CHAPTER V.—CAPTAIN JOE ON SHORE.
“I’ll tell you right now,” Alex declared, panting and out of breath in his efforts to keep pace with the long stride of the new-found friend, “that there isn’t anything the matter with the Rambler. There never was anything wrong with the boat, and there never will be. She may be in trouble, but she’s been there before.”
“Yes,” Case added, “and we’ve always gotten her out of her troubles, and we’ll do it again. What’s your name, Mister?” he added, turning to the lanky guide who was forcing them through the thickets at such swift pace.
“My name,” the other replied, “is Hank Beers. I live up in the mountains, and I came down to-day to see about negotiating for a little product I make up there.”
“Are you a moonshiner?” asked Case, innocently.
“No, I’m not a moonshiner,” replied Hank. “I’m making a superior quality of aeroplanes up in the hills. When I get one finished I put it in a suit case and bring it down.”
“That means,” Alex laughed, “that the product of your factory is intended to send people up in the air!”
“Put it any way you like,” laughed Hank. “The point with us now is to find out what’s become of that boat of yours. You say you left her up at the stem of the bend?”
“Yes,” answered Case, “we left her to get a spark plug and some squirrels. That shooting, you know, may not have been at the Rambler or from the Rambler. We may be unnecessarily excited about it.”
“Young man,” declared Hank, “when you hear shooting going on like that in this vicinity, you just make up your mind that the river pirates have something to do with it.”
“Why don’t they get out and lynch these river pirates?” demanded Case.
“Sakes alive!” exclaimed Hank. “If we Kentuckians lynched all the people who make us trouble, we’d have to import telegraph poles to hang ’em on. There wouldn’t be anywhere near enough trees for the business.”
“I thought Kentucky was a law-abiding state,” remarked Alex.
“She’s the most law-abiding state you ever heard tell of,” replied Hank with a laugh. “All the trouble is,” he went on, “that sometimes we mountain people make laws of our own, and when we do that the laws have to be abided by.”
“Oh, yes,” Case grinned, “I remember the Knights of the Golden Circle, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the Night-Riders, and the White Caps. When that bunch wanted to kill a man, all they did was to pass a law against him and then abide by it.”
“There are a whole lot of offenses,” the mountaineer went on, “that can’t be handled by the laws these here shysters put on the statute books. But,” he continued, “we won’t talk about that any more. We wouldn’t agree, anyhow. About how far are we from the point where you left your boat?”
“Two miles,” declared Alex.
“Three!” suggested Case.
“What time did you leave the boat?” asked Hank.
“Two o’clock,” was the reply.
Hank looked at a ponderous silver watch which he took from a back pocket of his trousers and shook his head.
“If you left the boat at two o’clock,” he said, “and you had just come to the settlement when that little ruction started, you were something like three hours on the way. That means more than three miles.”
“Oh yes,” Alex agreed, “but we wandered about this way and that, looking for squirrels, and coons, and rabbits, so I think that we ought to be somewhere near the boat by this time.”
“If we don’t come to it pretty soon,” the mountaineer suggested, “we’ll have to look for it in the dark. It is getting twilight in here right now. It will soon be almost impossible to make our way through the thickets. ’Tarnal bad woods in the night time, these are.”
Darkness was indeed settling over the forest. To make matters worse, a mass of heavy clouds was drifting up from the Mississippi valley, and the chances were remarkably good for a long, slow rain. After proceeding some farther in the thicket, Alex took out his electric searchlight—without which he never left the Rambler—and threw its rays on the thicket ahead. As he did so Hank seized him by the arm.
“Douse it, douse it!” the mountaineer cried. “Don’t you know any better than to make a light in here?”
“Where’s the harm?” asked Case. “We’d never get through there without a light.”
“I’ll tell you where the harm is,” the mountaineer answered. “Them fellers you stirred up back there at the settlement will shortly be sending men out here to look you up. I shouldn’t be surprised if they sent men with bloodhounds.”
“Oh well, then, we’ll have to do the best we can in the dark,” Alex sighed, turning off the light.
“Let me see that, will you?” asked Hank.
The mountaineer took the searchlight in his great bony hand and examined it attentively, switching the light on and off and turning it this way and that, taking the precaution, however, to hold the eye of the electric close to the ground.
“You Yankees,” he said presently, “will soon be getting searchlights by wireless! It’s a pretty good light, though, and I don’t object to it if you do. How much might one of those contraptions cost?” he added.
“All the way from four bits to four dollars,” was the reply. “If you want a real large one, you may go as high as fifty dollars.”
“I’ll buy one when I bring down my next airplane,” said the mountaineer, whimsically. “I don’t doubt but that I could use it in my business. I don’t suppose the wind would put that out, would it? It’s mighty strong up there in the mountains sometimes,” he added.
“No,” Case answered, “nothing will put that light out until the battery becomes exhausted. That is, unless you break the lamp.”
The boys were just starting on again when the long terrifying baying of a hound came to their ears. The dog was still a long distance off, yet even as they listened his great voice came more distinctly through the darkness.
“There!” Hank said in a disgusted tone of voice, “they’ve gone and done it at last! It’s just this way, boys,” he went on, “when you left that old skinflint of a merchant back there, you were two little boys sent out by a river pirate to see if the town was worth plundering. Ten minutes after your departure, you were two river pirates, armed to the teeth and half drunk on moonshine whiskey. Thirty minutes after you left, they were saying that the town had been visited by a band of pirates armed with cannons. By to-morrow morning, they will have the town pillaged and burned. I never did see the way people exaggerate things.”
“But where did they get that hound?” asked Alex. “There wasn’t any there when we were there.”
“They might have got one off of the Government boat,” Hank answered.
“But there wasn’t any Government boat,” Alex insisted.
“There was one just coming up the river,” said the mountaineer. “If we ever come to the bank of the stream we’ll see her pass up.”
“Well, what are we going to do about the dog?” Case asked. “He’s evidently out of leash, for, judging from the sound of his voice, he’s running faster than any man could navigate through the woods.”
“Yes, he does seem to be out of leash,” the mountaineer answered, “and it may be that he took up the scent on his own hook. Still, the Federals do have bloodhounds to aid in trailing the moonshiners.”
“Isn’t there any way to get away from the brute?” asked Case. “If we don’t, he’ll tree us and set up such a howling that the men will be thicker than bees around us in about an hour.”
“We can shoot him when he comes up,” suggested the mountaineer.
“Seems too bad to kill the dog,” Alex observed.
“Besides all that,” Case went on, “we couldn’t hit a barn in this darkness.”
“Well,” Hank suggested, “the thing for us to do is to make for the river as fast as possible. There’s always a good many skiffs and rowboats scattered along on the Kentucky side. You see, if we can only get to the water and pack ourselves into a boat, we can sit and make faces at that hound until Kingdom Come.”
Making what speed they could through the thicket, stumbling over vines and protruding roots, the boys proceeded on their way for a very few moments. Then it became evident that the dog was only a few rods away.
“Now that’s too bad,” Hank said, “we’ve got to climb a tree, turn that bottled gas concern of yours on the dog, and put a bullet plumb through his head. I never did like to kill dogs, somehow.”
The dog came swiftly on, and it seemed to the boys as if his voice could be heard for a thousand miles. They were crouching in a thicket, preparing to vault into the branches of a great beech tree which stood near at hand, when a great commotion was heard not far away. It seemed to them that a wild hog, or a bear, or some heavy yet swift denizen of the forest, awakened from his slumber by the howling of the dog, had set out to make a swift investigation of his own.
“What was that noise?” asked Alex, clutching his new-found friend by the arm.
“Well, sir,” Hank replied, “that sounded to me like a dog going out to hold a little conversation with that hound! It ran like a dog, and, besides, I think I heard a succession of low growls as it passed us.”
“Here’s hoping he keeps the hound so well entertained that it won’t come any farther in this direction!” Case said.
In a moment there came a great snarling and growling from a thicket not far away, accompanied by such a thumping and beating on the ground as the boys had not heard in many a day. The baying of the hound ceased entirely, and in a moment only low choking pants of suffering were heard.
“I’ll tell you what it is, boys!” the mountaineer exclaimed, excitedly, “that thing that went through here is either a bulldog or a wild hog. He’s mixing it with the hound right now, and we may as well go and see the scrap.”
Alex used his flashlight now without reproof. The three pressed swiftly forward, the sounds of conflict growing clearer as they advanced. Directly they came to a great patch of bushes, from the center of which the commotion came.
In spite of the protests of the others, Alex pushed his way into the jungle and turned his searchlight on two objects struggling desperately on the ground. The next moment they heard his voice crying out joyfully:
“It’s Captain Joe! It’s Captain Joe!” he said.
“What has he done to the hound?” asked Case.
“Who’s Captain Joe?” demanded the mountaineer.
Alex answered the two questions by dragging the white bulldog out of the thicket by the collar. His jaws were smeared with blood, and he limped slightly on one fore leg.
“Captain Joe,” Alex replied, “is the gamiest bulldog that ever lived, and there ain’t enough left of that hound to bait a trap with.
“Where did the bulldog come from?” demanded Hank.
“Huh!” Alex exclaimed. “That’s just exactly what I want to know.”