We all started shouting, “We are shaved! We are shaved! A Fraud car! A Fraud car on the horizon!” I guess the driver of that Ford car thought we were crazy. “I hope he’ll stop before he runs into the creek,” Warde said.
The car was coming along the turnpike at the rate of about a half a million miles a year and I shouted, “Hey, mister, whoever you are, please stop before you get here; it was raining last night and the water is wet.”
“Stop your fooling,” the kid said.
I said, “Do you think I want that car to come plunging into the creek? Suppose that driver is blind.”
“She’s coming under full sail,” Garry said.
“Hurrah!” they all shouted.
“She’s missing in one cylinder,” Bert said. Then we all started shouting, “Saved! At last we are saved!”
Just then, good night, that Ford car turned off into a side road and we couldn’t see it any more.
“Now you see what you get for fooling,” the kid shot at me. “If we had shouted ‘help’ all together as loud as we could he’d have come straight along. You think it’s fun being imprisoned here with nothing to eat; you make me tired. Maybe you don’t know that not much traffic comes along this old turnpike; that’s why they don’t have any bridge-tender here.”
“They have tenderfoot bridge-tenders,” I said.
“Maybe no one else will come along all night,” Pee-wee said, “and then what are we going to do? Suppose a wagon or an auto should come along after dark and we didn’t see it coming; it would plunge to death and then I hope you’d be satisfied.”
“That’s right,” Warde said, kind of serious, “we haven’t even got a lantern to swing. How could we warn anybody?”
“We can’t even shout if we don’t get something to eat,” the kid said.
“Sure,” Bert said, “we’ll be so weak we won’t even be able to lift our voices.”
“We’re in a desperate predicament,” Pee-wee said, very dark and serious like. I guess he got those words out of the movies.
“Maybe we could tie a note to the fish and throw him in the water,” I said. “When someone catches him they’ll find out we’re in distress.”
“No you don’t,” the kid yelled, hanging onto the fish while I tried to take it away from him.
“If we could only send up a signal,” Warde said. “It’s all very well joking but if it gets dark it will be mighty bad with this bridge open and no one standing guard at the ends of the road.”
“There’ll be a tragedy,” the kid said.
Gee whiz, when I heard Warde speak that way I realized that it might be pretty dangerous there after dark. And I was a little scared about it because it seemed that no one came along that road very much and maybe it would be night before anyone came.
I said, “Well, if it gets toward night and no one comes either way I’ll take a chance and dive and swim to shore. One of y............