CHAPTER XIV

THE STORY OF THE BLACK RIDERS

The sun seemed to burst forth from the sky, flooding over the camp as it did so, and never before had the great ball of fire seemed so comforting and cheerful. The fires were going briskly and the coffee was sending out its tempting aroma. Drummer, warming up throughout, was inspired to joke.

“Hey, you fellows!” he cried. “Who is going to take their morning dip in Bear Creek?”

A medley of groans greeted him and he grinned. “We ought to toss you in for even suggesting such a thing!” grinned Buck, as he fried the bacon.

The touch of the sun turned the camp into a new place. Their spirits rose visibly and all the uncertainty of the night passed away. No one felt the loss of sleep, and while the breakfast squad was busy another detachment took the wet canvas and spread it out to dry. The blankets and all personal effects were next in line and were hung on convenient limbs to partake of the beneficial sun.

Fortunately for them it was a warm day and things began to dry at once. As the heat increased they began to shed outer garments so as to give them a chance to dry also. The chill was out of their bodies and they felt perfectly normal.

“I feel better than I did before I got all wet!” declared one boy.

“You’ll probably have a reaction later on,” advised Ted. “I mean that you’ll probably get tired and want to sleep. We’ll all try a little sleep after we get the tents up again.”

The call for breakfast was now issued and disregarded by no one. With whoops of delight they trooped around, tin plates thrust forward, and for several minutes the cooks were busy young men. Never before had breakfast tasted so good, and there was a general satisfaction expressed.

“The cooks are putting their best into it this morning,” said Drummer.

“No differently than other mornings,” smiled Ted. “But you are hungrier.”

After breakfast the camp was cleaned up, the canvas reversed and the blankets treated in the same manner. There was also another problem before them and this had to do with the icebox. It had filled up with water and they had to take everything out of it, pull out some of the tin sheeting, and allow the water to seep into the ground.

“We didn’t make it water-tight,” said Buck.

“No, and the rain last night was so hard that it just settled above the cover and leaked through. I see now where we have made a mistake. Instead of sinking the ice chest so deep we ought to build it up a bit and have the cover above ground, with sloping sides, so that the water would run away from it. In that way a few drops might leak in, but not a couple of quarts as it did last night.”

Later in the day they made the improvement and did not have any further trouble with wet weather in regard to their provisions. Then they turned their attention to the tents, after having looked around back of them for footprints, but there were none, so they gave it up.

“We might find some way back in the bushes,” said Ted. “But we’ll look ’em up some other time. Let’s see what we can do with the tents.”

They presented quite a problem, for the cut rope had to be tied together. There was no extra rope to be had and while they were tieing pieces together Ted had an idea.

“Look here, I’ve got an idea which will keep us from using pegs or having to tie all these ropes to the smaller pieces.”

“What is it? I don’t see how—”

“The tent ropes on one side of each tent are still tied to the pegs, aren’t they?”

“Sure.”

“Well, the ropes have been cut on the sides of the tents facing each other. Instead of bothering to tie new ropes and peg them down, lets tie the ropes from each tent together and simply lay a heavy log across the ropes. That will be heavy enough to hold down the canvas and when it rains again we won’t have to loosen ropes because as the canvas tightens it will simply raise the weighing logs a little bit.”

“Say, that’s fine! We’ll do that!” approved Buck.

On the sides of the tents where the cut ropes faced each other the boys tied them together and then came the problem of logs. They did not want to use old half-rotted logs and they did not care to cut down good trees. Buck suggested that they seek out some trees that were dead but still standing, and this they did, finding more than enough of such trees. As soon as the best ones had been picked out they cut them down to the desired length, brought them back to camp, and then laid them across the ropes which stretched from tent to tent. Immediately they weighed the canvas down by their pressure on the ropes much as pegs would have drawn them tightly, and altogether proved themselves satisfactory.

“By George, any camp where they had more than one tent, could do that, and it would be an improvement on pegs!” approved Buck.

“Well, not exactly an improvement,” Ted shook his head. “Pegs give a more direct and downward pull. But the logs make a good substitute. It surely makes the camp look funny.”

The sight of the three logs hanging on the ropes between tents might have puzzled anyone who did not understand them, but the boys were content with their work. The camp was now in good condition and the reaction set in soon after the noon meal. The excitement and work had kept them all wide awake, but now yawns began to be heard from them.

“All of you fellows who want to can turn in for a good sleep,” said Ted. “Just roll up in your blankets and snooze away! Everyone who doesn’t feel like sleeping will please be quiet and give the others a chance.”

“I’d like to know who won’t be sleeping,” Bob smiled, rubbing his eyes.

“I’m not going to sleep right away,” replied Ted. “Buck and I are going over to the farmhouse where we buy the fresh supplies and get some stuff. When we get back we’ll turn in.”

The other boys straggled off at once to their tents, and wrapping themselves in their blankets, fell asleep without any trouble. Fortunately, the sun had passed far enough behind the trees so that the rays did not beat down on the tents and they had no great difficulty in getting to sleep. Ted and Buck put empty knapsacks on their backs and started off for the farmhouse where they bought their provisions.

“I certainly won’t mind a little sleep myself,” yawned Buck, as they left the camp.

“I won’t either,” his companion remarked. “But we’ll get back in time to snatch a few hours when we do get back.”

“Think we’ll learn anything from Farmer Crane?”

“I don’t know, but I hope so. This thing is getting serious. So far the boys haven’t been bad about it, although some of them are pretty scared at times, but I don’t know how long it will last. The uncertainty of it wears us down. We don’t know when somebody is going drop in and play a trick on us. I want to find out what it is all about.”

“If we find the person who is doing it,” said Buck, slowly, “we’ll surely tell him a thing or two!”

“If we ever catch him around the camp we’ll turn him over to the police in short order,” was Ted’s grim promise.

The farmer was glad to see them and he listened with interest to their story of the cutting of the tent ropes during the storm. It was felt that there was no need to tell him anything else, for fear that it would get abroad too much. The farmer was interested and excited.

“Somebody must have a grudge agin you fellers!” he cried. “Nobody’d be doing that for fun.”

“It must be somebody up this way, then,” said Ted. “Somebody doesn’t want us around. We thought it was that fellow you spoke to us about, the man who lives over in the log cabin, but he couldn’t have been the one, because we saw him a few minutes before all this happened.”

“Can’t think of no one else, ’less it could of been old Jerry Jackson, who lives over in Hogs’ Hollow,” mused the farmer.

“Where is Hogs’ Hollow?”

“’Bout a mile beyond where your camp is. It is a swampy sort of a place not fit for nothin’ but hogs to live in, and old Jerry has a shack there. But he never bothers no one and I don’t know why he’d ever want to chase you out of there.”

“I guess he couldn’t have anything to do with it,” agreed Ted. “By the way, what is that house way up on the mountain, the one where the furniture is still in the place? Looks like it was furnished and never used.”

“Oh, that’s the Bainbridge place,” was the reply. “Rich feller by the name of Bainbridge built that house for his wife and it sure was a handsome dwellin’! I saw it when it was first finished, and I want to tell you it had more gilt and brass and blue and everything than any place I ever saw. Well, Bainbridge was lookin’ forward to bringin’ his wife up there—she’d never seen it—when she decided she wasn’t goin’ to live up in no mountains, and she finally up and run off with somebody else. Bainbridge spent a lot of time mopin’ around the place and acted like he was half-crazy, and then finally he disappeared. Nobody knows where he is today.”

“That fellow over in the cabin isn’t Bainbridge, is he?” Buck asked, quickly.

“Oh, no! I know both of ’em by sight, and that ain’t him. No, unless Bainbridge’s ghost is hangin’ around that old house. I don’t know where he is.”

They paid for their provisions and then tramped back to camp, discussing the affair between them. Nothing definite appeared to have been learned from the farmer and they decided to keep a stricter lookout in the camp.

“If we ever hear anybody around in the bushes we’ll have to make a dash for them,” said Buck.

Arriving at the camp they found it apparently deserted and perfectly quiet, but a glance into the tents showed that all of the boys were asleep. Very quietly they packed the provisions in the improved ice chest, and then as quietly crawled into their blankets for a nap. For the next three hours the camp was so still that anyone looking down upon it would have decided that it was deserted, and then, as the coolness of the evening came on, first one and then another began to stir, until the whole camp was awake.

Supper was eaten and then they sat around, content to remain in the camp. Just before they turned in there was a dispute about the Black Riders and Ted was called upon.

“It was started by a man named Simon Reed,” he said.

“I don’t think many of us know the story,” Alfred Paulson said, thoughtfully. “Won’t you tell it to us, Ted?”

“You want me to tell you the story of the Black Riders?” Ted asked.

There was a general nod of assent. He looked at his watch, shaking his head.

“It is getting too late now,” he said. “But I’ll tell it to you after supper tomorrow night.”

Back of them a stick broke sharply and a few of them turned their heads to look in the direction of the tents. But in the talk that followed no one paid any further attention to it.

On the following evening, after the supper, Ted faced an expectant group of boys. They were ranged in a bow formation, with the ends drawn in toward the middle, and Ted stood near the fire. They were very quiet and he began at once.

“Most of you fellows know something about the history of the Revolutionary War at the time that Washington and his men were in Valley Forge, about forty miles from here, and the British were having a gay old time in Philadelphia. The British and the Hessians were all around here, a fine, fully equipped army of men, while the ragged, cold, heroic Americans were freezing over in Valley Forge. That was in the winter of 1777 and 1778, if my memory serves me correctly, and things in this particular part of the country were in pretty bad shape.”

“There was a man down in Germantown by the name of Simon Reed, and he was a patriot who had never run away even in the face of the British. He knew that up in these mountains there were some wild, hard-fighting farmers, and he used to slip out this way nights to get them organized. Right in this hollow they used to meet, all dressed in black, all of them riding black horses, and here they’d make up their plans to annoy the British. They used to go stealing out of here and lay in wait for stray British baggage trains, and then they’d swoop down on them and capture them. All through the winter they did such good work for Washington that they came to be recognized as the Black Riders. You know, during the Revolution, there were a number of cracker-jack bands of fighting men who just hung onto the British flanks and worried them to death, Marion’s men in the South, and Morgan’s Riflemen, Light-Horse Harry Lee’s men, and others. These Black Riders were a smaller bunch, but they helped a lot.”

“After awhile things got so hot for them around here that Washington had them taken into the regular army as part of Light-Horse Harry Lee’s division and they ceased to be known as the Black Riders from then on. But people around here always remembered them from the days before they joined Lee and this spot had always been known as their camp.”

“Gosh, that’s a great story!” exclaimed Drummer.

“It must have been great to have met here and planned their raids,” said another boy, looking around him.

“Wish I could see what one looked like,” said Bob Gilmore.

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when something happened which left the boys speechless with wonder. There was a soft flare of light near them and they all turned their heads toward the end of the camp nearest the foot of the mountains, to where a flat, moss-covered rock jutted out. There on the rock, lighted by the soft, noiseless glow, was a black horse and seated upon it, a rider dressed entirely in black, with a wide black hat pulled over his face. The glow burned only for a brief second, but in that second horse and rider stared straight ahead, and then the flare went out, and the Black Rider and his black horse disappeared from view.