LITMIR.BIZ

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“But it is quite serious for Philly – whether they got the maps or not.”

      “Oh! Didn’t they?” cried Ruth.

      “That – that he won’t say,” said Mrs. Heard, shaking her head. “I’m sure I don’t know. Philly Collinger can be just as close-mouthed as an oyster – and so I tell him.

      “But everybody thinks the maps were in that package he put in the car before he ran across the street to get a bite of lunch. And I’m pretty sure that he isn’t worried all that much over the stealing of his car. Though goodness knows when he can ever afford to buy another. The salary of surveyor in this county isn’t a fortune.

      “So, there it is,” said Mrs. Heard. “The car’s gone, and I guess the maps and data are gone with it. Somebody, of course, hired the two scamps that took it to do the trick – ”

      “Oh, were there two?” asked Neale, who had been running the car slowly again in order to listen.

      “Yes. They were seen; but nobody supposed they were stealing the car, of course.”

      “What kind of men were they? How did they look?” asked Agnes.

      “What do you want to know for, Miss Detective?” chuckled Neale.

      “So as to be on the watch for them. If I see one of them about our car, I shall make a disturbance,” announced the beauty, with decision.

      “I don’t know much about them,” admitted Mrs. Heard, laughing with the others over Agnes’ statement. “But one was a young man with a fancy band on his straw hat and yellow freckles on his face. I believe he had a little mustache. But he might shave that,” she added, reflectively.

      “And change the band on his hat,” whispered Neale to Agnes, his eyes dancing.

      “Never mind about his hat-band, Neale O’Neil!” cried Agnes, standing up suddenly in a most disconcerting way. “What is that ahead?”

      Neale promptly shut off the power and braked. Agnes was greatly excited, and she pointed to a place in the road not many yards in advance.

      The way was narrow, with rocky fields on either side approached by rather steep banks. Indeed, the road lay through what might well be called a ravine. It was the worst piece of road, too (so the guidebook, said), of any stretch between Milton and Marchenell Grove.

      As the car stopped, Neale saw what Agnes had seen. Right across the way – directly in front of the automobile – lay something long and iridescent. It was moving.

      “Oh!” shrieked Agnes again. “It’s a snake – a horrid, great, big snake!”

      “Well, what under the sun did you make me stop for?” demanded the boy. “I’d have gone right over it.”

      “That would have been cruel, boy,” declared Mrs. Heard, from behind.

      “Cruel? Huh! It’s a rattler,” returned Neale.

      “Oh, Neale! It’s never!” gasped Agnes, not meaning to be impolite.

      “A rattler, Neale?” asked Ruth. “Are you sure?”

      “What’s a rattler?” asked Dot, composedly. “Is it what they make baby’s rattles out of?”

      “Mercy, no!” shivered Tess. “Neale means it’s a rattlesnake.”

      “Oh! I don’t like them,” declared Dot, immediately picking up the Alice-doll, of which she always first thought in time of peril.

      “What shall we do?” demanded Ruth.

      “Can’t he drive around it?” asked Mrs. Heard, rather excitedly. “I don’t believe at all in hurting any dumb animal – not even a snake or a spider.”

      “How about breaking the whip on old Jonas?” whispered Neale to Agnes.

      But his girl friend was all of a shiver. “Do get around it, Neale,” she begged.

      “Can’t. The road’s too narrow,” declared the boy, with promptness. “And I am bound to run over the thing if it doesn’t move out of the way. I can’t help it.”

      “Wait!” cried Mrs. Heard. “Get out and poke it with a stick.”

      “Why, Mrs. Heard!” exclaimed Ruth, “do you realize that a rattlesnake is deadly poison? I wouldn’t let Neale do such a thing.”

      “Besides being a suffragist,” declared Mrs. Heard, firmly, “I am a professing and acting member of the S.P.C.A. I cannot look on and see a harmless beast – it is not doing anything to us – wantonly killed or injured.”

      “Good-night!” murmured Neale.

      Just then the snake – and it was a big fellow, all of six feet long – seemed to awaken. Perhaps it had been chilled by the coolness of the night before; it was lethargic, at any rate.

      It lifted its head, whirled into the very middle of the road, and faced the automobile defiantly. In a moment it had coiled and sprung its rattle. The whirring sound, once heard, is never to be mistaken for any other.

      “Oh, dear! what shall we do?” gasped Agnes. “If you try to run over it, it may get into the car – or something,” said Ruth.

      The roadway was narrower here than it had been back where the brown pony had held the party up. This first trip in their automobile seemed to be fraught with much adventure for the Corner House girls and Neale O’Neil.

      CHAPTER IV – SALERATUS JOE

      Neale O’Neil knew very well that he could not satisfy everybody – least of all the rattlesnake.

      Mrs. Heard did not want her S.P.C.A. sensibilities hurt; Agnes wanted him to drive on; Ruth wished him to dodge the coiled rattler. As for getting out and “coaxing it to move on” with a stick, Neale had no such intention.

      He tried starting slowly to see if the serpent would be frightened and open the way for the passage of the car. But the rattler instantly coiled and sprang twice at the hood. The second time it sank its fangs into the left front tire.

      “Cricky!” gasped Neale. “They say you swell all up when one of those things injects poison into you; but I don’t believe that tire will swell any more than it is.”

      “Don’t make fun!” groaned Agnes. “Suppose it should jump into the car?”

      “If we only had a gun,” began Neale.

      “Well, I hope you haven’t, young man,” cried Mrs. Heard. “I’m deadly afraid of firearms.”

      “Don’t get out of the car, Neale,” begged Agnes, clasping her hands.

      “Try to back away from it,” suggested Ruth.

      The smaller girls clung to each other (Dot determinedly to the Alice-doll, as well), and, although they did not say much, they were frightened. Tess whispered:

      “Oh, dear me! I’m ‘fraid enough of the wriggling fish-worms that Sammy digs in our garden. And this snake is a hundred times as big!”

      “And fish-worms don’t shoot people with their tongues, do they?” suggested Dot.

      Just at that very moment, when the six-foot rattler had coiled to strike again, there was a rattling and jangling of tinware from up the road. There was a turn not far ahead, and the young folks could not see beyond it.

      “Goodness me!” exploded Agnes, “what’s coming now?”

      “Not another rattlesnake, I bet a cent – though it’s some rattling,” chuckled Neale O’Neil.

      The heads of a pair of horses then appeared around the turn. They proved to be drawing a tin-peddler’s wagon, and over this rough piece of driveway the wash-boilers, dishpans, kettles, pails, and a dozen other articles of tin and agate-ware, were making more noise than the passage of a battery of artillery.

      Some scientists have pointed out that snakes – some snakes, at least – seem to

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