“Looks mighty suspicious,” snarled the man. “But, come on. Run yer shebang down on the boat, an’ go careful or you’ll go through the bottom. The craft ain’t built to carry locomotives.”
Jerry steered the car down a slight incline onto a big flat boat, where it was blocked by chunks of wood so that it could not roll forward or backward.
By this time the ferrymaster and his crew had come down to the craft. They were all rather unpleasant-looking men, with bold, hard faces, and it was evident that each one of the five, who made up the force that rowed the boat across the stream, was heavily armed. They wore bowie-knives and carried two revolvers apiece.
But the sight of armed men was no new one to the boys since their experience in the mining camp, and they had come to know that the chap who made the biggest display of an arsenal was usually the one who was the biggest coward, seldom having use for a gun or a knife.
“All ready?” growled the ferryman.
“All ready,” called Jerry. He and the other boys, with the professor, had alighted from the auto and stood beside it on the flat boat.
Pulling on the long sweeps, the men sent the boat out into the stream, which, at this point, was about a mile wide. Once beyond the shore the force of the current made itself felt, and it was no easy matter to keep the boat headed right.
Every now and then the ferryman would cast anxious looks at the sky, and several times he urged the men to row faster.
“Do you think it is going to storm, my dear friend?” asked the professor, in a kindly and gentle voice.
“Think it, ye little bald-headed runt! I know it is!” exploded the man. “And if it ketches us out here there’s goin’ to be trouble.”