The Outdoor Chums on a Houseboat: or, The Rivals of the Mississippi
A row of faces over the rail told that Oswald’s other chums, Duke Fletcher, Raymond Ellis, and the third fellow from St. Paul, whom Bluff and Frank had met at the time the trap was set for them in the cabin of the boat, were watching to see whether the Pot Luck showed any signs of foundering.
But although, no doubt, they hoped for the worst, nothing of the kind was likely to occur, since small damage had been done. Jerry sounded the well, and reported little bilge water in the hold. A trap on the forward deck allowed of anyone going below, where, in case of necessity, certain articles might be stowed; and Bluff took it upon himself to drop into the hold, carrying Frank’s electric torch. He found no evidence of damage, so that even Will felt reassured on that score.
Of course the four chums were highly indignant concerning the boldness and recklessness of their rivals in seeking to do them such an injury, at the risk of sharing the destruction.
“If they had struck us, with their engine going full tilt!” declared Jerry; “and before Ossie began to get cold feet, and edge away, why, ten to one, both boats by this time would be either sunk, or leaking like sieves, and bound to go under.”
“Then we’d have had to throw a few things, like our guns, into the dinghy, and jump overboard ourselves,” remarked Bluff.
“Yes,” agreed Will, “that’s the way at a fire, they say; throw the pictures out of the window, and carry a mattress carefully downstairs.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want the guns to get soaked, or lost; would we?” demanded the proud owner of the new-fangled six-shot firearm; “wouldn’t matter so much with us, because we could swim; and if we saved our clothes we’d have a dry outfit to put on later. But I wonder what next that Ossie Fredericks will try? Isn’t he the limit, though, Frank?”
“Well, I don’t exactly know,” replied the other. “I’ve tried to study that fellow for a whole year. Sometimes I think he’s got a halfway streak of decency in him, and that it’s only because he keeps such bad company that he chokes it right along.”
“Huh! mighty funny way of showing decency,” grunted Jerry; “to try and smash our boat, when we didn’t bother them any. But I know that Ellis lad is a bad egg, and wouldn’t be surprised if Fletcher’s just as tough a nut. They know Ossie’s got a fistful of money, always, and they just hang around, telling him what a great boy he is, and how mean Frank Langdon talks about him. Oh! rats! Don’t I know that crowd, though?”
Will was once more in the sulks, lamenting the fact that he hadn’t thought to run into the cabin, and bring out his rapid-action camera, so that he might have taken a snapshot of the power-boat heading straight for the Pot Luck.
“It would have been all the evidence we needed in court, if ever we sued to collect damages,” he declared, sadly; “and to think how I so seldom see these chances till it’s all over but the shouting.”
The other boat was rapidly leaving them, and every one of the four chums hoped they might never see the Lounger again – during that cruise, at least. It seemed that they must meet with some sort of trouble every time the two boats came close together, all through the bad tempers and ugly dispositions of those on board the Lounger.
An hour later, and they could barely make her out miles away; and only with the aid of the glasses could they recognize the craft. So they determined to put Ossie Fredericks and his cronies out of their minds, for the time being at least. There were other things much more pleasant demanding their constant attention on every hand; boats that passed, or which they overtook, moored to the bank; change of scenery that gave them more or less pleasure, and with Bluff and Jerry consulting as to what the evening meal should consist of.
“I move we camp ashore to-night, if there seems to be a decent chance,” proposed Bluff, as they began to look for a good spot to tie up to, with the sun hanging low in a bed of yellow clouds that Frank did not fancy any too much.
“We might have a camp fire, and do our cooking there,” he said in reply; “but if you cast your eyes over yonder, you’ll see why we ought to sleep aboard to-night.”
“It does look as if we’d get something before morning,” Jerry admitted.
“Think my foot don’t know?” remarked Will, with a grin and a nod.
When they had found a good place to fasten the cable to a tree alongside the bank, this programme was carried out. Frank soon learned they were close to what appeared to be a road that followed the river; but it seemed to be rather what Will called a “sequestered” spot, so he thought they could take chances.
He showed his chums once more how a good cooking fire was built, and, after supper was done, Bluff was allowed to build a large camp fire, around which they meant to sit for several hours, until their eyes warned them that it was time to go aboard and crawl into the bunks.
“Seeing that fire we made for Luther Snow just put me in the notion of having one for ourselves,” Bluff remarked, as he toasted his shins there beside the blaze he had created, with the aid of several logs, found near the spot.
“Wonder what’s become of the old fellow; and if we’ll ever see him again?” Will said, in a meditative manner.
Frank did not choose to tell anything he thought, but listened with an amused smile as his comrades discussed the chances the man had of making his intended destination before his only daughter sailed for the other side of the world.
The hour began to grow late, and once or twice Will started to yawn. Frank was just about to propose that they go aboard, after putting out the camp fire, as he had learned to always do on breaking camp, when Jerry called his attention to a strange ruddy hue in the sky.
“Can that be the storm coming?” asked Will, as they all gazed.
“If it is, she’s going to be a scorcher!” remarked Jerry.
“You forget that the storm is over to the southwest, boys, and this red light lies in the east, or southeast rather. I think it must be a house afire,” Frank at that moment remarked.
The idea of a poor family being burned out appealed to the boys strongly; and when Bluff boldly proposed that they lock the door of the cabin securely, and see if they could arrive on the scene in time to be of any assistance, somehow even timid Will and conservative Frank fell in with the idea at once.
The result of the vote being unanimous in favor of going, they hastened to shut the windows, and fasten the padlock on the door. Bluff insisted on carrying his precious gun, though admitting that it must look odd to see a boy hurrying to help a family that was being burned out, and carrying a shotgun along.
“But you never can tell what will happen,” said Bluff, stoutly; and so Frank, remembering that other occasion only too well when the presence of that same gun had prevented a fierce hammering from Fredericks and his crowd, wisely held his peace.
CHAPTER XIII – AFTER THE STORM
“Listen! is that somebody shouting?” cried Frank, after they had run along the road in a southerly direction for half a mile.
“Sounds like it to me,” ventured Will, between pants for breath.
“Now, on my part,” declared Bluff, “I thought it must be the screech of a locomotive; because, you know, there’s a railroad line on both sides of the river right along up here.”
“But there it is again,” Frank insisted; “and you can make out yelling now.”
“Yes, and it comes out of there, away back from the river. See here, Frank,” observed Jerry, “we just can’t plunge into the woods, and make for that fire; can we?”
“Now, my opinion is, there might be some other cross-road below here, and the fire is on that,” said Frank; “we’ll go a piece further, anyhow, and find out.”
The others were quite willing to do anything Frank proposed, and so they again started to run at quite a good pace.
It turned out just as he said; for about half a mile further down they suddenly came on a road that left the river highway, and turned abruptly into the hills. Besides, they could now see the fire itself, which, as usual, did not seem to be so very far away; though Frank knew how deceptive distances were apt to prove under such conditions.
Turning into this smaller road, they kept on running. Now and then Frank would drop into a walk, for he knew that Will must be tiring, though the other would never have admitted the fact if he dropped in his tracks with fatigue.
“Further than we thought, fellows!” gasped Bluff, who had to carry a heavy gun, and by now he almost wished he had left it on the boat.
“But now we’ve come this far we’d better keep on; eh, Frank?” suggested Jerry.
On that score the chums seemed to be agreed. Like all boys, they disliked very much to give up anything they had started to accomplish. All that hard running would go for nothing; and they were naturally curious to learn what sort of a fire it could be.
“A barn, I reckon,” Jerry had said.
“Perhaps it’s only a chicken coop,” Will had in his turn mentioned.
“Now, I’d think it more likely a pig pen,” observed the weary Bluff, as he changed his gun from one hand to the other for the twentieth time, refusing to let Frank relieve him of it.
“Jerry is right, according to my way of thinking,” Frank said. “The chances are that’s what it is. Perhaps it looked at one time as if the fire would jump to the farmer’s barn, too, and that was what all that shouting meant.”
They finally drew closer to the scene, though Frank feared they had gone twice as far as seemed wise, under the circumstances.
It was fully an hour after they had left the houseboat before they reached the place; and then it was to find the fire about out; with a dozen men, and as many women and children, gathered in clusters, talking it all over with the man who had lost his barns, and what new crop of hay he had just been putting in them, together with several cows that could not be rescued in time.
The boys hung around for a little while talking with some of the farm hands. Frank asked a few questions about various things, and even found that he could secure a small amount of information concerning the river below that point, since some of these young fellows had lived near it all their lives, and even taken boats of produce to Rock Island below.
An hour later, and Frank proposed that they start back to the boat. While the boys were engaged in listening to all that was being said concerning the fire, the sky had clouded over, and it was now quite dark. Indeed, the growl of thunder could be heard down the river, and some of the farmers were even then hurrying off.
One fellow, who happened to live not a great way from the location of the houseboat, as described by Frank, said he would keep company with the boys, in whose trip down the big water he seemed to be deeply interested. And while they thought little of that fact at the time, it afterwards turned out worth a great deal to them.
Louder came that noise from behind them, the storm having swung across the river apparently, so that it was now heading almost from the south direct. Will doubtless wished deep down in his heart that he was snug inside the cabin of the houseboat about that time, when the gale would have small terrors for any of them. But he did not say a word along those lines, only ran at the heels of the others, doing the very best he could.
“She’s going to catch us, boys!” remarked the young farmer, who had given them his name as Seth Groggins.
“Could we find any sort of shelter?” asked Bluff – and then, as if fearing that his motive might be misconstrued, he hastened to add: “not that I care a cent whether I get wet or not; but I’d hate to have my gun soaked. Steel rusts so easy, you know.”
“Might get under a big tree that lies a little way ahead,” remarked Seth; “only I’ve heard it isn’t the best thing to do in a thunderstorm.”
“No, I’d rather stand many duckings than take chances that way,” Frank declared, positively; for he had known of fatal cases following the action of men in a harvest field seeking shelter under a tree during an electrical storm.
“Well, here she is; but as you say so, we’ll give her the go-by,” the farmer called out over his shoulder, as he ran on past the big tree, standing close to the road. “If we could only make the old lime kiln I reckons as how the lot of us’d be able to find some sorter shelter thar. It’s jest a leeetle way further on, boys. Hit it up agin; kin ye?”
Even Will seemed to take another brace, for the din of the storm behind was surely enough to make any fellow try his level best to get out of its reach. What with the roar of the wind, the sound of falling trees, the terrible crash of the thunder accompanying each vivid flash of lightning, and the roar of the deluge of rain that followed, no one need be ashamed for wanting to find a place of refuge.
The rain began to come, and the boys would soon have been drenched to the skin only, as luck would have it, they reached the deserted lime kiln just then, and were able to hastily crawl under a low shed.
Although this threatened to carry away bodily with the fierce gusts of wind, approaching the force of a tornado at times, it seemed to have been sturdily built in the first place; and was also somewhat sheltered by the kiln, so that it managed to withstand the gale.
And thankful that they had found even so poor a shelter, the boys crouched there, waiting for the fury of the storm to subside, when they might go on their way to the moored houseboat, not more than half a mile off, Frank believed.
“Wow! listen to that; would you?” cried Bluff, as a crash followed a blinding flash of lightning, although the rain had now stopped.
“That hit something, sure!” quavered Will, who had no fancy for such a terrible display of electrical force.
“Say, I wouldn’t be surprised if that big tree got it thet ’ere time!” declared the farmer. “Kim right from thet ways; an’ she lies thar. An’, by hokey, I thort I ketched a crash o’ branches as the ole lightnin’ stripped her bare, like it does, sometimes.”
Frank was of the same opinion; and felt deeply grateful in his heart that they had been wise enough to give that shelter the go-by when it offered. If it was really the big tree that had been struck, what would have been their fate had they foolishly taken refuge under its wide-spreading limbs?
As Frank had truly said: far better a wet jacket any time, than to take chances under a tree that seems to especially invite the attention of the lightning, either by its being alone in a field, or standing higher than its fellows.
A short time later, and they once more started along the flooded road. All of them were wet, but made light of it, in view of the fact that they had managed to get off so lightly. And this was the first occasion Frank found for feeling glad the young Illinois farmer had accompanied them; since otherwise they would not have known about the shed at the old lime kiln.
The storm had gone raging up the river, and far in the distance they could still hear the dull roar of the thunder peals, and see the flash of each successive bolt of lightning, as it either passed from one cloud to another, or else sought the earth in a zigzag downward plunge that was most terrifying.
“I guess we ought to call ourselves lucky for once,” Jerry was saying, as they left the river road, and headed through the patch of timber, just beyond which all of them knew the boat had been left, securely fastened.
The young farmer kept along with them. He had told Frank that he would like to see for himself just how they were fixed; and had promised in the morning to fetch them a supply of fresh eggs, some newly-made butter, and milk from his Jersey cows.
“An’ ev’ry night you jest tie up alongside the bank, you say?” he remarked, as he kept at the side of Jerry, with regard to whom he seemed to have taken an especial fancy, for some reason or other.
“Why, yes, that’s the easiest way of doing with a houseboat, which, after all, is pretty much the same as one of your shantyboats, used to carry potatoes and truck down to market,” Frank had taken it upon himself to answer.
“Now, here’s just where we had our camp fire,” Bluff, who was in advance, remarked. “It got squdged by that downpour of rain, all right, I should say. And here you see, we tied the – Frank, Frank, she’s gone!” he suddenly ended with an excited yell, as he saw the well-known spot where the Pot Luck had been moored, vacant, and not the first sign of their floating home.
Will clung to Frank in the first shock of his dismay; while Jerry echoed the loud cries of the first discoverer of this new calamity that seemed to have overtaken them.
CHAPTER XIV – THE RUNAWAY HOUSEBOAT
They all stared as if they could hardly believe their eyes. The moon had set about the time the storm started; but since the sky was already clearing, the stars gave a certain amount of light. And especially on the river it was possible to see for some distance.
Frank was almost as dumbfounded as his chums when this alarming fact burst upon them. Without the houseboat, their cruise down the Mississippi must come to an end.
“They must have been hiding somewhere near by,” lamented Will, “and saw the whole bunch of us scooting down the road; so that the chance they just wanted came along.”
“Say, Frank, he thinks it must have been Ossie Fredericks!” exclaimed Jerry; “but I say it was that Marcus Stackpole. He wanted to get that treasure Uncle Felix hid away on board so neat that even I never could find it. But Marcus, he’s bound to get it, even if he has to take the old boat, and tear her to flinders. Oh! what a bunch of gumps we were to leave her that way, to run to a fire.”
The countryman was listening to all they said, and trying to grasp the situation. Frank saw him step over to the tree to which they had fastened the cable of the boat so securely, as they thought.
“This whar you tied her up, boys?” asked the young farmer.
“To that tree, yes,” Frank replied. “What have you found – a piece of the rope left there?”
“Jest what I hev,” came the reply, as the other took out a match, and prepared to strike it.
“Sliced it off as neat as you please; didn’t they?” demanded Bluff, angrily.
“Wall, not as I kin see,” replied the farmer, bending closer to look, as the match flamed up. “This hyar rope, she’s gone and busted clear off!”
“No knife used, then, you mean?” asked Frank, jumping at conclusions.
“Nixy a knife,” came the answer, in a positive tone.
“Then that settles it,” Frank went on, turning to his comrades. “Our cable turned out a bad one, boys; and in the storm, when the wind struck the side of the cabin, the rope snapped off short!”
“Wow! what do you think of that, now?” cried Jerry.
“Then it wasn’t Ossie and his crowd; nor yet Marcus Stackpole, that did the little job for us?” observed Bluff, bottling some of his wrath for another occasion.
“We can lay it all to the storm,” Frank went on to say, as he too examined the frayed end of the piece of cable still hanging from the trunk of the tree; and which it was plain to be seen had never been severed by a sharp instrument.
“But that’s just about as bad,” Will plaintively struck up just then. “Perhaps our fine boat has been knocked to pieces before now; or even if she hasn’t, then she must be booming along in the middle of the river, turning around and around as she floats. Why, Frank, this happened half an hour ago, and by now where do you think the Pot Luck can be?”
“If she hasn’t been snagged and sunk in the storm,” replied Frank, “or upset by the hurricane wind, why, by now she may be floating peacefully along, all by herself, say about two miles, perhaps three, below here.”
“Think of that! And I was expecting to sleep aboard to-night!” Will exclaimed.
“I hope you may yet, if there’s any way by which we can overtake a runaway houseboat,” Frank said, as he tried to think.
Was there any means of obtaining a team of horses, and by following the country road, getting ahead of the houseboat that had gone adrift in the storm? The countryman ought to know, for he had been born and raised in that section of the State, and must be familiar with the lay of the land.
So Frank turned to Seth Groggins.
“You understand what has happened to us; don’t you, Seth?” he asked.
“Reckon I does; the pesky boat’s gone an’ played you all a mean trick.”
“Now, perhaps you might help us overtake our boat, Seth.”
“You jest tell me how, then, an’ see me jump,” answered the farmer, quickly, and with a friendly ring in his voice that pleased Frank very much.
“Have you got any fast horses at your place?” he asked next.
“That’s what I hev, as good a pair as kin be found ‘raound these hyar parts. An’ I sees wot you mean to try, Frank. Think it kin be did?”
“How far does this road follow the river?” Frank asked.
“Oh! many a mile,” came the answer. “She runs alongside the Mississippi for mebbe four miles, then takes a straightaway course two miles ‘cross a neck o’ land, savin’ somethin’ like five miles, and strikes the winding water agin beyond.”
“Just let me figure on that,” Frank went on, calmly, for he knew nothing could be gained by getting excited like Bluff and the others seemed to be. “Six miles from here by the road, and then we strike the river again. Now, how far do you suppose that boat would have to drift with the current before it struck that same point?”
“They do say that five miles kin be saved by cuttin’ acrost that neck. I reckon as haow it’d be all o’ three anyway,” the farmer declared, positively.
“We ought to be able to go twice as fast as the boat, I should think,” Frank continued, “and counting the saving, I believe we would have plenty of time to get to your place and be off, if you agreed. We’re willing to pay you five dollars for your trouble.”
“Five dollars nothing!” exclaimed the young farmer. “What d’ye think I am, when, if it hadn’t been for you, like’s not I’d been crazy enough to hev camped, under thet same big tree, and jest think whar I’d be naow? Done it afore, more’n a few times. Reckon that ere lightnin’ was a layin’ for me, an’ she’d got me to-night sure. But come along, boys; my place ain’t far off.”
He led the way to the road, and up it at a fast run; the four chums following after him as best they could.
Inside of ten minutes they arrived at a wayside farmhouse; and without waiting to answer the calls of the old lady on the porch, who wanted to know all about the fire, country fashion, Seth led his new friends straight out to a big stable and barn.
The way that expert young countryman got out his horses, and hitched them to a light road wagon, made Frank ready to give him the palm for fast work. Why, in almost no time the ends of the lines were tossed over the seat.
“Jump in, boys, and we’ll be off, jest as soon as I shut the stable doors. You see, I never leave ’em open. Robbins lost his hull outfit one night, and I ain’t a-goin’ to take any chances with mine.”
Another minute, and they were making for the open gates, which Seth had seen to at the time they entered his grounds. The last the boys saw of the old lady she was standing there, where the light of a lamp issued from an open door, and looking after her boy, as though she wondered if he had taken leave of his senses.
“Tell her all erbout it, arter I gets back to hum,” Seth very sensibly remarked, as he used the whip, to send his horses galloping down the river road. “She allers arsks so many questions, you see, I jest natchly couldn’t hold up to satisfy her right now, when minutes are a-goin’ to count. Giddup, Bob! Hi! thar, Fanny, show us what you kin do!”
Both horses were already making great speed. Frank and Will sat beside the driver on the seat, while the others found as comfortable places as they could on the bottom of the light wagon.
The road was not everything that could be wished for, and in consequence, when they came to a little depression, or a “thank-you-mum,” which was intended to deflect running water, and save a washout, both Jerry and Bluff found it difficult to keep anything like an upright position. The latter especially, being still burdened with his gun, could only use one hand with which to hold on to the side of the wagon; and as a consequence he was bounding all over the bed of the vehicle, until Frank, noticing what hard lines had fallen to poor Bluff, took the gun away, which allowed him to have the use of both hands.
