Bart Stirling's Road to Success by Allen Chapman

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"Mr. Green," he said, approaching the bar, "I am looking for Lem Wacker.
Can you tell me where I may find him?"

"Eh? oh, young Stirling, isn't it? Wacker? Why, yes, I know where he
is."

He came out slowly from the obscurity of the bar, blinking his faded
eyes.

Bart knew he would not be unfriendly. His father, one stormy night a few
years previous, had picked up Green half frozen to death in a snowdrift,
where he had fallen in a drunken stupor.

Every Christmas day since then, Green had regularly sent a jug of liquor
to his father, with word by the messenger that it was for "the squarest
man in Pleasantville, who had saved his life."

Mr. Stirling had set Bart a practical temperance example by pouring the
liquor into the sink, but had not offended Green by declining his
well-meant offerings.

Bart remembered this, and felt that he might appeal to Green to some
purpose.

"Mr. Wacker is not at home," he explained, "and I wish to find him. I
understand he was here last night."

"He was," assented Green. "Came here about ten, and hasn't left the
house since."

"Why!" ejaculated Bart--and paused abruptly. "He is here now?"

"Asleep upstairs."

"And he has been here since--he is here now!" questioned Bart
incredulously.

"He was, ten minutes ago, when I came down--" asserted Green.

Bart stood dumbfounded. He was at fault--the thought flashed over his
mind in an instant.

It would not be so easy as he had fancied to run down the burglars, for
if what Silas Green said was true, Lem Wacker could prove a most
conclusive _alibi_.

CHAPTER XVII

A FAINT CLEW

"What's the trouble, Stirling?" inquired Silas Green, as Bart stood
silently thinking out the problem set before him. "You seem sort of
disappointed to find Wacker here. If you didn't think he was here, why
did you come inquiring for him?"

"I knew he came here last night," said Bart. "Mrs. Wacker told me so."

"Do you want to see him?"

"No, I think not," answered Bart after a moment's reflection.

"Then is there anything else I can do for you, or tell you? You seem
troubled. They say I'm a crabbed, treacherous old fellow. All the same,
I would do a good turn for Robert Stirling's son!"

"Thank you," said Bart, feeling easier. "If you will, you might tell me
who was with Lem Wacker last night."

"Two men--don't know them from Adam, never saw them before. Lem drove
up with them in his rig about ten o'clock. They took the horse and wagon
around to the side shed and came in, drank and talked a lot among
themselves, and finally started playing cards in the little room
yonder."

"By themselves?"

"Yes. Once, when I went in with refreshments, Wacker was in a terrible
temper. It seemed he had lost all his money, and he had staked his rig
and lost that, too. One of the two men laughed at him, and rallied him,
remarking he would have 'his share,' whatever that meant, in a day or
two, and then they would meet again and give him his revenge. By the
way, I'm off in my story--Wacker did leave here, about eleven o'clock."

"Alone?"

"Yes. He was gone half an hour, came back looking wise and excited,
joined his cronies again, and at midnight was helpless. My man and I
carried him upstairs to bed."

"What became of the two men?"

"They sat watching the clock till closing time, one o'clock, went out,
unhitched the horse, and drove off."

"I wish I knew who they were," murmured Bart.

"I suppose I might worry it out of Wacker, when he gets his head clear,"
suggested Green.

"I don't believe he would tell you the truth--and he might suspect."

"Suspect what?" demanded Green keenly.

"Never mind, Mr. Green. Can I take a look into the room where they spent
the evening?"

"Certainly--go right in."

Bart held his breath, nearly suffocated by the mixed liquor and tobacco
taint in the close, disorderly looking apartment.

His eye passed over the stained table, the broken glasses and litter of
cigar stubs. Then he came nearer to the table. One corner was covered
with chalk marks.

They apparently represented the score of the games the trio had played.
There were three columns.

At the head of one was scrawled the name "Wacker," at the second "Buck,"
at the third "Hank."

Bart wondered if he had better try to interview Lem Wacker. He decided
in the negative.

In the first place, Wacker would not be likely to talk with him--if he
did, he would be on his guard and prevaricate; and, lastly, as long as
he was asleep he was out of mischief, and helpless to interfere with
Bart.

The young express agent left the Sharp Corner without saying anything
further to Silas Green.

He had his theory, and his plan. His theory was that Lem Wacker, with a
perfect knowledge of the express office situation, had "fixed" the night
watchman's lunch, and employed two accomplices to do the rest of the
work.

When Wacker woke up, he would simply say he had sold his rig to two
strangers, and, so far as the actual burglary was concerned, would be
able to prove a conclusive _alibi_.

The men who had committed the deed had driven off with the wagon and
trunk, and by this time were undoubtedly at a safe distance in hiding.

Bart went home, got his breakfast, told his mother a trunk had got lost
and he might have to go down the road to look it up, returned to the
express office, found Darry Haven and McCarthy on duty, gave them some
routine directions, and left the place.

Darry Haven followed him outside with a rather serious face.

"Bart," he said anxiously, "Mrs. Colonel Harrington drove down here a
few minutes ago."

"About the trunk, I suppose."

"Yes, and she was wild over it. Said you had got rid of the trunk to
spite her, because she had had some trouble with your mother."

"Nonsense! Anything else?"

"If the trunk don't show up to-day, she says she will have you
arrested."

Bart shrugged his shoulders, but he was consciously uneasy.

"What did you tell her, Darry?" he inquired.

"I put on all the official dignity I could assume, but was very polite
all the time, informed her that mislaid, delayed and irregular express
matter were common occurrences, that the company was responsible for its
contracts, counted you one of its most reliable agents, and assured her
that very possibly within twenty-four hours she would find her trunk
delivered safe and sound at its destination."

"Good for you!" laughed Bart. "Keep an eye on things. I'll show up, or
wire, by night."

"Any clew, Bart?"

"I think so."

Bart went straight to the home of Professor Abner Cunningham.

That venerable gentleman--antiquarian, scientist and profound
scholar--had a queer little place at the edge of the town where he
raised wonderful bees, and grew freak squashes inside glass molds in
every grotesque shape imaginable.

He was a friend to all the boys in town, and Bart joined him without
ceremony as he found him out on the lawn in his skull cap and dressing
gown, studying a hornets' nest with a magnifying glass.

"Ah, young Bartley--or Bartholomew, is it?" smiled the innocent-faced
old scientist jovially. "I have a new volume on nomenclature that gives
quite an interesting chapter on the Bartholomew subject. It takes you
back to the eleventh century, in France--"

"Professor, excuse me," interrupted Bart gracefully, "but something very
vital to the twentieth century is calling for urgent attention, and I
wanted to ask you a question or two."

"Surely. Glad to tell you anything," assured the professor, happiest
always when he was talking, and willing to talk for hours with anyone
who would listen to him. "Come into the library."

"I really haven't the time, Professor," said Bart. "Please let me ask if
you had charge of getting up that directory of the county that a city
firm published?"

"Two years ago? yes," nodded the professor assentingly. "It was quite a
pleasant and profitable task. I believe I saw about every resident in
the county in preparing that directory."

"I am going to ask you a foolish question, perhaps, Professor,"
continued Bart, "for an accurate person like you of course took down
only correct names, and not nicknames. Here is the gist of it, then. I
am looking for two men, and I know only that they live outside of
Pleasantville, and call themselves Buck and Hank."

"Well! well! well!" muttered Professor Cunningham in a musing tone.
"Hank, proper name Henry; Buck, proper name Buckingham--hold on, I've
got it! Come in!" insisted the professor animatedly. "Oh, you haven't
time? Buckingham? Sure thing! Wait here, just a minute."

The professor rushed into the house, and in about two minutes came
rushing out again.

He had an open book in his hand, and stumbled over flower beds and walks
recklessly as he consulted it on the run, spilling out some loose papers
it contained, and leaving a white trail behind him.

"You see here the value of keeping notes of everything," he panted, on
reaching Bart--"nothing is lost in this world, however small. Here we
are: 'County at large.' Now then, in my private notes: 'Allessandro'
uncommon name--'look up--probably Greek.' 'Alaric, Altemus, Artemas,
Benno, Borl, Bud--derived from Budlongor, Budmeister--Buck'--I've got
it: 'Buckingham, last name Tolliver, residence: Millville, occupation
none.' Hold on. We've got the clew--now for the town record."

The Professor again flitted away to the house, and darted back again
with a new volume in his hand.

"Here you are!" he cried, selecting a printed page. "'Millville,
population two hundred and sixty, not on railroad. R.S.T. Tappan,
Tevens, Tolliver'--Ah, 'Buckingham Tolliver, Henry Tolliver,' must be
brothers, I fancy. That's all I've got on record. Information any use to
you?"

"Is it?" cried Bart, in profound admiration of the old bookworm's
system. "Professor, you are the wisest man and one of the best men I
ever met!"

CHAPTER XVIII

A DUMB FRIEND

At three o'clock that afternoon Bart Stirling sat down to rest at the
side of a dusty country road, pretty well tired out, and about ready to
return to Pleasantville.

When old Professor Cunningham gave him the names Buck and Hank Tolliver,
Bart was positive that the same covered the identity of the two men who
had been at the Sharp Corner with Lem Wacker.

Bart had started at once for Millville. His first intention was to get a
conveyance at the livery stable, his first impulse to solicit the
co-operation of the town police.

While discussing these points mentally, however, a farmer driving west
came down the road. He had a good team, said he was passing through
Millville, seemed glad to give Bart a lift, and so it was that the young
express agent found himself on the solitary lookout there, two hours
before noon.

He experienced no difficulty whatever in finding out all about the
Tollivers inside of twenty minutes after his arrival.

They were the last members of a shiftless, indolent family who had lived
on the edge of Millville for twenty years.

When the father and mother died the family broke up. The two boys, Buck
and Hank, kept bachelor's hall at the ricketty old ruin of a house on
the river until ejected by its owner for non-payment of rent, and then
went to the bad generally.

They patched up an abandoned shack over on the bottoms, the postmaster
at Millville told Bart, and lived by fishing, hunting and their
depredations on orchards and chicken coops.

In one of their nightly forays about a year previous they were captured
and fined heavily. They could not pay the fine and were sent to jail for
six months.

About the first of June they were released, came back to Millville,
found their old shack burned down, and since then, the postmaster
understood, had camped out in the woods, giving the town a wide
berth--in fact, only occasionally appearing, to buy a little flour,
sugar or coffee, or, mostly, tobacco.

Nobody had seen them for over a week--nobody knew anything of a
newly-painted red wagon.

It seemed probable, Bart theorized, that if they had made for hiding in
any of their familiar woodland haunts, they had reached the same by
driving through Millville before daylight, and when nobody was astir.

Bart finally found a woodcutter who knew where the Tollivers had had
their camping place the week previous. He described the spot and Bart
was soon there--a secluded gully about two miles from town.

The place showed evidences of having been used as a camp, but not
recently, and Bart went on a general blind hunt.

He traversed the woods for miles, both sides of a dried up rivercourse,
and inquired at farmhouses and of occasional pedestrians he met.

It was all of no avail. At three o'clock in the afternoon, tired,
bramble-torn and a little discouraged, he sat down by the roadside to
rest and think. He began to censure himself for taking the independent
course he had pursued.

"I should have telegraphed the company the circumstances of the
burglary, and put the matter in the hands of the Pleasantville police,"
he reflected. "If the trunk had belonged to anybody except Mrs. Colonel
Harrington, I would have done so at once. Somebody coming!" he
interrupted his soliloquy, as he caught a vague movement through the
shrubbery where the road curved.

"No--it's only a dog."

The animal came into view going a straight, fast course, its head
drooping, a broken rope trailing from its neck.

Bart suddenly sprang to his feet, for, studying the animal more closely,
something familiar presented itself and he ran out into the middle of
the road.

"Come here--good fellow!" he hailed coaxingly, as the animal approached.

But with a slight growl, and eyeing him suspiciously, it made a detour
in the road, passing him.

"Lem Wacker's dog--I am sure of that!" explained Bart, naturally
excited. "Come, old fellow--here! here! what is his name? I've got
it--Christmas. Come here, Christmas!"

The dog halted suddenly, faced about, and stared at Bart.

Then, when he repeated the name, it sank to its haunches panting, and,
head on one side, regarded him inquiringly.

The animal was a big half-breed mastiff and shepherd dog that Lem Wacker
had introduced to his railroad friends with great unction, one Christmas
day.

He had claimed it to be a gift from a friend just returned from Europe,
who had brought over the famous litter of pups of which it was one.

Wacker had estimated its value at five hundred dollars. Next day he cut
the price in half. New Year's day, being hard up, he confidentially
offered to sell it for five dollars.

After that it went begging for fifty cents and trade, and no takers. Lem
kicked the poor animal around as "an ornery, no-good brute," and had to
keep it tied up on his own premises all of the time to evade paying for
a license tag.

Meeting the dog now, gave a new animation to Bart's thoughts.

The sequence of its appearance, here, ten miles away from home, was easy
to pursue. It had broken away from its new owners--Buck and Hank
Tolliver--and they were somewhere further up the road.

Christmas was making for home. It was hardly possible that the animal
knew Bart, for, although he had seen it several times, he had never
spoken to it before. The call of its name, however, had checked the
animal, and now as Bart drew a cracker from his pocket and extended it,
the dog began to advance slowly and cautiously towards him.

Bart saw the importance of making a friend of the animal. He stood
perfectly still, talking in a gentle, persuasive tone.

Christmas came up to him timorously, sniffed all about his feet, and
suddenly wagged its tail and put its feet up on him in a friendly
manifestation of delight.

Its keen sense of scent had apparently recognized that Bart had been a
visitor to the Wacker home that day. It now took the cracker from Bart's
hand, then another, and as Bart sat down again stretched itself placidly
and contentedly at his side.

"This looks all right," ruminated Bart speculatively. "If I can only get
Christmas to go back the way he came, I feel I have found the right
trail."

Bart finally arose, and the dog, too. The animal turned its face east,
wagged its tail expectantly, and eagerly studied Bart's face and
movements.

As he took a step up the road the animal's tail went down, nerveless,
and its eyes regarded him beseechingly.

"Come on, old fellow!" hailed Bart encouragingly, patting the dog. It
followed him reluctantly. Then he made a rollic of it, jumping the
ditch, racing the animal, stopping abruptly, leaping over it, apparently
making Christmas forget everything except that it had a friendly
companion.

At length Bart induced the dog to go ahead. It led the way with evident
reluctance. It would stop and eye Bart with a decidedly serious eye. He
urged it forward, and finally it got down to a slow trot, sniffing the
road and looking altogether out of harmony with its forced course.

Christmas was about twenty yards ahead of Bart at the end of a two
miles' jaunt, when he shied to the extreme edge of the road and drew to
his haunches.

Here wagon tracks led into the timber. The road had been used lately,
Bart soon discerned.

"Come on, Christmas!" he hailed, branching off into the new obscure
roadway.

The dog circled him, but could not be induced to leave the main road.
Bart made a grab for the trailing rope. The animal eluded him, gave him
one reproachful look, turned its nose east, and shot off, headed for
home like an arrow.

"I've lost my ally," murmured Bart, "but I think I have got my clew.
Christmas does not like this road, which looks as if he left his captors
somewhere down its length. I'll try to locate them."

Bart followed the tortuous windings of the narrow road, through brush,
over hillocks, down into depressions, and finally into the timber.

He came to a clearing, forcing his way past a border of prickly bushes,
the tops of which seemed freshly broken, as though a wagon had recently
passed over them.

As he got past them, Bart came to a decisive halt, and stared hard and
with a thrill of satisfaction.

Twenty feet away, under a spreading tree, a horse was tethered, and
right near it was a red wagon--holding a trunk.

CHAPTER XIX

FOOLING THE ENEMY

Our hero's impulse was to at once spring into the wagon and see if the
trunk was still intact.

A natural cautiousness checked him, however, and he was glad of it a
minute later as he detected a rustling in the thick undergrowth back of
the tree.

A human figure seemed suddenly to drop to the ground, and a little
distance to the left of it Bart was sure he saw two sharp human eyes
fixed upon him.

He never let on that he suspected for a moment that he was not entirely
alone, but, walking over to a tree stump, where, spread out on a
newspaper, was the remains of a lunch, he acted delighted at the
discovery, picked up a hunk of bread in one hand, a piece of cheese in
the other, and, throwing himself on the green sward at full length,
proceeded to munch the eatables, with every semblance of satisfaction.

Bart's mind worked quickly. He felt that it was up to him to play a
part, and he prepared to do so.

He was morally certain that two persons in fancied hiding were watching
his every movement, and they must be Buck and Hank Tolliver.

Bart hoped they had never seen him before; he felt pretty certain that
they did not know him at all.

Bart sprang to his feet. He had thrown his cap back on his head in a
"sporty," off-handish way, and he tried hard to impersonate a reckless
young adventurer taking things as they came, and audacious enough to
pick up a handy meal anyhow or anywhere. He paid not the least apparent
attention to the wagon or the trunk, although he cast more than one
sidelong glance in that direction.

He walked up to the horse, stroked its nose, and said boisterously:

"Wish I had this layout--wouldn't I reach California like a nabob,
though!"

Then Bart went back to the stump. He purposely faced the patch of brush
where he knew his watchers were lurking.

Ransacking his pockets, with a comical, quizzical grin on his face, he
produced a solitary nickel, placed it ostentatiously on the tree stump
and remarked:

"Honesty is the best policy--there you are, landlord! and much obliged
for the handout."

Then, striking a jaunty dancing step, he started to cross the clearing,
whistling a jolly tune.

"Hey!"

Bart half expected the summons. He halted in professed wonderment,
looked up, to the right, to the left, in every direction except that
from which he was well aware the hail had come.

"Look here, you!"

Bart now turned in the right direction. A man of about thirty had
revealed himself from the brush.

He had small, bright eyes, a shrewd, narrow face, and Bart knew from
discription who he was--Buck Tolliver.

"Why, hello! somebody here?" exclaimed Bart, feigning surprise and then
fright, and he made a movement as if to run for it.

"Don't you bolt," ordered Buck Tolliver, advancing--"come back here,
kid."

Bart slowly retraced his steps. Then he manifested new alarm as a second
figure stepped out from the brush.

Recalling what the Millville postmaster had told him, the young express
agent was quickly aware that this second individual was Buck's brother,
Hank.

Buck was the spokesman and leader. He came up near to Bart and looked
him over critically.

"What you doing here?" he demanded, with a suspicious frown.

"Nothing," said Bart, with a grin.

"Where do you come from?"

"Me--nowhere!" chuckled Bart, winking deliberately and then, walking
over to the horse, he fondled his long ears, with the remark: "If I had
a dandy rig like you've got here, I bet I'd go somewheres, though!"

"Where would you go?" inquired Buck Tolliver curiously.

"I'd go to California--that's the place to do something, and make a
name, and amount to something."

Bart's off-handed ingenuousness had completely disarmed the men. He
pretended to be busy petting the horse, but saw Buck Tolliver slip back
to his brother, and a few quick questions and answers passed between
them. Then Buck came up to him again.

"See here, kid, are you acquainted around here at all?"

"Did you ever see me around here before?" chaffed Bart audaciously.

"Don't get fresh! This is business."

"Why, yes--I reckon I could find my way from Springfield to Bascober."

Bart had mentioned two points miles remote from the Millville district.

"He'll do," spoke Hank Tolliver for the first time. "Ask him, Buck."

"Do you want to drive that rig a few miles for us for a dollar?" asked
Buck Tolliver.

"Me?" cried Bart. "I guess so!"

"Can you obey orders?"

"Try me, boss."

"He'll do, I tell you. What do you want to waste time this way for!"
snapped Hank Tolliver irritably.

"Hitch him up," ordered Buck to Bart. "Come on, Hank."

Bart chuckled to himself. He did not know what all this might lead to,
but it was a famous start.

While he was putting on the horse's harness and hitching him up, the
brothers spread a piece of canvas over the wagon box. This they tucked
in, and completely covered trunk and canvas with long grass pulled from
the edge of a water pit near by.

Bart had the rig in full starting shape by the time they had concluded
their labors.

"What's the ticket, Captain?" he inquired of Buck, looking him squarely
in the face.

"You seem to know enough not to answer questions about yourself,"
observed Buck--"try and be as clever if anybody quizzes you about this
wagon."

"Why should they?"

"Oh, they may. If they do, you're from--let me see--Blackberry Hill,
remember?"

"All right--with a load of garden truck, eh?" propounded Bart
ingeniously.

"You hit it correct. What we want you to do is this: Drive down to the
main road, and turn west. Keep on straight ahead, and don't turn
anywhere. About nine miles west you'll hit Hamilton. Drive right through
the town, but as soon as you get out of it take the first branch south
from the turnpike, and keep on till you reach an old mill on the river.
Wait for us there."

"Why," said Bart, "aren't you going with me?"

"No," answered Buck Tolliver definitely.

"Why not?"

"None of your business," snapped out Hank.

"Oh!"

"You mind yours, strictly, or there will be trouble," warned Buck, and
Bart saw from the look in his hard face that he was a dangerous man,
once aroused. "You do this job with neatness and dispatch, and it will
mean a good deal more than a dollar."

"Crackey!" cried Bart, snapping the whip hilariously--"maybe this is one
of those story-book happenings where a fellow strikes fame and fortune!"

"Maybe it is," assented Buck drily.

Bart climbed up to the seat. He started up the horse, the Tollivers
following after the wagon till they reached the main road.

"When I get to the mill--" began Bart.

"We'll be there to meet you," announced Buck Tolliver.

"I don't see," growled Hank in an undertone to his brother, "why we
would take any risk riding under that grass."

"You leave this affair to me," retorted Buck. "If the kid gets through
all right, then we're all right, aren't we?"

"I suppose so."

"And we've got to wait as we agreed--for Wacker."

Bart had just turned into the main road. At the mention of that ominous
name, the young express agent brought the whip down upon the horse's
flanks with a sharp snap.

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