"Sure, I wonder what's the next step in our itinerary," Connie said.

Boy, but that fellow is some high brow.

"Our whaterary?" I asked him.

"Anyway, it's nice sitting here," Wig said.

"I wonder who it belongs to?" Pee-wee said. "I bet it belongs to a rich millionaire."

"Yes, or a poor one," Connie said. "There's only one thing I don't like about this Pierce-Arrow, and that's that I don't own it. Otherwise, it's all right."

"There's one thing _I_ don't like about it," I said.

"You're crazy!" Pee-wee shouted. "What don't you like about a Pierce-Arrow?"

"One great objection," I said.

"You must be crazy," he yelled. "You can bet I haven't got any objections to a Pierce-Arrow."

"That's because you're not as honest as I am," I said.

"Who? Me?" he hollered.

"The only thing I have against this machine is that it's stolen," I said. "I'm funny that way."

"You make me sick," Pee-wee said.

"I'd feel the same way about a flivver," I said.

"If you took a flivver, that wouldn't be stealing," Connie said; "it would be shoplifting."

"Sure, or pickpocketing," Wig said.

"Do you know the only way to tell if a man has a Ford?" I asked Pee-wee.

"Search him. Look how the sun is going down."

The Brewster's Centre sign was all bright on account of the sun setting.

It was getting dark and kind of cold and it made me homesick, sort of.

It seemed funny to see that car standing there across that strange road, with the lake on one side and the thick woods on the other. The woods were beginning to look dark and gloomy, and the arm of the lake was all steel color. I was glad on account of that sign, because it seemed friendly, like. That's one thing about an automobile, it doesn't seem friendly, like. But boats do. And the old car did, that was one sure thing.

Mostly scouts don't care much about railroads, because they like the water and they like to hike. But anyway, that old car was friendly.

Especially it seemed friendly on account of the sun going down and the day beginning to die and it getting cold. You can talk about boats and motorcycles and tents and leaf shelters and all those things, but anyway, none of them were as good as that old car. And don't you forget, either, that it was Westy that saved it for us. If it hadn't been for him, it would have been in the lake.

He's one real scout, Westy is.

CHAPTER XXI

THE SHERIFF ARRIVES

We were singing that crazy stuff that we had made up, when all of a sudden, along came an automobile with four men in it, and stopped right behind us. We heard one of them say, "Why, that's the car, now."

They all jumped down and came around the big Pierce-Arrow and stood staring up at us. They stared at the Brewster's Centre car, too; I guess they didn't know what to make of it.

One of the men said, "What's all this? What are you boys doing with that machine?"

As long as none of the other fellows said anything, I spoke up and said, "We're boy scouts and we're sitting here."

"Boy scouts!" he said, all flabbergasted.

"Right the first time," I told him; "we rescued this car from two fellows that were trying to get away with it. You see that railroad car?

That belongs to us."

"We're going to have a deed to it," Pee-wee shouted.

"Sure," I said; "a dark and b.l.o.o.d.y deed. We just happened to be there, because we rolled down the grade from Ridgeboro. Believe me, I've been through eight different grades in school, but this one was the worst I ever saw. We came near taking a header into the lake, but we got the brakes on just in time. You get a fine view of the car from here, don't you?"

"I'm the sheriff of this county," the man said. "You say you stopped this machine?"

"We can stop any machine, even a Rolls-Royce," I told him.

"Yes?" he said.

"You'd better ask this fellow how it was," I said, pointing to Westy.

"We stopped them, that's all," Westy said. That was just like him.

"Well then, _I'll_ tell you," I said. "When they said they couldn't get by, they wanted to run our car down into the lake. What did they care?"

"But we _foiled_ them," Pee-wee shouted.

"Foiled them, hey?" the sheriff said. Gee, he couldn't help smiling.

Then I just grabbed Westy's head and pulled it where the men could see.

"When they were on the railroad car," I said, "this fellow took the spark plugs out of the machine and hid them in the lake."

One of the men blurted out, "What!"

"That's nothing," Pee-wee started; "once----"

"He got a couple of snapshots of them, too," I said; "maybe they'll be of some use to you."

"Hey, Mister, can this machine do eighty miles an hour?" Wig piped up.

"Seventy," the man said.

"_Y--a--a--h!_ What did I tell you?" Connie said, giving him a rap on the head.