e're waitin' for Mr.
Beckley to get that automobile he thinks he needs."

Now that the Thirty belonging to the boys had been destroyed Beckley, on
reaching Staretta, had sent a man to the nearest town to bring some kind
of motor car, for it was plain to him that if he was to get anywhere with
his faithful assistant Daddy O'Lear, some kind of assistance more to be
depended on than Link's scraggy horse team should be secured.

So while Beckley waited the boys set out for Anderson's cabin. But upon
reaching there no sign of either Paul or Chip was to be seen. Instead
Nels himself sat despondent in the doorway, while inside Mrs. Anderson
and the child were striving in a desultory, hopeless way to arrange the
inside of the unkempt cabin.

"We came down to see if we could help about anything to make you all more
comfortable," said Phil, still looking for Jones and Chip. "We kind a
thought Paul and that Slider boy was down here."

"So they was," remarked Mrs. Anderson, apathetically wiping out a frying
pan, "but they went off soon as they had their grub cooked. And a job it
was, too."

"Just what do you mean, Mrs. Anderson?" put in Billy uneasily.

"They was goin' somewhere, I think. Then--"

"Yah--yah!" This from Nels in the doorway. "They bane had der dinners."

Meanwhile Phil was thinking what Chip had told them that morning. Paul's
absence was now explained. Worth also felt that an astonishing light had
dawned on him somehow. He turned to Way, saying:

"What doughheads we were when Chip was talking so glibly about what he was
going to do! Why, the thing is sheer nonsense!"

"More than that, it is dangerous!" exclaimed Phil. "Suppose them two boys
meet up with Murky way off in the burnt over woods. What'll Murky do to
'em?"

"Don't talk punk, Phil!" Billy was in cold earnest now. "You know what
he'd do or try to do, if he thought they had come after that money.
There's nothing he _wouldn't_ do if he could, that would put them off his
trail and land them--oh, goodness! It makes me cold when I think of Paul."

Here the Anderson girl timidly approached, holding out a scrap of paper.

"He give it me," said the child. "Pap was away and ma was busy."

"Who gave it you?" demanded Phil as Worth took the soiled, folded paper.

"One of you boys. They was leavin'. Ma didn't know," seeing Mrs. Anderson
looking on with astonishment written all over her. "I fergot it 'til now."

"Boys," the pencilled scrawl began. "I'm o