[Illustration:  “NOW TAKE A GOOD LOOK,” WHISPERED SUE TO BUNNY. Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour. Page 153.]

CHAPTER XVI

IN THE DITCH

For a few seconds the medicine man looked sharply at Mr. Brown.  He did not appear to understand what the children’s father had asked.  Then, finally, Dr. Perry asked: 

“Is it a joke you are making?”

“No, indeed.  I’m serious,” said Mr. Brown.  “We are looking for a lost boy, or rather, a runaway boy, named Fred Ward.  The Wards live next door to us, and when we started on this trip, which is not yet finished, the boy’s parents said they would be glad if we would try to find him and send him——­”

“Tell us, please,” broke in Bunny, unable to wait any longer for the question he wanted answered.  “Tell us if your banjo player is really colored?”

“Oh yes, he’s really colored all right,” said the medicine man, “but not by Mother Nature.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Sue.

“That means, little girl,” said Dr. Perry as he put away the unsold bottles of his medicine, “that my banjo player blackens his face and hands himself, and reddens his lips, to make him look like a negro.”

“Can you tell us who he really is?”

“No, I am sorry to say I can not,” said Dr. Perry, and he bowed respectfully to Mrs. Brown, who had asked the question.  “But I’ll let you ask him yourself.  He usually goes in back there,” and he nodded toward his wagon, “to wash the black off after the show each night.  No doubt he is in there now scrubbing himself, for I must say he is a very clean person, is John Lane.”

“John Lane!  Is that what he calls himself?” asked Mr. Brown.

“He has since he has been with me, which, however, is only the last few days.  I called him professor just for fun, as it sounds better with the public.  But I’ll let you ask him yourself.  He must be through washing by now.  It may be he is a runaway boy.  It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had ’em join me.  Sometimes they get sorry and run back home again, and sometimes they drift away and I don’t see ’em again.  But we’ll soon find out if this is the boy you want.”

He opened a door leading off the back platform.  It seemed to give admittance to the middle of the medicine van.

“Here you, John!  John Lane!” called Dr. Perry.  “There are some folks out here who want to see you.  They want to see how you look when you have the black off.  You ought to be washed now, for it’s almost time to go to the hotel for the night.  Come on out.”

There was no answer to the medicine man’s call.  He stepped inside the wagon, called again, and then, lighting a lamp, which stood in a bracket, looked around inside the van.

“John seems to have gone,” the medicine man said.  “I guess he finished washing off the black, and then slipped out the front way to go to the hotel.  He did that once before, without waiting for me to count up my money and come along.  You see I travel only by day, putting up the horse, that draws my van, at a hotel stable each night.