CHAPTER XIX

THE DESERTED CABIN

‘Phoney?’ asked the sheriff.

Mr. Kinsey lifted some of the bills from one of the two stacks and riffled the edges with a square thumb, nodding. These were tens; the other pile held twenties. He passed one of the oblong slips of crisp paper to the sheriff. ‘Rotten job,’ he said contemptuously. ‘Wouldn’t fool a child. Look at the lathe work! And the threads, done with a fine pen; no silk there. These are some of the same lot, Sheriff, as the ones the banks picked up. I’d like mighty well to know who made the plates. He must be a fool to think he could get away with anything as crude as that!’

‘Well, now, I don’t know,’ said the sheriff slowly. ‘I reckon if some one was to hand me one of those I wouldn’t suspect anything wrong with it. ’Course, if I was on the lookout for queer money I might be leery.’ He handed the bill to the policeman.

‘I’d take it in a minute,’ said the latter, ‘if I didn’t know there was bad ones around.’

Mr. Kinsey smiled and shook his head. ‘It will pay you to get a genuine bill and study it,’ he said. ‘It’s a good thing to know what a real ten-dollar bank-note looks like, Casey. Then maybe you won’t ever get stung.’ He placed the bill back and retied the package. ‘Want to run up there, Sheriff, and look things over?’ he asked as he climbed back into the other boat.

‘Well, I dunno,’ was the reply. ‘Think there’s enough of us?’

‘Oh, there won’t be any trouble,’ answered Mr. Kinsey. ‘They’ve skipped by this time. I’d just like to look the place over. Might find something that would help me a bit.’

‘Well, if they’ve gone,’ objected the sheriff, ‘we’d better go back to town, maybe, and work the ’phone.’

‘No hurry. I’d rather find out who they are first. I’m pretty sure about Thorbourn, but this “Cocker” has me guessing. And there may have been others in the gang.’

‘There was one more,’ said Pud, and he told about the man who ‘talked funny.’

‘Italian, probably,’ commented Mr. Kinsey. ‘He was the engraver, I guess. Well, let’s go.’

‘You come in here,’ directed the sheriff, ‘and we’ll pick up your friends. Your boat will be all right, I reckon, till we get back.’

Pud obeyed, and the police launch, with Mr. Casey in charge, jumped forward. That was, as Pud told himself, ‘some launch.’ It was long and slender, with a sharp, high bow, and it gleamed with white paint and mahogany and shining brass. The engine was housed in a compartment to itself, well forward, and beyond that, perched on the bow deck, was something concealed in a waterproof canvas cover that engaged Pud’s curiosity tremendously until he finally realized, with a thrill, that it was a small machine-gun.

To his surprise, the police launch, which bore no name, but had the letters ‘L. P. D.’ painted on the bow, turned almost instantly into a broad creek which the sheriff told him was Two-Pond Run.

‘That’s Second Pond there, son; where you spent the night. First Pond’s two miles below.’

‘Gee,’ muttered Pud, ‘if I’d known that last night――’

‘Glad you didn’t,’ said Mr. Kinsey. ‘We might not have found you at all. Suppose you tell us about your run-in with those fellows, Lank and Cocker. I’d like to get it straight.’

So Pud began with their arrival at Corbin, with Gladys Ermintrude aboard, and narrated their adventures down to the evening before when sleep had overtaken him. He had three interested and, at moments, slightly incredulous hearers.

‘Son,’ said the sheriff solemnly, ‘you’ve got a heap o’ pluck, and I’ll be gol-swizzled if you haven’t got a head on your shoulders, too!’

‘He’s got something else that’s better than those,’ said Mr. Kinsey, ‘and that’s luck!’

‘Aren’t you hungry?’ asked the sheriff solicitously.

‘Starved,’ laughed Pud.

‘’Course you be! Tom, got anything to eat aboard?’

The policeman shook his head regretfully. ‘Afraid not,’ he said. ‘I don’t know, though, Henry. Look in the little locker just back of you. There might be some crackers.’

There were! Only part of a carton, but Pud, eating them ravenously, was sure they had saved his life! There was plenty of cool water in a copper tank with a little nickel faucet, and he made a breakfast. While he ate, he listened to the conversation of the others. He learned that the sheriff’s name was Bowker, that Mr. Kinsey was a detective of the Department of Justice who had been sent to Livermore to find the persons who had been flooding the country thereabouts with counterfeit money, and that the latter’s presence aboard the launch was purely an accident. He had, it appeared, been at Police Headquarters when Sheriff Bowker had arrived to requisition the launch and had added himself to the party. Pud learned, too, many interesting facts about counterfeiters and their methods. The thought that the somewhat friendly Lank was in reality a desperate criminal, one ‘wanted’ by the Federal Government, stirred him considerably. Why, he and Lank had talked together just like ordinary folks! And, more marvelous still, he, Pud Pringle, alone and unaided, had foiled the villain! _Gee!_

‘Getting nigh Cypress Creek, son,’ announced the sheriff, breaking in on Pud’s reflections. ‘Maybe you better watch for those partners of yours.’

A minute or so later the launch slowed down, swung gracefully to the right and nosed into the smaller stream. Pud recognized the scene, although the morning sunlight gave it a far different aspect. Policeman Casey’s voice came suddenly from the bow.

‘There they are,’ he said. ‘One white and one black. On the bank over there.’

It was rather a sorry pair who sat on the rim of the creek and kept watch over a dilapidated rowboat. There had been no fire this morning, and, as a matter of course, no breakfast, and only within the last half-hour had the sun’s warmth begun to drive the chill from their bodies. But at sight of the launch they perked up immediately, their delight tempered by dubious surprise at the discovery that the boat was not only a strange one, but one inhabited by strange men. The discovery of Pud brought relief, but at the next instant Tim saw the uniformed officer and feared that his chum was in the hands of the Law. Indeed, it took a good while for Pud to convince Tim that he wasn’t, and he hadn’t quite succeeded when, with the outcasts aboard and the skiff tied astern, the police launch came in sight of the cabin.

‘You boys better stay here and keep out of sight,’ said the sheriff, jerking his pistol holster around to the front.

‘Oh, they’ve gone,’ said Mr. Kinsey confidently. ‘Door’s wide open, you see. Let the kids come if they want to.’

So they all went, the three men well in advance, and Tim, ever cautious, bringing up the rear. But no hostile demonstrations greeted the party as, leaving the launch well upstream, they advanced through a thicket and at last came to the edge of the small clearing. The cabin was a ramshackle affair of weathered planks and pine slabs, with a roof patched here and there with pieces of tin or squares of tar paper. There was a sagging porch in front, a door and two windows. A third window looked up the stream and a crazy brick-and-clay chimney peered over the roof at them.

Mr. Kinsey gave a hail, but there was neither answer nor sign of life, and they went on, crossed the rotting boards of the porch and entered the cabin. It had probably never been commodiously furnished, and perhaps what was left behind was all there ever had been; two bedsteads built against the walls, a rickety table, the remains of a canvas camp-chair, and four home-made stools. The cabin was divided by a wooden partition into two rooms of unequal size, the smaller of which had evidently served as kitchen and dining-room and the larger as sleeping- and living-apartment. There was a two-year-old calendar tacked to a wall and a litter of empty food containers, crusts of bread, fragments of paper, and other rubbish lay about.

‘Flown,’ said Mr. Kinsey dryly.

He peered about on the soiled floor, kicked about among the rubbish, fumbled amongst the ashes of the fireplace. Finally he brushed his hands. ‘They didn’t leave much,’ he said admiringly. ‘Plenty of ink on the floor over there, and a strong smell of it still, but that’s about all. Here’s where the press stood, Sheriff.’ He pointed with a broad-toed shoe at four spots on the worn floor. ‘Those are acid stains yonder, by that window. They moved out last night, I guess. You can see one or two places where the press scraped between here and the door. Must have had plenty of time, or thought they had, for they cleaned up pretty thoroughly. Took even the lamps, didn’t they? Must have had a boat-load! Wonder where they got that boat?’ He looked speculatively at the sheriff.

‘That’s so,’ said the latter. ‘You didn’t see any boat besides your own here last night, did you?’ he asked of Pud.

‘No, sir, I’m pretty sure there wasn’t any.’

‘Humph! Well, this Lank fellow probably fetched himself back in one from the Hole. Don’t seem like they could have got far, rowing, does it?’

‘Oh, I don’t believe they rowed,’ said the Secret Service man. ‘There are motor-boats about here, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, but they aren’t much. Still, they might have hired one――or stolen it, for that matter――at the Hole. We might find out if a boat’s missing. They wouldn’t tell us, though, like as not. They’re pretty close-mouthed in there.’

‘No harm asking, I guess.’ Mr. Kinsey gave a last look about and moved toward the door that gave from the kitchen to the back of the cabin. It was closed, but unlocked, and they all followed him out. There wasn’t much there; a few yellowed bits of paper that told nothing, a scanty woodpile, some old tin cans, a broken-handled shovel, the battered remains of a straw hat. Mr. Kinsey made the circuit of the cabin, passed through it again and went down the short path to the creek. There were plenty of footprints, but he did not, as Pud thought he should have, produce a magnifying-glass and tape-measure and study them in the manner of the detectives of whom Pud had read. Instead he gave them brief and unimpressed attention and went on to the bank where the _Kismet_ had been tied up the night before. Here there were signs of recent activity. The bank was torn and trodden by many steps, and a gash in the edge showed where something heavy had been dragged across. The Secret Service man peered long into the water, shading his eyes, stepping this way and that.

‘Thought I saw something down there,’ he said at last carelessly, ‘but it’s only a snag. Well, that’s all we can do here, Sheriff. We’ve got to get our news somewhere else.’

‘Didn’t learn a thing, eh?’ asked Sheriff Bowker as they turned back toward the launch.

‘Not much. I learned that they’d been printing here, and I’m pretty well satisfied that the plates were either engraved in that shack or finished there. Those were acid stains all right. I know what kind of a press they used and I know that the third man, the one the boy said talked funny, is a short, rather small guy; probably not over five feet six, and’――he took something from his pocket and showed it to the sheriff――‘I know this is the brand of cigarettes he smokes. Found it in the ashes in the chimney-place. That doesn’t help much, of course, but I’ve started on less. Besides, I know one of the three already, and that’s enough to land them all――some day.’

The sheriff nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You fellows generally get ’em in the end. But, say, how’d you get at the Italian’s size and his height, eh?’

‘Well, the boy described the other two pretty well. One tall and big-built, the other shorter, but still average height, and heavy-set. Guess maybe you didn’t notice those beds, did you? Boxes, sort of, filled with marsh hay. One of them was used by Lank and the fellow called Cocker. You could see that easy enough. The other was used by this Italian guy and there was six or eight inches of the hay at the bottom that had never been pressed down. That’s how I figured his height. I got his size from the size of his foot. His prints were all over outside there. Wears about a six shoe, and has a high arch.’

The sheriff grunted. ‘Well, that’s clever,’ he allowed, ‘but I wouldn’t want to see a man convicted on that sort of evidence.’

‘Oh, that isn’t evidence. That’s only information that may or may not come in handy some day. Well, now let’s try this famous Swamp Hole I’ve been hearing so much about!’

Pud had a long story to tell and many explanations to make while the police launch, her powerful motor scarcely more than purring, went on down the winding stream. But he was favored with as rapt an audience as any narrator could desire, and when he told of the short and sharp engagement in which, with the trusty boat-hook, he had repelled boarders, Tim gasped admiringly.

‘Gosh!’ he said.

‘My golly!’ chuckled Harmon. ‘Reckon you’s a pretty fine ol’ pirate, Mister Pud, after all!’

After that Pud brought events down to the moment, exhibiting with Mr. Kinsey’s permission, the amazing contents of Lank’s package, at sight of which Harmon’s eyes stuck so far out of his round black countenance that Pud was momentarily uneasy lest they might not get back again! And Tim was still questioning when the launch glided around a bend and Swamp Hole lay before them.

Pud blinked. What he saw now was no more like what he had seen last night than――well, than daylight is like dark! Now the warm sunlight bathed the scene; the tranquil stream reflected the clear blue sky, the green banks, the little cabins and shanty-boats, the clearings about them, the garden-patches and tobacco-fields beyond. Tall, straight pines and spreading oaks threw patches of shadow over which the morning dew still lay like a silver mist. The cabins, roughly made though they were, looked neat and homelike, and from most of them the gray-blue smoke of morning fires still arose to hover over the little village with a pleasantly pungent odor. Nearly every habitation had its small truck-patch behind. In some cases the patches were of good size, and several held strawberry beds in blossom and fruit. Tobacco, already a foot high, stretched back over land reclaimed from the swamp, its broad green leaves bright in the sun. Among the plants the growers were at work, men, women, and children.

In front of a cabin two women were fashioning baskets of willow withes. Before another an elderly, white-bearded man was making a hickory chair. In front of the small store, in the morning sunshine, a handful of Swampers, sighting the approach of the strange launch, ceased their gossip and lounged unhurriedly down the path. Somehow, Pud felt a dim sense of disappointment. This was not the Swamp Hole of his imaginings. This was merely a pleasant, peaceful, and peaceable little village which no more suggested dark deeds and villainy than Millville itself!

Harmon, who, in spite of a brave front, had been secretly alarmed at the prospect of bearding the desperadoes of Swamp Hole, regained his poise and put his head a little higher over the edge of the boat. Protected by the presence of a policeman in uniform, a sheriff, and a detective, he could, he believed, show himself with impunity. Tim was at once relieved and, like Pud, disappointed. He guessed Pud hadn’t done anything so startlingly daring after all!

The police boat eased to the few posts and old planks that served as a pier, and the sheriff hailed one of the loungers cheerily. ‘Howdy, Jeff! How you-all?’

‘Fair to middlin’, Sheriff.’ The man addressed was tall, lanky, very blue of eye, and with tow-colored hair. He wore cotton trousers and the remains of a blue calico shirt. Head and feet were bare. He smoked a pipe as he ambled nearer, followed by his companions, and slowly let his gaze travel from one end of the launch to the other.

‘Say, Jeff,’ went on the sheriff, ‘we picked up this skiff down yonder on the Run. Least, these boys did. Thought it might belong to some o’ you folks in here. Happen to know it?’

Jeff viewed the skiff leisurely, walking back along the path to obtain all particulars of its appearance. The others viewed it likewise, in silence. Finally, ‘Well, now I dunno as I do, Sheriff,’ said Jeff. He spoke guardedly and turned inquiringly to a neighbor. ‘You ever see it afore, Joe?’

Joe shook a large, shaggy black head, darting a speculative glance at the sheriff. Other heads shook, too.

‘Well, might’s well take it along then,’ announced the sheriff. ‘Reckon these boys can find a use for it. Thought maybe, though, it belonged in here. Saw one of your power-boats down below when we came up. Reckon it was yours, Tolliver, wasn’t it?’

A squat, bent-backed man at the back of the gathering looked startled, but shook his head with some vigor. ‘’Twan’t mine, Sheriff. I ain’t got me no power-boat now.’

‘That so? Well, whose you reckon it was, Jake? I’m plumb sure it was a Swamp Hole boat.’

The countenances of the group regarded him blankly. Jake Tolliver shook his head again. ‘Reckon ’twan’t none of ourn, Sheriff. Ain’t but three-four here, an’ they was all in creek this mornin’.’

‘Well, ’tain’t important. We’ll run along. These young fellows got lost and their folks sent me to bring ’em back. All right, Casey.’

‘Sheriff,’ drawled Jeff, ‘I ain’t sure but that there’s Tally Moore’s skiff, now I get me another look at it. It sort o’ favors Tally’s. Hank, you take a good look, will you? You recollec’ that old skiff o’ Tally’s, don’t you?’

‘Reckon that’s Tally’s,’ answered the man addressed promptly and with no more than a glance at the rowboat. ‘Heard him tell awhile back as how he’d lost it.’

‘Tally Moore?’ said the sheriff. ‘Don’t believe I recall him, Jeff. Where’s his place?’

‘’Round on backwater yonder. Second house on farther bank. Reckon that’s his boat, Sheriff. Reckon he’ll be powerful obliged to you.’

The sheriff nodded, waved good-bye. The launch slipped forward again. The group about the landing watched it silently, and along the creek old folks and children in front of the cabins or shanty-boats drawn back on the banks stopped at their tasks or play to look as silently.

The sheriff chuckled. ‘I said it wasn’t any use. They hate to answer questions. Wouldn’t even say about the skiff till they was mighty sure we wasn’t in here to make trouble.’

‘Looked peaceable enough,’ commented Mr. Kinsey.

‘Yes, they’re peaceable enough so long’s you don’t rile ’em,’ agreed the other tolerantly. ‘Don’t like strangers much; ’specially when they happen to be collectin’ taxes. They’ve got a mean way of shootin’ from cover, too. Mighty difficult to tell where they’re located. Ain’t much taxes goes out o’ the Hole! It ain’t a right healthy job, sir, collectin’ in here. Some o’ these fellows ought to be in jail, but, by and large, they’re fairly law-abiding.’

The backwater proved to be the stream that Pud had glimpsed last night, turning off to the left just past the last cabin on the creek-bank. It was shallow and muddy and came to an end not far distant where a cedar thicket massed itself closely and darkly. There were three cabins along it, one on the left side and two on the right. Good-sized patches of tobacco or corn flanked them and spread back for some way. Getting to the last landing, a log raft tied to stakes in the muddy bank, was skittish work for the launch, but she finally came within hailing distance of the small cabin and a shout from the sheriff brought a thin, stooped, pale-faced man around a corner of it.