Kitabı oku: «The Bungalow Boys in the Great Northwest», sayfa 6
CHAPTER XII.
SAM HARTLEY TURNS UP
If the figure proved to be one of the outposts of Simon Lake’s camp, the situation was a serious one. In a few moments the big tree would reach the narrow passage in the rocks. When it did, two courses were open to the boys. One was to stick to it and throw themselves and their fate upon providence, or else make a leap for the rocks which were seamed and scarred. But in the event of the motionless figure on the rock proving to be an enemy, their position would be as bad as before. Unarmed as they were, they would certainly have to give in without a struggle.
But just as Tom had about decided that their best plan would be to cling to the tree and trust to luck to get safely through the narrow “gate,” something familiar struck him about the figure. It was that of a sun-burned man of middle age, clean-shaven, and with a conveying sense of alertness in his erect pose. He wore khaki trousers, much the worse for wear, stout hunting boots, laced up almost to his knees, a rough blue shirt, and a big sombrero.
In a flash it came across Tom where they had seen that figure before.
Another instant made the conviction a certainty.
The man was Sam Hartley. If any question had remained of it, all doubt was once and for all removed, as Tom decided to risk a mistake and hailed the man.
“Sam! Oh, Sam!”
The man on the rock started. His rifle, which had come up to his arm pit as the boy hailed, fell back. He stared before him intently as the tree came bumping at the rock. Before he could recover himself, from amid its roots two active young forms had leaped and hurled themselves straight at the stalwart figure of the former arch enemy of the counterfeiters of Saw Mill Valley.
“Great Scott!” exclaimed Sam, as Tom stopped wringing his hand for an instant. “It is you, all right. I thought I was pretty sure of you when I peeked into Bully Banjo’s camp yesterday when he had you on the carpet.”
“But, Sam,” cried Tom excitedly, “what are you doing here, and – ” He broke off as a sudden explanation of the mysterious arrival of the knife flashed across him.
“It was you that lowered that knife!”
“Sure,” said Sam easily; “but, say, boys, we’re in a bad place right here. Let’s get back in the brush. I’ve got some grub there and a clean shirt apiece for you. I guess you’re in need of both,” he went on, with a smile, surveying the two dilapidated young figures.
“That’s right. Especially the grub part of it,” laughed Tom. “But, Sam, I can’t get over the mystery of it. You being here and arriving just in time to help us out of what seemed such a dickens of a mess.”
Yet it was simple enough as Sam explained to them a few moments later. He had been in Seattle when Mr. Chillingworth’s letter reached the Secret Service Department in Washington. His chief at the capital city had at once wired him in cipher to drop the case he was on and proceed with all haste to the neighborhood of the Chillingworth ranch.
In the guise of a prospector, Sam had been in the hills for some days, and, by a stroke of luck, he had encountered the day before the trail of the men he was after. An unlucky slip had betrayed his presence in the brush. It was that disturbance, it will be recalled, that had so excited Bully Banjo and his men.
He had seen and heard enough from his place of concealment, however, to know that two boys were in trouble, and it was no part of Sam Hartley’s nature not to try and help them. From various points of vantage among the rocks and trees on the cliffside he had watched all that had taken place subsequently in the camp of Bully Banjo.
After revolving one or two plans of rescue, it had occurred to him that his best plan would be to lower the knife, which the boys had put to such excellent use. From his eyrie high up on the cliffside above the cavern, he had later heard the shots at the river edge, and had surmised what was taking place. He had concluded, though, that the boys had been shot and killed as they reached the water, and had left the place while it was still dark, with a heavy heart.
What he had seen had enraged him still more against the men he had been sent to track, and he had made all haste back to his camp which was back of the “gate” in the rocks. It had occurred to him after his arrival there, though, that in the event of the boys having been killed their bodies might be carried down by the current. He had therefore posted himself by the narrow gateway in order to watch for them. His amazement when he encountered the Bungalow Boys safe and sound on their queer raft was only equaled by his delight.
To the readers of the “Bungalow Boys,” the first volume of this series, Sam Hartley will need no further introduction. Our other readers may be informed, however, that Sam was one of the “star men” of the Secret Service bureau in Washington, and that the boys had made his acquaintance at the Maine bungalow.
Sam, in disguise, was there for the purpose of getting evidence against the Trullibers in much the same manner as he was now after the defiant Bully Banjo. It will be recalled by our old readers that the boys had been of great service to Sam Hartley, aiding him in running down the Trullibers, and that he in his turn had been able to do them some services. How glad they were to meet each other once more under such odd – yet such entirely natural circumstances, when they came to be explained – may be better imagined than detailed.
“And now,” said Sam, when all had been said and explained, and the boys’ hunger fully satisfied, “what are you lads going to do?”
“Push on to the ranch, of course,” declared Tom. “It is important that we should get the medicines for Mr. Dacre without delay.”
“I agree with you,” said Sam, “and as it’s not much use my trailing those fellows any more – they’ll be away from there by now – I’ll go with you.”
“But then you’ll lose them altogether,” exclaimed Tom.
Sam laughed his light, cheery laugh.
“No fear of that, boy,” he said. “I know where their schooner is, and I’ll get them yet, just keep tabs of that. In any event, I don’t want to be in any hurry. I’m going to give this Bully Banjo all the rope he wants, and then round him and his gang up when he least expects it.”
“All by yourself?” asked Jack amazedly.
Sam laughed again.
“Well, hardly,” he said. “It will take a dozen or more of us to handle that job when the time comes. But in the meantime I don’t want to give him any idea that he is being watched or that the Secret Service is after him. That’s the way we always do things – wait till we are ready and the plum’s right for picking, and then go and get it with neatness and dispatch.”
“That’s why you didn’t let Mr. Chillingworth know you were in the vicinity, then?” cried Tom.
“That’s it,” agreed Sam Hartley. “You see, I figured that they were likely to be watching his place, and so I gave it a wide berth. But I guess there’s no harm in showing myself to him now. It’s evident that Bully Banjo doesn’t fear anything, or he’d not be running the Chinks through so boldly.”
Sam walked off into the brush a little way and soon reappeared with a small burro. Helped by the boys, he loaded his cooking utensils and other camping apparatus on the little creature’s back and then they set off through the brush, headed for a trail of which Sam knew. It was characteristic of Sam Hartley that already he was more familiar with the country about than most of the ranchers.
“There’s one thing that puzzles me, though,” he said, “and that is how those fellows ever get into the canyon yonder from the sea.”
“Why they come in by a trail, don’t they?” asked Jack innocently.
“Oh, no they don’t, for I watched them pretty sharply. I’m willing to swear that they didn’t come in by any trail. No, sir,” grunted Sam, with an air of conviction. “Either those rascals have an airship or else they travel under ground.”
“Well, they haven’t got an airship, that’s certain,” laughed Tom.
“That’s right,” agreed the detective; “therefore, they come under the ridge of hills that separates the canyon from the sea. But how – well, I’ll tell you,” he went on, without waiting for the boys to speak. “My theory is that this river burrows its way under that ridge, and that the rascals have some sort of a tunnel there they get through.”
“Do you really think so?” asked Tom, rather frankly incredulous.
“I do. It sounds wild, I admit, but how else are you to account for it. After all, there’s nothing very uncommon in rivers running under a range of hills. Why’s there’s one does it right up at my old home in New York State, and in California, and all through the west there are any amount of such waterways. The only real novelty in it is the fact that these rascals have been able to use it as a short cut to this canyon. At any rate, I’m going to explore it some day when I get time.”
“And shut them off from it?” asked Jack.
“Well, it might come in handy to use as a trap,” mused Sam Hartley. “But it’s no use figuring so far ahead till we know if there is such a thing in existence.”
“That’s right,” agreed the boys, and for some time after that they were far too busy getting through the close-growing brush to do much talking. At last they emerged, as Sam had foretold they would, on a rough trail, not unlike the one by which they had traveled into so much unlooked-for trouble.
“Now, then,” said Sam, “the next thing is to locate the Chillingworth ranch. We can’t be so awfully far from it.”
“How are we ever going to get a line on it,” wondered Jack, “I’m all twisted about now.”
But Tom who had observed Sam Hartley’s way of doing things on more than one previous occasion, said nothing. He just watched Sam as the latter tied the burro to a tree, and then, diving into the pocket of his mackintosh coat, produced a map. From its grimy condition it seemed to have been well handled. Along the edges of the folds it was torn by much folding and unfolding.
Selecting a flat rock, Sam spread the map out and the boys saw that it was a rough “sketch,” one drawn with pen and ink. Several places on it were marked in red ink. Sam laid a finger on one of these and remarked briefly:
“Chillingworth’s.”
“I don’t see how that helps,” began Jack, but a look from Tom stopped him, and presently he was glad he had not said more, for Sam produced a compass and a pair of parallel rulers. Gazing carefully over the map, he picked out a spot which he said was approximately the one on which they then stood. He then laid the rulers from that spot to the red-inked portion of the map representing Mr. Chillingworth’s place.
“A straight course, almost due northeast from here, and we’ll hit it,” he decided, folding the rulers and putting them carefully away. Then he methodically replaced the map in its envelope.
A few minutes later they set out on the course Sam had outlined. He planned to travel across country, the sure-footed burro being as much at home on the rough mountainside as on a trail.
“Lay hold of the ropes at the side of the pack if you get tired,” he advised the boys. “You’ll find it helps a lot.”
After an hour’s traveling, of a sort to which they had never been accustomed, the boys were glad to accept this advice, and found themselves greatly aided.
Their way lay over bowlder-strewn ground, under towering columnar trunks of great trees of the pine tribe. The lofty conifers entwined their dark branches high in the air, making the forest floor beneath cool and dim.
It was noon when Sam Hartley, consulting map and compass once more, struck off to the east.
“We ought to be there in ten minutes,” he said, without a trace of hesitation in his tone. A sea captain could not have been more confident of bringing his vessel across the ocean into a designated port than Sam was of landing in the exact spot for which he had laid his calculations.
As a matter of fact, it was half an hour before they emerged from the pine woods into a clearing littered with stumps and blackened trunks. Before them was a half-grown corn field, and traces of cultivation were all about them. In a roughly fenced pasture lot – cleared like the rest from the virgin forest – were some cattle and horses.
Across the corn field could be seen a long, low house of logs, with a rough-shingled roof. A little distance from it were some barns painted a dull red and made of undressed lumber, and a big corral with a hay stack in the center of it.
As they struck out, skirting the edge of the corn field, toward the house, the death-like quiet that had reigned about it was ruefully broken. From behind one of the barns there suddenly emerged a blue-bloused figure from whose head a pigtail stuck out behind as it flew along. Hardly had the new arrivals taken in this, before, behind the Chinaman, came a second figure, that of a woman in a blue sun bonnet and a pink print dress. They could see that she had a rifle in her hands, and as they watched she raised it and fired after the retreating Chinaman.
But she did not hit him, apparently – even if such had been her intention – for he kept straight on and vanished in an instant in the dark woods at the edge of the clearing.
“Gee whiz!” exclaimed Sam Hartley, hastening forward. “What’s the meaning of this drama?”
The words had hardly left his lips, before the woman who had put the Chinaman to such precipitate flight espied the approach of the newcomers.
They were about to hail her when, to their amazement, she raised her rifle to her shoulder once more. This time it was most unmistakably trained upon them and the good-looking face behind the sights bore an expression that seemed to say as plain as print:
“Don’t come any nearer if you want to avoid trouble.”
CHAPTER XIII.
A NOTE OF WARNING
A comical expression came over Sam Hartley’s face. He saw at once that the woman mistook them for enemies – possibly allies of the Chinaman whom, for some good reason apparently, she had just chased off the place.
“Hold on there, madam,” he cried, “we’re not here on any harm. The lads have a message to you from your husband.”
“Yes, our names are Dacre – ”
“For gracious sakes, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” demanded the woman, putting down her rifle and smiling pleasantly.
“Well, you see,” spoke Sam, with a whimsical intonation, “you didn’t give us a chance.”
Whereat they all had to break into a laugh, the situation seemed so ridiculous.
“As I suppose you have guessed,” said the woman, “I am Mrs. Chillingworth. That Chinaman you just saw heading off the place I caught hanging round the barn a few moments ago. He was nailing a paper up there. Here it is. Look at it and tell me what you make of it.”
She drew from her apron pocket a bit of paper on which the following was scrawled in a straggly hand:
“Chillingworth: You se what thee byes got. That waz onli a sampil. A Word to the Wize is Enuff. Live and Let Live.”
Sam Hartley’s face grew grave as he read, with the boys peering over his elbow.
“I suspected something like this,” he said, “but I thought we would have reached here ahead of them. I reckon that Chinaman must have known the country hereabouts as well as I did, or better.”
“Well, I allow he ought to,” said Mrs. Chillingworth. “His name is Fu. He worked for my husband, and you can imagine how mystified I was when I came out a short while ago and found him sneaking round the house like a criminal. I asked him what he was doing and he only answered by snarling like a nasty wild cat, and going ahead nailing up his paper. It was then I got the rifle and ordered him off the place.”
The boys explained as rapidly as possible such parts of their adventures as they thought would not alarm Mrs. Chillingworth too much, although it appeared to them that she was a very self-reliant woman – the kind that a rancher in that wild country must have found invaluable. The narration was made in the house, into which Mrs. Chillingworth had invited them. She set out glasses of buttermilk, cool from the cellar, and also produced a dish of fresh fruit, all of which was very inviting to the dusty travelers. In the meantime, Sam had stabled his burro in the corral, and the long-eared little animal was already pitching into the hay stack to the great disgust of the ranch horses.
As soon as she heard the boys’ story, Mrs. Chillingworth set about getting the various medicines for which her husband’s note called. This done, the boys and Sam sat down to a bountiful meal. It was shortly before two that, mounted on two good horses, they set out once more for the cove. Sam Hartley and his burro went off in another direction. The nemesis of the Chinese smugglers said he had a clew he wished to look up in the canyon.
There was little danger of Bully Banjo or his gang harassing the ranch before the boys returned with the two men, so that Mrs. Chillingworth felt no nervousness over being left alone. The boys had at first found it hard to account for the behavior of Fu, but Sam, after he had heard the details of the fellow’s fright at witnessing the burials and the awe in which he stood of the tall Chinaman, decided that by working on his superstitious fears the gang had pressed him into their service. Undoubtedly he had been selected to bear the warning paper, both because he knew the trail and also to test him.
“But suppose he had weakened at the last minute and told Mrs. Chillingworth everything?” Tom had asked.
“In that case, Fu’s career might have reached a sudden termination,” said Sam Hartley grimly. “I don’t doubt that Fu was accompanied by other members of that outfit to see that he did not play them false.”
“But we only saw one man,” objected Jack.
“That was because the rest were hiding in that wood yonder,” exclaimed Sam. “From what I know of Bully Banjo he is not the man to allow one of his untried men to go alone on an errand. Too much depends on it.”
With the explicit directions they had received, the boys arrived at the cove without missing the trail once, or encountering any adventures. They found the sloop anchored there still. As they rode down the hill, they were delighted to see another figure at Mr. Chillingworth’s side as the ranch owner stood upright in the cockpit of the little vessel. It was Mr. Dacre, apparently as well almost as ever, for as he went forward to hoist the anchor while the rancher took the sculling oar, the boys could only detect a slight limp.
It had been only a sprain after all, as they learned presently. But, naturally, the first thing to be done after the sloop had been sculled alongside the rock was to explain the cause of their delay, and the subsequent happenings.
“Good heavens!” grated out Mr. Chillingworth, as they related the incident of the warning paper and Mrs. Chillingworth’s brave behavior. “If the ranchers round here all had the courage of that woman, Bully Banjo’s days would soon be numbered.”
He was delighted, though, to hear that Sam Hartley was on the scene. During the boys’ absence Mr. Dacre had related to him in detail the boys’ adventures in the Saw Mill Valley and the part which Sam Hartley had played in them. The rancher therefore felt that the Secret Service man was one to be relied on.
In view of Mr. Dacre’s condition, it was decided to let him ride home on one of the horses, accompanied by Jack, while Mr. Chillingworth and Tom remained behind to navigate the sloop around the point and bring her to her anchorage in a small bay not far from the ranch house. The sea had by this time moderated, so that they anticipated no difficulty in doing this.
As progress would be slow up the trail and Mr. Dacre’s limb was still too painful to permit him to ride fast, no time was wasted after this, and ten minutes after they had received final instructions, Mr. Dacre and his younger nephew rode off. This time, however, the riders carried weapons. Mr. Chillingworth would have liked to go with them, but he was compelled to take the sloop around to her home anchorage, not liking to leave her alone in the cove. If the schooner, for instance, had dropped in there, her crew were quite capable of scuttling the little craft, just to show that they were men to be reckoned with.
Shortly after they had waved farewells to the horsemen, who speedily vanished into the curtain of pine woods and brush, the sloop set sail. Out past the point she beat, with a fair wind swelling her sails. Tom, who was quite handy about a boat, acted as “sheet tender,” while Mr. Chillingworth minded the helm. Before long they were outside the cove and plunging along through the big swells that the brisk wind had heaped up in the open water outside.
It was exhilarating sailing. The handy little craft fairly flew along, every now and then bucking a big sea and drenching herself with glittering spray.
But all this, pleasant as it was, held her back a good deal, so that when darkness fell it still found them some little distance from the anchorage they had hoped to reach by sundown.
“Never mind,” said Mr. Chillingworth. “I know this coast like a book. Tom, keep a good look out forward, my boy, and when you see a big, lone pine standing up against the sky on top of that range of hills yonder, let me know. That pine is a landmark for my harbor.”
But supper – a sandwich and a cup of coffee – grabbed in the intervals of working the boat, was eaten, and still no sign of the lone pine could be made out.
“I’ll beat out a bit and come in again on another tack,” decided Mr. Chillingworth finally. “We’re getting too close in shore for my liking. There are a great many rocks and shoals running out from land hereabouts.”
Accordingly, the sloop was put about and headed out into the open Sound. The wind had by this time freshened considerably. So much so, in fact, that before long it became necessary to take in the jib they were carrying and set a smaller one – a storm-sail. As this was an operation requiring some knowledge of boat handling, the helm was given to Tom, while Mr. Chillingworth himself went forward, dragging a big bundle of sailcloth.
As he left the cockpit, Tom noticed – or thought he noticed – some dark object coming up astern of them. Before long all doubt was removed. It was a dark spire of canvas, the sails of a vessel of some kind that he had espied. She seemed to be coming up at a tremendous rate, too. Even in the darkness he noted the white water as it frothed under her forefoot. To his surprise, the boy noticed, too, that she carried no lights. This, however, did not bother him as the sloop’s lights had been placed into the forestays some time before, and shone out brightly.
However, he called Mr. Chillingworth’s attention to the approaching vessel. The rancher eyed her keenly, pausing in his work on the wet, pitching foredeck to do so.
“Queer she carries no lights,” he commented, “however, our port light is toward them. They must have seen the red gleam by this time. It’s their place to go about and get out of our way.”
“But suppose they don’t?”
“Oh, they will. They wouldn’t deliberately run us down. Now watch your helm close, for I’m going to lower the jib, and without any headsail she’ll be hard to handle.”
Tom did his best to do as he was told, but just as the jib came down a sudden puff of wind came roaring across the water. With it came a huge wave that curved its crest menacingly above the tiny sloop. Tom, in his excitement, gave the tiller a quick shove over to meet the wave quartering. But as he altered his helm, there came a terrific crash above his head. The sloop’s boom swung over and she “jibed” sharply. Had the maneuver been deliberately made in such a wind and sea it would have been dangerous. As it was, however, it caught them utterly unprepared. There was a quick shout from Mr. Chillingworth, a cry of alarm from Tom, and the lad found himself suddenly struggling in the water.
The sloop had capsized in an instant, and now lay, bottom up, on the heaving sea. Mustering all his strength, Tom struck out for her and succeeded in reaching the hull. It was a hard task to clamber up the slippery, wet sides, but finally he managed it and succeeded in perching himself on the keel.
To his great delight, Mr. Chillingworth presently joined him there. He had had a narrow escape of being caught in the tangle of rigging, but had kicked himself free and was unhurt. He had no word of blame for Tom, although the lad took himself to task bitterly for being the cause of the accident.
During these tense moments, when it was a toss-up between life and death, they had both forgotten the near proximity of the sailing craft they had noticed a few minutes previously. Mr. Chillingworth, however, placed his hands to his mouth and hailed the craft, which was not more than a few score of feet away from the capsized sloop.
“Ahoy! Ship ahoy!” he yelled.
Tom joined him in his cries for help. At first it seemed that the crew of the sailing vessel had not noticed them, for the big craft was keeping right on. But just when it looked as if she was going to slip by, leaving them there on their perilous perches, there was a sudden stir noticeable on her decks. A light flashed near her stern, and sharp voices were heard calling commands.
Presently she was hove to, her sails shivering and slapping, and her blocks rattling with an infernal din. A voice hailed them, seemingly through a megaphone:
“Ahoy thar, what’s the trouble?”
“We’re capsized. Throw us a line!” shouted Mr. Chillingworth.
To his astonishment, instead of his appeal being complied with, an argument seemed to ensue on the deck of the vessel. Some man appeared, so far as they could judge, to be urging their rescue, while others contended against it. “Let ’em rot there,” they heard, as one of the voices rose louder than the others, and the wind bore it down to them. “We ain’t in any business where we wants strangers aboard.”
But the objectors, it seemed, had the worst of the argument, for the next minute the sailing vessel began to drift down on them.
“Get ready to catch a line,” came a shout, and presently a rope came hissing through the air. Mr. Chillingworth hauled on it, drawing the sloop in under the lee of the high side of the sailing vessel. The castaways could now see that she was a schooner and a good-sized one, too.
“Hurry up, and git aboard thar,” bellowed a rough voice, from above, as they made fast. “We don’t want ter lose any more uv this slant uv wind than we has to, by Chowder!”
Something in the voice rang in a strangely familiar way in Tom’s ears. Why this was so, he was to know in a few minutes.
A Jacob’s ladder was cast to them and they clambered up it over the schooner’s rail, and presently were standing on the stern in the lee of a low deck-house. As they reached the deck, a figure stepped forward from the group which had aided in their rescue, and thrust a lantern into their faces.
As the light fell on them, this figure stepped back with a quick exclamation of astonishment.
“Chillingworth, by Chowder, and” – once more the lantern was swung forward – “one of them young varmints thet got away this morning. Wall, by Juniper, ef this ain’t Yankee luck.”
Tom knew the voice well enough now. It was Simon Lake who spoke. And it was his notorious schooner upon whose deck they stood. Small wonder is it that the boy’s heart beat chokingly, and his pulses throbbed as he realized their situation.
