“I warrant you that it must have been the four young rascals who robbed our camp, that you saw,” ventured Mr. Witherspoon.
“I know now that it was as you say,” continued the other. “At the time I might have called out and warned them of the peril that lay in wait for them if they should continue along that misleading trail, but when I looked at their faces, and heard a little of the vile language they used, I determined that it would be a very unwise thing for me to let them know I lived so near.”
“And you allowed them to go on past, you mean, sir?” questioned Mr. Witherspoon.
“Yes, I regret to confess it now,” came the reply, “but at the time it seemed to be simply ordinary caution on my part. Besides, how was I to know they would pay the slightest heed to anything I might say? I did not like their looks. But since then I’ve had grave doubts about the wisdom of my course, and was more than half inclined to start out, lame though I am, to see whether they did get off the only safe trail, and lose themselves in the bog.”
“Is it then so dangerous?” asked Mr. Witherspoon; while Tom was saying to himself that perhaps the chance so ardently desired by poor Carl might be coming at last.
“There are places where it might be death itself to any one who got off the trail, and became bewildered. The mud is deceptive, and once one gets fast in it an hour or two is apt to see him swallowed up; nor will his fate ever be known, for the bottomless mire of the bog never discloses its secrets.”
Tom drew a long breath.
“If you will show us the way there, sir,” he told the naturalist, “we will certainly accompany you.”
Contents
“Is it worth our while to bother with that crowd, Tom?” asked Josh, with a look approaching disgust on his face.
One lad waited to hear what reply the patrol leader would make with more or less eagerness, as his face indicated. Needless to say this was Carl Oskamp, who had so much at stake in the matter.
“There’s just this about it, Josh,” said Tom, gravely, “suppose after we arrived safely home from this splendid hike, the first thing we heard was that one or two of that crowd had been lost in the Great Bog up here, and it was feared they must have found a grave in the mud flats. How would we feel about it, knowing that we had had the chance given to us to stretch out a helping hand them, and had failed?”
Josh turned red in the face. Then he made a sudden gesture which meant he was ready to throw up his hands.
“Huh! guess you know best,” he replied, in a husky voice; “I didn’t think of it that way. I’d sure hate to have such a thing on my mind nights. Let’s start right away then.”
That was the way with Josh; when he had anything unpleasant to do he was always eager to get it accomplished. For that matter, however, there were others among the scouts who wished to be astir, for the words of the patrol leader had thrilled them.
“What if they have gotten lost in that awful mud bog, and right now are stuck fast there, whooping for help?” suggested Felix.
Billy Button and Horace looked white with the very thought. As usual George pretended to make light of the whole matter, though some of them fancied much of his disbelief was assumed, for George had a reputation to maintain.
“Oh! no danger of those Smart Alecks being caught so easy,” he told them; “they could slip through any sort of bog without getting stuck. Like as not we’ll only have our trouble for our pains.”
“You can stay here at the cabin if you like, George,” Tom told him.
That, however, was far from George’s mind; if the others meant “to make fools of themselves he guessed he could stand it too”; and when they started forth George had his place in the veryvan. Josh often said George’s “bark was worse than his bite.”
“Fortunately,” said the old naturalist, “the Great Bog isn’t more than a mile away from here, and as I’ve spent many a happy hour there observing the home life of the little creatures that live in its depths the ground is familiar to me.”
“But you still limp, I notice, sir,” remarked Tom; “are you sure you can make it to-day? Hadn’t we better try it alone?”
“I wouldn’t think of letting you,” replied the other, hastily. “I shall get along fairly well, never fear. This limp has become more a habit with me than anything else, I must admit. But if you are ready let us start off.”
Accordingly the entire party began to head in the direction taken by those four boys from Lenox. Rob and Josh were keeping a close watch, and from time to time announced that those they were following had actually come along that same trail, for they could see their footprints.
“You know we took note of the different prints made by their shoes,” Rob told some of the other boys when they expressed surprise that this should be possible, “and it’s easy enough to tell them every once in a while.”
“They are really following my usual trail, which I always take when going to or returning from a trip,” explained the hermit-naturalist,looking pleased at this manifestation of scout sagacity on the part of the trackers.
Tom was keeping alongside his chum Carl, instead of being with those who led the procession. He had a reason for this, too; since he had seen that the other was again showing signs of nervousness.
“Tom,” said Carl in a low voice as they walked steadily onward, “do you think I may have a chance to see Dock face to face, so I can ask him again to tell me what he ever did with that paper he took?”
“While of course I can’t say positively,” was Tom’s steady answer, “I seem to feel that something’s going to happen that will make you happier than you’ve been this many a long day, Carl.”
“Oh! I hope you’re on the right track!” exclaimed Carl, drawing a long breath, as he clutched the arm of his faithful chum. “It would mean everything to me if only I could go home knowing I was to get that paper. Just think what a fine present it would be to my mother, worried half to death as she is right now over the future.”
“Well, keep hoping for the best, and it’s all going to come out well. But what’s that the boys are saying?”
“I think they must have sighted the beginning of the Great Bog,” replied Carl. “Do you suppose Mr. Henderson has brought that stout ropealong with the idea that it may be needed to pull any one out of the mud?”
“Nothing else,” said Tom. “He knows all about this place, and from what he’s already told us I reckon it must be a terrible hole.”
“Especially in that one spot where he says the path is hidden under the ooze, and that if once you lose it you’re apt to get in deeper and deeper, until there’s danger of being sucked down over your head.”
“It’s a terrible thing to think of,” declared Tom; “worse even than being caught in a quicksand in a creek, as I once found myself.”
“How did you get out?” asked Carl. “I never heard you say anything about it before, Tom?”
“Oh! in my case it didn’t amount to much,” was the answer, “because I realized my danger by the time the sand was half way to my knees. I suppose if I’d tried to draw one foot out the other would have only gone down deeper, for that’s the way they keep sinking, you know.”
“But tell me how you escaped?” insisted Carl.
“I happened to know something about quicksands,” responded the other, modestly, “and as soon as I saw what a fix I was in I threw myself flat, so as to present as wide a surface as I could, and crawled and rolled until I got ashore. Of course I was soaked, but that meant very littlecompared with the prospect of being smothered there in that shallow creek.”
“But the chances are Tony and those other fellows know nothing at all about the best ways to escape from a sucking bog,” ventured Carl.
“Yes, and I can see that Mr. Henderson is really worried about it. He is straining his ears all the while, and I think he must be listening in hope of hearing calls for help.”
“But none of us have heard anything like that!” said the other.
“No, not a shout that I could mention,” Tom admitted. “There are those noisy crows keeping up a chatter in the tree-tops where they are holding a caucus, and some scolding bluejays over here, but nothing that sounds like a human cry.”
“It looks bad, and makes me feel shivery,” continued Carl.
“Oh! we mustn’t let ourselves think that all of them could have been caught,” the patrol leader hastened to say, meaning to cheer his chum up. “They may have been smarter than Mr. Henderson thinks, and managed to get through the bog without getting stuck.”
Perhaps Carl was comforted by these words on the part of his chum; but nevertheless the anxious look did not leave his face.
They had by this time fully entered the bog. It was of a peculiar formation, and not at all ofa nature to cause alarm in the beginning. Indeed it seemed as though any person with common sense could go through on those crooked trails that ran this way and that.
The old naturalist had taken the lead at this point, and they could see that he kept watching the trail in front of him. From time to time he would speak, and the one who came just behind passed the word along, so in turn every scout knew that positive marks betrayed the fact of Tony’s crowd having really come that way.
By slow degrees the nature of the bog changed. One might not notice that his surroundings had become less promising, and that the surface of the ooze, green though it was, would prove a delusion and a snare if stepped on, allowing the foot to sink many inches in the sticky mass.
In numerous places they could see where the boys ahead of them had missed the trail, though always managing to regain the more solid ground.
“It’s getting a whole lot spooky in here, let me tell you!” admitted Felix, after they had been progressing for some time.
“But it’s entirely different from a real swamp, you see,” remarked Josh; “I’ve been in a big one and I know.”
“How about that, Josh; wouldn’t you call a bog a swamp, too?” asked George.
“Not much I wouldn’t,” was the reply. “Aswamp is always where there are dense trees, hanging vines and water. It’s a terribly gloomy place even in the middle of the day, and you’re apt to run across snakes, and all sorts of things like that.”
“Well, we haven’t seen a single snake so far,” admitted Horace. “I’m glad, too, because I never did like the things. This isn’t so very gloomy, when you come to look around you, but I’d call it just desolate, and let it go at that.”
“Black mud everywhere, though it’s nearly always covered with a deceptive green scum,” remarked Josh, “with here and there puddles of water where the frogs live and squawk the live-long day.”
“I wonder how deep that mud is anyhow?” speculated George.
“Suppose you get a pole and try while we’re resting here,” suggested Josh, with a wink at the scout next to him.
George thereupon looked around, and seeing a pole which Mr. Henderson may have placed there at some previous time he started to push it into the bog.
“What d’ye think of that, fellows?” he exclaimed, in dismay when he had rammed the seven foot pole down until three fourths of its length had vanished in the unfathomable depths of soft muck.
“Why, seems as if there wasn’t any bottom at all to the thing,” said Felix.
“Of course there is a bottom,” remarked the naturalist, who had been watching the boys curiously; “but in some places I’ve been unable to reach it with the longest pole I could manage.”
“Have we passed that dangerous place you were telling us about, sir?” asked Mr. Witherspoon.
“No, it is still some little distance ahead,” came the reply.
“If it’s much worse than right here I wouldn’t give five cents for their chances,” declared George.
“Hark!” exclaimed Tom just then.
“What did you hear?” cried Carl.
“It sounded like voices to me, though some distance off, and coming from further along the trail,” the patrol leader asserted.
“They may be stuck in the mire and trying every way they can to get out,” observed the naturalist. “Let us give them a shout, boys. Now, all together!”
As they all joined in, the volume of sound must have been heard a mile away. Hardly had the echoes died out than from beyond came loud calls, and plainly they heard the words “Help, help! Oh! come quick, somebody! Help!”
Contents
When that wailing cry reached their ears it thrilled the scouts through and through, for now they knew that the worst must have happened to the wretched Tony Pollock and his three cronies, adrift in the treacherous muck bog.
“Forward, but be very careful to keep in my tracks all the time!” called out the naturalist as he started off.
They wound around this way and that. There were times when Rob, who came directly on the heels of the pilot, could not see the slightest trace of a trail; but he realized that from long association and investigation Mr. Henderson knew exactly where to set his feet, and thus avoid unpleasant consequences.
They now and then sent out reassuring calls, for those unseen parties ahead continued to make fervent appeals, as though a terrible fear assailed them that the rescuers might go astray and miss them.
By degrees the shouts sounded closer, thoughbecoming exceedingly hoarse. Presently Felix called out that he believed he had glimpsed the unfortunate boys.
“Oh! they’re all in the mud, and up to their waists at that!” he cried.
“No, you’re wrong there, Felix,” said Josh. “Three of them seem to be stuck fast, but there’s one up in that tree nearly over them. He must have managed to pull himself up there, somehow or other.”
“He’s got a branch, and is trying to help one of his mates,” asserted Rob. “But he doesn’t seem to be making much headway.”
“They’re in a peck of trouble, believe me!” admitted George, for once neglecting to sneer at the prospect of a fatality.
Carl was trying to make out who the three in the bog were.
“Can you see ifhe’sin there, Tom?” he asked, eagerly.
“Yes, it’s Wedge McGuffey up in the tree, and the others must be Tony, Asa and Dock,” the patrol leader assured him; nor did he blame poor Carl for sighing as though in relief, for he could easily guess what it meant to him, this golden opportunity to be of help to the stubborn boy who could lift the load from his heart, if only he chose.
When they came closer to the struggling captives in the lake of mud they heard them actually sobbing for joy. Hope must have been almost gone when first they heard that chorus of cheering shouts. And when the scouts saw what a desperate condition the three prisoners were in they could not blame them for showing such emotion in the excess of their joy.
Soon the newcomers were as close as they could come to the three who were stuck there in the mire. Never would they forget their deplorable appearance. They had evidently floundered about until they were fairly plastered over with the mud, and looked like imps.
“Can’t you get us out of here, fellers?” called Tony Pollock, in a voice that seemed almost cracked, such was his excitement, and his fears that these scouts, whom he had done his best to injure, might think to pay him back in his own coin and abandon him to his fate.
“Yes, we’ll manage it some way or other,” said the hermit-naturalist. “Keep as still as you can, because every movement only sends you down deeper.”
Then he turned to Tom, for he knew the patrol leader was the one to take charge of the rescue party.
“Here’s the rope, Tom,” he told him. “Pick out several of the stoutest of your comrades, and make use of the tree as a lever. It’s all verysimple, you can see, thought it may hurt them more or less when you pull.”
Tom understood what was expected of him.
“Come along with me, Carl, Rob and Josh,” he said. “The rest of you stand by and be ready to pull if we need any more help. We’ll pass the end of the rope back to you.”
“But how are we going to climb up in the tree?” asked Rob; “without getting stuck in the mud ourselves?”
“There’s only one way,” replied Tom, as he seized hold of a branch that happened to be within reach, and commenced to climb it as though he were a sailor swarming up a rope.
When he had effected a lodgment above they threw the rope to him, and after Tom had made one end fast to the thick limb the other three had little difficulty in following him.
Then they clambered out to where Wedge McGuffey was perched. His condition betrayed the fact that he too had been caught in the muck; but being closer to a friendly branch he must have made a tremendous effort and climbed into the tree.
First of all Tom made a running noose in the end of the rope. Then he lowered this to Tony who was almost below the limb of which they were astride.
“Listen, Tony,” said Tom, clearly, “put theloop under your arms, with the knot at your chest. Then grin and bear it, because we’ve got to drag hard to get you free from all that stuff you’re in.”
“Oh! never mind about me, Tom; I’d stand anything if only I could get out of this terrible place. Pull me in half if you have to; I’m game!” said the boy below.
They found that it was really a little harder than they had bargained for, because of their insecure footing. Accordingly, after several attempts that did not meet with much success, Tom had the other end of the rope carried to the scouts who were on the ground.
After that Tony just had to come. He evidently suffered pain, but, as he had said, he was game, and in the end they hoisted him to the limb, where he clung watching the next rescue.
It happened that Asa was the second to be pulled out. Meanwhile Dock was in great distress of mind. All his nerve seemed to have gone, for he kept pleading with Carl not to think of having revenge because of the way he had harmed him.
“Only get me out of this, Carl,” he kept saying, “and I’ve got something right here in my pocket I’m meaning to give back to you. I was getting shaky about it anyhow; but if you help me now you’re a-goin’ to have it, sure you are, Carl!”
It can easily be imagined that Carl worked feverishly when it came time to get Dock Phillips out. He was deeper than either of the others had been, and it required some very rough usage before finally they loosened him from his miry bed.
Dock groaned terribly while the work was being carried on, but they did not stop for that, knowing it had to be. In the end he, too, was drawn up to the limb, a most sorry looking spectacle indeed, but his groans had now changed into exclamations of gratitude.
It required much labor to get the four mud-daubed figures down to where the others were awaiting them. Even Tom and his helpers were pretty well plastered by that time, and their new uniforms looked anything but fine. Josh grumbled a little, but as for Tom and Carl they felt that it was worth all it cost and a great deal more.
Carl would not wait any longer than he could help. Perhaps he believed in “striking while the iron was hot.” Tom too was egging him on, for he felt that the sooner that precious paper was in the possession of his chum the better.
“Dock, I hope you mean to keep your word to me,” Carl said, as they took up the line of march over the ground that had been so lately covered.
Dock was seen to be fumbling as though reaching into an inner pocket; and while the suspense lasted of course Carl held his very breath. Thena hand reached back, and something in it was eagerly seized by the widow’s son. One look told him that it was the paper his mother needed so much in order to balk the greedy designs of Amasa Culpepper.
“How is everything now, Carl?” asked a voice in his ear, and turning he found Tom’s smiling face close to his own.
“Oh! that terrible load seems to have fallen from my shoulders just as water does from the back of a duck!” Carl exclaimed, joyously, and the patrol leader saw that he was very happy.
“I’m so glad!” was all Tom said, but the way he grasped his chum’s hand counted for much more than mere words.
When they finally reached the end of the treacherous Great Bog there was a halt called by the naturalist.
“We must stop here and try to clean these boys off as best we can,” he announced.
This was no easy task, but by making use of slivers of wood from a fallen tree they finally managed to relieve Tony and his crowd of most of the black mud, although they would be apt to carry patches of it on their garments for some time after it dried.
“Now,” said the kindly old hermit-naturalist, “I’m going to invite all of you up to my cabin, and we’ll have a feast to-night in celebration ofthis rescue from the Great Bog. You four lads have had a narrow escape, and I only hope you’ll never forget what the scouts have done for you.”
Even Tony seemed affected, and certainly no one had ever before known him to show the first sign of contrition. He went straight up to Tom and looked him in the eye.
“We played your crowd a mighty low trick I want to say, Tom Chesney; and while we’ve et up most of the grub we took, here’s something you might be glad to get back again,” and with that he thrust into the hand of the patrol leader the little note-book which Tom had mourned as lost to him forever.
“I’m glad to have that again, Tony,” the other said, offering his hand to the contrite one; “because I mean to use my account of this hike later on in trying for a prize. It’s lucky you didn’t throw it away as you did the frying-pan and coffee-pot, which I see you failed to carry along with you.”
“We know where they’re hid in the brush,” Tony hastened to declare; “and I c’n get ’em again inside of an hour. I’m a-goin’ to do it too, ’cause I feel mean about that thing. I’m done with callin’ the scouts names. Fellers that’d reach out a helpin’ hand to them that didn’t deserve it must be the right sort. And laugh if you want to, Tom Chesney, but when we get backhome I want ye to lend me a book that tells all a feller has to do when he thinks of gettin’ up a scout troop!”
Tony was as good as his word. When he said a thing he stuck to it, which was his best quality. He tramped a long way back along the trail, and reappeared after sunset bearing the missing cooking utensils.
“We’re going to pay for the eatables we took later on, I promise ye, Tom,” he declared.
They spent a great night and those four boys who had hated the scouts so long learned many wonderful things connected with the great movement as they sat by the fire, and listened to all that was said.
In the morning they went their way, and appeared to be different youths from what they had been in the past.
Mr. Witherspoon and the scouts spent another day and night with the hermit-naturalist. Then on the next morning they started forth to complete their hike over Big Bear Mountain.
It chanced that no further adventures came their way, and one afternoon weary but well satisfied with the success of their trip, the troop re-entered Lenox, with Felix sounding his fish horn just as valiantly as though it were the most beautiful silver-plated bugle that money could buy.
Contents
Amasa Culpepper had taken advantage of the absence of Carl to drop around that afternoon to see the widow. He fully believed that by this time Dock Phillips had either destroyed or lost the paper he claimed to have found; or else Amasa felt that he could secure possession of it at any time by paying the sum the boy demanded.
When Carl drew near his home he saw the well-known rig of the old lawyer and grocer at the gate. Somehow, the sight gave Carl an unpleasant feeling. Then, as his hand unconsciously went up to the pocket where he had that precious paper, he felt a sensation of savage joy.
They would get rid of this nuisance at last. Mr. Culpepper would have to produce the certificate for the oil shares that had become so valuable, now that the receipt he had given for it could be produced, and after that an era of prosperity would come to the Oskamp’s, with grim poverty banished forever.
Carl entered by the gate, and passed around the side of the house instead of using the front door as usual.
The boy knew that the windows of the little sitting room must be open, and of course the afternoon caller would be in there. Carl was anxious to hear what had caused the rich old man to don his best clothes and drop in to see his mother of an afternoon, though he strongly suspected the reason back of it.
It did not strike the boy that he was playing the part of an eavesdropper, for in his mind just then the end justified the means. And he knew that Amasa Culpepper had to be fought with his own weapons.
Evidently he must have again asked Mrs. Oskamp to marry him, and as before met with a laughing refusal, for Carl could hear him walking nervously up and down in the little sitting room.
Having exhausted his stock of arguments as to why she should think seriously of his proposal, Mr. Culpepper seemed to be getting angry. He had been courting the widow for a long time without making any impression on her heart. It was time to change his tactics. Perhaps since entreaties had failed something in the way of half-veiled threats would become more successful.
“You tell me that with the burning of the tenement building more than half of your little property has been lost,” Carl heard him saying as he crouched there under the open window.
“Yes, that is the sad truth, Mr. Culpepper,” the widow admitted.
“But with a family of children to bring up how are you going to live from now on, when before this happened you had barely enough? If you would seriously consider the proposition I make you, and become Mrs. Culpepper, your children would have a good home.”
“That is very generous of you, Mr. Culpepper,” Carl heard his mother say, while he fairly held his breath in suspense for fear she might agree to what the other asked; “but I cannot change my mind. I never expect to marry again.”
“But how can you get along, I want to know?” he demanded, angrily. “It takes money to live, and you will see the children you love suffer.”
“There is one resource still left,” she told him, as though urged to put him to the test. “It lies in those shares of oil stock which you are holding for me. They have become very valuable, and when I dispose of them I hope to have enough and to spare for all future needs.”
There was a brief and awkward silence.
“But what evidence is there,” he finally asked icily, “that you ever placed any shares of stock in my hand, or even so, that they were not deliveredto you again? Of course you can show my name at the bottom of a receipt if that is the fact?”
“Is that absolutely necessary, Mr. Culpepper?” she asked, helplessly.
“It is strictly business, madam,” the visitor went on, in his cold, cutting tones that were like the rasping of a file. “I could not think of handing over anything of value that was in my possession without receiving in return a receipt.”
“But you would not be so cruel as to deprive my children of their bread simply because of a little technicality, sir? I will do anything the law demands to insure that you are not held liable whether the lost receipt is ever found again or not.”
“There is only one thing you can do,” continued Mr. Culpepper, eagerly, “that will cause me to waive my rights, and you know what that is. Those are my only terms of surrender.”
“That’s just where you’re a whole lot mistaken Mr. Culpepper!” cried Carl, unable to hold in any longer, and thrusting his head and shoulders through the open window as he spoke.
The widow gave a slight shriek, while Mr. Culpepper said something half under his breath that no doubt expressed his feelings.
“What do you mean by saying that?” he asked, in a voice that was unsteady.
“You made a statement that you’ll have to take water on,” Carl told him with a broad smile onhis face. “Listen! My mother will be down at your office to-morrow morning with Judge Beatty and myself, and she’ll demand that you deliver the paper that this receipt calls for!”
With that he held up the precious little paper so that those in the sitting room could see it. Mrs. Oskamp gave a bubbling cry of joy, while Amasa Culpepper, seizing his hat and stick, hurried out of the door, entered his buggy and whipped his horse savagely, as though glad to vent his ill humor on some animate object.
Carl was not another moment in climbing through the open window and gathering his mother in his strong arms. The whole story was told that evening with the younger children gathered around. Mrs. Oskamp sat there and felt her mother heart glow with pride as she heard how Carl had played his part in the exciting drama connected with the hike of the Boy Scouts.
“It seems as though some power over which you had no control must have led you on to the glorious success that came in the end,” she told the happy Carl, after everything had been narrated. “With that paper in our hands we can have no further trouble in securing our property. But I shall feel that we owe something to Dock Phillips, and that it can only be repaid through kindness to his mother.”
On the following day they took Judge Beatty, who was an old friend of Carl’s father, into theirconfidence, and the certificate of stock was promptly though grudgingly delivered to them on demand.
Amasa Culpepper knew that he had been fairly beaten in the game, and he annoyed Mrs. Oskamp no longer.
The oil shares turned out to be worth a large sum of money, and it placed the Oskamps beyond the reach of want.
Tom Chesney wrote his account of their great trip over big Bear Mountain, and, sure enough it did take the prize when submitted in competition with numerous others to the magazine that had made the offer. Tom remembered his promise and sent copies of the story to Mr. Clark, as well as to Mr. Henderson.
The last heard from Lenox the Boy Scouts were thriving famously. They expected to enjoy many an outing under the charge of the good-hearted scout master, Mr. Witherspoon, but some of the boys were of the opinion that there never could be just such a wonderful series of exciting adventures befall them as had accompanied the hike over Big Bear Mountain.