fine thing. You
deserve great credit."

"That's nothing," Pee-wee said; "once when----"

"Which way did they go?" the men asked.

So then we told them all there was to tell, and about our car, and about
how we were brought out to Ridgeboro by mistake. They were in so much
of a hurry that I thought they'd just let our car roll down into the
water, so that they could get by. But anyway, they didn't do that. I
guess they liked us, because we did them a good turn.

As soon as Westy gave them the film out of his pocket camera, they
lifted a big heavy log across the tracks near the water. They said they
thought they could let the car roll easily against that, without any
danger of its going on down into the water. You bet we were nervous till
we saw them do it, and then we realized that probably those thieves
could have done the same thing, except that they didn't care anything
about other people's property.

The men thought that the two fellows would cut through the woods and
come out at a town named Skunk Hollow. Ozone Valley, that was the new
name of it. So we all went in the two cars to that place, because a
train stopped there at about half-past eight, and they thought that
maybe those fellows would take the train.

I don't know which went faster, the automobiles or Pee-wee's tongue.
Anyway, Pee-wee's tongue was running on high. He sat behind me in the
big machine, wedged in between two big deputy sheriffs, and he told
every heroic act that scouts have done since the movement started.
Blamed if I know how he finds those things out, but he does. He gave
them Westy's whole history and told how Tom Slade won the gold cross and
how burglars and highwaymen weren't safe any more, on account of the Boy
Scouts. Every time they told him it was wonderful, he would say, "That's
nothing," and come right back with a five reeler. Oh, boy, I thought I'd
die, but I guess the sheriffs liked it. Anyway, they laughed a lot.

Pee-wee told them about a scout in the dismal north (that's what he
called it) that rescued a maiden. He told them a maiden was something
like a girl, "only more kind of pale and weak and helpless, like." I
nearly doubled up.

But anyway, he didn't mention cooking.

CHAPTER XXII

RAILROADING

When we got to the Ozone Valley station, there wasn't anything there,
but the ozone and a couple of milk cans. The men searched all around in
the woods and under the freight platform, but they couldn't find t