The Outdoor Chums on a Houseboat: or, The Rivals of the Mississippi
“Where are you going?” asked Bluff, always wanting to know.
“To the houseboat!” replied Frank, glancing back over his shoulder, and wondering whether they could make it before some of the rioters caught up with them.
Oswald heard what was said, and made no comment. Doubtless in his condition of terror any port in a storm might be his motto. Only a short time before he had thought of the Pot Luck only when plotting how to injure the houseboat of his rival; but now a refuge aboard that same craft was to be considered the finest thing possible.
“A little faster, if you can make it, Ossie,” Frank said, presently, when he began to fear that they would yet be overtaken, and perhaps beaten badly by the unthinking, yelling rioters.
“Do you think they’ll get us?” gasped the other.
“I guess we’ll make it all right; but if you could start up a little spurt it’d be a good thing,” replied Frank, encouragingly.
Fear is a splendid spur, and Ossie really did manage to quicken his pace, though he had to grit his teeth, and make the most desperate efforts in order to accomplish it.
“Bully! there she is!” cried Bluff, excitedly; and although Bluff had so recently expressed the desire to look at a riot, doubtless by now he was fully satisfied with his experience, and would welcome the shelter of the houseboat almost as gladly as Oswald himself.
They could see the three who had been left on board, watching their approach; and Frank made all sorts of wild motions with his arms, trying to tell them to get the hawser loose, so as to be ready to let go the instant the fugitives of the levee arrived, pushing the houseboat out upon the swift current.
Jerry seemed bewildered, and it was Will, after all, who grasped the true meaning of Frank’s shouts and gestures, for he hurried away to the new rope, where it was fastened ashore, while Jerry snatched up a push pole, and stood ready for work.
Thicker came the stones; and several times the fleeing boys narrowly escaped being struck; which was fortunate indeed, since more or less injury would surely have followed such a disaster.
When they finally reached the boat, the leading spirits among their unreasoning pursuers, both black and white, were not more than a hundred feet away, and still running strong.
“Push off!” gasped Frank, himself seizing hold of a pole, and starting to throw all of his strength into the labor.
Even old Luther lent a hand; and in this crisis the unwelcome passenger proved at least that he was no coward, Frank noticed, for he exposed himself as well as any of the others, until finally Frank thrust him inside the cabin.
The boat was now moving down the river, but altogether too close to the shore to wholly escape the rain of missiles that came pelting after, thrown by the angry mob, under the belief that those aboard were somehow concerned in the bringing of strike-breakers across the river to take their places.
It kept the boys busy dodging the stones, even though four-fifths of these dropped into the river. There was a constant pattering and banging as others struck the cabin and deck of the boat. One smashed through a window, and the crowd yelled hoarsely with delight at this evidence of good marksmanship.
Frank, however, believed they would soon be free from this fusillade. He saw that the levee came to an end just below, and consequently the crowd could no longer pursue the boat with profit. Besides, there were so many other scenes of excitement taking place all around, that by degrees the strikers were dropping off. The floating houseboat was really beyond their reach now; and they concluded that it would be more fun to attack a group of men who would fight back, than bombard a few boys who simply wanted to get away from the city.
So the last stone was thrown, and as the Pot Luck sailed out upon the broad reach below the city, where the two mighty rivers have their confluence, Frank and his chums could get their breath again, and survey the damages.
Two windows in the cabin had been broken, and there were a score of rocks and pieces of iron lying on the deck; besides numerous dents in the woodwork; but on the whole, they might feel they had escaped in pretty fair luck.
Ossie was recovering his breath, and also his courage. He seemed to feel queerly about having been rescued from danger by the very boys whom he had been trying to injure for so long.
Frank thought the opportunity for healing the breach between them was a good one, and after they had managed to push the houseboat in toward the shore, below the mouth of the Ohio, a hard task that took much time, he approached his rival, with a pleasant smile on his face.
“That was a pretty ugly experience, Ossie,” he remarked. “How did it happen you got caught in that mob, and were taken for a strike-breaker?”
“Why, you see, we had anchored down below here, when I remembered that I ought to have done an important errand for my father in Cairo,” the other explained. “As our engine was out of commission again, I hired a man to row me up to the city. He took more than half the morning to do it, too, and was to bring me back again in the afternoon. I heard about the rioting, and thought I’d like to see something of it on my way down to the river to find my boatman. Then, almost before I knew what was happening, it broke out all around me, and I was caught up in a pack of blacks retreating before an attack of another mob. I tried to get away, but you saw what happened. Whew! I wouldn’t like to repeat that experience. And look, there’s theLounger right now! Could you hold up, and put me aboard?”
Frank was quite willing. They had one passenger aboard now, which was more than the law, as laid down by Uncle Felix, allowed; and they certainly did not care for another.
He believed that if Oswald had listened to his better nature he would have wiped the slate clean then and there, after finding himself indebted so heavily to his supposed rival; and become friends from that hour with the crew of the Pot Luck.
But there were his three chums lining the side of the Lounger, and evidently in a great state of mind to see Ossie coming back aboard the other houseboat, which certainly showed signs of hard usage.
The anchor was allowed to drop overboard, and Frank himself took the captain of theLounger across the few fathoms of water separating the two houseboats. Oswald was greeted by a noisy outcry as he climbed up on deck. The three who stood there, fearing that there was some danger that the bad feeling of the past would be crossed out, scowled at the crew of thePot Luck, and even gave utterance to more or less contemptuous remarks concerning the rival craft.
No doubt these things had their influence upon Oswald. He looked at Frank after he had climbed aboard his own boat, and seemed almost about to stretch out his hand, to thank him for all he had done; but the old spirit was still uppermost.
“So-long, Langdon. Do as much for you some day, perhaps. But, of course you had to save your own bacon in the bargain; for as soon as you ran they believed you were strike-breakers as much as they did me. All the same, it was rather decent of you; and perhaps you may not be the bad lot I’ve considered you.”
Frank only smiled, and made no reply, as he paddled back to his own boat. But he knew that his chums were boiling with indignation, for as they once more resumed their passage down-stream Bluff burst out with:
“Well, of all the mean, ornery skunks I ever met up with, that Ossie Fredericks takes the cake. He hasn’t even common decency enough to offer to shake hands, and thank the fellows who stood all that stone pelting just to drag him in out of the wet. Shucks! I wish now, Frank, we’d just let him take his medicine. He’d be getting all he deserved, and no more, the ungrateful cur!”
“You never can tell,” said Frank, calmly. “Perhaps, when he gets to thinking it over, he may see a light; but we only did our duty. Bluff; and that’s got to be our reward.”
CHAPTER XVIII – WHAT JERRY’S STICK BROUGHT DOWN
More days passed, and the houseboat was making steady progress down the Mississippi, with as happy a party of lads aboard as could be found anywhere. Indeed, each day seemed to bring new delights along with it; and so lighthearted were the chums that every little while Bluff would break out in some college song, to be joined in the chorus by several other hearty voices.
They fished many times, and took toll of the waters they passed over; though sometimes the hooks came in empty, and they had to change the order arranged for dinner that evening. Once Bluff, who had gone ashore with his favorite gun over his shoulders, was heard to shoot several times; and the others were more or less concerned as to what manner of spoils he might have run across; for really at this time of year the law did not allow of hunting, save for woodcock, and very few other edible kinds of game.
When he came in shortly afterwards it was to fling down a magnificent specimen of the red-tailed hawk.
“Why, would you believe it,” asserted Bluff, stoutly, “the measly thing just went for me like hot cakes, and I never did a thing to rile her up. I had to use my gun first of all, to club her away; and then, as she darted down at me, I just thought it was a mighty poor game that two couldn’t play at; so I began to shoot. Took several times to make her be good. Looky here, where she scratched me in the cheek when she tried to carry me off at first.”
The others never did know the true inwardness of that story. Frank guessed that Bluff, deeming a big, saucy hawk fair game, had blazed away and wounded her; and that he got his scratched cheek when he came to close quarters with the bird.
But to the victor belong the spoils; and in reality Frank believed the hawk was likely to do more damage to farmers’ chickens and the small song birds, than it might good by destroying mice and such vermin that play such havoc with the growing crops. And for many days did that handsome hawk hang there, nailed on the cabin wall of the houseboat.
Frank continued to study Luther Snow. He was slowly making up his mind that they must get rid of him before arriving anywhere near New Orleans. He had mentioned Vicksburg once or twice as the point where they would purchase him a ticket on the railroad, so he could get to his destination quickly; but secretly Frank had arranged with his chums that Memphis should be the point of departure.
“Between us,” remarked Jerry, on one occasion, as they were talking it over together, while Luther was inside the cabin, asleep on the cot they had made up for his occupancy; “I really don’t think the old chap wants to leave us at all, but would rather stay aboard till we get to Orleans.”
“Sure he would,” remarked Will, with a nod and a grin; “he’d be a silly not to, when he’s certain of three square meals a day, and such meals,” and he smacked his lips in a way that must have made the cook feel proud that his talent was appreciated so much.
“Yes, I happen to know he wants to stick by us,” remarked Bluff.
“Tell us how, then,” said Frank, quickly, his eye on the door of the cabin.
“Well, more’n a few times, when we got to talkin’, Luther, he’d turn to the subject of the great expense he’d been to us; and then he’d always say he hoped we’d change our minds, and not put him ashore at Vicksburg, because he wasso contented aboard here, and wished he could just finish the voyage with us. Besides, he said we might need his help later on, as a doctor; and you know he did fix me up the finest way ever when I fell on that axe, and cut my leg so bad a week ago. Reckon no regular sawbones could have done the job better.”
“He says he studied for a doctor’s sheepskin away back, and was always sorry he didn’t keep right along,” Will put in.
“How about that, Frank; do we keep him or assist him on his way by rail?” Bluff asked; but Frank would not commit himself, because he believed that in some way the old man might hear of it, and play “sick” when they drew near Memphis, so that they could not have the heart to put him ashore.
He was himself coming to some sort of conclusion in the matter, and it first of all seemed to be founded on a certain fact, which by now Frank had made certain of. Luther Snow was not the real name of their passenger. Frank had made a startling discovery one day recently, and it put an end to his bewilderment at least. It happened that, chancing to notice some handkerchiefs the old man had stowed in his various pockets, and which he was washing out, after a crude fashion that would have made a woman laugh, Frank saw that in every case a name had been carefully erased with indelible ink.
Then again there began to be other little things about the old man that told the observing lad he surely had never been a carpenter. Frank purposely asked him to build some boxes out of several smooth boards purchased for the purpose; and the result was a botched job that any second-class carpenter would have blushed to own. Even Bluff screwed up his eyebrows when he saw them, and privately declared that he did not wonder old Luther was out of a job so often, if that was a sample of the best he could do along the line of his trade.
To Frank there was a deeper significance in this failure to make good on the part of their passenger. No wonder his hands were so free from calloused places, for Frank now felt positive that Luther had never been a carpenter in all his life.
If that part was made up, then probably the entire tale was only a “fairy story,” told for a purpose. That purpose was to get aboard the houseboat, for some reason or other. Well, he had been aboard for some weeks now, and nothing had happened, only he seemed to like it so well he wanted to remain with the boys until they reached New Orleans.
There was something about this desire on his part that impressed Frank. If, as he now actually began to believe, Luther Snow was really the Marcus Stackpole of whom Uncle Felix had particularly warned them, why had he not picked up the hidden treasure Jerry was always talking about, and disappeared long ago?
Frank somehow began to believe that, after all, there was no secret cache aboard the boat which might contain valuables in the shape of papers or jewels. Jerry liked to think there was, but really they had not a peg on which to hang such an idea; except that queer Uncle Felix seemed to want to keep strangers off the boat, and particularly a man he seemed to dislike very much, one Marcus Stackpole.
Frank was even now busying himself with trying to lay some little trap by means of which he might learn the truth.
“I’ll take him unawares some time,” he was saying to himself, as he stood on deck that afternoon, after they had tied up, with the sunlight around him, and looked out from under the shady branches of the tree to which the boat was fast; “and spring that name on him – call him Mr. Stackpole. If he can look me in the eye, and never show a sign, I’ll have to think I’m mistaken; but all the same, off this boat he goes at Memphis, if I have to get an ambulance, and send him to the hospital.”
Bluff was seated, as he often might be seen, on the rail of the boat; while Will pottered over the tangled fish lines, for Jerry had taken a notion to put a new roll of film in the little camera, and was even then rubbing it up. Luther Snow, a blanket about his shoulders, sat near by, watching it all in a pleased sort of way.
“Time was when I could stand anything, boys,” remarked the old man as he gathered this covering closer to his body; “and I reckon I’ve been through considerable all over the wide world, for a man who never had a cent that he didn’t earn himself. But I’m getting a little old now, you see. I begin to feel rheumatism in my bones, and sometimes I begin to believe that my days as a rover are nearly over.”
Frank always listened when he started to speak of experiences in his checkered past. It often aroused the curiosity of the boy to understand how a man who, as he confessed himself, was only a common carpenter (and a mighty poor one at that, Frank would say to himself), had been able to get around in all the queer corners of the world that Luther Snow had.
He seemed to know many foreign cities by heart, and spoke of certain things in a way that only one familiar with them could do. Well, there could be no doubt of one thing, and this was that Luther occupied the rôle of a mystery to Frank, a puzzle he could not wholly solve.
If, then, he proved to be Marcus Stackpole, the very man against whom they had been especially warned, what did he want?
Frank kept repeating that to himself time and again as he lounged there and in the light of the declining sun watched his chums; then turned his eyes in the direction of the man who had the blanket about his shoulders, and who seemed so satisfied to be with them on board Uncle Felix’s houseboat.
It was Jerry who startled them all suddenly by calling out:
“Hey! there’s a gray squirrel right over your head, Bluff! Watch me give the little beggar a scare, will you?”
He reached over, and picked up one of a number of sticks of wood which had been brought on board at their last stop, being intended to serve as fuel for the little cook stove, after they had been chipped in half, perhaps.
This was a short and heavy one Jerry had selected. Rising to his feet, he gave it one whirl around his head, and then let fly. Jerry had always been reckoned something of a thrower. He often played in the pitcher’s box before he went away from home, and was even now a promising fielder on the sub nine at college.
So Frank would not have been very much surprised had he succeeded in knocking the squirrel in question off his perch. But he was very much astonished at the most remarkable consequences of Jerry’s shot.
There was an angry scream, such as only an enraged cat could make; and something large and hairy, with extended legs, came floundering down upon the deck of the houseboat directly in front of Bluff. Indeed, in its passage, the wildcat, for it turned out to be nothing else, made a vicious stab for Bluff; and that excited as well as alarmed individual was so taken aback, that quite naturally he lost his grip on the railing of the boat, and fell over into the river.
This was getting to be a settled habit with Bluff, for he seemed capable of going overboard on the slightest excuse, just as though he rather liked taking a plunge into the cool waters of the Mississippi.
And the angry cat sprawled there on the deck, yowling and snarling, as if daring anyone to dispute his right to be monarch of all he surveyed.
CHAPTER XIX – A BOBCAT ON BOARD
“Help!” gasped Jerry, who seemed to be in some sort of a pickle, having managed to get his legs crossed in such a way, as he sat there pottering with Will’s camera, that in the excitement of the moment he was unable to either rise, or roll out of the danger zone.
As sometimes happens in a case like this, it turned out to be the one least expected to play the part of hero. Nobody dreamed that Will – quiet, sensitive Will, the artist of the expedition, and a boy given more to dreaming than doing strenuous things – would jump into the breach as he did.
In fact, he was never able to explain it himself, save that somehow he seemed to imagine those clubs on the deck were just made for belaboring a tiger-cat over the head with; and from the fact that Bluff had gone over into the river, with Jerry calling wildly for help, it must be up to him to dosomething.
Why, he snatched up one of the heavy sticks as though he had been anticipating just such a sudden call, and had his plan of campaign already laid out.
“Take care, Will; don’t let him get in at you with those sharp claws!” cried the startled Frank, as he too tried to possess himself of a suitable cudgel, if there chanced to be another worth having in the bunch.
He could not find what he wanted on the spur of the moment – one was too slender to promise any results; while another seemed much too short with which to attack a vicious wildcat.
Will did not appear to expect any help in his fight. The way he kept at it was a revelation to those who watched him, for all the while Frank sought his stick, he kept one eye on the battle, determined to jump in, if necessary, club or no club.
Whack! came the cudgel Will yielded against the side of the bobcat, knocking the savage beast sprawling on the deck; though like his kind the cat could not be kept down, but was on its feet instantly, more angry than ever.
“Whoop! hit him again for his mother!”
It was surely Bluff who gave utterance to that shout. Evidently he had not cared to stay there in the river, while so much that was exciting seemed to be occurring aboard the houseboat; and taking advantage of some objects upon which he was able to seize, Bluff had clambered up far enough to thrust his head over the side, in time to witness that splendid “home run hit” made by timid Will.
Well, they would hardly be likely to ever call him that again, after seeing how vigorously he went after the now demoralized wildcat, getting in blows whenever an opening occurred, and meanwhile poking at the beast threateningly.
It crouched there, snarling as only such a beast can, with its ears drawn back, and its green eyes seeming to emit sparks. Once it sprang full at the boy, and Mr. Snow uttered a cry of alarm; he made his way into the cabin, and now held Bluff’s repeating gun in his hands, with the air of a hunter accustomed to such tools; but there seemed small chance to get a fair shot, the boy and the cat were so close to each other.
But Will proved as quick as a flash in his movements. He met this leap of his feline foe just as cleverly as a champion ball player might a swift one, straight over the plate. There was a loud concussion; and then they had a view of a squirming, hairy figure just passing over the rail above Bluff, four legs working overtime in the effort to get a grip with those keen-pointed and poisonous claws.
Luther Snow thrust the gun into the hands of Frank, who had been in the act of trying to meet the figure of the cat at the instant the animal made his spring.
“It’s your right to wind him up, Frank!” the man said; and seemed as cool as any one accustomed to scenes of peril all his life could be.
So Frank stepped to the rail, and seeing the baffled bobcat just about climbing the bank, he wound up his existence with one shot.
“Wow! is it all over?” demanded Bluff, who, when the cat came sailing toward him a second time, had simply let go, and dropped with another splash into the river; because, as he afterwards said, he was already as wet as he could get; and knew he would be safe down there from those threatening claws.
Will was as pale as a ghost, and breathing hard from his exertions, when Frank rushed over to seize his hand and squeeze it.
“Good boy, Will!” he exclaimed. “We’re proud of you this day, believe that. Why, what you didn’t do to that poor beast could be put into a thimble. I’ll never, never forget it, as long as I live!”
“Maybe you won’t have to,” remarked Jerry, who, it seemed, had finally managed to get on his feet again, and now stood there; holding the camera in his hands, a grin of delight on his face.
“What do you mean, Jerry?” asked Frank.
But Will saw the little black box, and being himself always just wild to snap off everything he could run across that promised to make a good picture, he seemed to jump to the right conclusion.
“Did you do it, Jerry?” he demanded, eagerly.
“I rattled her right lively; and if I didn’t make a big mistake, you ought to get some good pictures out of the lot,” replied Jerry, handing Will’s property over.
“Well,” remarked the wet figure that came crawling over the rail just then, “if you only managed to press the button when that crazy cat was sailing into Will, and our chum gave him that blow on the nose, you’ve got something we’ll all be proud to see.”
“That was when I pushed the button the last time, I reckon,” Jerry declared; “but honest to goodness, I was that excited I wouldn’t like to say right now that I got anything but the tip of pussy’s tail.”
“Oh! I hope it won’t be so bad as that,” said Will; “not that I want to figure in a picture, because I’d ten times rather it was one of the rest; but I’ve always wanted to get a snapshot of a bobcat on the jump.”
