They bobbed along like professionals, it seemed to me."
"You"ll see how fast they can run!" Bradley growled. "They"ll go fast enough to send you all over the road."
"Now about this grandson," asked Ned, falling back. "Mrs. Brady wants to know where he is. No use for you to hide him, now that we all know he was disguised to look like the prince stolen from Washington. Why did you paint him if not to imitate this other boy we speak of?"
"I don"t know anything about the boy," was the reply. "He was taken without my knowledge, and that is on the level. I was ordered to do the paint act."
They trudged on for some minutes in silence, and then Bradley asked:
"What is it about this prince you are always talking about? What is there about the prince? Where is he? Why is he supposed to be in this section?"
"You don"t know a thing about him, do you?" asked Ned, laughing, "and yet you painted a boy to represent him?"
Bradley only scowled.
"When I find him," Ned continued, "I"ll present him to you!"
When the boys reached the tent they found Oliver and Teddy mourning over the destruction of a large number of films and plates. Many pictures, developed and printed with great care, had also been torn or burned.
"Well," Jimmie declared, "they didn"t get their hands on the films in my baby camera. I"ve got a few good ones left."
"Now, Jack," Ned said, "suppose you connect with Uncle Ike and make for the nearest telegraph office? Don"t break your neck, and the neck of the mule, but get there as soon as you can. And get back as soon as you receive an answer."
"Why can"t I go with him?" asked Jimmie. "I guess I want a mule ride."
"Go it, if you want to!" Ned laughed. "That will leave us one mule to run away on if things get too hot for us here!"
CHAPTER XXI
TOLD BY THE PICTURES
"You"ll think we took great care of the camp!" Teddy said, flushing, to Ned, as Jack and Jimmie, followed by the cheers and good wishes of their chums, started away.
"Aw, it wasn"t Teddy"s fault at all," Oliver declared. "He went down to tell Uncle Ike what a gentleman and a scholar he was, and I was supposed to watch the tent."
"And I was to help him," wailed Dode. "See how well I did it!"
He swung a hand around at the mess on the ground.
"So, while Teddy was down at the corral, Dode and I sat down to develop some snapshots. We never looked out at all! After we had a lot of pictures ready to show on your return, we heard a noise outside and thought Teddy had come back."
"And there is when we got it!" Dode cut in.
"Yes, there, is where we got it in the neck," Oliver went on, while Teddy grinned. "The gun I looked into seemed about as large as the tunnel under the Hudson, and I became the good little boy without further argument."
"I thought the gun I saw was a room in a cavern!" grinned Dode.
"So they performed with their ropes and gags, and we lay there like two little kittens while they tore up our work and smashed things generally. And the way they wrecked the trunks and boxes was a caution."
"What did they talk to each other about while they were searching?"
asked Ned.
"Nothing much. They seemed to be too busy looking for papers. From what I could make out; I reckon they thought you had some official doc.u.ment with you."
"I have," laughed Ned, "but they did not find it."
"After they had made all the trouble they could," Oliver went on, "they spoke of burning the tent, and I guess they would haved one it, too, if other things hadn"t attracted their attention just at that time!" he added, with a wink at Ned.
"Well," Ned observed, "I"m sorry we lost the pictures, but there may be some of the valuable ones left. We"ll look them over right now."
"Jimmie left the films from his baby camera," Teddy remarked. "We can see what he got while he was in the hands of those cheap skates!"
Nearly all the snapshots taken by Ned and Jack on the afternoon they had come to the hiding place of Jimmie"s captors had been printed by the boys, and most of them had been destroyed, plates and all.
Stationing Oliver and Dode out on the slope to watch for any approach which might be made, Ned gave his attention to the pictures.
"The worst of it is," Frank declared, "that the good ones were the ones the boys printed, and the ones which were burned up."
"I don"t know about that," Ned said. "The camera sees things the human eye does not see! What we want now is a knowledge of the country near the spot where Jimmie was held. We took plenty of pictures around there, and Jimmie took some, too, so we may be able to find what we want."
"I"ll work over the baby camera pictures while you handle the others," suggested Frank, and the two boys were soon busy at their tasks. Finally Ned handed a torn print to Frank, pointing out a single feature as he did so.
"You see the tree in the foreground?" he asked.
"Yes, of course."
"Now follow along back to the bush at the left and in the rear."
"I see the bush," Frank said.
"What else do you see there?"
Frank bent closer over the print.
"Is that a face there?" he asked.
"It certainly is a face."
"But it looks too small for a human face. It may be caused be some odd arrangement of the leaves. Besides, it is very indistinct."
"Sure, because it is in the shade. It is almost a miracle that we see it at all. I "ll get a better print of it soon and enlarge it. Then we shall know more about it. Now, look lower down. What do you see there?"
"Say," cried Frank, "that"s a child"s face up there! Here is the leg below. Now, what do you think of that?"
"That is doubtless the boy Jack and I saw," said Ned.