i didn’t know what to make of it. mark wasn’t the kind of er fellow to run away and leave me to face batten and bill; but, all the same, he was gone. not a sign could we see. he must have sneaked off while the men were looking for the engine in the cave. one thing i was sure of, he hadn’t carried the turbine away with him. maybe both of us together could have lifted it, but we certainly couldn’t have carried it up the hill.
i reached down and pinched myself to see if i was awake. there was getting to be so many mysteries and disappearances and such-like that it got to seeming like a dream where things pop in and out without any reason or excuse. but it wasn’t a dream, for there was batten and bill, scowling as ferocious as a couple of wolves. (i never saw a wolf scowl, but if he does it must be ferocious.) no, sir, it wasn’t any dream—not a bit of it. what i remembered about getting back the turbine, and the night on the rattlesnake island, and getting the turbine up-hill to the cave really happened. the engine had been in the cave, because i helped put it there. according to what i figured out, it must be there yet. it couldn’t have gotten out. but it was out! when a thing happens that you know positively can’t happen it sort of shakes you up. it made me feel pretty creepy.
i had been around the cave ever since we put the turbine in, except for the little while i was spying on batten and bill when they almost caught me; and mark had been sitting right before the door all of that time. nobody could have taken it out without his seeing it, and he hadn’t said a word to me about anything happening while i was gone. it was too much for me. one thing i knew, though, and that was that the only time that engine could have gotten away was while i was gone. the only reasonable way to explain it was that mark had carried it away; but, then, mark couldn’t have lifted it alone. and there you are! what would anybody expect a fellow to make of such a mess?
batten came and stood over me, threatening-like. “boy,” says he, “where’s that engine?”
“mr. batten,” says i (i thought it was best to be sort of polite), “i wish i knew.”
“it was in that cave, wasn’t it?”
“yes,” says i; “it was in there, all right, and how it ever got out beats me.”
“do you mean to say you didn’t know it was gone?”
“honest, mr. batten,” says i, “i thought it was there till you yanked off the sheets.”
he turned to bill. “what do you think of it?” he asked. “is the kid telling the truth?”
“if he ain’t,” says bill, “he’s a good one. i never see a kid look more like he was tellin’ the truth.”
“who’s been around here besides you two boys?”
“nobody i know of,” i told him, “except you two.”
“cross your heart,” says he; “haven’t you seen anybody else?”
“not a soul,” i says, and made a cross-mark over the front of me.
“if that engine ever was in the cave,” bill put in, “it must be somewheres around here. it was there when we came, and it can’t have got away far. we’ve been watchin’ perty careful, you know.”
“that’s right. it would have been mighty hard to cart it off without our seeing them. but it’s gone, just the same,” he says.
“what’s these things?” bill asked me, kicking at the lengths of sapling mark had cut. they were about two feet long and there were three or four of them.
“i dunno,” i told him. “maybe mark cut them for a fire.”
“um!” says bill, dubious-like. “let’s skirmish around some, batten. if i ain’t mistaken that engine is hid close to here.”
they started looking for it, and, seeing they didn’t act like they were going to damage me any, i hung around to see what they’d find. they went poking down holes and looking under brush-heaps and in the middle of clumps of bushes, but not a hide or hair of the turbine did they run onto. they searched and searched and searched, careful, as if they were looking for a nickel in a pile of sand. they started near the cave, and worked away in circles, and there wasn’t an inch they didn’t hunt over.
all at once i heard mark holler, and when i looked up there he stood, with uncle ike bond right beside him. batten and bill looked, too, and they didn’t wait to chat with uncle ike; they legged it down to the boat as fast as they could hike and shoved off. i couldn’t resist scooting a couple of pebbles after them, but they were in such a hurry i didn’t hit either time. i turned and yelled to uncle ike.
“you didn’t come any too soon,” i said.
uncle ike was mad clean through and came plunging down to the cave a lot more rapid than an old gentleman ought to move. “the scalawags!” says he. “the scamps—the—what-d’ye-call-’ems! pickin’ on a passel of boys like you! i’d like to lay my buggy-whip acrost their shoulders, i would. maybe they wouldn’t dance! maybe! they seen me, though, and they won’t be back—not them. not where old uncle bond can git holt of ’em. they’re gone for good.”
“looks that way,” says mark.
“peddler give me your knife,” uncle ike says. “he didn’t find me till about fifteen minutes ago. i knowed there wa’n’t no foolin’ about it, so i come a-peltin’. smart thing, sendin’ that knife; mighty smart. in all the years i’ve drove a bus i hain’t seen nothin’ smarter. your pa, tallow, and mr. whiteley is comin’ behind. couldn’t keep up with me, not them.”
“we’re awful glad you’re here,” mark says. and uncle ike jerked his head like he was glad, too, and pretty proud of himself.
“your father’s home,” says he to mark. “got home this mornin’ and found you gone and the engine gone. it most set him crazy. never see a man so flustered. didn’t know what to do, not him, so what does he up and go at? why, he grabs that there decline and fall of the roman empire and goes to readin’ it to see if it won’t tell him how to act. says he to me, ‘mr. bond, it’s in this here book if i can find it. everythin’s in this book.’ and your mother, she jest walked up and down and couldn’t say a word, she was that scairt. what ever possessed you to go prowlin’ off without sayin’ a word?”
“we didn’t have no time to tell anybody. and we didn’t want ma to know the turbine was stole,” says mark.
well, pretty soon along came my father and mr. whiteley, excited as could be and perspiring so their collars were melted. dad he grabbed onto me and says: “what does this mean, young man? where have you been? you’ve been scaring your mother and me most to death.”
“we—we went to get back mr. tidd’s engine,” i said, kind of shaky.
“pretty pickle,” snapped mr. whiteley, “standing the town on its head. you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
“if you’d had the sense of a pint of mice,” says my father, “you’d have known a couple of kids couldn’t do any good. why didn’t you come right off and tell me?”
“didn’t think of it,” i says; and that was true, too.
“now see what comes of being headstrong,” says mr. whiteley. “probably the engine is gone for good. the men that took it have got a whole day’s start. if you’d come to us right away there wouldn’t have been much trouble getting it back. what you need is a good belting, both of you.”
“i’ll look after that, whiteley,” says my father; “don’t ever worry.”
now that was a nice thing, wasn’t it? after what mark and i had gone through, to get licked for it! seems like grownup folks are mighty unreasonable sometimes.
“i guess maybe,” says mark to mr. whiteley, “we’ll git back the t-t-t—”
“turbine,” says i.
“turbine,” he says, “after all—”
“bosh!” says mr. whiteley. “the men have disappeared, and the engine with them.”
mark pointed off across the river where batten and bill were landing out of their boat. “there they go,” he said, “and they ain’t got the turbine with them that i can see.”
uncle ike was grinning as hard as he could grin, and looking at mr. whiteley out of the corner of his eye.
“what’s that? what’s that?” my father asks.
“it’s henry c. batten and bill,” says mark, “and the turbine—well, you come along with me. i g-guess maybe we’ll find it.”
uncle ike roared out loud and slapped mr. whiteley on the back. “i told you,” says he. “slicker’n greased lightnin’. yes, sir, you can’t git ahead of that boy—him with his signs and signals and what-not.”
“mark,” says i, in a whisper, “the turbine’s gone.”
he looked at me kind of blank a minute and then grinned.
“gone, is it?” says he. “kind of lucky it was gone, too, wasn’t it? eh?” he looked awful self-satisfied, and it kind of roiled me.
“well?” says mr. whiteley, pretty impatient. “well?”
“come on,” says mark. he led them to the cave and pointed in. “we got it back,” says he, “and put it in there. then along came those men, chasin’ after us, and we had to fight them off. i was sure they’d beat us sooner or later and git back the engine, so when tallow was off scoutin’ i hid it.”
“um!” says i. “how?”
“easy,” says he. “i cut some rollers to put under it and tied a rope around it. it wasn’t hard to haul it along then. all i did was to drag it out to the edge of that gully”—he pointed—“and let it over the edge slow, hangin’ onto the rope so it wouldn’t slip.” that was what those lengths of sapling were.
we walked over and looked into the washout, but there wasn’t any engine; nothing but a heap of rocks.
“it’s under there,” says mark. “i piled those stones over it as careful as could be, and then s-s-smoothed out the sand so nobody could tell i’d been around there. and there’s your engine!”
father and mr. whiteley couldn’t say very much after that, but they kept on being stern out of principle, like grown folks do. they had to thaw out some, though.
“how’d you do it?” uncle ike wanted to know.
“they can tell us goin’ back,” says mr. whiteley. “mr. and mrs. tidd don’t know they’re found yet.”
together we got the turbine out and up the hill and onto uncle ike’s wagon. then we set out for town.
“your father came home unexpectedly early this morning,” mr. whiteley told mark “and he’s all upset about losing his invention and you, too.”
“what made him come home so quick?” mark asked.
“lost his money,” says mr. whiteley, grinning a little. “telegraphed me last night so as not to frighten your mother. here’s his telegram.”
the telegram said:
money lost. can’t pay hotel bill. can’t pay anything. what shall i do?
now wasn’t that just like mr. tidd? well, mr. whiteley telegraphed him back some money, and he took the first train home. said he wasn’t going to take any more chances in the city.
“did he get his p-p-patent?” mark asked.
“he didn’t get anything but flabbergasted,” says mr. whiteley. “and when he got here and found what had happened he was more flabbergasted than ever.”
uncle ike slapped his knee. “that reminds me,” says he. “i took a perty slick-lookin’ feller up to see him just before that peddler give me your knife. he was a feller with a shiny leather bag and a plug hat and glasses that pinched onto his nose and whiskers. he looked like he was so loaded down with ten-dollar gold pieces he couldn’t walk. he was one of them pompous fellers. strutted around like a turkey in a yard full of banty chickens.”
mark looked up sharp. “what was his name?” he asked.
“dunno,” says uncle ike. “he didn’t say. just come a-struttin’ up to me and says, ‘my good man, can you take me to the house of a man named tidd immediately?’ i looked him in the eye and says back: ‘my good man, i kin take you there, and i kin take you immediate, or i kin take you less immediate. it all depends.’ well, he got in without sayin’ any more, and i charged him double fare. he’s there now.”
“uncle ike,” says mark, with his mouth set firm and his eyes twinkling bright, “can you make these horses git?”
“i kin,” says uncle ike, “if it’s necessary.”
“it’s mighty necessary,” says mark.
uncle ike leaned over and laid his whip across the horses’ back. “giddap, there!” he yelled, and off we went, rocking and rattling and jumping and tipping down the road toward wicksville.
