One thing I’ll say for Pee-wee, he can make the loudest noise with his mouth and the smallest noise with his feet of any Scout I ever knew. He’s sure one little fiend when it comes to stalking--grasshoppers, crickets, field-mice and everything he stalks. And believe me, you just try to stalk a field-mouse, you just try it. But just the same I felt kind of scary waiting for him. I picked my way along the rocky wall till I came to the place where we could make a short cut out if we had to. It was a kind of wide crevice where you could scramble up. I kept waiting and waiting, and he didn’t come back. Then I began thinking what I would do if he didn’t come back at all. Gee whiz, bandits these days, they don’t care what they do. I was kind of sorry I let Pee-wee go. All of a sudden there he was. And even in the dark I could see he looked good and scared. CHAPTER XII THE REWARD Pee-wee was so excited he could hardly speak. “We don’t have to hurry,” he said, “because nobody saw me--I didn’t make a sound. Listen, it’s bandits! I crept around to the other side of the place and there isn’t any canvas there at all. The top is all covered with brush like you said and underneath there’s a couple of blankets where people sleep. _Listen_--there are pistols--three of them--one great big one--I _saw_ them. And I saw a mask or something like bandits use--black. Even a shotgun I saw--listen--there’s nobody in there now, but you can bet I didn’t wait.” “Are you sure you’re not dreaming?” I asked him. “Do you think I don’t know a dream when I see one?” he said. “Do you call a shotgun and pistols and a burglar’s mask all things like that a dream? And you needn’t say that it’s somebody hunting because this isn’t the hunting season so you needn’t say it. And nobody ever goes camping like that--no _sireeee_. I know who’s hiding there all right. It’s those bandits that robbed the post office in Warnerville and we can get the reward and I’m the one that wanted to sneak up and you said no, so that shows how much you don’t know--it’s good I didn’t do like you said because now you got the proof I didn’t get killed. And I bet this cleft is where they came down, too. We’d better get away from here.” “I guess you’re right,” I said. “_Oh boy_, that’s some discovery!” he said. “It’s even almost better than finding that will. And anyway I’m elected leader now because I discovered them so I’m going to be the one to say what we’ll do.” I said, “It was a very exciting election, I’ll say that. All right, kid, come ahead back. I guess you win to-night. What are we going to do about it?” He said, all excited, “To-morrow morning early we’re going to go to Bagley Center and tell the police--that’s the nearest village. Oh boy, we’ll get the reward because I saw a bulletin in the Catskill Post Office and I think it’s a thousand dollars, anyway there were a lot of naughts----” “Maybe the naughts were upside down,” I said. I had to laugh he was so excited.