have got past even if I tried.”

“Gee! what d’ye think of that! And right here within twenty miles of Oakvale, too?” ejaculated Billy, his face expressing the most intense interest, “but excuse my interrupting you, Gusty. Please go on. You’ve got me chained fast. Stopped you on the road did they, and robbed you of the pay money?”

“When I managed to pull up, I was right on the tree they had thrown across the road,” continued the other. “At first the tall man pretended he was a country constable, meaning to arrest me because I was speeding, though of course, it was silly to think of such a thing away up here in the mountains. Then the other fellow showed up, and they let me know that they’d been waiting for me in order to steal the money I carried. I tried to jump into the runabout again to get hold of the gun dad makes me carry, but they battered me on the head, and nearly did me as you can see. In the end they lowered me to that ledge, so that I couldn’t get anywhere and give the alarm. Oh! I’ve been having the time of my life, let me tell you! But if they think they’re going to get away with this job so easy, they’re barking up the wrong tree. Now I’m out of that hole, I mean to get after them lickety-split.”

“How much of a start have they got?” asked Hugh soberly.

“Really I couldn’t tell you,” came the reply. “You see, that short rascal snatched my gold watch before they lowered me down the precipice. It seemed to me as if I must have been there for hours.”

“It was just a little more than an hour and a half ago that you left the tavern where we were waiting to be called to dinner,” Hugh told him. Gus expressed the greatest surprise, for he had never known time to drag so before.

“But let’s talk of what can be done to overtake those men and get back all they took from me,” he suggested doggedly.

“One of us might turn around and make a run for home to get the police on the track,” ventured Billy, “though it would be taking big chances to start me over that course, because I’m a bum rider so far, and apt to take a header if I get a little rattled.”

“How far away are the quarries you were making for, Gus?” asked Hugh.

“Oh, something like ten miles, I should say,” came the reply. “Too far to go for help. Besides, what good would a dozen or two of those wild Italian laborers be in a thief chase? Chances are the men would make a clean getaway. No, something else will have to be tried if we hope to bring them up with a round turn.”

“What’s to hinder the lot of us whooping after them, and finding some chance either to have them arrested, or perhaps do the job as slick as you please, while they sleep?” demanded Monkey Stallings, who came by his name through his faculty for doings all sorts of antics, from climbing greased poles that no other boy could mount, to hanging from lofty limbs of trees by his toes, and pretending to sleep that way, just as though he were a simian in truth.

“If you only would, it might turn out to be the grandest thing ever!” exclaimed the Merrivale boy, his face lighting up with sudden hope as he contemplated the shining motorcycles nearby, and remembered what wonderful things they were capable of accomplishing in the right hands.

“You see, we were making our way up to a camp where a few of our fellow scouts have been spending a week,” Hugh explained. “We declined to go along because we expected these machines to arrive, and were all fairly wild to get busy with them. And between ourselves we had secretly arranged to give the boys a big surprise after all of us got so we could ride fairly well. But you must know that it is a part of a scout’s education to give up his own pleasure whenever he can help anyone who is in trouble; and so, Gus, we will do what we can to assist you to recover your runabout, as well as the money they took from you.”

“That’s fine of you, Hugh!” declared the other boy, flushing with pleasure, as well as with shame at the recollection of how he had misjudged these splendid fellows in the past. “I’m beginning to get my eyes opened to a lot of things about this scout business, and if only you can help me out, I reckon I’ll just have to join the troop, no matter if I start in as the worst tenderfoot you ever saw.”

“Bully for you, Gusty!” cried the explosive Billy. “Take my word for it, you’ll never have any reason to regret the step if you do hitch up with the scouts. Fact is you’ll wonder how you ever got any fun in life before you knocked the scales off your eyes, and saw things everywhere around you. We know. Lots of us have been through the mill, haven’t we, Monkey?”

“We sure have, Billy,” answered the other solemnly, “and nothing could hire me to throw up my present job of gymnastic teacher to the troop. As to learning things, I’ve found out how to stow away a quarter more rations every meal by just watching you work your jaws, Billy.”

“We can follow after the runabout without much trouble once we examine the marks made by its tires in some muddy spot,” Hugh said, speaking directly to the boy who had been taken from the ledge, “because in nearly every case you’ll find there’s a distinctive mark about the track left by a rubber-shod wheel. I can tell the trail my motorcycle makes among a dozen; both the others have individualities about them that all of us have learned to recognize. And I expect you may have noticed something about the marks your car leaves that would tell you which road it took, in case we came to a fork?”

“Well, I don’t think I ever took the trouble to notice anything like that,” Gus confessed not without more or less confusion, as though he might already be beginning to realize how lacking in practical information his education was, “but now that you speak of it, there was a patch put on one of the rear tires that I should think would leave an impression something like a diamond. Of course, though, that wouldn’t show here where the road is rocky; but at the first chance we could watch out for it.”

Hugh looked at him with a half smile on his face.

“You talk as though you expected to go along with us, Gusty?” he observed.

“And to tell the truth I’m hoping you’ll ask me to hang on behind,” the other instantly replied. “You see, I’ve ridden a motorcycle before and I guess my shoulder isn’t so lame but what I could keep my seat. Those men treated me about as mean as they knew how, and I’ve been telling myself all along that, if only I could have a hand in their apprehension, it’d go a great way to evening things up. Do you reckon now, Hugh, that if you took me on behind it would go?”

His whole manner was so imploring that even had the patrol leader felt inclined to hesitate he must have found it very difficult to disappoint Gusty. It chanced, however, that Hugh knew more about a motorcycle than either of his chums, or both together for that matter. And he believed that if the other boy had the nerve to keep his seat he could take him along.

“I’m willing to make the try, anyhow, Gusty,” was what Hugh told him.

“Oh! thank you, thank you a dozen times, for you’ve made me feel ever so happy!” cried the Merrivale boy. Apparently he had made a clean sweep when he threw that pride of his overboard, for once again he reached out and shook the hand of Hugh, as though determined to look on him as his best friend. “And there’s one other thing you ought to know, because it may cut some figure in the chase.”