The entire situation on board the _Rambler_ had not been observed from
the shore. The boys and the mountaineer had seen only Teddy in the
center of the stage, so they had naturally supposed that the swift
departure of the pirates had been occasioned by the sudden appearance of
the grizzly. Had they been in a little different position, they would
have seen Alex and Jule standing in the open doorway of the cabin with
threatening automatics in their hands.
“Now, that’s a funny proposition,” the mountaineer deliberated, as Clay
and Case clambered to the after deck. “Them pirates are watching the
_Rambler_, and yet they don’t see that the boys are getting possession
of her. They must be a stupid lot.”
The next minute, however, convinced the mountaineer that he had been
mistaken in his estimate of the intelligence of the pirates. Half a
dozen pistol shots came in quick succession, making little spurts of
water on the surface of the river near the stern of the boat. However,
Clay and Case were soon climbing, dripping with river water, through the
window at the rear of the cabin.
Still watching from the shore, the mountaineer saw Clay creep up to the
bridge deck which concealed the motors, keeping down below the level of
the gunwale. Bullets from the _Hawk_ continued to spatter about the
motor boat, but seemed to do no damage whatever.
As those who have read the previous volumes of this series will
understand, the entire exterior walls of the _Rambler_ were sheathed
with bullet-proof steel. This fact, it will be remembered, had preserved
the lives of all the boys during the voyage to the head waters of the
Amazon river.
Directly the watcher saw the anchor, which had been dropped again when
the boat had taken her position near the shore, lifted and the next
instant, the motor boat went gliding like a shot downstream.
The moonshiner bent his head forward and rubbed his eyes in wonder. It
was all new to him, this wonderful speed. His acquaintance with motor
boats had consisted almost entirely of a slight knowledge of the large
flat-bottomed scows hardly worthy the name of motor boats. When the
_Rambler_ darted away at a speed not less than twenty miles an hour, it
all seemed to him like magic.
He stood for a moment on the bank watching the little spurts of flame
shooting from the _Hawk_ and then turned into the thicket with a chuckle
which shook his broad shoulders.
“Sho’,” he exclaimed, “we mountaineers don’t know much about river
folks, after all. I never knew there was anything on the face of the
earth that could go as fast as that motor boat went.”
He tramped along in the darkness for a long time and then stopped and
made a small fire, by the side of which he slept until morning. With the
appearance of the day he was out toward the hills, and also forever out
of the lives of those on board the _Rambler_.
“Now, see here,” Clay suggested as the Rambler speeded beyond reach of
the bullets from the _Hawk_, “we can’t long keep this gait with empty
gasoline tanks.”
“If we pull in at the landing just below here,” Alex laughed, “we’ll all
get pinched. If you leave it to that old store keeper, we’re pirates,
and Case and I are little rhinoceros birds sent on ahead to see whether
the picking is good.”
“Well,” Clay continued, “we don’t have to strain the motors right now,
so we’ll keep just enough gasoline burning to give us headway. Perhaps
we’ll strike a more hospitable settlement farther down.”
“I don’t believe that old fellow had any gasoline to sell, anyhow,”
laughed Case. “If you boys could have seen the rubes fall all over each
other when we pulled our automatics, you’d have nearly died laughing!”
“Suppose we stop and see how they feel about the matter to-night,”
suggested Alex. “I’d like to drag that constable out of bed!”
“No use of looking for trouble,” Clay advised. “After all, you must
remember that those fellows have the law on their side.”
“Yes,” Case declared, “and if they could once get us into jail they’d
keep us there for years. They’re likely good and angry about the way we
bluffed them before their own townspeople.”
Teddy now came up to where the boys were standing and demanded
appreciation for the part he had played in the recapture of the boat.
Captain Joe, also, advised the boys of his presence by nipping them
quietly on the legs.
“I know what’s the matter with the menagerie,” Alex exclaimed. “They
haven’t had any supper. And that makes me think,” he went on, making a
dive for the cabin, “that I haven’t had any supper, either.”
“What are you going to get for supper?” Clay asked, following the boy to
the cabin door.
“Oh,” Alex replied with a grin which wrinkled his freckled nose, “it’s
almost midnight now, and we’ll just get a light little luncheon.”
“You make lots of bad breaks trying to talk the English language,” Case
advised. “You mustn’t say ‘luncheon’ unless you have pie. It’s ‘lunch’
when you don’t have pie, and ‘luncheon’ when you do have pie.”
“I said ‘luncheon’, didn’t I?” asked Alex.
“You certainly did,” was the reply.
“Well,” Alex said, “then we’re going to have pie.
“The only kind of pie we can have now,” Case objected, “is fish pie.
I’ll go and catch a couple of river perch and you can make a fish pie.”
“Say, look here,” Alex said, shutting the cabin door in Case’s face and
talking through the glass panel, “what do you know about pie? I suppose
you’ll be wanting me to make a liver pie next.”
“That would be fine fodder!” laughed Case. “I guess you are joking!”
“You’ve forgotten about those canned apples,” Alex insisted. “I’m going
to make hot apple pie for our midnight luncheon. And we’re going to have
ham and eggs, and potatoes, and soda biscuit, and a whole lot of good
things.”
“Go to it!” grinned Case, as he went back on the prow and sat down to
watch the river.
The boat slipped steadily down with the current for about an hour before
any lights were seen on the Kentucky side. Then Clay got out his map of
the river and they all examined it intently.
“Here’s the big bend below Brandenburg,” Case said with his finger on
the representation of the river. “Just now, we are free of the big bend,
and so that light on the south bank must be at Wolf Creek.”
“Je-rusalem!” Jule exclaimed. “The name sounds fierce, all right!”
“Anyway,” Clay went on, “there’s a little stream enters the Ohio at Wolf
Creek, and we can tie up there until morning. If they haven’t got any
gasoline there, we can shoot over to the Indiana shore as soon as it
gets daylight and see what we can do there.”
The suggested plan was carried out so far as entering the mouth of Wolf
Creek was concerned. The first thing the boys did, however, was not to
search the few stores the village boasted for gasoline. In the first
place, they did not care to awaken the store keepers, as there was no
necessity for their going on that night. In the second place, they
desired to keep their arrival at the landing as quiet as possible, as
some rumor of the show of arms at the landing above might have filtered
down the river, in which case they would all be regarded with suspicion.
As soon as the boat was fairly at rest in the mouth of the creek, Alex
opened the cabin door and announced in a joyous voice that dinner was
served “in the dining-car.”
For the next hour the boys paid little attention to anything save the
bountiful meal provided by their chum. Alex’s soda biscuit and hot apple
pie proved very attractive to the hungry boys.
“Now then,” Alex declared, walking out on deck after leaving the table,
“I’m going to bed for the night!”
“You’ve surely earned a little sleep!” Case grinned. “That’s the best
dinner we’ve had in many a day.”
“Oh, I guess I can go some when it comes to cooking,” laughed Alex, “and
I’ll wake up in shape to cook another good breakfast in the morning.”
“I’ll be thinking all night what we’re going to have for breakfast,”
Clay suggested. “How did you ever come to think of that hot apple pie?”
Before Alex could answer the question, Jule caught him by the shoulder
and pointed out to the surface of the river almost directly opposite the
mouth of the creek.
“What do you know about that?” he asked.
“About what?” demanded Alex.
The three blue lights!” answered Jule.
The other boys were all attention now, but all declared that they could
see no lights whatever. Presently Jule bounded to the top of the
gunwale, steadying himself by the roof of the cabin, and looked toward
the distant Indiana shore.
“There they are!” he shouted, “There they are! Three blue lights! Now
what do you suppose they mean?”
“They’re probably in a boat?” Clay asked, tentatively.
“Nix on the boat!” Jule protested. “They’re just floating right down
flat on top of the wet water.”
Clay now vaulted to the gunwale and followed the direction of the boy’s
pointing finger. As he did so, a sharp detonation came from the river,
echoing down the stream weirdly, and then the lights he had seen only a
moment before disappeared from view.
That was the boys’ first experience with the three blue lights!