Chapter XXIII: Roughing It

Agnes had an excellent opportunity to say "I told you so!" to Neale; but did not even mention to her boy chum the fact that he could not have searched the barn very thoroughly upon his first visit to the place.

For Mr. Collinger's stolen automobile was there under the hay. By the light of their own automobile lanterns Neale uncovered the runabout and finally hauled it out on the barn floor.

"What do you suppose is the matter with it?" asked Ruth.

"Why, nothing, of course," cried Mrs. Heard, almost in tears, she was so happy. "Philly will be so delighted."

"Guess I'd better telegraph to him in the morning when I send for that casting--eh?" said Neale.

"Oh! if you will, Neale," said the chaperone. "He can come and get the car himself. Oh, dear me! isn't this just the finest thing that's happened to us during our tour?"

"It is, indeed, Mrs. Heard," Ruth agreed.

"And all because of Sammy," said Neale. "Sammy, you're some kid."

"Of course I am," agreed that irrepressible. "I guess you're all glad _now_ that I came with you, ain't you?"

There was nothing bashful about Sammy Pinkney. He demanded and received all the credit due him.

Nor did Agnes and Neale begrudge him the honor--and certainly not Mrs. Heard. The discovery of the stolen car was sufficient to make Mrs. Heard forget their present discomforts; while Neale and Agnes felt that their suspicions of Saleratus Joe and the ugly man had been proved true.

"The Gypsy king told us the exact truth," Agnes said. "I thought he was an honest man."

"Of course," Dot said wonderingly. "Wasn't he a _king_, even if he didn't wear a crown and carry a scalper?"

"And won't Philly Collinger be glad? _Won't_ he be glad?" Mrs. Heard cried, over and over again.

Meanwhile Neale was going carefully over the recovered runabout; but he could not examine it thoroughly by lantern-light.

"Of course, it broke down or something," he said. "Or they wouldn't have abandoned it here. Just as soon as the farmer came for some of his hay he'd have found the car. Saleratus Joe couldn't have intended to leave it here for long unless it needed repairing. That is, it doesn't seem as if he would."

"He may come back here--he and the ugly man--_any time!_" whispered Agnes in his ear.

"Sh! nonsense!" commanded Neale. "Anyway, we have Tom Jonah. I'll give the car a thorough going over when I come back from the railroad to-morrow."

The excitement occasioned by Sammy's discovery kept them all awake longer than usual. Besides, camping out in this way had not become familiar enough to the party for them to have become used to it. Only on the night they had remained with Luke and Cecile Shepard had they experienced anything at all like this present situation.

It was agreed by all that they should bed in the hay. With robes and dust-cloths from their car they made themselves very comfortable in the heaped-up, fragrant mass of dried grass at the back of the barn.

"We are 'bedding down' just like cattle," giggled Agnes. "Isn't it fun?"

It was very comfortable, whether it was fun or not, and they soon went to sleep and slept as heavily as the seven sleepers--whoever they may have been--until daybreak. Tom Jonah lay at the open barn door and kept faithful watch.

Neale was astir first, and he built a fire and made coffee. Agnes smelled the coffee, and soon ran out in her stocking feet with her shoes in her hand.

"Oh, Neale!" she whispered shrilly. "This is the life! Isn't it just great? I could live this way always. Where do you wash?"

"At the horse-trough," said the boy.

"Oh-o! I don't like that," she objected.

"Dear me!" responded Neale, in a shrill falsetto, and grinning at her. "And you could live this way always!"

"Mean thing!" she retorted. "Folks can be nice if they do live like Gypsies."

"Or hoboes," added the boy.

"Well----"

"Pump fresh water for yourself, of course," said Neale. "And put on your shoes or you'll bruise your feet on these pebbles."

"My, yes! I feel as if I were doing penance," confessed Agnes, hastening to pull on her shoes.

They had a cozy time drinking the hot coffee and munching crackers before the others were even astir.

"I'll bring back a lot of grub," promised Neale.

"And a tube of cold-cream; Ruth and I are all out. And a bottle of witch hazel, and some animal crackers, because the kids like 'em. And some hand lotion for Mrs. Heard--I know her bottle is almost empty. And _do_ get good tea. And don't forget the stuffed olives----"

"Hold on," interposed Neale, beginning to count on his fingers. "Let's see if I can remember all those. First, a tub of cold cream----"

"Tube! tube!" cried Agnes.

"Oh! Ah! There is a difference, isn't there?" he responded, grinning, and named the other articles over with some exactness. "All right. If my memory--and my money--doesn't give out I'll bring them all, even if I have to hire a four-horse wagon to cart the stuff."

He started away at once, and was out of sight before the rest of the party appeared from the barn, yawning but deliciously rested. Sweet-smelling hay for a bed cannot be improved upon.

"Only," Tess observed, "I don't feel just right because I haven't been all undressed. Don't you s'pose, Ruthie, that we could take turns having a bath in the horse-trough?"

The others laughed at her; and it was agreed that it was not going to be much of a cross, after all, to remain on the abandoned farm for the few days it would be necessary to wait for the new part for the automobile.

Neale O'Neil was two hours in getting to Hickton, for it was a long seven miles and the roads were sandy. And along the way he did not pass a dozen houses, and none of them was very near to the Higgins farm. Still, it was not later than eight o'clock when he sent the telegram to the automobile factory, which was not very far away; and he ordered the new casting sent C. O. D. to the Hickton station.

Then he telegraphed to Mr. Collinger, at Milton, in Mrs. Heard's name. The surveyor's aunt had written her message carefully, so that the ordinary reader would not understand just where the stolen car was. Mr. Collinger was to come to Hickton and there inquire for the party of motor car tourists.

There were two stores in sight of the railway station, and in them Neale managed to buy enough food to last his party several days, including eggs and milk and country butter and cheese.

Neale could never have carried all these things back to the farm, but he found a long-legged boy with a rattling wagon drawn by a pony, and bargained with the youth for transportation to the Higgins farm. When the boy learned that a touring party was camped at the site of the burned farmhouse, he was greatly amused.

"Guess old man Higgins don't know about it, does he?" the lad asked.

"I don't suppose he does," admitted Neale. "But we are not doing any harm there."

"He, he! I reckon yer critters won't eat up his hay, that's sure."

"No. Our motive power feeds on gasoline," Neale laughed.

"By jinks! I s'pose that's so. But I'll drive around to old man Higgins and tell him yer camping there--jest ter see what he'll say."

Neale told Mrs. Heard this, and the chaperone decided to send a note to the owner of the place, requesting permission to remain at the abandoned farm and offering to pay for the accommodation if the owner so desired.

The party was quite settled in the camping place by this time.

"We really _are_ Gypsies," Mrs. Heard said. "And I never in my life saw children so delighted as these of ours are at the present time. Goodness! they will never want to live properly again."

It was not alone the little folks who fully enjoyed the situation. Ruth found a big, clean galvanized iron pail and proceeded to wash all the clothes that did not need starch and a hot iron. She had filled a long line before Neale returned from Hickton.

After the noon meal Neale went to work on the stolen car. He made an important discovery in a very short time. There was absolutely nothing the matter with Mr. Collinger's car, though there was no gasoline in the tank!

"I wonder if those fellows found it out before they abandoned it here?" Mrs. Heard queried.

"Well, if they went away just to get some gas for it, they've been gone a long time," giggled Agnes. "But Neale might have saved himself the walk to Hickton if he'd found this out last night."

"Oh, yes; if the rabbit hadn't stopped to take a nap he'd have won the race over Mr. Tortoise," retorted Neale. "We know all about those might-have-beens."

"But--really--I wonder," said the chaperone slowly.

"You wonder what, Mrs. Heard?" asked Ruth.

"I wonder what became of those maps and things that Philly was so careful of. If they were in the car----"

"Then Saleratus Joe got 'em," said Neale promptly.

"No. I don't believe the politicians who instigated the robbery have obtained what they hoped to find in this car. I--wonder--where--they--are."

"Not in the gasoline tank, that's sure," said Neale. "I looked in it."

They all laughed at that, and Mrs. Heard abandoned the puzzling subject.

There was nothing to do of importance but to wait for the message from the automobile factory. Neale tried out the car that had been stolen from Mrs. Heard's nephew and Mrs. Heard herself enjoyed a ride in it. It was a very good car indeed, and beautifully upholstered.

"I know Philly told me he had this car built according to his own plans, and I've wondered since if he didn't have a place built in it in which to hide his private papers," Mrs. Heard said. "It would be just like him."

"Oh! wouldn't that be great?" cried Agnes.

"And then maybe the maps and things are in the car," Ruth said.

"Who knows? I am quite confident, because of what my nephew said, that the bundle the thieves got in the car was worthless. I remember his saying: 'Those rascals won't get what they want unless they tear my car to pieces.' Now, what could he have meant by _that_?"

The problem interested the older Corner House girls and Neale very much. Agnes examined the upholstering and the panel-work of the runabout very closely.

"Perhaps Saleratus Joe did find the papers. That's why the car was abandoned here," she said to Neale, with a sigh.

"Well, if they found the secret panel," said the boy, grinning, "they didn't leave it open so we could find it, did they?"

"You needn't make fun," said Agnes. "If I find the papers I won't tell you--so now!"

"Help yourself," he returned. "I'm not half so much interested in Mr. Collinger's affairs as I am in our own car. I hope the factory hustles that casting right along."

They could not expect it yet, and the remainder of the day was spent in roaming about the farm. The children found the biggest huckleberry pasture any of them had ever seen. Mrs. Heard's housewifely desires were spurred.

"I do wish these berries were near Milton," she declared. "I'd can enough of them to last the winter through for huckleberry pies."

They were getting supper, Gypsy fashion, when the lanky boy with the pony drove up with the answers to the telegrams Neale had sent that morning from the Hickton station.

"Hurrah!" shouted Neale, the moment he read his message. "The thing is already shipped. When does the first train from the south stop at Hickton in the morning?" he asked the messenger.

"Eight-thirty," was the reply.

"It will be on that. I'll run over in Mr. Collinger's car and get it."

"And Philly says he'll come up here some time to-morrow, too," announced Mrs. Heard. "We sha'n't have to live in a barn but one night more."

"Oh, say!" drawled the country lad. "Old man Higgins says you kin stay here as long as ye want to, if ye don't burn up the rest o' the buildings."