The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers

by Claude A. LaBelle

Phil was unceremoniously hustled out through the rear door, and with a couple of brutal shoves, was taken up the dark stairway. Still, a second flight he went up, and was then drawn into a dark room. Just before they closed the door upon him, his heart sank, as he heard LeBlanc tell the proprietor:

"This is the fourth time that I have met this boy. He seems fated to work me harm. Once I left him for dead in the Great Woods, but he seemed to have a charmed life and escaped. This time, I promise you he will not."

So saying, they slammed the door, and Phil heard the rasp of the heavy lock being turned in the door. Groping his way about, he found that the room was bare of all furnishing, except for a decrepit old cot, and a rough table. Feeling for the top of the table, he discovered there was an old bottle, with a good-size piece of candle in it. He went through his pockets carefully to see if by chance his searchers had left behind them a stray match, but his hunt was not rewarded.

There was nothing to do but make the best of the darkness. He groped his way to the cot and sat down, taking stock of the situation. There seemed to be nothing he could do except to wait for the morning, provided that he would be allowed to see the morning come, then to look about the room in search of some method of escaping. Thanks to his foresightedness, he still had his knife, and this might prove to him to be salvation as far as escape was concerned. He laid down on the cot, thinking, and after nearly a half of an hour jumped to his feet, inwardly calling himself names for his forgetfulness.

Not until that moment had he remembered that he generally carried several matches, wrapped in a bit of oil silk and tucked under his hat band. It was a trick that Garry had taught him when they first went in the woods.

Fumbling inside of the hat band, he came upon a little package of half a dozen matches, still securely wrapped in the oiled silk in which he had placed them, almost a month before.

"What a fool I was," he muttered to himself. "All that time that I was tied and chained to a tree by LeBlanc and Anderson, I had those matches and never once thought of them."

So saying, he carefully struck one of the matches and lighted the candle. He now had a chance to examine the prison room that he was in. Save for the door, the only other means of egress from the room was a solitary window, but a quick examination showed that escape in this way was impossible, for the shutter of the window, instead of being composed of wood was made of a solid piece of iron.

Phil then examined the door, finding that this was evidently made of several thicknesses of hard wood, so thick was it, that when he rapped strongly with his knuckles, it gave forth a dead heavy sound, showing that it was unusually thick. It was so thick and hard, in fact, as to defy any effort to cut it through with his knife. Phil hardly knew what to do; all way of escaping seemed barred to him.

There was one chance, however, and that was a possibility of attacking whatever guard came to bring him food in the morning, for he did not believe that they intended to starve him to death.