It wasn’t hard closing it again when we got it started. It moved back very slowly until the ends of it fitted the ends of the road. The little girl just stood there kind of disgusted with us. Pee-wee didn’t say a word. As soon as the way was open the cow started across, the little girl after her. She looked back two or three times as if she didn’t know what to make of us. Once the cow looked back, kind of puzzled like; that’s the way it seemed to me. CHAPTER XVII WE COOK THE DUCK “Rescued by a brave, heroic little girl,” I said, as we went tramping off into the road. “Let’s be sure that we’re headed in the right direction,” Warde said. “After what happened I don’t trust myself at all. Is this the end of the bridge we got on at, or is it the other end?” “It’s one end or the other,” I said. “One end’s as good as the other if not better,” Hervey said. “Come on, follow your leader——” “Have a heart,” I said; “wait a minute. Let me collect my senses. _That’s_ north and _that’s _south, and the Hudson is over that way—east. This creek flows into the Hudson. All right, we’re supposed to go in the opposite direction from the direction that little girl is taking. We’re on the right end of the bridge.” “Right,” Warde said. “That means that the piece of tin that Pee-wee saw is across the bridge,” Bert said. “I’ll go back and hunt for it,” said Pee-wee. “Here, hold the fish.” “At last we’re going to have something to eat,” I said; “I’m so hungry I could eat the piece of tin and all.” “You’re not going to tell them at camp that we were saved by a little girl, are you?” Pee-wee wanted to know. “Yes, and I’m going to tell them that a cow laughed at us,” I said. “Hurry up, go and hunt up that piece of tin; I’m starving.” You see how it was, we were at the north end of the bridge and our way was north. I’m telling you because everything was so mixed up on that crazy hike that maybe you don’t know where you’re at. This is chapter Seventeen and it’s called, “We Cook the Duck” but you can’t always go by names. Don’t get worried, if you lose your way just follow me. After that terrible adventure the principal thing about us was that we were hungry; we were a kind of a walking famine. I don’t know if that fish shrunk, but anyway it didn’t look as big as it had looked before. I guess it was because our appetites were bigger. Pee-wee started back across the bridge to hunt for the piece of tin he had seen in the woods, and the rest of us began gathering twigs and pieces of wood for a fire. Oh boy, but that fish looked good! He was dead by that time but he was good and fresh just the same. We ran a forked stick through his gills and hung him in the water where it was cool and sat around waiting for Pee-wee. We had everything all ready to start the fire. Pretty soon along came our young hero with the piece of tin, tiptoeing across the bridge, very excited and mysterious.