The Auto Boys' Vacation

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

AGAIN THE LONELY SOUTH FORK ROAD

“You can’t hide anything from the chief,” observed Willie Creek, when Chief Fobes had left his garage, the scene of the mystery related in The Auto Boys’ Big Six.

“Well, he didn’t seem to be a whole lot interested to find out who broke in here—who killed our dog,” replied Billy Worth, severely.

“You don’t know him,” returned Mr. Creek. “You just show him the fellow that done the deed and he’ll arrest him mighty quick.”

“Maybe if we’d see a man robbing a bank here, then called Fobes so he could see, too, that the man was robbing the bank, he’d do something,” remarked Billy, as the lads returned to the hotel.

“I’ll tell you what he’d do,” growled Paul Jones. “He’d say—‘now from the standpoint of the law, maybe that man is going to commit a crime. From the standpoint of the law, he better go a little careful or I’ll tell his mother on him.’”

All of which might be taken to indicate that Chief Fobes was not as great a man in the minds of the four boys as he was in his own. Still, something might be said on both sides of this subject, quite as Phil Way now remarked, but the conversation was abruptly dropped.

“No news yet?” asked Mr. Wagg. The lads had just reached the hotel again.

“None of the car, but—” and then they told the landlord of the killing of Scottie. Confidentially they intimated their belief that John Smith or “Pickem” might know something of the affair.

“Very strange,” mused Mr. Wagg. “He checked out—paid his bill and left—last night. He said he was leaving on the ten o’clock train east. Seemed put out because the party he had been expecting in to see him had not come. But he left no word—no address for mail, or anything.”

The hotel proprietor was not at all pleased with the indifference of Chief Fobes. The boys had told him of all that took place at the garage. “Yet of course,” said he, “it might make a difference if you lived here. There’d be quite a little expense to find out who killed the dog and, besides, the thieves, if it was thieves who did it, didn’t get anything. It doesn’t seem to me, now really, that this new trouble has anything to do with your lost automobile, and I take it that that’s the main thing, after all.”

To this the boys agreed and, eager to put into execution Phil’s plan to telephone to all the larger cities east and west, to get some trace of the Big Six, if possible, they started for the telephone office.

“But we can’t all telephone,” said Phil. “Who will look after burying Scottie? And who will go to Ferndale in the Torpedo and take back the pick and shovel to the blacksmith? Even if he did say we might have them as long as we liked, they should be toted home to-day.”

Billy and Paul volunteered for the work mentioned. With the cold, stiff body of poor Scottie covered over with muslin in the tonneau, they started the stray automobile again toward the lonely South Fork and Ferndale....