The stranger looked at the boys sharply as they stood listening to the
noises on shore. There was an expression of displeasure on his face as
he noted how watchful they were.
“What’s that?” asked Alex.
“Sounds like horses and men, replied the stranger, speaking sharply and
turning away as he did so.
“What are they doing out on the river bank at this time of night?”
queried Jule. “What’s coming next, I wonder?”
The stranger, who had turned away abruptly, now moved back so that his
face was plainly seen under the prow light of the _Rambler_. When he
spoke it was with an attempt at heartiness, but the boys saw that he was
worried.
“I may as well tell you all about it,” he began with an insincere air.
“You’ve heard the horses trampling, and heard the men talking, so you
may as well understand what they’re here for. These river pirates have
been making a lot of trouble lately. They coax our plantation hands on
board their pesky boats and that’s the last we ever see of them. There’s
many a good crop gone to waste along the Ohio river because those
outlaws carry whiskey to sell.”
“We’ve seen quite a lot of that,” Clay suggested.
“Everybody who is on the river sees a lot of it,” the stranger
continued. “Well, now we’ve decided not to stand it any longer. We came
here to destroy that boat, and I’m half sorry that an accident prevented
our accomplishing the work. One boat nicely blown up would warn a score
away. They need the lesson.”
“Well,” Clay laughed, “it wasn’t an accident that destroyed the steamer.
She tried to block us in the lagoon and we rammed her with our steel
prow. That boat will never make you any more trouble.”
“You are to be congratulated!” the stranger observed. “You have my
permission to ram every whiskey boat on the river.”
The man’s face was smiling enough, and his manner was sufficiently
friendly, still the boys all found themselves wondering if he was
telling the exact truth. They knew very well that many people scattered
along the river on both banks were in touch with the whiskey boats, even
supplying them with moonshine and tobacco.
“Why don’t some of those men with the horses show up?” asked Jule
presently. “Why are they hiding in there now?”
“Because they don’t care about being identified as being mixed up in a
raid on a whisky boat!” was the reply. “Only for the fact that you got
the start of us we could have destroyed that boat without one of us
being recognized. We don’t care for lawsuits.”
“If they remain here a few hours,” Case suggested, “they will probably
have a chance at another boat. The _Hawk_ was not far from this place
not very long ago.”
“And you had a bit of a tussle with her?” laughed the stranger.
“Oh, they got a little gay, but we managed to keep away from them,” was
the reply. “They tried to steal our boat.”
“Yes, I presume they would like a trim little motor boat like yours,”
suggested the stranger. “And now,” he continued, “I may as well get back
to my friends. It will be daylight in an hour or two, and we’ve got to
work at this dirty business in the dark if we work at all.”
Jule opened his lips to ask the man a question regarding the three blue
lights but Clay, as if understanding his purpose, drew him back and
whispered in his ear:
“No more questions just now, boy.”
“Why not?” Jule asked impatiently. “That’s just what we came up here
for—to find out something about the three blue lights.”
“I have an idea,” Clay explained, “that this man didn’t tell the truth
about the other things, and that he won’t tell the truth about the three
blue lights—that is, if he knows anything about them at all.”
“I’ve been a little bit leary of him all along,” Jule replied.
While the boys were talking together, the stranger left the stranded
coal barge upon which he had been standing and, pushing his boat along,
joined his friends on the bank. The boys could hear a murmur of
conversation following his arrival there, and now and then the light of
a match flared up.
“There’s one thing I can’t understand,” Clay said as the boys put out
into the current again, “and that is, why we have seen no wreckage from
the steamer coming down.”
“That’s easy,” Alex grinned, “the boat must have dropped into the mouth
of the lagoon.”
“No she didn’t!” Case cut in. “She sunk south of the arm of the island.
She’s lying there now in twenty feet of water unless I am very much
mistaken. Still, we should have seen wreckage by this time.”
“Suppose we take a run up and see what the situation is there,”
suggested Alex. “It would give me great joy to see a lot of those
fellows marooned on that island, with nothing to eat or drink for a
week.”
“We’ll only get tangled up in some kind of a mess if we go there,” Clay
advised, “so I think we’d better go on down the river and see if we
can’t shake off all this trouble and have a pleasant, leisurely river
trip. We’ve had trouble in plenty on all our other trips, but I thought
the Ohio journey would mostly consist of floating in the sunshine
through cities and back yards.”
“All right!” Alex said. “I’m just as willing to get out of this mess as
any one. Anyway, it will soon be daylight, and we’ll then be needing
breakfast. Who does the cooking this morning?”
“We all cook,” answered Case, “for we all talk slang except Captain Joe
and Teddy, and they probably have done something in that line themselves
only we didn’t understand them.”
“Look here!” suggested Jule when a faint line of daylight began to show
upstream. “Suppose we pull over to that wooded cove and build a roaring
fire on the bank. Then we’ll send Alex out to get another catfish and
bake it Indian fashion.”
“He didn’t make a success of Indian cookery on the St. Lawrence,”
suggested Case. “I don’t want any foolishness about this breakfast.”
“Well,” Alex laughed, “there was something the matter with the soil over
there. I guess it leaked gas or something of that kind. Anyway, the clay
along the Ohio is all right.”
“Very well,” Clay said, “we’ll run into the cove and give the boy a
chance to serve catfish a la Indian. The combination of gritless clay
and green leaves ought to produce fine results.”
“You just watch me!” Alex insisted.
The _Rambler_ was accordingly anchored in a pretty little cove whose
banks were covered with trees of large growth. At first, Alex tried to
capture a fish from the stern, but, not succeeding in this, he ran out
into the river and anchored there, leaving the other boys on shore. It
was broad daylight when he felt a strong pull at his line and knew that
he had hooked some denizen of the stream.
So busily was he engaged in playing the fish that he heard nothing of
the shouts from upstream, or the warning from his chums on the bank.
Directly, however, he glanced up to see that a coal tow which appeared
to fill the entire width of the river was drifting down upon him.
“Get into the cove! Get into the cove!” cried Clay.
“You’ll be struck in a minute!” shouted Case.
“Release your anchor line and shoot downstream!” Jule suggested.
This last advice appeared to be not only the most desirable but the
easiest to follow, so the boy severed the manilla line with one blow of
a sharp hatchet and sprang to the motors. When at last the boat was
under way headed downstream, the foremost barges were almost upon her.
The men on board the tow seemed to be taking great delight in the
thought that the _Rambler_ would soon be completely at their mercy.
Several of them stood at the top of their barges making crude and
humorous suggestions to the boy.
With the boat under way and headed downstream at a speed with which the
tow could by no means compete, Alex amused himself by making scornful
faces at the men on the tow.
“Come back here, you river rat!” one of the men shouted. “You’ll get a
bullet in your back if you don’t!”
“Fire away!” shouted Alex and promptly ducked down under the protected
gunwale of the boat.
The boys on shore saw the _Rambler_ speeding away with many expressions
of disgust. Jule even started on a run down the bank, but soon gave over
the attempt to catch the swiftly disappearing boat.
The men on the tow, observing the boys on the bank, greeted them with
insulting epithets and amused themselves by heaving chunks of coal
toward them. Case replied with a pistol shot but did not succeed in
wounding any of the men. The coal came thicker after that for a time,
but the barges were soon too far down the river to make such an attack
effective.
“Now, we’re in a nice box!” Jule cried, as the steamer in charge of the
tow disappeared around a bend in the river. “How do you suppose that
little monkey will ever get that boat back to us?”
“Aw, that’s easy enough!” Case answered. “River boats pass those coal
tows every day in the week, and I guess Alex can get the _Rambler_
upstream again. In fact,” he added, “I don’t think he needed to run down
so far. He might have ducked over to the other shore and let the barges
go by. Anyway,” the boy added with a smile, “he’ll lose his fish. And
serve him good and right at that!”
“And we lose our fish breakfast!” Clay returned. “And that won’t serve
us good and right!”
“That’s a fact!” shouted Jule. “We haven’t got a thing to eat on this
bank!”
“We probably won’t have to wait long for the boy to come back,” Clay
assured the others. “He may be afraid the bargemen will make trouble for
him, and may run down until he comes to the mouth of a creek or deep
cove in which he can hold the _Rambler_ until the tow passes by. In that
case, he may be away an hour or so, but I reckon we won’t starve to
death in that time.”
“I’ve a good notion to go and hunt out some farm house and buy something
to eat!” Jule declared. “We’re most out of eggs, anyway.”
“It seems to me,” Clay laughed, turning to Case, “that Alex and Jule
have been having most of the adventures lately. Now what I propose is
that you two boys stay here and wait for the _Rambler_ to return while I
cut back into the country and see what I can buy in the way of
provisions.”
“That will be all right,” Case replied. “And while you are gone, Jule
and I will flop into a thicket and go to sleep. I’ve had to prop my
eyelids open with my fingers for the last hour. The bulldog can keep
watch while we get our forty winks.”
“Why,” Clay said, “I didn’t see Captain Joe come on shore. I guess
you’ll find that he’s on board the boat with Alex and the bear.”
“Oh, he was here all right,” Case insisted. “I saw him running about on
the other shore of the cove acting as if he had got scent of a rabbit or
a squirrel.”
“Then he’ll be back all right!” Clay replied. “Be sure that he is before
both of you go to sleep. He’ll stand guard, all right, if you tell him
to watch for Alex. You wouldn’t like to have the _Rambler_ come back
here and not find you!” Clay added.
And so, leaving the boys preparing a bed of leaves in the thicket, Clay
turned away to the south and disappeared in the forest.