CHAPTER XVIII THE GYPSY VAN

Jake jumped ashore; Burk followed, and pushed the canoe far out, so that it floated empty on the face of Lake Wallis.

Never had Jake Utway taken a paddle in such a wild canoe race! It was impossible that the two fugitives should still be at liberty. The boy had given up hope long before they had reached the lake and taken the canoe; their furious progress across the half-mile of water had seemed the despairing effort of a dream; but here they were, miraculously ashore again, and for the moment still free. Yet the dream feeling still persisted; Jake moved his body as if he were wrapped in the twining coils of a nightmare, when horrors beset the sleeper and all efforts to escape the menacing shapes in pursuit are of no avail.

“Tired, partner?” asked Burk. The man seemed to be made of whipcord; he had taken the stern paddle in their mad dash, yet his set face showed no trace of anything but determination.
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“I can keep going,” Jake managed to say.

“We’ll have to get somewhere else pretty quick.” Burk pointed toward the far shore from which they had come. “Look over there! See that little motorboat just pushing out? Well, I’m pretty sure that the people in it won’t take long to get over here and pick up our trail again. We’re in for it again—but at least we’ve got a few minutes’ start.”

“I’m ready. Which way?”

Burk shook his head. “We’ve just got to trust to our luck now. They’ve driven us out into the open; I’m not much good down here near town. There’s only one way we can go.”

They had landed on a little spit of gravel on the east side of Lake Wallis, almost directly across from the town. There must have been people over on the wharf who had seen them desert the canoe, who would put their pursuers on the track at once; even now, hostile eyes might be watching their every move.
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“Don’t run—somebody may be watching us, and get suspicious,” warned the man, and set the example by walking rapidly away from the border of the lake. Jake, following, tried to smile; he felt that he couldn’t run even if his life depended upon it. They climbed a bushy slope, came out above in a little glade aglow with maple and sumach. Burk darted a look backward; the motorboat was already well on its way across, coming toward them with a feather of spray on either side of its bows.

“The state highway runs along here on this side somewhere,” remarked Burk. “We’ll have to keep away from it; it’s dangerous for us right now.”

He swerved to the right to avoid crossing the ribbon of asphalt that cut through the woods, and the two walked parallel to the files of telegraph wires lining the highway. For five minutes or so they followed a course which brought them ever nearer to Wallistown; and each of those passing minutes, they knew, brought the net of capture ever closer.

Suddenly Burk gave a sharp exclamation, and pointed. “Something funny ahead!” he said warningly.

It was too late to turn back. A few yards before them, the highway bent toward them in a sharp angle. They stopped in their tracks, and looked on a strange scene.
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The queerest vehicle Jake had ever seen was tilted drunkenly at the side of the road at the outer corner of the bend. “Half flivver, half covered wagon,” the boy described it to himself. Two little seats huddled behind the steering-wheel; the remainder of the chassis was roofed over by a spreading arc of canvas, patched and weatherworn, stretched over hoops fastened in the truck-like body of the car, from the rear of which hung down a few narrow steps. The right-hand wheel at the rear was firmly bedded in the ditch; the opposite wheel in front was raised several inches from the road. Two quaint figures stood mournfully gazing at the ditched wheel. One of these was a short, very fat woman of middle age. She stood with her stout arms akimbo, and with such a downcast look on her dark face that Jake almost burst out laughing. Her arms glittered with several bracelets, and large rings dangled from her ears. The man at her side was also short and fat, and also wore earrings, and in one hand swung a spreading black hat which, when worn, must have given him the appearance of an Italian bandit in a stage melodrama. With his other hand he was scratching among his graying locks with a perplexed air.

He must have heard Burk and Jake approaching, for he wheeled about on his toes, and flashed a dazzling display of white teeth at them.
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Jake had taken in the situation in an instant.

“We’ll help you get back on the road, Mister!” he said. “Come on, partner—let’s give them a hand!” He gripped the ditched wheel, and tried to lift it.

The little man danced about on his toes, while his wife swung back and forth until her bracelets and bangles tinkled in delight.

Burk was now at the front of the car. He pulled back the emergency brake lever, and Jake felt the strange vehicle starting to roll farther down into the ditch. He put all his strength against the tailboard; the little dark man was at his side. “Poosh—that’s right!” The boy heaved, his face red with exertion; Burk had gripped the spokes of the wheel in the ditch, and was bending all his effort to force the car from its lodgment. The united strength of the three of them slowly shoved the strange little vehicle up the slanting grade, and in half a minute the car was back on the road again, headed toward Wallistown, no worse for its plunge.
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“Many, many thanks—many!” the dark man cried happily. He clapped his villainous-looking hat on his head, and scrambling into the seat, worked the levers and steering-wheel back and forth to see that no damage had been done. “You help fine! Come up, Maria!”

“Yes, you help fine!” the little man repeated. “Now we go. You go, too?”

“We’re going the same way you are,” said Jake quickly. “You—you couldn’t give us a lift, could you?”

“For sure! For sure!” Their new acquaintance was all smiles. “You help me fine! I help you a little bit maybe.”

They needed no second invitation and darted around to the tiny set of steps that hung from the tailboard, sprang one after the other through the slit in the canvas at the back, and tumbled into the body of the caravan. An alarming pop-popping sounded in front; the wheels began to move, and the car rattled down the highway at the breath-taking speed of twenty miles an hour.
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Jake looked around the interior of the strange van. Overhead arched the canvas roof, filtering the sunshine and splashed with moving shadows as the car journeyed down the road. He found himself sitting on the edge of a bunk built across the floor of the car, directly back of the driver’s seat now occupied by the ridiculous couple whom they had helped. In one corner was a small charcoal stove. The interior was heaped with all sorts of things: a little tin trunk, cooking pots, a cage with a canary chirping inside, bundles of clothing; from hooks swung more clothing, a lantern, a jangling bucket, a spare tire. “A regular house on wheels!” he told himself. “Wonder if these people are sure-enough gypsies?”

The little dark man’s head appeared as if by magic through an opening cut in the front of the canvas, his teeth showing white against his sweeping mustachios. “That ees right! Make yourselfs like at home, eh?”

“How far are you going?” Burk asked him. “To Wallistown?”

The car bumped and shook dangerously; the head was withdrawn and the machine put back on its course again. Then the rolling black eyes were turned on them once more. “What town ees that?”

“The one just down the road there.”

“We do not like the towns. We just go on, and then go on some more. Maybe we see nice place, we stop, eh? Maybe not.” A teeth-rattling lurch of the car again demanded his full attention, and the conversation was cut off.
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Burk shook his head. “I don’t know whether we’ve done the right thing or not,” he said in a low tone. “These people seem to be going our way; but it remains to be seen whether we’re any better off than we were.”

“But, Burk—those people from the lake would have found us in no time if we hadn’t got this lift! And now we’re going south, even if it’s not very fast. And we’re hidden here under this cover, so that nobody will see us, even if the police have sent out a description.”

Burk nodded soberly. “I guess so. But you can be sure this highway is the first place they’ll watch.” He peeped out through the flap in the back of the caravan. “Look; we’re almost into Wallistown; if he stops here, I might as well be back in my cell at the prison right now. I know this was the only thing we could do; but maybe we’ve jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.” The hunted man had never been at his ease among crowds of people; now, he felt doubly unsure.

Jake tried to reassure him. “Cheer up! We’re snug enough here for a while, and it’ll give us time to think up a plan. We’ll make it yet, old timer! Now, if I only knew where Jerry was, I think I’d feel pretty good.”
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The creaking van shivered to a halt; bumped forward again. Burk chanced another look outside. “We’ve crossed the main street of town,” he whispered. “Looks like we’re going south after all.”

“Sure! That’s the stuff!” Jake replied. “You see—it was a lucky thing we were able to help out these gypsies, or whatever they are. If the cops can find us here in this travelling house, they’re pretty good. Keep a stiff upper lip, and we’ll make Canoe Mountain before dark!”