“I’ll tell you right now,” Alex declared, panting and out of breath in
his efforts to keep pace with the long stride of the new-found friend,
“that there isn’t anything the matter with the _Rambler_. There never
was anything wrong with the boat, and there never will be. She may be in
trouble, but she’s been there before.”
“Yes,” Case added, “and we’ve always gotten her out of her troubles, and
we’ll do it again. What’s your name, Mister?” he added, turning to the
lanky guide who was forcing them through the thickets at such swift
pace.
“My name,” the other replied, “is Hank Beers. I live up in the
mountains, and I came down to-day to see about negotiating for a little
product I make up there.”
“Are you a moonshiner?” asked Case, innocently.
“No, I’m not a moonshiner,” replied Hank. “I’m making a superior quality
of aeroplanes up in the hills. When I get one finished I put it in a
suit case and bring it down.”
“That means,” Alex laughed, “that the product of your factory is
intended to send people up in the air!”
“Put it any way you like,” laughed Hank. “The point with us now is to
find out what’s become of that boat of yours. You say you left her up at
the stem of the bend?”
“Yes,” answered Case, “we left her to get a spark plug and some
squirrels. That shooting, you know, may not have been at the _Rambler_
or from the _Rambler_. We may be unnecessarily excited about it.”
“Young man,” declared Hank, “when you hear shooting going on like that
in this vicinity, you just make up your mind that the river pirates have
something to do with it.”
“Why don’t they get out and lynch these river pirates?” demanded Case.
“Sakes alive!” exclaimed Hank. “If we Kentuckians lynched all the people
who make us trouble, we’d have to import telegraph poles to hang ’em on.
There wouldn’t be anywhere near enough trees for the business.”
“I thought Kentucky was a law-abiding state,” remarked Alex.
“She’s the most law-abiding state you ever heard tell of,” replied Hank
with a laugh. “All the trouble is,” he went on, “that sometimes we
mountain people make laws of our own, and when we do that the laws have
to be abided by.”
“Oh, yes,” Case grinned, “I remember the Knights of the Golden Circle,
and the Ku Klux Klan, and the Night-Riders, and the White Caps. When
that bunch wanted to kill a man, all they did was to pass a law against
him and then abide by it.”
“There are a whole lot of offenses,” the mountaineer went on, “that
can’t be handled by the laws these here shysters put on the statute
books. But,” he continued, “we won’t talk about that any more. We
wouldn’t agree, anyhow. About how far are we from the point where you
left your boat?”
“Two miles,” declared Alex.
“Three!” suggested Case.
“What time did you leave the boat?” asked Hank.
“Two o’clock,” was the reply.
Hank looked at a ponderous silver watch which he took from a back pocket
of his trousers and shook his head.
“If you left the boat at two o’clock,” he said, “and you had just come
to the settlement when that little ruction started, you were something
like three hours on the way. That means more than three miles.”
“Oh yes,” Alex agreed, “but we wandered about this way and that, looking
for squirrels, and coons, and rabbits, so I think that we ought to be
somewhere near the boat by this time.”
“If we don’t come to it pretty soon,” the mountaineer suggested, “we’ll
have to look for it in the dark. It is getting twilight in here right
now. It will soon be almost impossible to make our way through the
thickets. ’Tarnal bad woods in the night time, these are.”
Darkness was indeed settling over the forest. To make matters worse, a
mass of heavy clouds was drifting up from the Mississippi valley, and
the chances were remarkably good for a long, slow rain. After proceeding
some farther in the thicket, Alex took out his electric
searchlight—without which he never left the _Rambler_—and threw its rays
on the thicket ahead. As he did so Hank seized him by the arm.
“Douse it, douse it!” the mountaineer cried. “Don’t you know any better
than to make a light in here?”
“Where’s the harm?” asked Case. “We’d never get through there without a
light.”
“I’ll tell you where the harm is,” the mountaineer answered. “Them
fellers you stirred up back there at the settlement will shortly be
sending men out here to look you up. I shouldn’t be surprised if they
sent men with bloodhounds.”
“Oh well, then, we’ll have to do the best we can in the dark,” Alex
sighed, turning off the light.
“Let me see that, will you?” asked Hank.
The mountaineer took the searchlight in his great bony hand and examined
it attentively, switching the light on and off and turning it this way
and that, taking the precaution, however, to hold the eye of the
electric close to the ground.
“You Yankees,” he said presently, “will soon be getting searchlights by
wireless! It’s a pretty good light, though, and I don’t object to it if
you do. How much might one of those contraptions cost?” he added.
“All the way from four bits to four dollars,” was the reply. “If you
want a real large one, you may go as high as fifty dollars.”
“I’ll buy one when I bring down my next airplane,” said the mountaineer,
whimsically. “I don’t doubt but that I could use it in my business. I
don’t suppose the wind would put that out, would it? It’s mighty strong
up there in the mountains sometimes,” he added.
“No,” Case answered, “nothing will put that light out until the battery
becomes exhausted. That is, unless you break the lamp.”
The boys were just starting on again when the long terrifying baying of
a hound came to their ears. The dog was still a long distance off, yet
even as they listened his great voice came more distinctly through the
darkness.
“There!” Hank said in a disgusted tone of voice, “they’ve gone and done
it at last! It’s just this way, boys,” he went on, “when you left that
old skinflint of a merchant back there, you were two little boys sent
out by a river pirate to see if the town was worth plundering. Ten
minutes after your departure, you were two river pirates, armed to the
teeth and half drunk on moonshine whiskey. Thirty minutes after you
left, they were saying that the town had been visited by a band of
pirates armed with cannons. By to-morrow morning, they will have the
town pillaged and burned. I never did see the way people exaggerate
things.”
“But where did they get that hound?” asked Alex. “There wasn’t any there
when we were there.”
“They might have got one off of the Government boat,” Hank answered.
“But there wasn’t any Government boat,” Alex insisted.
“There was one just coming up the river,” said the mountaineer. “If we
ever come to the bank of the stream we’ll see her pass up.”
“Well, what are we going to do about the dog?” Case asked. “He’s
evidently out of leash, for, judging from the sound of his voice, he’s
running faster than any man could navigate through the woods.”
“Yes, he does seem to be out of leash,” the mountaineer answered, “and
it may be that he took up the scent on his own hook. Still, the Federals
do have bloodhounds to aid in trailing the moonshiners.”
“Isn’t there any way to get away from the brute?” asked Case. “If we
don’t, he’ll tree us and set up such a howling that the men will be
thicker than bees around us in about an hour.”
“We can shoot him when he comes up,” suggested the mountaineer.
“Seems too bad to kill the dog,” Alex observed.
“Besides all that,” Case went on, “we couldn’t hit a barn in this
darkness.”
“Well,” Hank suggested, “the thing for us to do is to make for the river
as fast as possible. There’s always a good many skiffs and rowboats
scattered along on the Kentucky side. You see, if we can only get to the
water and pack ourselves into a boat, we can sit and make faces at that
hound until Kingdom Come.”
Making what speed they could through the thicket, stumbling over vines
and protruding roots, the boys proceeded on their way for a very few
moments. Then it became evident that the dog was only a few rods away.
“Now that’s too bad,” Hank said, “we’ve got to climb a tree, turn that
bottled gas concern of yours on the dog, and put a bullet plumb through
his head. I never did like to kill dogs, somehow.”
The dog came swiftly on, and it seemed to the boys as if his voice could
be heard for a thousand miles. They were crouching in a thicket,
preparing to vault into the branches of a great beech tree which stood
near at hand, when a great commotion was heard not far away. It seemed
to them that a wild hog, or a bear, or some heavy yet swift denizen of
the forest, awakened from his slumber by the howling of the dog, had set
out to make a swift investigation of his own.
“What was that noise?” asked Alex, clutching his new-found friend by the
arm.
“Well, sir,” Hank replied, “that sounded to me like a dog going out to
hold a little conversation with that hound! It ran like a dog, and,
besides, I think I heard a succession of low growls as it passed us.”
“Here’s hoping he keeps the hound so well entertained that it won’t come
any farther in this direction!” Case said.
In a moment there came a great snarling and growling from a thicket not
far away, accompanied by such a thumping and beating on the ground as
the boys had not heard in many a day. The baying of the hound ceased
entirely, and in a moment only low choking pants of suffering were
heard.
“I’ll tell you what it is, boys!” the mountaineer exclaimed, excitedly,
“that thing that went through here is either a bulldog or a wild hog.
He’s mixing it with the hound right now, and we may as well go and see
the scrap.”
Alex used his flashlight now without reproof. The three pressed swiftly
forward, the sounds of conflict growing clearer as they advanced.
Directly they came to a great patch of bushes, from the center of which
the commotion came.
In spite of the protests of the others, Alex pushed his way into the
jungle and turned his searchlight on two objects struggling desperately
on the ground. The next moment they heard his voice crying out joyfully:
“It’s Captain Joe! It’s Captain Joe!” he said.
“What has he done to the hound?” asked Case.
“Who’s Captain Joe?” demanded the mountaineer.
Alex answered the two questions by dragging the white bulldog out of the
thicket by the collar. His jaws were smeared with blood, and he limped
slightly on one fore leg.
“Captain Joe,” Alex replied, “is the gamiest bulldog that ever lived,
and there ain’t enough left of that hound to bait a trap with.
“Where did the bulldog come from?” demanded Hank.
“Huh!” Alex exclaimed. “That’s just exactly what I want to know.”