"Why shouldn"t it be a narrow escape?" Connie said. "It"s a narrow bridge. Anyway, where do we go from here?"
"There"s a couple of men lying on the top of one of your cars, too,"
Pee-wee said; "we could see them by the light."
"Tramps, I guess," the brakeman said. He didn"t seem to be surprised.
So then we told them all about how it was with us--our adventures with the car and all that. They said we had a bad coupling and that it was no wonder it had parted.
"We should worry," I told him; "scouts stick together, even if couplings part. But anyway, we"d like to get off this bridge."
The fireman said it wouldn"t be a bad idea.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote A: He probably meant terra firma.]
CHAPTER XXIX
"FOILED"
Pretty soon they went back to the train and then, after about ten minutes, the engine began puffing and coming toward us ever so slow. It seemed as if it hardly moved.
"I think we"re going to get a good bunk in the nose," Wig said.
"Good night," I told him; "I hope it doesn"t pick up speed."
"I"d rather see it pick up anything than that," Connie said.
"Suppose it had hit us at full speed," Pee-wee said.
"It would have been a home run all right," I told him.
Even with that locomotive just creeping along toward us, it scared me.
It seemed as if it couldn"t touch our car without banging it into splinters. But that engineer knew what he was doing all right. The train came along so slowly you could hardly tell it was moving, and sometimes it stopped and started again. Pee-wee said it was going scout pace. But it was more like a snail"s pace, I guess.
Pretty soon it stopped just about ten feet from us and the headlight brightened up the whole car. I could feel the bridge tremble a little, sort of keeping time with that great big locomotive, as it stood there puffing and just kind of throbbing. And I thought how all that engineer would have to do was pull a handle and--_g--o--o--d_ night! He was sitting, looking out of the window, sort of calm and easy, smoking a pipe. Connie called up to him and said, "Hey, Mister, have a heart and don"t start anything." The engine just went, "_pff_, _pff_, _pff_," very slow. We could even feel the heat of it.
Somebody called out for us to get inside the car and stay there. A man went through our car with a red lantern and kept swinging it on the other platform. I could see men swinging red lights way in the back of the train, too. Some people on the train tried to get out, but the railroad men made them get on again. I could hear a lady crying that there was going to be a bad collision. Cracky, I never heard of a good one, did you?
The men between the front of the engine and our car had a long iron bar, sort of, and they had one end of it fixed in a sort of coupling just above the cow-catcher. It was pretty hard keeping us off the platform, so we saw everything they did. The other end of that bar they held up so it stuck out like a shaft, and then the engine moved about an inch, then stopped, then moved about another inch, then stopped. Gee whiz, I was glad I wasn"t down there with those men. _Yum_, _yum_, I like sandwiches, but I don"t like being the middle part of one. Then all of a sudden, _bunk_.
The men climbed up on our car and in a minute, chu chu, along we went ever so slow, the engine pushing us.
When we were off the bridge, the train stopped and the men on the other end of our car went away along the tracks, swinging their lanterns. Gee, it"s all right to say a bridge is strong, and I guess that one was, all right, but me for the good solid earth. It feels good underneath you.
Pretty soon the conductor and a lot of pa.s.sengers came along to take a look at us. What did _we_ care? Everybody said we were _wonders_ to think about using the movie apparatus and they were laughing. I guess it was at the word _pots_, hey? One man said we were prenominal,[B] or something or other like that--I should worry.
Pretty soon we noticed a little crowd of people outside the second car, so we went up that way to see what was the matter. A couple of men were just coming down off the platform and each of them was holding a man by the collar. The men they were holding had on scout hats. I took one look and _g--o--o--d_ night! Those two fellows were the automobile thieves.
"_What--do--you--know--about--that?_" Connie whispered to me.
"And the train people never knew they were up there until we told them,"
Westy said.
I guess the two men were detectives. Anyway, just as they stepped off, they let go the one man and one of them said, "Now you two hoboes beat it, and the next time either of you is caught riding on this road, you"ll do time for it There"s the road----"
_Jiminetty!_ I didn"t wait for him to say any more. I just went right up to that detective and I said, "Mister, those men are worse than tramps; they"re not tramps at all; they"re thieves; they stole an automobile; hurry up, you"d better catch him."
Oh, boy, didn"t he grab hold of that fellow again! The fellow must have seen some of us, because he was just starting to run when, zippo, that detective had him by the collar again. The other one hadn"t been let go even, so he was safe.
By that time pa.s.sengers from the train were crowding around and Pee-wee was right in the center, shouting, same as he always does.
"They"re--they"re desperate--culprits----" he said; "we _foiled_ them once before--we did----"
All the pa.s.sengers were laughing. Even the conductor and the detectives were laughing. I was laughing so hard, I couldn"t speak.
He just shouted on, "You can say what you want about robbers and bandits and--and all things like that being bad--in the movies--but anyway, I don"t care how many censors there are--you"ve got to admit that the movies are all right--they can--what d"ye call it--they can reveal ident.i.ties, they can----"
Then Westy spoke up. He said, "This is our little mascot; he"s harmless." Then he told all about how our car was stalled on the road and how the thieves got away. Westy always has his wits about him when he talks, that"s one thing.
One of the detectives said, "Can you boys positively identify this pair?"
"Haven"t they got our hats?" I said. "Sure we can identify them."
The two thieves looked at us as if to try to scare us, but what did _we_ care? They made a big fuss and said they were only tramps, but it didn"t do them any good, and n.o.body believed them. Because all those people could see we knew what we were talking about, especially Westy, because he"s always so sober, like. And besides, they knew that we were the ones who had first discovered them on top of the car, and I guess they saw that we had some sense, because on account of our flashing the signal in that way.
Anyway, you can bet those two fellows didn"t get away. The men took them into the baggage car and that was the last we saw of them, because after the train started we had to stay in our own car, on account of the engine being between us and the train. That was the only thing that kept Pee-wee from giving a movie show.
But the fireman came in to see us, because he knew how to climb all over the engine. He told us that those fellows had handcuffs on, and he got all our names and addresses, because he said we"d have to come back and be witnesses. But we never did, because the fellows confessed. Gee whiz, I would have liked to go back again. Maybe it wouldn"t have been so much fun though, hey? I guess maybe I wouldn"t have liked to. It"s no fun seeing people sent to jail. But anyway, one sure thing, they had no right to steal a Pierce-Arrow. Even they wouldn"t have had any right to steal a Ford.
But anyway, who"d want to steal a Ford?
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote B: Phenomenal is probably what the man said.]
CHAPTER x.x.x
OUR PATROL "SING"
So you have to admit that there were two thieves that really got caught in the movies. Mr. Ellsworth says that movies with thieves and robbers and pistols and things are no good. But if it hadn"t been for that movie outfit, good night, where would we have been, I"d like to know? And where would those thieves have been?