CHAPTER XVIII

COUNTERFEIT MONEY

Pud searched hurriedly, frantically in the gloom for the handle that fitted into the fly-wheel while the sounds of pursuit grew louder and nearer. He found it at last, slipped it in place, and heaved mightily. There was no response from the engine. Then he remembered that he had not switched the spark on. The omission remedied, he turned the wheel again, and this time the response was instantaneous. The engine raced loudly. He peered forward, saw that the launch’s head still pointed into the stream and pulled the clutch lever back. Then he hurried again to the bow and seized the wheel.

Now he dared an anxious look to the rear. Lights moved along the bank and there was a confusion of hails and shouts, but for the moment he was not threatened with capture. With the throttle wide open and the current aiding, the launch slipped down the winding stream at a good five miles an hour. Pud believed that there were motor-boats of a sort back there, but he doubted that any of them could show much speed. Besides, it would take minutes to get one started, and already he had a fair lead. Cabins still showed their lights along the way, but they stood farther apart now. A smaller stream led off to the left, but Pud paid it no heed. Then came a longish turn in the creek, and presently, looking back, but one solitary light met his view. Perhaps the sounds of pursuit still kept up, but the engine was chugging loudly and he could no longer hear them. He heaved a deep sigh and sank onto the seat beside the wheel.

It was not difficult to follow the creek, for, once away from the lights of Swamp Hole, it lay before him quite plainly in the starlight, a broadening path bordered by the black gloom of its banks. The stars were reflected brightly in its still depths as it led him on and away from the Hole. As the minutes passed and no sign of pursuit showed, his courage grew. Sitting there in the bow he began to talk to himself aloud.

‘I told them they couldn’t get away with it,’ he muttered. ‘I guess they know it now! No one can steal my good old boat, I guess; not to keep it! No, sir, not for very long they can’t! I guess Lank’s pretty mad about now. I guess he’s wondering what happened.’ Pud chuckled. ‘I’d just like to know what he _does_ think! Bet you he never will suspect I did it!’

He sort of wished he might somehow have revealed himself to Lank before he got free. It would have been decidedly satisfying to have called back a defiance. Pud pictured himself standing in the stern, shaking his fist at the amazed Lank and shouting, ‘Ha, villain, what think you now? Pud Pringle has come into his own once more!’ Well, anyway, something like that.

Pud couldn’t see just how he could have done that, though. He guessed it was better to get the boat back than to have risked failure seeking credit for the exploit. Besides, maybe Lank and Cocker――and the other man who had talked so funny――would feel more worried and humiliated if they weren’t able to account for the boat’s disappearance. Maybe they’d think it was spooks! On the whole, Pud was pretty well satisfied. He did wish, though, that he knew whether the men had stolen the contents of the lockers. There was no time to satisfy himself on that point now, but, since they had not taken the tent and the beds and the cooking-kit, he didn’t think it likely they had disturbed the things that were out of sight.

The launch did what Pud believed to be a mile without misadventure. She did strike a snag once, but she broke through it without damage to the propeller. Where the creek was leading him he didn’t know, save that it must eventually bring him either into Two-Pond Run or Turtle Creek. Since leaving the Hole he had, he reckoned, been going in a generally southwesterly direction, and it seemed that Two-Pond Creek must be somewhere ahead. Once on that stream, he meant to double back and rescue Tim and Harmon. He recalled their plight with mingled sympathy and amusement. Tim, he decided, would be complaining like anything about now!

More than once he caught sight of small streams leading away from the one he traversed, but he had no use for them, and it was not until what seemed another mile had been left behind that he was called on to choose between divergent courses. Turning somewhat abruptly to the left, he saw, as the boat swung, a sizable stream leading away to the right. He stumbled back and threw out the clutch, but by the time the launch had slowed down the other opening was far back. Perhaps it would lead to Two-Pond Run, he reflected, but it looked in the darkness rather as if it went back toward Swamp Hole. Besides, it was much narrower than the stream he was on, and it might peter out and lead him nowhere. Half an hour later he was glad he had not taken it, for then he came to a creek fully as large as the one it entered, one that started off in just the right direction. It wasn’t until he had gone some distance along it that he discovered that the current was flowing against him!

Dismay vanished, though, when he recalled the erratic behavior of River Swamp waterways. Even if he was going upstream he might reach Two-Pond Run. Anyway, he would keep on. He was tired now, and pretty sleepy, too, and the rescue of his marooned companions seemed far less urgent than it had earlier. Nothing could happen to them, anyhow. Of course they wouldn’t find it very pleasant, spending the night up there in the hummocks, and they’d be kind of hungry――Pud paused. Gee, he was hungry himself, now that he came to think of it! Still, he wasn’t nearly so hungry as he was sleepy. He yawned widely.

The dark water, star-sprinkled, continued interminably between its banks, the latter now patched with groups of trees that threw pockets of blackness over the stream. Pud’s eyes closed for moments at a time, but always he managed to force them open in time to avoid running aground. He blinked longingly at the pile of canvas behind him. If he could only snuggle up under there in warmth and darkness and go to sleep! Warmth was becoming almost as desirable as slumber, for, while his wet underclothes had long since dried, the night was growing chill with the damp coolness of the swamp and he was beginning to shiver. There were things he might put on, but he would have to stop the boat to search for them in the lockers, and rather than pause he huddled lower under the gunwale and stared painfully ahead in the hope of seeing Two-Pond Run appear.

Presently he sighed with relief, for the stream widened suddenly and then was lost in a larger body of water. But his succeeding sigh was one of disappointment. It was not the Run he had found, but a pond somewhat larger than Turtle Pond. He must have spent a quarter of an hour chugging about it and straining weary eyes along the shadowed margin for sign of a way out. Twice he poked the launch’s nose into the mud when what had looked like the mouth of a stream proved only a shallow. But finally perseverance won and he was going on once more along a black, tree-bordered creek that seemed to run almost at right angles to the one he had left. More time passed. His head nodded frequently, but it wasn’t safe to close his eyes now even for an instant, for this stream was far darker and turned continually to right and left.

Then he found himself in another pond, a pond that was twice as large as the one he had recently found his way out of, and he threw out the clutch and stared discouragedly about him. This settled it, he told himself. Had he reached the Run, he would have somehow pegged on, but to spend another age nosing around the sides of a pond was beyond him. He was sorry for Tim and Harmon, but they’d just have to make out as best they could. As for him, he was going to sleep!

He dragged the anchor from the bow locker and dropped it over, shortened the line and made it fast, his hands all thumbs, and then made his bed. The boat-hook, rescued by Lank or Cocker from the water, again served him well. He rested an end on each gunwale, draped the folds of the canvas over it in the shape of a tent and crawled beneath. But the canvas was unsympathetic against his chilled body and he stumbled out and searched the nearer lockers. Luck was with him, for he found Tim’s gray flannel shirt and a pair of trousers; whose, Pud neither knew nor cared. Clothed in these garments, he again sought the seclusion of his improvised tent. This time, in lowering himself to the floor, he came in contact with an uncomfortable object that proved to be Lank’s package. He thrust it out of the way, gathered the folds of the canvas under his head as a pillow and, with a long and delicious sigh, gave himself to slumber. He was just floating blissfully off when a disturbing thought came to him. He hadn’t written to his folks that day! Worse, the letter he had written yesterday still lay in his jacket pocket, unposted! These reflections, though, couldn’t keep him awake long, and soon he was fast asleep.

Had he known that the one letter posted by him had, by one of those mistakes such as even an efficient Post-Office Department sometimes makes, been dispatched to Millersville instead of Millville, and that it was not to arrive at the little house on Arundel Street until the next morning, he might have been kept awake two minutes longer, but certainly no more than that!

He awoke to an amber glow that offended his eyes. For a moment he wondered dazedly where he was. Then he turned his head and snuggled back, his whereabouts a matter of no interest. But it was more than the sunlight striking through the faded brown canvas that had disturbed him, and he was destined to sleep no longer. There were sounds about him, and then his tent was invaded and a lean countenance with a grizzled mustache and two keen brown eyes was bending over him. About the same instant the boat-hook fell on one of Pud’s ankles and he became very wide awake, though sorely puzzled.

‘Hello!’ said the lips under the grizzled mustache.

‘Hello,’ replied Pud vaguely. ‘What time――’ But that inquiry didn’t seem just the right one, and he changed it to: ‘What do you want?’

‘Well, we might be wanting you,’ answered the man. Two other faces appeared, a long, tanned face, clean-shaven, and a somewhat round face that held a wide smile. Pud thought that they must find it rather uncomfortable to be standing in the water like that, but when he had attained a sitting position he found that they were leaning over the side of a trim launch lying alongside. That was both surprising and interesting, and Pud climbed to his feet to have a better look.

‘What’s your name, youngster?’ pursued the man who had spoken before.

Resentful of the term ‘youngster,’ Pud was taking his own time about replying when he discovered two things almost simultaneously, to wit; that the round-faced man wore the uniform of the police, and that, as the speaker leaned forward, a nickel badge, pinned close to the arm-hole of his vest, was exposed to view. Pud decided to forgive the term.

‘Anson Pringle,’ he replied respectfully.

‘What!’ The man leaned back and cast a glance toward the bow of Pud’s launch. ‘What are you doing in this boat, then? Where’s the one you started out in? And what have you done with the other boys?’

‘I changed the name,’ explained Pud. ‘They――they’re up there a ways.’

‘No wonder we couldn’t get trace of the _Kismet_,’ chuckled the policeman. ‘Say, kid, why didn’t you write to your folks like they told you to? Didn’t you know they’d be anxious?’

‘I did write once,’ answered Pud. ‘Tuesday.’

‘Well, they never got it,’ said the first man, who it later appeared, was a sheriff. ‘They’re pretty worried about you, Anson. So are the other boys’ folks. Your father telephoned to me last night about ten o’clock and we started out early this morning to look for you. No one had seen a launch called _Kismet_, but we found an old chap at Corbin who remembered a boat with two white boys and a negro in it. He had the name wrong, though. What did he say it was called, Tom?’

‘_Vengeance_, I think.’

‘This is it,’ said Pud. ‘It’s the _Vengance_ on one side and the _Jolly Rodger_ on the other.’

‘For the love of Mike! What’s the idea?’

‘I couldn’t just decide which I liked best,’ said Pud.

There was a chuckle from the third occupant of the police launch. He was looking to where the skull-and-cross-bones flag, dropped by Cocker, lay outspread near the stern. ‘Playing pirate, I guess, eh?’ he inquired.

‘Sort of,’ muttered Pud.

‘Playing the dickens, you mean,’ observed the policeman severely. ‘Worrying your folks ’most to death!’

‘But I did write, I tell you! I wrote twice, only the last letter didn’t get posted because we lost our way and got up into Cypress Lake――’

‘You did! Well, I’ll be switched!’ The sheriff shook his head amazedly. ‘And found your way out again, eh?’

‘Well, two men came along and showed us the way, and then they stole the launch and I went and got it back and I was trying to find Tim and Harmon, but I got so sleepy I couldn’t go on, and so I stayed here, and――’

‘Stole your launch, did they? Who were they? How’d you get it back?’

‘Hold on,’ said the policeman. ‘We’d better take him in with us and go fetch those other kids. He can tell us about that on the way. Where’d you say you left them?’

‘About a couple of miles this side of the lake; where you turn off the Run to go into Swamp Hole. You see, Lank and Cocker live along that stream a ways, and――’

‘Those the men who stole your boat?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The policeman eyed the sheriff. ‘Who might they be, Henry?’

‘Don’t know. Sure the name wasn’t Hank? There’s three-four Hanks up there.’

‘No, sir, it was Lank. I don’t believe they belong in the Swamp regular. Lank said they were just visiting. He said they’d been fishing when we met them, but they didn’t have any lines or poles in the skiff.’

‘What sort of looking men were they?’ asked the third occupant of the police launch. He appeared to take interest in the conversation for the first time. Pud described Lank and Cocker as well as he could.

‘Cross-eyes, you say? And a long, crooked nose? And might be all of six feet tall?’

‘Yes, sir, I think so.’

‘Know him, Kinsey?’ asked the sheriff.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised. Sounds a lot like Jim Thorbourn. Thorbourn served a term at Joliet about four years back. Hasn’t been heard of since that I know of.’

‘Counterfeiting?’ inquired the policeman.

‘Passing.’

‘Well, he doesn’t answer the description of any of the lot we’ve heard of,’ said the policeman.

‘He might have passed the stuff out to them. Son, did you see the place they live in?’

‘Not very well. It was sort of dark then. It was just a board cabin.’ Pud was trying to piece things together in his mind. The word ‘counterfeiting’ seemed to suggest something to him, but he couldn’t think what!

‘Can you take us to it?’ asked Mr. Kinsey.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Pud. ‘If I could find Tim and――’ He stopped suddenly, staring wide-eyed at the other.

‘What’s wrong?’ demanded the man.

Pud found his tongue. ‘Lank took a package with him,’ he said slowly. ‘It――’

‘What sort of a package?’ Mr. Kinsey asked eagerly.

‘Square. It smelled of ink. I thought it was circulars.’

‘Where’d he take it?’

‘To Swamp Hole.’

‘You been in there, too!’ cried the sheriff.

‘Well, well, what did he do with it?’ pursued Mr. Kinsey impatiently.

‘Nothing,’ said Pud. ‘He left it. It’s here.’

‘Here! Where? Find it, you young idiot!’

At another time Pud might have resented the title, but now he didn’t notice it. He was searching hurriedly under the confusion of his wrecked tent. Then he found the package, and Mr. Kinsey, who had jumped down beside him, snatched it out of his hands. He didn’t hurry to open it, though. Instead, he turned it over and over and studied it thoroughly. To Pud, wildly impatient, he seemed to be the slowest person he had ever met! Finally, though, Mr. Kinsey took a penknife from a pocket and severed the stout cord. The sheriff and the policeman leaned curiously forward as the coarse brown paper was removed. Then, as the contents were exposed, the sheriff whistled softly, eloquently. Pud’s eyes grew bigger and bigger.

There, in two neatly stacked piles, was more money than he had ever dreamed of!