helping me to find my own car?"

"I wonder where they went?"

"I should worry where they went; I'm thankful we found the car. Maybe
they've gone to join The Bandit of Harrowing Highway; he'll have pistols
enough to go around, anyway; seventy was it?"

"And a couple of blackjacks."

"Well, we've got him beaten for a romance of the road. Let's go in this
house and see if we can scare up some gasoline. Jim, you and I ought to
go into the movies--we'd have a six reeler called The Kids of Kidder
Lake or Fido of Frying-pan Island. How's that strike you? Most of those
kids don't need any pistols, they can kill time without them. We've got
some dead ones over there, Jim, only they haven't got sense enough to
lie down. What do you bet we don't get some gas in this house? Well,
here goes for a knock on the door by Ned the Nabber,--_one_ pistol."

Pee-wee held his breath, listening. What could this mean? Seventy
pistols? Blackjacks? His old friend, The Bandit of Harrowing Highway?
Dead ones? Was he indeed in the spell of some horrible nightmare? What
on earth could this mean?

In a kind of trance he heard a knocking on the door and a lot of hearty,
clamoring, bantering voices. They did not seem at all like robbers and
cut-throats. They were not stealthy--a couple of million miles from it.
Pee-wee rubbed his glistening eyes with that old cap that he held and
blinked to make sure he was awake.

CHAPTER XXX

FACE TO FACE

Still in a daze, Pee-wee saw the old man step to the door; he heard a
hearty, good-humored voice asking about gasoline. "If you could just put
us on the track of some," the voice said; "we're good at tracking."

Tracking! Pee-wee's eyes opened. Tracking?

"Well, could we use your 'phone, then?" he heard.

The next thing Pee-wee knew, half a dozen boys and young men spilled
into the room. All but one of them, and that was Jim Burton, were in
scout attire. Pee-wee stood gaping at them as if they had dropped from
the clouds.

Whatever their wee hour call meant they seemed all to be in high
good-humor and amused at their own adventure. One of them, a scoutmaster
as Pee-wee knew, was particularly offhand and jovial and seemed to fill
the room with his breezy talk. Peter Piper stared like one transfixed;
they were scouts, the kind he had read about, the kind that were on the
cover of the handbook! He backed into a corner so as not to get in their
way....

"Yes sir, we've had some night of it," sa