CHAPTER XXV.—GRATEFUL NIGHT-RIDERS.
The next moment the great flashlight on the prow of the Rambler blazed out over the waters.
“Why!” exclaimed Clay, “that’s our boat, and there’s some one holding three blue lights up on a stick!”
“Yes,” exclaimed Jule, fairly dancing up and down in his excitement, “and that little monkey in the prow is Alex! He’s the one that’s holding up the three blue lights! Now where do you suppose he got that layout?”
“He has a way of picking things out of the atmosphere!” laughed Case.
“Looks like a scene in a play!” cried Jule.
“That would be a mighty good place to drop a curtain!” suggested Case.
“Not quite yet,” Clay insisted. “The scene mustn’t close just yet. The audience wants to know what the three blue lights are going to do to the Rambler.”
The boys were not long kept in waiting in this regard. The rowboat, sunk almost to the guards under the weight of four men and a boy, swept up to the Rambler. Directly all were on the deck of the motor boat. Alex dancing excitedly up and down when he was not waltzing over the deck with the white bulldog.
“Why don’t you let us in on that?” demanded Jule from the bank.
“Oh, there you are!” shouted Alex springing up on the gunwale. “We thought you boys had gone and got lost. Wait a minute, and I’ll row the boat over to you.”
The lad dropped into the rowboat with a tunk, and soon had his wondering companions on the deck of the motor boat. What they saw there added, if possible, to the surprise of the previous five minutes.
Four men, two of whom Alex recognized as the men who had stolen the boat, lay tied hard and fast on the deck, and four other men, two of whom had visited the camp at the cove during the forenoon, were standing over them with guns in their hands. The prisoners seemed to be trying to the best of their ability to conciliate their stern-faced guards.
“We didn’t know that you had an interest in the outfit,” one of the prisoners was saying. “Those boys rammed our steamer, and we were bound to get even with them.”
“It’s hands off the boys!” exclaimed Peck sternly. “What do you think we ought to do with them?” he asked turning to his companions.
“We ought to stretch their necks!” was the fierce reply.
“I wouldn’t mind assisting at a necktie party,” Peck answered, “but, under the circumstances, I think we’d better not become too prominent in any such society event. You three men pitch them over into the old houseboat and drift along the river until you come to a Government steamer. Then turn them over as outlaws and return on the Government steamer if it’s going upstream to the cove. If it’s going downstream, get the first upboat you can.”
Peck’s authority seemed to be supreme, for in five minutes the four bound men were transferred to the houseboat which was then nosed out into the stream by the Rambler. This done, Peck sat down in a deck chair and regarded the four boys quizzically.
“Where’s the old negro?” he asked in a moment.
“Didn’t you hear him splash in the water?” asked Alex. “When you showed the three blue lights, he waddled ashore with a face so white it made a chalk-mark on the night.”
“What does it all mean?” asked Clay.
As he spoke he pointed to the blue lights still burning on the prow of the rowboat.
“It’s all easily explained,” Peck replied with an engaging smile. “Just after two of you boys left my house to-day, a gang of good fellows laboring under a misapprehension came up with a supply of birch whips intended for the backs of you kids. Their attention was attracted to a burning building, or they would have overtaken the lads before they reached the cove and beaten them half to death.
“When I reached home, my wife told me of the incident, and I began worrying for fear the boys would be caught and mistreated. While we were talking it over, that old nigger came up and said that you boys wanted to do something for my wife because she had been so good to you.
“This kindness on your part—this willingness to do anything you could if we needed your help—stirred me up considerable. So we started out through the woods for the cove. When we got to the cove, which was after dark, of course, you were not there, and we’ve been floundering around in the water and woods and bushes ever since. We crossed the stream in a rickety old scow and landed on the peninsula, thinking that perhaps the river pirates, known to have headquarters here, had made trouble for you.
“Just as we were about to turn back, this little chap,” pointing at Captain Joe, “came plunging through the bushes and we knew that you were not far away. Then this boy came panting along and we grabbed him. He was frightened half to death for a minute, but when things were explained, he told us the kind of a mixup you were in.
“Well, we came down to the cut-off and got into the boat and came down here. Then we remembered that the river pirates stand in deadly terror of the three blue lights—our boys having been a little rough with them!—so we put up the signal you saw, and I guess that’s about all!”
“I guess I know what the three blue lights mean,” Alex blurted out. “They constitute a signal used by the night-riders. I don’t wonder the pirates are afraid of them!”
“And I guess the night-riders are the ones who keep the ghost stories about the lights going!” Jule added.
“Of course,” Peck replied with a whimsical smile, “I don’t know anything about that. One of my friends, here, just happened to have three blue lights with him, so we put ’em up to scare the pirates. We thought that if we could make the outlaws believe that we belonged to the night-riders, we could throw a bigger scare into them.”
“Of course,” Case laughed, winking at Peck, “we never thought for a moment that you gentlemen belonged to the night-riders!”
“Of course not!” laughed Peck, winking back. “Nobody around here belongs to the night-riders! You might travel up and down the river, and over the mountains, for a thousand miles, and not find a night-rider in the whole country! Fact!” he added, significantly.
“Do they put out blue lights whenever they’re going to burn some one’s warehouse?” asked Alex.
“Boy,” answered Peck, patting Alex kindly on the shoulder, “you mustn’t ask any questions about the night-riders in this section of the country. They think they are protecting their own interests in what they do, and that’s all I know about it.”
“I’d just like to know how they make the lights go out so quickly,” Jule grinned. “They go out with a loud noise, don’t they.”
“I had that explained to me once,” replied Peck with a queer smile, “and if you won’t say anything about it. I’ll tell you how it’s done.”
“The three blue lights are placed on a board, either floating on the water or suspended from some elevation. On the same board is a stick of dynamite with a long fuse. After the lights burn a few moments—they are just little kerosene lamps with blue globes, you know—the dynamite explodes and that ends the display. Perfectly simple, ain’t it, boys?”
“I should think it was!” answered Clay.
Peck remained on board the Rambler until daylight, and then the boys took him back up the river to the little cove near his own home. When at last he shook hands with the lads at parting, they did their best to reward him, but he refused every offering made.
“I did this for you boys,” he said, “just because you sent that word up to my wife. You thought she was alone, and might be in trouble, on account of the rough characters you had seen about, and you notified her that you were ready and willing to fight for her if she wanted any assistance. That was enough for me!”
After cooking breakfast at the old camp at the head of the cove, the boys again set out on their journey. During the rest of the trip they avoided saloon boats and coal tows.
They also tied up at night near some city or town. Now and then they read in the daily newspapers stories of alleged outrages by night-riders, but their experiences with the men of the three blue lights led them to make many excuses for them.
They spent nearly a month loitering along the river, stopping here and there, sometimes tying up for two or three days at a time. When at last they saw the lights of Cairo they were heartily sorry that the journey was ended.
“We have had a pleasant trip, mixed with a little healthy excitement!” laughed Case, as they threw out their lines at one of the lower wharves.
“A little excitement?” repeated Alex. “Say, look here, kid, the Ohio is the sixth river we’ve navigated, and she’s given us the liveliest run for our money we’ve had yet.”
“And now,” Case said rather soberly, “we’ll sail up the Mississippi, through the Illinois river and the canal, and get back to our little pier up on the South Branch.”
“Whew!” exclaimed Alex, “won’t Captain Joe, the old sea-captain, be glad to see us come sailing in?”
“I don’t believe he’ll accept half our three-blue-lights’ stories as true!” Jule put in.
“Anyway,” Clay replied, “we’ve had the experiences, and Captain Joe can think what he likes!”
THE END.