UP IN THE AIR

After backing up the hill a second time, Townsend turned the car and coasted down the long grade on the other side. The momentum took them to a point where a railroad track crossed the road; indeed, the car would have gone farther than that if caution had not required Townsend to stop on hearing the whistle of a locomotive. Presently a train went whizzing past.

The place at which they now were was apparently the site of a deserted village, which in its flourishing day had boasted of a set of railroad gates and a little tower house for a gateman and switchman. The four gates were standing stark upright now and they did not so much as bow when the train went by.

A ladder which had probably been the means of access to the tower house lay below it, broken and rotted, one of its uprights entirely gone, while three or four rungs stuck out from the other one like the few remaining teeth of some aged crone. It looked more like a giant, dilapidated rake than a ladder.

The tower house stood quite high upon a rotting trestle. Its roof was almost entirely bereft of shingles. There was no sign of glass in either of its windows which commanded views north and south along the track. How long it may have been since any solitary watcher stayed in that aerial shack, one could not guess. For a shack that held itself so high it was very shabby. Through one of the windows the boys could see a tall lever standing at an angle; whether it was a switch lever or the gate lever they could not say. It was red with rust.

A few small houses clustered about the spot but they seemed all to be forsaken and falling to pieces, save one. This one was surrounded by a picturesque fence ingeniously devised of laths, old bed springs, chicken wire, grocery boxes and barrel staves.

In front of the house was a very small and shabby porch and upon this sat an Italian woman of enormous dimensions. It was impossible to determine what she was sitting on for no part of this was visible, but undoubtedly she was sitting on something, for she was in a sitting posture.

The only other living thing on this romantic hamlet was a billy goat within the enclosure, who, upon seeing the Ford stop close by the tracks, dropped a rusty tin can which he had been chewing on, and sauntered toward the edge of his domains surveying the visitors through an old woven wire bed spring.

“You don’t suppose he wants to eat the flivver, do you?” Townsend asked.

“Bah—h—h—h,” said the billy goat.

“Quite well, thank you,” said Townsend. “How are you?” Then to Pee-wee he said, “Let’s see how much gas we’ve got, I mean how little.”

They both climbed out and Townsend lifted the front seat cushion, revealing a veritable feast of torn burlap and disordered straw at which the goat seemed to cast a yearning eye.

“Jumping Christopher, we’ve only got about half a pint,” said Townsend. “If we get across the tracks we’re lucky.”

“We should have kept on going,” said Pee-wee.

“In that case we would have knocked the train over,” said Townsend. “Wait a minute, I’m going to ask the lady if we can get gas anywhere around here.”

He strolled over to the table d’hÔte fence and called to the hostess of the establishment: “Gasoline? Can we get gasoline anywhere around here?”

“Idner,” the woman responded, shrugging her shoulders.

“I say is there a gas station near?”

“Gess (shrug) lotterdamile gess, Idner.”

“Very far—long way?”

“Gess yer Idner,” said the woman with another shrug.

“There must be a place or a man named Idner somewhere,” said Townsend.

“She means, I don’t know,” said Pee-wee.

“Baaah—h—h,” said the goat.

“How’s that?” said Townsend.

“I’ve got an inspiration,” shouted Pee-wee.

“Baaah—h—h,” said the goat.

“I don’t know which of you to believe,” said Townsend.

“Do you want me to tell you?” Pee-wee yelled.

“Oh, certainly, when you have time.”

“Didn’t that man back at that place say he was expecting the gasoline wagon? I’m going to climb up into that switch tower and see if it’s coming. I bet I can scan the landscape from up there.”

“You can what it?”

“Scan it; I bet I can see a—a vista.”

“We don’t want a vista, we want some gas.”

“You’re crazy,” said Pee-wee, “a vista is when you see a long way up a narrow road, like. I can look both ways; back over the hill, too, I bet.”

“I’m going to take one more chance with Mrs. Spaghetti,” said Townsend. And raising his voice he asked again, simplifying the query, “Gas? Makadergas. Way far?”

The woman shrugged her shoulders again, “Wayerderfer Idner, makerderfergess Idner. Idner spiggedyamer.”

“Very well,” said Townsend, “if that’s the way you feel about it. It looks as if we’ll have to stay neighbors; we might as well be friends. Let’s push the car over to the side of the road, Kid. I don’t think much of this for a camping spot.”

They sat in the car for a few minutes discussing the situation while the goat looked on intently through the woven wire mattress. Abandoning, apparently, all vain hopes of eating the Ford, he had picked up his rusty tin can again, holding its crumpled rusty cover in his mouth while his gaze still lingered on the strangers.

“Gee whiz,” said Pee-wee, “I’ll eat anything that comes out of a can but I won’t eat a can.”

“Good for you,” said Townsend.

He seemed to think it pleasant enough sitting there and for a while appeared to be altogether oblivious to their predicament.

“Shall I shin up the gate?” Pee-wee asked again, finally.

Townsend glanced idly at the gate. “Might be a good idea,” he said. “Do you think you could do it?”

“Sure I could do it. I’ll scan the horizon, hey?”

The crossing gates, as is usual, were in two pairs. They were of the customary sort which are lowered to a horizontal position by cogwheels. When not down they stood perfectly upright like four emaciated giant fingers pointing skyward. One of these stood close to the old tower house and was at present the only means (though a rather doubtful means) of access to it. The open framework on which the little edifice stood did not extend out to the edge of it on any side, so that climbing up these supports would avail one nothing.

The upright gate, though slender and rather wabbly, was reinforced by iron bars and would doubtless bear the weight of our mighty hero for at least two-thirds of its length. He now proceeded to shinny up this gate and as he ascended toward its thinner end it swayed slightly like the stalk of a lily in the summer breeze.

“’Tisn’t going to break, is it?” Townsend called, watching the little scout as he wriggled up. “It seems kind of unsteady.”

“Sure it isn’t,” Pee-wee called.

“Watch your step,” called Townsend as Pee-wee ascended to a point level with the window.

“Oh, boy!” shouted Pee-wee, elated and without waiting to transfer himself to the little house. “I can see the road for miles and miles and miles. There’s a village or something about a mile down that way.”

“Watch your step,” Townsend warned, as Pee-wee reached out one leg to get a foothold on the old window ledge.