"'Westward the Star of Empire takes its way,'" quoted Billy Worth, waving his cap zestfully, as the automobile bowled smoothly along, MacLester at the wheel.

"Takes its Way and also its Worth, and MacLester and Jones," shouted Paul, with that expansive grin which never failed to bring a smile from any sort of person disposed to be half-way good-natured.

"Say, Jones, they've hung people out in the Ship woods country for horse-stealing, and that's hardly a misdemeanor compared to such downright atrocities as you perpetrate! Goodness! That was bad!"

declared Dave. He always did like to have a fling at Paul. "The best pun is horrible, but a poor one!--"

"What did you say about the 'breast bone' Mac?" shouted Jones, from the tonneau, with admirable pretense of having caught but two words and caught neither of those correctly, as the car whizzed forward. Then, almost without pause, "Yes, I like the white meat, too!" he sang out.

"White meat? Don't mention it! I'm positively starving," Worth put in, and in a twinkling the whole conversation changed to the subject of the noonday lunch and what the car's larder afforded. Paul's hearing improved very greatly, at once, by the way.

"Why, we have a cheese-box full of cold ham and buns and baked beans and pickles and a cake and cheese and pie and--" Jones enumerated; then MacLester, quickly going forward with the inventory, as Paul paused for breath, added:

"Sardines, bananas, olives and potato chips, and I'll bet half the stuff will spoil on our hands."

"Risk it!" Phil Way observed in the tone of one who speaks from experience. And somewhat later when a halt was made for luncheon, weighty evidence was presented that if any risk whatever existed it was extremely slight. The very hour appropriated to a noonday purpose was strong testimony--not yet eleven o'clock. However, breakfast had been extremely early, it will be remembered.

With a great deal more haste than ceremony, the roadside repast being finished, dishes and food were packed away again and the automobile sent once more bounding forward. Nearly fifty miles onward lay the little town of Sagersgrove and here the Auto Boys expected to receive information direct from Lannington concerning the movements of Gaines, Pickton and Perth.

How much or how little those young gentlemen may have discovered by this time, and what their intentions might be, were matters of marked interest to the chums who had so cleverly outwitted them. They were more than pleased with themselves, therefore, that their foresight had prompted the making of arrangements with Mr. Knight to send a telegram to Sagersgrove to be received upon reaching there.

That Knight & Wilder shared the secret of the four boys it is almost needless to say. Even to knowledge of the destination and the real purpose of the journey the garage proprietors had been taken into confidence. They were good, reliable friends, to begin with, and as the location of the Ship woods was remote from sources of automobile supplies, it might be necessary to send to them for repairs. And as both men had shown a lively interest in the enterprise now under way, it was quite certain Mr. Knight would not fail to have news of some kind awaiting the travelers at the point agreed upon.

Meanwhile the probable and possible discoveries of the Chosen Three and what their ultimate plans would be were discussed over and over again.

Even if Gaines and his followers should learn the direction the Thirty had taken--even if they chanced upon the discovery that the party had spent the night in Littleton--they would still be unable to so much as guess the direction taken next.

Again, even if the Trio had any knowledge of the great Ship forest they would have no reason for supposing the four friends to be bent on reaching that wilderness. All the information the Gaines crowd had, so far as known, and the thing which so seriously p.r.i.c.ked their curiosity, was that sentence they had somehow overheard, "Three stones piled one on top of another to mark the place."

"They could connect that and the big woods if they knew where we were heading for; but by itself the talk of the three stones gives them nothing to go by," urged Billy Worth. He had put the same thought into slightly different words at least a half-dozen times before and the others had done no less. But there was no cause to doubt his reasoning.

"Three stones piled one on top of another" might be used to mark many and many different sorts of places. They might be in town. They might be in the country, in pasture or meadow; beside a lake in the valley, or on the summit of the hills. Again, what reason why they might not be in the heart of a great forest?

The Ship woods comprised such a forest. Its very name was derived from the fact that for long years great timbers for ship building purposes had been cut there. In one part or another of its vast expanse men were at work the whole year through, sawing, chopping, hewing. A single "stick" from the forest's depths might measure more than one hundred feet in length by three feet or more each way, in thickness. Perhaps four teams of horses would be used to haul such a piece of timber out of the woods and to the railroad siding where it was loaded for transportation to the owners' mills, many miles away.

The fact that those who owned the forest did live a long distance from it, naturally left the vast tract in the hands of only such men as were employed in cutting the big "sticks." And as the latter were little interested in anything more than the trees that would do for their purposes, the woods was for the most part regarded as pretty nearly public property. That is to say, no one so much as thought of asking permission to go there, to camp, to hunt, to pick blackberries, or anything of the kind.

Nor was anyone expected to do so, for that matter. The boss timber man and the crews which handled the saws, and axes, the heavy chains, the canthooks and all the paraphernalia of their hard, hard work, asked no questions of trespa.s.sers. They warned hunters against leaving campfires burning and against dropping lighted matches in the leaves. They would permit no one to chop into or otherwise injure a tree which might make "timber" then or later; but in general the occasional stranger who visited these wilds was as free to come to hunt, to fish, to build a brush shack or camp, or to gather firewood, herbs or poles or bark--to do almost as he pleased in short--and as free to go away again, as he would have been in the unclaimed forest of a new country.

All this information and much more the Auto Boys had gathered. Plans for their trip had been under way all winter. In imagination they had often pictured the wild, rugged scenery of the locality. Working and talking together, they had built for themselves a kind of aircastle on the banks of the swift, cold and rock-strewn stream skirting the edge of the big woods, in which, at least figuratively, they lived. They had seen themselves in their tent, the automobile in a shelter close by, and a little fire lighted to drive mosquitoes away, many and many an evening together, while still the snow lay deep and the tinkle and gurgle of the swift-flowing stream were smothered beneath the ice.

Possibly it is true that in antic.i.p.ation there is more pleasure than in realization, yet few people actually believe it. Certainly Phil Way and his friends did not. They had antic.i.p.ated a lot of fun in this tour now under way at last, but one of its merriest features they had not foreseen at all. This was the keen delight they had in having given Gaines, Pickton and Perth the slip so nicely. Indeed, their self-satisfaction over this incident was quite beyond measure, and Dave MacLester found no support whatever when he advanced a supposition that the telegram to be picked up in Sagersgrove would say the Chosen Ones were in pursuit and probably not far behind.

"Anyhow, we'll know all about it in about two and a half flicks of a bobolink's tail," said Billy Worth, "for if that church spire up over the trees yonder isn't Sagersgrove, I'm blind."

Fortunately, then, for young Mr. Worth's eyes, the spire rising above the banks of green a half mile beyond, was that of the Methodist church of the town he named. In a very brief time it had been reached, also, and from a very neat and clean old gentleman, who might have been the preacher himself, although he was mowing the small church lawn, the lads inquired their way to the telegraph office.

Fortunately, again, it was not at all difficult to find one's way about in Sagersgrove. The telegraph office was in the wing of the operator's home, "down the street two blocks, then turn to your left two blocks--a little brown house, set low to the ground. You'll see the white and blue sign."

Three minutes later Phil Way emerged from the side door of the identical house the old gentleman described. He held up to expectant view a yellow envelope, then opened the same, and, one foot on the running board, read in a low tone:

To Phil Way and Party, Sagersgrove.

Know you have gone. Don't know where. Rushing around crazy.

"Wow!" yelled Paul Jones, with cheery emphasis. Which expression, although seeming to betray no very great depth of intellect, or to communicate any very particular intelligence, did appear to express the feelings of the Auto Boys to a nicety.

CHAPTER V

CAMPING ON A STRANGE ROAD

Jubilant and expressive though it may have been, Paul Jones' "wow," was very far from being all the Auto Boys had to say concerning the telegram received. In general they shared Paul's mirthful feelings. With a very human kind of pleasure they let their minds dwell upon Gaines' sullen wrath and Pickton's chagrin and disappointment.

The condition of bewilderment and utter discomfiture which would be natural to Freddy Perth was also easily imagined. In short, it was with real delight that the boys pictured the Trio confronted by the discovery that they had been out-generaled; left like a squad of raw recruits hopelessly drilling around the field, looking for the beginning of the battle that was all over long ago.

"Oh, I guess maybe they don't find _their_ cake is dough, and they couldn't eat it if they kept it," chuckled Paul, blithely, but really somewhat twisted as to the quotations he meant to employ. "But anyhow, the thing for us to do is keep moving. We're getting too much noticed.

It'll lead to more advertising than we'd really like to have."

This reference to a considerable number of pairs of eyes now scrutinizing the travel-stained car, its touring and camp equipment and the owners thereof, caused Billy, now at the wheel, to drive slowly up the street.

Dave MacLester, who had gone into a livery stable close by to inquire about the roads to the westward, came out just in time to see the machine move off. Not guessing Billy's intentions, which were to go only to the next corner above, as a good place to turn, he dashed frantically after the car. He sprang aboard and climbed into the tonneau breathlessly.

"Don't seem to be in any hurry at all!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, witheringly. "Go straight ahead. Turn at the first corner. It's the best road west. Other one's all torn up for four miles out, they said."

Billy had put on speed at once, when Dave was safely in, and now he let the speedometer mark up to twenty-five on a fine stretch of brick pavement, clear of car tracks and broken by few intersecting streets, a speedway not to be resisted.

The net result of the flying start and apparent haste was not a little comment on part of those who had gathered near the car. Even the men in the livery stable ran out to see and learn what the commotion was all about and the town marshal sauntered up just a moment later.

Now the marshal of Sagersgrove was a self-important old fellow named Wellock. His uniform consisted princ.i.p.ally of a badge of great size and a greasy blue coat with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons. He wore old and rusty black trousers, very baggy at the knees and much frayed around the bottom.

With a solemn and knowing look Marshal Wellock made a few inquiries concerning the car which had just pa.s.sed out of sight and its occupants.

Then he made some mysterious entries in a pocket memorandum, the generally soiled appearance of which was not at all unlike his own.

These movements alone were enough to make a deep impression upon the crowd which had now collected; but accompanied as they were by Mr.

Wellock's knowing and extremely mysterious air, the whole effect was to produce in the minds of those gathered near the profound conviction that the four strange boys were nothing short of bank-robbers in disguise.

Men exchanged looks of deep significance as if saying, "I told you so."

Women nodded their heads to one another in a way that plainly indicated their certain knowledge of the guilt of the young strangers, whatever might be the crime laid at their door.

Observing the unlimited notice he was attracting, Marshal Wellock's importance increased. Preserving still his deeply mysterious air, he walked on to the telegraph office and went in. What he learned there apparently did not cause him to change his very good opinion of himself and of the great power vested in him, for he was more darkly mysterious than ever as he returned. Indeed, his whole bearing was such as to make him decidedly red in the face, as he frowned savagely, in keeping with his idea of the great personage which he himself felt and, he believed, everyone else must undoubtedly consider him to be. What he thought he knew about the four boys would have made a long story. What he did know could have been told in a dozen words and none of them to the lads'

discredit.

Meanwhile the Thirty still sped on westward. The afternoon was waning and the road was growing bad. Sagersgrove lay far in the rear.

"Don't look to me as if this could be the main route," said Phil Way, thoughtfully noting the brush-grown fields and the poor character of the farmhouses and buildings, becoming more and more infrequent as they progressed.

"Oh, it's the road all right. It'll be better going soon," MacLester answered; and as the latter himself had obtained the information respecting the route, Phil said no more.