The Hunt in the Swamp
“Guess what I just found?” smiled Cadet Jim Mercer, joining a group at
the piano in the recreation room.
Douglas was playing the piano and Don, Terry, Vench and Hudson were
standing around listening. Jim had been at Inslee Hall visiting a friend
and had just popped into the recreation room. It was in the evening just
before study period.
“The pot at the end of the rainbow!” laughed Vench. “Lot of people been
hunting for that a long time!”
“I wouldn’t be likely to find that at night, would I?” retorted Jim. He
unbuttoned the overcoat and dipped his hand into his jacket pocket.
“This is what I found.”
He produced a long, thin instrument of steel, at the sight of which the
assembled boys cried out. It was nothing less than a steel saw, slightly
rusty from exposure to the weather. One end of it had been broken off.
“Ah, ha!” cried the senior captain, examining it closely. “A steel saw!
That thing was used to saw off the base of our eagles!”
“No doubt about it!” murmured Douglas.
“And that isn’t all,” Jim went on, turning it over. “See the name on the
other side of it?”
Stamped into the steel was the name “Henry Rose.” They looked puzzled,
and Jim went on to explain.
“Henry Rose is the name of the maker of the steel saw. All we have to do
is to find out which hardware store in this town, or in an adjacent
town, sells Henry Rose saws. That ought not to be hard.”
“No,” agreed Terry. “Where did you find it, Jimmie boy?”
“In the grass at the end of the campus. I took a short cut across from
Inslee and my foot struck something in the grass. I wouldn’t have paid
any attention to it, only it flew across the grass with a zipping sort
of a sound and it aroused my curiosity. So I picked it up, and when I
saw what it was I knew it must have been part of the game.”
“Shall we show it to the colonel?” asked Don.
“Not right away,” advised Hudson. “Tomorrow is Saturday and we have half
day off. Suppose we fellows go down to Portville and do a little
snooping on our own account. We may be able to scare up a clue or two.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Jim nodded. “There is only one hardware store
in town, so we shouldn’t have any trouble.”
On the following afternoon the six cadets entered the hardware store of
John J. Potts. Mr. Potts himself, a little, energetic man, bustled up to
them, rubbing his hands.
“Hello, boys,” inquired Mr. Potts. “What can I do for you today? I have
nothing in the way of swords or bayonets, but perhaps you’ll want
something more useful, a can opener, for instance.”
Having delivered himself tactfully of his feeling toward war and the
implements of war, Mr. Potts laughed and the cadets smiled pleasantly.
Mr. Potts was harmless and they knew it. Jim showed him the broken blade
and the others watched him closely.
“Do you keep Henry Rose steel saws?” Jim asked.
Mr. Potts took the saw, examined it, and nodded. “Yes, I do. Nice blade,
just the right play and solidity to it, retails for—”
“Never mind that,” Jim cut him short, sensing Mr. Potts’ desire to talk
at length. “Have you sold any lately?”
“I sold three of them to Peter Cozoza last week,” replied the
Storekeeper, promptly.
“When was it?” Vench asked, eagerly.
“Last Monday,” Mr. Potts supplied. The cadets exchanged glances.
“Who is Peter Cozoza?” Hudson put in.
“He is a laborer, lives over on Meadow Street, out by the swamps.”
“He didn’t say why he wanted them, I suppose?” Don inquired.
“Oh, no,” protested Mr. Potts. “And of course I didn’t ask him. I’m not
in the habit of asking people what they buy things for, you know!”
“I know it!” returned Hudson, gravely. “You wouldn’t do anything like
that, Mr. Potts!”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Potts agreed, eyeing him suspiciously. “I never ask no
questions. What do you boys want to know what Peter bought the blades
for?”
“We want to hire him to do a job for us,” Jim said, gravely. “Colonel
Morrell is thinking of building a new school and he wants Peter to saw
up the lumber for him!”
“For lands sake! You don’t saw up lumber with a steel metal-cutting
blade. Look here, are you boys poking fun at me?”
The boys looked from one to the other in silence and then Douglas shook
his head. “It is horribly bad manners to poke at anyone, Mr. Potts. We
wouldn’t think of it. Well, thanks for your information. So long.”
The cadets walked out of the local hardware store, leaving Mr. Potts in
an uncertain frame of mind. He shook his head and went back to work,
addressing his clerk briefly.
“Them cadets must be crazy. Such looney talk I never heard!”
On the way out to the unkempt street that had been named Meadow Street
Don chuckled.
“Mr. Potts never asks questions, gentlemen! But he was just dying to
know what we had in mind!”
“I’ll say,” laughed Hudson. “And if we had told him it would have spread
all over town like wildfire.”
There were only four or five houses on Meadow Street and they had no
trouble in finding the one owned by the laborer Peter Cozoza. The man
was not home and his small, undersized wife stared in awe at the six
erect cadets who so completely blocked up her back door. She was
somewhat charmed because they took off their military hats while they
talked to her and they spoke gently and courteously, something with
which Mrs. Cozoza was none too familiar. She told them, in answer to
their inquiry, that her husband was not at home.
“Not at home, Mrs. Cozoza?” Jim replied, blankly. Douglas addressed the
little woman next.
“Was he at home last Wednesday night?”
Don grasped his arm warningly. “I’m not altogether sure we ought to ask
her that, Doug,” he cautioned. “Might get her in trouble with the
husband. You know how these people are.”
But the little woman answered frankly enough. “No, mister, he go out
last Wednesday night, I not know where. Since then he go down in the
swamp a lot. You see, his boots muddy.”
She pointed to a pair of muddy rubber boots that stood beside the stove.
Jim quickly snapped up the lead offered.
“Down in the swamps?” he asked. “Which way? That way?”
He pointed at random toward the black swamp that crept up close to the
house, but Mrs. Cozoza shook her head. “No, down the path, there.” She
pointed to a path that showed faintly through the trees.
“Oh, I see,” smiled Jim. “Well, that is all, thank you.”
They left the woman standing in the doorway, frankly puzzled, and looked
at the path that led into the swamp. Hudson looked at his watch.
“We’ve got time to follow the path a little way, at least,” he
announced. “The fact that the man goes into the swamp may not have any
bearing on the thing at all, and then again, it may. I suppose you all
think it worth looking into?”
They all agreed on that point and took the path into the swamp. When
they had entered the dark, rank woods they were compelled to spread out
in single file and keep to the path, which in some places was little
more than a mere ribbon. A false step would have meant a wet and muddy
foot. Thick bushes grew close to the path and brushed against their
coats as they made their way into the damp swamp.
“This is a first class swamp, by golly,” commented Vench. “That guy must
have something good in here to make him want to dive into a place like
this very often.”
After they had followed the path for at least a quarter of a mile, they
came to a kind of island in the midst of the swamp mud. The ground here
was a little harder than the rest, although it did not take a very
determined kick to drive a heel down into soft black soil. They spread
out on this island and beyond a clump of bushes they came upon a
ramshackle hut.
“Hooray, there is the castle before us!” cried Terry.
“A hobo’s castle, by the looks of it,” Don said, as they approached it.
“Hope there’s nobody here now.”
The hut was not large and appeared to be about the size of a one-car
garage. A door, which was closed, faced them, and one window was in the
place, a glassless window that stared at them like a vacant eye. Hudson
thrust his head cautiously in this opening.
“Only empty space greets us,” he said.
“Nothing in there at all?” Douglas asked.
Vench went around and opened the door. “Looks like a couple of bags of
potatoes in one corner,” he called.
They thronged in the narrow door and Don poked one shoe against the bags
in the corner. Then, as a look of understanding passed over his face, he
turned swiftly to the others.
“Here are the eagles!” he cried.
“I thought as much,” whooped Hudson, tearing at the mouth of the bag
nearest him. “Sure enough, here they are.”
They swiftly tore the sacking away and the brass eagles were disclosed,
swathed in straw. A thorough examination showed that they had not been
damaged.
“So here is where they were taken,” murmured Vench, looking around the
hut.
“Yes, and who would ever think of looking for them out here?” put in
Douglas. “If it hadn’t been for Jim’s chance discovery we would never
have thought to look here.”
“Things worked out in great shape all around,” Jim said. “Well, now that
we have the big birds, what—”
“Look!” cried Don, suddenly. “Here come some men!”