Motor Boat Boys on the St. Lawrence

“Now what can he be up to?” Nick asked Josh, as they looked after the other.

“Give me something easy, will you?” replied that worthy. “But all the same, I noticed that Jack was careful to take his gun along.”

“But he can’t shoot any game now; the law is on nearly everything, you know. And up here the wardens are always on the lookout for poachers,” Nick continued.

“Oh, shucks!” Josh complained, “you don’t see through a millstone, even when it’s got a big hole in it. Can’t you understand that Jack is bent on looking up that ghost business? Wonder if it was Tricky Clarence at the back of it. Gee! but when I first set eyes on the same I really thought it was a dead sure spirit of some old Injun chief come back from the Happy Hunting Grounds to warn us away.”

“Huh! I noticed that you hung on to that same idea to the bitter end,” Nick continued pugnaciously. “Right now, I bet you believe deep down in your silly heart, it was a regular hobgoblin. Oh! I know you all right, Josh Purdue; and you’ve got a scary heart all right. But I saw, just as soon as Jack spoke up, how we’d been fooled by Clarence. Wait till he comes back, and he’ll prove it.”

“I’d like to know how?” demanded Josh. “Expect him to interview that thing, and get a written confession? I’m just wondering what we’ll run up against if we’re bound to stay here in this cove another night.”

“Piffle!” scoffed Nick. “What about guns, hey, tell me that? Ghosts don’t appear to like guns much, do they? Jack says not, and Jack, he ought to know. Stay here? Of course we will; a week, two of ’em, if we feel like it!”

“Oh! yes, how brave some people are in the middle of the day, when the sun’s shining,” jeered Josh. “But wait; that’s all! I expect to see you get the scare of your life tonight, don’t you know. If that thing gets real mad, and digs in for us you needn’t bother worrying about taking on any more fat, because you’ll shake that hard you’ll lose pounds and pounds! But let’s wait till Jack comes back, and find out what he’s discovered. I’ve got a good notion to follow him ashore, if I can pull up the anchor and beach the Comfort. Watch how I manage it.”

CHAPTER X – FOLLOWING A TRAIL

Josh found his little plan was not hard of accomplishment. All he had to do was to push the Wireless around, after letting out all the cable connected with the anchor, when he was able to jump ashore.

He took with him another rope that was fastened to the stern of the motor boat, and this he fastened to the nearest tree. Now, when he wanted to go aboard, all he had to do was to unfasten this latter hawser, climb over the side, and draw the Wireless back to her original anchorage.

“Good boy!” cried Nick, who had been a close observer of this clever little game. “You go up head. When it comes to dodges like that, you take the cake.”

It was not often that Josh heard a compliment from this source, and he had to stop and wave his hand toward the cook of the Comfort, before following after Jack.

He had not gone twenty feet before he discovered the object of his concern, who appeared to be bending over something that seemed to greatly interest him.

“Hello! there, what’ve you found, Jack? Signs of a diamond mine, or traces of the ice age they tell us about?” Josh demanded, as he reached the side of the other.

“Hello yourself, Josh,” replied Jack, looking up with a smile, as though pleased because he was to have some one to talk to, and possibly confer with. “Well, no, I can’t just say that either of your guesses comes anywhere near the truth. I’m only examining a trail.”

“What’s that? Then this old island hasn’t always been as deserted as it looks right now, if people sometimes drop ashore here?” remarked Josh, his interest at once aroused.

“Look here and tell me what you see,” the other lad continued, as he pointed to the ground near his feet.

“Say, as sure as you live, it is, for a fact,” exclaimed Josh. “Looks like they’d done a heap of passing up and down this way, too. D’ye know, Jack, I wondered what those marks on the little beach meant, and now I understand. Boats, that’s what; boats that have been drawn up there when the water was higher than it is now.”

“Yes, I saw them,” said Jack, quietly. “In fact, I looked to find such marks on the sand. And this broad trail began there, too.”

“Oh! I’m beginning to tumble to a few things. I guess that in the season, this same tight little island may be a place for duck shooters to hold out. Perhaps we might even find an old deserted shanty somewhere back yonder in which they camp out during the blustery fall months.”

“Hold on, Josh,” remarked Jack. “Is that all you know about signs?”

“Why, whatever do you mean?” asked the other, puzzled.

“Take another squint at these marks, and then tell me what you think, Josh.”

“Say, I tumble to what you mean!” exclaimed Josh, after he had bent down once more. “You expect me to say that if these marks had been made months ago, with a winter’s ice and snow, and a summer’s heavy rains, they’d have been washed out long ago. And so they would, Jack, so they would. You’re right about it. They’ve been made lately! They look fresh, for a fact!”

“Now you’re tumbling to facts, Josh. Remember, we had a big downpour just three days ago, don’t you?” Jack went on.

“Sure I do. And you’re on to that, too. But I grab your meaning now, all right. There are marks here that must have been made since that rain.”

“Well, what do you say about it now?” continued the boy who could read signs.

“Instead of duck shooters they’re fishermen,” observed Josh, calmly. “Yes, and you remember how those three boats came along, and the men in each stared so hard at us? Jack, I see it all now. We just happened in a favorite place of theirs, and they didn’t like it for a cent. Why, they even tried to scare us off with that silly ghost business that gave poor old Pudding such a fright.”

Jack only smiled.

“Well,” he said, “suppose we follow this trail for a bit. I have an idea it will lead us to the very place where I thought I saw a moving light, like a swinging lantern, last night.”

Josh was eager to keep step with him; but there was no trouble experienced in picking up the trail, so plainly marked were the tracks.

“There it is, Jack!” exclaimed Josh, suddenly; for he had been looking ahead all the time his companion kept his eyes fixed on the ground.

“It is a shanty of some sort, isn’t it?” remarked Jack, without much emotion; for he had been absolutely positive as to what they would discover, so that the announcement did not excite him.

“Why, yes, a tumbledown sort of a shack,” observed Josh, with a trace of disappointment about his manner. “I’d pity the fellows who spent a rainy day in such a rookery. Why, the roof is falling in at one end; and the door hangs on one rusty hinge.”

Jack saw all these things as quickly as did his companion, even though he failed to cry out and express himself as vehemently as Josh took pains to do.

“Old dilapidated cabin as it is, note one thing, will you,” he remarked.

“You mean that the tracks lead up to the door, is that it, Jack?”

“Well, yes,” the other continued, “but just notice that there’s a rusty padlock on the door. Stop and think if that doesn’t look queer, considering that if anybody wanted to get in, all they’d have to do would be to knock that one hinge, and the whole door would drop flat?”

“Say, that makes me laugh, for a fact,” Josh chuckled. “But it’s just what you’d expect to run across up among these simple people of the border. They make me think of the ostrich. Don’t you know we read the silly thing just sticks its head in a little bush, and thinks because it can’t see anything that it’s got a bully hiding place.”

“Yes, that sort of covers the bill,” said Jack. “I guess this padlock is only meant to tell people who have no business here that they are not wanted inside this shack. It stands as a warning. To enter after that would be a breach of the rights to property, as Lawyer George would say.”

“Looky here, would you!” cried Josh, presently, while his companion was prowling around, and peeping through a hole in the wall, as though curious to know what the interior of the cabin looked like.

“What have you found now?” asked Jack, who was himself wondering why that new single trail had been made, coming out of the dense bushes at the back of the hut, and showing signs of recent passage, which somehow he could not help connecting with the flash of that lantern on the preceding night.

“The bally old lock don’t hold even a little bit,” announced Josh, as though that circumstance added to his hilarity. “See, I can lift it off with one finger. It’s a fake, that’s what it is, Jack. But while it might fool ordinary people, it can’t a live Yankee. Now what d’ye say to going in?”

Jack laughed as though amused at the reasoning of his chum, and remarked:

“I see you think we wouldn’t be breaking the law of possession if we walked in when the lock was out of gear. That sounds nice, Josh, but many a chicken thief has found that such a plea didn’t save him. But all the same, I’m going to step in and look around a bit.”

“Seems to me it smells fishy around here?” observed Josh, sniffing eagerly.

“Oh! that’s easy enough to explain,” and Jack pointed to several heads of black bass that lay near by. “Somebody has had a fish dinner, for there is the ash bed of a fire. It may have been passing sportsmen from one of the big hotels; then again, perhaps the people who made the trail also cooked a meal or two here!”

Once inside the cabin he looked around. There was virtually nothing to see. The place had not a sign of furniture of any description. Some straw lay on the hard earthen floor, as though it might be made useful in case one wished to pass the night there.

Josh almost doubled up with laughter.