Chapter XXI: The Unexpected Happens

The automobile party did not travel all day long--whirling over the dusty roads, past flower-spangled fields, or through pleasant woods. No, indeed.

Little folks especially--like Tess and Dot and Sammy--cannot sit patiently, even in an upholstered touring car, hour after hour. It was pleasant to ride so smoothly through the lovely country; it was nicer still to halt by the wayside and hunt for adventure.

Tom Jonah, who was by nature a tramp, enjoyed the excursions away from the automobile as much as did the children--and he was never again off their trail at such times. If Tess and Dot and Sammy left the party, somebody would be sure to speak to the old dog, and up he would get in order to follow the children. He had not forgotten the occasion when the two smallest Corner House girls had escaped his watchful eye. So Tom Jonah was what the slangy Sammy Pinkney called "Johnny on the Spot" one day when something quite exciting happened.

They had stopped beside the road for lunch, as they almost always did, and as soon as they had eaten the children were anxious to explore.

The almost dry bed of a water-course attracted their attention, and as they could step from rock to rock, and so keep their feet dry, they started up this ravine. Sammy, of course, led and recklessly leaped from rock to rock with the assurance of a goat. The little girls were agile enough; but Tess gave much attention to Dot, and the latter had to be sure that the Alice-doll got into no difficulty.

"You mustn't go so fast, Sammy," urged Tess. "You know we haven't got to catch a train. And _do_ go away, Tom Jonah! You're all wet. When you shake yourself I'd just as lief be walking close behind a sprinkling-cart."

Both the boy and the dog laughed at her; but Dot, realizing that Alice's best gown might be ruined, almost fell off her stepping-stone as Tom Jonah deliberately shook himself again and she tried to shield her doll's finery.

"Oh, bully!" shouted Sammy, suddenly. "There's blackberries."

The bushes were overhanging the steep wall of the ravine on one side. Tess looked doubtfully up the rocky slope.

"They're mostly red, Sammy," she objected. "Or green."

"Some of 'em's black enough," declared the boy. "Come on! Let's get some."

Sammy scrambled up the rough side of the gully. Tom Jonah bounded after him and then looked back at his little mistresses to see if they were coming too.

"Well! I won't be beaten by a boy," said Tess, with sudden decision. "Let's go too, Dot."

It was a rather hard pull for the little girls; and Dot got her knees "scrubby," although she saved the Alice-doll's dress. They came to the top of the height all but breathless and with flushed faces.

Sammy was coolly picking the best berries and cramming them into a mouth which betrayed to all who might behold his greediness. "You better hurry up," he advised, with a lofty detachment from all chivalry, "or there won't be any left. There _ain't_ many ripe ones, after all."

"Well, I do declare!" exclaimed Tess. "You aren't very polite, Sammy Pinkney."

"You--you might have saved us _some_!" protested Dot.

The little girls looked all about. They did not see any other blackberry bushes in the vicinity. But Tess sighted something else.

"Oh, Dot! Roses! Lovely, pink, wild, roses! Did you ever see so many?"

There was a veritable hedge of the pretty, fragrant, delicate flowers at the far side of this little field. The two girls raced over to them at once, forgetting both Sammy's greediness and the berries. Tom Jonah bounded after them, and rushed through a gap in the rose hedge. Instantly there was excitement on the far side of the hedge, just out of sight.

An angry and excited voice rose in a familiar: "Bla-a-a-t! bla-a-a-t!"

"Oh, my! what's that?" asked Dot, startled.

"It sounds just like Billy Bumps," said Tess.

Again it sounded: "Ba-a-a! bla-a-a-t!" Tom Jonah barked. Sammy came running over to them.

"Hear that old Billy goat?" he shouted. "I bet Tom Jonah's treed him!"

He dived through the break in the hedge and perforce, because of their curiosity, the little Corner House girls were drawn after him. There they found both Tom Jonah and the boy dancing about a rather savage-looking black-faced ram that had been tied to a stump and that was now so wound up in his rope that he could do little but stamp his hoofs and shake his horns at his tormentors.

"Oh, Sammy! don't worry the poor goat," begged Dot.

"Come here, Tom Jonah!" commanded Tess sternly, and the dog obeyed if the boy did not.

"Aw, what's the odds? He can't get at us," said Sammy, careless of both his grammar and the ethics of the case. "And he's only an old goat."

"That is just horrid of you, Sammy Pinkney!" declared Tess. "Suppose it was our own poor Billy Bumps?"

The girls, no more than the boy, did not recognize the difference between the goat they knew well and the ram that they had never seen before. The black-faced rogue had been tied because it was not safe to let him run loose with the herd.

"We _must_ help him," declared Tess, having made Tom Jonah go to the rear. "We can't leave him tied here to suffer--and all wound up in that rope. If Neale were only here----"

"Oh, yes!" agreed Dot. "Neale would fix it all right."

"Say," declared Sammy, spurred to the quick, "_I_ ain't afraid. If Neale could do it, I guess I can. But just the same, I bet if we let him loose he'll chase us."

"Oh, no! he wouldn't do that, would he?" cried Dot.

"He wouldn't be so ungrateful," said Tess severely.

"Poor, poor old Billy," cooed Dot, putting out her hand to the ram.

"He--he doesn't look just like our goat; but I know he's suffering," Tess declared.

The noise the ram made would naturally lead one to think that he was suffering. If not urged on by this appearance, Sammy desired to make a certain impression upon his companions. He walked boldly up to the stump to which the ram was tethered. Things began to happen immediately! That black-faced ram had no more idea of gratitude than a rattlesnake.

Sammy got two loops of the rope off the stump, and another off the ram's hind leg. The beast immediately put down its head and bumped Sammy just as hard as he possibly could.

"Ow! Ouch!" yelled Sammy. "Get out, you mean thing!"

"Bla-a-at!" said the ram, and tried to charge again. Sammy attempted to scramble out of the way; the little girls screamed; Tom Jonah began to bark and to jump about the excited party.

The ram ran several times around the stump in the right direction to unwind his rope; but in so doing he got Sammy and the rope entangled. In a moment more the modern pirate was lashed to the post, yelling vigorously, while the ram was brought to a stop again on too short a rope to do the boy any damage with his ugly horns, although he threatened Sammy continuously.

The screams of the three children and the barking of Tom Jonah was bound to raise the neighborhood. A shout soon replied, and the screaming of other youthful voices. Into the field at its far end came a man, running, and close upon his heels several ragged and bare-legged children, both boys and girls.

"What are ye doin' there, ye little imps?" roared the man, bearing down on the little Corner House girls and their unfortunate champion in a very ugly way.

"Oh, _do_ help Sammy!" begged Tess, with clasped hands, of the ugly man.

Dot, hugging the Alice-doll closely, stared wonderingly at the horde of little ragamuffins that came dancing and screeching to the scene of Sammy's disaster.

"Take him off, mister, an' lemme get away," cried Sammy. "I won't never do it again."

It was so natural for Sammy Pinkney to be blamed in whatever situation he found himself, that he offered his apologies at once. The ugly man scowled down at him.

"I'd oughter let old Dewey lam' you good," he growled.

"Cut the rope and let old Dewey go for 'em, Uncle Jim!" yelled one of the young savages.

At that both Tess and Dot burst into despairing wails. At the same moment Neale O'Neil and Agnes burst through the bushes, having been drawn to the spot by the uproar.

"Oh, Aggie!" shrieked Tess.

"Oh, Neale!" cried Dot.

Sammy pluckily held his tongue; but the way he looked at the bigger boy belonging to the automobile party would have touched a much stonier heart than that of Neale O'Neil.

"Keep away from here," commanded the ugly man, to Neale.

"I guess not," responded the boy sharply. "_You_ don't seem to be doing anything to help him."

"What did he want to get tangled up with the ram for, then?" demanded the fellow.

"He was trying to help the poor Billy goat," Tess sobbed, from the shelter of Agnes' arms.

"You city folks are too fresh, anyhow," cried one of the ragged children. "We ought to stone you kids. Hadn't we, Uncle Jim?"

But the man was busy with Neale. "Let that rope alone!" he commanded, as the boy approached the entangled Sammy.

"Stand out of my way," said Neale, taking out his pocketknife and opening the big blade. "And run your old sheep out of here when I cut him free."

"Don't you do that!" cried the man.

But with one stroke of the sharp blade Neale freed both the ram and Sammy.

"Ba-a-a! Bla-a-a-t!" uttered the ram, and shook his horns threateningly at Neale.

"Butt him, Dewey!" yelled the ragamuffins.

But Neale delivered a hearty kick that resounded upon the ram's ribs. With another blat the beast switched around, lowered his head, and charged directly at the ugly man.

"Git out, ye derned nuisance!" yelled the fellow, and only by leaping high and spreading wide his legs did he escape the ram's furious charge.

Missing his object, the ram kept on across the field and, whooping, the rag-and-bobtail crew strung along after him. The man remained to bluster and threaten Neale for a while; but the boy from Milton paid very little attention to him.

"Let's go! Let's go!" Agnes kept saying, and the little girls, thoroughly frightened, kept urging the same thing.

But when they got down into the ravine again, and the ugly man was out of sight, Agnes sent the trio of little folks ahead, and said to Neale:

"Do you know, Neale, who that horrid man was?"

"Huh?" grunted Neale, puzzled.

"Didn't you see who he was when he stood right there before you?"

"Er--'Hawkshaw, the detective'!" scoffed Neale, grinning widely.

"Don't try to be funny," implored Agnes. "Where were your eyes? _That_ was the man we saw the last time with Saleratus Joe, when they passed us in that strange automobile," declared the girl earnestly.

"No?" gasped Neale.

"Yes, it was. I could never forget his ugly face. He is the very man, I believe, who helped Joe steal Mr. Collinger's car."

Neale wagged his head. "Whether he is one of the thieves or not, he's a bad man all right. You can see that," the boy agreed. "I wonder if we ought to hunt up Sheriff Keech?" But they were a long way from the residence of the sheriff whose acquaintance they had previously made.

That night the touring party stopped with the blacksmith and his wife. The Shepards had not returned to this neighborhood, and the Corner House party did not wish to waste any time. They were to make a long detour from this point before going back to Milton. They desired to see a part of the country altogether strange to them.

"Shall we go around by the Higgins farm again?"

That was the query Neale O'Neil propounded before bedtime that evening after they had eaten another of "Mother's" wonderful suppers.

"I don't really see the use," Mrs. Heard said. "I haven't heard a word from Philly Collinger about it. And I told him everything that Gypsy told you, Neale."

"And how Neale hunted in the barn and found no trace of Mr. Collinger's car?" suggested Ruth.

"Oh, yes."

"But he _did_ find something!" cried Agnes.

"What did he find, I'd like to know?" asked her sister.

"He saw where the auto wheels had skidded on the path going up to the barn--didn't you, Neale?"

"Yes," the boy agreed. "But the car wasn't there."

"Pooh! you didn't find it," said the girl scornfully.

"My goodness, Aggie!" cried Ruth, "when you set out to be, you can be the most stubborn person!"

"Oh, well," Mrs. Heard said soothingly, "what if we do go around by that barn and satisfy Agnes? It won't be much out of our way."

It was over a good bit of rough road, however, and that rough road brought calamity to the Corner House car. Neale O'Neil knew something was wrong before they had climbed the long hill to the level of the Higgins farm.

"What's that thumping noise, Neale?" asked the sharp-eared Agnes, who had chosen to ride with the young chauffeur and Sammy and Tom Jonah in the front of the machine.

Neale was scowling. "Ask me an easier one," he growled. "I'm no soothsayer."

"Well! you needn't be so pie-crusty," she said. "Is the car falling to pieces?"

"Maybe."

"Why don't you stop and find out?"

"On this hill? Not much!" declared the boy, his brow still wrinkled with anxiety.

"Well! It's--go-ing--to--stop!" jerked out the prophetic Agnes, as the wheels of the rumbling car seemed to turn more and more slowly.

"What is the matter?" demanded Ruth, from the tonneau. "Is the car stopping?"

Neale manipulated the levers, and the engine roared spitefully; but the speed did not increase, and that sepulchral thumping under the car continued.

"I hope you haven't run out of gasoline again, Neale?" suggested Mrs. Heard.

Neale grunted. Agnes giggled. "My! you could bite nails, couldn't you?" she whispered.

It was most exasperating--no mistake about it! The machine had acted so well all along, that perhaps he had grown careless. Yet Neale could not imagine what it was that had happened now. And away out here in the wilderness! He was sure that rumbling and thumping spelled trouble.

"Don't you mean to stop?" gasped Ruth.

"Not here, I tell you," snapped the exasperated youth. "You want us to get stalled here out of sight of a house, even?"

"We won't be in sight of many houses when we get to the top of the hill, if I remember rightly," murmured Agnes.

Neale made no further reply. The thing continued to thump and the engine to roar. But they reached the top of the hill and continued staggering along toward the farm buildings, which looked as deserted as they had on the previous occasion when the party had stopped here.

"How near are we to a repair garage?" asked Mrs. Heard.

"About twenty miles," Agnes told her. "Sweet prospect, isn't it?"

"But what is the matter?" repeated Ruth.

"If you ask _me_," said Agnes, with conviction, "I think the old thing has the epizootic."

"Oh, my!" gasped Dot. "That's what the stableman's horse had--and it died. Could our automobile have the same sickness?"

"I don't know; but it acts as if it were going to die," growled Neale.

"Shall--shall we get out and walk?" asked Tess. "Maybe it can't carry so many now."

"Hear the kid!" scoffed Sammy. "'Tain't nothing but an old mess of iron-work. It _can't_ get sick."

There certainly was something, however, seriously the matter with the Corner House girls' automobile. Just as they came abreast of the drive that led up to the big hay barn the engine coughed two or three times, and then stopped dead.

"All out!" ejaculated Neale, in disgust. "This looks like the end of our day's journey."

"And not a house in sight," murmured Mrs. Heard.