Brent went back along the track a little way and began walking along the ties. “There’s a spike, there’s another, there’s another, there’s another,” he kept saying, “and here’s another—with a different kind of a head. Notice? More square—see?” He kept walking along. “Now there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight” and he kept walking along and counting up to about eleven or twelve “of those square headed spikes. See? They’re different from the others and they were driven in after the others. Can’t foil the old Newburgh Sleuth. This is where the train was derailed.
“The way I see it is, those robbers ripped up the tracks for about ten or fifteen feet and set the ends apart and spread some leaves over the break. When the railroad people spiked the rail down again, they just happened to use spikes with heads of a little different shape. Then there was a lapse of twenty-five years—that’s what they usually call it, isn’t it, Pee-wee?—and, presto, along came the Boy Scouts. Nothing to it. Right here is where that hold-up occurred—you can take it from the Church Mice Patrol. Flowers and testimonials should be addressed to First B. S. Troop, Newburgh and sent prepaid.”
I just blurted out, “Brent, you’re a _wonder_!”
Harry just kept shaking his head and then he said, “Brent, we’ve got to hand it to you fellows. Pee-wee did a pretty good little stunt in deduction himself, and the fact that these spikes are on the left side bears out what he said.”
Then he told Brent about what Pee-wee had said, and Brent said, “Well, it seems we haven’t got anything on Scout Harris, when it comes to deducing.”
“Did you hunt for the tree?” Harry asked him.
Brent said, “No, because we weren’t sure of there being any tree; and you weren’t either. We came up the track hunting for signs of a derailed train, and we found them. It was as easy as pie.”
“Some pie isn’t so easy,” Willie Wide-Awake said.
Brent said, “Alas, ’tis true!” in that funny way he has. I guess little Bill had had some experience, hey?
“Now come back to the tent and I’ll show you something else,” Brent said; “we found it in the bushes when we were collecting firewood. How about you? Are you game for camp-fire to-night?”
“You bet we are,” I said; “I’d rather have a camp-fire any day than an auto trip.”