deer. The turkeys were to be picked and dressed and one of them to be
roasted. Some fishing was to be done and it was necessary to put up
some sort of bush shelter for use in case of rain. So, leaving Tom as
sentinel, the other boys went back to the anchorage, and Tom began his
scrutiny of the things he had observed.
As a last injunction Larry said: “You can come in to dinner, Tom, when
I whistle through my fingers. If there’s nobody in sight then, we can
risk the dinner hour without a sentry.”
IX
A FANCY SHOT
THE things that had attracted Tom’s attention were so trifling in
themselves that only a person alertly observing would have noticed them
at all. Yet Tom thought they might have significance, and he was bent
upon finding out what that significance was.
First of all, he had observed that a little blind trail seemed to lead
westward from the tree, and in no other direction, as if it had been
made by someone who visited the tree and then returned by the way he
had come, going no farther in any direction. The trail was so blind
that Tom could not be sure it was a trail at all. If so, it had been
traversed very infrequently, and at rather long intervals. If it had
been the only suggestive thing seen, the boy would probably not have
given it a thought. But he observed also that the bark of the gum tree
was a trifle scarred at two points, suggesting that some one with heavy
boots on had recently climbed it.
As soon as the other boys had gone back to camp, Tom set to work to
make a closer inspection of his surroundings. He climbed the tree to
the crotch and looked about him. There was nothing there, but from that
height he could trace the little trail through the bushes for perhaps
fifty or a hundred yards. He satisfied himself in that way that it was
really a trail, made by the passage of some living thing, man or beast,
through the dense undergrowth.
“I’ll follow that trail after a while,” he resolved, “but I’ll say
nothing about it now. I might be laughed at for my pains. Not that I
mind that, of course. We fellows are well used to being laughed at
among ourselves. But when I say anything about this, I want to have
something to tell that is worth telling. After all, it may be only the
path of a deer or of one of the queer little wild horses—tackeys, they
call them—that live in the swamps. Or a wild hog may have made it. I
don’t know, and I’m not going to talk about the thing till I can talk
to some purpose.”
As he wriggled around in the crotch, he dropped his knife from his
pocket.
“That’s a reminder,” he reflected, “that people sometimes drop things
when they don’t intend to. If anybody else has been roosting up here
he may have dropped things, too. I’ll recover my knife and then I’ll
search around the tree.”
He was on the ground now, and having replaced his knife he began a
minute search of the space for ten or twenty feet around the tree. It
was thickly carpeted with the densely-growing vegetation that is always
quick to take possession of every unoccupied inch of ground in the far
southern swamps and woodlands. Searching such a space for small objects
was almost a hopeless task, and finding nothing, Tom was on the point
of giving up the attempt, when he trod upon something. Examining it,
he found it to be an old corncob pipe with a short cane stem. It was
blackened by long smoking, and that side of it which had lain next to
the ground had begun to decay. But there was half-burned tobacco in it
still.
From all these facts Tom thought it likely that the pipe, while still
alight, had been dropped from the tree, and that its owner had failed
to find it upon his descent.
“That means that somebody was using this tree for a lookout a good
while ago. I can’t imagine why or wherefore, but I mean to find out if
I can. Just now I hear Larry’s whistle calling me to dinner. I wonder
how he manages to make that shrill shrieking noise by putting two
fingers into his mouth and blowing between them. I must get him to
teach me the trick.”
It was decided at dinner that the deer hunt should occur as soon as
that meal was finished.
“The deer will be lying down, chewing the cud, at this time of day,”
explained Larry to his two guests, who had never shared a deer hunt,
“and so we shan’t disturb him in placing ourselves. What’s the nature
of the ground, Cal? Can three of us cover it while the fourth drives?”
“We must,” Cal answered. “It may give some one of us a very long shot,
but with nitro-powder cartridges these modern guns of ours will pitch
buckshot a long way. The marsh in which the deer is feeding is on a
sort of peninsula which is surrounded by water except on one side. That
land side is a rather narrow neck, narrow enough for three guns to
cover it, I think, if the guns are well handled. Fortunately the marsh
itself is small. If it weren’t we might drive all day, as we have no
dogs, without routing the deer out. As it is, I think I can start him,
and I’ll do the driving after I post you three at the three best points
of observation.”
“How do you ‘drive,’ as you call it, Cal?” Dick asked.
“Well, if we had dogs and horses, as we always do in a regular deer
hunt, the man appointed to drive would ride around to the farther side
of the swamp, and put the dogs into it. The dogs would scatter out
into an irregular line and zigzag to one side and the other in search
of the quarry. In that way they would advance till they found the deer
and set him running toward the line of men on the posts. Every one of
these would be intently looking and listening till the deer should come
running at top speed in an effort to dash past his enemies and escape.
The man on the post nearest where he breaks through is expected to
bring him down with a quick shot aimed at his side, just behind the
shoulder.”
“But what if he misses?”
“In that case the deer has won the game. As we have no dogs and there
are only four of us, I mean to post you three at the points I find best
suited, and then I’ll play hounds myself. I’ll go round to the farther
side of the little swamp, invade it as noisily as I can, whooping and
hallooing in the hope of getting the deer up. If I do, he’ll make a
dash to get out of the swamp, and if no one of you manages to shoot
him in the act, we’ll have none of that juicy venison that you, Tom,
thought you had almost in your mouth when I first told you that the
deer was here. Now let us be off. We’re burning daylight. Load with
buckshot cartridges.”
When the neck of the little peninsula was reached, Cal bade his
comrades wait at the point from which their camp could be seen, while
he should go over the ground and pick out the places to be occupied as
posts.
On his return he placed the others each at the point he had chosen for
him, taking care that Tom and Dick should have the places near which
the quarry was most likely to make his effort to break through.
“Now, you must keep perfectly still,” he admonished the two
inexperienced ones, “and keep both eyes and three ears, if you have so
many, wide open. You may see the deer without hearing him, or you may
hear him tearing through the bushes before you see him. That will give
you notice of his coming, but don’t let him fool you. He may not come
straight on from the spot at which you hear him. If he catches sight,
sound or smell of you, he’ll veer off in some other direction. So if
you hear him coming don’t move a muscle except those of your eyes.
“Now I’m off to drive. If I can, I’ll get him up and away. After that
everything will depend upon you.”
It was nearly half an hour before the boys heard Cal’s shoutings in the
distance, but slowly coming nearer. After that, in the eager watching
and waiting, the seconds seemed minutes, and the minutes dragged
themselves out into what seemed hours.
At last, however, Dick heard the deer breaking through bushes just
ahead of him. In another second the frightened creature burst into view
and Dick fired, missing the game, which instantly changed its course
and ran away toward its left, with the speed of the wind. Dick, in his
excited disappointment, fired his second barrel at a hopelessly long
range.
Almost immediately he heard a shot from Tom’s gun, and after that
all was still. Cal struggled out of the swamp, while Larry and Dick
made their way toward Tom’s post, “to hear,” Cal said, “just what
excuses the novices have invented on the spur of the moment by way of
accounting for their bad marksmanship.”
“I have none to offer,” said Dick, manfully. “I missed my shot, that’s
all.”
“How is it with you, Tom? What plea have you to offer?”
“None whatever,” answered Tom. “Yonder lies the deer by the side of the
fallen tree. He was taking a flying leap over it when I shot him—on
the wing, as it were.”
The congratulations that followed this complete surprise may be
imagined. Cal fairly “wreaked himself upon expression” in sounding his
praises of Tom’s superb marksmanship, and better still, his coolness
and calmness under circumstances, as Cal phrased it, “that might have
disturbed the equipoise of an Egyptian mummy’s nerve centres.”
Tom took all this congratulation and extravagance of praise modestly
and with as little show of emotion as he had manifested while making
his difficult shot.
Perhaps this was even more to his credit than the other. For this was
the first time Tom Garnett had ever seen a deer hunt, or a live deer,
either, for that matter.
X
TOM’S DISCOVERIES
AS no attack had been made upon the camp the boys gradually relaxed
the vigilance of their guard duty; but they still maintained a sentry
at the lookout tree at night and made occasional visits of observation
during the day, going to the tree sufficiently often to avoid being
taken by surprise.
“And what if they should attack us in daytime?” argued Dick. “We’d be
here, armed and ready for them.”
There was fishing to be done, and a game of chess or backgammon was
usually in progress. Moreover, like any other company of bright youths
accustomed to think, they had enough to talk about, many things to
explain to each other, many stories to tell, and many questions
to discuss. Thus the daytime sentry duty was reduced to nearly no
activity, except upon Tom’s part. He was apparently fond of going to
the lookout and remaining there sometimes for hours at a time.
The others did not know why he should care for that as for an
amusement. Tom did, but he said nothing. Tom was finding out something
that the others knew nothing about.
On the next morning but one after the deer hunt he had climbed to
the crotch of the tree to make a further study of the trail he had
discovered. After a little while he decided to climb farther up the
tree, in order to secure a better view.
From that loftier perch he saw something at a distance that deeply
interested him. It was a sort of hovel, so buried in undergrowth that
it would have been scarcely visible at all except to one looking from a
high place as he was.
But what interested him most was that presently he saw the lame
intruder of two nights before come out of the hovel and limp down
toward the shore, where, as Tom easily made out, there was a small,
crooked little cove running into the woods, not from the creek, but
from the broader water outside.
Tom lost sight of the man when he reached the cove, and so did not make
out what he was doing there, but after a time he saw him limp away
again and go back to the neighborhood of the hovel, which, however, he
did not enter or approach very nearly.
He loitered around for awhile, like one who must remain where he is,
but who has nothing to do there during an indefinitely long and tedious
waiting time. At last he stretched himself out on a log in the shadow
of the trees, as if to pass away the time in sleep.
Tom’s curiosity was by this time master of him. Having seen so much,
he was eager to see more. Accordingly he clambered down the tree, and,
with gun in hand, set out to follow the blind trail.
He moved silently from the first, and very cautiously toward the end of
his half-mile journey. He was careful not to tread upon any of the dry
sticks that might make a noise in breaking, and to permit no bush to
swish as he let it go.
At last he reached the neighborhood of the hovel, and, securing a
good hiding place in the dense undergrowth, minutely studied his
surroundings. The lame man lay still on his log and apparently asleep,
until after awhile the sun’s changing position brought his face into
the strong glare. Then he rose lazily, rubbing his eyes as if the sleep
were not yet out of them. Rising at last, with muttered maledictions
upon the heat, he limped over to a clump of palmetes and from among
them lifted a stone jug, from which he took a prolonged draught.
“That’s the stuff to brace a man up!” he muttered as he replaced the
jug in its hiding place.
Tom observed that there were nowhere any traces of a camp fire, present
or past, a fact that puzzled him at first, for obviously the man lived
there in the thicket, or at least remained there for prolonged periods
at a time, and, as Tom reflected, “he must eat.”
The man himself solved the riddle for him presently by going to another
of his hiding places and bringing thence a great handful of coarse ship
biscuit and a huge piece of cold pickled beef of the kind that sailors
call “salt-horse,” which he proceeded to devour.
“Obviously,” reflected Tom, “his food, such as it is, is brought to
him here already cooked. He makes no fire, probably because he fears
its light by night or the smoke of it by day might reveal his presence
here. But why does he stay here? What is he here for? Who are they
who bring him food, and when or how often do they come, and for what
purpose? It’s a Chinese puzzle, but I mean to work it out.”
Having made his observation of the place as minute as he could Tom
silently crept away, not walking in the trail, but through the bushes
near enough to let him see it and follow its winding course. He did
this lest by walking too often in the trail he should leave signs of
its recent use.
When he reached the lookout tree, to his surprise he found his three
comrades there.
“Hello! What are you fellows doing here?” he asked, breaking out of
the bushes and thus giving the first sign his comrades had had of his
approach, for even to the end of his little journey he had been at
pains to travel in absolute silence as an Indian on the war path does.
“Why, Tom, where have you been?” was the first greeting the others gave
him.
“We’ve been dreadfully uneasy about you,” Larry explained, “and when I
whistled through my fingers to call you to dinner and you didn’t come,
we hurried out here to look for you. Where _have_ you been and what
have you been doing?”
“I say, Larry, that reminds me that I want you to teach me the trick of
whistling through my fingers in that way. Will you?”
“I’ll teach you some things that are easier to learn than that,”
answered his companion, “if you try any more of Cal’s tricks of beating
round the bush. Why don’t you tell us where you’ve been and why, and
all the rest of it? Don’t you understand that we’ve been on tenterhooks
of anxiety about you for an hour?”
“Well, as I’m here, safe and sound, there is no further need of
anxiety, and as for your curiosity to hear what I have to tell, I’ll
relieve that while we’re at dinner. Come on! I’m hungry and I reckon
the rest of you are, too. Anyhow, what I’ve got to tell you is well
worth hearing, and I shall not tell you a word till we sit down on our
haunches and begin to enjoy again the flavor of that venison, broiled
on the live coals. You haven’t cooked it yet, have you?”
“No. We got the chops ready for the fire, and then I whistled for you,
so that we might all have them fresh from the coals. As you didn’t
come, we got uneasy and went to look for you. So come on and we’ll have
a late dinner and sharp appetites.”
No sooner were the juicy venison chops taken from the fire and served
upon a piece of bark that did duty as a platter than the demand for the
story of Tom’s morning adventure became clamorous.
With a chop in one hand and half an ash cake in the other, Tom told all
that he had done and seen, giving the details as the reader already
knows them. Then, after finishing the meal and washing his hands, face
and head in the salt water of the creek, he set forth the conclusions
and conjectures he had formed.
“In the first place,” he said, “I am certain that our late visitor—he
with the game leg—is the only person anywhere around. We are in no
danger of an attack, either by night or by day, until his comrades,
whoever they may be, come here and join him. We have no need of doing
sentry duty out there at the gum tree, except to keep a sufficient
lookout to make sure that we know when they do come. In my opinion that
will be at night sometime.”
“Why do you think so, Tom?”
“Simply because it is evident that they don’t come here for any good
or lawful purpose. If that lame fellow with the whisky jug is a fair
sample of the crew, they are the sort that prefer darkness to light
because their deeds are evil.”
“Who do you think they are, Tom?” asked Cal, “and what, in your
opinion, are they up to?”
“I don’t know, but I mean to find out.”
“How, Tom?”
“By watching, and, if I don’t find out sooner, by being within sight
when they do come. I’m going to reconnoiter the place again to-night to
see what that fellow does down there. Perhaps I may make out something
from that. At any rate, it’s worth trying.”
“Why shouldn’t we all go with you?” Dick asked eagerly. “Then if by any
accident that evil-visaged person with the lame leg should discover
you, we’ll be there in force enough to handle him and the situation.
I’ve heard that one of your southern generals during the Civil War once
said that strategy is ‘getting there first with the most men.’ Why
shouldn’t we practice strategy?”
“Why, of course, I counted on that,” Tom answered. “I knew all you
fellows would want to go, and I reckon that’s our best plan. Anyhow,
we’ll try it.”
“Now,” said Cal, “I have something to report which I regard as of
some little importance, particularly as it means that the _Hunkydory_
will have to leave this port pretty soon—probably within the next
forty-eight hours, and possibly sooner.”
“Why, what’s the matter, Cal?” asked all the others together.
“Only that our spring is rapidly drying up, and as there is no other
fresh water supply within reach, we shall simply be obliged to quit
these parts as soon as we can get ourselves in shape to risk it.”
“To risk what?”
“Why, putting off in a boat on salt water. We can’t do that without
some fresh water on board. I’ve already begun the filling of the kegs
by thimblefuls. It promises to be a slow process, as the spring seems
unable to yield more than a gill or so at a time.”
“But, Cal,” interrupted Tom, “we can get all the water we want by
digging a little anywhere around here. It doesn’t lie three feet below
the surface.”
“Neither does the fever,” answered Cal.
“How do you mean?”
“Why, I mean that the milky-looking water you find by digging a few
feet into the soil of these low-lying lands is poisonous. It is surface
water, an exudation from the mass of decaying vegetable matter that
constitutes the soil of the swamps. To drink it is to issue a pressing
invitation to fever, dysentery and other dangerous and deadly diseases,
to take up their permanent residence in our intestinal tracts.”
“But why isn’t the water of our spring just as bad?”
“Because it isn’t surface water at all, but spring water that comes
from a source very different from that of the swamp soil. You have
perhaps observed that the bottom of our spring is composed of clean,
white sand, through which the water rises. That sand was brought up by
that water from strata that lie far below the soil.”
“What makes it brackish, then?”
“It is brackish because a certain measure of sea water from the creek
there sipes into it. The sea water is filtered through the sand,
losing most of its salt in the process. You’ve noticed, perhaps, that
the spring water is more brackish at high than at low tide. That’s
because—”
“Oh, I see all that now. I hadn’t thought of it before. But really,
Cal, it seems rather hard that we must sail away from here just when
we’ve run up against something mysterious and interesting. Now, doesn’t
it?”
“Let me remind you,” answered Cal in his most elaborate manner of
mock-serious speaking, “that I am in nowise called upon to assume
responsibility for the vagaries of a casually encountered spring. I
did not bring up that spring. I had no part in its early education or
training. Presumably it is even my superior in age and experience. In
any case, I feel myself powerless to control or even to influence its
behavior. Moreover, I feel as keen a disappointment as you can in the
fact that we shall have to abandon our search for knowledge of the
purposes of our neighbor with the game leg. But it is not certain that
we shall have to sail away with that inquiry unfinished. It will take
a considerable time to fill our water kegs, and in the meanwhile we may
penetrate the mystery sooner than we expect. Anyhow, we’ll see what we
shall see to-night.”
XI
PERILOUS SPYING
AT Dick’s suggestion the boys cut a number of larger logs than usual
and placed them on their camp fire that evening before setting out on
their expedition.
“It will avert suspicion of what we are at,” Dick said in explanation
of his proposal. “So long as the camp fire burns up brightly nobody
seeing it from a distance will doubt that we are here. It isn’t much
trouble, anyhow.”
The night proved to be an unusually dark one, with an overcast sky,
threatening rain, and on the chance of that Cal rigged up the largest
tarpaulin the company owned and so arranged it as to conduct all
the water that might fall upon it into the bait pail and such other
receptacles as would hold it. “If it rains hard,” he explained, “we’ll
catch enough water before morning to fill both the kegs.”
Going to the big gum tree, Tom climbed to the top of it to see if
he could discover anything the little company might want to know.
After a careful scrutiny of the landscape to the west he came down
again, reporting that everything was quiet “in the region of our late
visitor’s country seat.”
Then the party set out on their exploring expedition. Tom, acting as
guide, followed the little blind trail, while the rest made their way
through the undergrowth on either side, keeping near enough to the
trail to hear even a whispered warning or direction if Tom should have
need to give any such.
Slowly, carefully, and in profound silence, they made their way to the
point from which Tom had watched the place during the day. Then, as had
been arranged in advance, the four stretched out their little line, so
as to see the place from different points of view.
At first there was not much to see, and on so dark a night even that
little could be seen only indistinctly and with difficulty. The “man
with the game leg,” as the boys called him, was moving about the place
in a leisurely fashion, but what he was doing none of the investigating
party could make out in the darkness, though they had crept very close
to the camp and were watching intently.
At last their watching and waiting were rewarded by a happening which
interested them, though they did not understand it. The man with the
game leg went into the hovel Tom had seen, and after remaining there
for a considerable time, came out again. As he did so the boys were
easily able to make out that he carried a dark lantern in his hand. It
was carefully closed, but there were little leaks of light from its
fastenings, as there always are from such contrivances when they are of
the common, cheap variety as this one obviously was.
Carrying it in his hand and still closed, the man limped off down the
trail that led toward the cove.
No sooner had he got well clear of the camp than the four watchers
began scrambling up the trees nearest to them for the sake of a better
view. There was nobody to hear them, but under the impulse of that
caution which their presence in such a place required of them, they
were careful to climb as silently as possible.
Very dimly, but with certainty, they could see the glow of the closed
dark lantern and in that way trace the man carrying it throughout his
brief journey.
When at last he reached the mouth of the cove where the view opened out
toward the broad inlet, he opened his lamp for a brief second, holding
it so that its gleam should show down the inlet to his right. A moment
later he flashed it again, this time straight across the broad inlet.
Presently he opened it for the third time, sending the flash up the
inlet.