CHAPTER XVI.—THE COAL BARGES INTERVENE.
The stranger looked at the boys sharply as they stood listening to the noises on shore. There was an expression of displeasure on his face as he noted how watchful they were.
“What’s that?” asked Alex.
“Sounds like horses and men, replied the stranger, speaking sharply and turning away as he did so.
“What are they doing out on the river bank at this time of night?” queried Jule. “What’s coming next, I wonder?”
The stranger, who had turned away abruptly, now moved back so that his face was plainly seen under the prow light of the Rambler. When he spoke it was with an attempt at heartiness, but the boys saw that he was worried.
“I may as well tell you all about it,” he began with an insincere air. “You’ve heard the horses trampling, and heard the men talking, so you may as well understand what they’re here for. These river pirates have been making a lot of trouble lately. They coax our plantation hands on board their pesky boats and that’s the last we ever see of them. There’s many a good crop gone to waste along the Ohio river because those outlaws carry whiskey to sell.”
“We’ve seen quite a lot of that,” Clay suggested.
“Everybody who is on the river sees a lot of it,” the stranger continued. “Well, now we’ve decided not to stand it any longer. We came here to destroy that boat, and I’m half sorry that an accident prevented our accomplishing the work. One boat nicely blown up would warn a score away. They need the lesson.”
“Well,” Clay laughed, “it wasn’t an accident that destroyed the steamer. She tried to block us in the lagoon and we rammed her with our steel prow. That boat will never make you any more trouble.”
“You are to be congratulated!” the stranger observed. “You have my permission to ram every whiskey boat on the river.”
The man’s face was smiling enough, and his manner was sufficiently friendly, still the boys all found themselves wondering if he was telling the exact truth. They knew very well that many people scattered along the river on both banks were in touch with the whiskey boats, even supplying them with moonshine and tobacco.
“Why don’t some of those men with the horses show up?” asked Jule presently. “Why are they hiding in there now?”
“Because they don’t care about being identified as being mixed up in a raid on a whisky boat!” was the reply. “Only for the fact that you got the start of us we could have destroyed that boat without one of us being recognized. We don’t care for lawsuits.”
“If they remain here a few hours,” Case suggested, “they will probably have a chance at another boat. The Hawk was not far from this place not very long ago.”
“And you had a bit of a tussle with her?” laughed the stranger.
“Oh, they got a little gay, but we managed to keep away from them,” was the reply. “They tried to steal our boat.”
“Yes, I presume they would like a trim little motor boat like yours,” suggested the stranger. “And now,” he continued, “I may as well get back to my friends. It will be daylight in an hour or two, and we’ve got to work at this dirty business in the dark if we work at all.”
Jule opened his lips to ask the man a question regarding the three blue lights but Clay, as if understanding his purpose, drew him back and whispered in his ear:
“No more questions just now, boy.”
“Why not?” Jule asked impatiently. “That’s just what we came up here for—to find out something about the three blue lights.”
“I have an idea,” Clay explained, “that this man didn’t tell the truth about the other things, and that he won’t tell the truth about the three blue lights—that is, if he knows anything about them at all.”
“I’ve been a little bit leary of him all along,” Jule replied.
While the boys were talking together, the stranger left the stranded coal barge upon which he had been standing and, pushing his boat along, joined his friends on the bank. The boys could hear a murmur of conversation following his arrival there, and now and then the light of a match flared up.
“There’s one thing I can’t understand,” Clay said as the boys put out into the current again, “and that is, why we have seen no wreckage from the steamer coming down.”
“That’s easy,” Alex grinned, “the boat must have dropped into the mouth of the lagoon.”
“No she didn’t!” Case cut in. “She sunk south of the arm of the island. She’s lying there now in twenty feet of water unless I am very much mistaken. Still, we should have seen wreckage by this time.”
“Suppose we take a run up and see what the situation is there,” suggested Alex. “It would give me great joy to see a lot of those fellows marooned on that island, with nothing to eat or drink for a week.”
“We’ll only get tangled up in some kind of a mess if we go there,” Clay advised, “so I think we’d better go on down the river and see if we can’t shake off all this trouble and have a pleasant, leisurely river trip. We’ve had trouble in plenty on all our other trips, but I thought the Ohio journey would mostly consist of floating in the sunshine through cities and back yards.”
“All right!” Alex said. “I’m just as willing to get out of this mess as any one. Anyway, it will soon be daylight, and we’ll then be needing breakfast. Who does the cooking this morning?”
“We all cook,” answered Case, “for we all talk slang except Captain Joe and Teddy, and they probably have done something in that line themselves only we didn’t understand them.”
“Look here!” suggested Jule when a faint line of daylight began to show upstream. “Suppose we pull over to that wooded cove and build a roaring fire on the bank. Then we’ll send Alex out to get another catfish and bake it Indian fashion.”
“He didn’t make a success of Indian cookery on the St. Lawrence,” suggested Case. “I don’t want any foolishness about this breakfast.”
“Well,” Alex laughed, “there was something the matter with the soil over there. I guess it leaked gas or something of that kind. Anyway, the clay along the Ohio is all right.”
“Very well,” Clay said, “we’ll run into the cove and give the boy a chance to serve catfish a la Indian. The combination of gritless clay and green leaves ought to produce fine results.”
“You just watch me!” Alex insisted.
The Rambler was accordingly anchored in a pretty little cove whose banks were covered with trees of large growth. At first, Alex tried to capture a fish from the stern, but, not succeeding in this, he ran out into the river and anchored there, leaving the other boys on shore. It was broad daylight when he felt a strong pull at his line and knew that he had hooked some denizen of the stream.
So busily was he engaged in playing the fish that he heard nothing of the shouts from upstream, or the warning from his chums on the bank. Directly, however, he glanced up to see that a coal tow which appeared to fill the entire width of the river was drifting down upon him.
“Get into the cove! Get into the cove!” cried Clay.
“You’ll be struck in a minute!” shouted Case.
“Release your anchor line and shoot downstream!” Jule suggested.
This last advice appeared to be not only the most desirable but the easiest to follow, so the boy severed the manilla line with one blow of a sharp hatchet and sprang to the motors. When at last the boat was under way headed downstream, the foremost barges were almost upon her.
The men on board the tow seemed to be taking great delight in the thought that the Rambler would soon be completely at their mercy. Several of them stood at the top of their barges making crude and humorous suggestions to the boy.
With the boat under way and headed downstream at a speed with which the tow could by no means compete, Alex amused himself by making scornful faces at the men on the tow.
“Come back here, you river rat!” one of the men shouted. “You’ll get a bullet in your back if you don’t!”
“Fire away!” shouted Alex and promptly ducked down under the protected gunwale of the boat.
The boys on shore saw the Rambler speeding away with many expressions of disgust. Jule even started on a run down the bank, but soon gave over the attempt to catch the swiftly disappearing boat.
The men on the tow, observing the boys on the bank, greeted them with insulting epithets and amused themselves by heaving chunks of coal toward them. Case replied with a pistol shot but did not succeed in wounding any of the men. The coal came thicker after that for a time, but the barges were soon too far down the river to make such an attack effective.
“Now, we’re in a nice box!” Jule cried, as the steamer in charge of the tow disappeared around a bend in the river. “How do you suppose that little monkey will ever get that boat back to us?”
“Aw, that’s easy enough!” Case answered. “River boats pass those coal tows every day in the week, and I guess Alex can get the Rambler upstream again. In fact,” he added, “I don’t think he needed to run down so far. He might have ducked over to the other shore and let the barges go by. Anyway,” the boy added with a smile, “he’ll lose his fish. And serve him good and right at that!”
“And we lose our fish breakfast!” Clay returned. “And that won’t serve us good and right!”
“That’s a fact!” shouted Jule. “We haven’t got a thing to eat on this bank!”
“We probably won’t have to wait long for the boy to come back,” Clay assured the others. “He may be afraid the bargemen will make trouble for him, and may run down until he comes to the mouth of a creek or deep cove in which he can hold the Rambler until the tow passes by. In that case, he may be away an hour or so, but I reckon we won’t starve to death in that time.”
“I’ve a good notion to go and hunt out some farm house and buy something to eat!” Jule declared. “We’re most out of eggs, anyway.”
“It seems to me,” Clay laughed, turning to Case, “that Alex and Jule have been having most of the adventures lately. Now what I propose is that you two boys stay here and wait for the Rambler to return while I cut back into the country and see what I can buy in the way of provisions.”
“That will be all right,” Case replied. “And while you are gone, Jule and I will flop into a thicket and go to sleep. I’ve had to prop my eyelids open with my fingers for the last hour. The bulldog can keep watch while we get our forty winks.”
“Why,” Clay said, “I didn’t see Captain Joe come on shore. I guess you’ll find that he’s on board the boat with Alex and the bear.”
“Oh, he was here all right,” Case insisted. “I saw him running about on the other shore of the cove acting as if he had got scent of a rabbit or a squirrel.”
“Then he’ll be back all right!” Clay replied. “Be sure that he is before both of you go to sleep. He’ll stand guard, all right, if you tell him to watch for Alex. You wouldn’t like to have the Rambler come back here and not find you!” Clay added.
And so, leaving the boys preparing a bed of leaves in the thicket, Clay turned away to the south and disappeared in the forest.