The Rival Campers; Or, The Adventures of Henry Burns

by Ruel Perley Smith

A strange thing had happened. The crowd, pausing breathlessly in the midst of flight, had seen with horror the dog spring at Henry Burns; but the animal’s leap had a most extraordinary termination. All at once the dog was jerked violently backward through the air, and fell heavily on the wharf, yelping with surprise and fright. Then it was dragged rapidly across the wharf, and the crowd yelled with derision as they saw that the rope by which the dog had been tied to the ring had been unfastened or cut from the ring, and had been fastened to the rope which had been thrown from the steamer, and the other end of which was made fast to the steamer’s hawser.

As the boat steamed away it drew the rope after it. There was no possible escape for the dog. Struggling as best it could, barking and yelping, and snapping madly at the rope, it braced itself for one instant on the edge of the wharf, and then was dragged over and fell, still struggling, to the water below. The steamer kept on its way a short distance, and then stopped. The rope was drawn in by a deck-hand and the dog hauled to the railing of the steamer, but it was not taken aboard, for nobody on board wanted a dead dog. The deck-hand cut the rope, and the body splashed into the water.

Thus perished the squire’s bulldog, unmourned, save for the squire himself, who raged about the wharf, looking for some boy whom he might accuse of the trick, and vowing untold vengeance upon the perpetrators of it. But, one and all, they had wisely dispersed, the guilty and the innocent alike, and the squire was soon left alone in his wrath.

Who had done the thing? The crowd did not know, for it had been too excited to notice that Jack Harvey and Tim Reardon had emerged from behind the freight-house just at the critical moment when the dog had sprung at Henry Burns.

As for Henry Burns, he was the hero of the hour.

There had been on the whole so much excitement attending the squire’s arrival that few had noticed a stranger who had come ashore soon after Squire Brackett. He had not waited on the wharf, but had gone directly to the hotel. There Henry Burns met him later; for the man sat at Colonel Witham’s table, as that was the only one then available.

The new arrival was the sort of guest to please the colonel, for he was extremely quiet. He walked only with the aid of a cane, and then, apparently, with great effort, stopping frequently to rest. He told them he had been very ill; that his health had broken down with overwork, and he had accordingly tried cruising along the coast. His friends had left him up the river some days before, and would call for him.

He was a man a little under middle age, of medium height and thick-set, with black hair and a pale, smooth-shaven face. He was evidently somewhat a man of the world and had travelled abroad, for, seated before the fireplace in the office that evening, he talked for some time of his travels.

But there were other things of more interest to the boarders than this quiet, reserved stranger, who did not play cards and who hobbled about with a cane. There was, above all, a morning paper from town, which bristled with startling head-lines, descriptive of a robbery of the residence of one of the richest men in the town. It told how the thieves, three in number, had entered the house where Mr. Curtis, the owner, was sleeping alone, in the absence of his family; how they had put a pistol to his head and made him get up and open a safe, from which they had taken several hundred dollars in money and a jewel-case containing a diamond necklace and other gems to the value of several thousand dollars.

The jewels, it said, were the property of Mrs. Curtis, and most of them had been bridal presents. A reward of $500 was offered for their return or for information leading to the arrest of any one of the robbers.