CHAPTER X.AN UNEXPECTED HAPPENING.
“Hit me a clip on the wrist and wake me up!” exclaimed Jimmie.
The three men were entire strangers to the boys, and yet they appeared to be friendly. They had expected only hostile meetings in the gully. The men smiled at the evident surprise of the boys and pushed the burly prisoner on in advance.
“Who rubbed the lamp?” asked Carl, as he clambered laboriously up toward the summit. “I never saw anything exactly like this!”
“Say, Mr. Policeman,” Jimmie called out to a man in citizen’s dress whose smutty face disclosed a week’s growth of beard, “me friend here wants to know who rubbed the lamp for this last scene.”
“You’ll find out when you get to the top of the summit,” replied the other. “You’ll find friends up there!”
“This comes out of a dream-book, all right!” Jimmie declared.
“Say,” Carl exclaimed, “can’t we go back into the cavern and get our automatics? They’re perfectly good guns!”
“I’ve got your guns, boys!” said the prisoner. “I thought I might get a chance to use them, but it seems I didn’t. I didn’t expect to meet Dick Sherman in this neck of the woods.”
“Dick Sherman?” repeated Jimmie.
“Is that the Canadian revenue officer we’ve heard so much about?” asked Carl. “I wouldn’t mind meeting Dick Sherman.”
“Well, there he is!” snarled the prisoner pointing to the man who had spoken to the boys before, the man who had so used his imagination at the camp sometime before!
The party toiled on up the gully until they reached the snowy summit. Off to the east they saw the great planes of theAnntilting in the morning sunlight. Just beyond her, and veering to the south, raced theLouise. While the three men started down the declivity with their prisoner the boys stood at the cold summit and watched the two machines.
“That’s a race all right!” Jimmie exclaimed.
“Of course!” answered Carl. “Ben is chasing up the fellow who stole theLouise. I’d just like to know how the kid got wise to the fact that we needed help, and how these three men happened to come here just in the nick of time.”
“I presume it will all be explained before many hours,” Jimmie answered. “What I’m most interested in now is this race. Suppose Ben catches theLouise. How’s he going to get the machine down without shooting the aviator? And that wouldn’t be good for the machine!”
“He’s got some scheme on foot,” Carl answered. “Just watch him whirl around theLouise. There! Now, don’t you see he’s got the other aviator buffaloed? I’ll bet he’s holding a gun on him!”
The two machines came back side by side. TheAnnlanded on the ledge and the two boys were hustled into the seat by the side of their chum who sat grinning at their bewildered faces.
Before they could ask any questions theAnnshot away and in an incredibly short space of time Jimmie and Carl were landed by their own fire!
“Get a move on, now!” Ben cried, as he again sprang into the seat of the aeroplane. “Mr. Havens will be wanting breakfast, and I’ve got a date with Dick Sherman!”
The boys stood watching theAnnlift into the air and make toward the summit. Their faces expressed both wonder and impatience.
“Now, what do you think of that?” demanded Jimmie.
“This is one of the mysteries you read about in books but never see in real life!” laughed Carl. “I wish we’d choked the story out of Ben. He’s laughing in his sleeve this minute, I know he is!”
“Boys!” Mr. Havens called from the tent.
Jimmie and Carl hastened forward and looked in.
“Perhaps you can tell us what’s been going on here?” asked Jimmie.
“If you’ll go and fix up a big breakfast, I’ll tell you all about it!” laughed the millionaire.
“We’ll cook you some steak,” replied Carl, “and make you some coffee.”
“I think,” smiled the millionaire, “that you’d better bury that bear.”
The boys made an onslaught on the store boxes, which had been brought from the aeroplanes to the vicinity of the fire, and soon had ham and eggs frying over the ruddy coals. Potatoes were boiling in a great kettle before many minutes, and coffee was bubbling not far away.
Jimmie snatched a loaf of bread from the box and began eating, while Carl opened a tin of pork and beans and began searching for a spoon.
“Hungry, boys?” asked Mr. Havens.
“Hungry?” repeated Jimmie. “We’ve been frozen to death, and shot to death, and held captive in a mountain dungeon, and had several other disagreeable things happen to us, but the worst of the whole business is that we haven’t had anything to eat since last night!”
“Tell us what’s been going on,” requested Carl.
“After you went away,” Mr. Havens began, “three men came into camp declaring that they had been lost in the mountains. Ben prepared supper for them and then proposed going out after theLouise. At the last moment one of the men sprang into the seat beside him and they went away together.
“The next I knew Ben came swinging back in theAnnalone. He talked with the two men who had been left here for a moment and then they all went away together, flying like mad in the aeroplane.”
“Didn’t Ben explain the situation to you?” asked Jimmie.
“He said that the three men who had represented themselves as hunters lost in the hills were Canadian revenue officers in search of smuggled whiskey, and that their leader, the man who had gone away with him, was the famous Dick Sherman.
“He said, too, that Sherman had discovered a nest of outlaws and a cavern which he believed to be the storehouse of the gang. At that time we knew little regarding the whereabouts of the two rattle-brained boys who had gone away in theLouise.”
“They stole it while we were watching the camp-fire,” Jimmie explained in a hesitating way.
“What’s Ben gone back for, now?” asked Carl.
“I suspect from what he said to me,” laughed Mr. Havens, “that he’s gone back after the revenue officers and the prisoners.”
“Then perhaps I’d better be getting more breakfast ready,” suggested Carl. “We’ll be running a hotel next, just like we always do when we get out into the mountains.”
In less than an hour theAnnandLouiselay on level ground near the fire, two prisoners sat handcuffed together not far away, and the three revenue officers were enjoying a plentiful breakfast supplied by the lads. Ben and Jimmie sat with Mr. Havens in his tent.
“There goes my dream!” exclaimed Ben pointing to the two prisoners.
“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Havens.
“Why, I had it all doped out that the men Dick Sherman captured were the men who abducted Colleton.”
“That’s just the way I had it figured!” exclaimed Jimmie.
“And now they turn out to be just whiskey smugglers!” exclaimed Ben in disgust. “They probably never saw Washington, nor heard of Colleton, nor even read one of the lying advertisements of the Kuro company.”
“We’ve been through a rotten bad night,” Jimmie agreed, “without getting anywhere! Say, Ben,” he added, “how did you induce the aviator on theLouiseto swing back to the landing and give himself up?”
“I got the drop on him!” laughed Ben.
“But didn’t he have just as good a chance to get the drop on you?”
“He emptied his automatic before I did mine,” was the modest reply.
“Did you look after the men who were shot in the gulch?” Carl inquired in a moment.
“When I made the last trip,” Ben explained, “I found a drunken man sitting by the fire. He said the men were dead and that he would give them burial.”
“What’s this Sherman fellow going to do now?” asked Jimmie.
“He’s going to try to get this smuggled whiskey into a government warehouse somewhere,” answered Mr. Havens. “I don’t know just how he’ll do it, but it’s got to be done.”
“What do we get out of it?” asked Jimmie.
“You’re the merry little savings bank boy!” laughed Ben.
“I didn’t mean money!” retorted Jimmie scornfully. “What I meant was how does all this smuggled whiskey business help us find this post-office inspector?”
“It doesn’t,” replied Ben. “Ask something hard.”
“You don’t know that yet,” advised Mr. Havens.
“Come to think of it, of course we don’t!” cried Ben. “The abductors would be apt to bring Colleton into just such a hole as this, wouldn’t they? The outlaws would, in a measure, protect them from hunters, who are said to give a wide berth to any region known to contain outlaws.”
“Well,” Jimmie cut in in a moment, “I’m going to go and get Carl, and romp merrily off to the hay. We didn’t have any sleep last night and I guess we can get in a few lines of slumber to pretty good purpose.”
“Then you’ll be ready for another crazy midnight trip,” smiled Ben.
“I guess it wasn’t so very crazy after all,” replied Jimmie. “If we hadn’t gone out to look into those signals, the smugglers wouldn’t have been captured.”
“Have it your own way,” laughed Ben.
Jimmie and Carl went away to the other tent and were soon sound asleep. When they lay down the camp-fire was surrounded by the revenue officers and prisoners. Ben was making arrangements to sleep on a roll of blankets in the Havens’ tent. When they awoke, twilight was settling over the valley and Ben was rolling them about on their blankets.
“Get up!” the boy said. “You’ve slept all day!”
Jimmie sat up and rubbed his eyes. Carl aimed a kick at the boy who had aroused him and then lay back on the blankets.
“Where are the others?” asked Jimmie tumbling out of the tent.
“They went away in the machines,” answered Ben.
“You never let them take theAnnand theLouise!” almost shouted Jimmie. “They’ll be sure to break ’em!”
“Don’t get excited, now,” laughed Ben. “I took them over the ridge in theAnnand came back more than an hour ago. Since then I’ve been getting supper and helping Mr. Havens fix up his porcupine feet.”
“Can he walk yet?” asked Jimmie sleepily.
“He won’t be able to walk for a week!” was the reply.
“Say,” Jimmie said to Ben in a moment, as they approached the fire, “did you see that pirate with the package when you went back after the prisoners?”
“Of course, I saw him!” answered Ben.
“What was he talking about?”
“I don’t know what he was trying to say,” replied Ben, “but I got the impression that before long he would be umpiring a fight between a green rattlesnake and a pink lion with a red tail.”
“It’s a wonder this Dick Sheman left him there alone with all that whiskey,” commented Jimmie. “If he had my disposition, he’d set fire to the whole bunch of it!”
“Sherman won him over to the side of law and order,” laughed Ben, “by promising him immunity and a position in the government service. He’ll be there when they came back for the whiskey, all right. Sherman seemed to know something about the fellow. At least, he told me that Crooked Terry, as they call him, has been in crooked games all his life. He told me, too, that the old fellow knows this country better than any person in the world. He’s got a map of it in his head.”
“That’s just what I wanted to know!” cried Jimmie. “If you don’t mind, Ben,” he added with a sly wink, “we’ll go up there to-night and get a copy of that map! I’ll just bet you,” he went on, “that our little scrap with the smugglers will get us somewhere in the game we’re playing, after all! What do you think about it?”
“That seems to me to be the very thing to do!” replied Ben. “If Crooked Terry knows all about this country, he’s the man we’ve got to do business with. If we find Colleton, we’ve got to know where to look!”