CHAPTER XIII. IN AND OUT OF LEEVILLE.

“Mr. Hawkins,” said Matt, attempting to argue the matter, and show the constable the error of his way, “you’re a little mistaken in this matter.”

“’Way wide of the trail,” chipped in McGlory.

“You can’t teach me no law,” scowled the constable. “I know my business.”

“Of course you do,” went on Matt, signing to McGlory to let him do the talking. “I’m not saying that you don’t know all about the law, or are not trying to do your duty. It’s the fellow at the other end of the line who has started you wrong.”

“D’you own this car?” demanded Hawkins, slapping the broken hood.

“No, but----”

“Didn’t you run away with it?”

“Yes, but if you’ll let----”

“I calculate that’s a-plenty,” cut in Hawkins, with a triumphant look at Hiram. “We’ll hop in an’ show ye the way to the jail.”

“I want to explain this,” cried Matt.

“Oh, ye do!” gibed the constable. “I can tell, just by the look of you, you’re a pair of scalawags. You can’t do any explainin’ that’ll help your case any.”

“Take us before a justice,” pleaded Matt.

“The jedge is away, fishin’, an’ he won’t hold court till this arternoon. I’ll haul ye up in front o’ him, soon enough, an’ if he don’t hold ye to a higher court to answer for the larceny of one benzine buggy, I’ll miss _my_ guess. Hiram,” and the constable turned to his comrade, “I’ll git in with ’em, so’st to make sure they don’t run, then you take down the chain, an’ git in, too.”

“You bet I will,” assented Hiram, with great alacrity.

“Is there a telegraph office in town?” asked Matt, while Hiram was removing the chain.

“’Course there is,” replied Hawkins. “We got a railroad, too, and an op’ry house, and everythin’ else that makes a town worth livin’ in.”

“We want to stop at the telegraph office and send a message,” said Matt.

“No, ye don’t! You fellers can’t play any shenanigin tricks on Bill Hawkins. I’m too old a hand to be come over by two younkers like you.”

“Sufferin’ jaybirds!” growled McGlory. “Say, constable, this message we want to send is mighty important. If we can get it through, it will prevent a ten-thousand-dollar robbery in New York.”

Bill Hawkins laughed.

“You’re funnier’n a Joe Miller joke book,” said he. “Jest as though ye could make me swaller a yarn like that. Git in, Hiram,” he added. “You drive this automobile right down Main Street till I tell ye to stop,” he finished, addressing Matt.

“Will you let me send that telegram?” pleaded McGlory. “It will only take a minute.”

“Well, I guess not,” said the constable, snapping his lean jaws decisively. “Start the car,” he ordered sternly.

Matt took two five-dollar bills from his pocket, offering one to each of the men.

“You can read the telegram, Mr. Hawkins,” said Matt. “It’s important.”

Hawkins went up on his toes and fairly bristled.

“Say,” he snorted, “you ain’t got money enough to bribe me from doin’ my duty. Now I _know_ ye’re crooked. Tryin’ to bribe Bill Hawkins! Well, by jing! What d’ye think o’ that, Hiram?”

“Scand’lous!” gurgled Hiram, horror-stricken.

McGlory leaned toward Matt.

“Put on full speed, pard,” he whispered excitedly, “and let’s snake ’em out into the country.”

But Matt shook his head and started the car slowly into the village.

All the inhabitants of the place, Matt judged, had been drawn to the scene of the “arrest.” Men, women, children, and dogs clustered around the car, and proceeded with it as it took its melancholy way along the street.

“There’s the place,” said Hawkins, pointing, “that two-story red buildin’ on the right. Hardware store on the first floor and the jail’s upstairs.”

Matt steered for the curb, and halted the car at the edge of the walk, then Hawkins took him in charge, Hiram looked after McGlory, and the motor boys were led toward an outside stairway by which they were to climb to the “jail.”

The cowboy, halting at the foot of the stairs, renewed his desperate attempt to get permission to send his telegram. Hiram spoke harshly, Hawkins put in a few warm words, and the crowd jeered. Then McGlory gave up, and followed Hawkins and Matt as they climbed the stairs.

The second floor of the building was partitioned into two rooms. A sign proclaimed that the front room was occupied by a “Justice of the Peace,” while another sign, bearing the one word, “Jail,” set forth the uses to which the rear room was put.

Matt and McGlory, it appeared, were the only occupants of the jail. The room was meagrely furnished, with a table, a cot, and two chairs, and there were two grated windows overlooking the rear of the premises.

Here the motor boys were left, McGlory sinking disconsolately into one of the chairs, while Matt roamed around, making himself as familiar as possible with the situation.

From the grated windows he could look off for half a block to the railroad station. The station building was about as large as a good-sized packing case, and there was one spur track, running between the main track and the rear of the hardware store, with a lonely flat car on the rails.

“Here’s a go!” wailed McGlory. “Jugged! Jugged by a country constable, just when a telegram might save the day for us in New York! Sufferin’ cats! Can’t we do something, pard? We’re not going to let a couple of hayseeds knock us out like this, are we?”

Matt was trying the bars at the windows. The ends of the bars were set into the wood of the casing, and the casing was old, and partly decayed.

“We can break out,” said Matt, “but what good will that do us, Joe? We’d be apprehended by the villagers before you could get to the telegraph office. It won’t be possible to send a message from here.”

“How can we send it from anywhere,” cried the cowboy, “if we don’t get away from this place?”

“Jail-breakers are apt to have quite a hard time of it.”

“I’ll take my chances on the hard time if we can make a getaway.”

“The only thing for us to do, so far as I can see, is to wait till the judge gets back from his fishing trip. We can talk to _him_, and he’ll have to listen to us.”

Matt sat down, and McGlory, grumbling his disgust, started up and went to one of the windows. Laying hold of a bar he gave it a wrench, breaking the end completely out of the wood. A gap was left, through which the boys might squeeze their way to liberty--if it seemed advisable.

“There’s a shed under the window,” reported McGlory. “We could get out on the shed and reach the ground too easy for any use.”

“That part of it is all right,” returned Matt, “but how could we get out of town without being seen? There’s the rub, Joe. Be guided by me, and let’s wait for the justice.”

“There’s no telling when he’ll get here. Why, right now, this minute, Tibbits may have his pals at the bank!”

Urged on by his frantic thoughts, the cowboy began hoisting the window. In a few moments, a path to freedom, through the bars and over the shed roof, lay open to the motor boys.

“Let’s make a try of it, pard,” pleaded McGlory. “We can reach the spur track, crawl along it through the bushes, and maybe get out of the town. Then we can hoof it to the next town, drop in at a telegraph office----”

“And find a telegram from Leeville asking the authorities to capture and hold us as jail-breakers,” said Matt.

“We haven’t done anything we ought to be jugged for, have we?” demanded McGlory.

“Of course not.”

“Then it’s right for us to get away if we can, isn’t it?”

“Certainly, Joe, but I don’t see how we can manage it.”

Just at that moment a distant whistle was heard.

“A train!” exclaimed McGlory. “If it stops here, Matt, why can’t we----”

Matt caught the inspiration of his chum’s words. Again fortune was favoring him and McGlory. There was a chance to escape, but they would have to be quick if they took advantage of it.

“Crawl through the window, Joe!” whispered Matt. “Be wary! The jig’s up if we’re seen.”

The cowboy began at once crowding himself through the bars. He succeeded, and alighted on the roof of the shed on hands and knees. Matt followed, made his way carefully over the top of the shed, dropped from the edge of the roof, and found himself beside his chum at the rear of the hardware store.

The train was just pulling into the station. Without losing a moment, the boys scrambled over a fence, skirmished onward under the screen of the flat car, dodged beneath it, raced across the narrow stretch separating the spur from the main track, and climbed aboard the forward coach of the train.

The station was on the other side of the cars, and, so far as the boys could discover, not an inhabitant of the village had seen them.

Where the train was going they did not know; but they did know that it would halt at a more friendly town than Leeville, that there would be a telegraph office in the town, and that they could forward their message to New York.

“In and out of Leeville,” murmured the cowboy, as he and Matt sank breathlessly into a seat. “I reckon old Bill Hawkins will have another guess coming, eh?”