PEE-WEE DOESN’T WATCH HIS STEP

The sun, which had not been out many hours on that memorable day, withdrew behind the hills, the Italian woman withdrew within her domicile, the billy goat withdrew to his private suite and was soon wrapped in slumber. And night cast its shroud over the quiet countryside.

Pee-wee felt strange and very lonesome. There he was, almost exactly half-way between Bridgeboro and Temple Camp marooned in a railroad tower house. To be sure, his situation was not desperate; occasionally an auto passed along the road, the Italian woman (though apparently not deeply interested in his adventures) was somewhere within call, and, in any case, Townsend would either return or send some one. What Pee-wee could not comprehend was that a perfectly innocent person could be subjected to the indignity of arrest. Townsend had not been able to show his card, therefore he had been taken away. The reason had nothing to do with it. Pee-wee may have heard that the law is blind, but he had never known that it is deaf, dumb and blind.

There was nothing to do now but wait, so he sat on the low shelf which had evidently been a sort of desk, dangling his legs. At first he looked at the pictures in the seven-year-old magazine, but somehow he could not fix his mind on the pictures and he threw the torn, yellow-leaved periodical from him.

Moreover, it was rapidly getting too dark to read. He was not exactly nervous, but he was impatient and anxious. And this feeling increased as the darkness came on apace.

Across the track were the few deserted houses which had constituted the village or settlement. He could see them more clearly from the tower house than he had been able to from the flivver when they had first approached the spot. And now that he was not preoccupied with the distant landscape, he noticed more particularly the scene near at hand.

Across the track, and somewhat back from the road was a large wooden structure, too large for a place of residence. Pee-wee could just make it out among the trees in the gathering darkness. The thought occurred to him that this had once been a factory, the closing down of which, might easily have depopulated the neighborhood. That would account for the railroad gates at such an out-of-the-way spot. Perhaps, before the war, or even during the war, streams of workers had flowed to and from that big structure among the trees.

This supposition of Pee-wee’s was presently confirmed by a new discovery. Glancing along the track to the east he saw that a branch track curved around behind the supposed factory. This might have been a branch of the railroad, but he thought it was more likely to be just a siding for convenience in shipping goods from the factory.

In the fast approaching darkness he could see these tracks only as two lines; he could not see the ties at all. The rails of the main line shone like silver in the night, but the rails of the siding must have been dull and rusty. From which Pee-wee supposed that they were not in continuous use.

He craned his neck far out of the window to see how far he could follow these branch tracks with his eyes. He could only see that the line curved away behind the large building, the upper part of which was visible among the trees. As he withdrew his gaze from up the track, something small and bright red between the rails closer at hand caught his eye. He might have noticed this more particularly if his mind had not been full of another matter.

As has been said of Pee-wee, whenever he did a thing he went head first. On this occasion he went back first, but with his usual headlong impulsiveness. With the one remaining match which he had he intended to examine the old time-table on the wall and try to determine whether or not the branch track was indeed a branch of the railroad.

He had been sprawled across the low shelf, his neck far out of the window and now as he withdrew into the little apartment he backed against something which yielded to the pressure of his form. He realized at once what he had done. One of the long switch levers which stuck up from the floor at an angle toward him, had been pushed over so that it slanted the other way.

Somewhere in the solemn, silent night and spent in the intervening area of wood and mountain and valley, sounded the deep, melodious whistle of a locomotive.