The next moment the great flashlight on the prow of the _Rambler_ blazed
out over the waters.
“Why!” exclaimed Clay, “that’s our boat, and there’s some one holding
three blue lights up on a stick!”
“Yes,” exclaimed Jule, fairly dancing up and down in his excitement,
“and that little monkey in the prow is Alex! He’s the one that’s holding
up the three blue lights! Now where do you suppose he got that layout?”
“He has a way of picking things out of the atmosphere!” laughed Case.
“Looks like a scene in a play!” cried Jule.
“That would be a mighty good place to drop a curtain!” suggested Case.
“Not quite yet,” Clay insisted. “The scene mustn’t close just yet. The
audience wants to know what the three blue lights are going to do to the
_Rambler_.”
The boys were not long kept in waiting in this regard. The rowboat, sunk
almost to the guards under the weight of four men and a boy, swept up to
the _Rambler_. Directly all were on the deck of the motor boat. Alex
dancing excitedly up and down when he was not waltzing over the deck
with the white bulldog.
“Why don’t you let us in on that?” demanded Jule from the bank.
“Oh, there you are!” shouted Alex springing up on the gunwale. “We
thought you boys had gone and got lost. Wait a minute, and I’ll row the
boat over to you.”
The lad dropped into the rowboat with a tunk, and soon had his wondering
companions on the deck of the motor boat. What they saw there added, if
possible, to the surprise of the previous five minutes.
Four men, two of whom Alex recognized as the men who had stolen the
boat, lay tied hard and fast on the deck, and four other men, two of
whom had visited the camp at the cove during the forenoon, were standing
over them with guns in their hands. The prisoners seemed to be trying to
the best of their ability to conciliate their stern-faced guards.
“We didn’t know that you had an interest in the outfit,” one of the
prisoners was saying. “Those boys rammed our steamer, and we were bound
to get even with them.”
“It’s hands off the boys!” exclaimed Peck sternly. “What do you think we
ought to do with them?” he asked turning to his companions.
“We ought to stretch their necks!” was the fierce reply.
“I wouldn’t mind assisting at a necktie party,” Peck answered, “but,
under the circumstances, I think we’d better not become too prominent in
any such society event. You three men pitch them over into the old
houseboat and drift along the river until you come to a Government
steamer. Then turn them over as outlaws and return on the Government
steamer if it’s going upstream to the cove. If it’s going downstream,
get the first upboat you can.”
Peck’s authority seemed to be supreme, for in five minutes the four
bound men were transferred to the houseboat which was then nosed out
into the stream by the _Rambler_. This done, Peck sat down in a deck
chair and regarded the four boys quizzically.
“Where’s the old negro?” he asked in a moment.
“Didn’t you hear him splash in the water?” asked Alex. “When you showed
the three blue lights, he waddled ashore with a face so white it made a
chalk-mark on the night.”
“What does it all mean?” asked Clay.
As he spoke he pointed to the blue lights still burning on the prow of
the rowboat.
“It’s all easily explained,” Peck replied with an engaging smile. “Just
after two of you boys left my house to-day, a gang of good fellows
laboring under a misapprehension came up with a supply of birch whips
intended for the backs of you kids. Their attention was attracted to a
burning building, or they would have overtaken the lads before they
reached the cove and beaten them half to death.
“When I reached home, my wife told me of the incident, and I began
worrying for fear the boys would be caught and mistreated. While we were
talking it over, that old nigger came up and said that you boys wanted
to do something for my wife because she had been so good to you.
“This kindness on your part—this willingness to do anything you could if
we needed your help—stirred me up considerable. So we started out
through the woods for the cove. When we got to the cove, which was after
dark, of course, you were not there, and we’ve been floundering around
in the water and woods and bushes ever since. We crossed the stream in a
rickety old scow and landed on the peninsula, thinking that perhaps the
river pirates, known to have headquarters here, had made trouble for
you.
“Just as we were about to turn back, this little chap,” pointing at
Captain Joe, “came plunging through the bushes and we knew that you were
not far away. Then this boy came panting along and we grabbed him. He
was frightened half to death for a minute, but when things were
explained, he told us the kind of a mixup you were in.
“Well, we came down to the cut-off and got into the boat and came down
here. Then we remembered that the river pirates stand in deadly terror
of the three blue lights—our boys having been a little rough with
them!—so we put up the signal you saw, and I guess that’s about all!”
“I guess I know what the three blue lights mean,” Alex blurted out.
“They constitute a signal used by the night-riders. I don’t wonder the
pirates are afraid of them!”
“And I guess the night-riders are the ones who keep the ghost stories
about the lights going!” Jule added.
“Of course,” Peck replied with a whimsical smile, “I don’t know anything
about that. One of my friends, here, just happened to have three blue
lights with him, so we put ’em up to scare the pirates. We thought that
if we could make the outlaws believe that we belonged to the
night-riders, we could throw a bigger scare into them.”
“Of course,” Case laughed, winking at Peck, “we never thought for a
moment that you gentlemen belonged to the night-riders!”
“Of course not!” laughed Peck, winking back. “Nobody around here belongs
to the night-riders! You might travel up and down the river, and over
the mountains, for a thousand miles, and not find a night-rider in the
whole country! Fact!” he added, significantly.
“Do they put out blue lights whenever they’re going to burn some one’s
warehouse?” asked Alex.
“Boy,” answered Peck, patting Alex kindly on the shoulder, “you mustn’t
ask any questions about the night-riders in this section of the country.
They think they are protecting their own interests in what they do, and
that’s all I know about it.”
“I’d just like to know how they make the lights go out so quickly,” Jule
grinned. “They go out with a loud noise, don’t they.”
“I had that explained to me once,” replied Peck with a queer smile, “and
if you won’t say anything about it. I’ll tell you how it’s done.”
“The three blue lights are placed on a board, either floating on the
water or suspended from some elevation. On the same board is a stick of
dynamite with a long fuse. After the lights burn a few moments—they are
just little kerosene lamps with blue globes, you know—the dynamite
explodes and that ends the display. Perfectly simple, ain’t it, boys?”
“I should think it was!” answered Clay.
Peck remained on board the _Rambler_ until daylight, and then the boys
took him back up the river to the little cove near his own home. When at
last he shook hands with the lads at parting, they did their best to
reward him, but he refused every offering made.
“I did this for you boys,” he said, “just because you sent that word up
to my wife. You thought she was alone, and might be in trouble, on
account of the rough characters you had seen about, and you notified her
that you were ready and willing to fight for her if she wanted any
assistance. That was enough for me!”
After cooking breakfast at the old camp at the head of the cove, the
boys again set out on their journey. During the rest of the trip they
avoided saloon boats and coal tows.
They also tied up at night near some city or town. Now and then they
read in the daily newspapers stories of alleged outrages by
night-riders, but their experiences with the men of the three blue
lights led them to make many excuses for them.
They spent nearly a month loitering along the river, stopping here and
there, sometimes tying up for two or three days at a time. When at last
they saw the lights of Cairo they were heartily sorry that the journey
was ended.
“We have had a pleasant trip, mixed with a little healthy excitement!”
laughed Case, as they threw out their lines at one of the lower wharves.
“A little excitement?” repeated Alex. “Say, look here, kid, the Ohio is
the sixth river we’ve navigated, and she’s given us the liveliest run
for our money we’ve had yet.”
“And now,” Case said rather soberly, “we’ll sail up the Mississippi,
through the Illinois river and the canal, and get back to our little
pier up on the South Branch.”
“Whew!” exclaimed Alex, “won’t Captain Joe, the old sea-captain, be glad
to see us come sailing in?”
“I don’t believe he’ll accept half our three-blue-lights’ stories as
true!” Jule put in.
“Anyway,” Clay replied, “we’ve had the experiences, and Captain Joe can
think what he likes!”
THE END.