ONE CAR AND THREE COWS

The young man looked worried. He was capless and coatless, and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled to the elbows. When he saw the nine boys approaching, he stopped and waited for them.

"I'll bet you," said Specs, "that's George W. Trouble's youngest son. About half the world seems to be needing help to-day. Shall we walk right past without seeing him?"

"Shall we?" asked Bonfire slyly. "We can pretend, of course, that we don't notice his car, on ahead a bit."

"Whose car? Where? How do you know?" Specs was twisting his head and straining his eyes for some glimpse of an automobile. "What makes you think he has a car?"

Bonfire grinned. "Well, maybe he carries those goggles in his shirt pocket just to look like a driver, but—"

"Anybody could guess after seeing them," sniffed Specs, unimpressed. He caught the snicker that was going around the patrol. "Oh, all right! All right! Maybe I did overlook 'em. If you're so smart, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, tell me where the car is and why he isn't riding in it."

Bonfire bowed mockingly. "Certainly. The car is down there in the hollow, off to one side of the road. It is stuck in the mud. The man has tried chains on the rear wheels, but it won't pull itself free, even with them. He wants us to give him a lift."

"Rats!" said Specs. He dismissed the statements as careless banter. "But if that fellow has a car able to run to Belden, and needs something like a loose switch tightened—" A heavy wink completed the sentence.

Bunny frowned. There were times when Specs simply could not and would not remember the Scout law about taking pay for good turns. But it was too late to thresh out the question with him. By this time, they were abreast the young man.

"Good afternoon, fellows!" he said to them. "I'm in a bit of a mess, with my car stuck in the mud there in the hollow. I swerved off the road, to avoid running down a dog, and plumped into the soft creek-bed. She won't pull out, even with chains."

Bunny nodded his willingness to help. He was afraid Specs would blurt out something about pushing out the car in return for a ride to Belden but he need not have worried. Specs was wholly beyond speech. The absolute confirmation of Bonfire's guesses, detail by detail, had left him stunned and dumb.

"Say," he gasped to that Scout, as they turned to follow the young man to a point where the road dipped into a broad gulley, "how did you figure it all out, anyhow? What did you see that made you know about the mired car?"

"Nothing," smiled Bonfire good-naturedly. "I didn't see a thing except the goggles; they connected the man with a car. But I did use my ears. Halfway down the hill, when everybody was pretty glum and not saying much, I heard a motor racing, then the clutch thrown in, then a sort of churning, with the motor slowing till it almost stalled. Once or twice it did. So I knew a car was stuck. It was off the road a ways, of course, because this is a state highway, with a rock bottom. And the only place a car would mire is in some low hollow, where the sun never has a chance to shine through the trees and dry the mud. That's all."

"But you said the car had chains on."

"Oh, yes, the chains. I did use my eyes there. It was the mud on the man's shirt sleeves, where he reached around the tires putting them on, that told me he had tried chains. Anything else you want to know?"

"What color are his grandmother's eyes?" Specs demanded fiercely. "Tell me that, you bunk detective. What's his sister's middle name? What make of car is it?"

"Saybrook touring," answered Bonfire, picking up the last question. When Specs, completely dazed by this new flash of information, looked up with awestruck eyes, the other Scout pointed a gleeful finger at the car beside the road. "All you have to do, my boy, is to keep your eyes and ears open. Come on; Bunny's calling."

Getting the car out of the mud was neither a long nor a difficult job. All it required was a little knowledge and common sense. The wheels had evidently sunk a few inches at the outset, and their useless whirling had furrowed a nasty rut, made deeper by the use of chains. But when the boys had helped jack up the rear end and filled the holes with branches, against which the chains could bite, and had made a path of the same material to the solid road, the car pulled itself clear without any trouble at all.

"Well," said the young man, wiping his forehead, "I might have done all that by myself. Just the same, I'm much obliged." He drew a purse from his pocket. "How much do I owe you?"

The "busted" patrol gasped. It was as if they feared their leader might falter before this temptation. But Bunny waved back the bill the young man was offering.

"Nothing at all," he said. "We are Boy Scouts, and we are not allowed to take pay for doing good turns."

"But if you are going to Belden—" Specs began insinuatingly.

"I'm not," said the young man.

"If you are," Specs persisted, "or if you could go there, we'd like to be taken along."

"Well, I'm not," said the young man again, "and I can't." He said it very decisively. "I'm much obliged for your help, but I can't pay for it—that way." He smiled a little derisively, stepped on the self-starter, and shot the car at the long hill down which the boys had just come.

"I hope he gets stuck again," snorted Specs, looking at the swirl of dust that marked the young man's going. "I hope he breaks a steering knuckle and six spokes, and has nineteen punctures."

"No, you don't, either," Bunny put in. "You're wrong and he's right. Do you realize, Specs, that this is the first time in all our trip we have given a wrong impression of the Boy Scouts? That man thinks we did him a good turn in the hope of a reward; he'll think we always want some kind of pay when we help somebody out. Well, we don't; and what's more, we're going to stop making people think we do."

In the face of this gentle reproof, Specs had nothing to say. When they resumed their hike, he fell in at the rear and seemed to be pondering the matter. Opposite the next farmhouse, he drew up to the patrol leader and said, in a nonchalant way. "All right, Bunny; I'm cured." Then, to prove it, he raced into the yard and pumped a trough full of water for an old lady, and raced out again to the Scouts before she had time to thank him.

With this minor worry off his mind, Bunny faced the greater problem of getting to Belden in time for the ball game.

"It's a good nine miles yet," he told the others, "and we have less than two hours to make it. At the Scout pace, we might possibly cover the distance in time, but it would leave us all played out. I guess we'll have to turn in somewhere and—and find another Mr. Jenkins."

They were in the lowlands now. The road stretched ahead, as far as the eye could reach, between lush fields of corn and wheat and oats. Grimly, without talking, the boys plodded on, pressing ahead as steadily as if Belden were just around the next corner. But it wasn't, of course, and something had to be done to revive their drooping spirits. At the worst, a halt at some house would serve to break the monotony of the hike.

Bunny chose a prosperous looking place on the right. The house was big and freshly painted. The barns and granaries were in good repair. Up-to-date farm implements nearly filled the yard. Everywhere was an air of success.

A shaggy shepherd dog ran to meet them, barking uncertainly and wagging its tail, as if divided between a desire to be courteous and yet to serve its master at the same time. Bunny called to the animal, and it came close and sniffed at his legs, and was satisfied. He hoped its owner would prove as friendly.

But when he knocked at the door, there were no answering footsteps. He knocked again. A third time. Convinced at last that they were merely wasting precious time, he turned to the others with a little gesture of disappointment.

"There's nobody home," he said.

"I can tell you something else," added Bonfire. "The man who lives here doesn't own an automobile; there's no garage. And he has only two horse stalls in that big barn, both empty. Even if he wanted to help us get to Laurel, he couldn't."

Bunny nodded gloomily. "We might as well hike on."

Fifty yards down the road, Bonfire lifted a pointing hand.

"Look there!" he shouted. "Three cows in that cornfield, gobbling up those little stalks as if they were prairie grass. I don't believe—Ah, I thought so! See that gap in the fence on the far side. They have broken in."

"And nobody around to chase them out," said Specs briskly. "I guess it's a job for us."

"What good would it do us?" Bunny tested him. "There isn't a soul about to thank us or to give us a lift on our way."

Specs hung his head. "Aw, Bunny!" he protested; "forget it, won't you?"

And then everybody laughed, as if it were a great joke, and finally Specs laughed, too. After that, there was no question about what they meant to do. Nine boys climbed through the barbed-wire fence along the road and went whooping toward the astonished trio of cows. Tender and juicy as the cornstalks were, the animals realized that their stolen meal must end. They turned and galloped awkwardly through the gap in the fence, back into their own field.

"Sorry, old girls!" shouted Specs, quite himself again, "but you can't eat up a crop just for the sake of one square meal. Besides, you'd get an awful, awful tummy-ache."

"Now let's patch up the break," urged Bunny. "We can prop up this broken post and restring these wires. It won't take ten minutes."

In something like half that time, the fence was as good as new for all practical purposes. While they were winding the last loose strand about the bolstered post, a voice from the cornfield said pleasantly:

"When the boss's away, the cows will play. Thank you, boys; thank you!"

The minute Bunny looked at the man, he knew he was going to like him. He stood just beyond the dividing fence, his lean, brown face crinkling into an irresistible smile.

"Are those your cows, sir?" Bunny asked.

"I own them," the man admitted, "and I still own the sprouting corn in this field—thanks to you boys. I came up the road just in time to see what you did for me. But I am curious to learn how you happened to be passing, and why you stopped to save my crop from serious damage. Suppose we all adjourn to my house yonder, where we can talk things over. There is a crock of cold milk there, and a jar of cookies and doughnuts. If you will do me the honor—" He broke short the sentence with another of his big, fine smiles, and turned to lead the way. The Scouts fell in behind him.

Over the doughnuts and milk, Bunny fell ready victim to the stranger's warming personality; and somehow, without being able to tell exactly how the conversation started, he was revealing the troubles of the Black Eagle Patrol in getting to the baseball game at Belden, and explaining the mishaps it had encountered. Bonfire's previous assurance that there were no cars or horses on the place made it easier. The man couldn't possibly misunderstand.

Nor did he. He knew all about Boy Scouts and good turns without hope of reward, and he nodded and smiled and said, "Exactly!" when Specs remarked that they knew he hadn't any means of taking them to Belden.

"And I am afraid," the man added, "there isn't a thing on wheels or four legs in this country that hasn't trundled or trotted to the farmers' institute at Middletown this afternoon. That's where my own team went, and I do not own an automobile." He looked quizzically at the boys. "You are ready to admit, I suppose, that you have come to the point in your trip where, if it were a story, the author would write 'The End.' It isn't even 'To Be Continued.'"

"But it is, sir," Bunny denied sturdily. "We're going on to Belden. I know we can't make it afoot in time now; but even if we reach the ball park during the ninth inning, and even if we get there so tired we can hardly move, we're going to make it. We—we aren't quitters, I guess."

"Good!" said the man. "I like that spirit. It moves mountains and—hearts." He walked to the window and stared toward a distant field. "Then you boys could not help me on the farm this afternoon, I suppose?"

"No," Bunny confessed reluctantly, "I'm afraid not."

"I did not expect you could," the man said, with his understanding smile. "Anyhow, my machinery needs overhauling by some expert."

The nine boys smiled back. A Scout must be cheerful. But it was hard to smile, very hard, with the clock on the wall striking half past one and Belden nine miles away.