“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.
CHAPTER XVII.—THE TWO CLAIMANTS.
Sailing swiftly down the stream in the early morning, Alex was not at all in bad humor as he regarded the general situation. He figured that he could very readily elude the coal tow and return upstream to his chums. In fact, the portion of the incident which he regretted most was the loss of his fish.
“Now,” he pondered as he whirled the boat over towards the Indiana shore in order to find open water for his passage upstream, “I’ll have to go and hook another catfish before we can have breakfast.”
He chuckled softly to himself as he thought of the chums marooned on the shore of the little cove without a thing to eat. At the time of his sudden departure with the Rambler, no supplies of any kind had been carried ashore. He laughed as he thought of the rage of the boys.
“I’ll throw out a troll-line as I go up,” he mused, “and perhaps I’ll have a pickerel or something of that kind all ready for the hot stones when I get up to the cove.”
When within a short distance of the Indiana shore, the boy saw a long line of floats extending out from the bank, indicating the location of a fishing net. The boy sprang to the motors in the hope of saving the net by shutting off the power, but he was too late. In fact, his effort only made the meeting with the net more disastrous.