Chapter XI: Passing the Load of Hay

Later that morning the Big Six was spinning over the road eastward from the small village where the preceding debate had occurred. Before starting Phil had asked their host if he knew of an old inn some miles ahead that had formerly been prosperous during the old stage-coaching days, before the advent of the railroads. The tavern keeper scratched his head as he reflected. Finally he said:

"Can't think of nary place onless it's what they used to call the Ghost Tavern, but--law me! That place must 'a' rotted down before now."

Phil intimated that this might be what he was after, asking how far the inn with the foreboding name might be.

"Might be thirty mile or it might be fifty or more, I can't say. You might pass it not knowing where it is, and yet be within a few rods of where it is--or was. It's a woodsy neighborhood, and seems to me that I heard it had burned down but I won't be sure. Anyhow, that's the only place I've learned of beyond here, eastward, that in the least is like what you been asking about. What might you kids be wanting such a place for? Looks like I'd ruther pass it not knowing there was such a thing near as a ghost tavern."

Phil replied evasively, for it was decided to say nothing at present as to what the boys were up to. At least to say nothing that might make others think that anything out of the common was embodied in their present purposes.

Before the car started, however, the innkeeper, still scratching his grizzled head, looked up again, saying:

"Seems like I heard 'way back yonder that there was a tavern near where a big railroad robbery took place. But I ain't sure. Old folks like me find that we forgit easier than we remember. However, I wish ye all good luck. Keep your eyes open, boys, and don't go it blind--at least no blinder 'n you can help. So long!"

All this strengthened their confidence in the sincerity of Coster's last bequest to P. Jones, Esq., who plumed himself accordingly, after his customary manner. He pinched Dave's arm as he said:

"Bet your life, Dave, there was more in what Coster gave me than you thought! You're driving. You watch the road. Me and Phil and Billy will keep up a lookout that will not miss that old tavern, ghost or no ghost."

"S'pose the old rookery has been burned or made way with?" Dave propounded this while curving his course round a steep embankment that made the roadway barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass. Before Paul had time to retort a rumble ahead broke in on their ears. Dave instantly turned towards the bluff on his right, for the shelving embankment sloped steeply to the left.

"That's right, Mac!" interposed Paul, his attention being thus diverted from a witticism at MacLester's expense. "Jam her close to the bluff and let the other fellow do the worrying."

Just then, round the further end of the curve came a farm wagon loaded with hay, one man driving as he sat cramped against the dashboard, while on the load behind was a boy and a girl, both somewhere along their teens in age. When the farm team saw the purring car they balked, tried to shy dangerously towards the slope, but the man behind reined them up so sharply that they were halted midway of the road and about twenty feet from the car. Dave at once shut off the power and the purring ceased.

"Say, mister!" called the man anxiously. "How we goin' to pass ye?"

"We've tried to give you all the room we could, don't you see?" This from MacLester as he leaned coolly back in his seat. "You'll have to slow up, then go at a walk to the right, won't you?"

"My team's sorter skeery along here. They ain't used to you autermobile fellers. Whoa thar! What ye up to now?"

The team was trying to shy again as they eyed the strange monster just ahead that was as terrifying to them as when some unsuspecting hunter suddenly sees just ahead of him a dangerous beast of prey. Meantime Phil, noting the alarm of the girl on the hay and similar symptoms in the younger boy, was taking in the possibilities of the situation. He signalled to the others to keep silent, then sprang out of the tonneau and made cautiously towards the team, speaking soothingly the while as the man held them in tightly.

"Let me get hold of their headstalls," he called, raising his voice slightly. "I think we can manage it. We'll pass each other all right."

By cautious management, speaking calmly to the horses, Phil managed at last to seize first one bridle, then the other, rubbing his hand propitiatingly over their noses, while securing a good grip on the startled animals, and began leading them to the left, towards the bluff. At the same time he called to Dave, in a low but distinct tone:

"Loose the brake! Get out, two of you, and back the car gently. Keep her headed towards the middle of the road. Don't release your clutch, Dave."

With some difficulty Phil's directions were implicitly followed by the boys, all of whom had learned in the past to defer to Phil's judgment when sudden decisions were required. When the Big Six was squarely midway of the road and pointed slightly outward towards the dangerous slope, the car was halted, and Paul and Billy clambered back into the machine.

"Now, my friend," said Phil, "if I lead them, can you turn in close to the bluff, right where we were when we first saw you?"

"I'll try mighty hard. Whoa, Jack! Easy now, Jill!"

With Way still at their heads, the wagon and its cumbrous load were safely jammed against the side of the bluff.

"Perhaps the young lady and the boy better get off on the upper side. We'll try to pass you, but your team may not like the situation." Phil smiled. "It may cause trouble, but we will be as careful as we can."

"Well, boss," said the man, "you sure are good boys. My team--well, I don't know what they might have done if I'd tried to pass you on the outside."

He turned back to the couple on the hay. "Say, Danny, you slide off and then help Nan down. Be keerful! Remember she's your sister, and if she gets a fall you'll have to settle with me later."

Danny, a straw-hatted, barefooted lad with a freckled face and dangling legs, managed to slide himself down against the bluff and also managed to assist the girl in following him to a spot where they could uneasily await further developments.

"Better not start your car until I git by," remarked the farmer, while Phil, still holding the bridles, aided the loaded wagon to slip by the red monster, now quiet enough on the dangerous side of the road. Once their backs were towards the machine the team quieted down quickly enough.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dave turned back to Way, saying:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phil passed this by without reply, as he talked about other matters. Little did any of them then think that they had not seen the last of those three whom they had saved from possible accident and bodily danger by giving them the safest side of the road.

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

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

"Yes, we will have dinner ready in a few minutes," remarked a comfortable looking woman who seemed to be in charge of the tiny office. "Make yourselves at home. Why, are you lads from Lannington?" This after reading the register.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, rather! Hey, Phil? We got this car mainly through his aid. McKnight & Wilder--they're some punkins when it comes to automobiles!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Midlandville, stupid!" This from P. Jones, Esq., with a superior air. "That was one of the first things I heard."

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

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

Where they were now much of the timber appeared to be second growth, and such hemlocks as they saw were small.

In a shaded spot to the right of the ill-kept highway they stopped at a small rivulet for the noonday lunch. This was eaten rather silently. In fact, so gloomy were their surroundings that after eating Phil Way proposed that they should divide themselves, two in each party, and explore to the north and south of the highway for a mile or so, making a detour into the forest as they went.

"I'm with you," said Paul briskly. "I'm getting tired of all this guessing. Let's start from here, Phil, and take a half circle northwest, then west, then south, crossing the highway. After another mile, we'll turn east, then northeast, then north until we strike the road again. Dave, you and Billy do the same thing, only turn northeast, east, then south and so on so as to bring you back to the road not far from where we all are now."

But before any comment could be made on this plan there came a sudden interruption.