CHAPTER XIV

ON THE TRAIL

Disappointment showed plainly on the faces of the three motor boys. They looked at one another, and then at Mrs. Johnson, the housekeeper. She could not mistake their feeling.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Johnson remarked. “If he had known you were coming to see him, I’m sure he would have waited for you. But I understood him to say, when he left here, that he was going to call on you boys, and get you to go with him.”

“He did call on me,” explained Jerry, “but he left suddenly to make a search for some specimens, and did not return. We supposed he came back here.”

“No, he didn’t,” the housekeeper answered, “though he sent me a letter in which he said he was going to the mountains, and for me not to worry about him.

“But I always do that, when he’s off on one of his queer trips,” went on Mrs. Johnson, with a sigh. “I never know what danger he may get into. I don’t fuss so much when I know he is with you boys, for I know you’ll sort of look after him. But when he’s by himself he’d just as soon get wet through and never change his things from one day to another. He is so thoughtless!

“And now it is such a queer search he is on. A two-tailed lizard! As if there could be any such thing as that. Oh dear! I don’t know what to do!”

“Well, the professor has found queerer things than two-tailed lizards,” remarked Jerry, “so that part is all right. But I can’t understand about his going away without saying a word to us. That’s what makes it seem queer.”

“It sure does,” agreed Ned.

“Didn’t he want you to go with him?” Mrs. Johnson wanted to know.

“He didn’t give us a chance to say,” was Bob’s answer. “He just--disappeared.”

“Have you his address?” asked Jerry of the housekeeper.

“Yes, it’s Hurdtown, but you’ll wait a good while before you can get an answer from there.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s miles away from a railroad, and in a lonely part of the mountains. I have written once to the professor since he sent me word where he was going, but I haven’t heard from him.”

“Hurdtown,” observed Jerry. “I wonder how we could get there?”

“Are you going after him?” the housekeeper wanted to know.

“I think so--yes,” replied Jerry. “I want to see him on important business.”

“Oh, I’m so glad!” Mrs. Johnson cried. “He just needs you boys, I know he does! I can’t understand his going away without you. Please find him, and here--take these dry socks to him. I know he’ll go about with wet feet.”

Jerry smiled as he took the socks, and then his face grew grave. He was thinking of the yellow mud of the swamp, and wondering what Professor Snodgrass would say when asked why he had told Jerry it was worthless, and why, later, he had indorsed it as of great value.

Mrs. Johnson brought out the professor’s letter. It was short, as his epistles always were, and merely stated that he had gotten on the track of a two-tailed lizard. He gave his address simply as Hurdtown, Maine.

“Well, we’ll have to go after him!” decided Ned, “and the sooner we start the better. I wonder where this place is, anyhow?”

“I looked it up on the map,” said the housekeeper eagerly. “I can show it to you.”

Hurdtown appeared to be in the northern part of New England, several hundred miles from Boston, and in a lonely section, poorly supplied with railroad facilities.

“Yes, we could get there,” decided Jerry, looking at the map. “We could best make it by road and river, as well as by some lake travel. See,” he went on, tracing out a route with a pencil. “We could go up that far in the auto, leave the car there, and make the rest of the trip in the motor boat. That river would take us nearly to Hurdtown, and we could finish up with a lake trip.”

“Shall we do it?” asked Bob.

“I’m willing, if you are,” assented Jerry. “I sure do want to have a talk with the professor.”

“Well, it will be an all-right jaunt; merely as a trip,” said Ned slowly, “and of course we’ll stand by you, Jerry. But I don’t see how we’re going to do any water traveling--not with our motor boat, anyhow. We can’t haul it along behind the auto very well.”

“No, but we could ship it on in advance, and have it waiting for us at the head of Silver River. Then we can go down that to Lake Mogan and so on to Hurdtown. It will be quite a trip, but maybe we’ll enjoy it.”

“Enjoy it! I should say we would!” cried Bob. “We can take along a lot of things to eat, and----”

He stopped as he saw his chums smiling at him. A flicker of amusement also came into the face of Mrs. Johnson.

“Well, I certainly will be glad if you boys can locate the professor,” she said. “Tell him I was quite worried about him. But then I don’t s’pose that will do any good--he’ll do just the same thing next time--or worse. But you can send me word how he is when you find him, and that’s more than he’d do. When he writes all he thinks about is his bugs, and he’ll write and tell me how many of such-and-such an insect he has. He gives them their Latin names, and he might just as well talk Italian to me. But you boys will look after him; won’t you?”

“We sure will!” exclaimed Jerry. In spite of the feeling he had that Dr. Snodgrass had not played fair with him, the tall lad could not forget the affection he had for the absent-minded scientist.

“Well, if we’re going to make that long trip we’d better set about it,” spoke Ned. “We’ll have to go home and make preparations, I suppose.”

“Oh, sure!” broke in Bob. “It’ll take a lot of grub----”

“Can’t you think of anything else, Chunky?” asked Jerry, with a smile. “Of course we’ll have to make some plans,” he went on, “and arrange to ship the motor boat. We’d better get busy, I guess.”

They said good-bye to Mrs. Johnson, and, a little later, were on their way back home in the auto. The visit to the professor’s house had detained them somewhat, as Mrs. Johnson insisted that they stay to dinner.

“We can’t make Cresville by night,” observed Ned, looking at his watch, when they were on the road. Ned was at the wheel.

“No, we’ll stay at a hotel until morning, after we cover as much ground as we care to,” decided Jerry. “No use taking any chances with night travel.”

They had said nothing to Mrs. Johnson about their reasons for wanting to see the professor, and to his original one, of merely desiring an explanation about the yellow clay, Jerry had added another.

“Fellows,” he said, “I’m not so sure but what mother could claim that she was fraudulently induced to sell that land. It wasn’t a square deal, anyhow, and maybe the professor, unless he’s too friendly with that Universal Plaster Company, could give evidence in our favor.”

“What good would it do?” asked Bob.

“Why, if we could prove that the sale of the land was brought about by fraud, the transfer would be set aside,” Jerry said. “Mother could have her property again, and get a profit from the medicated mud. I only hope it will turn out that way.”

“And you think the professor can help you?” asked Ned.

“He may be able to. I can’t believe that he’s gone back on me altogether, though it does look so.”

Discussing this subject made the time pass quickly for the boys, and soon they had arrived at a hotel where, once before, they had put up over night.

“We’ll stay here,” decided Jerry, “and go on in the morning.”

At supper that evening Bob called Jerry’s attention to an advertisement in the paper, extolling the virtues of the yellow clay for rheumatism and other ills.

“Don’t take my appetite away, Chunky!” begged Jerry. “I don’t want to think about it until I have to. And yet, with it all, I can’t believe the professor has betrayed us.”

“Me either,” chimed in Ned.

Mrs. Hopkins, after some thought, consented to the plans of her son and his chums.

“I know you will be careful,” she said, “though I have not much hope that you will accomplish anything. I haven’t the least idea that Professor Snodgrass is at fault. He is not that sort of a character. There has been some mistake, I am sure. But the trip may do you good, even if you don’t get my land back, Jerry,” and she smiled at her impulsive son.

“Well, I’ll give the professor a chance to explain, anyhow,” the tall lad remarked. “One funny thing about it is that he hasn’t sent for the things he left here. I should think he’d want them. There are some specimens, and his clothes. I wonder----”

Jerry was interrupted by a ring at the door. A servant came back with a note.

“Great Scott!” cried Jerry, as he noted the writing on the envelope, “it’s from Professor Snodgrass himself!”

“Maybe he’s coming back!” added Ned.

“Or maybe it’s an explanation,” said Bob.

But it was neither, as Jerry discovered when he opened it. It was merely a request that the professor’s possessions at the Hopkins house be sent to an address he gave.

“I am off after a two-tailed lizard,” the scientist wrote. “I’ll see you boys later. No time to come and say good-bye.”

“Humph! He was in something of a hurry,” observed Jerry.

The note thus delivered was the one Professor Snodgrass had written at the instigation of Fussel and his fellow conspirator, who had used the scientist for their own ends. They had held back his communication until it pleased them to have it delivered. They now thought they had matters in their own hands. Of course Jerry and his chums had no means of knowing this.

“Well, we’ll send his things, of course,” Jerry decided. “Or, rather, we’ll take them to him ourselves. We can do it as quickly as they would go to him by express. Come on, boys, let’s hustle and get on the trail.”

The motor boat was sent by freight to the headwaters of Silver River, and then the boys spent a few days getting their own outfit ready to take with them in their auto.

“Say, I wish you’d take me!” cried Andy Rush, when he heard something of the prospective trip. “I’d help--do the cooking--bring the water--rustle the wood--stand guard--Noddy Nixon might try some of his funny tricks--I’d stand him off--take me along--I need a vacation--I’ll pump up the tires--whoop!”

“You’ve got enough hot air--that’s sure--to pump up a dozen tires, Andy,” said Jerry. “But it can’t be done!”