The Corner House Girls Among the Gypsies Part 20

"It would have been something else that sent him off in this way, if it hadn't been beets," grumbled Mr. Pinkney. "He was about due for a break-away. I should have paid more attention to him myself. But business was confining.

"Oh, well; we always see our mistakes when it is too late. But that boy needs somebody's oversight besides his mother's. She is always afraid I will be too harsh with him. But she doesn't manage him, that is sure."

"We'd better catch the rabbit before we make the rabbit stew,"

chuckled Neale O'Neil. "Sammy is a good kid, I tell you. Only he has crazy notions."

"Pooh!" put in Agnes. "You need not talk in so old-fas.h.i.+oned a way.

You used to have somewhat similar 'crazy notions' yourself. You ran away a couple of times."

"Well, did I have a real home and a mother and father to run from?"

demanded the boy. "Guess not!"

"You've got a father now," laughed Agnes.

"But he isn't like a real father," sighed Neale. "He has run away from me! I know it is necessary for him to go back to Alaska to attend to that mine. But I'll be glad when he comes home for good--or I can go to him."

"Oh, Neale! You wouldn't?" gasped the girl.

"Wouldn't what?" he asked, surprised by her vehemence.

"Go away up to Alaska?"

"I'd like to," admitted the boy. "Wouldn't you?"

"Oh--well--if you can take me along," rejoined Agnes with satisfaction, "all right. But under no other circ.u.mstances can you go, Neale O'Neil."

CHAPTER XVI--THE DEAD END OF NOWHERE

Mr. Pinkney and Neale went to work to hoist the motor-car into the road again. No easy nor brief struggle was this. A dozen times Agnes started the car and the wheels slipped off the poles or Neale or Mr.

Pinkney lost his grip.

Before long they were well bespattered with mud (for there was considerable water in the ditch) and so was the automobile. Neale and their neighbor worked to the utmost of their muscular strength, and Agnes was in tears.

"Pluck up your courage, Aggie," panted her boy friend. "We'll get it yet."

"I just feel that it is my fault," sobbed the girl. "All this slipping and sliding. If I could only just get it to start right--"

"Again!" cried Neale cheerfully.

And this time the forewheels really got on solid ground. Mr. Pinkney thrust his lever in behind the sloughed hind wheel and blocked it from sliding back.

"Great!" yelled Neale. "Once more, Aggie!"

She obeyed his order, and although the automobile engine rattled a good deal and the car itself plunged like a bucking broncho, they finally got all the wheels out of the mud and on the firm road.

"Crickey!" gasped Neale. "It looks like a battlefield."

"And we look as though we had been in the battle all right," said Mr.

Pinkney. "Guess Mamma Pinkney will have something to say about _my_ trousers when we get home, let alone Sammy's."

"Do you suppose the car will run all right?" asked the anxious Agnes.

"I don't know what Ruth would say if we broke down."

"She'd say a-plenty," returned Neale. "But wait till I get some of this mud off me and I'll try her out again. By the way she bucked that last time I should say there was nothing much the matter with her machinery."

This proved to be true. If anything was strained about the mechanism it did not immediately show up. Neale got the automobile under way without any difficulty and they drove ahead through the now fast darkening road.

The belt of woods was not very wide, but the car ran slowly and when the searchers came out upon the far side, the old shack which housed the big, red-faced woman, who had been kind to Sammy, and her brood of children, some of whom had been not at all kind, the place looked to be deserted.

In truth, the family were berry pickers and had been gone all day (after Sammy's adventure with the cherry-colored calf) up in the hills after berries. They had not yet returned for the evening meal, and although Neale stopped the car in front of the shack Mr. Pinkney decided Sammy would not have remained at the abandoned place.

And, of course, Sammy had not remained here. After his exciting fight with Peter and Liz, and fearing to return to the house to complain, he had gone right on. Where he had gone was another matter. The automobile party drove to the town of Crimbleton, which was the next hamlet, and there Mr. Pinkney made exhaustive inquiries regarding his lost boy, but to no good result.

"We'll try again to-morrow, Mr. Pinkney, if you say so," urged Neale.

"Of course we will," agreed Agnes. "We'll go every day until you find him."

Their neighbor shook his head with some sadness. "I am afraid it will do no good. Sammy has given us the slip this time. Perhaps I would better put the matter in the hands of a detective agency. For myself, I should be contented to wait until he shows up of his own volition.

But his mother--"

Agnes and Neale saw, however, that the man was himself very desirous of getting hold of his boy again. They made a hasty supper at the Crimbleton Inn and then started homeward at a good rate of speed.

When they came up the grade toward the old house beside the road, at the edge of the wood, the big woman and her family had returned, made their own supper, and gone to bed. The place looked just as deserted as before.

"The dead-end of nowhere," Neale called it, and the automobile gathered speed as it went by. So the searchers missed making inquiry at the very spot where inquiry might have done the most good. The trail of Sammy Pinkney was lost.

Neale O'Neil wanted to satisfy himself about one thing. He said nothing to Agnes about it, but after he had put up the car and locked the garage, he walked down Main Street to Byburg's candy store.

June Wildwood was always there until half past nine, and Sat.u.r.day nights until later. She was at her post behind the sweets counter on this occasion when Neale entered.

"I am glad to see you, Neale," she said. "I'm awfully curious."

"About that bracelet?"

"Yes," she admitted. "What has come of it? Anything?"

"Enough. Tell me," began Neale, before she could put in any further question, "while you were with the Gypsies did you hear anything about Queen Alma?"

"Queen Zaliska. I was Queen Zaliska. They dressed me up and stained my face to look the part."

"Oh, I know all about that," Neale returned. "But this Queen Alma was some ancient lady. She lived three hundred years ago."

"Goodness! How you talk, Neale O'Neil. Of course I don't know anything about such a person."

"Those Gypsies you were with never talked of her?"