CHAPTER XVIII—WHAT JERRY’S STICK BROUGHT DOWN
More days passed, and the houseboat was making steady progress down the Mississippi, with as happy a party of lads aboard as could be found anywhere. Indeed, each day seemed to bring new delights along with it; and so lighthearted were the chums that every little while Bluff would break out in some college song, to be joined in the chorus by several other hearty voices.
They fished many times, and took toll of the waters they passed over; though sometimes the hooks came in empty, and they had to change the order arranged for dinner that evening. Once Bluff, who had gone ashore with his favorite gun over his shoulders, was heard to shoot several times; and the others were more or less concerned as to what manner of spoils he might have run across; for really at this time of year the law did not allow of hunting, save for woodcock, and very few other edible kinds of game.
When he came in shortly afterwards it was to fling down a magnificent specimen of the red-tailed hawk.
“Why, would you believe it,” asserted Bluff, stoutly, “the measly thing just went for me like hot cakes, and I never did a thing to rile her up. I had to use my gun first of all, to club her away; and then, as she darted down at me, I just thought it was a mighty poor game that two couldn’t play at; so I began to shoot. Took several times to make her be good. Looky here, where she scratched me in the cheek when she tried to carry me off at first.”
The others never did know the true inwardness of that story. Frank guessed that Bluff, deeming a big, saucy hawk fair game, had blazed away and wounded her; and that he got his scratched cheek when he came to close quarters with the bird.
But to the victor belong the spoils; and in reality Frank believed the hawk was likely to do more damage to farmers’ chickens and the small song birds, than it might good by destroying mice and such vermin that play such havoc with the growing crops. And for many days did that handsome hawk hang there, nailed on the cabin wall of the houseboat.
Frank continued to study Luther Snow. He was slowly making up his mind that they must get rid of him before arriving anywhere near New Orleans. He had mentioned Vicksburg once or twice as the point where they would purchase him a ticket on the railroad, so he could get to his destination quickly; but secretly Frank had arranged with his chums that Memphis should be the point of departure.
“Between us,” remarked Jerry, on one occasion, as they were talking it over together, while Luther was inside the cabin, asleep on the cot they had made up for his occupancy; “I really don’t think the old chap wants to leave us at all, but would rather stay aboard till we get to Orleans.”
“Sure he would,” remarked Will, with a nod and a grin; “he’d be a silly not to, when he’s certain of three square meals a day, and such meals,” and he smacked his lips in a way that must have made the cook feel proud that his talent was appreciated so much.
“Yes, I happen to know he wants to stick by us,” remarked Bluff.
“Tell us how, then,” said Frank, quickly, his eye on the door of the cabin.
“Well, more’n a few times, when we got to talkin’, Luther, he’d turn to the subject of the great expense he’d been to us; and then he’d always say he hoped we’d change our minds, and not put him ashore at Vicksburg, because he was so contented aboard here, and wished he could just finish the voyage with us. Besides, he said we might need his help later on, as a doctor; and you know he did fix me up the finest way ever when I fell on that axe, and cut my leg so bad a week ago. Reckon no regular sawbones could have done the job better.”
“He says he studied for a doctor’s sheepskin away back, and was always sorry he didn’t keep right along,” Will put in.
“How about that, Frank; do we keep him or assist him on his way by rail?” Bluff asked; but Frank would not commit himself, because he believed that in some way the old man might hear of it, and play “sick” when they drew near Memphis, so that they could not have the heart to put him ashore.
He was himself coming to some sort of conclusion in the matter, and it first of all seemed to be founded on a certain fact, which by now Frank had made certain of. Luther Snow was not the real name of their passenger. Frank had made a startling discovery one day recently, and it put an end to his bewilderment at least. It happened that, chancing to notice some handkerchiefs the old man had stowed in his various pockets, and which he was washing out, after a crude fashion that would have made a woman laugh, Frank saw that in every case a name had been carefully erased with indelible ink.
Then again there began to be other little things about the old man that told the observing lad he surely had never been a carpenter. Frank purposely asked him to build some boxes out of several smooth boards purchased for the purpose; and the result was a botched job that any second-class carpenter would have blushed to own. Even Bluff screwed up his eyebrows when he saw them, and privately declared that he did not wonder old Luther was out of a job so often, if that was a sample of the best he could do along the line of his trade.
To Frank there was a deeper significance in this failure to make good on the part of their passenger. No wonder his hands were so free from calloused places, for Frank now felt positive that Luther had never been a carpenter in all his life.
If that part was made up, then probably the entire tale was only a “fairy story,” told for a purpose. That purpose was to get aboard the houseboat, for some reason or other. Well, he had been aboard for some weeks now, and nothing had happened, only he seemed to like it so well he wanted to remain with the boys until they reached New Orleans.
There was something about this desire on his part that impressed Frank. If, as he now actually began to believe, Luther Snow was really the Marcus Stackpole of whom Uncle Felix had particularly warned them, why had he not picked up the hidden treasure Jerry was always talking about, and disappeared long ago?
Frank somehow began to believe that, after all, there was no secret cache aboard the boat which might contain valuables in the shape of papers or jewels. Jerry liked to think there was, but really they had not a peg on which to hang such an idea; except that queer Uncle Felix seemed to want to keep strangers off the boat, and particularly a man he seemed to dislike very much, one Marcus Stackpole.
Frank was even now busying himself with trying to lay some little trap by means of which he might learn the truth.
“I’ll take him unawares some time,” he was saying to himself, as he stood on deck that afternoon, after they had tied up, with the sunlight around him, and looked out from under the shady branches of the tree to which the boat was fast; “and spring that name on him—call him Mr. Stackpole. If he can look me in the eye, and never show a sign, I’ll have to think I’m mistaken; but all the same, off this boat he goes at Memphis, if I have to get an ambulance, and send him to the hospital.”
Bluff was seated, as he often might be seen, on the rail of the boat; while Will pottered over the tangled fish lines, for Jerry had taken a notion to put a new roll of film in the little camera, and was even then rubbing it up. Luther Snow, a blanket about his shoulders, sat near by, watching it all in a pleased sort of way.
“Time was when I could stand anything, boys,” remarked the old man as he gathered this covering closer to his body; “and I reckon I’ve been through considerable all over the wide world, for a man who never had a cent that he didn’t earn himself. But I’m getting a little old now, you see. I begin to feel rheumatism in my bones, and sometimes I begin to believe that my days as a rover are nearly over.”
Frank always listened when he started to speak of experiences in his checkered past. It often aroused the curiosity of the boy to understand how a man who, as he confessed himself, was only a common carpenter (and a mighty poor one at that, Frank would say to himself), had been able to get around in all the queer corners of the world that Luther Snow had.
He seemed to know many foreign cities by heart, and spoke of certain things in a way that only one familiar with them could do. Well, there could be no doubt of one thing, and this was that Luther occupied the rôle of a mystery to Frank, a puzzle he could not wholly solve.
If, then, he proved to be Marcus Stackpole, the very man against whom they had been especially warned, what did he want?
Frank kept repeating that to himself time and again as he lounged there and in the light of the declining sun watched his chums; then turned his eyes in the direction of the man who had the blanket about his shoulders, and who seemed so satisfied to be with them on board Uncle Felix’s houseboat.
It was Jerry who startled them all suddenly by calling out:
“Hey! there’s a gray squirrel right over your head, Bluff! Watch me give the little beggar a scare, will you?”
He reached over, and picked up one of a number of sticks of wood which had been brought on board at their last stop, being intended to serve as fuel for the little cook stove, after they had been chipped in half, perhaps.
This was a short and heavy one Jerry had selected. Rising to his feet, he gave it one whirl around his head, and then let fly. Jerry had always been reckoned something of a thrower. He often played in the pitcher’s box before he went away from home, and was even now a promising fielder on the sub nine at college.
So Frank would not have been very much surprised had he succeeded in knocking the squirrel in question off his perch. But he was very much astonished at the most remarkable consequences of Jerry’s shot.
There was an angry scream, such as only an enraged cat could make; and something large and hairy, with extended legs, came floundering down upon the deck of the houseboat directly in front of Bluff. Indeed, in its passage, the wildcat, for it turned out to be nothing else, made a vicious stab for Bluff; and that excited as well as alarmed individual was so taken aback, that quite naturally he lost his grip on the railing of the boat, and fell over into the river.
This was getting to be a settled habit with Bluff, for he seemed capable of going overboard on the slightest excuse, just as though he rather liked taking a plunge into the cool waters of the Mississippi.
And the angry cat sprawled there on the deck, yowling and snarling, as if daring anyone to dispute his right to be monarch of all he surveyed.