THE MYSTERY MAN OF THE MARSH
The moon was just rising out of the marsh; turning the dark rushes to a
deep bottle green and spreading a bar of gold down a channel. For two
solid hours Johnny had managed to throw off his problems and worries and
the strange grip of mysteries that had held him so long. In those two
delightful hours he had been just a boy, paddling about an enchanted
marsh in twilight and gathering darkness.
With his good pal Mazie, he had eaten the lion’s share of a lunch such as
only Mazie could prepare; strangely delicious little sandwiches and cake
that melted in your mouth, pears from a glass jar, cold chicken, and a
thermos bottle of steaming cocoa. Johnny had enjoyed all this.
And now, side by side on the narrow seat of the flat-bottomed boat, they
sat through a half hour of deep enchantment, watching the moon rise. For
a long time they sat in silence, and who can know what were the long,
long thoughts that came to them?
Whatever they were, they were destined to come to an abrupt end.
Suddenly, as his ear caught an unaccustomed sound, Johnny put a finger
over Mazie’s lips, then stood straight up to allow his eyes to sweep the
marsh. The next instant he motioned Mazie down as he dropped flat in the
bottom of the boat. For a moment they lay very still.
“Wha—what is it?” Mazie whispered.
“Sh!” Johnny’s all but inaudible whisper answered back. “Not so loud.
Some men can shoot accurately at sound. It was often done during the war.
I heard the dip of an oar and caught the gleam of a rifle. It’s—it’s the
mysterious one! It must be. Lie perfectly still. Not a sound. Perhaps he
didn’t see me.”
“I—I won’t move, Johnny.”
Johnny knew that Mazie was frightened, for he felt the wild beating of
her heart against his shoulder. But he knew she was game, too, and was
proud of her for that.
Fifteen minutes they lay there in the bottom of the boat. Speaking in the
lowest whispers, scarcely daring to breath, they listened intently, but
caught no further sound.
“Listen, Mazie,” whispered Johnny at last, “we can’t stay here all
night.”
“No, we can’t.”
“Are you afraid to stay here alone for a minute or two?”
“N—no. But what are you going to do?” she asked in sudden alarm.
“I’m going after that fellow.”
“Johnny! You’ll be killed!”
“He’ll not harm me. It’s the only way out. I’m going.”
With a grip of her hand he signalled farewell, then with astonishing
dexterity he got over the side of the boat and into the water without a
sound.
Swimming down the channel until he was opposite the spot where he judged
the man to have been, he at last began parting the rushes and making his
way slowly through them. He had not gone ten yards when he caught sight
of a black form directly before him.
“That’s him!” he breathed. “He’s in a boat. There’s a channel there.”
Lest he be detected and fired upon, he worked his way back to his own
channel, swam rapidly up this channel and then crossed the stretch of
rushes to the other side.
For a time after that he swam noiselessly in the shadow of rushes down
the channel toward the mysterious one’s boat, swam until he made out the
form of an oval bottomed, clinker-built boat. A tall man was standing up
in it. Johnny again caught the gleam of a rifle barrel.
Johnny took one deep, silent breath, then disappeared under the water.
Swimming strongly under water, he came up to the right of the boat and
almost directly beneath it. He could hear the man’s deep breathing and
caught fragments of husky mutterings.
“Now’s the time,” Johnny thought to himself.
Gripping the edge of the boat he gave it a sudden upward thrust which all
but capsized it. There followed at once a small splash and a large one.
“His rifle goes—now he takes the plunge,” thought Johnny as his heart
went racing.
“He’s safe enough now. He’ll not find his rifle at the bottom in this
darkness. He’s a tiger without his fangs.”
Johnny even had the temerity to lift himself up as high as he could in
the water and peer over the boat.
It was then that he got a real shock. The man was nowhere to be seen.
“Huh! He can’t have drowned,” Johnny reasoned.
The next instant a thought struck him which set him doing the Australian
crawl with a vengeance. The man may have known the general direction of
their boat and might have gone for it. If he had, what of Mazie?
After three minutes of breathless swimming, Johnny arrived in their
channel to find his fears unfounded. Everything was as serene as when he
had left it.
“Come on,” he said to Mazie as he climbed into the boat, “we’re going to
get out of here.”
Seizing a long pole, he stood boldly upright in the boat and sent it
shooting through the water. Ten minutes later he beached his boat, then
dragged it to a low shed which served as boat-house.
As he turned about from snapping the padlock, the moon came suddenly out
from behind a cloud and shone down one of those long channels of the
marsh. In the midst of a channel was a clinker-built boat—and a man was
standing in it.
“That’s him,” Johnny chuckled, “I—I’m sort of glad he didn’t drown. Bet
he hasn’t got his rifle, though. I’d like to swim back there and beat him
up.”
He did not yield to this mad impulse. Mazie was pulling at his sleeve and
saying in her most persuasive tone:
“Come on. Let’s go home.”
“All right,” smiled Johnny, slapping the water from his soaked trousers,
“guess we’d better.”
“All the same,” he mused, “I’d like to know where that fellow stays and
how he always happens to be about the marsh at the same time I am.”
“It’s something more than a happening,” said Mazie seriously, “and since
you don’t learn anything by coming, it might be well to stay away.”
“Might,” agreed Johnny.
“But for all that,” he thought to himself, “I’m going back out there some
time and prowl about the edge of the marsh a bit. That fellow may live
out there somewhere.” He thought of the black shack at the edge of the
marsh.
“Johnny,” said Mazie as they rode home, “let’s go somewhere to-morrow
night; some place where we won’t be bothered and where we can have some
fun.”
“For instance?”
“Why not Forest City?”
“I don’t mind. Chute the chutes, roll down the roller coaster, and
everything; good old stuff that never grows old.”
“Something like that,” smiled Mazie. “Anyway, it’s a lot of fun to see
people having a roaring time of it. And they really do enjoy it. Don’t
you think so?”
“Yes,” said Johnny, “and I might as well admit it, I enjoy it myself;
makes me think of the picnics and county fairs I used to go to when I was
a small boy. All right, we’ll go.”