"You"ll have to take the switch," he said.
"We wouldn"t take anything that didn"t belong to us," Connie said; "you"ll have to give it to us if you want us to take it."
"I don"t care so much about having one, anyway," I said. I guess that man thought we were crazy.
"We"ll give you the run," he said.
"I wouldn"t blame you for doing that if we took the switch," Wig told him. Gee, he had to laugh.
Pretty soon the man who was far ahead began swinging his lantern around in a circle. Then the engine gave a kind of a quick, shrill whistle, and we started again. We went a little faster than before and then, all of a sudden, we saw the engine standing quite a way off, and already the men on our car were turning the hand brakes. Our car was rattling along all by itself. In about half a minute, _kerlick, kerlick_, it went on a switch and then the men began yanking on the brake handles for all they were worth.
But I knew that old car all right, and its brakes were pretty near as bad as its couplings.
"Oh, merrily, merrily on we roll," Connie began singing.
"What"s the matter with this plaguey old boat?" one of the men said, all the while bracing his feet and pulling and pulling on the wheel.
"It likes to go off on a hike by itself," I said; "you should worry.
When it stops, it stops."
"Well, it better stop pretty soon," he said, "or else----Here, get hold of this wheel, you kids, and pull."
"Them brakes got about as much bite in "em as a ki-oodle," the man said; "how old is this old scow? "Bout a hundred, I guess."
"This old car is all right," I told him; "a scout must have respect for age--page something-or-other-scout handbook. We may be old ourselves some day. What do we care, yo ho?"
He said, "Well, I hope the brakes on your tongue will work better than they do now."
"The pleasure is mine," I told him.
Two of us were pulling away as hard as we could, helping one of the trainmen, two were helping the man on the other platform, and Pee-wee was sleeping peacefully inside with his head on the floor and one of his legs sprawled up over the seat.
As well as I could see, we were rolling merrily along a track that branched away from the main track. I thought that, because I couldn"t see the full blaze of the engine"s headlight any more, and I knew we were verging away from the railroad.
"Talk about prodigal sons," Westy said; "when this old car gets back home, they ought to kill the fatted calf for it."
"Good night," I told him; "if the fatted calf gets on the track, he"ll be killed all right."
"Oh, boys, where do we go from here?" Wig began singing.
But those trainmen didn"t seem to think it was much of a joke. All of a sudden, we went rattling through an opening in a fence and I saw a couple of big white things near us.
"They"re tents," Westy said.
By now the car was slowing down and pretty soon it stopped right in front of a big dark thing--a kind of a building. If we"d have gone fifty feet more, we"d have bunked our nose right into it.
The trainman said, "That"s the craziest old set of brakes I ever saw.
You"ll have to be contented to stay right here, that"s all; twenty-three"ll back in after you."
"Contented is our favorite nickname," I told him; "is this Flimdunk, with the fence around it? It"s a good idea--the place can"t run away. I hope they"ll like us."
"Do you think we"re intruding?" Westy said.
I guess those trainmen set us down for a lot of idiots. Anyway, they didn"t have to tell us so, because we admit it. They said that the brakes were worn off so much that they didn"t press hard against the wheels, only sort of gentle, like. They were nice polite brakes.
One of the trainmen said he"d leave us a lantern so we could see to talk; then they went back out through the fence and I could see their lanterns making circles in the dark. Pretty soon we could hear the engine puffing and all of a sudden, it gave a loud, shrill whistle. It sounded as if the train was coming very slowly up toward the switch, but in about a couple of minutes we could hear it rattling along, farther and farther away, and going faster and faster.
"So long, old flyer," Westy called.
I said, "Listen! Listen to the sound it makes--_tk-ed, tk-ed, tk_----It seems as if it"s saying, "twenty-three for yours," doesn"t it?"
"Skiddo, flyer!" Connie shouted; "anyhow, you were foiled by the Boy Scouts."
That word _foiled_ reminded us of Pee-wee, so we went inside and looked at him. I guess the stopping of the car had shaken him up some. His head was way underneath the seat, one of his arms was halfway up on the seat and one of his legs was on the movie outfit in the aisle.
It was a sight for a painter. I mean a sign painter.
CHAPTER x.x.xII
EXPLORING
"What do you say we explore the neighborhood?" Wig said.
"What do you say we put a block in front of the wheels?" I said. "Safety first."
"This seems to be a kind of a walled city, like China," Connie said. "I can see a kind of a shadow. Do you suppose that"s the fence going all the way around?"
"Sure it is," I told him; "all we have to do is shut those big gates and the car will never get away. Only China isn"t a city, if anybody should ask you."
"What"s the difference?" he said. "n.o.body"s likely to ask me."
"This is a very mysterious place," Westy said; "I, for one, would like to know where we"re at." That"s just the nice way he talks. It"s caused by his bringing up.
I said, "Oh, dear me, _I for two_, would be delighted to ascertain."
"Where do you think we are?" he said.
"That"s easy," I told them; "I know where we are."
"Where are we?" Wig wanted to know.
"We"re here," I told him.
"Yes, but what is this?"