CHAPTER VIII

THE RESCUE

The return to the launch was uneventful. They had the car to themselves most of the way, and Tim dozed off in a corner. Pud lost his bearings after they had reached the center of town and so they were carried four blocks farther than they should have gone and had a long, wet and dismal trudge to the river and made two failures before they found the right alley. The _Vengance_ was extremely wet and soggy when they reached her. The potatoes had wandered all around, the rain had leaked into several of the lockers, and a _swish-swashing_ sound under the floor informed them that there was much bailing to be done. With the passing of the early morning excitement, reaction had set in and every one’s spirits were low. Tim complained that he had not had sufficient sleep and even Harmon seemed more solemn than usual. One thing, though, they were agreed on, which was that they had had quite enough of Livermore!

But there the engine failed to agree with them. Pud turned the fly-wheel until he was red-faced and breathless, and then Tim tried it. Then Pud peered into the gasoline tank and fiddled with every movable part of the engine. After that he thought of priming the cylinders, but that didn’t produce the desired result. Half an hour passed and the sun came up over the roofs of the town and deepened the flush on Pud’s countenance. At intervals Pud arose and turned the wheel over. At intervals he sank back on the seat in exhaustion. At intervals Tim performed a similar routine. Once, very early in the proceedings, the engine had emitted a faint but heartening cough. Since then it had not even sneezed.

Tim offered many well-meant suggestions and theories, but Pud received them all coldly. Between spells at the fly-wheel he viewed the engine in deep disgust, a disgust that was just short of loathing, and said a great many unkind things about it. Toward the last he included Andy Tremble in his remarks. Of the three aboard, Harmon alone retained his equanimity. As his companions became more and more depressed, Harmon’s spirits visibly lightened. When, though, he sought to give expression to his cheerfulness by playing soft melodies on his mouth-organ, Pud turned on him wrathfully and threatened to ‘pitch that thing in the river’ if he didn’t quit!

‘All you do is sit there and chuckle,’ accused Pud. ‘_You_ don’t break your back on this old wheel! _You_ don’t blister your hands! You just――just sit there and think it’s funny! My goodness, I should think you’d be ashamed!’

‘Jus’ you-all let me turn it,’ said Harmon eagerly.

‘Yes,’ said Tim, ‘let him try it, Pud.’

‘No, sir! He don’t know how. He’d probably break his wrist or something.’

‘No, sir, Mister Pud, I won’t. I done seen how you-all does it. Jus’ you let me――’

‘Well, all right,’ agreed Pud grudgingly. ‘But you have to take hold of the handle like this. See? And then pull it out when you’ve turned it over, because if you don’t it might fly back on you and break your arm. Now you be careful, Harmon.’

‘Sure will!’ Harmon heaved upward――

Then he sat down suddenly on the floor, the handle flew against the locker and――the engine started!

‘Are you hurt?’ cried Tim anxiously.

Harmon felt of himself gingerly. Then he shook his head in solemn negation.

‘No, sir, I ain’ hurt, but how-come it ac’ so short with me, Mister Tim?’

It was Tim’s turn to laugh then, and Pud’s, and they seized it. Harmon viewed them with funereal reproach and picked himself up. Pride asserted itself. ‘Ain’ any ol’ engine can hol’ out agains’ me,’ he declared as he went dignifiedly back to the stern.

The early start brought them to Berryville before nine, and an hour later they steered the launch up to a shaded bank and went in swimming. It was the hottest day they had so far experienced, and life aboard the launch when the sun beat fiercely and scarcely any air moved was none too pleasant. After their swim, a protracted affair, they remained in bathing attire, deciding to have lunch there and wait for the cooler afternoon before going on. They pulled the launch downstream a few rods to where the sunlight could reach it and spread their damp tent and bedding out on the bank to dry. Tim went to sleep then, Harmon sat in the stern of the boat and played on the mouth-organ, and Pud fished. At twelve hunger asserted itself and they made a hearty lunch. Afterward Tim dozed again and Pud went back to his luckless fishing, assisted by Harmon. The fish evidently had no appetites for grasshoppers and Harmon’s search for worms was unsuccessful. At three, by which time a faint breeze was stirring, they bundled things back on the boat and went on down the river.

The river had changed now. It was three times as wide as it had been when they had set forth at Millville, the pleasant forests had disappeared and settlements were close together. Boats were numerous, too; fishing launches that chugged noisily past, tugs that towed schooners of lumber or barges of coal, small sailboats that tacked back and forth in the light breeze, flat-bottomed punts, occupied by patient fishermen, anchored along the margins. While to-day the bosom of the river was hardly more than ruffled, Tim realized that, with a strong wind blowing, the same stream might well become uncomfortable to a poor sailor; and Tim, while not certain, had a suspicion that rough water would prove him to be such. Consequently, he accepted with secret enthusiasm Pud’s plan to turn into Fox River, some few miles below, and ascend that tributary for a way.

‘But,’ stated Tim positively, ‘I’m not going near Swamp Hole, Pud.’

‘Well, who wants to go there?’ demanded Pud. ‘Gee, Swamp Hole’s twenty miles or more up the river! Besides, I’ve heard that you can’t get to it, anyway, unless you know just how. That’s what makes it like it is; filled with murderers and such-like folks, I mean. They just know the officers can’t find them.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose,’ answered Tim charitably, ‘that they’re all murderers up there. I guess there are some decent people, Pud.’

But Pud didn’t hold with that notion. He shook his head and frowned darkly. ‘I guess decent folks wouldn’t be likely to live in with all those cut-throats and――and desperadoes, Tim. No, sir, I guess they’re all pretty much alike in Swamp Hole, and I wouldn’t go in there for any amount of money. Well, maybe I would for a couple of hundred dollars, but not any less than that.’

‘A couple of hundred!’ exclaimed Tim. ‘Gosh, I wouldn’t do it for――for a couple of million!’

‘Well,’ hedged Pud, ‘of course I didn’t mean I’d go alone. I wouldn’t mind going with Mr. Garvey, the marshal, and, maybe, Sumner Jones and――and Mr. Thrasher.’

‘Maybe, if they were all armed,’ granted Tim doubtfully.

‘The’s worser things than murderers in that ol’ Swamp Hole,’ observed Harmon gravely. ‘The’s ghos’es an’ hants, Mister Pud.’

‘There’s no such thing as ghosts,’ replied Pud severely.

‘How-come?’

‘Because there isn’t!’

‘Mister Pud, did you-all ever see a ghos’?’

‘No, I didn’t, and there’s no use in your asking me “How do I know then!” Because that’s no argument at all! Nobody believes in ghosts any more, Harmon; nobody but just darkies!’

‘How-come Mister Tim say they was hants in that there house what you’ Aun’ live in, then? He ain’ no darky!’

‘I suppose he was just fooling,’ answered Pud, looking to Tim for agreement. Tim nodded, but Harmon insisted with conviction:

‘He don’ ac’ like he’s foolin’ when he say it!’

Further discussion was prevented by their arrival at the mouth of the Fox River, and Pud swung the bow of the launch to starboard and entered new water. The Fox proved a sluggish stream, but even so the launch showed speedily that moving against a current was quite different from moving with it, and although Tim, at Pud’s command, advanced the throttle to the limit, the boat seemed contented to chug along at a four-mile gait. Perhaps it may have had a premonition of what awaited beyond and was loath to meet it!

For a while the stream, nowhere much more than a hundred yards wide, curved slowly between low banks edged with rushes from which wide fields, mostly tilled, ascended gently to distant farmhouses and barns. It was perhaps an hour before the forest closed in upon them and they found themselves moving slowly through silent reaches where the shadows lay broadly on the scarcely moving water. It was very warm in there, for the trees cut them off from the breeze that was swaying the topmost branches, high above.

The heat and the silence together seemed to exert a depressing effect on them, and when they spoke they found themselves quite unconsciously talking in lowered voices. It was a relief when, chugging around a bend, they came on an aged negro in the stern of a punt, half asleep, while two corks lay placidly on the surface near by. He awoke sufficiently to wave and bow to them and to shake his head when Pud asked if he was having any luck. When they went from sight around the next curve, his chin was back on his chest once more.

The river turned and twisted continually, but the turns were leisurely and there was deep water right to within a few feet of the tree-hung banks. Now and then a snag sent them farther into the middle, but on the whole navigation was easy and Pud might almost have emulated the old darky and dozed at his post. Turtles slipped noiselessly from half-submerged logs and now and then a fish broke the smooth surface. An occasional kingfisher awoke the silence with strident challenge and jays called mockingly from the woods. Once they passed a mother duck herding four youngsters before her to safety, and Harmon’s eyes grew very round and hungry-looking. It was now time to think of disembarking and setting up camp, and Pud watched anxiously for a clearing, but the trees continued on each side, so closely set, so tangled in undergrowth as to afford no chance for the tent. Tim showed indications of mutiny and suggested dining on board and finding a camp-site later, but just then a new turn of the stream promised better things.

On the left the forest gave place to a clearing that ran back, fan-shaped, to the summit of a distant slope. At some time, not very recently it seemed, the timber had been cut, and everywhere within the bare expanse unsightly stumps and unburned mounds of slashings remained. Over the water hung a decrepit wharf, too high at the present stage of the river to offer convenient landing. Well beyond the wharf, drawn to the edge of the red-clay bank and moored to a near-by stump, lay a shanty-boat. This was the first of its kind they had encountered, although farther up the river they found them numerous enough. The present one was small, with a four-foot roofed deck at the shoreward end from which a plank led upward to the bank. It was painted green, but the color had faded to a neutral tint. There were small one-sash windows on the sides and end. That the shanty-boat was in use was proved by two things; smoke issuing from the stovepipe thrust through the roof and a person sitting on an upturned nail-keg on the deck. At first the person appeared to be a boy, but a closer look showed her to be a girl in a bluish dress.

‘I guess,’ said Pud, ‘we can camp beyond ’em, but maybe we’d better ask.’

At sound of the launch the girl on the shanty-boat had turned to observe it. Now she stood up and waved a hand. Pud grunted merely, but Tim, more polite, waved back. Pud turned the nose of the _Vengance_ toward the shanty-boat and prepared to hail it. He was going to say ‘Hello!’ and then ‘Say, mind if we camp beyond you folks?’ All he did say, though, was ‘Hello!’, for at the same instant the girl spoke.

‘Help!’ she called.

The occupants of the launch stared in surprise. Doubtless, though, they had misunderstood her, and Pud asked, ‘What did you say?’ This time there was no mistaking.

‘_Help!_’ said the girl.

Pud looked about him in every direction. So did Tim. So, too, did Harmon. Not a person was to be seen. Never, indeed, had any one of them ever looked on a more quiet, peaceful, and lonely scene. Pud viewed Tim blankly and received as blank a gaze in reply. By this time the two boats were close together and mechanically Pud eased the launch up to the stern of the other, motioning Tim to throw out the clutch. Harmon, in the rôle of deck-hand, laid hold of the shanty-boat. Pud now gave serious attention to the girl.

She was apparently thirteen, possibly fourteen years old, with a thin, deeply tanned face and coppery-brown hair drawn tightly back from her forehead into a long braid which, at the present moment, hung across one shoulder and terminated in a bow of bright red ribbon. She wore a dress of some thin stuff that showed blue flowers on a white ground. It was not a new dress, nor, observed Pud, was it particularly clean. Brown cotton stockings enclosed a pair of painfully thin ankles. A pair of scuffed black shoes completed her costume. Pud decided that she was not at all pretty. In fact, he took an instant, if mild, dislike to the girl; but this was more because she was regarding him with an intense, unwavering stare from a pair of large dark eyes, a stare that disconcerted him unpleasantly.

Tim, untroubled by the hypnotic gaze, voiced his curiosity.

‘Say, what’s the matter?’ he demanded. ‘What you yelling “Help” for?’

‘Because,’ replied the girl, still regarding Pud, ‘I want to be rescued.’ She had rather a nice voice, sort of low and gurgly, and there was such a tragic note in it that Tim thrilled and once more gazed apprehensively about over the desolate scene.

‘Rescued!’ echoed Pud. ‘What――who――Say, what are you doing? Getting funny with us?’

‘Oh, no!’ The girl leaned nearer and dropped her voice. ‘You must take me away from here before they come back! You will, won’t you? Oh, say you will not desert me!’

‘Take you where? Who is it’s coming back?’ asked Pud dazedly.

‘Those――those awful men!’ She looked swiftly, fearfully toward the edge of the woods, and Pud looked, too, a sort of creepy feeling edging up his spine. ‘They kidnaped me from my happy home and they’re keeping me a prisoner in this dreadful place.’ She was speaking now in a thrilling whisper. ‘You can’t imagine what I’ve been through! It――it has been terrible!’ She shuddered. So did Pud and Tim, the latter having joined Pud at the bow. ‘You will rescue me, won’t you?’

‘Well,’ muttered Pud uncomfortably, ‘I don’t know. It――it sounds sort of funny to me. Say, what’s your name, and where do you live?’

‘My name’s Gladys Ermintrude Liscomb, and I live in Corbin. Oh, won’t you please, _please_ take me home to my poor, distracted mother? If you are seeking a reward――’

‘Gosh, no!’ exclaimed Tim. ‘Sure, we’ll take you home! Won’t we, Pud?’

‘Gee, I don’t know!’ Pud scowled at the deck. ‘What I want to know――’

‘Oh, dear!’ cried the girl distressedly. ‘We’re wasting time! They’ll be back almost any moment now. They went off with their guns an hour ago. They said they were going hunting, but’――again she shuddered――‘I don’t know what awful deed they are up to!’

‘That’s right,’ urged Tim, tugging Pud’s arm. ‘We’d better get a move on.’

‘What I want to know,’ repeated Pud doggedly, ‘is what they wanted to kidnap you for.’ He viewed Gladys Ermintrude in cold apprisal. ‘You don’t look to me like the sort of girls that get kidnaped. I guess your folks ain’t got much money, have they?’

‘They have, too!’ declared the girl resentfully. ‘They’re fabulously wealthy, you horrid thing! Why, I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if mother had offered a thousand dollars reward for me!’

‘Huh, that isn’t much,’ said Pud.

‘Or maybe ten thousand,’ added Gladys Ermintrude hastily.

‘Gosh!’ murmured Tim.

Even Pud was impressed now, but he was still cautious.

‘Well, maybe it’s all right,’ he muttered, ‘but Corbin’s a good eight miles from here, I guess, and we’ve got to get our tent pitched. Maybe in the morning we could attend to it for you.’

The girl’s wail of despair was really heart-rending. ‘Too late!’ she cried. ‘To-morrow I shall be far away!’

‘Oh, say, Pud,’ begged Tim, ‘have a heart, can’t you? Gosh, suppose she was your sister or something! Gosh, I guess you wouldn’t like it if she was! I guess――’

‘I haven’t got any sister,’ replied Pud stubbornly. ‘Anyhow, what I say is――’

‘Yonder’s them,’ interrupted Harmon in pleased excitement.

They all looked. Several hundred yards distant two men, carrying shot-guns, had emerged into the clearing. They were undeniably rough-looking persons, and, rescue or no rescue, Pud instantly decided, this was no place to spend the night!

‘Quick!’ said Gladys Ermintrude tensely. ‘Start your engine! It won’t take me a second to get my bag!’

She disappeared into the shanty-boat and Tim sprang to the fly-wheel. Pud stared irresolutely after the girl and then uneasily toward the leisurely approaching men. The engine came to life and Pud reached a decision. He didn’t like that silly girl, and there was something mighty funny about the whole business, but here was real adventure!

‘Stand ready to cast off!’ he ordered briskly.

‘Er-huh,’ replied Harmon.

Then they waited. From within the shanty-boat came faint sounds, but no Gladys Ermintrude. Pud looked apprehensively at the approaching kidnapers. They were walking more briskly now, even, he thought, hurriedly. Doubtless they had caught sight of the launch. A sunbeam glinted on the barrel of a gun and Pud felt suddenly chilly at the back of his neck. He called hoarsely.

‘Hey there! Gladys Whatyoucall it! Get a move on, can’t you?’

‘Just a minute!’ called the girl.

‘No, sir, not a half a minute! If you ain’t out here before I count five I’m going to leave you! One――’

‘Maybe we’d better start along,’ said Tim uneasily. ‘We could come back later, I guess, and get her, Pud.’

‘Mighty fierce-lookin’ men, they is,’ declared Harmon cheerfully.

‘Four,’ counted Pud, his intervals shortening perceptibly. ‘_Five!_ Back her up, Tim!’

‘Here I am,’ announced Gladys Ermintrude triumphantly. ‘Will you please take my bag?’

‘No, I won’t,’ growled Pud. ‘Throw it in and jump quick! Let’s go, Tim! Give her gas!’

Gladys Ermintrude landed somewhat inelegantly in the launch just as that craft churned away from the shanty-boat and just as a stentorian hail came across the clearing.

‘_Hey! Where you goin’?_’ shouted a voice.

Pud swung the wheel hard, the _Vengance_ pushed her nose into the current, and Gladys Ermintrude, jumping to a seat, waved defiantly toward shore.

‘Ha, ha!’ she cried. ‘At last, villains, I am out of your clutches! Before dawn the hand of Justice――’

Unceremoniously Pud grabbed a skinny ankle and Gladys Ermintrude collapsed in a heap. ‘You shut up!’ sputtered Pud. ‘Want us to get shot? You get down and stay down!’ He was obeying his own order as well as he could, and so were Tim and Harmon. The launch was picking up speed now and the shanty-boat was already a length behind, shutting out of sight the kidnapers for the moment. ‘Give her all there is, Tim!’ called Pud.

‘She’s got it,’ answered Tim. ‘Reckon they’ll shoot?’

‘I don’t know! Keep down, you’d better.’ Pud put his own head up and looked back. The two men, roughly clothed and bearded desperadoes indeed, were running hard now, were almost at the bank. As long as they kept on running, Pud reflected, they couldn’t shoot, and even if they did shoot they couldn’t do more than pepper the boat as long as they all kept below the gunwale and――

‘Come back here!’ called an angry voice. ‘Where are you taking that girl? I’ll have the Law on you!’

‘Oh,’ exclaimed Gladys Ermintrude despairingly, ‘that he should speak of the Law!’

The other man shouted now, his words coming more faintly as the distance increased. ‘You Tibbie! You Tibbie Liscomb, you come right back here! If you don’t I’ll tell your mother the minute――’

The rest was lost in the noise of the engine and the steady thud of the propeller. Pud scowled questioningly at the girl crouched beside him. ‘What’s he call you Tibbie for?’ he demanded suspiciously. ‘And how’s he going to tell your ma if――’

‘He does it to humiliate me,’ answered the girl bitterly. ‘They both called me Tibbie. Ah, well, it’s over now!’ She sighed deeply and turned a look of gratitude on Pud. ‘My preserver!’ she whispered. ‘Had it not been for you, who knows what awful fate were mine! Never, never can I thank you enough, my brave――’

‘Aw, cut it,’ growled Pud. ‘And you’d better wipe the end of your nose. You’ve got engine grease on it.’