CHAPTER I.—IN QUEST OF SPARK PLUGS.
“That Kentucky shore looks to me like good hunting.”
“What can you get over there?”
“’Possums, coons, rabbits and squirrels.”
“All right, we’ll go right now and get a coon.”
Cornelius Witters threw himself back on the gunwale and laughed and shook until little wavelets sprang from the sides of the boat and rippled away over the Ohio river.
“You’ll get lots of coons in the middle of the afternoon,” he said, finally. “You have to get coons in the night.”
“Well, there’s another night coming, ain’t there?” suggested Alex Smithwick. “We’re going to stay here in this eddy until morning, ain’t we?”
“I guess we’ll have to stay till morning,” Jule Shafer cut in. “The motor has gone wrong, and Clay doesn’t seem to know how to fix it.”
Clayton Emmett looked up from the motors with a very smutty face and smiled at the last remark.
“I’ll tell you what it is, boys,” he said, “this motor can’t be put in good shape until we get another consignment of spark plugs.”
The four boys, Clayton Emmett, Alex Smithwick, Jule Shafer and Cornelius Witters, gathered about the motor, looking with disgust at its motionless cranks. The boat had been turned into an eddy on the Kentucky side of the Ohio river about noon, and Clay had been working at the machinery ever since in the hope of getting farther down the river that night.
“Well,” Case said, after a short silence, “some one must go out to civilization and buy some spark plugs. How far do you think we’ll have to go? Of course these little trading points on the river don’t keep spark plugs. We’ll be lucky if we even get gasoline there.”
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” Clay suggested.
“We may be able to buy or borrow spark plugs from some passing launch or steamer. There are store-boats on the Ohio, you know, and they may carry all kinds of motor boat supplies.”
“Oh yes,” Alex grinned, “there are store-boats on the Ohio, and whiskey boats, and show-boats, and house-boats, and about a thousand other kinds of boats, but I don’t believe they carry such supplies as we want.”
“It’s just a chance,” Clay went on. “We may be able to get a supply from some motor boat, but in the meantime we’d better be looking about in other directions.”
“All right,” Case exclaimed, excitedly, “Alex and I will go out hunting and steer toward any little river town we get wise to. We may find motor supplies in any old shanty town.”
“All right,” Clay replied. “Go out and get a mess of squirrels or rabbits while you’re hunting for a supply store.”
The motor boat Rambler lay in an eddy on the Kentucky side of the Ohio river, some distance below Louisville. The four owners had put the boat into the river at Pittsburg, and were making their way to the Mississippi at Cairo.
They had only recently returned from an extended trip up the St. Lawrence river. From Ogdensburg they had followed the Great Lakes to Chicago, which was their home. From Ogdensburg the motor boat had been accompanied by the launch Cartier, which had been presented to Captain Joe, one of their old-time friends, because of important services rendered by the boys. Those who have read the previous books of this series will understand the build and speed of the Rambler, and also the affectionate relations existing between the four boys and Captain Joe, an ex-sea, lake and river captain.
Captain Joe had been urged by the lads to accompany them on their trip down the Ohio with his launch, but had objected, saying that the boys would be sure to get into all kinds of scrapes, and that he did not care to become responsible for the actions of a crew going about the world looking for trouble!
The old captain, however, had a very alert and intelligent representative on board the Rambler in the person of Captain Joe, a white bulldog of forbidding appearance. This dog had been purchased at Para, Brazil, by Alex, and had often made himself useful during trying situations on previous trips.
There was also another passenger on board the Rambler whose name did not appear on the crew list. This was Teddy, the quarter-grown grizzly bear which Alex had rescued from a floating tree in the Columbia river, near the source of that wonderful stream.
The bear and the dog were very good friends, playing together like kittens. During their many river trips the boys had taught the bear to box, wrestle and frisk about in the water. Captain Joe was always ready for a tussle with the bear, and had a habit of following Alex surreptitiously every time the boy left the boat.
The Rambler was well supplied with provisions and ammunition of all kinds, but, the supply of gasoline running low, the tanks being well-nigh empty, and the spark plug badly worn, the boys had proposed early in the day to merely drift down the river, keeping headway with the sweep.
But a little experience of this mode of traveling on the great stream had caused them to tie up in an eddy on the Kentucky side. It was September, and the Ohio was alive with traffic of all kinds.
During the early part of the day they had passed several excursion boats, gay with flags and music, almost a fleet of shanty-boats, and innumerable packets, stern-wheelers and side-wheelers. Drifting with no control to speak of, the Rambler had several times come very near collision with larger boats.
On the Ohio, as well as on the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, the traffic-men seem to have a great contempt for those who go about in gasoline boats. Captains and pilots unite in making trouble for the owners of such craft whenever it is possible to do so.
Once that forenoon the Rambler had come very near destruction because of a monstrous tow of coal barges moving down upon it. Later, the boys had been annoyed and insulted by a gang of toughs who were lounging over the railing of a whiskey boat which was passing up the river.
It was finally arranged that Alex and Case should go ashore and look about for a place where supplies might be purchased. There were no settlements in sight from the point where the Rambler lay, but the boys thought that, as she lay just above a great bend which swept around a long peninsula, turning to the south at last, there might be business places not far away which were not in view.
“And while you are gone,” Jule called out as the boys rowed ashore, “catch a coon and half a dozen squirrels. I can make a squirrel pie that will bring Captain Joe down from Chicago!”
“All right!” Alex called back. “We’ll bring game enough to last a week. Get your fires all ready by dark.”
The shore on which the boys found themselves a few moments later was wild and rocky. There were great oaks towering along the side hills and immense trees of hickory, beech and walnut shut out the view on all sides. There was also a heavy undergrowth.
“Where are you heading for?” asked Case, as Alex turned into a thicket and went tramping through it with a great noise.
“I think,” Alex replied, “that we’d better keep off to the west and south. I looked at a map of the river just before I left the boat, and there’s a great bend here. We can walk across it in an hour or two, but it would take half a day to float or row around it.”
“I see,” Case answered. “There may be a town in a nook around the bend. That’s where they build towns in this country.”
The boys made good time for an hour or more, when they came out on the bank of the river perhaps three miles from the boat, across the bend, and ten or fifteen by way of the river. Just below them, hardly forty rods from the point where they emerged from the underbrush, they saw a little river settlement composed of half a dozen ramshackle houses, a fishing dock, and one store building.
“There!” Alex said. “I’ll bet we find spark plugs there!”
“If we find as many spark plugs there as we didn’t find squirrels coming through,” Case laughed, “It will take a long time to get our motor started.”
“Oh, well,” Alex answered, “we didn’t look very hard for squirrels, anyway. We’ll see what they’ve got here, and do our hunting on the way back.”
“Clay may get what we want from some of the boats,” Case suggested. “There are lots of boats on the river that ought to carry spark plugs. It’s dollars to apples that every motor boat we’ve seen to-day carries an extra supply.”
“That won’t do us any good,” Alex answered, “if they don’t show a disposition to pass them around.”
“Do you know,” Case went on, “I’m afraid of some of those river boats. There’s a tougher gang on some of them than you’ll find on Clark street. They drink third-rail whiskey, made up in the mountains, and are ready to do murder after a dozen doses of it.”
“Well,” Alex said, “we’ll just have to watch out, that’s all.”
“You remember that red, white and blue boat we saw yesterday?” Case went on. “That was a gambling house proper. Just looking over the gunwale into the cabin windows, I saw roulette wheels in operation and three faro layouts crowded with excited gamblers.”
“Yes,” Alex assented, “and it looked to me like they were playing stud poker out in the open. It’s a wonder the people along the river don’t put dynamite under those boats some night.”
“I reckon,” Case suggested, “that the people along the river are more afraid of the store-boats than they are of the gambling boats. These store-boat men steal everything they can get their hands on. They have been known to raid small towns, strip the shelves of the business places, and even take valuable furniture and musical instruments from the residences. When they get a boat load of this sort of plunder, they take it down to New Orleans, where it is disposed of by men who make a business of doing that sort of thing.”
Alex scratched his red head and wrinkled his freckled nose for a minute and then turned to his chum with a grin on his face.
“If they try to get the Rambler,” he said, “don’t forget that we have dynamite under the after deck near the gasoline tanks.”
“If they try to get the Rambler,” Case exclaimed, “they’ll do it while we are away on shore, or asleep. These river rats are too cowardly to put up an open fight. They do their work in the dark.”
“That’s one reason why I don’t like being away from the boat long at a time,” Alex went on. “Clay and Jule would do anything any two boys could do to protect our property, but, all the same, two boys wouldn’t cut much ice with a gang of river pirates like I’ve seen on those boats.”
As the boy ceased speaking he laid an excited hand on Case’s shoulder and turned his face in the direction from which they had come.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
Case nodded and turned back to the east.
“It sounded like a gun,” he exclaimed. “I’m going back to the boat.”
Alex held him back and pointed toward the settlement below.
“We may as well see about the spark plugs,” he advised. “It won’t take us very much longer. That noise may be only hunters, anyway.”
Trying their best to conceal their excitement, the boys moved down the slope to the river bank and stopped on a level platform before the store door. The shots were now coming in a volley.