er cars.
Nine fellows are heavier than one. Gee whiz, it did seem a funny way to
catch any one, but that fellow was caught, sure. I wondered how he felt
up there.

"Do you think he'll take a chance of his life?" one of the fellows
asked.

"I bet he's half crazy up there," I said.

"Maybe he'll shoot," the kid said, kind of scared.

"What good would that do him?" Will said. "He'd have to shoot the whole
nine of us, six or seven of us anyway, before the wheel would move. And
besides, the axle is in his way."

"If we all leave here the car will come down," Warde Hollister said. "He
could rock it so as to get the wheel started."

"It's rocking a little now," Westy said.

"I know what I'm going to do," I told them. "I'm going to find out who
he is, if I can."

"You're not going to go up and ask him!" the kid said. "You might better
use the megaphone. Safety first."

I said, "I'm going to make believe I'm hunting for something and see if
there are any footprints around. If there are and they're from the
direction of the river, that will look bad."

On the fancy seats were four wooden knobs, two on each seat. I said,
"Turn one of those and see if it screws off."

Warde was sitting at the end of one of the seats and he kept turning
the knob till it came off.

I said, "Reach down under your knees--don't anybody look up--reach down
under your knees and wrap your handkerchief tight around that knob, so
it will look like a baseball or a tennis ball. Then throw it over here."

The paint was all gone from those knobs and the wood was all cracked and
rotten like all the wood in that old park. I wanted the ball to look
white so it would be good and plain to the fellow up there.

In a few seconds Warde and I began throwing it to each other. No one
would be suspicious seeing us, that's sure. Pretty soon I threw it good
and hard, like Christy Matthewson, only different, and it went flying
out in the direction of the river and dropped. It went in the long
grass.

And then is when I had good luck. Because I didn't have to go five feet
from that car before I found something. So you see I didn't get off the
track of our bee-line enough to really call it getting off the track.

I made believe I was hunting for the ball, and in about ten seconds,
good night, right there near the car were footprints. I could see them
as plain as day. They came from the direction of the river, too. Not in
a bee-line the way we had come. But j