the
+death sweat of his brow. His eyes were wide and, even in death, terror
+filled, his features were distorted with fear and horror. His fingers,
+clenched in the rigidity of death, clutched wisps of dark brown hair.
+There were no indications of a wound or other violence upon his body,
+that either the Kid or Bridge could see, except the dried remains of
+bloody froth which flecked his lips.
+
+Bridge still stood holding the quiet form of the girl in his arms, while
+The Kid, pressed close to the man's side, clutched one arm with a fierce
+intensity which bespoke at once the nervous terror which filled him and
+the reliance he placed upon his new found friend.
+
+To their right, in the faint light of the flash lamp, a narrow stairway
+was revealed leading to the second story. Straight ahead was a door
+opening upon the blackness of a rear apartment. Beside the foot of the
+stairway was another door leading to the cellar steps.
+
+Bridge nodded toward the rear room. “The stove is in there,” he said.
+“We'd better go on and make a fire. Draw your pistol--whoever did this
+has probably beat it; but it's just as well to be on the safe side.”
+
+“I'm afraid,” said The Oskaloosa Kid. “Let's leave this frightful place.
+It's just as I told you it was; just as I always heard.”
+
+“We can't leave this woman, my boy,” replied Bridge. “She isn't dead.
+We can't leave her, and we can't take her out into the storm in her
+condition. We must stay. Come! buck up. There's nothing to fear from a
+dead man, and--”
+
+He never finished the sentence. From the depths of the cellar came the
+sound of a clanking chain. Something scratched heavily upon the wooden
+steps. Whatever it was it was evidently ascending, while behind it
+clanked the heavy links of a dragged chain.
+
+The Oskaloosa Kid cast a wide eyed glance of terror at Bridge. His
+lips moved in an attempt to speak; but fear rendered him inarticulate.
+Slowly, ponderously the THING ascended the dark stairs from the gloom
+ridden cellar of the deserted ruin. Even Bridge paled a trifle. The man
+upon the floor appeared to have met an unnatural death--the frightful
+expression frozen upon the dead face might even indicate something
+verging upon the supernatural. The sound of the THING climbing out of
+the cellar was indeed uncanny--so uncanny that Bridge discovered himself
+looking about for some means of escape. His eyes fell upon the stairway
+leading to the second floor.
+
+“Quick!” he whispered. “Up the stairs! You go first; I'll follow.”
+
+The Kid needed no second invitation. With a bound he was half way up
+the rickety staircase; but a glance ahead at the darkness above gave
+him pause while he waited for Bridge to catch up with him. Coming more
+slowly with his burden the man followed the boy, while from below the
+clanking of the chain warned them that the THING was already at the top
+of the cellar stairs.
+
+“Flash the lamp down there,” directed Bridge. “Let's have a look at it,
+whatever it is.”
+
+With trembling hands The Oskaloosa Kid directed the lens over the
+edge of the swaying and rotting bannister. His finger slipped from the
+lighting button plunging them all into darkness. In his frantic effort
+to find the button and relight the lamp the worst occurred--he fumbled
+the button and the lamp slipped through his fingers, falling over the
+bannister to the floor below. Instantly the sound of the dragging chain
+ceased; but the silence was even more horrible than the noise which had
+preceded it.
+
+For a long minute the two at the head of the stairs stood in tense
+silence listening for a repetition of the gruesome sounds from below.
+The youth was frankly terrified; he made no effort to conceal the fact;
+but pressed close to his companion, again clutching his arm tightly.
+Bridge could feel the trembling of the slight figure, the spasmodic
+gripping of the slender fingers and hear the quick, short, irregular
+breathing. A sudden impulse to throw a protecting arm about the boy
+seized him--an impulse which he could not quite fathom, and one to which
+he could not respond because of the body of the girl he carried.
+
+He bent toward the youth. “There are matches in my coat pocket,” he
+whispered, “--the same pocket in which you found the flash lamp. Strike
+one and we'll look for a room here where we can lay the girl.”
+
+The boy fumbled gropingly in search of the matches. It was evident to
+the man that it was only with the greatest exertion of will power that
+he controlled his muscles at all; but at last he succeeded in finding
+and striking one. At the flare of the light there was a sound from
+below--a scratching sound and the creaking of boards as beneath a heavy
+body; then came the clanking of the chain once more, and the bannister
+against which they leaned shook as though a hand had been laid upon it
+below them. The youth stifled a shriek and simultaneously the match went
+out; but not before Bridge had seen in the momentary flare of light a
+partially open door at the far end of the hall in which they stood.
+
+Beneath them the stairs creaked now and the chain thumped slowly from
+one to another as it was dragged upward toward them.
+
+“Quick!” called Bridge. “Straight down the hall and into the room at
+the end.” The man was puzzled. He could not have been said to have been
+actually afraid, and yet the terror of the boy was so intense, so real,
+that it could scarce but have had its suggestive effect upon the other;
+and, too, there was an uncanny element of the supernatural in what they
+had seen and heard in the deserted house--the dead man on the floor
+below, the inexplicable clanking of a chain by some unseen THING from
+the depth of the cellar upward toward them; and, to heighten the effect
+of these, there were the grim stories of unsolved tragedy and crime. All
+in all Bridge could not have denied that he was glad of the room at the
+end of the hall with its suggestion of safety in the door which might
+be closed against the horrors of the hall and the Stygian gloom below
+stairs.
+
+The Oskaloosa Kid was staggering ahead of him, scarce able to hold his
+body erect upon his shaking knees--his gait seemed pitifully slow to
+the unarmed man carrying the unconscious girl and listening to the chain
+dragging ever nearer and nearer behind; but at last they reached the
+doorway and passed through it into the room.
+
+“Close the door,” directed Bridge as he crossed toward the center of the
+room to lay his burden upon the floor, but there was no response to
+his instructions--only a gasp and the sound of a body slumping to the
+rotting boards. With an exclamation of chagrin the man dropped the girl
+and swung quickly toward the door. Halfway down the hall he could hear
+the chain rattling over loose planking, the THING, whatever it might
+be, was close upon them. Bridge slammed-to the door and with a shoulder
+against it drew a match from his pocket and lighted it. Although his
+clothing was soggy with rain he knew that his matches would still
+be dry, for this pocket and its flap he had ingeniously lined with
+waterproof material from a discarded slicker he had found--years of
+tramping having taught him the discomforts of a fireless camp.
+
+In the resultant light the man saw with a quick glance a large room
+furnished with an old walnut bed, dresser, and commode; two lightless
+windows opened at the far end toward the road, Bridge assumed; and there
+was no door other than that against which he leaned. In the last flicker
+of the match the man scanned the door itself for a lock and, to his
+relief, discovered a bolt--old and rusty it was, but it still moved
+in its sleeve. An instant later it was shot--just as the sound of the
+dragging chain ceased outside. Near the door was the great bed, and
+this Bridge dragged before it as an additional barricade; then, bearing
+nothing more from the hallway, he turned his attention to the two
+unconscious forms upon the floor. Unhesitatingly he went to the boy
+first though had he questioned himself he could not have told why; for
+the youth, undoubtedly, had only swooned, while the girl had been the
+victim of a murderous assault and might even be at the point of death.
+
+What was the appeal to the man in the pseudo Oskaloosa Kid? He had
+scarce seen the boy's face, yet the terrified figure had aroused within
+him, strongly, the protective instinct. Doubtless it was the call of
+youth and weakness which find, always, an answering assurance in the
+strength of a strong man.
+
+As Bridge groped toward the spot where the boy had fallen his eyes, now
+become accustomed to the darkness of the room, saw that the youth was
+sitting up. “Well?” he asked. “Feeling better?”
+
+“Where is it? Oh, God! Where is it?” cried the boy. “It will come in
+here and kill us as it killed that--that--down stairs.”
+
+“It can't get in,” Bridge assured him. “I've locked the door and pushed
+the bed in front of it. Gad! I feel like an old maid looking under the
+bed for burglars.”
+
+From the hall came a sudden clanking of the chain accompanied by a loud
+pounding upon the bare floor. With a scream the youth leaped to his
+feet and almost threw himself upon Bridge. His arms were about the man's
+neck, his face buried in his shoulder.
+
+“Oh, don't--don't let it get me!” he cried.
+
+“Brace up, son,” Bridge admonished him. “Didn't I tell you that it can't
+get in?”
+
+“How do you know it can't get in?” whimpered the youth. “It's the thing
+that murdered the man down stairs--it's the thing that murdered the
+Squibbs--right here in this room. It got in to them--what is to prevent
+its getting in to us. What are doors to such a THING?”
+
+“Come! come! now,” Bridge tried to soothe him. “You have a case of
+nerves. Lie down here on this bed and try to sleep. Nothing shall harm
+you, and when you wake up it will be morning and you'll laugh at your
+fears.”
+
+“Lie on THAT bed!” The voice was almost a shriek. “That is the bed the
+Squibbs were murdered in--the old man and his wife. No one would have
+it, and so it has remained here all these years. I would rather die than
+touch the thing. Their blood is still upon it.”
+
+“I wish,” said Bridge a trifle sternly, “that you would try to control
+yourself a bit. Hysteria won't help us any. Here we are, and we've to
+make the best of it. Besides we must look after this young woman--she
+may be dying, and we haven't done a thing to help her.”
+
+The boy, evidently shamed, released his hold upon Bridge and moved
+away. “I am sorry,” he said. “I'll try to do better; but, Oh! I was so
+frightened. You cannot imagine how frightened I was.”
+
+“I had imagined,” said Bridge, “from what I had heard of him that it
+would be a rather difficult thing to frighten The Oskaloosa Kid--you
+have, you know, rather a reputation for fearlessness.”
+
+The darkness hid the scarlet flush which mantled The Kid's face. There
+was a moment's silence as Bridge crossed to where the young woman still
+lay upon the floor where he had deposited her. Then The Kid spoke. “I'm
+sorry,” he said, “that I made a fool of myself. You have been so brave,
+and I have not helped at all. I shall do better now.”
+
+“Good,” said Bridge, and stooped to raise the young woman in his arms
+and deposit her upon the bed. Then he struck another match and leaned
+close to examine her. The flare of the sulphur illuminated the room
+and shot two rectangles of light against the outer blackness where the
+unglazed windows stared vacantly upon the road beyond, bringing to a
+sudden halt a little company of muddy and bedraggled men who slipped,
+cursing, along the slimy way.
+
+Bridge felt the youth close beside him as he bent above the girl upon
+the bed.
+
+“Is she dead?” the lad whispered.
+
+“No,” replied Bridge, “and I doubt if she's badly hurt.” His hands ran
+quickly over her limbs, bending and twisting them gently; he unbuttoned
+her waist, getting the boy to strike and hold another match while he
+examined the victim for signs of a bullet wound.
+
+“I can't find a scratch on her,” he said at last. “She's suffering from
+shock alone, as far as I can judge. Say, she's pretty, isn't she?”
+
+The youth drew himself rather stiffly erect. “Her features are rather
+coarse, I think,” he replied. There was a peculiar quality to the tone
+which caused Bridge to turn a quick look at the boy's face, just as
+the match flickered and went out. The darkness hid the expression
+upon Bridge's face, but his conviction that the girl was pretty was
+unaltered. The light of the match had revealed an oval face surrounded
+by dark, dishevelled tresses, red, full lips, and large, dark eyes.
+
+Further discussion of the young woman was discouraged by a repetition of
+the clanking of the chain without. Now it was receding along the hallway
+toward the stairs and presently, to the infinite relief of The Oskaloosa
+Kid, the two heard it descending to the lower floor.
+
+“What was it, do you think?” asked the boy, his voice still trembling
+upon the verge of hysteria.
+
+“I don't know,” replied Bridge. “I've never been a believer in ghosts
+and I'm not now; but I'll admit that it takes a whole lot of--”
+
+He did not finish the sentence for a moan from the bed diverted his
+attention to the injured girl, toward whom he now turned. As they
+listened for a repetition of the sound there came another--that of
+the creaking of the old bed slats as the girl moved upon the mildewed
+mattress. Dimly, through the darkness, Bridge saw that the victim of the
+recent murderous assault was attempting to sit up. He moved closer and
+leaned above her.
+
+“I wouldn't exert myself,” he said. “You've just suffered an accident,
+and it's better that you remain quiet.”
+
+“Who are you?” asked the girl, a note of suppressed terror in her voice.
+“You are not--?”
+
+“I am no one you know,” replied Bridge. “My friend and I chanced to be
+near when you fell from the car--” with that innate refinement which
+always belied his vocation and his rags Bridge chose not to embarrass
+the girl by a too intimate knowledge of the thing which had befallen
+her, preferring to leave to her own volition the making of any
+explanation she saw fit, or of none--“and we carried you in here out of
+the storm.”
+
+The girl was silent for a moment. “Where is 'here'?” she asked
+presently. “They drove so fast and it was so dark that I had no idea
+where we were, though I know that we left the turnpike.”
+
+“We are at the old Squibbs place,” replied the man. He could see that
+the girl was running one hand gingerly over her head and face, so that
+her next question did not surprise him.
+
+“Am I badly wounded?” she asked. “Do you think that I am going to die?”
+ The tremor in her voice was pathetic--it was the voice of a frightened
+and wondering child. Bridge heard the boy behind him move impulsively
+forward and saw him kneel on the bed beside the girl.
+
+“You are not badly hurt,” volunteered The Oskaloosa Kid. “Bridge
+couldn't find a mark on you--the bullet must have missed you.”
+
+“He was holding me over the edge of the car when he fired.” The girl's
+voice reflected the physical shudder which ran through her frame at the
+recollection. “Then he threw me out almost simultaneously. I suppose he
+thought that he could not miss at such close range.” For a time she was
+silent again, sitting stiffly erect. Bridge could feel rather than see
+wide, tense eyes staring out through the darkness upon scenes, horrible
+perhaps, that were invisible to him and the Kid.
+
+Suddenly the girl turned and threw herself face downward upon the bed.
+“O, God!” she moaned. “Father! Father! It will kill you--no one will
+believe me--they will think that I am bad. I didn't do it! I didn't
+do it! I've been a silly little fool; but I have never been a bad
+girl--and---and--I had nothing to do with that awful thing that happened
+to-night.”
+
+Bridge and the boy realized that she was not talking to them--that for
+the moment she had lost sight of their presence--she was talking to that
+father whose heart would be breaking with the breaking of the new day,
+trying to convince him that his little girl had done no wrong.
+
+Again she sat up, and when she spoke there was no tremor in her voice.
+
+“I may die,” she said. “I want to die. I do not see how I can go on
+living after last night; but if I do die I want my father to know that
+I had nothing to do with it and that they tried to kill me because
+I wouldn't promise to keep still. It was the little one who murdered
+him--the one they called 'Jimmie' and 'The Oskaloosa Kid.' The big one
+drove the car--his name was 'Terry.' After they killed him I tried to
+jump out--I had been sitting in front with Terry--and then they dragged
+me over into the tonneau and later--the Oskaloosa Kid tried to kill me
+too, and threw me out.”
+
+Bridge heard the boy at his side gulp. The girl went on.
+
+“To-morrow you will know about the murder--everyone will know about it;
+and I will be missed; and there will be people who saw me in the car
+with them, for someone must have seen me. Oh, I can't face it! I want to
+die. I will die! I come of a good family. My father is a prominent man.
+I can't go back and stand the disgrace and see him suffer, as he will
+suffer, for I was all he had--his only child. I can't bear to tell you
+my name--you will know it soon enough--but please find some way to
+let my father know all that I have told you--I swear that it is the
+truth--by the memory of my dead mother, I swear it!”
+
+Bridge laid a hand upon the girl's shoulder. “If you are telling us the
+truth,” he said, “you have only a silly escapade with strange men upon
+your conscience. You must not talk of dying now--your duty is to your
+father. If you take your own life it will be a tacit admission of guilt
+and will only serve to double the burden of sorrow and ignominy which
+your father is bound to feel when this thing becomes public, as it
+certainly must if a murder has been done. The only way in which you
+can atone for your error is to go back and face the consequences with
+him--do not throw it all upon him; that would be cowardly.”
+
+The girl did not reply; but that the man's words had impressed her
+seemed evident. For a while each was occupied with his own thoughts;
+which were presently disturbed by the sound of footsteps upon the floor
+below--the muffled scraping of many feet followed a moment later by an
+exclamation and an oath, the words coming distinctly through the loose
+and splintered flooring.
+
+“Pipe the stiff,” exclaimed a voice which The Oskaloosa Kid recognized
+immediately as that of Soup Face.
+
+“The Kid musta croaked him,” said another.
+
+A laugh followed this evidently witty sally.
+
+“The guy probably lamped the swag an' died of heart failure,” suggested
+another.
+
+The men were still laughing when the sound of a clanking chain echoed
+dismally from the cellar. Instantly silence fell upon the newcomers upon
+the first floor, followed by a--“Wotinel's that?” Two of the men had
+approached the staircase and started to ascend it. Slowly the uncanny
+clanking drew closer to the first floor. The girl on the bed turned
+toward Bridge.
+
+“What is it?” she gasped.
+
+“We don't know,” replied the man. “It followed us up here, or rather
+it chased us up; and then went down again just before you regained
+consciousness. I imagine we shall hear some interesting developments
+from below.”
+
+“It's The Sky Pilot and his gang,” whispered The Oskaloosa Kid.
+
+“It's The Oskaloosa Kid,” came a voice from below.
+
+“But wot was that light upstairs then?” queried another.
+
+“An' wot croaked this guy here?” asked a third. “It wasn't nothin'
+nice--did you get the expression on his mug an' the red foam on his
+lips? I tell youse there's something in this house beside human bein's.
+I know the joint--it's hanted--they's spooks in it. Gawd! there it is
+now,” as the clanking rose to the head of the cellar stairs; and those
+above heard a sudden rush of footsteps as the men broke for the open
+air--all but the two upon the stairway. They had remained too long and
+now, their retreat cut off, they scrambled, cursing and screaming, to
+the second floor.
+
+Along the hallway they rushed to the closed door at the end--the door
+of the room in which the three listened breathlessly--hurling themselves
+against it in violent effort to gain admission.
+
+“Who are you and what do you want?” cried Bridge.
+
+“Let us in! Let us in!” screamed two voices. “Fer God's sake let us in.
+Can't you hear IT? It'll be comin' up here in a minute.”
+
+The sound of the dragging chain could be heard at intervals upon the
+floor below. It seemed to the tense listeners above to pause beside the
+dead man as though hovering in gloating exultation above its gruesome
+prey and then it moved again, this time toward the stairway where
+they all heard it ascending with a creepy slowness which wrought more
+terribly upon tense nerves than would a sudden rush.
+
+“The mills of the Gods grind slowly,” quoted Bridge.
+
+“Oh, don't!” pleaded The Oskaloosa Kid.
+
+“Let us in,” screamed the men without. “Fer the luv o' Mike have a
+heart! Don't leave us out here! IT's comin'! IT's comin'!”
+
+“Oh, let the poor things in,” pleaded the girl on the bed. She was,
+herself, trembling with terror.
+
+“No funny business, now, if I let you in,” commanded Bridge.
+
+“On the square,” came the quick and earnest reply.
+
+The THING had reached the head of the stairs when Bridge dragged the bed
+aside and drew the bolt. Instantly two figures hurled themselves into
+the room but turned immediately to help Bridge resecure the doorway.
+
+Just as it had done before, when Bridge and The Oskaloosa Kid had taken
+refuge there with the girl, the THING moved down the hallway to the
+closed door. The dragging chain marked each foot of its advance. If it
+made other sounds they were drowned by the clanking of the links over
+the time roughened flooring.
+
+Within the room the five were frozen into utter silence, and beyond the
+door an equal quiet prevailed for a long minute; then a great force
+made the door creak and a weird scratching sounded high up upon the old
+fashioned panelling. Bridge heard a smothered gasp from the boy beside
+him, followed instantly by a flash of flame and the crack of a small
+caliber automatic; The Oskaloosa Kid had fired through the door.
+
+Bridge seized the boy's arm and wrenched the weapon from him. “Be
+careful!” he cried. “You'll hurt someone. You didn't miss the girl much
+that time--she's on the bed right in front of the door.”
+
+The Oskaloosa Kid pressed closer to the man as though he sought
+protection from the unknown menace without. The girl sprang from the
+bed and crossed to the opposite side of the room. A flash of lightning
+illuminated the chamber for an instant and the roof of the verandah
+without. The girl noted the latter and the open window.
+
+“Look!” she cried. “Suppose it went out of another window upon this
+porch. It could get us so easily that way!”
+
+“Shut up, you fool!” whispered one of the two newcomers. “It might hear
+you.” The girl subsided into silence.
+
+There was no sound from the hallway.
+
+“I reckon you croaked IT,” suggested the second newcomer, hopefully;
+but, as though the THING without had heard and understood, the clanking
+of the chain recommenced at once; but now it was retreating along the
+hallway, and soon they heard it descending the stairs.
+
+Sighs of relief escaped more than a single pair of lips. “IT didn't hear
+me,” whispered the girl.
+
+Bridge laughed. “We're a nice lot of babies seeing things at night,” he
+scoffed.
+
+“If you're so nervy why don't you go down an' see wot it is?” asked one
+of the late arrivals.
+
+“I believe I shall,” replied Bridge and pulled the bed away from the
+door.
+
+Instantly a chorus of protests arose, the girl and The Oskaloosa Kid
+being most insistent. What was the use? What good could he accomplish?
+It might be nothing; yet on the other hand what had brought death
+so horribly to the cold clay on the floor below? At last their pleas
+prevailed and Bridge replaced the bed before the door.
+
+For two hours the five sat about the room waiting for daylight. There
+could be no sleep for any of them. Occasionally they spoke, usually
+advancing and refuting suggestions as to the identity of the nocturnal
+prowler below-stairs. The THING seemed to have retreated again to the
+cellar, leaving the upper floor to the five strangely assorted prisoners
+and the first floor to the dead man.
+
+During the brief intervals of conversation the girl repeated snatches
+of her story and once she mentioned The Oskaloosa Kid as the murderer of
+the unnamed victim. The two men who had come last pricked up their ears
+at this and Bridge felt the boy's hand just touch his arm as though in
+mute appeal for belief and protection. The man half smiled.
+
+“We seen The Oskaloosa Kid this evenin',” volunteered one of the
+newcomers.
+
+“You did?” exclaimed the girl. “Where?”
+
+“He'd just pulled off a job in Oakdale an' had his pockets bulgin' wid
+sparklers an' kale. We was follerin' him an' when we seen your light up
+here we t'ought it was him.”
+
+The Oskaloosa Kid shrank closer to Bridge. At last he recognized the
+voice of the speaker. While he had known that the two were of The Sky
+Pilot's band he had not been sure of the identity of either; but now it
+was borne in upon him that at least one of them was the last person on
+earth he cared to be cooped up in a small, unlighted room with, and a
+moment later when one of the two rolled a 'smoke' and lighted it he saw
+in the flare of the flame the features of both Dopey Charlie and The
+General. The Oskaloosa Kid gasped once more for the thousandth time that
+night.
+
+It had been Dopey Charlie who lighted the cigaret and in the brief
+illumination his friend The General had grasped the opportunity to scan
+the features of the other members of the party. Schooled by long years
+of repression he betrayed none of the surprise or elation he felt when
+he recognized the features of The Oskaloosa Kid.
+
+If The General was elated The Oskaloosa Kid was at once relieved and
+terrified. Relieved by ocular proof that he was not a murderer and
+terrified by the immediate presence of the two who had sought his life.
+
+His cigaret drawing well Dopey Charlie resumed: “This Oskaloosa Kid's a
+bad actor,” he volunteered. “The little shrimp tried to croak me; but
+he only creased my ribs. I'd like to lay my mits on him. I'll bet there
+won't be no more Oskaloosa Kid when I get done wit him.”
+
+The boy drew Bridge's ear down toward his own lips. “Let's go,” he said.
+“I don't hear anything more downstairs, or maybe we could get out on
+this roof and slide down the porch pillars.”
+
+Bridge laid a strong, warm hand on the small, cold one of his new
+friend.
+
+“Don't worry, Kid,” he said. “I'm for you.”
+
+The two other men turned quickly in the direction of the speaker.
+
+“Is de Kid here?” asked Dopey Charlie.
+
+“He is, my degenerate friend,” replied Bridge; “and furthermore he's
+going to stay here and be perfectly safe. Do you grasp me?”
+
+“Who are you?” asked The General.
+
+“That is a long story,” replied Bridge; “but if you chance to recall
+Dink and Crumb you may also be able to visualize one Billy Burke and
+Billy Byrne and his side partner, Bridge. Yes? Well, I am the side
+partner.”
+
+Before the yeggman could make reply the girl spoke up quickly. “This man
+cannot be The Oskaloosa Kid,” she said. “It was The Oskaloosa Kid who
+threw me from the car.”
+
+“How do you know he ain't?” queried The General. “Youse was knocked
+out when these guys picks you up. It's so dark in here you couldn't
+reco'nize no one. How do you know this here bird ain't The Oskaloosa
+Kid, eh?”
+
+“I have heard both these men speak,” replied the girl; “their voices
+were not those of any men I have known. If one of them is The Oskaloosa
+Kid then there must be two men called that. Strike a match and you will
+see that you are mistaken.”
+
+The General fumbled in an inside pocket for a package of matches
+carefully wrapped against possible damage by rain. Presently he struck
+one and held the light in the direction of The Kid's face while he and
+the girl and Dopey Charlie leaned forward to scrutinize the youth's
+features.
+
+“It's him all right,” said Dopey Charlie.
+
+“You bet it is,” seconded The General.
+
+“Why he's only a boy,” ejaculated the girl. “The one who threw me from
+the machine was a man.”
+
+“Well, this one said he was The Oskaloosa Kid,” persisted The General.
+
+“An' he shot me up,” growled Dopey Charlie.
+
+“It's too bad he didn't kill you,” remarked Bridge pleasantly. “You're
+a thief and probably a murderer into the bargain--you tried to kill this
+boy just before he shot you.”
+
+“Well wot's he?” demanded Dopey Charlie. “He's a thief--he said he
+was--look in his pockets--they're crammed wid swag, an' he's a gun-man,
+too, or he wouldn't be packin' a gat. I guess he ain't got nothin' on
+me.”
+
+The darkness hid the scarlet flush which mounted to the boy's cheeks--so
+hot that he thought it must surely glow redly through the night. He
+waited in dumb misery for Bridge to demand the proof of his guilt.
+Earlier in the evening he had flaunted the evidence of his crime in the
+faces of the six hobos; but now he suddenly felt a great shame that his
+new found friend should believe him a house-breaker.
+
+But Bridge did not ask for any substantiation of Charlie's charges,
+he merely warned the two yeggmen that they would have to leave the boy
+alone and in the morning, when the storm had passed and daylight had
+lessened the unknown danger which lurked below-stairs, betake themselves
+upon their way.
+
+“And while we're here together in this room you two must sit over near
+the window,” he concluded. “You've tried to kill the boy once to-night;
+but you're not going to try it again--I'm taking care of him now.”
+
+“You gotta crust, bo,” observed Dopey Charlie, belligerently. “I guess
+me an' The General'll sit where we damn please, an' youse can take it
+from me on the side that we're goin' to have ours out of The Kid's haul.
+If you tink you're goin' to cop the whole cheese you got another tink
+comin'.”
+
+“You are banking,” replied Bridge, “on the well known fact that I never
+carry a gun; but you fail to perceive, owing to the Stygian gloom which
+surrounds us, that I have the Kid's automatic in my gun hand and that
+the business end of it is carefully aiming in your direction.”
+
+“Cheese it,” The General advised his companion; and the two removed
+themselves to the opposite side of the apartment, where they whispered,
+grumblingly, to one another.
+
+The girl, the boy, and Bridge waited as patiently as they could for
+the coming of the dawn, talking of the events of the night and planning
+against the future. Bridge advised the girl to return at once to her
+father; but this she resolutely refused to do, admitting with utmost
+candor that she lacked the courage to face her friends even though her
+father might still believe in her.
+
+The youth begged that he might accompany Bridge upon the road, pleading
+that his mother was dead and that he could not return home after his
+escapade. And Bridge could not find it in his heart to refuse him, for
+the man realized that the boyish waif possessed a subtile attraction, as
+forceful as it was inexplicable. Not since he had followed the open road
+in company with Billy Byrne had Bridge met one with whom he might care
+to 'Pal' before The Kid crossed his path on the dark and storm swept
+pike south of Oakdale.
+
+In Byrne, mucker, pugilist, and MAN, Bridge had found a physical and
+moral counterpart of himself, for the slender Bridge was muscled as
+a Greek god, while the stocky Byrne, metamorphosed by the fire of a
+woman's love, possessed all the chivalry of the care free tramp whose
+vagabondage had never succeeded in submerging the evidences of his
+cultural birthright.
+
+In the youth Bridge found an intellectual equal with the added charm
+of a physical dependent. The man did not attempt to fathom the evident
+appeal of the other's tacitly acknowledged cowardice; he merely knew
+that he would not have had the youth otherwise if he could have
+changed him. Ordinarily he accepted male cowardice with the resignation
+of surfeited disgust; but in the case of The Oskaloosa Kid he realized a
+certain artless charm which but tended to strengthen his liking for the
+youth, so brazen and unaffected was the boy's admission of his terror of
+both the real and the unreal menaces of this night of horror.
+
+That the girl also was well bred was quite evident to Bridge, while both
+the girl and the youth realized the refinement of the strange companion
+and protector which Fate had ordered for them, while they also saw
+in one another social counterparts of themselves. Thus, as the night
+dragged its slow course, the three came to trust each other more
+entirely and to speculate upon the strange train of circumstances which
+had brought them thus remarkably together--the thief, the murderer's
+accomplice, and the vagabond.
+
+It was during a period of thoughtful silence when the night was darkest
+just before the dawn and the rain had settled to a dismal drizzle
+unrelieved by lightning or by thunder that the five occupants of the
+room were suddenly startled by a strange pattering sound from the
+floor below. It was as the questioning fall of a child's feet upon the
+uncarpeted boards in the room beneath them. Frozen to silent rigidity,
+the five sat straining every faculty to catch the minutest sound from
+the black void where the dead man lay, and as they listened there
+came up to them, mingled with the inexplicable footsteps, the hollow
+reverberation from the dank cellar--the hideous dragging of the
+chain behind the nameless horror which had haunted them through the
+interminable eons of the ghastly night.
+
+Up, up, up it came toward the first floor. The pattering of the feet
+ceased. The clanking rose until the five heard the scraping of the chain
+against the door frame at the head of the cellar stairs. They heard it
+pass across the floor toward the center of the room and then, loud
+and piercing, there rang out against the silence of the awful night a
+woman's shriek.
+
+Instantly Bridge leaped to his feet. Without a word he tore the bed from
+before the door.
+
+“What are you doing?” cried the girl in a muffled scream.
+
+“I am going down to that woman,” said Bridge, and he drew the bolt,
+rusty and complaining, from its corroded seat.
+
+“No!” screamed the girl, and seconding her the youth sprang to his feet
+and threw his arms about Bridge.
+
+“Please! Please!” he cried. “Oh, please don't leave me.”
+
+The girl also ran to the man's side and clutched him by the sleeve.
+
+“Don't go!” she begged. “Oh, for God's sake, don't leave us here alone!”
+
+“You heard a woman scream, didn't you?” asked Bridge. “Do you suppose I
+can stay in up here when a woman may be facing death a few feet below
+me?”
+
+For answer the girl but held more tightly to his arm while the youth
+slipped to the floor and embraced the man's knees in a vice-like hold
+which he could not break without hurting his detainer.
+
+“Come! Come!” expostulated Bridge. “Let me go.”
+
+“Wait!” begged the girl. “Wait until you know that it is a human voice
+that screams through this horrible place.”
+
+The youth only strained his hold tighter about the man's legs. Bridge
+felt a soft cheek pressed to his knee; and, for some unaccountable
+reason, the appeal was stronger than the pleading of the girl. Slowly
+Bridge realized that he could not leave this defenseless youth alone
+even though a dozen women might be menaced by the uncanny death below.
+With a firm hand he shot the bolt. “Leave go of me,” he said; “I shan't
+leave you unless she calls for help in articulate words.”
+
+The boy rose and, trembling, pressed close to the man who,
+involuntarily, threw a protecting arm about the slim figure. The girl,
+too, drew nearer, while the two yeggmen rose and stood in rigid silence
+by the window. From below came an occasional rattle of the chain,
+followed after a few minutes by the now familiar clanking as the iron
+links scraped across the flooring. Mingled with the sound of the chain
+there rose to them what might have been the slow and ponderous footsteps
+of a heavy man, dragging painfully across the floor. For a few moments
+they heard it, and then all was silent.
+
+For a dozen tense minutes the five listened; but there was no repetition
+of any sound from below. Suddenly the girl breathed a deep sigh, and
+the spell of terror was broken. Bridge felt rather than heard the youth
+sobbing softly against his breast, while across the room The General
+gave a quick, nervous laugh which he as immediately suppressed as though
+fearful unnecessarily of calling attention to their presence. The other
+vagabond fumbled with his hypodermic needle and the narcotic which would
+quickly give his fluttering nerves the quiet they craved.
+
+Bridge, the boy, and the girl shivered together in their soggy clothing
+upon the edge of the bed, feeling now in the cold dawn the chill
+discomfort of which the excitement of the earlier hours of the night had
+rendered them unconscious. The youth coughed.
+
+“You've caught cold,” said Bridge, his tone almost self-reproachful, as
+though he were entirely responsible for the boy's condition. “We're a
+nice aggregation of mollycoddles--five of us sitting half frozen up here
+with a stove on the floor below, and just because we heard a noise which
+we couldn't explain and hadn't the nerve to investigate.” He rose. “I'm
+going down, rustle some wood and build a fire in that stove--you two
+kids have got to dry those clothes of yours and get warmed up or we'll
+have a couple of hospital cases on our hands.”
+
+Once again rose a chorus of pleas and objections. Oh, wouldn't he wait
+until daylight? See! the dawn was even then commencing to break. They
+didn't dare go down and they begged him not to leave them up there
+alone.
+
+At this Dopey Charlie spoke up. The 'hop' had commenced to assert its
+dominion over his shattered nervous system instilling within him a new
+courage and a feeling of utter well-being. “Go on down,” said he to
+Bridge. “The General an' I'll look after the kids--won't we bo?”
+
+“Sure,” assented The General; “we'll take care of 'em.”
+
+“I'll tell you what we'll do,” said Bridge; “we'll leave the kids up
+here and we three'll go down. They won't go, and I wouldn't leave them
+up here with you two morons on a bet.”
+
+The General and Dopey Charlie didn't know what a moron was but they felt
+quite certain from Bridge's tone of voice that a moron was not a nice
+thing, and anyway no one could have bribed them to descend into the
+darkness of the lower floor with the dead man and the grisly THING that
+prowled through the haunted chambers; so they flatly refused to budge an
+inch.
+
+Bridge saw in the gradually lighting sky the near approach of full
+daylight; so he contented himself with making the girl and the youth
+walk briskly to and fro in the hope that stimulated circulation might at
+least partially overcome the menace of the damp clothing and the chill
+air, and thus they occupied the remaining hour of the night.
+
+From below came no repetition of the inexplicable noises of that night
+of terror and at last, with every object plainly discernible in the
+light of the new day, Bridge would delay no longer; but voiced his final
+determination to descend and make a fire in the old kitchen stove. Both
+the boy and the girl insisted upon accompanying him. For the first time
+each had an opportunity to study the features of his companions of
+the night. Bridge found in the girl and the youth two dark eyed,
+good-looking young people. In the girl's face was, perhaps, just a trace
+of weakness; but it was not the face of one who consorts habitually with
+criminals. The man appraised her as a pretty, small-town girl who had
+been led into a temporary escapade by the monotony of village life, and
+he would have staked his soul that she was not a bad girl.
+
+The boy, too, looked anything other than the role he had been playing.
+Bridge smiled as he looked at the clear eyes, the oval face, and the
+fine, sensitive mouth and thought of the youth's claim to the crime
+battered sobriquet of The Oskaloosa Kid. The man wondered if the mystery
+of the clanking chain would prove as harmlessly infantile as these two
+whom some accident of hilarious fate had cast in the roles of debauchery
+and crime.
+
+Aloud, he said: “I'll go first, and if the spook materializes you two
+can beat it back into the room.” And to the two tramps: “Come on, boes,
+we'll all take a look at the lower floor together, and then we'll get a
+good fire going in the kitchen and warm up a bit.”
+
+Down the hall they went, Bridge leading with the boy and girl close
+at his heels while the two yeggs brought up the rear. Their footsteps
+echoed through the deserted house; but brought forth no answering
+clanking from the cellar. The stairs creaked beneath the unaccustomed
+weight of so many bodies as they descended toward the lower floor.
+Near the bottom Bridge came to a questioning halt. The front room lay
+entirely within his range of vision, and as his eyes swept it he gave
+voice to a short exclamation of surprise.
+
+The youth and the girl, shivering with cold and nervous excitement,
+craned their necks above the man's shoulder.
+
+“O-h-h!” gasped The Oskaloosa Kid. “He's gone,” and, sure enough, the
+dead man had vanished.
+
+Bridge stepped quickly down the remaining steps, entered the rear room
+which had served as dining room and kitchen, inspected the two small
+bedrooms off this room, and the summer kitchen beyond. All were empty;
+then he turned and re-entering the front room bent his steps toward the
+cellar stairs. At the foot of the stairway leading to the second floor
+lay the flash lamp that the boy had dropped the night before. Bridge
+stooped, picked it up and examined it. It was uninjured and with it in
+his hand he continued toward the cellar door.
+
+“Where are you going?” asked The Oskaloosa Kid.
+
+“I'm going to solve the mystery of that infernal clanking,” he replied.
+
+“You are not going down into that dark cellar!” It was an appeal, a
+question, and a command; and it quivered gaspingly upon the verge of
+hysteria.
+
+Bridge turned and looked into the youth's face. The man did not like
+cowardice and his eyes were stern as he turned them on the lad from
+whom during the few hours of their acquaintance he had received so many
+evidences of cowardice; but as the clear brown eyes of the boy met his
+the man's softened and he shook his head perplexedly. What was there
+about this slender stripling which so disarmed criticism?
+
+“Yes,” he replied, “I am going down. I doubt if I shall find anything
+there; but if I do it is better to come upon it when I am looking for it
+than to have it come upon us when we are not expecting it. If there is
+to be any hunting I prefer to be hunter rather than hunted.”
+
+He wheeled and placed a foot upon the cellar stairs. The youth followed
+him.
+
+“What are you going to do?” asked the man.
+
+“I am going with you,” said the boy. “You think I am a coward because I
+am afraid; but there is a vast difference between cowardice and fear.”
+
+The man made no reply as he resumed the descent of the stairs, flashing
+the rays of the lamp ahead of him; but he pondered the boy's words and
+smiled as he admitted mentally that it undoubtedly took more courage
+to do a thing in the face of fear than to do it if fear were absent.
+He felt a strange elation that this youth should choose voluntarily to
+share his danger with him, for in his roaming life Bridge had known few
+associates for whom he cared.
+
+The beams of the little electric lamp, moving from side to side,
+revealed a small cellar littered with refuse and festooned with
+cob-webs. At one side tottered the remains of a series of wooden racks
+upon which pans of milk had doubtless stood to cool in a long gone,
+happier day. Some of the uprights had rotted away so that a part of the
+frail structure had collapsed to the earthen floor. A table with one leg
+missing and a crippled chair constituted the balance of the contents of
+the cellar and there was no living creature and no chain nor any other
+visible evidence of the presence which had clanked so lugubriously
+out of the dark depths during the vanished night. The boy breathed
+a heartfelt sigh of relief and Bridge laughed, not without a note of
+relief either.
+
+“You see there is nothing,” he said--“nothing except some firewood which
+we can use to advantage. I regret that James is not here to attend me;
+but since he is not you and I will have to carry some of this stuff
+upstairs,” and together they returned to the floor above, their arms
+laden with pieces of the dilapidated milk rack. The girl was awaiting
+them at the head of the stairs while the two tramps whispered together
+at the opposite side of the room.
+
+It took Bridge but a moment to have a roaring fire started in the old
+stove in the kitchen, and as the warmth rolled in comforting waves about
+them the five felt for the first time in hours something akin to relief
+and well being. With the physical relaxation which the heat induced came
+a like relaxation of their tongues and temporary forgetfulness of their
+antagonisms and individual apprehensions. Bridge was the only member
+of the group whose conscience was entirely free. He was not 'wanted'
+anywhere, he had no unexpiated crimes to harry his mind, and with the
+responsibilities of the night removed he fell naturally into his old,
+carefree manner. He hazarded foolish explanations of the uncanny noises
+of the night and suggested various theories to account for the presence
+and the mysterious disappearance of the dead man.
+
+The General, on the contrary, seriously maintained that the weird sounds
+had emanated from the ghost of the murdered man who was, unquestionably,
+none other than the long dead Squibb returned to haunt his former home,
+and that the scream had sprung from the ghostly lungs of his slain wife
+or daughter.
+
+“I wouldn't spend anudder night in this dump,” he concluded, “for both
+them pockets full of swag The Oskaloosa Kid's packin' around.”
+
+Immediately all eyes turned upon the flushing youth. The girl and Bridge
+could not prevent their own gazes from wandering to the bulging coat
+pockets, the owner of which moved uneasily, at last shooting a look of
+defiance, not unmixed with pleading, at Bridge.
+
+“He's a bad one,” interjected Dopey Charlie, a glint of cunning in his
+ordinarily glassy eyes. “He flashes a couple o' mitsful of sparklers,
+chesty-like, and allows as how he's a regular burglar. Then he pulls
+a gun on me, as wasn't doin' nothin' to him, and 'most croaks me. It's
+even money that if anyone's been croaked in Oakdale last night they
+won't have to look far for the guy that done it. Least-wise they won't
+have to look far if he doesn't come across,” and Dopey Charlie looked
+meaningly and steadily at the side pockets of The Oskaloosa Kid.
+
+“I think,” said Bridge, after a moment of general silence, “that you
+two crooks had better beat it. Do you get me?” and he looked from Dopey
+Charlie to The General and back again.
+
+“We don't go,” said Dopey Charlie, belligerently, “until we gets half
+the Kid's swag.”
+
+“You go now,” said Bridge, “without anybody's swag,” and he drew the
+boy's automatic from his side pocket. “You go now and you go quick--beat
+it!”
+
+The two rose and shuffled toward the door. “We'll get you, you colledge
+Lizzy,” threatened Dopey Charlie, “an' we'll get that phoney punk, too.”
+
+“'And speed the parting guest,'” quoted Bridge, firing a shot that
+splintered the floor at the crook's feet. When the two hoboes had
+departed the others huddled again close to the stove until Bridge
+suggested that he and The Oskaloosa Kid retire to another room while the
+girl removed and dried her clothing; but she insisted that it was
+not wet enough to matter since she had been covered by a robe in the
+automobile until just a moment before she had been hurled out.
+
+“Then, after you are warmed up,” said Bridge, “you can step into this
+other room while the kid and I strip and dry our things, for there's no
+question but that we are wet enough.”
+
+At the suggestion the kid started for the door. “Oh, no,” he insisted;
+“it isn't worth while. I am almost dry now, and as soon as we get out on
+the road I'll be all right. I--I--I like wet clothes,” he ended, lamely.
+
+Bridge looked at him questioningly; but did not urge the matter. “Very
+well,” he said; “you probably know what you like; but as for me, I'm
+going to pull off every rag and get good and dry.”
+
+The girl had already quitted the room and now The Kid turned and
+followed her. Bridge shook his head. “I'll bet the little beggar never
+was away from his mother before in his life,” he mused; “why the mere
+thought of undressing in front of a strange man made him turn red--and
+posing as The Oskaloosa Kid! Bless my soul; but he's a humorist--a
+regular, natural born one.”
+
+Bridge found that his clothing had dried to some extent during the
+night; so, after a brisk rub, he put on the warmed garments and though
+some were still a trifle damp he felt infinitely more comfortable than
+he had for many hours.
+
+Outside the house he came upon the girl and the youth standing in the
+sunshine of a bright, new day. They were talking together in a most
+animated manner, and as he approached wondering what the two had found
+of so great common interest he discovered that the discussion hinged
+upon the relative merits of ham and bacon as a breakfast dish.
+
+“Oh, my heart it is just achin',” quoted Bridge,
+
+        “For a little bite of bacon,
+
+     “A hunk of bread, a little mug of brew;
+
+        “I'm tired of seein' scenery,
+
+     “Just lead me to a beanery
+
+        “Where there's something more than only air to
+
+           chew.”
+
+The two looked up, smiling. “You're a funny kind of tramp, to be quoting
+poetry,” said The Oskaloosa Kid, “even if it is Knibbs'.”
+
+“Almost as funny,” replied Bridge, “as a burglar who recognizes Knibbs
+when he hears him.”
+
+The Oskaloosa Kid flushed. “He wrote for us of the open road,” he
+replied quickly. “I don't know of any other class of men who should
+enjoy him more.”
+
+“Or any other class that is less familiar with him,” retorted Bridge;
+“but the burning question just now is pots, not poetry--flesh pots. I'm
+hungry. I could eat a cow.”
+
+The girl pointed to an adjacent field. “Help yourself,” she said.
+
+“That happens to be a bull,” said Bridge. “I was particular to mention
+cow, which, in this instance, is proverbially less dangerous than the
+male, and much better eating.
+
+“'We kept a-rambling all the time. I rustled grub, he rustled rhyme--
+
+“'Blind baggage, hoof it, ride or climb--we always put it through.'
+Who's going to rustle the grub?”
+
+The girl looked at The Oskaloosa Kid. “You don't seem like a tramp at
+all, to talk to,” she said; “but I suppose you are used to asking for
+food. I couldn't do it--I should die if I had to.”
+
+The Oskaloosa Kid looked uncomfortable. “So should--” he commenced, and
+then suddenly subsided. “Of course I'd just as soon,” he said. “You two
+stay here--I'll be back in a minute.”
+
+They watched him as he walked down to the road and until he disappeared
+over the crest of the hill a short distance from the Squibbs' house.
+
+“I like him,” said the girl, turning toward Bridge.
+
+“So do I,” replied the man.
+
+“There must be some good in him,” she continued, “even if he is such
+a desperate character; but I know he's not The Oskaloosa Kid. Do you
+really suppose he robbed a house last night and then tried to kill that
+Dopey person?”
+
+Bridge shook his head. “I don't know,” he said; “but I am inclined to
+believe that he is more imaginative than criminal. He certainly shot up
+the Dopey person; but I doubt if he ever robbed a house.”
+
+While they waited, The Oskaloosa Kid trudged along the muddy road to the
+nearest farm house, which lay a full mile beyond the Squibbs' home.
+As he approached the door a lank, sallow man confronted him with a
+suspicious eye.
+
+“Good morning,” greeted The Oskaloosa Kid.
+
+The man grunted.
+
+“I want to get something to eat,” explained the youth.
+
+If the boy had hurled a dynamite bomb at him the result could have
+been no more surprising. The lank, sallow man went up into the air,
+figuratively. He went up a mile or more, and on the way down he reached
+his hand inside the kitchen door and brought it forth enveloping the
+barrel of a shot gun.
+
+“Durn ye!” he cried. “I'll lam ye! Get offen here. I knows ye. Yer one
+o' that gang o' bums that come here last night, an' now you got the gall
+to come back beggin' for food, eh? I'll lam ye!” and he raised the gun
+to his shoulder.
+
+The Oskaloosa Kid quailed but he held his ground. “I wasn't here last
+night,” he cried, “and I'm not begging for food--I want to buy some.
+I've got plenty of money,” in proof of which assertion he dug into a
+side pocket and brought forth a large roll of bills. The man lowered his
+gun.
+
+“Wy didn't ye say so in the first place then?” he growled. “How'd I know
+you wanted to buy it, eh? Where'd ye come from anyhow, this early in
+the mornin'? What's yer name, eh? What's yer business, that's what Jeb
+Case'd like to know, eh?” He snapped his words out with the rapidity of
+a machine gun, nor waited for a reply to one query before launching
+the next. “What do ye want to buy, eh? How much money ye got? Looks
+suspicious. That's a sight o' money yew got there, eh? Where'dje get
+it?”
+
+“It's mine,” said The Oskaloosa Kid, “and I want to buy some eggs and
+milk and ham and bacon and flour and onions and sugar and cream and
+strawberries and tea and coffee and a frying pan and a little oil stove,
+if you have one to spare, and--”
+
+Jeb Case's jaw dropped and his eyes widened. “You're in the wrong
+pasture, bub,” he remarked feelingly. “What yer lookin' fer is Sears,
+Roebuck & Company.”
+
+The Oskaloosa Kid flushed up to the tips of his ears. “But can't you
+sell me something?” he begged.
+
+“I might let ye have some milk an' eggs an' butter an' a leetle bacon
+an' mebby my ol' woman's got a loaf left from her last bakin'; but we
+ain't been figgerin' on supplyin' grub fer the United States army ef
+that's what yew be buyin' fer.”
+
+A frowsy, rat-faced woman and a gawky youth of fourteen stuck their
+heads out the doorway at either side of the man. “I ain't got nothin'
+to sell,” snapped the woman; but as she spoke her eyes fell upon the fat
+bank roll in the youth's hand. “Or, leastwise,” she amended, “I ain't
+got much more'n we need an' the price o' stuff's gone up so lately that
+I'll hev to ask ye more'n I would of last fall. 'Bout what did ye figger
+on wantin'?”
+
+“Anything you can spare,” said the youth. “There are three of us and
+we're awful hungry.”
+
+“Where yew stoppin'?” asked the woman.
+
+“We're at the old Squibbs' place,” replied The Kid. “We got caught by
+the storm last night and had to put up there.”
+
+“The Squibbs' place!” ejaculated the woman. “Yew didn't stop there over
+night?”
+
+“Yes we did,” replied the youth.
+
+“See anything funny?” asked Mrs. Case.
+
+“We didn't SEE anything,” replied The Oskaloosa Kid; “but we heard
+things. At least we didn't see what we heard; but we saw a dead man on
+the floor when we went in and this morning he was gone.”
+
+The Cases shuddered. “A dead man!” ejaculated Jeb Case. “Yew seen him?”
+
+The Kid nodded.
+
+“I never tuk much stock in them stories,” said Jeb, with a shake of his
+head; “but ef you SEEN it! Gosh! Thet beats me. Come on M'randy, les see
+what we got to spare,” and he turned into the kitchen with his wife.
+
+The lanky boy stepped out, and planting himself in front of The
+Oskaloosa Kid proceeded to stare at him. “Yew seen it?” he asked in
+awestruck tone.
+
+“Yes,” said the Kid in a low voice, and bending close toward the other;
+“it had bloody froth on its lips!”
+
+The Case boy shrank back. “An' what did yew hear?” he asked, a glutton
+for thrills.
+
+“Something that dragged a chain behind it and came up out of the cellar
+and tried to get in our room on the second floor,” explained the youth.
+“It almost got us, too,” he added, “and it did it all night.”
+
+“Whew,” whistled the Case boy. “Gosh!” Then he scratched his head and
+looked admiringly at the youth. “What mought yer name be?” he asked.
+
+“I'm The Oskaloosa Kid,” replied the youth, unable to resist the
+admiration of the other's fond gaze. “Look here!” and he fished a
+handful of jewelry from one of his side pockets; “this is some of the
+swag I stole last night when I robbed a house.”
+
+Case Jr. opened his mouth and eyes so wide that there was little left
+of his face. “But that's nothing,” bragged The Kid. “I shot a man, too.”
+
+“Last night?” whispered the boy.
+
+“Yep,” replied the bad man, tersely.
+
+“Gosh!” said the young Mr. Case, but there was that in his facial
+expression which brought to The Oskaloosa Kid a sudden regret that he
+had thus rashly confided in a stranger.
+
+“Say,” said The Kid, after a moment's strained silence. “Don't tell
+anyone, will you? If you'll promise I'll give you a dollar,” and he
+hunted through his roll of bills for one of that lowly denomination.
+
+“All right,” agreed the Case boy. “I won't say a word--where's the
+dollar?”
+
+The youth drew a bill from his roll and handed it to the other. “If you
+tell,” he whispered, and he bent close toward the other's ear and spoke
+in a menacing tone; “If you tell, I'll kill you!”
+
+“Gosh!” said Willie Case.
+
+At this moment Case pere and mere emerged from the kitchen loaded with
+provender. “Here's enough an' more'n enough, I reckon,” said Jeb Case.
+“We got eggs, butter, bread, bacon, milk, an' a mite o' garden sass.”
+
+“But we ain't goin' to charge you nothin' fer the garden sass,”
+ interjected Mrs. Case.
+
+“That's awfully nice of you,” replied The Kid. “How much do I owe you
+for the rest of it?”
+
+“Oh,” said Jeb Case, rubbing his chin, eyeing the big roll of bills and
+wondering just the limit he might raise to, “I reckon 'bout four dollars
+an' six bits.”
+
+The Oskaloosa Kid peeled a five dollar bill from his roll and proffered
+it to the farmer. “I'm ever so much obliged,” he said, “and you needn't
+mind about any change. I thank you so much.” With which he took the
+several packages and pails and turned toward the road.
+
+“Yew gotta return them pails!” shouted Mrs. Case after him.
+
+“Oh, of course,” replied The Kid.
+
+“Gosh!” exclaimed Mr. Case, feelingly. “I wisht I'd asked six bits
+more--I mought jest as well o' got it as not. Gosh, eh?”
+
+“Gosh!” murmured Willie Case, fervently.
+
+Back down the sticky road plodded The Oskaloosa Kid, his arms heavy and
+his heart light, for, was he not 'bringing home the bacon,' literally as
+well as figuratively. As he entered the Squibbs' gateway he saw the
+girl and Bridge standing upon the verandah waiting his coming, and as
+he approached them and they caught a nearer view of his great burden of
+provisions they hailed him with loud acclaim.
+
+“Some artist!” cried the man. “And to think that I doubted your ability
+to make a successful touch! Forgive me! You are the ne plus ultra, non
+est cumquidibus, in hoc signo vinces, only and original kind of hand-out
+compellers.”
+
+“How in the world did you do it?” asked the girl, rapturously.
+
+“Oh, it's easy when you know how,” replied The Oskaloosa Kid carelessly,
+as, with the help of the others, he carried the fruits of his expedition
+into the kitchen. Here Bridge busied himself about the stove, adding
+more wood to the fire and scrubbing a portion of the top plate as clean
+as he could get it with such crude means as he could discover about the
+place.
+
+The youth he sent to the nearby brook for water after selecting the
+least dirty of the several empty tin cans lying about the floor of the
+summer kitchen. He warned against the use of the water from the old
+well and while the boy was away cut a generous portion of the bacon into
+long, thin strips.
+
+Shortly after, the water coming to the boil, Bridge lowered three eggs
+into it, glanced at his watch, greased one of the new cleaned stove lids
+with a piece of bacon rind and laid out as many strips of bacon as the
+lid would accommodate. Instantly the room was filled with the delicious
+odor of frying bacon.
+
+“M-m-m-m!” gloated The Oskaloosa Kid. “I wish I had bo--asked for more.
+My! but I never smelled anything so good as that in all my life. Are you
+going to boil only three eggs? I could eat a dozen.”
+
+“The can'll only hold three at a time,” explained Bridge. “We'll have
+some more boiling while we are eating these.” He borrowed his knife from
+the girl, who was slicing and buttering bread with it, and turned the
+bacon swiftly and deftly with the point, then he glanced at his watch.
+“The three minutes are up,” he announced and, with a couple of small,
+flat sticks saved for the purpose from the kindling wood, withdrew the
+eggs one at a time from the can.
+
+“But we have no cups!” exclaimed The Oskaloosa Kid, in sudden despair.
+
+Bridge laughed. “Knock an end off your egg and the shell will answer in
+place of a cup. Got a knife?”
+
+The Kid didn't. Bridge eyed him quizzically. “You must have done most of
+your burgling near home,” he commented.
+
+“I'm not a burglar!” cried the youth indignantly. Somehow it was very
+different when this nice voiced man called him a burglar from bragging
+of the fact himself to such as The Sky Pilot's villainous company, or
+the awestruck, open-mouthed Willie Case whose very expression invited
+heroics.
+
+Bridge made no reply, but his eyes wandered to the right hand side
+pocket of the boy's coat. Instantly the latter glanced guiltily
+downward to flush redly at the sight of several inches of pearl necklace
+protruding accusingly therefrom. The girl, a silent witness of the
+occurrence, was brought suddenly and painfully to a realization of her
+present position and recollection of the happenings of the preceding
+night. For the time she had forgotten that she was alone in the company
+of a tramp and a burglar--how much worse either might be she could only
+guess.
+
+The breakfast, commenced so auspiciously, continued in gloomy silence.
+At least the girl and The Oskaloosa Kid were silent and gloom
+steeped. Bridge was thoughtful but far from morose. His spirits were
+unquenchable.
+
+“I am afraid,” he said, “that I shall have to replace James. His
+defection is unforgivable, and he has misplaced the finger-bowls.”
+
+The youth and the girl forced wan smiles; but neither spoke. Bridge drew
+a pouch of tobacco and some papers from an inside pocket.
+
+        “'I had the makings and I smoked
+
+           “'And wondered over different things,
+
+        “'Thinkin' as how this old world joked
+
+           “'In callin' only some men kings
+
+        “'While I sat there a-blowin' rings.'”
+
+He paused to kindle a sliver of wood at the stove. “In these parlous
+times,” he spoke as though to himself, “one must economize. They are
+taking a quarter of an ounce out of each five cents worth of chewing, I
+am told; so doubtless each box must be five or six matches short of full
+count. Even these papers seem thinner than of yore and they will only
+sell one book to a customer at that. Indeed Sherman was right.”
+
+The youth and the girl remained occupied with their own thoughts, and
+after a moment's silence the vagabond resumed:
+
+      “'Me? I was king of anywhere,
+
+         “'Peggin' away at nothing, hard.
+
+      “'Havin' no pet, particular care;
+
+         “'Havin' no trouble, or no pard;
+
+“'“Just me,” filled up my callin' card.' “Say, do you know I've learned
+to love this Knibbs person. I used to think of him as a poor attic
+prune grinding away in his New York sky parlor, writing his verse of the
+things he longed for but had never known; until, one day, I met a fellow
+between Victorville and Cajon pass who knew His Knibbs, and come to find
+out this Knibbs is a regular fellow. His attic covers all God's country
+that is out of doors and he knows the road from La Bajada hill to
+Barstow a darned sight better than he knows Broadway.”
+
+There was no answering sympathy awakened in either of his
+listeners--they remained mute. Bridge rose and stretched. He picked
+up his knife, wiped off the blade, closed it and slipped it into a
+trousers' pocket. Then he walked toward the door. At the threshold he
+paused and turned. “'Good-bye girls! I'm through,'” he quoted and passed
+out into the sunlight.
+
+Instantly the two within were on their feet and following him.
+
+“Where are you going?” cried The Oskaloosa Kid. “You're not going to
+leave us, are you?”
+
+“Oh, please don't!” pleaded the girl.
+
+“I don't know,” said Bridge, solemnly, “whether I'm safe in remaining in
+your society or not. This Oskaloosa Kid is a bad proposition; and as for
+you, young lady, I rather imagine that the town constable is looking for
+you right now.”
+
+The girl winced. “Please don't,” she begged. “I haven't done anything
+wicked, honestly! But I want to get away so that they can't question me.
+I was in the car when they killed him; but I had nothing to do with it.
+It is just because of my father that I don't want them to find me. It
+would break his heart.”
+
+As the three stood back of the Squibbs' summer kitchen Fate, in the
+guise of a rural free delivery carrier and a Ford, passed by the front
+gate. A mile beyond he stopped at the Case mail box where Jeb and
+his son Willie were, as usual, waiting his coming, for the rural free
+delivery man often carries more news than is contained in his mail
+sacks.
+
+“Mornin' Jeb,” he called, as he swerved his light car from the road and
+drew up in front of the Case gate.
+
+“Mornin', Jim!” returned Mr. Case. “Nice rain we had last night. What's
+the news?”
+
+“Plenty! Plenty!” exclaimed the carrier. “Lived here nigh onto forty
+year, man an' boy, an' never seen such work before in all my life.”
+
+“How's that?” questioned the farmer, scenting something interesting.
+
+“Ol' man Baggs's murdered last night,” announced the carrier, watching
+eagerly for the effect of his announcement.
+
+“Gosh!” gasped Willie Case. “Was he shot?” It was almost a scream.
+
+“I dunno,” replied Jim. “He's up to the horspital now, an' the doc says
+he haint one chance in a thousand.”
+
+“Gosh!” exclaimed Mr. Case.
+
+“But thet ain't all,” continued Jim. “Reggie Paynter was murdered last
+night, too; right on the pike south of town. They threw his corpse outen
+a ottymobile.”
+
+“By gol!” cried Jeb Case; “I hearn them devils go by last night 'bout
+midnight er after. 'T woke me up. They must o' ben goin' sixty mile an
+hour. Er say,” he stopped to scratch his head. “Mebby it was tramps.
+They must a ben a score on 'em round here yesterday and las' night an'
+agin this mornin'. I never seed so dum many bums in my life.”
+
+“An' thet ain't all,” went on the carrier, ignoring the other's comments.
+“Oakdale's all tore up. Abbie Prim's disappeared and Jonas Prim's house
+was robbed jest about the same time Ol' man Baggs 'uz murdered, er most
+murdered--chances is he's dead by this time anyhow. Doc said he hadn't
+no chance.”
+
+“Gosh!” It was a pater-filius duet.
+
+“But thet ain't all,” gloated Jim. “Two of the persons in the car with
+Reggie Paynter were recognized, an' who do you think one of 'em was, eh?
+Why one of 'em was Abbie Prim an' tother was a slick crook from Toledo
+er Noo York that's called The Oskaloosie Kid. By gum, I'll bet they get
+'em in no time. Why already Jonas Prim's got a regular dee-dectiff down
+from Chicago, an' the board o' select-men's offered a re-ward o' fifty
+dollars fer the arrest an' conviction of the perpetrators of these
+dastardly crimes!”
+
+“Gosh!” cried Willie Case. “I know--“; but then he paused. If he told
+all he knew he saw plainly that either the carrier or his father would
+profit by it and collect the reward. Fifty dollars!! Willie gasped.
+
+“Well,” said Jim, “I gotta be on my way. Here's the Tribune--there ain't
+nothin' more fer ye. So long! Giddap!” and he was gone.
+
+“I don' see why he don't carry a whip,” mused Jeb Case. “A-gidappin' to
+that there tin lizzie,” he muttered disgustedly, “jes' like it was as
+good as a hoss. But I mind the time, the fust day he got the dinged
+thing, he gets out an' tries to lead it by Lem Smith's threshin'
+machine.”
+
+Jeb Case preferred an audience worthy his mettle; but Willie was better
+than no one, yet when he turned to note the effect of his remarks on his
+son, Willie was no where to be seen. If Jeb had but known it his young
+hopeless was already in the loft of the hay barn deep in a small,
+red-covered book entitled: “HOW TO BE A DETECTIVE.”
+
+Bridge, who had had no intention of deserting his helpless companions,
+appeared at last to yield reluctantly to their pleas. That indefinable
+something about the youth which appealed strongly to the protective
+instinct in the man, also assured him that the other's mask of
+criminality was for the most part assumed even though the stories of the
+two yeggmen and the loot bulging pockets argued to the contrary. There
+was the chance, however, that the boy had really taken the first step
+upon the road toward a criminal career, and if such were the case Bridge
+felt morally obligated to protect his new found friend from arrest,
+secure in the reflection that his own precept and example would do
+more to lead him back into the path of rectitude than would any police
+magistrate or penal institute.
+
+For the girl he felt a deep pity. In the past he had had knowledge of
+more than one other small-town girl led into wrong doing through the
+deadly monotony and flagrant hypocrisy of her environment. Himself
+highly imaginative and keenly sensitive, he realized with what depth of
+horror the girl anticipated a return to her home and friends after the
+childish escapade which had culminated, even through no fault of hers,
+in criminal tragedy of the most sordid sort.
+
+As the three held a council of war at the rear of the deserted house
+they were startled by the loud squeaking of brake bands on the road in
+front. Bridge ran quickly into the kitchen and through to the front
+room where he saw three men alighting from a large touring car which
+had drawn up before the sagging gate. As the foremost man, big and
+broad shouldered, raised his eyes to the building Bridge smothered an
+exclamation of surprise and chagrin, nor did he linger to inspect the
+other members of the party; but turned and ran quickly back to his
+companions.
+
+“We've got to beat it!” he whispered; “they've brought Burton himself
+down here.”
+
+“Who's Burton?” demanded the youth.
+
+“He's the best operative west of New York City,” replied Bridge, as he
+moved rapidly toward an outhouse directly in rear of the main building.
+
+Once behind the small, dilapidated structure which had once probably
+housed farm implements, Bridge paused and looked about. “They'll search
+here,” he prophesied, and then; “Those woods look good to me.”
+
+The Squibbs' woods, growing rank in the damp ravine at the bottom of the
+little valley, ran to within a hundred feet of the out-building. Dense
+undergrowth choked the ground to a height of eight or ten feet around
+the boles of the close set trees. If they could gain the seclusion
+of that tangled jungle there was little likelihood of their being
+discovered, provided they were not seen as they passed across the open
+space between their hiding place and the wood.
+
+“We'd better make a break for it,” advised Bridge, and a moment later
+the three moved cautiously toward the wood, keeping the out-house
+between themselves and the farm house. Almost in front of them as they
+neared the wood they saw a well defined path leading into the thicket.
+Single-file they entered, to be almost instantly hidden from view, not
+only from the house but from any other point more than a dozen paces
+away, for the path was winding, narrow and closely walled by the budding
+verdure of the new Spring. Birds sang or twittered about them, the mat
+of dead leaves oozed spongily beneath their feet, giving forth no sound
+as they passed, save a faint sucking noise as a foot was lifted from
+each watery seat.
+
+Bridge was in the lead, moving steadily forward that they might put as
+much distance as possible between themselves and the detective should
+the latter chance to explore the wood. They had advanced a few hundred
+yards when the path crossed through a small clearing the center of which
+was destitute of fallen leaves. Here the path was beaten into soft mud
+and as Bridge came to it he stopped and bent his gaze incredulously upon
+the ground. The girl and the youth, halting upon either side, followed
+the direction of his eyes with theirs. The girl gave a little,
+involuntary gasp, and the boy grasped Bridge's hand as though fearful
+of losing him. The man turned a quizzical glance at each of them and
+smiled, though a bit ruefully.
+
+“It beats me,” he said.
+
+“What can it be?” whispered the boy.
+
+“Oh, let's go back,” begged the girl.
+
+“And go along to father with Burton?” asked Bridge.
+
+The girl trembled and shook her head. “I would rather die,” she said,
+firmly. “Come, let's go on.”
+
+The cause of their perturbation was imprinted deeply in the mud of the
+pathway--the irregular outlines of an enormous, naked, human foot--a
+great, uncouth foot that bespoke a monster of another world. While,
+still more uncanny, in view of what they had heard in the farm house
+during the previous night, there lay, sometimes partially obliterated
+by the footprints of the THING, the impress of a small, bare foot--a
+woman's or a child's--and over both an irregular scoring that might
+have been wrought by a dragging chain!
+
+In the loft of his father's hay barn Willie Case delved deep into the
+small red-covered volume, HOW TO BE A DETECTIVE; but though he turned
+many pages and flitted to and fro from preface to conclusion he met only
+with disappointment. The pictures of noted bank burglars and confidence
+men aided him not one whit, for in none of them could he descry the
+slightest resemblance to the smooth faced youth of the early morning. In
+fact, so totally different were the types shown in the little book that
+Willie was forced to scratch his head and exclaim “Gosh!” many times
+in an effort to reconcile the appearance of the innocent boy to the
+hardened, criminal faces he found portrayed upon the printed pages.
+
+“But, by gol!” he exclaimed mentally, “he said he was The Oskaloosie
+Kid, 'n' that he shot a man last night; but what I'd like to know is
+how I'm goin' to shadder him from this here book. Here it says: 'If the
+criminal gets on a street car and then jumps off at the next corner
+the good detective will know that his man is aware that he is being
+shadowed, and will stay on the car and telephone his office at the first
+opportunity.' 'N'ere it sez: 'If your man gets into a carriage don't
+run up an' jump on the back of it; but simply hire another carriage and
+follow.' How in hek kin I foller this book?” wailed Willie. “They ain't
+no street cars 'round here. I ain't never seen a street car, 'n'as fer a
+carriage, I reckon he means bus, they's only one on 'em in Oakdale 'n'if
+they waz forty I'd like to know how in hek I'd hire one when I ain't got
+no money. I reckon I threw away my four-bits on this book--it don't tell
+a feller nothin' 'bout false whiskers, wigs 'n' the like,” and he tossed
+the book disgustedly into a corner, rose and descended to the barnyard.
+Here he busied himself about some task that should have been attended to
+a week before, and which even now was not destined to be completed that
+day, since Willie had no more than set himself to it than his attention
+was distracted by the sudden appearance of a touring car being brought
+to a stop in front of the gate.
+
+Instantly Willie dropped his irksome labor and slouched lazily toward
+the machine, the occupants of which were descending and heading for the
+Case front door. Jeb Case met them before they reached the porch and
+Willie lolled against a pillar listening eagerly to all that was said.
+
+The most imposing figure among the strangers was the same whom Bridge
+had seen approaching the Squibbs' house a short time before. It was he
+who acted as spokesman for the newcomers.
+
+“As you may know,” he said, after introducing himself, “a number of
+crimes were committed in and around Oakdale last night. We are searching
+for clews to the perpetrators, some of whom must still be in the
+neighborhood. Have you seen any strange or suspicious characters around
+lately?”
+
+“I should say we hed,” exclaimed Jeb emphatically.
+
+“I seen the wo'st lookin' gang o' bums come outen my hay barn this
+mornin' thet I ever seed in my life. They must o' ben upward of a dozen
+on 'em. They waz makin' fer the house when I steps in an' grabs my ol'
+shot gun. I hollered at 'em not to come a step nigher 'n' I guess they
+seed it wa'n't safe monkeyin' with me; so they skidaddled.”
+
+“Which way did they go?” asked Burton.
+
+“Off down the road yonder; but I don't know which way they turned at the
+crossin's, er ef they kept straight on toward Millsville.”
+
+Burton asked a number of questions in an effort to fix the identity of
+some of the gang, warned Jeb to telephone him at Jonas Prim's if he saw
+anything further of the strangers, and then retraced his steps toward
+the car. Not once had Jeb mentioned the youth who had purchased supplies
+from him that morning, and the reason was that Jeb had not considered
+the young man of sufficient importance, having cataloged him mentally as
+an unusually early specimen of the summer camper with which he was more
+or less familiar.
+
+Willie, on the contrary, realized the importance of their morning
+customer, yet just how he was to cash in on his knowledge was not yet
+entirely clear. He was already convinced that HOW TO BE A DETECTIVE
+would help him not at all, and with the natural suspicion of ignorance
+he feared to divulge his knowledge to the city detective for fear that
+the latter would find the means to cheat him out of the princely reward
+offered by the Oakdale village board. He thought of going at once to the
+Squibbs' house and placing the desperate criminals under arrest; but
+as fear throttled the idea in its infancy he cast about for some other
+plan.
+
+Even as he stood there thinking the great detective and his companions
+were entering the automobile to drive away. In a moment they would be
+gone. Were they not, after all, the very men, the only men, in fact, to
+assist him in his dilemma? At least he could test them out. If necessary
+he would divide the reward with them! Running toward the road Willie
+shouted to the departing sleuth. The car, moving slowly forward in low,
+came again to rest. Willie leaped to the running board.
+
+“If I tell you where the murderer is,” he whispered hoarsely, “do I git
+the $50.00?”
+
+Detective Burton was too old a hand to ignore even the most seemingly
+impossible of aids. He laid a kindly hand on Willie's shoulder. “You bet
+you do,” he replied heartily, “and what's more I'll add another fifty to
+it. What do you know?”
+
+“I seen the murderer this mornin',” Willie was gasping with excitement
+and elation. Already the one hundred dollars was as good as his. One
+hundred dollars! Willie “Goshed!” mentally even as he told his tale. “He
+come to our house an' bought some vittles an' stuff. Paw didn't know who
+he wuz; but when Paw went inside he told me he was The Oskaloosie Kid
+'n' thet he robbed a house last night and killed a man, 'n' he had a
+whole pocket full o' money, 'n' he said he'd kill me ef I told.”
+
+Detective Burton could scarce restrain a smile as he listened to this
+wildly improbable tale, yet his professional instinct was too keen to
+permit him to cast aside as worthless the faintest evidence until he had
+proven it to be worthless. He stepped from the car again and motioning
+to Willie to follow him returned to the Case yard where Jeb was already
+coming toward the gate, having noted the interest which his son
+was arousing among the occupants of the car. Willie pulled at the
+detective's sleeve. “Don't tell Paw about the reward,” he begged; “he'll
+keep it all hisself.”
+
+Burton reassured the boy with a smile and a nod, and then as he neared
+Jeb he asked him if a young man had been at his place that morning
+asking for food.
+
+“Sure,” replied Jeb; “but he didn't 'mount to nothin'. One o' these here
+summer camper pests. He paid fer all he got. Had a roll o' bills 's big
+as ye fist. Little feller he were, not much older 'n' Willie.”
+
+“Did you know that he told your son that he was The Oskaloosa Kid and
+that he had robbed a house and killed a man last night?”
+
+“Huh?” exclaimed Jeb. Then he turned and cast one awful look at
+Willie--a look large with menace.
+
+“Honest, Paw,” pleaded the boy. “I was a-scairt to tell you, 'cause he
+said he'd kill me ef I told.”
+
+Jeb scratched his head. “Yew know what you'll get ef you're lyin' to
+me,” he threatened.
+
+“I believe he's telling the truth,” said detective Burton. “Where is the
+man now?” he asked Willie.
+
+“Down to the Squibbs' place,” and Willie jerked a dirty thumb toward the
+east.
+
+“Not now,” said Burton; “we just came from there; but there has been
+someone there this morning, for there is still a fire in the kitchen
+range. Does anyone live there?”
+
+“I should say not,” said Willie emphatically; “the place is haunted.”
+
+“Thet's right,” interjected Jeb. “Thet's what they do say, an' this here
+Oskaloosie Kid said they heered things las' night an' seed a dead man on
+the floor, didn't he M'randy?” M'randy nodded her head.
+
+“But I don't take no stock in what Willie's ben tellin' ye,” she
+continued, “'n' ef his paw don't lick him I will. I told him tell I'm
+good an' tired o' talkin' thet one liar 'round a place wuz all I could
+stand,” and she cast a meaning glance at her husband.
+
+“Honest, Maw, I ain't a-lyin',” insisted Willie. “Wot do you suppose
+he give me this fer, if it wasn't to keep me from talkin',” and the boy
+drew a crumpled one dollar bill from his pocket. It was worth the dollar
+to escape a thrashing.
+
+“He give you thet?” asked his mother. Willie nodded assent.
+
+“'N' thet ain't all he had neither,” he said. “Beside all them bills he
+showed me a whole pocket full o' jewlry, 'n' he had a string o' things
+thet I don't know jest what you call 'em; but they looked like they
+was made outen the inside o' clam shells only they was all round like
+marbles.”
+
+Detective Burton raised his eyebrows. “Miss Prim's pearl necklace,” he
+commented to the man at his side. The other nodded. “Don't punish your
+son, Mrs. Case,” he said to the woman. “I believe he has discovered a
+great deal that will help us in locating the man we want. Of course I am
+interested principally in finding Miss Prim--her father has engaged me
+for that purpose; but I think the arrest of the perpetrators of any of
+last night's crimes will put us well along on the trail of the missing
+young lady, as it is almost a foregone conclusion that there is a
+connection between her disappearance and some of the occurrences which
+have so excited Oakdale. I do not mean that she was a party to any
+criminal act; but it is more than possible that she was abducted by the
+same men who later committed the other crimes.”
+
+The Cases hung open-mouthed upon his words, while his companions
+wondered at the loquaciousness of this ordinarily close-mouthed man,
+who, as a matter of fact, was but attempting to win the confidence of
+the boy on the chance that even now he had not told all that he knew;
+but Willie had told all.
+
+Finding, after a few minutes further conversation, that he could glean
+no additional information the detective returned to his car and drove
+west toward Millsville on the assumption that the fugitives would seek
+escape by the railway running through that village. Only thus could he
+account for their turning off the main pike. The latter was now well
+guarded all the way to Payson; while the Millsville road was still open.
+
+No sooner had he departed than Willie Case disappeared, nor did he
+answer at noon to the repeated ringing of the big, farm dinner bell.
+
+Half way between the Case farm and Millsville detective Burton saw, far
+ahead along the road, two figures scale a fence and disappear behind
+the fringing blackberry bushes which grew in tangled profusion on either
+side. When they came abreast of the spot he ordered the driver to stop;
+but though he scanned the open field carefully he saw no sign of living
+thing.
+
+“There are two men hiding behind those bushes,” he said to his
+companions in a low whisper. “One of you walk ahead about fifty yards
+and the other go back the same distance and then climb the fence. When
+I see you getting over I'll climb it here. They can't get away from us.”
+ To the driver he said: “You have a gun. If they make a break go after
+'em. You can shoot if they don't stop when you tell 'em to.”
+
+The two men walked in opposite directions along the road, and when
+Burton saw them turn in and start to climb the fence he vaulted over the
+panel directly opposite the car. He had scarcely alighted upon the other
+side when his eyes fell upon the disreputable figures of two tramps
+stretched out upon their backs and snoring audibly. Burton grinned.
+
+“You two sure can go to sleep in a hurry,” he said. One of the men
+opened his eyes and sat up. When he saw who it was that stood over him
+he grinned sheepishly.
+
+“Can't a guy lie down fer a minute in de bushes widout bein' pinched?”
+ he asked. The other man now sat up and viewed the newcomer, while from
+either side Burton's companions closed in on the three.
+
+“Wot's de noise?” inquired the second tramp, looking from one to another
+of the intruders. “We ain't done nothin'.”
+
+“Of course not, Charlie,” Burton assured him gaily. “Who would ever
+suspect that you or The General would do anything; but somebody did
+something in Oakdale last night and I want to take you back there and
+have a nice, long talk with you. Put your hands up!”
+
+“We--.”
+
+“Put 'em up!” snapped Burton, and when the four grimy fists had been
+elevated he signalled to his companions to search the two men.
+
+Nothing more formidable than knives, dope, and a needle were found upon
+them.
+
+“Say,” drawled Dopey Charlie. “We knows wot we knows; but hones' to gawd
+we didn't have nothin' to do wid it. We knows the guy that pulled it
+off--we spent las' night wid him an' his pal an' a skoit. He creased
+me, here,” and Charlie unbuttoned his clothing and exposed to view the
+bloody scratch of The Oskaloosa Kid's bullet. “On de level, Burton, we
+wern't in on it. Dis guy was at dat Squibbs' place wen we pulls in dere
+outen de rain. He has a pocket full o' kale an' sparklers an' tings, and
+he goes fer to shoot me up wen I tries to get away.”
+
+“Who was he?” asked Burton.
+
+“He called hisself de Oskaloosa Kid,” replied Charlie. “A guy called
+Bridge was wid him. You know him?”
+
+“I've heard of him; but he's straight,” replied Burton. “Who was the
+skirt?”
+
+“I dunno,” said Charlie; “but she was gassin' 'bout her pals croakin' a
+guy an' turnin' 'im outten a gas wagon, an' dis Oskaloosa Kid he croaks
+some old guy in Oakdale las' night. Mebby he ain't a bad 'un though!”
+
+“Where are they now?” asked Burton.
+
+“We got away from 'em at the Squibbs' place this mornin',” said Charlie.
+
+“Well,” said Burton, “you boes come along with me. If you ain't done
+nothing the worst you'll get'll be three squares and a place to sleep
+for a few days. I want you where I can lay my hands on you when I need
+a couple of witnesses,” and he herded them over the fence and into the
+machine. As he himself was about to step in he felt suddenly of his
+breast pocket.
+
+“What's the matter?” asked one of his companions.
+
+“I've lost my note book,” replied Burton; “it must have dropped out of
+my pocket when I jumped the fence. Just wait a minute while I go look
+for it,” and he returned to the fence, vaulted it and disappeared behind
+the bushes.
+
+It was fully five minutes before he returned but when he did there was a
+look of satisfaction on his face.
+
+“Find it?” asked his principal lieutenant.
+
+“Yep,” replied Burton. “I wouldn't have lost it for anything.”
+
+Bridge and his companions had made their way along the wooded path for
+perhaps a quarter of a mile when the man halted and drew back behind the
+foliage of a flowering bush. With raised finger he motioned the others
+to silence and then pointed through the branches ahead. The boy and
+the girl, tense with excitement, peered past the man into a clearing in
+which stood a log shack, mud plastered; but it was not the hovel which
+held their mute attention--it was rather the figure of a girl, bare
+headed and bare footed, who toiled stubbornly with an old spade at a
+long, narrow excavation.
+
+All too suggestive in itself was the shape of the hole the girl was
+digging; there was no need of the silent proof of its purpose which lay
+beside her to tell the watchers that she worked alone in the midst of
+the forest solitude upon a human grave. The thing wrapped in an old
+quilt lay silently waiting for the making of its last bed.
+
+And as the three watched her other eyes watched them and the digging
+girl--wide, awestruck eyes, filled with a great terror, yet now and
+again half closing in the shrewd expression of cunning that is a hall
+mark of crafty ignorance.
+
+And as they watched, their over-wrought nerves suddenly shuddered to the
+grewsome clanking of a chain from the dark interior of the hovel.
+
+The youth, holding tight to Bridge's sleeve, strove to pull him away.
+
+“Let's go back,” he whispered in a voice that trembled so that he could
+scarce control it.
+
+“Yes, please,” urged the girl. “Here is another path leading toward the
+north. We must be close to a road. Let's get away from here.”
+
+The digger paused and raised her head, listening, as though she had
+caught the faint, whispered note of human voices. She was a black haired
+girl of nineteen or twenty, dressed in a motley of flowered calico and
+silk, with strings of gold and silver coins looped around her olive
+neck. Her bare arms were encircled by bracelets--some cheap and gaudy,
+others well wrought from gold and silver. From her ears depended
+ornaments fashioned from gold coins. Her whole appearance was barbaric,
+her occupation cast a sinister haze about her; and yet her eyes seemed
+fashioned for laughter and her lips for kissing.
+
+The watchers remained motionless as the girl peered first in one
+direction and then in another, seeking an explanation of the sounds
+which had disturbed her. Her brows were contracted into a scowl of
+apprehension which remained even after she returned to her labors, and
+that she was ill at ease was further evidenced by the frequent pauses
+she made to cast quick glances toward the dense tanglewood surrounding
+the clearing.
+
+At last the grave was dug. The girl climbed out and stood looking down
+upon the quilt wrapped thing at her feet. For a moment she stood there
+as silent and motionless as the dead. Only the twittering of birds
+disturbed the quiet of the wood. Bridge felt a soft hand slipped into
+his and slender fingers grip his own. He turned his eyes to see the
+boy at his side gazing with wide eyes and trembling lips at the tableau
+within the clearing. Involuntarily the man's hand closed tightly upon
+the youth's.
+
+And as they stood thus the silence was shattered by a loud and human
+sneeze from the thicket not fifty feet from where they stood. Instantly
+the girl in the clearing was electrified into action. Like a tigress
+charging those who stalked her she leaped swiftly across the clearing
+toward the point from which the disturbance had come. There was an
+answering commotion in the underbrush as the girl crashed through, a
+slender knife gleaming in her hand.
+
+Bridge and his companions heard the sounds of a swift and short pursuit
+followed by voices, one masterful, the other frightened and whimpering;
+and a moment afterward the girl reappeared dragging a boy with her--a
+wide-eyed, terrified, country boy who begged and blubbered to no avail.
+
+Beside the dead man the girl halted and then turned on her captive. In
+her right hand she still held the menacing blade.
+
+“What you do there watching me for?” she demanded. “Tell me the truth,
+or I kill you,” and she half raised the knife that he might profit in
+his decision by this most potent of arguments.
+
+The boy cowered. “I didn't come fer to watch you,” he whimpered. “I'm
+lookin' for somebody else. I'm goin' to be a dee-tectiff, an' I'm
+shadderin' a murderer;” and he gasped and stammered: “But not you. I'm
+lookin' for another murderer.”
+
+For the first time the watchers saw a faint smile touch the girl's lips.
+
+“What other murderer?” she asked. “Who has been murdered?”
+
+“Two an' mebby three in Oakdale last night,” said Willie Case more
+glibly now that a chance for disseminating gossip momentarily outweighed
+his own fears. “Reginald Paynter was murdered an' ol' man Baggs an'
+Abigail Prim's missin'. Like es not she's been murdered too, though
+they do say as she had a hand in it, bein' seen with Paynter an' The
+Oskaloosie Kid jest afore the murder.”
+
+As the boy's tale reached the ears of the three hidden in the
+underbrush Bridge glanced quickly at his companions. He saw the boy's
+horror-stricken expression follow the announcement of the name of the
+murdered Paynter, and he saw the girl flush crimson.
+
+Without urging, Willie Case proceeded with his story. He told of the
+coming of The Oskaloosa Kid to his father's farm that morning and
+of seeing some of the loot and hearing the confession of robbery and
+killing in Oakdale the night before. Bridge looked down at the youth
+beside him; but the other's face was averted and his eyes upon the
+ground. Then Willie told of the arrival of the great detective, of the
+reward that had been offered and of his decision to win it and become
+rich and famous in a single stroke. As he reached the end of his
+narrative he leaned close to the girl, whispering in her ear the while
+his furtive gaze wandered toward the spot where the three lay concealed.
+
+Bridge shrugged his shoulders as the palpable inference of that cunning
+glance was borne in upon him. The boy's voice had risen despite his
+efforts to hold it to a low whisper for what with the excitement of the
+adventure and his terror of the girl with the knife he had little or
+no control of himself, yet it was evident that he did not realize that
+practically every word he had spoken had reached the ears of the three
+in hiding and that his final precaution as he divulged the information
+to the girl was prompted by an excess of timidity and secretiveness.
+
+The eyes of the girl widened in surprise and fear as she learned that
+three watchers lay concealed at the verge of the clearing. She bent
+a long, searching look in the direction indicated by the boy and then
+turned her eyes quickly toward the hut as though to summon aid. At the
+same moment Bridge stepped from hiding into the clearing. His pleasant
+'Good morning!' brought the girl around, facing him.
+
+“What you want?” she snapped.
+
+“I want you and this young man,” said Bridge, his voice now suddenly
+stern. “We have been watching you and followed you from the Squibbs
+house. We found the dead man there last night;” Bridge nodded toward the
+quilt enveloped thing upon the ground; “and we suspect that you had
+an accomplice.” Here he frowned meaningly upon Willie Case. The youth
+trembled and stammered.
+
+“I never seen her afore,” he cried. “I don' know nothin' about it.
+Honest I don't.” But the girl did not quail.
+
+“You get out,” she commanded. “You a bad man. Kill, steal. He know; he
+tell me. You get out or I call Beppo. He keel you. He eat you.”
+
+“Come, come, now, my dear,” urged Bridge, “be calm. Let us get at the
+root of this thing. Your young friend accuses me of being a murderer,
+does he? And he tells about murders in Oakdale that I have not even
+heard of. It seems to me that he must have some guilty knowledge himself
+of these affairs. Look at him and look at me. Notice his ears, his chin,
+his forehead, or rather the places where his chin and forehead should
+be, and then look once more at me. Which of us might be a murderer and
+which a detective? I ask you.
+
+“And as for yourself. I find you here in the depths of the wood digging
+a lonely grave for a human corpse. I ask myself: was this man murdered?
+but I do not say that he was murdered. I wait for an explanation from
+you, for you do not look a murderer, though I cannot say as much for
+your desperate companion.”
+
+The girl looked straight into Bridge's eyes for a full minute before she
+replied as though endeavoring to read his inmost soul.
+
+“I do not know this boy,” she said. “That is the truth. He was spying
+on me, and when I found him he told me that you and your companions were
+thieves and murderers and that you were hiding there watching me. You
+tell me the truth, all the truth, and I will tell you the truth. I have
+nothing to fear. If you do not tell me the truth I shall know it. Will
+you?”
+
+“I will,” replied Bridge, and then turning toward the brush he called:
+“Come here!” and presently a boy and a girl, dishevelled and fearful,
+crawled forth into sight. Willie Case's eyes went wide as they fell upon
+the Oskaloosa Kid.
+
+Quickly and simply Bridge told the girl the story of the past night, for
+he saw that by enlisting her sympathy he might find an avenue of escape
+for his companions, or at least a haven of refuge where they might hide
+until escape was possible. “And then,” he said in conclusion, “when the
+searchers arrived we followed the foot prints of yourself and the bear
+until we came upon you digging this grave.”
+
+Bridge's companions and Willie Case looked their surprise at his
+mention of a bear; but the gypsy girl only nodded her head as she had
+occasionally during his narrative.
+
+“I believe you,” said the girl. “It is not easy to deceive Giova. Now I
+tell you. This here,” she pointed toward the dead man, “he my father. He
+bad man. Steal; kill; drink; fight; but always good to Giova. Good to no
+one else but Beppo. He afraid Beppo. Even our people drive us out he, my
+father, so bad man. We wander 'round country mak leetle money when Beppo
+dance; mak lot money when HE steal. Two days he no come home. I go las'
+night look for him. Sometimes he too drunk come home he sleep Squeebs.
+I go there. I find heem dead. He have fits, six, seven year. He die fit.
+Beppo stay guard heem. I carry heem home. Giova strong, he no very large
+man. Beppo come too. I bury heem. No one know we leeve here. Pretty soon
+I go way with Beppo. Why tell people he dead. Who care? Mak lot trouble
+for Giova whose heart already ache plenty. No one love heem, only Beppo
+and Giova. No one love Giova, only Beppo; but some day Beppo he
+keel Giova now HE is dead, for Beppo vera large, strong bear--fierce
+bear--ogly bear. Even Giova who love Beppo is afraid Beppo. Beppo devil
+bear! Beppo got evil eye.
+
+“Well,” said Bridge, “I guess, Giova, that you and we are in the same
+boat. We haven't any of us done anything so very bad but it would be
+embarrassing to have to explain to the police what we have done,” here
+he glanced at The Oskaloosa Kid and the girl standing beside the youth.
+“Suppose we form a defensive alliance, eh? We'll help you and you help
+us. What do you say?”
+
+“All right,” acquiesced Giova; “but what we do with this?” and she
+jerked her thumb toward Willie Case.
+
+“If he don't behave we'll feed him to Beppo,” suggested Bridge.
+
+Willie shook in his boots, figuratively speaking, for in reality he
+shook upon his bare feet. “Lemme go,” he wailed, “an' I won't tell
+nobody nothin'.”
+
+“No,” said Bridge, “you don't go until we're safely out of here. I
+wouldn't trust that vanishing chin of yours as far as I could throw
+Beppo by the tail.”
+
+“Wait!” exclaimed The Oskaloosa Kid. “I have it!”
+
+“What have you?” asked Bridge.
+
+“Listen!” cried the boy excitedly. “This boy has been offered a hundred
+dollars for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the men
+who robbed and murdered in Oakdale last night. I'll give him a hundred
+dollars if he'll go away and say nothing about us.”
+
+“Look here, son,” said Bridge, “every time you open your mouth you put
+your foot in it. The less you advertise the fact that you have a hundred
+dollars the better off you'll be. I don't know how you come by so much
+wealth; but in view of several things which occurred last night I should
+not be crazy, were I you, to have to make a true income tax return.
+Somehow I have faith in you; but I doubt if any minion of the law would
+be similarly impressed.”
+
+The Oskaloosa Kid appeared hurt and crestfallen. Giova shot a suspicious
+glance at him. The other girl involuntarily drew away. Bridge noted the
+act and shook his head. “No,” he said, “we mustn't judge one another
+hastily, Miss Prim, and I take it you are Miss Prim?” The girl made a
+half gesture of denial, started to speak, hesitated and then resumed. “I
+would rather not say who I am, please,” she said.
+
+“Well,” said the man, “let's take one another at face value for a while,
+without digging too deep into the past; and now for our plans. This wood
+will be searched; but I don't see how we are to get out of it before
+dark as the roads are doubtless pretty well patrolled, or at least every
+farmer is on the lookout for suspicious strangers. So we might as
+well make the best of it here for the rest of the day. I think we're
+reasonably safe for the time being--if we keep Willie with us.”
+
+Willie had been an interested auditor of all that passed between his
+captors. He was obviously terrified; but his terror did not prevent him
+from absorbing all that he heard, nor from planning how he might utilize
+the information. He saw not only one reward but several and a glorious
+publicity which far transcended the most sanguine of his former dreams.
+He saw his picture not only in the Oakdale Tribune but in the newspapers
+of every city of the country. Assuming a stern and arrogant expression,
+or rather what he thought to be such, he posed, mentally, for the
+newspaper cameramen; and such is the power of association of ideas
+that he was presently strolling nonchalantly before a battery of motion
+picture machines. “Gee!” he murmured, “won't the other fellers be sore!
+I s'ppose Pinkerton'll send for me 'bout the first thing 'n' offer me
+twenty fi' dollars a week, er mebbie more 'n thet. Gol durn, ef I don't
+hold out fer thirty! Gee!” Words, thoughts even, failed him.
+
+As the others planned they rather neglected Willie and when they came to
+assisting Giova in lowering her father into the grave and covering him
+over with earth they quite forgot Willie entirely. It was The Oskaloosa
+Kid who first thought of him. “Where's the boy?” he cried suddenly. The
+others looked quickly about the clearing, but no Willie was to be seen.
+
+Bridge shook his head ruefully. “We'll have to get out of this in
+a hurry now,” he said. “That little defective will have the whole
+neighborhood on us in an hour.”
+
+“Oh, what can we do?” cried the girl. “They mustn't find us! I should
+rather die than be found here with--” She stopped abruptly, flushed
+scarlet as the other three looked at her in silence, and then: “I am
+sorry,” she said. “I didn't know what I was saying. I am so frightened.
+You have all been good to me.”
+
+“I tell you what we do.” It was Giova speaking in the masterful voice of
+one who has perfect confidence in his own powers. “I know fine way out.
+This wood circle back south through swamp mile, mile an' a half. The
+road past Squeebs an' Case's go right through it. I know path there I
+fin' myself. We on'y have to cross road, that only danger. Then we reach
+leetle stream south of woods, stream wind down through Payson. We all
+go Gypsies. I got lot clothing in house. We all go Gypsies, an' when we
+reach Payson we no try hide--jus' come out on street with Beppo. Mak'
+Beppo dance. No one think we try hide. Then come night we go 'way. Find
+more wood an' leetle lake other side Payson. I know place. We hide there
+long time. No one ever fin' us there. We tell two, three, four people
+in Payson we go Oakdale. They look Oakdale for us if they wan' fin' us.
+They no think look where we go. See?”
+
+“Oh, I can't go to Payson,” exclaimed the other girl. “Someone would be
+sure to recognize me.”
+
+“You come in house with me,” Giova assured her, “I feex you so your own
+mother no know you. You mens come too. I geeve you what to wear like
+Gypsy mens. We got lots things. My father, him he steal many things from
+our people after they drive us out. He go back by nights an' steal.”
+
+The three followed her toward the little hovel since there seemed no
+better plan than that which she had offered. Giova and the other girl
+were in the lead, followed by Bridge and the boy. The latter turned to
+the man and placed a hand upon his arm. “Why don't you leave us,” he
+asked. “You have done nothing. No one is looking for you. Why don't you
+go your way and save yourself from suspicion.”
+
+Bridge did not reply.
+
+“I believe,” the youth went on, “that you are doing it for me; but why I
+can't guess.”
+
+“Maybe I am,” Bridge half acknowledged. “You're a good little kid, but
+you need someone to look after you. It would be easier though if you'd
+tell me the truth about yourself, which you certainly haven't up to
+now.”
+
+“Please don't ask me,” begged the boy. “I can't; honestly I can't.”
+
+“Is it as bad as that?” asked the man.
+
+“Oh, it's worse,” cried The Oskaloosa Kid. “It's a thousand times worse.
+Don't make me tell you, for if I do tell I shall have to leave you,
+and--and, oh, Bridge, I don't want to leave you--ever!”
+
+They had reached the door of the cabin now and were looking in past the
+girl who had halted there as Giova entered. Before them was a small room
+in which a large, vicious looking brown bear was chained.
+
+“Behold our ghost of last night!” exclaimed Bridge. “By George! though,
+I'd as soon have hunted a real ghost in the dark as to have run into
+this fellow.”
+
+“Did you know last night that it was a bear?” asked the Kid. “You told
+Giova that you followed the footprints of herself and her bear; but you
+had not said anything about a bear to us.”
+
+“I had an idea last night,” explained Bridge, “that the sounds were
+produced by some animal dragging a chain; but I couldn't prove it and so
+I said nothing, and then this morning while we were following the trail
+I made up my mind that it was a bear. There were two facts which argued
+that such was the case. The first is that I don't believe in ghosts and
+that even if I did I would not expect a ghost to leave footprints in
+the mud, and the other is that I knew that the footprints of a bear are
+strangely similar to those of the naked feet of man. Then when I saw the
+Gypsy girl I was sure that what we had heard last night was nothing more
+nor less than a trained bear. The dress and appearance of the dead man
+lent themselves to a furtherance of my belief and the wisp of brown hair
+clutched in his fingers added still further proof.”
+
+Within the room the bear was now straining at his collar and growling
+ferociously at the strangers. Giova crossed the room, scolding him
+and at the same time attempting to assure him that the newcomers
+were friends; but the wicked expression upon the beast's face gave no
+indication that he would ever accept them as aught but enemies.
+
+It was a breathless Willie who broke into his mother's kitchen wide eyed
+and gasping from the effects of excitement and a long, hard run.
+
+“Fer lan' sakes!” exclaimed Mrs. Case. “Whatever in the world ails you?”
+
+“I got 'em; I got 'em!” cried Willie, dashing for the telephone.
+
+“Fer lan' sakes! I should think you did hev 'em,” retorted his mother as
+she trailed after him in the direction of the front hall. “'N' whatever
+you got, you got 'em bad. Now you stop right where you air 'n' tell me
+whatever you got. 'Taint likely it's measles, fer you've hed them three
+times, 'n' whoopin' cough ain't 'them,' it's 'it,' 'n'--.” Mrs. Case
+paused and gasped--horrified. “Fer lan' sakes, Willie Case, you come
+right out o' this house this minute ef you got anything in your head.”
+ She made a grab for Willie's arm; but the boy dodged and reached the
+telephone.
+
+“Shucks!” he cried. “I ain't got nothin' in my head,” nor did either
+sense the unconscious humor of the statement. “What I got is a gang o'
+thieves an' murderers, an' I'm callin' up thet big city deetectiff to
+come arter 'em.”
+
+Mrs. Case sank into a chair, prostrated by the weight of her emotions,
+while Willie took down the receiver after ringing the bell to attract
+central. Finally he obtained his connection, which was with Jonas Prim's
+bank where detective Burton was making his headquarters. Here he learned
+that Burton had not returned; but finally gave his message reluctantly
+to Jonas Prim after exacting a promise from that gentleman that he would
+be personally responsible for the payment of the reward. What Willie
+Case told Jonas Prim had the latter in a machine, with half a dozen
+deputy sheriffs and speeding southward from Oakdale inside of ten
+minutes.
+
+A short distance out from town they met detective Burton with his two
+prisoners. After a hurried consultation Dopey Charlie and The General
+were unloaded and started on the remainder of their journey afoot under
+guard of two of the deputies, while Burton's companions turned and
+followed the other car, Burton taking a seat beside Prim.
+
+“He said that he could take us right to where Abigail is,” Mr. Prim
+was explaining to Burton, “and that this Oskaloosa Kid is with her,
+and another man and a foreign looking girl. He told a wild story about
+seeing them burying a dead man in the woods back of Squibbs' place. I
+don't know how much to believe, or whether to believe any of it; but
+we can't afford not to run down every clew. I can't believe that my
+daughter is wilfully consorting with such men. She always has been full
+of life and spirit; but she's got a clean mind, and her little escapades
+have always been entirely harmless--at worst some sort of boyish prank.
+I simply won't believe it until I see it with my own eyes. If she's with
+them she's being held by force.”
+
+Burton made no reply. He was not a man to jump to conclusions. His
+success was largely due to the fact that he assumed nothing; but merely
+ran down each clew quickly yet painstakingly until he had a foundation
+of fact upon which to operate. His theory was that the simplest way is
+always the best way and so he never befogged the main issue with any
+elaborate system of deductive reasoning based on guesswork. Burton never
+guessed. He assumed that it was his business to KNOW, nor was he on any
+case long before he did know. He was employed now to find Abigail Prim.
+Each of the several crimes committed the previous night might or might
+not prove a clew to her whereabouts; but each must be run down in the
+process of elimination before Burton could feel safe in abandoning it.
+
+Already he had solved one of them to his satisfaction; and Dopey Charlie
+and The General were, all unknown to themselves, on the way to the
+gallows for the murder of Old John Baggs. When Burton had found them
+simulating sleep behind the bushes beside the road his observant eyes
+had noticed something that resembled a hurried cache. The excuse of a
+lost note book had taken him back to investigate and to find the loot
+of the Baggs's crime wrapped in a bloody rag and hastily buried in a
+shallow hole.
+
+When Burton and Jonas Prim arrived at the Case farm they were met by a
+new Willie. A puffed and important young man swaggered before them as
+he retold his tale and led them through the woods toward the spot where
+they were to bag their prey. The last hundred yards was made on hands
+and knees; but when the party arrived at the clearing there was no one
+in sight, only the hovel stood mute and hollow-eyed before them.
+
+“They must be inside,” whispered Willie to the detective.
+
+Burton passed a whispered word to his followers. Stealthily they crept
+through the underbrush until the cabin was surrounded; then, at a signal
+from their leader they rose and advanced upon the structure.
+
+No evidence of life indicated their presence had been noted, and Burton
+came to the very door of the cabin unchallenged. The others saw him
+pause an instant upon the threshold and then pass in. They closed behind
+him. Three minutes later he emerged, shaking his head.
+
+“There is no one here,” he announced.
+
+Willie Case was crestfallen. “But they must be,” he pleaded. “They must
+be. I saw 'em here just a leetle while back.”
+
+Burton turned and eyed the boy sternly. Willie quailed. “I seen 'em,” he
+cried. “Hones' I seen 'em. They was here just a few minutes ago. Here's
+where they burrit the dead man,” and he pointed to the little mound of
+earth near the center of the clearing.
+
+“We'll see,” commented Burton, tersely, and he sent two of his men back
+to the Case farm for spades. When they returned a few minutes' labor
+revealed that so much of Willie's story was true, for a quilt wrapped
+corpse was presently unearthed and lying upon the ground beside its
+violated grave. Willie's stock rose once more to par.
+
+In an improvised litter they carried the dead man back to Case's farm
+where they left him after notifying the coroner by telephone. Half of
+Burton's men were sent to the north side of the woods and half to the
+road upon the south of the Squibbs' farm. There they separated and
+formed a thin line of outposts about the entire area north of the road.
+If the quarry was within it could not escape without being seen. In the
+mean time Burton telephoned to Oakdale for reinforcements, as it would
+require fifty men at least to properly beat the tangled underbrush of
+the wood.
+
+                        *****
+
+
+In a clump of willows beside the little stream which winds through the
+town of Payson a party of four halted on the outskirts of the town.
+There were two men, two young women and a huge brown bear. The men and
+women were, obviously, Gypsies. Their clothing, their head-dress, their
+barbaric ornamentation proclaimed the fact to whoever might pass; but no
+one passed.
+
+“I think,” said Bridge, “that we will just stay where we are until after
+dark. We haven't passed or seen a human being since we left the cabin.
+No one can know that we are here and if we stay here until late to-night
+we should be able to pass around Payson unseen and reach the wood to the
+south of town. If we do meet anyone to-night we'll stop them and inquire
+the way to Oakdale--that'll throw them off the track.”
+
+The others acquiesced in his suggestion; but there were queries about
+food to be answered. It seemed that all were hungry and that the bear
+was ravenous.
+
+“What does he eat?” Bridge asked of Giova.
+
+“Mos' anything,” replied the girl. “He like garbage fine. Often I take
+him into towns late, ver' late at night an' he eat swill. I do that
+to-night. Beppo, he got to be fed or he eat Giova. I go feed Beppo, you
+go get food for us; then we all meet at edge of wood just other side
+town near old mill.”
+
+During the remainder of the afternoon and well after dark the party
+remained hidden in the willows. Then Giova started out with Beppo in
+search of garbage cans, Bridge bent his steps toward a small store upon
+the outskirts of town where food could be purchased, The Oskaloosa Kid
+having donated a ten dollar bill for the stocking of the commissariat,
+and the youth and the girl made their way around the south end of the
+town toward the meeting place beside the old mill.
+
+As Bridge moved through the quiet road at the outskirts of the little
+town he let his mind revert to the events of the past twenty four hours
+and as he pondered each happening since he met the youth in the dark of
+the storm the preceding night he asked himself why he had cast his
+lot with these strangers. In his years of vagabondage Bridge had never
+crossed that invisible line which separates honest men from thieves and
+murderers and which, once crossed, may never be recrossed. Chance and
+necessity had thrown him often among such men and women; but never had
+he been of them. The police of more than one city knew Bridge--they knew
+him, though, as a character and not as a criminal. A dozen times he had
+been arraigned upon suspicion; but as many times had he been released
+with a clean bill of morals until of late Bridge had become almost
+immune from arrest. The police who knew him knew that he was straight
+and they knew, too, that he would give no information against another
+man. For this they admired him as did the majority of the criminals with
+whom he had come in contact during his rovings.
+
+The present crisis, however, appeared most unpromising to Bridge. Grave
+crimes had been committed in Oakdale, and here was Bridge conniving
+in the escape of at least two people who might readily be under police
+suspicion. It was difficult for the man to bring himself to believe that
+either the youth or the girl was in any way actually responsible for
+either of the murders; yet it appeared that the latter had been present
+when a murder was committed and now by attempting to elude the police
+had become an accessory after the fact, since she possessed knowledge
+of the identity of the actual murderer; while the boy, by his own
+admission, had committed a burglary.
+
+Bridge shook his head wearily. Was he not himself an accessory after the
+fact in the matter of two crimes at least? These new friends, it seemed,
+were about to topple him into the abyss which he had studiously avoided
+for so long a time. But why should he permit it? What were they to him?
+
+A freight train was puffing into the siding at the Payson station.
+Bridge could hear the complaining brakes a mile away. It would be easy
+to leave the town and his dangerous companions far behind him; but even
+as the thought forced its way into his mind another obtruded itself to
+shoulder aside the first. It was recollection of the boy's words: “Oh,
+Bridge, I don't want to leave you--ever.”
+
+“I couldn't do it,” mused Bridge. “I don't know just why; but I
+couldn't. That kid has certainly got me. The first thing someone knows
+I'll be starting a foundlings' home. There is no question but that I am
+the soft mark, and I wonder why it is--why a kid I never saw before
+last night has a strangle hold on my heart that I can't shake loose--and
+don't want to. Now if it was a girl I could understand it.” Bridge
+stopped suddenly in the middle of the road. From his attitude he might
+have been startled either by a surprising noise or by a surprising
+thought. For a minute he stood motionless; then he shook his head again
+and proceeded along his way toward the little store; evidently if he had
+heard anything he was assured that it constituted no menace.
+
+As he entered the store to make his purchases a foxeyed man saw him and
+stepped quickly behind the huge stove which had not as yet been taken
+down for the summer. Bridge made his purchases, the volume of which
+required a large gunny-sack for transportation, and while he was
+thus occupied the fox-eyed man clung to his coign of vantage, himself
+unnoticed by the purchaser. When Bridge departed the other followed him,
+keeping in the shadow of the trees which bordered the street. Around
+the edge of town and down a road which led southward the two went until
+Bridge passed through a broken fence and halted beside an abandoned
+mill. The watcher saw his quarry set down his burden, seat himself
+beside it and proceed to roll a cigaret; then he faded away in the
+darkness and Bridge was alone.
+
+Five or ten minutes later two slender figures appeared dimly out of the
+north. They approached timidly, stopping often and looking first this
+way and then that and always listening. When they arrived opposite the
+mill Bridge saw them and gave a low whistle. Immediately the two passed
+through the fence and approached him.
+
+“My!” exclaimed one. “I thought we never would get here; but we didn't
+see a soul on the road. Where is Giova?”
+
+“She hasn't come yet,” replied Bridge, “and she may not. I don't see how
+a girl can browse around a town like this with a big bear at night and
+not be seen, and if she is seen she'll be followed--it would be too much
+of a treat for the rubes ever to be passed up--and if she's followed she
+won't come here. At least I hope she won't.”
+
+“What's that?” exclaimed The Oskaloosa Kid. Each stood in silence,
+listening.
+
+The girl shuddered. “Even now that I know what it is it makes me creep,”
+ she whispered, as the faint clanking of a distant chain came to their
+ears.
+
+“We ought to be used to it by this time, Miss Prim,” said Bridge. “We
+heard it all last night and a good part of to-day.”
+
+The girl made no comment upon the use of the name which he had applied
+to her, and in the darkness he could not see her features, nor did
+he see the odd expression upon the boy's face as he heard the name
+addressed to her. Was he thinking of the nocturnal raid he so recently
+had made upon the boudoir of Miss Abigail Prim? Was he pondering the
+fact that his pockets bulged to the stolen belongings of that young
+lady? But whatever was passing in his mind he permitted none of it to
+pass his lips.
+
+As the three stood waiting in silence Giova came presently among them,
+the beast Beppo lumbering awkwardly at her side.
+
+“Did he find anything to eat?” asked the man.
+
+“Oh, yes,” exclaimed Giova. “He fill up now. That mak him better nature.
+Beppo not so ugly now.”
+
+“Well, I'm glad of that,” said Bridge. “I haven't been looking forward
+much to his company through the woods to-night--especially while he was
+hungry!”
+
+Giova laughed a low, musical little laugh. “I don' think he no hurt you
+anyway,” she said. “Now he know you my frien'.”
+
+“I hope you are quite correct in your surmise,” replied Bridge. “But
+even so I'm not taking any chances.”
+
+                          *****
+
+
+Willie Case had been taken to Payson to testify before the coroner's
+jury investigating the death of Giova's father, and with the dollar
+which The Oskaloosa Kid had given him in the morning burning in his
+pocket had proceeded to indulge in an orgy of dissipation the moment
+that he had been freed from the inquest. Ice cream, red pop, peanuts,
+candy, and soda water may have diminished his appetite but not his pride
+and self-satisfaction as he sat alone and by night for the first time in
+a public eating place. Willie was now a man of the world, a bon vivant,
+as he ordered ham and eggs from the pretty waitress of The Elite
+Restaurant on Broadway; but at heart he was not happy for never before
+had he realized what a great proportion of his anatomy was made up
+of hands and feet. As he glanced fearfully at the former, silhouetted
+against the white of the table cloth, he flushed scarlet, assured as he
+was that the waitress who had just turned away toward the kitchen with
+his order was convulsed with laughter and that every other eye in the
+establishment was glued upon him. To assume an air of nonchalance and
+thereby impress and disarm his critics Willie reached for a toothpick in
+the little glass holder near the center of the table and upset the sugar
+bowl. Immediately Willie snatched back the offending hand and glared
+ferociously at the ceiling. He could feel the roots of his hair being
+consumed in the heat of his skin. A quick side glance that required all
+his will power to consummate showed him that no one appeared to have
+noticed his faux pas and Willie was again slowly returning to normal
+when the proprietor of the restaurant came up from behind and asked him
+to remove his hat.
+
+Never had Willie Case spent so frightful a half hour as that within the
+brilliant interior of The Elite Restaurant. Twenty-three minutes of this
+eternity was consumed in waiting for his order to be served and seven
+minutes in disposing of the meal and paying his check. Willie's method
+of eating was in itself a sermon on efficiency--there was no lost
+motion--no waste of time. He placed his mouth within two inches of his
+plate after cutting his ham and eggs into pieces of a size that would
+permit each mouthful to enter without wedging; then he mixed his mashed
+potatoes in with the result and working his knife and fork alternately
+with bewildering rapidity shot a continuous stream of food into his
+gaping maw.
+
+In addition to the meat and potatoes there was one vegetable in a
+side-dish and as dessert four prunes. The meat course gone Willie placed
+the vegetable dish on the empty plate, seized a spoon in lieu of knife
+and fork and--presto! the side-dish was empty. Whereupon the prune dish
+was set in the empty side-dish--four deft motions and there were no
+prunes--in the dish. The entire feat had been accomplished in 6:34 1/2,
+setting a new world's record for red-headed farmer boys with one splay
+foot.
+
+In the remaining twenty five and one half seconds Willie walked what
+seemed to him a mile from his seat to the cashier's desk and at the
+last instant bumped into a waitress with a trayful of dishes. Clutched
+tightly in Willie's hand was thirty five cents and his check with a like
+amount written upon it. Amid the crash of crockery which followed the
+collision Willie slammed check and money upon the cashier's desk and
+fled. Nor did he pause until in the reassuring seclusion of a dark
+side street. There Willie sank upon the curb alternately cold with fear
+and hot with shame, weak and panting, and into his heart entered the
+iron of class hatred, searing it to the core.
+
+Fortunately for youth it recuperates rapidly from mortal blows, and
+so it was that another half hour found Willie wandering up and down
+Broadway but at the far end of the street from The Elite Restaurant. A
+motion picture theater arrested his attention; and presently, parting
+with one of his two remaining dimes, he entered. The feature of the bill
+was a detective melodrama. Nothing in the world could have better suited
+Willie's psychic needs. It recalled his earlier feats of the day,
+in which he took pardonable pride, and raised him once again to a
+self-confidence he had not felt since he entered the ever to be hated
+Elite Restaurant.
+
+The show over Willie set forth afoot for home. A long walk lay ahead of
+him. This in itself was bad enough; but what lay at the end of the long
+walk was infinitely worse, as Willie's father had warned him to return
+immediately after the inquest, in time for milking, preferably. Before
+he had gone two blocks from the theater Willie had concocted at least
+three tales to account for his tardiness, either one of which would
+have done credit to the imaginative powers of a Rider Haggard or a
+Jules Verne; but at the end of the third block he caught a glimpse of
+something which drove all thoughts of home from his mind and came
+but barely short of driving his mind out too. He was approaching the
+entrance to an alley. Old trees grew in the parkway at his side. At the
+street corner a half block away a high flung arc swung gently from its
+supporting cables, casting a fair light upon the alley's mouth, and just
+emerging from behind the nearer fence Willie Case saw the huge bulk of a
+bear. Terrified, Willie jumped behind a tree; and then, fearful lest
+the animal might have caught sight or scent of him he poked his head
+cautiously around the side of the bole just in time to see the figure of
+a girl come out of the alley behind the bear. Willie recognized her at
+the first glance--she was the very girl he had seen burying the dead man
+in the Squibbs woods. Instantly Willie Case was transformed again into
+the shrewd and death defying sleuth. At a safe distance he followed the
+girl and the bear through one alley after another until they came out
+upon the road which leads south from Payson. He was across the road when
+she joined Bridge and his companions. When they turned toward the old
+mill he followed them, listening close to the rotting clapboards for
+any chance remark which might indicate their future plans. He heard them
+debating the wisdom of remaining where they were for the night or moving
+on to another location which they had evidently decided upon but no clew
+to which they dropped.
+
+“The objection to remaining here,” said Bridge, “is that we can't make a
+fire to cook by--it would be too plainly visible from the road.”
+
+“But I can no fin' road by dark,” explained Giova. “It bad road by day,
+ver' much worse by night. Beppo no come 'cross swamp by night. No, we
+got stay here til morning.”
+
+“All right,” replied Bridge, “we can eat some of this canned stuff and
+have our ham and coffee after we reach camp tomorrow morning, eh?”
+
+“And now that we've gotten through Payson safely,” suggested The
+Oskaloosa Kid, “let's change back into our own clothes. This disguise
+makes me feel too conspicuous.”
+
+Willie Case had heard enough. His quarry would remain where it was
+over night, and a moment later Willie was racing toward Payson and a
+telephone as fast as his legs would carry him.
+
+In an old brick structure a hundred yards below the mill where the
+lighting machinery of Payson had been installed before the days of the
+great central power plant a hundred miles away four men were smoking as
+they lay stretched upon the floor.
+
+“I tell you I seen him,” asserted one of the party. “I follered this
+Bridge guy from town to the mill. He was got up like a Gyp; but I knew
+him all right, all right. This scenery of his made me tink there was
+something phoney doin', or I wouldn't have trailed him, an' its a good
+ting I done it, fer he hadn't ben there five minutes before along comes
+The Kid an' a skirt and pretty soon a nudder chicken wid a calf on a
+string, er mebbie it was a sheep--it was pretty husky lookin' fer a
+sheep though. An' I sticks aroun' a minute until I hears this here
+Bridge guy call the first skirt 'Miss Prim.'”
+
+He ceased speaking to note the effect of his words on his hearers. They
+were electrical. The Sky Pilot sat up straight and slapped his thigh.
+Soup Face opened his mouth, letting his pipe fall out into his lap,
+setting fire to his ragged trousers. Dirty Eddie voiced a characteristic
+obscenity.
+
+“So you sees,” went on Columbus Blackie, “we got a chanct to get both
+the dame and The Kid. Two of us can take her to Oakdale an' claim
+the reward her old man's offerin' an' de odder two can frisk de Kid,
+an'--an'--.”
+
+“An' wot?” queried The Sky Pilot.
+
+“Dere's de swamp handy,” suggested Soup Face.
+
+“I was tinkin' of de swamp,” said Columbus Blackie.
+
+“Eddie and I will return Miss Prim to her bereaved parents,” interrupted
+The Sky Pilot. “You, Blackie, and Soup Face can arrange matters with The
+Oskaloosa Kid. I don't care for details. We will all meet in Toledo as
+soon as possible and split the swag. We ought to make a cleaning on this
+job, boes.”
+
+“You spit a mout'ful then,” said Columbus Blackie.
+
+They fell to discussing way and means.
+
+“We'd better wait until they're asleep,” counseled The Sky Pilot. “Two
+of us can tackle this Bridge and hand him the k.o. quick. Eddie and Soup
+Face had better attend to that. Blackie can nab The Kid an' I'll annex
+Miss Abigail Prim. The lady with the calf we don't want. We'll tell her
+we're officers of the law an' that she'd better duck with her live stock
+an' keep her trap shut if she don't want to get mixed up with a murder
+trial.”
+
+                          *****
+
+
+Detective Burton was at the county jail in Oakdale administering the
+third degree to Dopey Charlie and The General when there came a long
+distance telephone call for him.
+
+“Hello!” said the voice at the other end of the line; “I'm Willie Case,
+an' I've found Miss Abigail Prim.”
+
+“Again?” queried Burton.
+
+“Really,” asserted Willie. “I know where she's goin' to be all night. I
+heard 'em say so. The Oskaloosie Kid's with her an' annuder guy an' the
+girl I seen with the dead man in Squibbs' woods an' they got a BEAR!” It
+was almost a shriek. “You'd better come right away an' bring Mr. Prim.
+I'll meet you on the ol' Toledo road right south of Payson, an' say, do
+I get the whole reward?”
+
+“You'll get whatever's coming to you, son,” replied Burton. “You say
+there are two men and two women--are you sure that is all?”
+
+“And the bear,” corrected Willie.
+
+“All right, keep quiet and wait for me,” cautioned Burton. “You'll know
+me by the spot light on my car--I'll have it pointed straight up into
+the air. When you see it coming get into the middle of the road and wave
+your hands to stop us. Do you understand?”
+
+“Yes,” said Willie.
+
+“And don't talk to anyone,” Burton again cautioned him.
+
+A few minutes later Burton left Oakdale with his two lieutenants and a
+couple of the local policemen, the car turning south toward Payson and
+moving at ever accelerating speed as it left the town streets behind it
+and swung smoothly onto the country road.
+
+                        *****
+
+
+It was after midnight when four men cautiously approached the old mill.
+There was no light nor any sign of life within as they crept silently
+through the doorless doorway. Columbus Blackie was in the lead. He
+flashed a quick light around the interior revealing four forms stretched
+upon the floor, deep in slumber. Into the blacker shadows of the far end
+of the room the man failed to shine his light for the first flash had
+shown him those whom he sought. Picking out their quarry the intruders
+made a sudden rush upon the sleepers.
+
+Bridge awoke to find two men attempting to rain murderous blows upon
+his head. Wiry, strong and full of the vigor of a clean life, he pitted
+against their greater numbers and cowardly attack a defense which was
+infinitely more strenuous than they had expected.
+
+Columbus Blackie leaped for The Oskaloosa Kid, while The Sky Pilot
+seized upon Abigail Prim. No one paid any attention to Giova, nor, with
+the noise and confusion, did the intruders note the sudden clanking of
+a chain from out the black depths of the room's further end, or the
+splintering of a half decayed studding.
+
+Soup Face entangling himself about Bridge's legs succeeded in throwing
+the latter to the floor while Dirty Eddie kicked viciously at the
+prostrate man's head. The Sky Pilot seized Abigail Prim about the waist
+and dragged her toward the doorway and though the girl fought valiantly
+to free herself her lesser muscles were unable to cope successfully
+with those of the man. Columbus Blackie found his hands full with The
+Oskaloosa Kid. Again and again the youth struck him in the face; but
+the man persisted, beating down the slim hands and striking viciously
+at body and head until, at last, the boy, half stunned though still
+struggling, was dragged from the room.
+
+Simultaneously a series of frightful growls reverberated through the
+deserted mill. A huge body catapulted into the midst of the fighters.
+Abigail Prim screamed. “The bear!” she cried. “The bear is loose!”
+
+Dirty Eddie was the first to feel the weight of Beppo's wrath. His foot
+drawn back to implant a vicious kick in Bridge's face he paused at the
+girl's scream and at the same moment a huge thing reared up before him.
+Just for an instant he sensed the terrifying presence of some frightful
+creature, caught the reflected gleam of two savage eyes and felt the
+hot breath from distended jaws upon his cheek, then Beppo swung a single
+terrific blow which caught the man upon the side of the head to spin him
+across the floor and drop him in a crumpled heap against the wall, with
+a fractured skull. Dirty Eddie was out. Soup Face, giving voice to
+a scream more bestial than human, rose to his feet and fled in the
+opposite direction.
+
+Beppo paused and looked about. He discovered Bridge lying upon the floor
+and sniffed at him. The man lay perfectly quiet. He had heard that often
+times a bear will not molest a creature which it thinks dead. Be that as
+it may Beppo chanced at that moment to glance toward the doorway. There,
+silhouetted against the lesser darkness without, he saw the figures of
+Columbus Blackie and The Oskaloosa Kid and with a growl he charged them.
+The two were but a few paces outside the doorway when the full weight of
+the great bear struck Columbus Blackie between the shoulders. Down
+went the man and as he fell he released his hold upon the youth who
+immediately turned and ran for the road.
+
+The momentum of the bear carried him past the body of his intended
+victim who, frightened but uninjured, scrambled to his feet and dashed
+toward the rear of the mill in the direction of the woods and distant
+swamp. Beppo, recovering from his charge, wheeled in time to catch a
+glimpse of his quarry after whom he made with all the awkwardness that
+was his birthright and with the speed of a race horse.
+
+Columbus Blackie, casting a terrified glance rearward, saw his Nemesis
+flashing toward him, and dodged around a large tree. Again Beppo shot
+past the man while the latter, now shrieking for help, raced madly in a
+new direction.
+
+Bridge had arisen and come out of the mill. He called aloud for The
+Oskaloosa Kid. Giova answered him from a small tree. “Climb!” she cried.
+“Climb a tree! Ever'one climb a small tree. Beppo he go mad. He keel
+ever'one. Run! Climb! He keel me. Beppo he got evil-eye.”
+
+Along the road from the north came a large touring car, swinging from
+side to side in its speed. Its brilliant headlights illuminated the road
+far ahead. They picked out The Sky Pilot and Abigail Prim, they found
+The Oskaloosa Kid climbing a barbed wire fence and then with complaining
+brakes the car came to a sudden stop. Six men leaped from the machine
+and rounded up the three they had seen. Another came running toward
+them. It was Soup Face, so thoroughly terrified that he would gladly
+have embraced a policeman in uniform, could the latter have offered him
+protection.
+
+A boy accompanied the newcomers. “There he is!” he screamed, pointing at
+The Oskaloosa Kid. “There he is! And you've got Miss Prim, too, and when
+do I get the reward?”
+
+“Shut up!” said one of the men.
+
+“Watch this bunch,” said Burton to one of his lieutenants, “while we
+go after the rest of them. There are some over by the mill. I can hear
+them.”
+
+From the woods came a fear-filled scream mingled with the savage growls
+of a beast.
+
+“It's the bear,” shrilled Willie Case, and ran toward the automobile.
+
+Bridge ran forward to meet Burton. “Get that girl and the kid into your
+machine and beat it!” he cried. “There's a bear loose here, a regular
+devil of a bear. You can't do a thing unless you have rifles. Have you?”
+
+“Who are you?” asked the detective.
+
+“He's one of the gang,” yelled Willie Case from the fancied security of
+the tonneau. “Seize him!” He wanted to add: “My men”; but somehow his
+nerve failed him at the last moment; however he had the satisfaction of
+thinking it.
+
+Bridge was placed in the car with Abigail Prim, The Oskaloosa Kid,
+Soup Face and The Sky Pilot. Burton sent the driver back to assist in
+guarding them; then he with the remaining three, two of whom were armed
+with rifles, advanced toward the mill. Beyond it they heard the growling
+of the bear at a little distance in the wood; but the man no longer made
+any outcry. From a tree Giova warned them back.
+
+“Come down!” commanded Burton, and sent her back to the car.
+
+The driver turned his spot light upon the wood beyond the mill and
+presently there came slowly forward into its rays the lumbering bulk of
+a large bear. The light bewildered him and he paused, growling. His left
+shoulder was partially exposed.
+
+“Aim for his chest, on the left side,” whispered Burton. The two men
+raised their rifles. There were two reports in close succession. Beppo
+fell forward without a sound and then rolled over on his side. Giova
+covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
+
+“He ver' bad, ugly bear,” she said brokenly; “but he all I have to
+love.”
+
+Bridge extended a hand and patted her bowed head. In the eyes of The
+Oskaloosa Kid there glistened something perilously similar to tears.
+
+In the woods back of the mill Burton and his men found the mangled
+remains of Columbus Blackie, and when they searched the interior of the
+structure they brought forth the unconscious Dirty Eddie. As the car
+already was taxed to the limit of its carrying capacity Burton left two
+of his men to march The Kid and Bridge to the Payson jail, taking the
+others with him to Oakdale. He was also partially influenced in this
+decision by the fear that mob violence would be done the principals by
+Oakdale's outraged citizens. At Payson he stopped long enough at the
+town jail to arrange for the reception of the two prisoners, to notify
+the coroner of the death of Columbus Blackie and the whereabouts of his
+body and to place Dirty Eddie in the hospital. He then telephoned Jonas
+Prim that his daughter was safe and would be returned to him in less
+than an hour.
+
+By the time Bridge and The Oskaloosa Kid reached Payson the town was
+in an uproar. A threatening crowd met them a block from the jail; but
+Burton's men were armed with rifles which they succeeded in convincing
+the mob they would use if their prisoners were molested. The telephone,
+however, had carried the word to Oakdale; so that before Burton arrived
+there a dozen automobile loads of indignant citizens were racing south
+toward Payson.
+
+Bridge and The Oskaloosa Kid were hustled into the single cell of the
+Payson jail. A bench ran along two sides of the room. A single barred
+window let out upon the yard behind the structure. The floor was
+littered with papers, and a single electric light bulb relieved the
+gloom of the unsavory place.
+
+The Oskaloosa Kid sank, trembling, upon one of the hard benches. Bridge
+rolled a cigaret. At his feet lay a copy of that day's Oakdale Tribune.
+A face looked up from the printed page into his eyes. He stooped and
+took up the paper. The entire front page was devoted to the various
+crimes which had turned peaceful Oakdale inside out in the past twenty
+four hours. There were reproductions of photographs of John Baggs,
+Reginald Paynter, Abigail Prim, Jonas Prim, and his wife, with a large
+cut of the Prim mansion, a star marking the boudoir of the missing
+daughter of the house. As Bridge examined the various pictures an
+odd expression entered his eyes--it was a mixture of puzzlement,
+incredulity, and relief. Tossing the paper aside he turned toward The
+Oskaloosa Kid. They could hear the sullen murmur of the crowd in front
+of the jail.
+
+“If they get any booze,” he said, “they'll take us out of here and
+string us up. If you've got anything to say that would tend to convince
+them that you did not kill Paynter I advise you to call the guard and
+tell the truth, for if the mob gets us they might hang us first and
+listen afterward--a mob is not a nice thing. Beppo was an angel of mercy
+by comparison with one.”
+
+“Could you convince them that you had no part in any of these crimes?”
+ asked the boy. “I know that you didn't; but could you prove it to a
+mob?”
+
+“No,” said Bridge. “A mob is not open to reason. If they get us I shall
+hang, unless someone happens to think of the stake.”
+
+The boy shuddered.
+
+“Will you tell the truth?” asked the man.
+
+“I will go with you,” replied the boy, “and take whatever you get.”
+
+“Why?” asked Bridge.
+
+The youth flushed; but did not reply, for there came from without a
+sudden augmentation of the murmurings of the mob. Automobile horns
+screamed out upon the night. The two heard the chugging of motors, the
+sound of brakes and the greetings of new arrivals. The reinforcements
+had arrived from Oakdale.
+
+A guard came to the grating of the cell door. “The bunch from Oakdale
+has come,” he said. “If I was you I'd say my prayers. Old man Baggs is
+dead. No one never had no use for him while he was alive, but the whole
+county's het up now over his death. They're bound to get you, an'
+while I didn't count 'em all I seen about a score o' ropes. They mean
+business.”
+
+Bridge turned toward the boy. “Tell the truth,” he said. “Tell this
+man.”
+
+The youth shook his head. “I have killed no one,” said he. “That is the
+truth. Neither have you; but if they are going to murder you they can
+murder me too, for you stuck to me when you didn't have to; and I am
+going to stick to you, and there is some excuse for me because I have a
+reason--the best reason in the world.”
+
+“What is it?” asked Bridge.
+
+The Oskaloosa Kid shook his head, and once more he flushed.
+
+“Well,” said the guard, with a shrug of his shoulders, “it's up to you
+guys. If you want to hang, why hang and be damned. We'll do the best we
+can 'cause it's our duty to protect you; but I guess at that hangin's
+too good fer you, an' we ain't a-goin' to get shot keepin' you from
+gettin' it.”
+
+“Thanks,” said Bridge.
+
+The uproar in front of the jail had risen in volume until it was
+difficult for those within to make themselves heard without shouting.
+The Kid sat upon his bench and buried his face in his hands. Bridge
+rolled another smoke. The sound of a shot came from the front room of
+the jail, immediately followed by a roar of rage from the mob and a
+deafening hammering upon the jail door. A moment later this turned to
+the heavy booming of a battering ram and the splintering of wood. The
+frail structure quivered beneath the onslaught.
+
+The prisoners could hear the voices of the guards and the jailer raised
+in an attempt to reason with the unreasoning mob, and then came a final
+crash and the stamping of many feet upon the floor of the outer room.
+
+Burton's car drew up before the doorway of the Prim home in Oakdale. The
+great detective alighted and handed down the missing Abigail. Then he
+directed that the other prisoners be taken to the county jail.
+
+Jonas Prim and his wife awaited Abigail's return in the spacious living
+room at the left of the reception hall. The banker was nervous. He paced
+to and fro the length of the room. Mrs. Prim fanned herself vigorously
+although the heat was far from excessive. They heard the motor draw up
+in front of the house; but they did not venture into the reception hall
+or out upon the porch, though for different reasons. Mrs. Prim because
+it would not have been PROPER; Jonas because he could not trust himself
+to meet his daughter, whom he had thought lost, in the presence of a
+possible crowd which might have accompanied her home.
+
+They heard the closing of an automobile door and the sound of foot steps
+coming up the concrete walk. The Prim butler was already waiting at the
+doorway with the doors swung wide to receive the prodigal daughter of
+the house of Prim. A slender figure with bowed head ascended the
+steps, guided and assisted by the detective. She did not look up at the
+expectant butler waiting for the greeting he was sure Abigail would have
+for him; but passed on into the reception hall.
+
+“Your father and Mrs. Prim are in the living room,” announced the
+butler, stepping forward to draw aside the heavy hangings.
+
+The girl, followed by Burton, entered the brightly lighted room.
+
+“I am very glad, Mr. Prim,” said the latter, “to be able to return Miss
+Prim to you so quickly and unharmed.”
+
+The girl looked up into the face of Jonas Prim. The man voiced an
+exclamation of surprise and annoyance. Mrs. Prim gasped and sank upon
+a sofa. The girl stood motionless, her eyes once again bent upon the
+floor.
+
+“What's the matter?” asked Burton. “What's wrong?”
+
+“Everything is wrong, Mr. Burton,” Jonas Prim's voice was crisp and
+cold. “This is not my daughter.”
+
+Burton looked his surprise and discomfiture. He turned upon the girl.
+
+“What do you mean--” he started; but she interrupted him.
+
+“You are going to ask what I mean by posing as Miss Prim,” she said. “I
+have never said that I was Miss Prim. You took the word of an ignorant
+little farmer's boy and I did not deny it when I found that you intended
+bringing me to Mr. Prim, for I wanted to see him. I wanted to ask him to
+help me. I have never met him, or his daughter either; but my father and
+Mr. Prim have been friends for many years.
+
+“I am Hettie Penning,” she continued, addressing Jonas Prim. “My father
+has always admired you and from what he has told me I knew that you
+would listen to me and do what you could for me. I could not bear to
+think of going to the jail in Payson, for Payson is my home. Everybody
+would have known me. It would have killed my father. Then I wanted to
+come myself and tell you, after reading the reports and insinuations in
+the paper, that your daughter was not with Reginald Paynter when he was
+killed. She had no knowledge of the crime and as far as I know may not
+have yet. I have not seen her and do not know where she is; but I was
+present when Mr. Paynter was killed. I have known him for years and have
+often driven with him. He stopped me yesterday afternoon on the street
+in Payson and talked with me. He was sitting in a car in front of the
+bank. After we had talked a few minutes two men came out of the bank.
+Mr. Paynter introduced them to me. He said they were driving out into
+the country to look at a piece of property--a farm somewhere north
+of Oakdale--and that on the way back they were going to stop at The
+Crossroads Inn for dinner. He asked me if I wouldn't like to come
+along--he kind of dared me to, because, as you know, The Crossroads has
+rather a bad reputation.
+
+“Father had gone to Toledo on business, and very foolishly I took his
+dare. Everything went all right until after we left The Inn, although
+one of the men--his companion referred to him once or twice as The
+Oskaloosa Kid--attempted to be too familiar with me. Mr. Paynter
+prevented him on each occasion, and they had words over me; but after
+we left the inn, where they had all drunk a great deal, this man renewed
+his attentions and Mr. Paynter struck him. Both of them were drunk.
+After that it all happened so quickly that I could scarcely follow it.
+The man called Oskaloosa Kid drew a revolver but did not fire, instead
+he seized Mr. Paynter by the coat and whirled him around and then he
+struck him an awful blow behind the ear with the butt of the weapon.
+
+“After that the other two men seemed quite sobered. They discussed what
+would be the best thing to do and at last decided to throw Mr. Paynter's
+body out of the machine, for it was quite evident that he was dead.
+First they rifled his pockets, and joked as they did it, one of them
+saying that they weren't getting as much as they had planned on; but
+that a little was better than nothing. They took his watch, jewelry,
+and a large roll of bills. We passed around the east side of Oakdale and
+came back into the Toledo road. A little way out of town they turned
+the machine around and ran back for about half a mile; then they turned
+about a second time. I don't know why they did this. They threw the body
+out while the machine was moving rapidly; but I was so frightened that
+I can't say whether it was before or after they turned about the second
+time.
+
+“In front of the old Squibbs place they shot at me and threw me out; but
+the bullet missed me. I have not seen them since and do not know where
+they went. I am ready and willing to aid in their conviction; but,
+please Mr. Prim, won't you keep me from being sent back to Payson or to
+jail. I have done nothing criminal and I won't run away.”
+
+“How about the robbery of Miss Prim's room and the murder of Old Man
+Baggs?” asked Burton. “Did they pull both of those off before they
+killed Paynter or after?”
+
+“They had nothing to do with either unless they did them after they
+threw me out of the car, which must have been long after midnight,”
+ replied the girl.
+
+“And the rest of the gang, those that were arrested with you,” continued
+the detective, “how about them? All angels, I suppose.”
+
+“There was only Bridge and the boy they called The Oskaloosa Kid, though
+he isn't the same one that murdered poor Mr. Paynter, and the Gypsy
+girl, Giova, that were with me. The others were tramps who came into
+the old mill and attacked us while we were asleep. I don't know who they
+were. The girl could have had nothing to do with any of the crimes. We
+came upon her this morning burying her father in the woods back of the
+Squibbs' place. The man died of epilepsy last night. Bridge and the boy
+were taking refuge from the storm at the Squibbs place when I was thrown
+from the car. They heard the shot and came to my rescue. I am sure they
+had nothing to do with--with--” she hesitated.
+
+“Tell the truth,” commanded Burton. “It will go hard with you if you
+don't. What made you hesitate? You know something about those two--now
+out with it.”
+
+“The boy robbed Mr. Prim's home--I saw some of the money and
+jewelry--but Bridge was not with him. They just happened to meet by
+accident during the storm and came to the Squibbs place together. They
+were kind to me, and I hate to tell anything that would get the boy in
+trouble. That is the reason I hesitated. He seemed such a nice boy!
+It is hard to believe that he is a criminal, and Bridge was always
+so considerate. He looks like a tramp; but he talks and acts like a
+gentleman.”
+
+The telephone bell rang briskly, and a moment later the butler stepped
+into the room to say that Mr. Burton was wanted on the wire. He returned
+to the living room in two or three minutes.
+
+“That clears up some of it,” he said as he entered. “The sheriff just
+had a message from the chief at Toledo saying that The Oskaloosa Kid is
+dying in a hospital there following an automobile accident. He knew he
+was done for and sent for the police. When they came he told them he had
+killed a man by the name of Paynter at Oakdale last night and the chief
+called up to ask what we knew about it. The Kid confessed to clear
+his pal who was only slightly injured in the smash-up. His story
+corroborates Miss Penning's in every detail, he also said that after
+killing Paynter he had shot a girl witness and thrown her from the car
+to prevent her squealing.”
+
+Once again the telephone bell rang, long and insistently. The butler
+almost ran into the room. “Payson wants you, sir,” he cried to Burton,
+“in a hurry, sir, it's a matter of life and death, sir!”
+
+Burton sprang to the phone. When he left it he only stopped at the
+doorway of the living room long enough to call in: “A mob has the two
+prisoners at Payson and are about to lynch them, and, my God, they're
+innocent. We all know now who killed Paynter and I have known since
+morning who murdered Baggs, and it wasn't either of those men; but
+they've found Miss Prim's jewelry on the fellow called Bridge and
+they've gone crazy--they say he murdered her and the young one did for
+Paynter. I'm going to Payson,” and dashed from the house.
+
+“Wait,” cried Jonas Prim, “I'm going with you,” and without waiting to
+find a hat he ran quickly after the detective. Once in the car he leaned
+forward urging the driver to greater speed.
+
+“God in heaven!” he almost cried, “the fools are going to kill the only
+man who can tell me anything about Abigail.”
+
+                         *****
+
+
+With oaths and threats the mob, brainless and heartless, cowardly,
+bestial, filled with the lust for blood, pushed and jammed into the
+narrow corridor before the cell door where the two prisoners awaited
+their fate. The single guard was brushed away. A dozen men wielding
+three railroad ties battered upon the grating of the door, swinging the
+ties far back and then in unison bringing them heavily forward against
+the puny iron.
+
+Bridge spoke to them once. “What are you going to do with us?” he asked.
+
+“We're goin' to hang you higher 'n' Haman, you damned kidnappers an'
+murderers,” yelled a man in the crowd.
+
+“Why don't you give us a chance?” asked Bridge in an even tone,
+unaltered by fear or excitement. “You've nothing on us. As a matter of
+fact we are both innocent--”
+
+“Oh, shut your damned mouth,” interrupted another of the crowd.
+
+Bridge shrugged his shoulders and turned toward the youth who stood very
+white but very straight in a far corner of the cell. The man noticed the
+bulging pockets of the ill fitting coat; and, for the first time that
+night, his heart stood still in the face of fear; but not for himself.
+
+He crossed to the youth's side and put his arm around the slender
+figure. “There's no use arguing with them,” he said. “They've made
+up their minds, or what they think are minds, that we're guilty; but
+principally they're out for a sensation. They want to see something die,
+and we're it. I doubt if anything could stop them now; they'd think we'd
+cheated them if we suddenly proved beyond doubt that we were innocent.”
+
+The boy pressed close to the man. “God help me to be brave,” he said,
+“as brave as you are. We'll go together, Bridge, and on the other side
+you'll learn something that'll surprise you. I believe there is 'another
+side,' don't you, Bridge?”
+
+“I've never thought much about it,” said Bridge; “but at a time like
+this I rather hope so--I'd like to come back and haunt this bunch of rat
+brained rubes.”
+
+His arm slipped down the other's coat and his hand passed quickly behind
+the boy from one side to the other; then the door gave and the leaders
+of the mob were upon them. A gawky farmer seized the boy and struck him
+cruelly across the mouth. It was Jeb Case.
+
+“You beast!” cried Bridge. “Can't you see that that--that's--only a
+child? If I don't live long enough to give you yours here, I'll come
+back and haunt you to your grave.”
+
+“Eh?” ejaculated Jeb Case; but his sallow face turned white, and after
+that he was less rough with his prisoner.
+
+The two were dragged roughly from the jail. The great crowd which had
+now gathered fought to get a close view of them, to get hold of them, to
+strike them, to revile them; but the leaders kept the others back lest
+all be robbed of the treat which they had planned. Through town they
+haled them and out along the road toward Oakdale. There was some talk of
+taking them to the scene of Paynter's supposed murder; but wiser heads
+counselled against it lest the sheriff come with a posse of deputies and
+spoil their fun.
+
+Beneath a great tree they halted them, and two ropes were thrown over
+a stout branch. One of the leaders started to search them; and when he
+drew his hands out of Bridge's side pockets his eyes went wide, and he
+gave a cry of elation which drew excited inquiries from all sides.
+
+“By gum!” he cried, “I reckon we ain't made no mistake here, boys. Look
+ahere!” and he displayed two handsful of money and jewelry.
+
+“Thet's Abbie Prim's stuff,” cried one.
+
+The boy beside Bridge turned wide eyes upon the man. “Where did you get
+it?” he cried. “Oh, Bridge, why did you do it? Now they will kill you,”
+ and he turned to the crowd. “Oh, please listen to me,” he begged. “He
+didn't steal those things. Nobody stole them. They are mine. They have
+always belonged to me. He took them out of my pocket at the jail because
+he thought that I had stolen them and he wanted to take the guilt upon
+himself; but they were not stolen, I tell you--they are mine! they are
+mine! they are mine!”
+
+Another new expression came into Bridge's eyes as he listened to the
+boy's words; but he only shook his head. It was too late, and Bridge
+knew it.
+
+Men were adjusting ropes about their necks. “Before you hang us,” said
+Bridge quietly, “would you mind explaining just what we're being hanged
+for--it's sort of comforting to know, you see.”
+
+“Thet's right,” spoke up one of the crowd. “Thet's fair. We want to do
+things fair and square. Tell 'em the charges, an' then ask 'em ef they
+got anything to say afore they're hung.”
+
+This appealed to the crowd--the last statements of the doomed men might
+add another thrill to the evening's entertainment.
+
+“Well,” said the man who had searched them. “There might o' been some
+doubts about you before, but they aint none now. You're bein' hung fer
+abductin' of an' most likely murderin' Miss Abigail Prim.”
+
+The boy screamed and tried to interrupt; but Jeb Case placed a heavy
+and soiled hand over his mouth. The spokesman continued. “This slicker
+admitted he was The Oskaloosa Kid, 'n' thet he robbed a house an' shot
+a man las' night; 'n' they ain't no tellin' what more he's ben up to. He
+tole Jeb Case's Willie 'bout it; an' bragged on it, by gum. 'Nenny way
+we know Paynter and Abigail Prim was last seed with this here Oskaloosa
+Kid, durn him.”
+
+“Thanks,” said Bridge politely, “and now may I make my final statement
+before going to meet my maker?”
+
+“Go on,” growled the man.
+
+“You won't interrupt me?”
+
+“Naw, go on.”
+
+“All right! You damn fools have made up your minds to hang us. I doubt
+if anything I can say to you will alter your determination for the
+reason that if all the brains in this crowd were collected in one
+individual he still wouldn't have enough with which to weigh the most
+obvious evidence intelligently, but I shall present the evidence, and
+you can tell some intelligent people about it tomorrow.
+
+“In the first place it is impossible that I murdered Abigail Prim, and
+in the second place my companion is not The Oskaloosa Kid and was not
+with Mr. Paynter last night. The reason I could not have murdered Miss
+Prim is because Miss Prim is not dead. These jewels were not stolen from
+Miss Prim, she took them herself from her own home. This boy whom you
+are about to hang is not a boy at all--it is Miss Prim, herself. I
+guessed her secret a few minutes ago and was convinced when she cried
+that the jewels and money were her own. I don't know why she wishes to
+conceal her identity; but I can't stand by and see her lynched without
+trying to save her.”
+
+The crowd scoffed in incredulity. “There are some women here,” said
+Bridge. “Turn her over to them. They'll tell you, at least that she is
+not a man.”
+
+Some voices were raised in protest, saying that it was a ruse to escape,
+while others urged that the women take the youth. Jeb Case stepped
+toward the subject of dispute. “I'll settle it durned quick,” he
+announced and reached forth to seize the slim figure. With a sudden
+wrench Bridge tore himself loose from his captors and leaped toward the
+farmer, his right flew straight out from the shoulder and Jeb Case went
+down with a broken jaw. Almost simultaneously a car sped around a curve
+from the north and stopped suddenly in rear of the mob. Two men leaped
+out and shouldered their way through. One was the detective, Burton; the
+other was Jonas Prim.
+
+“Where are they?” cried the latter. “God help you if you've killed
+either of them, for one of them must know what became of Abigail.”
+
+He pushed his way up until he faced the prisoners. The Oskaloosa Kid
+gave him a single look of surprise and then sprang toward him with
+outstretched arms.
+
+“Oh, daddy, daddy!” she cried, “don't let them kill him.”
+
+The crowd melted away from the immediate vicinity of the prisoners. None
+seemed anxious to appear in the forefront as a possible leader of a
+mob that had so nearly lynched the only daughter of Jonas Prim. Burton
+slipped the noose from about the girl's neck and then turned toward her
+companion. In the light from the automobile lamps the man's face was
+distinctly visible to the detective for the first time that night,
+and as Burton looked upon it he stepped back with an exclamation of
+surprise.
+
+“You?” he almost shouted. “Gad, man! where have you been? Your father's
+spent twenty thousand dollars trying to find you.”
+
+Bridge shook his head. “I'm sorry, Dick,” he said, “but I'm afraid it's
+too late. The open road's gotten into my blood, and there's only one
+thing that--well--” he shook his head and smiled ruefully--“but there
+ain't a chance.” His eyes travelled to the slim figure sitting so
+straight in the rear seat of Jonas Prim's car.
+
+Suddenly the little head turned in his direction. “Hurry, Bridge,”
+ admonished The Oskaloosa Kid, “you're coming home with us.”
+
+
+The man stepped toward the car, shaking his head. “Oh, no, Miss Prim,”
+ he said, “I can't do that. Here's your 'swag.'” And he smiled as he
+passed over her jewels and money.
+
+Mr. Prim's eyes widened; he looked suspiciously at Bridge. Abigail
+laughed merrily. “I stole them myself, Dad,” she explained, “and then
+Mr. Bridge took them from me in the jail to make the mob think he had
+stolen them and not I--he didn't know then that I was a girl, did you?”
+
+“It was in the jail that I first guessed; but I didn't quite realize
+who you were until you said that the jewels were yours--then I knew. The
+picture in the paper gave me the first inkling that you were a girl, for
+you looked so much like the one of Miss Prim. Then I commenced to recall
+little things, until I wondered that I hadn't known from the first that
+you were a girl; but you made a bully boy!” and they both laughed. “And
+now good-by, and may God bless you!” His voice trembled ever so little,
+and he extended his hand. The girl drew back.
+
+“I want you to come with us,” she said. “I want Father to know you and
+to know how you have cared for me. Won't you come--for me?”
+
+“I couldn't refuse, if you put it that way,” replied Bridge; and he
+climbed into the car. As the machine started off a boy leaped to the
+running-board.
+
+“Hey!” he yelled, “where's my reward? I want my reward. I'm Willie
+Case.”
+
+“Oh!” exclaimed Bridge. “I gave your reward to your father--maybe he'll
+split it with you. Go ask him.” And the car moved off.
+
+“You see,” said Burton, with a wry smile, “how simple is the detective's
+job. Willie is a natural-born detective. He got everything wrong from A
+to Izzard, yet if it hadn't been for Willie we might not have cleared up
+the mystery so soon.”
+
+“It isn't all cleared up yet,” said Jonas Prim. “Who murdered Baggs?”
+
+“Two yeggs known as Dopey Charlie and the General,” replied Burton.
+“They are in the jail at Oakdale; but they don't know yet that I know
+they are guilty. They think they are being held merely as suspects in
+the case of your daughter's disappearance, whereas I have known since
+morning that they were implicated in the killing of Baggs; for after I
+got them in the car I went behind the bushes where we discovered them
+and dug up everything that was missing from Baggs' house, as nearly as
+is known--currency, gold and bonds.”
+
+“Good!” exclaimed Mr. Prim.
+
+On the trip back to Oakdale, Abigail Prim cuddled in the back seat
+beside her father, told him all that she could think to tell of Bridge
+and his goodness to her.
+
+“But the man didn't know you were a girl,” suggested Mr. Prim.
+
+“There were two other girls with us, both very pretty,” replied Abigail,
+“and he was as courteous and kindly to them as a man could be to a
+woman. I don't care anything about his clothes, Daddy; Bridge is a
+gentleman born and raised--anyone could tell it after half an hour with
+him.”
+
+Bridge sat on the front seat with the driver and one of Burton's men,
+while Burton, sitting in the back seat next to the girl, could not but
+overhear her conversation.
+
+“You are right,” he said. “Bridge, as you call him, is a gentleman.
+He comes of one of the finest families of Virginia and one of the
+wealthiest. You need have no hesitancy, Mr. Prim, in inviting him into
+your home.”
+
+For a while the three sat in silence; and then Jonas Prim turned to his
+daughter. “Gail,” he said, “before we get home I wish you'd tell me why
+you did this thing. I think you'd rather tell me before we see Mrs. P.”
+
+“It was Sam Benham, Daddy,” whispered the girl. “I couldn't marry him.
+I'd rather die, and so I ran away. I was going to be a tramp; but I had
+no idea a tramp's existence was so adventurous. You won't make me marry
+him, Daddy, will you? I wouldn't be happy, Daddy.”
+
+“I should say not, Gail; you can be an old maid all your life if you
+want to.”
+
+“But I don't want to--I only want to choose my own husband,” replied
+Abigail.
+
+Mrs. Prim met them all in the living-room. At sight of Abigail in the
+ill-fitting man's clothing she raised her hands in holy horror; but she
+couldn't see Bridge at all, until Burton found an opportunity to draw
+her to one side and whisper something in her ear, after which she was
+graciousness personified to the dusky Bridge, insisting that he spend a
+fortnight with them to recuperate.
+
+Between them, Burton and Jonas Prim fitted Bridge out as he had not been
+dressed in years, and with the feel of fresh linen and pressed clothing,
+even if ill fitting, a sensation of comfort and ease pervaded him which
+the man would not have thought possible from such a source an hour
+before.
+
+He smiled ruefully as Burton looked him over. “I venture to say,” he
+drawled, “that there are other things in the world besides the open
+road.”
+
+Burton smiled.
+
+It was midnight when the Prims and their guests arose from the table.
+Hettie Penning was with them, and everyone present had been sworn to
+secrecy about her share in the tragedy of the previous night. On the
+morrow she would return to Payson and no one there the wiser; but first
+she had Burton send to the jail for Giova, who was being held as a
+witness, and Giova promised to come and work for the Pennings.
+
+At last Bridge stole a few minutes alone with Abigail, or, to be more
+strictly a truthful historian, Abigail outgeneraled the others of the
+company and drew Bridge out upon the veranda.
+
+“Tell me,” demanded the girl, “why you were so kind to me when you
+thought me a worthless little scamp of a boy who had robbed some one's
+home.”
+
+“I couldn't have told you a few hours ago,” said Bridge. “I used to
+wonder myself why I should feel toward a boy as I felt toward you,--it
+was inexplicable,--and then when I knew that you were a girl, I
+understood, for I knew that I loved you and had loved you from the
+moment that we met there in the dark and the rain beside the Road to
+Anywhere.”
+
+“Isn't it wonderful?” murmured the girl, and she had other things in her
+heart to murmur; but a man's lips smothered hers as Bridge gathered her
+into his arms and strained her to him.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+Partial list of correctioins made in the previous reproofing:
+
+
+     PAGE  PARA.  LINE  ORIGINAL               CHANGED TO
+      10            6  emminent               eminent
+      15     4      2  it's warmth            its warmth
+      15     5     13  promisculously         promiscuously
+      16     1      3  appelation             appellation
+      19            3  it's scope             its scope
+      21            6  by with seasons        by seasons
+      25     1      8  Prim manage            Prim menage
+      25     2     20  then, suspicious,      then, suspicions,
+      28           12  even his               even this
+      34     6      1  it's quality           its quality
+      37     3     10  have any-              have any
+      38     4      4  tin tear.              tin ear.
+      39     2      6  Squibbs farm           Squibbs' farm
+      40     2      2  his absence,           his absence,”
+       47     5      1  sudden, clanking       sudden clanking
+      47     8      3  its the thing          it's the thing
+      48     5      2  was moment's           was a moment's
+      59     9      4  bird aint              bird ain't
+      60     8      3  dum misery             dumb misery
+      71            2  dead Squibbs           dead Squibb
+      74     1      2  tend during            tent during
+      75     7      3  Squibbs house          Squibbs' house
+      76     1      6  Squibbs home.          Squibbs' home.
+      76     8      4  business, thats        business, that's
+      78     1      1  Squibbs place          Squibbs' place
+      78     2      1  Squibbs place!”        Squibbs' place!”
+       80     6      4  Squibbs gateway        Squibbs' gateway
+      84     6      1  Squibb's summer        Squibbs' summer
+      85     6      1  thet aint              thet ain't
+      85     7      5  on em                  on 'em
+      85     8      1  An' thet aint          An' thet ain't
+      85    10      1  But thet aint          But thet ain't
+      85    10      3  of em                  of 'em
+      85    10      3  of em                  of 'em
+      86     2      2  there aint             there ain't
+      87            5  others' mask           other's mask
+      88     6      1  Squibbs woods          Squibbs' woods
+      91            2  “They aint             “They ain't
+      91            3  I aint                 I ain't
+      91     2      3  Squibbs house          Squibbs' house
+      91            6  aint got               ain't got
+      92            6  it wa'nt safe          it wa'n't safe
+      92     4     10  Squibbs house          Squibbs' house
+      94     2      1  to nothin.             to nothin'.
+      94     8      1  Squibbs place,”        Squibbs' place,”
+       97     4      2  “We aint               “We ain't
+      98     1      8  Squibbs place          Squibbs' place
+      98     3      1  hiself de              hisself de
+      98     5      4  he aint                he ain't
+      98     7      1  Squibbs place          Squibbs' place
+      98     8      2  you aint               you ain't
+     107     4      3  wont tell              won't tell
+     113     3      5  its measles            it's measles
+     113     3      6  cough aint             cough ain't
+     113     3      6  its 'it,'              it's 'it,'
+     113     4      1  I aint                 I ain't
+     114     2      6  Squibb's place         Squibbs' place
+     114     2     13  simply wont            simply won't
+     116     6      3  few minutes            few minutes'
+     116     7      5  Squibb's farm          Squibbs' farm
+     121            4  she wont               she won't
+     121            5  wont.”                 won't.”
+      128     7      4  can knab               can nab
+     134     2      2  an upraor.             an uproar.
+     136     8      5  we aint                we ain't
+     139     2      8  had all drank          had all drunk
+     141     3      9  Squibb's place.        Squibbs' place.
+     146            1  its sort of            it's sort of
+     146     2      3  nings entertainment    ning's entertainment
+     146     4      5  aint no tellin'        ain't no tellin'
+     146     7      1  “You wont              “You won't
+     151     2      4  wont make              won't make
+     152     1      2  Nettie Penning         Hettie Penning
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Oakdale Affair, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
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