[Illustration: Alex pointed to Clay and Don, crawling down the opposite
wall like flies.]
The River Motor Boat Boys on the Colorado
OR
The Clue in the Rocks
By HARRY GORDON
Author of
“The River Motor Boat Boys on the Mississippi,”
“The River Motor Boat Boys on the St. Lawrence,”
“The River Motor Boat Boys on the Amazon,”
“The River Motor Boat Boys on the Columbia,’
“The River Motor Boat Boys on the Ohio.”
A. L. Burt Company
New York
Copyright, 1913
By A. L. Burt Company
THE SIX RIVER MOTOR BOYS ON THE COLORADO
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES
II. TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD
III. CAPTAIN JOE’S MESSAGE
IV. “THE PHANTOM BOARDER”
V. A SURPRISE FOR THE GREASERS
VI. TEDDY BEAR MAKES A HIT
VII. THAT HAUNTED STERN DECK!
VIII. DEPUTY KING GETS A BATH
IX. ANOTHER GUEST FROM THE RIVER
X. THE OLD HOUSE BY THE RIVER
XI. ALEX GETS HIS RECEIPT
XII. ANOTHER GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT
XIII. ALEX PLANS A NIGHT ADVENTURE
XIV. A VISIT FROM RIVER PIRATES
XV. TEDDY MEETS A RELATIVE
XVI. CONCERNING A HEADLESS GHOST
XVII. THE SUNBURST ON THE WALL
XVIII. CASE AND ALEX UNDER ARREST
XIX. TWO GUESTS FROM CHICAGO
XX. A JOURNEY IN THE DARK
XXI. THE CLUE IN THE ROCKS
XXII. THE END OF A LONG JOURNEY
CHAPTER I.—MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES.
The motor boat _Rambler_ lay pulling at her anchor-chain in the muddy
waters of the Gulf of California. To the North opened the wide, shallow
mouth of the Colorado river, with its many shifting currents and
treacherous sandbars.
Eastward stretched a Mexican desert, where flourished cacti and forms of
animal life unknown to other parts of the world. Beyond this waste of
sand, which had, in times long gone by, formed the bed of a lake, rose
the peaks and ridges of the Sierra del Pinacates mountains.
To the South the Montague islands shut out the body of the Gulf, and
Westward a patch of desert led out to a mountain range. There are two
volcanic elevations running down the peninsula, and beyond them lies the
tumbling Pacific ocean, a hundred miles away.
The sun was lifting out of the desert to the East, rising round and red
and hot, like the bottom of a great brass kettle, and the chill of the
dark hours was changing to the stifling, long-scorching heat which is a
thing of the desert the world over.
Those who have followed the adventures of the _Rambler_ and her crew,
will remember her last on the Columbia. After a journey through the wild
canyons and forest-lined reaches of the great river of the Northwest
Territories, the motor boat had been shipped to Guaymas, where she had
taken to the water again in the Gulf of California.
The _Rambler_ carried a crew of three this morning, Clayton Emmett,
Cornelius Witters and Alexander Smith wick, boys of seventeen, who had
explored the Amazon as well as the Columbia in the staunch little boat.
There had been others on the previous trips, but now only these three
were ready for the voyage up the wonderful stream which finds its waters
in the frozen snows of the Rocky Mountains and plays hide-and-seek with
them thousands of feet below the lips of the desert, in the most
mysterious and wildly beautiful canyons known to the world.
Others might join them at up-river points, but the lads were content to
make the journey just as they were. Now, as the sun rose higher and the
air above the sands began to shimmer in the heat, they tumbled out of
their bunks in the little cabin of the motor boat and, after
invigorating baths in the Gulf, began preparations for breakfast.
“If we wait much longer,” Alex suggested, as he busied himself in making
coffee, “we won’t want anything for breakfast but snowballs, it will be
so hot, and we’re not likely to get them in this oven of a land. Who’s
going to fry the cakes this morning? Oh, you would, would you!”
This last sentence was addressed to a grizzly bear cub which shambled
into the cabin and placed two paws and a soft muzzle of a mouth on the
table where the boy stood. This was “Teddy,” the cub Alex had captured
during the trip down the Columbia river.
“I know what you want, Teddy Bear!” the boy added, as the cub winked a
small eye at him. “You want to wait until I get the sugar out, then you
want to empty one bowl into one bear! Now, you move on!”
The boy addressed the cub just as he would have spoken to one of his
chums, and the bear appeared to understand what was said to him, for he
grabbed angrily at an egg which Alex had brought to “settle” the coffee
and made off with it, walking upright to the door, with the broken yolk
marking his muzzle, paws and breast with cabalistic inscriptions in
yellow.
Once on deck the cub was promptly chased over the rail into the Gulf,
where he wallowed clumsily, with three boys laughing at his antics and
penitent looks. When permitted to come, dripping and sullen, on board he
sulked off to a corner and scolded every one who approached until
Captain Joe sat down in front of him and grinned sarcastically at his
plastered fur and stuck-up eyes.
Captain Joe was a white bulldog the boys had acquired on the Amazon
trip. The bear and the dog were great chums. Captain Joe now sat making
wrinkled faces at the disconsolate cub.
“Eat him up, Captain Joe!” Cornelius Witters, known to his friends as
“Case,” shouted. “He stole an egg!”
The dog cocked one short ear and looked reproachfully at the cub.
“The price of that egg would have bought you a bone, Captain Joe,”
Clayton Emmett, better known as “Clay,” put in. “Take a bit out of him,
just to teach him better manners!”
Captain Joe winked his red eyes at Teddy and walked away in a dignified
manner, as if not relishing being made the executioner of the crew! The
lads laughed at the animal’s attitude of offended innocence and went on
with their preparations for breakfast.
The most of the cooking was done on the top of a coal stove, but the
coffee was bubbling on an electric coil which stood on a table at the
back of the cabin. After a dozen pancakes had been cooked Alex placed
them close to the electric coil to keep warm, though, as he said, “The
air was fit to keep them red hot anywhere.”
There was a small, square window over the electric stove, at the back of
the cabin, a window which opened on about a yard’s width of deck at the
stern of the boat. This small space concealed gasoline tanks, and was
not in sight from either the deck or the cabin of the motor boat.
Indeed, it was rarely visited, except by Captain Joe and Teddy, who
often took long siestas there when the bulk of the cabin cast shadows on
the bare planks.
Case cooked heap after heap of brown buckwheat cakes and passed them on
to Alex to be placed in the warming closet, as the boys called the ledge
of the electric stove, “until they had enough to get a good eating start
on,” as Witters observed. Finally he ceased his efforts and glanced at
the place where the tempting heap of cakes had been placed.
There was not even a crumb of a pancake in sight! Alex was busy getting
out plates and cups, his back to the electric stove and the window. The
coffee was bubbling over the cherry-red coils.
Case advanced to the stove and looked over it, under it, around it, and
even under the table it stood on. There wasn’t a pancake, or a part of
pancake, anywhere! He rushed up to Alex and shook him by the arm.
“You never bolted ’em all?” he demanded. “Not every last one of them,
did you? Two dozen of 'em! You never did!”
Alex dropped a plate on the table and looked quizzically at Case.
“Sure!” he declared. “Sure I did! What of it?”
“Two dozen cakes at one gobble!” laughed Case. “Now, you can get ready
to cook more. Land of Promise! Twenty-four—count 'em—twenty-four at one
mouthful! If I had your capacity I’d—”
Then Alex began to sense the situation. He glanced from Case to the
place where the cakes had just stood in a rich, brown column. Then his
eyes roved about until they encountered Captain Joe and Teddy consoling
each other on the prow of the boat. They certainly couldn’t have done
it!
“Did you get ’em?” he asked, hopelessly, of Case? “Did you cop 'em out
to prevent our getting indigestion?”
“You ate them yourself!” Case returned, half angrily.
Alex grinned and placed his hands at his lean waist.
“I don’t seem to find ’em anywhere,” he laughed. “Not on me!”
“Then where did they go?” demanded Case. “Who did get them?”
Alex walked to the rear window and opened it. The sash swung inward on
hinges, and was not locked, but it rarely was locked. Then he thrust his
head out of the opening and looked down on the small deck. There was no
one there.
“The old Nick is in the place!” Case cried, presently. “I can smell
sulphur in the air! Suppose we get out of this?” he added, as Clay came
into the cabin. “This ain’t no place for a Christian gentleman!”
Clay’s eyes sparkled when the story was told to him.
“It is a joke!” he laughed. “You’ll have to get some fairy tale stronger
than that to account for a lost breakfast! Come on, now, who got the
cakes? Own up, and I’ll fry more. Who is the villain?”
“You may search me,” Alex answered, dropping into slang. “Case handed
them to me and I put them on the edge of the electric coil. They’ve gone
up in the air, if anybody should ask you! Right up in the air!”
“Who opened the window?” asked Clay, still unbelieving.
“I did,” Alex answered. “There’s no one out there.”
“No one could get on board without being challenged by Captain Joe,”
Case suggested. “Even Teddy would make a row and ask questions of any
stranger! It is uncanny! I’m beginning to think the _Rambler_ is
haunted. Or it may be the locality! Suppose we pull anchor and go on
up?”
“Just my idea!” Alex agreed. “When we get a few miles up the Colorado,
I’ll cook bacon and eggs for breakfast, and we can have some of the
honey Teddy didn’t get his thieving paws on.”
So the boys brought up the anchor, started the motors, and in ten
minutes were pushing up the Colorado. The famous river is wide and
shallow at its junction with the Gulf of California, and the constantly
changing currents heap sandbars to-day where there was deep water
yesterday, so the lads proceeded at less than half speed.
At the end of an hour they were only fifteen miles from the anchorage of
the night before. The river was narrowing. To the east a low line of
sand hills came down to the water, to the west the foothills of the
Sierra de los Cucapas range dropped close to the channel. Something less
than one hundred miles to the north was Yuma, where the Southern Pacific
Railroad crosses the stream.
The lads cast anchor near the west shore, and Alex brought out the bacon
and eggs, while Case proceeded to brew fresh coffee. By this time the
sun was shining blisteringly on the deck of the motor boat, and all
three lads were in the cabin, with all the small windows open to the
slight breeze.
“Now,” Clay suggested, as the three sat at the little table in the
center of the cabin, two facing each other and one looking out of the
open doorway which commanded a view of the deck, “suppose we have the
honey we’re going to consume to keep Teddy from acquiring it? Where is
it?”
“I put it back of the electric stove, there by the window,” Alex
replied. “I’ll get it in a minute.”
Three faces were turned toward the rear window, three pair of eyes
expressed amazement, incredulity, three boys sprang to their feet and
moved toward the electric stove. The can of honey was not there!
“I saw it not more than a minute ago!” insisted Case.
“So did I,” Alex agreed. “Not half a minute ago!”
Then three faces turned toward the deck. Teddy and Captain Joe lay on
the prow, sweltering in the heat, their ears cocked as if set to catch
some sound as yet only faintly heard. They didn’t have the honey!
“I reckon,” Alex observed, “that we’ve got a phantom boarder!”
“He’s got his nerve, whoever he is!” Case said, with a scowl, for Case
was inordinately fond of honey, and had counted much on the can which
had so strangely disappeared. “He’s clever, too!”
Captain Joe now arose from the deck at the prow and walked to the
railing on the port side. He stood there an instant, as if undecided
what to do next, then lifted his paws to the top of the deck guard and
looked over into the river.
“I guess the dog’s got him—this phantom boarder!” Clay laughed.
But Captain Joe went back to the cub in a moment and lay down again. If
there was any stranger around the boat, the dog certainly was not aware
of the fact, the boys concluded. Yet some one had taken the cakes and
the honey! Who could it have been, they asked each other.
“It wouldn’t be right for us to start on a river trip unaccompanied by a
mystery,” laughed Clay. “We had a mystery with us while we were on the
Amazon, and the Columbia panned out pretty well in that particular, too,
so I’m not much astonished by the presence of a mysterious boarder now.
He ought not to take the best of everything, though,” he added, with a
grin at Case, who was still inconsolable because of the loss of the
honey.
“Say,” Alex exclaimed, presently. “This is no joke! There’s something
going on here that we ought to know more about. The pancakes and honey
never walked off without legs! Some fierce creature may have come up out
of the river and grabbed them, but I don’t believe it.”
“Do you think there’s some one hidden on the boat?” asked Case. “If
there is, where is he? No place to hide here, that I know of.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Alex returned. “No one from the
shore took the two articles of food, for they were taken at points
fifteen miles apart—unless we have been visited by two thieves using the
same methods, which I do not believe.
“I’m going to find out whether human hands took the grub, or whether
some monster came up out of the river and assessed us for a square meal.
You boys stay here and watch in front, and I’ll climb on the little deck
over the gasoline tanks and see what’s going on there. If anything I
can’t handle shows up, I’ll call for help!”
Clay and Case sat for a long time with their eyes fixed on the open deck
and the up-river landscape. They heard Alex scramble over the low cabin
roof and take a position on the narrow space over the tanks. Then all
was still save the rush of the water. Captain Joe arose again, sniffed
at the port rail, peered over into the water, and gave a low growl.
“He sees something!” Clay cried, excitedly.
Case hastened to the rear window and looked out, as if to ask Alex a
question. At first he only looked out. Then he leaned out. Then he
dashed out of the cabin and called to Clay, a note of anxiety in his
tone.
When Clay reached the deck he saw what had excited his chum. Alex was
not on the narrow deck, not on the cabin roof, nowhere on the boat! The
river ran away smooth and clear, sparkling in the light with no craft in
sight. The boy had disappeared as utterly as if he had been dissolved in
the hot air!