I didn’t know what to make of it. Mark wasn’t the kind of er fellow to run away and leave me to face Batten and Bill; but, all the same, he was gone. Not a sign could we see. He must have sneaked off while the men were looking for the engine in the cave. One thing I was sure of, he hadn’t carried the turbine away with him. Maybe both of us together could have lifted it, but we certainly couldn’t have carried it up the hill.

I reached down and pinched myself to see if I was awake. There was getting to be so many mysteries and disappearances and such-like that it got to seeming like a dream where things pop in and out without any reason or excuse. But it wasn’t a dream, for there was Batten and Bill, scowling as ferocious as a couple of wolves. (I never saw a wolf scowl, but if he does it must be ferocious.) No, sir, it wasn’t any dream—not a bit of it. What I remembered about getting back the turbine, and the night on the rattlesnake island, and getting the turbine up-hill to the cave really happened. The engine had been in the cave, because I helped put it there. According to what I figured out, it must be there yet. It couldn’t have gotten out. But it was out! When a thing happens that you know positively can’t happen it sort of shakes you up. It made me feel pretty creepy.

I had been around the cave ever since we put the turbine in, except for the little while I was spying on Batten and Bill when they almost caught me; and Mark had been sitting right before the door all of that time. Nobody could have taken it out without his seeing it, and he hadn’t said a word to me about anything happening while I was gone. It was too much for me. One thing I knew, though, and that was that the only time that engine could have gotten away was while I was gone. The only reasonable way to explain it was that Mark had carried it away; but, then, Mark couldn’t have lifted it alone. And there you are! What would anybody expect a fellow to make of such a mess?

Batten came and stood over me, threatening-like. “Boy,” says he, “where’s that engine?”

“Mr. Batten,” says I (I thought it was best to be sort of polite), “I wish I knew.”

“It was in that cave, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” says I; “it was in there, all right, and how it ever got out beats me.”

“Do you mean to say you didn’t know it was gone?”

“Honest, Mr. Batten,” says I, “I thought it was there till you yanked off the sheets.”

He turned to Bill. “What do you think of it?” he asked. “Is the kid telling the truth?”

“If he ain’t,” says Bill, “he’s a good one. I never see a kid look more like he was tellin’ the truth.”

“Who’s been around here besides you two boys?”

“Nobody I know of,” I told him, “except you two.”

“Cross your heart,” says he; “haven’t you seen anybody else?”

“Not a soul,” I says, and made a cross-mark over the front of me.

“If that engine ever was in the cave,” Bill put in, “it must be somewheres around here. It was there when we came, and it can’t have got away far. We’ve been watchin’ perty careful, you know.”

“That’s right. It would have been mighty hard to cart it off without our seeing them. But it’s gone, just the same,” he says.

“What’s these things?” Bill asked me, kicking at the lengths of sapling Mark had cut. They were about two feet long and there were three or four of them.

“I dunno,” I told him. “Maybe Mark cut them for a fire.”

“Um!” says Bill, dubious-like. “Let’s skirmish around some, Batten. If I ain’t mistaken that engine is hid close to here.”

They started looking for it, and, seeing they didn’t act like they were going to damage me any, I hung around to see what they’d find. They went poking down holes and looking under brush-heaps and in the middle of clumps of bushes, but not a hide or hair of the turbine did they run onto. They searched and searched and searched, careful, as if they were looking for a nickel in a pile of sand. They started near the cave, and worked away in circles, and there wasn’t an inch they didn’t hunt over.

All at once I heard Mark holler, and when I looked up there he stood, with Uncle Ike Bond right beside him. Batten and Bill looked, too, and they didn’t wait to chat with Uncle Ike; they legged it down to the boat as fast as they could hike and shoved off. I couldn’t resist scooting a couple of pebbles after them, but they were in such a hurry I didn’t hit either time. I turned and yelled to Uncle Ike.

“You didn’t come any too soon,” I said.

Uncle Ike was mad clean through and came plunging down to the cave a lot more rapid than an old gentleman ought to move. “The scalawags!” says he. “The scamps—the—what-d’ye-call-’ems! Pickin’ on a passel of boys like you! I’d like to lay my buggy-whip acrost their shoulders, I would. Maybe they wouldn’t dance! Maybe! They seen me, though, and they won’t be back—not them. Not where old Uncle Bond can git holt of ’em. They’re gone for good.”

“Looks that way,” says Mark.

“Peddler give me your knife,” Uncle Ike says. “He didn’t find me till about fifteen minutes ago. I knowed there wa’n’t no foolin’ about it, so I come a-peltin’. Smart thing, sendin’ that knife; mighty smart. In all the years I’ve drove a bus I hain’t seen nothin’ smarter. Your pa, Tallow, and Mr. Whiteley is comin’ behind. Couldn’t keep up with me, not them.”

“We’re awful glad you’re here,” Mark says. And Uncle Ike jerked his head like he was glad, too, and pretty proud of himself.

“Your father’s home,” says he to Mark. “Got home this mornin’ and found you gone and the engine gone. It most set him crazy. Never see a man so flustered. Didn’t know what to do, not him, so what does he up and go at? Why, he grabs that there Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and goes to readin’ it to see if it won’t tell him how to act. Says he to me, ‘Mr. Bond, it’s in this here book if I can find it. Everythin’s in this book.’ And your mother, she jest walked up and down and couldn’t say a word, she was that scairt. What ever possessed you to go prowlin’ off without sayin’ a word?”

“We didn’t have no time to tell anybody. And we didn’t want ma to know the turbine was stole,” says Mark.

Well, pretty soon along came my father and Mr. Whiteley, excited as could be and pers............