Motor Boat Boys Among the Florida Keys Part 14

"Say, now you've gone and got me guessing good and hard again,"

remonstrated George. "You seem to just love to say things that sound so mysterious. Tell a fellow, Jack, there's a good chap, why you don't want them to hear us talking. Why, we hadn't ought to have anything but good words to say about those gentlemen after the fine way they acted toward our chum here."

"That's true enough, George," Jack went on to say; "and make up your mind I'm the last one to look a gift horse in the mouth to find out his age; but there were a few things about our two new friends that somehow made me sit up and take notice; and I wanted to ask Josh here what he thought."

"I just expected you'd be up to that dodge," the party in question observed, with a little chuckle, as of amus.e.m.e.nt. "I knew that if anybody could get on to their curves, Jack would."

"Curves!" repeated George, wonderingly.

"Sure, he do be thinkin' he's playing baseball again," laughed Jimmy.

"And from the way you talk, Josh," Jack went on, paying no attention to these side remarks on the part of his other chums, "I can give a guess that you must have made some little discovery on your own hook that has told you our two friends might be playing a little game of blindman's buff with us right now. How is that, Josh?"

"Jack, you're the greatest feller I ever struck, to get on to anything,"

replied the long-legged one, admiringly.

"That isn't answering my question," the other continued.

"Then I'll say, yes," Josh went on.

"Tell us what it was you heard," George asked, once more fairly boiling with a desire to know everything connected with the mysterious pa.s.sengers of the little power boat that had acted so strangely on the trip down the east coast.

"Hold on a minute," said Josh. "This bandage is slipping down, so I'll have to get you to fix it for me, boys. Hope the hole's leaked all it's going to, because I can't afford to lose as much fluid as some fellers, Nick for instance. There, that feels all right. Now, what was you saying to me? Oh! yes, about how I happened to get onto the fact that the two gentlemen that took me aboard their boat might be somethin' else besides what they said. Was that it?"

"Just what it was!" George came back, knowing how Josh always liked to beat about the bush more or less before telling anything he knew.

"Well, here's the way it stands, fellers," went on Josh. "You see, after they carried me on board the boat, I laid there like a mummy in a trance. But by slow degrees I began to come back again. And all the while my eyes must have been shut, I could hear some mumbling voices, though for the life of me I couldn't make out who it was talkin'."

"Oh! hurry up, old ice-wagon; get a move on you, and tell us!" exclaimed George, almost biting his tongue with impatience.

"I heard one man that I afterwards knew was Mr. Bliss say, as plain as anything: 'I tell you, they're nothin' but boys, and they ain't goin' to give us away.' And then the other one, he says, says he: 'If I thought this one knew anything, I'd be tempted to let him lie there where we picked him up, that's what. We can't afford to take any chances, and you know it, Sam!'"

Jack gave a low whistle.

"And yet Mr. Bliss said his friend's name was Bryce Carpenter," he observed. "I had an idea all along, from the way he called that name, he wasn't used to saying it. Sam came easier to his tongue. Now, we don't know who Sam is, or what he's done, but seems to me there's something crooked about that yarn they set up, of a wager made with that Lenox fellow."

"They never made such a wager," declared Josh, stubbornly; "and right now the only thing they want to do is to get around to Tampa, where they expect to slip aboard a boat bound for Cuba. I heard some more talk before I opened my eyes and spoiled it all. If the one who calls himself Carpenter hadn't got cold feet, their plan was to drop down the keys to Key West, and get across to Havana from there."

"Well, what's that to us?" remarked Jack. "They treated you white, Josh, didn't they?"

"They sure did," answered the other, warmly.

"All right," Jack went on; "then it's no business of ours who and what they are; and we'll just have to forget them. But, listen, wasn't that a shout ahead, there?"

CHAPTER XII.

AN INVASION OF THE CAMP.

"I heard it, too, Jack!" exclaimed George; but neither of the others seemed to have noticed anything, though in the case of Josh, with his head tied up, this was really not to be wondered at.

"What sort of a sound was it, boys?" demanded the tall one.

"I thought it was a shout of some kind; how about it, George?" Jack replied.

"Same here. But then, perhaps it's only Herb and Nick skylarking. Once in so often Nick gets a streak, and thinks he has to work off his high humor. But see here, Jack, I hope you don't imagine some sort of trouble has dropped in on the two boys we left in camp less than an hour back?"

"Well, I don't know," Jack made answer, in a half-hesitating way. "But somehow it struck me that yell was more along the line of anger or fright than the result of high spirits or kidding."

"But Jack, we don't hear any more of the same sort?" George remonstrated.

"How's that, then?" asked the other, as a plain whoop came faintly to their ears.

"Say, that's Nick, all right," Josh declared, stoutly. "I could tell his shout among a thousand. There never was one like it. I always said a wild Injun from the Crow reservation couldn't begin to hold a candle to Nick, when it came to letting out a whoop."

"But what would make him give tongue that way?" asked George, as he pushed on at the heels of the leader; for they were now following what seemed to be a trail through the undergrowth, where the trees grew sparingly.

"Troth, and I hope now, nothing has happened to Herb," Jimmy remarked.

"Oh! let up guessing that way. Whatever could happen to either of them, tell me that?" George demanded. "We left the boys safe in camp; and they even said they believed they'd go aboard one of the boats, although making sure to keep the fire going, so we would see it, if we got mixed in our bearings, while skirting the short line. Maybe you'd expect an alligator to crawl in from the swamp, and try to make a meal off our chums?"

"Well, why not?" demanded Josh. "I reckon, now, they have just such reptiles in this region, don't they, great big fellers, too, some call them crocodiles, I'm told. But there, Nick tunes up again, like a good feller."

"There must be something wrong, or he wouldn't show so much excitement.

Make all the hurry you can, boys. We're getting closer all the time; yes, and it seems to me I can almost make out what he's shouting."

"You're right, Jack, for I'd take my affidavy I heard him say just then: 'Get out, you robber! skedaddle, now!'"

"That sounds like some one had found the camp, and was trying to steal our belongings!" George exclaimed.

"Well, I hope they lave the boats, that's all; for the walkin' do be harrd, I'm tould, between here and Meyers," Jimmy up and said, in his whimsical way.

"Good gracious! you don't think, now, that anybody would be so mean as to try and crib our bully boats?" gasped George; and no matter what oceans of trouble his _Wireless_ may have given him in the past, all was forgiven now, when danger lurked over the motor boat flotilla.

"Come along!" called Jack, over his shoulder; "the quickest way to find out what it all means, is to get there. Hit it up a little swifter, all of you! Put your best foot forward, and run!"

They accordingly did so. What mattered it if occasionally one of them did happen to trip, and come down with a hard thump; it was only a question of a few seconds for the unlucky one to scramble to his feet, and a few bruises more or less surely did not count.

In this fas.h.i.+on, then, they covered the remainder of the ground that lay between the camp and themselves.

Jack, being in the lead, was the first to glimpse what was going on.

He held up a warning arm to head off the impetuous rush of his mates; and as they could plainly see his figure outlined against the bright background of the fire-lighted zone, George and Josh and Jimmy all drew up alongside the leader.

No one said anything. They were too busily engaged taking it all in, to express themselves in any way. And, indeed, it was a sight well worth observing, one that would return to them many a time, and always cause a smile to creep across each boy's face.

For it was more humorous than tragical, though possibly one of the actors in the affair looked upon it in the light of a serious proposition.