“If that’s the racket we’ll know soon enough. There’ll be letters, phone calls, demanding ransom. What say we turn in? To-morrow is just around the corner. And to-morrow we must be out and after ’em.”
“What’s the first move?”
“Trace that speed boat down the river, the one that carried him away. It went south, that’s clear enough. I saw where they tied up to an old scow. Scraped her side when they left; rubbed off a lot of mud. The shape of the spot showed plain enough which way they were going. Somehow we’ve got to find their hide-out and get the Red Rover back.”
Had the speaker been privileged to see the Red Rover at that moment ankle deep in icy water, making his way as best he could with pole and improvised paddle on a raft that, turning round and round, seemed to go nowhere, he would surely have understood that a long trail lay before him. Not being granted such a vision, he crawled into his bed and went sound asleep.
* * * * * * * *
There was no sleep for Red Rodgers and his mysterious little friend on the raft.
There had been clumsy, flat-bottomed boats in the rust-blackened slips where monster ore boats lay near Red’s boyhood home, but no rafts.
Just how does one propel a raft? By a long pole where water is shallow. But one does not endeavor to drive the raft in the direction he wishes to go. He is more likely to achieve his end if he shoves in the opposite direction. For a raft, like an ox, a mule or a reindeer, is likely to go its own cranky way.
This Red learned soon enough. Scarcely had he begun poling than the raft started spinning like a top. It was only under the girl’s expert direction that he at last started for the shore that loomed dark and ragged in the distance.
They had not gone a dozen yards when the bottom sank beneath the end of the pole.