I said, "Grab hold of this rope, Detective Harris, if you want to get across the river."
So that"s the way we got across, going straight west, even while the tide was running out good and strong. Mr. Pinchem rowed over with one end of the rope, and the tide carried him about fifty yards downstream before he made the other sh.o.r.e. Then he got out and dragged the boat back upstream and tied the rope to the tree just where we told him to.
We had to make two trips across, but it was easy keeping our course because all we had to do was to keep hold of the rope and work the boat along with our hands.
I guess those men didn"t think we could be much help to them; anyway they didn"t hire Pee-wee to foil the bandit the way men do in stories.
I"d like to see that kid capturing a bandit. Judging by the way he treats ice cream cones there wouldn"t be much left of the bandit. I"m not crazy about bandits, anyway, but some fellows are. Anyway, I"d like a blue one better than a black one because that"s my patrol color.
But, anyway, this is the way those men thought it was. Northvale is about three or four miles above Bridgeboro. It"s right on the river and there"s a boat club up there. So when they found that boat in the marshes down near Bridgeboro I guess they thought that fellow had left the boat and maybe was hiding somewhere around there. Because, anyway, it would be pretty hard for him to get through the marshes to the railroad track, that"s sure.
Now after those men left us they started rowing back up the river and they didn"t get along very fast on account of the tide being against them. Gee whiz, I"d kind of like to be a detective if I was a man, but I wouldn"t want to be a truant officer.
So now our bee-line hike was about half over and we had traveled in a pretty straight line. I"m not saying that we didn"t go even a yard to the right or left, because, gee, that would be impossible, but I bet we went in a pretty straight line. We didn"t vary our course any just to save trouble, that"s sure.
Now from the river there is open country till you get to Little Valley.
The only thing that stands in the way is Riverview Park. That used to be an amus.e.m.e.nt park. They closed it up during the war because they needed the horses on the merry-go-round for ambulances in France; that"s what Harry Donnelle said. He lives in Little Valley.
Anyway, they never opened that park again. Gee whiz, I didn"t care much because we"re always up at Temple Camp in the summer. All you could do there was spend money. You can have more fun for nothing.
So the only trouble we would have between the river and Little Valley was the board fence around that old park, and you don"t call a board fence an obstacle, I hope.
Our young hero couldn"t get that bandit out of his mind. He said, "I bet he"s a pretty desperate robber, hey? To fire two shots."
"Sure," Westy said, "if he had only fired one it wouldn"t have been so bad. And to get away with seven hundred dollars, too."
"If it had been only three or four hundred dollars I wouldn"t say anything," I said. "But seven hundred is too much."
"It"s grand larceny," the kid said.
"I don"t call it so very grand," I told him. "If you think it"s grand to steal seven hundred dollars, you"ve got some funny ideas. I suppose if a man stole about ten thousand dollars you"d call that magnificent larceny."
"You"re crazy," Pee-wee shouted. "Grand larceny is a kind of a crime."
I said, "Well, I"m a scout, and I don"t call larceny grand."
"It"s a crime," Pee-wee shouted, "and he can get a long sentence for it."
"He ought to get a whole paragraph for a crime like that," I told him.
"Do you think maybe we"ll run into him?" the kid wanted to know.
"Not if we see him first," I said. "I guess a man who is guilty of wayhigh robbery wouldn"t hang around here."
"Sometimes scouts catch fugitives," Pee-wee said.
"More often they catch the d.i.c.kens," Hunt said. "Come on, forget it."
"Sure," I said; "keep in a bee-line and you"ll always go straight."
CHAPTER XIV
THE HAUNTED WHEEL
I guess maybe it"s a half a mile across that old amus.e.m.e.nt park. All the land there is low; we could see right over the top of Little Valley as you might say, and the big tree away off there on the ridge stood out good and plain. Maybe that was partly because the sun was getting over that way. Anyway, I know that about a couple of hours later the tree looked as if it were all kind of spangled with gold like a Christmas tree. It seemed sort of as if the sun was going ahead to get the tree all decorated for us.
Westy said, "The sun"s beginning to get over to the west. See?"
I said, "It"s going to beat us to the tree, too."
So you can see from what I told you that it was easy to follow a straight course right through that old park. Sometimes we had to clamber over piles of old boards and we had to work our way kind of in and out through the old rotten trestle of the scenic railway. That thing crossed our path like a big, long, wriggling snake. Some of the old booths were boarded up and some of them were all falling to pieces. The concrete basin that used to be a swimming pool was all full of rubbish. And the little platform away way up, that the man used to do the dive of death from, was all falling to pieces. Some places we had to climb over the old ramshackle booths, but that was easy.
All of a sudden Westy stopped short and said, "Look ahead; do you know what?"
"What?" I asked him.
"See that old ferris-wheel?" he said. "We"re going to run plunk right into it."
I took a good squint and sure enough it was right in a bee-line with our beacon. It wasn"t across our path but it was lengthways with our path.
It was so narrow that we might have gone past on either side of it, but just the same it was right plunk in our path. It was quite a long ways ahead.
Once, when Westy and I were going through that old park on our way home from Little Valley we got a good scare on account of that old ferris-wheel. And that"s what started people thinking it was haunted.
Maybe you"ve heard of haunted houses but I bet you never heard of a haunted ferris-wheel.
That time we went through there--oh, I guess it was a couple of years ago. Anyway, it was in the night and everything was as dark as licorice bars. Maybe you never ate those, but they"re mighty good, they"re black.
All of a sudden we heard a kind of a creaking noise and we couldn"t make out where it was. Sometimes it sounded just as if it might be a person.
We followed that noise the best we could and pretty soon we came to the old wheel. It isn"t so big, that wheel. And it isn"t so little either.
Then we could hear the sound good and plain and it was up in the wheel.
It sounded pretty spooky. Sometimes it was a noise like some one crying.
And then it would kind of die away.
When we got home we told about it and Mr. Ellsworth (he"s our scoutmaster) said it was probably just the wind blowing in that creaky old thing. But after that, all the kids in Bridgeboro said the wheel was haunted. If you say a place is haunted, it"s haunted.
But one thing, it kept the kids away from the old park. Because, anyway, they weren"t supposed to go there. Gee whiz, I can"t say whether I"m afraid of a ghost or not because I never saw one, but I know that white is their patrol color. Anyway, if I were a ghost I wouldn"t hang out in a ferris-wheel, I know that. I guess they"re half crazy, anyway, because there used to be one in the old tumbled-down schoolhouse in North Bridgeboro. Jiminy, I should think he could have found a better place than that to stay in. But my father says it"s pretty hard to find places to live in these days. We should worry, the woods for us.
CHAPTER XV
A SCOUT IS OBSERVANT
Westy said, "I wonder how our old friend the ghost is?"