The Boy Scouts' Mountain Camp

CHAPTER XVI

INTO THE FIRE!

The moon had just risen. Her light silvered the dark hemlock tops, and, by bad luck, fell in a flood full upon Rob and Jumbo. The man who had sprung into such sudden activity was, on the contrary, completely shrouded in the black shadow of the hut.

Even had they had weapons they would, situated as they were, have been completely in his power. To use a slang term, but one full of expressiveness, he had “the drop” on them.

“Who are you?” rasped out the inmate of the hut in a harsh, startled voice. “Speak quick, for I’m right smart on the trigger.”

“We are two wanderers who have lost our way,” rejoined Rob, “we have no weapons and have no wish to harm you.”

“Come forward a bit while I look you over,” said the man, his suspicion mollified a bit by the boyish tone. But the next instant, as his eyes fell on Rob’s uniform, he seemed to bristle with suspicion again.

“What’s that uniform?” he demanded; “be you some new-fangled revenue?”

“I’m a Boy Scout,” rejoined Rob, and then, thinking it best not to relate his whole story at once, he added, “I got lost on a scouting expedition. Our camp is not far from here on the other side of the lake. All we want is some food, drink and shelter.”

“Boy Scout, eh?” said the man, eyeing him curiously, “um, ay, I’ve read of ’em. To my mind you’d be best at home instead of gallivanting around the country and getting lost. But who’s that black fellow?”

“Ah’se a ’spectable colored gen’ulman, suh,” began Jumbo indignantly in his usual formula. But the black-bearded man checked him with a gesture.

“You’re just a nigger, nigger, don’t forget that. I come from south of the Mason and Dixon line.”

“Yas, sah, yas, sah,” grinned Jumbo. The big black shivered and showed all the gleaming white of his teeth and eyes in his alarm at the bearded little man’s fierce looks and gestures.

“S’pose I feed yer,” was the bearded one’s next question, “kin you pay? I’m a poor woodsman and – ”

“Oh, we can pay,” Rob assured him. Foolishly he drew out a rather well-filled purse. The next moment he wished he hadn’t. For a brief instant the hut-dweller’s keen, serpent-like black eyes had kindled with an avaricious flame.

But he cleverly masked whatever emotion it was that had swept over him at sight of the money receptacle.

“Guess that’ll be all right,” he said, “come on in.”

Rather troubled in his mind, but deciding that it was best to accept the situation as it unfolded, Rob followed his conductor into the hut. Jumbo ambled along behind, his black face expanded in a grin of wonderment. The hut, within, proved to be a roughly constructed affair of raw logs. The chinks were plastered with clay, mixed with grass to give it consistency. A few skins hung on the walls and some rough, home-made furniture stood about.

At one end of the place was a huge, open fireplace, with a big hearthstone. It was not used, however, the cookery being done upon the stove, which also provided the heat.

At the end of the hut opposite to the chimney a rough flight of steps led to an attic. After the two half-famished wanderers had concluded a hearty meal, washed down by strong, hot, black coffee, their host motioned to the steps.

“Ef you want a shake-down you’ll find straw up thar,” he said.

Rob thanked him civilly and he and Jumbo climbed the stairway and found themselves in a low-ceiled loft. The floor was of unnailed boards. Through the chinks between them the ruddy lamplight below could be seen.

“Dere’s wusser beds in dis wale ob tears dan nice clean straw,” observed Jumbo philosophically as he threw himself on his heap. Rob agreed with him. The straw did, indeed, seem soft and grateful after their recent hard knocks and experiences. Following Jumbo’s example, the lad made for himself a kind of nest. Curling up in it he was soon off in the deep, dreamless slumber of healthy boyhood.

Voices awakened Rob. He sat up sharply. They were coming from below. The sounds of the conversation floated up through the wide chinks in the rough floor.

Rob rolled on his side and peered through the most convenient crack. Three men were now in the room below him. As he gazed he was amazed to see the hearthstone swing bodily backward, on some concealed hinges, and a fourth man emerge from some secret passage.

“Wall,” said the newcomer, a huge figure of a man with a big, blond viking-like beard, “the last keg is headed and fixed up. We’ve finished our work. To-morrow – ”

But the black-bearded man checked him with a sharp gesture.

“Shut up, Sims,” he warned, “not so loud. Go ahead, Watkins,” he went on, turning to one of the men with whom he had been talking.

“What I ses is,” resumed this fellow, a squatty-built, loosely-hung little fellow, with close-cropped sandy hair, and a bristly growth on his chin, like the stubble on an old tooth brush, “what I ses is, don’t take no risks.”

He paused impressively and then added in a lowered voice, but one that reached Rob, nevertheless, with thrilling clearness:

“Fix ’em.”

“Great Abraham Lincoln!” gasped the boy, “this is a nice nest of hornets we’ve stumbled into. ‘Fix ’em,’ that must mean us.”

But the talk went on, and Rob strained his ears for the continuation.

“But if they was guvn’ment men they wouldn’t hev walked in like they done, I reckon,” put in another man, a pallid, sickly-looking chap, with pink-rimmed eyes and a ferrety, furtive manner.

“Best be on the safe side,” counselled the black-bearded man, who had introduced the travelers to the hut, “they’ve got money, too.”

“Money?” questioned the blonde-bearded man.

“Yes. The boy has. And they haven’t got any weapons. I guess we’ll have an easy time of it with them.”

“That nigger looks pretty hefty, and the kid’s no weakling.”

It was the pink-eyed man who spoke. Rob felt a shiver run through him. So they had been observed while they were asleep and never knew it!

“Oh, I’m a fine Scout!” thought the lad bitterly.

“Seems kind of tough on the kid,” said the blonde-bearded man, “but you never did have no sense of pity, Black Bart.”

Black Bart! Rob’s heart stood still and then beat furiously. These men then, were the moonshiners of whom Dale had spoken that afternoon. It seemed, too, from their talk, that they suspected him and Jumbo of being government spies. In that case they would stop at nothing. And they were four to one. The Boy Scout felt for the knife he had filched from Dale, but in their passage through the woods it must have been lost, for he could not find it on him.

“Kid or no kid,” retorted Black Bart, viciously, “he can tell the revenues a story jes’ as well as anybody else, can’t he?”

“That’s so,” agreed the red-headed man, “and if they get us this time they’ll make it hot for us.”

This argument seemed to extinguish all regrets in the blond-bearded man’s mind.

“When air you goin’ ter do it?” he asked. His voice was perfectly matter-of-fact and cold-blooded.

“No time like the present. But it’s best to get ’em asleep. We don’t want no noise,” said Black Bart, with deliberation. “Pinky,” to the pink-eyed man, “jes’ take a look upstairs and see if they are asleep.”

Rob laid down and crouched still as a mouse while he heard Pinky ascend the creaking stairs, satisfy himself that the intended victims were asleep, and retreat again.

Then the boy awakened Jumbo. In a few words he apprised him of the situation. To Rob’s great relief, the negro, in this dire emergency, seemed to be as self-possessed as he was cowardly in minor matters. Many natures are so constituted.

“What we gwine ter do, Marse Rob?” he breathed, crawling noiselessly about on his straw.

“There’s a window over there,” whispered Rob; “we’ll have to drop through it and chance coming out safely.”

“Lawsy sakes! S’posin’ it looks out on one ob dem bottomless pitses lak yo’ all near fell inter ter-night?”

“Can’t be helped, it’s the only way we can escape. Hark! They’re coming now. Get over to the window with as little noise as you can.”

“How ’bout you alls?”

“I’ll follow. You get it open first.”

Without another word the negro noiselessly wriggled across the floor to the window – a mere opening in the wall – that Rob had observed. At the same instant there came the “creak! creak!” of the staircase as one of the men below began to ascend the stairway.

There was a big bit of loose timber lying near Rob’s straw. With a sudden flash of anger at the thought of the men’s treachery, the lad snatched it up.

“They shan’t get off scot free, anyhow,” he decided within himself.

With the bulk of timber clutched in both his hands, ready poised for a blow, Rob waited by the opening at the head of the rickety stairway as the midnight assailant ascended.

CHAPTER XVII

“WE WANT YOU.”

A stubbly red-head protruded itself through the opening. The crucial moment had come.

“Take that!” cried Rob bringing down the bulk of timber with a resounding crack on the fellow’s pate. He grunted, clutched at the sill of the opening for an instant, and then went toppling down the stairway in a heap.

A roar of fury and a rush of feet from below followed. But Rob did not wait for the sequel.

“Hope I haven’t seriously injured the chap,” he thought, as he sprinted for the window, “I hit a bit harder than I meant to.”

But the next instant, when red-head’s voice was added to the uproar below, Rob knew that he had, at least, not impaired the miscreant’s talent for profanity.

All need of concealment was gone now. Rob’s heart leaped to the adventure. Jumbo was half way through the window as the lad reached it. Rob hastened him with a shove and a quick word. The black held for an instant, clutching the sill, and then he dropped. The next moment Rob had followed him. He fell in a sprawling heap on top of the black. Both were up in a jiffy.

“Which way?” gasped out Jumbo.

“Any way – this!” cried Rob, dashing across a moonlit strip toward a dark belt of woods.

A fusillade of shots rang out behind them. Rob heard the bullets screech as they spun by.

“Law’sy, Marse Rob, dem bullets talk ter me mighty plain,” gasped Jumbo as they gained the comparative security of the dark hemlocks.

“What did they say?” asked Rob, breathlessly.

“Dey say Jum-bo, we’se ah lookin’ fo’ you, chile!”

Whatever Rob’s reply might have been it was forestalled the next instant by an entirely unsuspected and startling happening. From the woods ahead of them, came a sudden trampling of feet.

“Quick, Jumbo. Down in here!” exclaimed the Boy Scout, dragging the quaking negro down into a clump of bushes. They were just in time. The next moment half-a-dozen dark figures rushed by them through the woods, going in the direction of the hut they had just vacated so summarily.

“What on earth does this mean?” gasped Rob, half aloud in his utter astonishment. Parting the bushes a bit, he could perceive the dark outlines of the hut and the newcomers deploying across the moonlit strip in front of it.

A loud crash echoed through the sleeping woods as the door of the hut was suddenly slammed shut.

Almost simultaneously, the walls of the hut and the space in front of it seemed to spit vicious flashes of fire.

“Gee whiz!” cried Rob, excitedly, “they’re attacking the hut, Jumbo! What under the sun does this mean?”

“Dunno,” said the negro, “but mah hopes is dat dey jes’ nachully exterminaccouminicate each other like dem Killarney cats.”

“Kilkenny cats, you mean, don’t you?”

“It’s all de same,” retorted Jumbo, “but say, Marse Rob, we’d bettah be clearing out ob here.”

“No, let’s stay awhile. We’re in no danger here. In fact I’ve an idea that this may all turn out to be a good thing for us.”

The attacking party now dropped back a bit.

“They’re well armed and desperate,” Rob heard one of them say, “better breathe a bit, boys, and then we’ll go for ’em again.”

“Let’s get a log and smash the door down,” said a voice.

“Good idea, O’Malley,” was the response, “here’s an old hemlock trunk. It’s just the thing. Lay hold, boys, and we’ll smoke out that nest of rats in a jiffy.”

Willing hands laid hold of the big stick of timber, and the next instant they were staggering with it toward the hut. There was a low word of command and a sudden dash. The log was poised for an instant and then:

Smash! crash!

The massive door stood for a moment and then toppled inward, falling with a splintering crash. But a dead silence followed the fall of the door. No more pretence of defense was made by the inmates of the hut. Could they be going to give up so tamely?

Then a sudden voice floated through the night. The voice of one of the attacking party.

“Say! There’s nobody here, boys!”

“Confound them! Have they escaped us again?” came another voice.

“Look’s like it. Scatter and find them – back for your lives, all of you!”

The warning cry was followed almost instantly by a deafening explosion. A vivid flash of blue flame occurred simultaneously.

“Gollyation!” gasped Jumbo, “de end ob de worl’ am comin’.”

The whole hut seemed to burst into flame at once. Lurid, vivid fire seemed to gush from every window and opening in the place. In color it was an intense blue.

“Shades ob Massa George Wash basin!” yelled Jumbo, “all de debils in dat pit we see back dar is on de job! Come on, Marse Rob. Let’s git out ob here in double quick jig time.”

“Nonsense,” said Rob sharply, “I see it all, now, Jumbo. That place was a moonshine joint – an illegal distillery. Those men who just attacked it are revenue officers. The explosion was caused by hundreds of gallons of spirits. I guess the moonshiners set it on fire to destroy the evidence.”

Each instant the blaze rose higher. The hut, within its four walls, was a mass of flames. It glowed like a red hot furnace. Rob watched it with fascinated eyes. The whole clearing was bright as day. The dark woods beyond were bathed in a blood-red glare from the flames.

The intense heat fairly blistered the trunks of the nearest hemlocks. Resin ran from them freely.

“Let’s get further back, Jumbo, it’s too hot here,” said Rob presently.

“Golly goodness! It am dat,” declared Jumbo in awed tones, “dat fire dere puts me in mo’ fear ob dat bottomless pit dan all de preachifying I ever listened to.”

But their retreat into the woods was checked in a strange manner. Rob, who was in advance, recoiled suddenly. A whole section of the woodland floor seemed to uprear itself before his eyes, and a wild figure, with a tangled black beard and shifty, wicked eyes, emerged. Rob realized in a flash that it was a trapdoor cleverly concealed by brush and earth that had just opened. Simultaneously he recognized the figure that was crawling from it as that of Black Bart himself.

The man was too much perturbed to notice their nearness to him. But suddenly his eyes fell on them. With a furious oath he dashed at Rob.

“You young fiend! You’re responsible for this!” he yelled in a frenzy.

A knife glittered in his hand, but before he could use it Jumbo’s black fist collided with his jaw. Black Bart fell sprawling back upon the trap door which he had just opened.

“Reckon Jack Johnson himself couldn’t hev done no bettah!” grinned the negro.

“Oh, no you don’t, sah!” he exclaimed the next instant as Black Bart struggled to rise; “ah reckon you can repose yo’self right dar fo’ a peahriod ob time.”

So saying he pinioned the ruffian’s arms to his sides and held him thus.

As he did so, violent knockings began to resound from under the trap-door. Evidently somebody was imprisoned there.

“Hey! Let us out! Let us out!” came sharp cries from below, albeit they were considerably muffled by the trap-door.

“Yo’ all come an’ sit on hyah too, Marse Rob,” urged Jumbo. “Ah reckon den dey kain’t git dat door open till we am willing dat dey should conmerge inter terrier firmer.”

Rob guessed at once what had happened. The moonshiners, following the attack of the revenue officers, had realized that continued resistance would be useless. They had, therefore, made their escape by the secret passage, led into by the swinging hearthstone. Its outlet evidently being by the trap door on which they were then stationed. But first, with wicked craft, they had ignited their whole stock of spirituous liquors, hoping in the consequent explosion, that the revenue men would perish. This much seemed clear. Indeed, it was confirmed afterward, and – but we are anticipating.

The Boy Scout had just reached these conclusions when a sudden stir in the brush behind him made him look up. Two men stood there, the light of the conflagration showing every detail of their figures and countenances plainly. They were regarding the group on the top of the trap-door with peculiar interest.

Rob started up toward them but was abruptly checked as two rifles were jerked to two shoulders, and aimed straight at him.

“Don’t move a step!” warned one of the men, “I guess we want you.”

CHAPTER XVIII

JUMBO EARNS $500.00 – AND LOSES IT

“Guess you do want us, but not exactly in the same sense as you mean,” retorted Rob with a chuckle.

“What do you mean, boy?” asked one of the men sharply, as several others of the revenue officers – as Rob had guessed them to be – came up.

“I mean that we’ve got the whole gang you were after bottled up in a tunnel under this trap door,” rejoined Rob breezily.

“Yas sah, Misto Arm-ob-de-Law,” grinned Jumbo, “ah reckin no coon up a tree was eber moh completely obfusticated dan dose same chill’uns.”

“What does all this mean?” asked another of the group, a gray-moustached man of stern appearance, “this boy is either one of the gang or he has been reading dime novels.”

“Nebber read a bit ob dat classification ob literachoor in mah life,” snorted Jumbo indignantly, “ef yo’ alls don’ want dese men we got obfusticated under hay’ah, why we jes’ gits off dis yar trap door an’ lits dem skeedaddle.”

“Who’s that you’re sitting on, nigger?” demanded the gray moustached man, who seemed to be in authority.

“Why, dis am a genelman what answers to de ufoinious name ob Black Bart,” grinned Jumbo amiably, “an’ ah’s not a nigger, ah’s a ’spectable – ”

“Do be quiet, Jumbo,” exclaimed Rob, as the inevitable protest came into evidence. “The case is just this, gentlemen,” he continued. “I am a Boy Scout. This man is attached to our camp. We wandered away and got lost.”

Rob did not tell all that happened, for he foresaw that such a procedure might lead to questions which would bring out the fact of their treasure hunt.

“I see that you wear a Scout uniform now,” said the gray-moustached man.

“Yes, and Boy Scouts don’t lie,” put in another man, “my sons are both in the organization.”

“What troop?” asked Rob.

“The Curlews of Patchogue.”

“Why, we’ve met them in water games at Patchogue,” exclaimed Rob, “my name is Rob Blake.”

“And mine’s Sam Taylor,” said the man, advancing, “glad to meet you, Rob Blake, I’ve heard of you. This lad is all right,” he said, turning to the leader. “I’ll vouch for him.”

“All right,” rejoined the gray-moustached revenue officer, “but we can’t be too careful. Well, Rob Blake, what’s your story? Go ahead.”

“As I said, we lost our way,” went on Rob. “We stumbled on that hut. We were tired and faint, and for pay this man, on whom Jumbo is sitting, took us in. I awoke in time to overhear a plot to rob us. We escaped and while hiding in the brush – not just knowing who you were, friend or foe, we saw that trap-door open and nailed that man – Black Bart. At least Jumbo did.”

“Then it looks as if Jumbo gets five hundred dollars reward for the capture of Black Bart, and more may be in store. You say that the rest are in that passage?”

“Yes.”

“Some of you fellows tie Black Bart,” ordered the leader.

When this was done, the sullen prisoner not uttering a word, the order to open the trap-door was issued.

“No monkey tricks, you fellows,” warned the revenue officer, as it swung back, “we’ll take stern measures with you.”

One by one the occupants of the hut crawled out and were promptly made prisoners. They were almost exhausted, and could not have put up a fight had they been so inclined.

“Glad to get out,” said the blonde-bearded man as he submitted to being handcuffed, “it was hot enough in thar to roast potatoes.”

“So you got scorched by the same fire you intended should destroy us,” said the chief revenue officer dryly.

“Young man,” he went on, turning to Rob, “I shall bring this bit of work to the attention of the government. In the meantime, I may tell you, that besides the five hundred dollars offered for Black Bart’s capture, there was a reward of two thousand dollars for the apprehension of the gang as a whole. I shall see that you and your companion get it.”

“But – but – ” stammered Rob, “you had all the trouble and risk – ”

“Hush, Marse Rob! don’ be talkin’ dat way. Dey may take dat reward away ag’in,” whispered Jumbo, whose eyes had been rolling gleefully. He could hardly credit his good fortune.

“We’re paid for our work,” said the revenue man briefly, “I’m not saying that we always get much credit for the risks we take. Half the time they don’t even mention our raids in the papers. But we do our duty to Uncle Sam and that’s enough.”

Soon after, a search having been made of the ruins of the hut, the revenue men set out with their prisoners for the lake, where they had a boat and two small bateaus. Rob and Jumbo accompanied them. Jumbo walked like one in a trance. He saw money fairly hanging to the trees.