"It was near ten o'clock now; so we went to a country saloon to
telephone police headquarters, and they had found the car conductor, he
remembering because he had threatened to put the boy scout off the car
if he didn't quit pointing his gun straight at an old man with gold
spectacles setting across the aisle. And finally they had got off
themselves about three miles down the road; he'd watched 'em climb over
a stone wall and start up a hill into some woods that was there. And he
was Conductor Number Twenty-seven, if we wanted to know that.

"We beat it to that spot after I'd powdered my nose and we'd had a quick
round of drinks. The policemen knew where it was. It wasn't moisting any
more--it was raining for fair; and we done some ground-and-lofty
skidding before we got there. We found the stone wall all right and the
slope leading up to the woods; but, my Lord, there was a good half mile
of it! We strung out--four cops and my driver and me--hundreds of yards
apart and all yelling, so maybe the poor lost things would hear us.

"We made up to the woods without raising a sign; and, my lands, wasn't
it dark inside the woods! I worked forward, trying to keep straight from
tree to tree; but I stumbled and tore my clothes and sprained my wrist,
and blacked one eye the prettiest you'd want to see--mighty near being a
blubberhead myself, I was--it not being my kids, you understand. Oh, I
kept to it though! I'd have gone straight up the grand old state of New
York into Lake Erie if something hadn't stopped me.

"It was a light off through the pine and oak trees, and down in a kind
of little draw--not a lamplight but a fire blazing up. I yelled to both
sides toward the others. I can yell good when I'm put to it. Then I
started for the light. I could make out figures round the fire. Mebbe