CHAPTER XI.—ALEX GETS HIS RECEIPT.
When Alex and Case awoke at daylight and discovered Clay’s absence, they began a search of the shore with their glass, supposing that he had gone into the city for supplies. Then Alex discovered the remains of Tom’s supper, and Case came across the clothing taken off by the lad. The clothes were still wet.
“There’s something queer been going on here!” Case exclaimed. “Clay had a visitor who swam out to the boat last night!”
“And the guest had supper here!” Alex contributed. “And Clay must have gone away with him. Wonder he wouldn’t have awakened us before leaving the boat!”
While the boys cooked breakfast, discussing the remarkable disappearance of Clay as they did so, a boat bumped against the prow of the Rambler and a voice called out:
“Hello, there! Where’s my rowboat?”
Alex, leaning over the railing, saw a swarthy face looking up at him. The fellow seemed to be angry for he was swearing and gesticulating wildly.
“If you think I’ve got your boat you may search me!” the boy said.
“But you got it last night!” insisted the other. “You rented it for an hour and never brought it back. What have you done with it?”
“Guess again!” Alex replied. “I slept all night. Never saw your old boat. It was some one else who rented it.”
“Well, the boy who got it said he wanted to bring a friend off this boat, and that he would return it before midnight.”
“You’ve been buncoed!” Alex laughed.
“Wait a minute,” Case broke in. “There may be something to this. You say a boy got a boat of you to row out to the Rambler?” he asked of the man, now getting ready to board the boat and make physical trouble for the boys.
“That’s what I said. Where is that boy now?” “What sort of a looking boy was it?” asked Case, patiently.
“A little bit of a chap. He was wet as a rat, and said he had swum off this boat and wanted to row out to bring a friend off.”
“Well, did you watch him after he left with the boat?”
“Yes, and he came out here; and then another boy got into the boat with him and they rowed ashore. I want my boat or good pay for it—right now!”
“If you come up here with your threats,” Alex declared, “you’ll get a rap over the head—and I’ll set the dog on you!”
“I’ll have you all arrested!” shouted the other. “I want my boat.”
“Sing it!” chuckled Alex. “You might make a fine song with that ‘I want my boat’ story of yours. Have you looked along the river bank for it? The boy might have left it there.”
“I have not,” was the reply. “It is up to you to return it, and not my place to look for it. That boat was worth $50 of any man’s money.”
“Will you wait a moment, please?” Case asked of the boatman, as he drew Alex to one side. “I may want to go to shore with you before long.”
The other nodded and stood angrily in his boat, waiting.
“Now,” Case explained to Alex, “there is no need of making an enemy of this man with your impudent talk. He is probably right. Some one swam out here, had supper, swam back and got a boat, and took Clay to the shore. Now, who could it have been? This beats me?”
“Couldn’t have been Don, could it?” asked Alex, doubtfully.
“I’m all at sea,” Case replied. “I don’t understand how Don could have got up to Yuma, and yet I’m half inclined to believe that it was he who took the money, though why he should have done so without letting us know is more than I can figure out.”
“There’s no head or tail to this business,” Alex declared. “We’re all mixed up with other folks’ troubles, just as we were on the Amazon and Columbia river trips! Are you going ashore with this man?”
“Of course. I’ve got to find out, if I can, where Clay went.”
“Of course we’ve got to do that.” Alex agreed, “but don’t you go to mixing with any one else!
Bring Clay aboard and we’ll fly up the river like little birds! I don’t want to see any one else for a month! The river and the mountains and the canyons will do for mine!”
“That’s just the way I feel about it,” Case replied. “I’m tired of mixing in affairs that don’t concern me. I want to get up the river and be let alone. I hope Don will find his money, but I’m not going to bother my head any more about it.”
“That’s me!” Alex agreed. “You go ashore and get Clay. He’s not far off. Take Captain Joe with you. He will follow the boy’s track from the place where he landed. And when you get Clay, make a run for the Rambler! Don’t stop, even to pick up money, until you get on board, then we’ll shoot up stream like a shark after a pig! No more of this for me.”
So, after further talk, Case went ashore with the boatman, and Alex got out his automatic and sat watching the river bank. Teddy stood up on his hind legs and invited the boy to a boxing match, but he was too blue and too anxious to play with the cub.
“I wonder if Don did get that money?” he thought, over and over again as he sat watching the shore. “If he did, why didn’t he let me know that he was taking it?”
He could find no answers to his questions, so he studied the shore of the river where the town loomed up and wished from the bottom of his heart that his friends were on board, and that the Rambler was a hundred miles away from King, Don, and all the rest! Then he heard a hail from the river and ran to the prow.
A small boat lay rocking in the current, and out of it looked the grinning face of Don Durand! Alex almost dropped over the side in his amazement. Now that the boy was before his eyes, however, he was unaffectedly glad to see him.
He tossed down a rope end so Don could secure his boat to the rail of the Rambler and, later, gave him a helping hand. When Don gained the deck he received a cordial greeting.
“Can you get me out of sight, quickly?” the boy asked. “King is in Yuma, ‘and he’s goin’ to get me if I don’t watch out!’”
“Of course I’ll help you,” Alex answered. “I don’t like your ways, but I’m sore on King. He came on board and mussed up the furniture and tied up the dog, and marooned Clay and Case on a desert island!”
“That must have been nice!” Don grinned, going to a heap of pancakes which had been cooked for breakfast and left to grow cold because of the excitement of the time. “I’m going to eat these few dozen pancakes while you converse!” he added. “Why don’t you like my ways?”
“Eat away!” Alex returned. “You’re always hungry when you come on board the Rambler. “I’ll get you coffee in a short time.”
“There’s nothing to eat in the desert,” Don said, stuffing his mouth with cakes. “Besides, I’m going to board with you all the way up the Colorado, so I may as well begin now to make you acquainted with my appetite. But you didn’t tell me why you don’t like my ways.”
“Why didn’t you let us know you took the money?” asked Alex, at a venture, almost trembling as he awaited a reply.
“Didn’t you get my receipt for it?” asked Don. “It was on the silk wrapper. I wrote in there! Where is the wrapper?”
Alex took the silk from a pocket and examined it. Surely enough, there, on the edge, were the words: “Received contents. Don.”
“Why, you old fraud!” shouted Alex, overjoyed at the discovery. “You old river thief! Why didn’t you wake us up and tell us you were after the money? You’ve made us a lot of trouble!”
Don grinned and continued his work on the cakes, and Alex finally put the coffee pot over the coils and made him a cup of hot drink while he told of running across the point and floating down to the Rambler on a plank he found in the water. Alex grabbed him, then, and demanded to know where the money was.
“Let go!” yelled Don. “I’ve got it in my belt, and I didn’t want any one but you to know I took it because I didn’t want the others to know where it was, if anybody should come on board and ask about it, and, then,” he went on, with a sly wink, “I made the receipt a little blind because I wanted to teach you not to go to sleep with fifty thousand dollars in gold notes lying in your lap! That was careless of you!”
“The notes were in the silk covering, in my pocket,” insisted the boy.
“Well, perhaps they were, at one time, but Teddy was about to investigate the package when I crawled up out of the water, off the plank I’d floated down on! Now, tell me about King coming on board, and what he did and said.”
“He must have landed on the Rambler from a small boat dropped off a river steamer,” Alex answered, still so pleased with the news that the money was safe that he could hardly talk straight, “and he came in the night.”
“And no one saw him? What about the dog’s giving an alarm?”
“We have figured that out. King had been on board before, and had been treated kindly, so the dog probably thought he had a right to come back. But he insulted Captain Joe, after he got on the deck, for he tied him up. He won’t get on here again right away. Joe will eat him up if he tries to.”
Then the boy told of the manner in which Teddy had gotten rid of the unwelcome visitor, and Don began to make inquiries for Case and Clay. Alex had to tell him about that, too, and Don looked frightened at the recital.
“The boatman said it was a little bit of a fellow?” he asked. “Then that was my brother, Tom! I was to meet him here, after King got out of the way. Now, where do you think they are?”
“I don’t try to think any more,” was the reply.
“I believe I know where they went,” Don burst out, in a moment. “They went to the basement of an old house owned by my uncle, and something has happened to them to prevent their coming back.”
“If you know where they went, suppose you go bring them back.”
“And run plump into King! Not for mine. You go! I’ll tell you where the house is, and you can go and bring them back.”
“If King hasn’t arrested them, perhaps I can,” Alex added. “He may have caught them, you know. Well, where do I go? I’ll make a bluff at finding the boys, and then we’ll go on up the river. Trouble is too thick down in this country! Show me where the house is.”
“You see that old tumble-down structure on the river bank, just a little below the city?” asked Don. “Well, that’s it.”
“What would they go there for?” demanded the other. “More mystery!”
“They will tell you that! Now, while you are gone, I’ll fry more cakes and get a good breakfast. I’m going up the Colorado with you, you know, and I may as well begin to make myself useful.”
“You say it well!” returned Alex, but he did not appear to be much annoyed at the thought of taking on this agreeable passenger.
Alex descended into the rowboat and cast off. Then he stood up, excitedly, and pointed to the old building Don had designated.
“What’s the matter with the old barn?” he called out. “Get the glass and look at it. It seems to me to be tumbling into the river.”
“It surely is!” Don cried, looking through the glass. “There’s been something exciting going on there, and the old house is sliding into the water. I guess I’d better go ashore with you!”
“No you don’t!” the boy answered. “You’re going to guard the boat while I find out about this. If King comes on board, set Teddy at him!”
“No one will pick money off me while I’m asleep!” roared Don.
Alex made good time to the shore, but when he reached the little pier which ran out just south of the junction of the Colorado and Gila rivers he found a crowd ahead of him. The old house was just below, and the creaking of parting timbers told of rapid disintegration.
“What is the trouble?” he asked of the first man he met after landing.
“Why, the old Durand place is tumbling down,” was the reply, “going into the river! It is believed that large sums of money are hidden in the old miser’s den, and the people are flocking here to see if they can snatch some of it. Doesn’t look now as if any one would get it!”
“Some of the folks here may be after money,” another on-looker cut in, “but most of them are watching to see if the boys get out alive. They say there are two young boys locked up in an iron room down there.”
“How do you know that?” demanded Alex, his heart in his throat.
Before the other could answer the question Case came running up.
“Clay and another boy are in there!” he cried, wringing Alex’s hand. “They are locked in a deep cellar, with water pouring in on them! If they don’t drown, the falling walls will kill them!”
“How do you know they are in there?” Alex asked, hoping to find the story told by the on-looker and by Case an uncertain one, after all.
“King came for help to get them out, when he found the cellar was filling with water,” Case answered. “He said he had arrested them and put them in the den for safe keeping. He admitted that his act of authority might be the death of the boys, and he would have been lynched if he hadn’t run away. How are we ever going to get them out?”
While they stood there in an excited, anxious group Don came panting up, wet from a swim from the Rambler. Alex began grumbling because the boat had been left alone, but Don stopped him.
“I heard what they are saying about the iron room,” Don said, “and the boys being locked in there! I used to know the location of the spring that opened that door from the cellar, but I can’t think of it now. If I only could!” he cried beating his forehead with his fists.
The old house was tumbling fast. The thin bank which ran along the river side was now caving, and the ground around the structure, which was considerably lower than the surface of the river, was being flooded. Captain Joe pulled at Alex’s leg, drawing him toward the house!
“I’m going in there to try to find the spring,” Don said, but as the three lads started for the crumbling old house the officious crowd seized and drew them back!