Chapter XVI: Searching the Barn

"I'm going too! I'm going too!" exclaimed Sammy Pinkney, scrambling out of the car after Neale O'Neil.

Agnes was opening the door on her side of the car, but Neale said quietly:

"Now, wait a little, both of you. Aggie, you'd spoil everything. And, Sammy, you keep still," and he tossed that offended youngster back into the front seat.

"Aw, say!" bristled Sammy.

"You're so bossy, Neale O'Neil," declared Agnes. "I'd like to know----"

"See here," interrupted the youth, with his back to the burned house and the barns, "if there _should_ be anybody on watch, it wouldn't do to let 'em see we'd come here just for the sake of looking into that hay barn."

"Oh!" observed Agnes, sitting down again.

Neale had opened the hood and made a pretense of fumbling inside.

"You see," he said, still in a low voice, "I want it to appear that something has happened to our car. Now I'm going to hunt in the tool kit----"

"Whuffor?" demanded Sammy. "I'll find it for you."

"You'll sit where you are," declared Neale O'Neil sternly. "I'm supposed to be hunting for something I can't find. Then I'll go up to that old barn and try to find it. It won't look right if everybody gets out of the car and goes snooping around."

"I admire your language, Neale O'Neil," sighed Ruth.

"Do go ahead and see what you can find, boy," urged Mrs. Heard, very much excited now.

"Goodness!" murmured Agnes. "He acts as though he expected to find that barn full of robbers."

"Nothin' but rats in it, I bet," grumbled Sammy, feeling much abused.

"Oh, there! You don't catch _me_ going near it, then!" cried Agnes.

Neale, undisturbed by either Ruth's criticism or Agnes' fun-making, proceeded to act as though the motor car had really met with an accident. Finally he started for the barn, which stood some distance back from the road.

"Look out for the rats--oh, _do_ look out for the rats, Neale!" Tess called after him.

"He can't whisper to the _rats_, anyway," remarked Dot. "I guess Neale O'Neil, even if he did come from a circus, can't tame _all_ animals."

The approach to the barn was by a broad, well graveled drive which sloped smoothly upward to the wide barn door. Almost at once Neale O'Neil saw that there had been an automobile on this piece of gravel. He could see where the wheels had skidded and disturbed much of the surface of the drive--whether when the car entered the barn or when it came out, he could not say.

He looked sharply around on all sides, but saw nobody. By the strands of twisted hay hanging from the closed loft door he presumed the upper part of the barn was filled with the only crop being harvested on the Higgins farm this year. On trying the main door, Neale found it barred; but there was a small door beside the great one, and this opened at his touch upon the latch.

The great barn was filled with a brown dusk in which Neale O'Neil could see nothing at first. But by stepping within and leaving the door open, he was able to obtain some idea of what was on the barn floor. On either side were the mows, the hay stacked in them down to the ground. The loosely boarded loft over the runway of the barn had also been filled, he supposed. The sweet, dusty odor of the cured grasses was almost overpowering at first. Dim outlines of a few old agricultural tools were to be seen in the gloom. These were shoved back out of the way so as to clear the middle of the course.

Neale, still curious, fumbled at the bar which held closed the two-leaved door, and finally opened this. The door swung open slowly and the strong July sunlight rushed in. Millions of motes danced in the sunshine that spread across the barn floor. Now all was revealed.

"Can you find it?" cried Agnes from the seat of the automobile.

Neale had to wag his head in negation. There was nothing here that looked like a motor car. Back, at the rear of the barn floor, the hay had overflowed the mows and loft, and was heaped in a fragrant pile on the barn floor to the height of the floor of the loft.

"One sure thing, they've got an abundant hay crop stored away," thought Neale O'Neil. "Uncle Bill Sorber's elephants would find plenty of fodder here."

He laughed, barring the big doors again securely. As he came out of the barn he glanced sharply around, but saw nobody save his own friends in the motor car.

Naturally his examination of the other farm buildings was hasty; but he neglected to look into no shed large enough to have housed the runabout of which he was so eagerly in search. He came back to the Corner House automobile with the assurance that there was no car but their own at the Higgins farm, and made the statement boldly.

"Well, but," pouted Agnes, shaking her head at him, "I'd feel much more satisfied if you had let me look."

"Me, too," grumbled Sammy. "I bet I could see into smaller places than _you_ could, Neale O'Neil."

Neale just grinned at them. "This isn't a flivver we are looking for, I'd have you know. The Maybrouke is some car, believe me! You folks talk like the funny-man who went into the flivver factory to look around; and when he came out he kept scratching himself--said he was sure he had got one of the things on him!"

There was no use of waiting around on this lonely road any longer, so Neale got in and started the car again. As they had got off their original route some distance in coming to this farm, it would be impossible to make a good hotel that night.

"But," as Mrs. Heard said, "we have nothing to fear after that lodging in Frog Hollow----"

"Arbutusville, Mrs. Heard--do!" laughed Agnes, in correction.

"Well. That woman had the hardest beds I ever saw. If the street pavements had been as hard they would certainly have had good roads in that town."

They stopped at a countryside store for lunch and bought crackers and cheese and milk, and feasted while sitting in the automobile under the shade of a great elm.

"We're almost like Gypsies ourselves," said Tess, ruminating as she crunched the crackers and cheese. "Aren't we, Dot?"

"No. We're cleaner," said the smallest Corner House girl; "and we haven't any little goaties--_and_ pigs! But this is lots of fun, just the same; and I wish we _could_ sleep out again all night--just for once--all of us, of course."

She came near having her wish that very night, or so it seemed when sunset came. In some way they got off the marked route they had been following, and, on stopping at a crossroads to ask a blacksmith who was just closing his shop, they found that they were far away from the beaten track of automobile tourists.

"We might have known that," grumbled Ruth, "from the state of the roads."

"The worst of it is," said Mrs. Heard, a little worried, "it is going to be hard on the children. They are tired out now. And it is a dark night."

"No moon till late--that's a fac', ma'am," said the blacksmith, leaning on the mud-guard while Neale lit the lamps.

"And have we got to go back over that rocky piece of road to get to the Tailtown Pike?" asked Agnes, trying to study out the lost route in the guide book.

"It's forty-five miles to Tailtown, where we were going to stop. And over the meanest roads in the State, I bet," growled Neale.

"Dear me!" sighed Ruth.

"There are _some_ objections to touring the country roads in an automobile," admitted Mrs. Heard. "And things seemed to be going so smoothly!"

"I dunno what you'll do," drawled the blacksmith. "'Nless you talk to mother."

"To _whom_?" chorused the older girls and the chaperone.

"Mother. Mebbe she kin advise ye," drawled the man. "We live down the road jest a piece. I dunno what she'd say----"

"Does she know the roads better than you do?" asked Neale bluntly.

The blacksmith laughed mellowly. "I don't reckon she does--'cept the road to Heaven, son," he said. "She sure knows all about _that_. But she might be helpful. I've been takin' her advice, off and on, for forty years, and whenever I've took it I've not been sorry."

"Come!" exclaimed Ruth suddenly, "let us drive on to this gentleman's house."

"Where is it?" asked Neale, getting in behind the steering wheel again.

"You can see our kitchen lamp twinkling in the window yonder," said the blacksmith, stepping upon the running-board as Neale started the car.

They jolted down the rough road, and quickly came to the house in question. As far as they could see, it was rather a large country house with a terraced lawn before it and a driveway running up beside the dwelling to the rear premises.

"Drive her right up to the door, young man," advised the blacksmith.

"Room to turn around up there?" asked Neale, the careful.

"Plenty," agreed the man. "Don't have no fear about that."

Neale immediately turned the car up the little incline and the blacksmith leaped to the ground as it stopped.

"Now," he said jovially, "one of you young misses just go up there on the porch and tell mother how you're fixed. You can git out, ma'am, I'm sure," he added, to Mrs. Heard, as Ruth jumped from the car. "Get out your baggage too--this here little shaver can help at that," and he rumpled Sammy's hair with his big hand.

"But--but----Do you mean we can stay here?" gasped Mrs. Heard.

Ruth had scarcely reached the door when it was opened from within. A comfortable figure of a woman, with spectacles and gray hair, faced the oldest Corner House girl.

"Well, well!" said "Mother," in just the hearty tone of voice a mother should possess. "An automobile party? Well, well! how many of you air there, my dear?"

"But, my goodness me!" gasped Ruth. "You're not going to take us in 'sight unseen,' in this way, are you?"

The woman laughed. "Why not?" she asked. "If you are going to do anything for anybody, it ain't perlite to hem and haw about it, I'm sure. Leastways, that's the way _I_ was brought up, my dear. And there's little children with you, too! Of course you shall stay."

Ruth and the others were speechless. Such hospitality--and evidently this was not a house of public entertainment--was quite unexpected.

"That you, Buckley?" she called to her husband. "You see to putting up the car. How many did you say there was? I want to know how much ham to slice," and she chuckled unctuously again.

"There's seven of 'em, Mother," called the blacksmith's mellow voice from the dark, "_and_ a dog. B'sides, mebbe you'd better take notice that two of 'em's boys, and like enough they've got their appetites with 'em," and he broke into another mellow guffaw.

"Well," Agnes later whispered to Ruth, "this is certainly the unexpected end of a perfect day! Goodness! what should we have done if these good people hadn't taken us in? The blacksmith says they are rebuilding the bridge over Mason's Creek and we couldn't have got across."

"Oh!"

"And that would have made us go around so far that the run to Tailtown would have been nearer sixty miles than forty-five."

They were all glad; and such a supper of ham and eggs as they ate! The accommodations the blacksmith's wife put at the party's disposal were ample too.

"Just the same," yawned Neale, before retiring, "this has sure been an empty day. There hasn't been much doing."

"Well, what do you expect to happen in these perfectly civilized places?" responded Agnes.

"And we have surely had enough excitement to last us for a while--the children getting lost, and all," Ruth said.

"And you hunted for that car of Mr. Collinger's," said Agnes, slyly. "_That_ was exciting, I'm sure."

"Oh--ouch!" yawned Neale. "Don't knock, Aggie. We may find that car--and Saleratus Joe--yet."

"Your desire for low company shocks me, Neale," giggled Agnes. "Saleratus Joe, indeed!"

"Don't say a word," the boy retorted. "You and Ruth met the gentleman first--don't forget that," and they separated for the night with laughter.