The Rival Campers Ashore: or, The Mystery of the Mill

Smith Ruel Perley

The Rival Campers Ashore or The Mystery of the Mill

CHAPTER I

AN INLAND VOYAGE

The morning train from Benton, rumbling and puffing along its way through outlying farmland, and sending its billows of smoke like sea rollers across the pastures, drew up, ten miles from the city, at a little station that overlooked a pond, lying clear and sparkling at the base of some low, wooded hills. An old-fashioned, weather-beaten house, adjacent the station, and displaying a sign-board bearing the one word, "Spencer's," indicated that Spencer, whoever he might prove to be, would probably extend the hospitality of his place to travellers. Here and there, widely scattered across the fields, were a few farmhouses.

The locomotive, having announced its approach by a mingled clanging and whistling that sent startled cattle galloping for the shelter of the thickets, came to a dead stop at the station; but, as though to show its realization of the insignificance of Spencer's, continued to snort and throb impatiently. Certain important-appearing trainmen, with sleeves rolled to the elbows, hastily throwing open the door of the baggage-car, seemed to take the hint.

Presently a trunk, turning a summersault through the air, landed, somewhat damaged, on the platform. A few boxes and packages followed likewise, similarly ejected. Then, through the open doorway, there appeared the shapely, graceful bow of a canoe. Whatever treatment this might have received, left to the tender mercies of the trainmen, can only be imagined; for at this moment two youths, who had descended from one of the passenger coaches, came running along the platform.

"Hold on, there," said the larger of the two, addressing a man who stood with arms upreached to catch the end of the canoe, "let me get hold with you. We don't want to be wrecked before we start, – eh, Henry?"

"Hope not," responded his companion, quietly taking the bow of the canoe, which the larger youth relinquished to him, while the latter stepped to the car door and put a stalwart shoulder and arm under the stern, passed to him by a man inside.

Together, the two boys deposited their craft gently on a patch of grass near-by; the locomotive puffed away from Spencer's, dragging its train; the station agent resumed his interrupted pipe. Soon the only sounds that broke the stillness of the place were the clickings of a single telegraph instrument in the station and the scoffing voices of a few crows, circling about the tops of some pine trees that overlooked the farmhouse.

The prospect that met the eyes of the boys was most enticing. On one hand lay the little pond, reflecting some great patches of cloud that flecked the sky. All about them, as far as eye could discern, stretched the country, rolling and irregular, meadow and pasture, corn and wheat land, and groves of maple, pine and birch.

Flowing into the pond, a thin, shadowy stream wound its way through alders and rushes, coming down along past Spencer's, invitingly from the fields and hills. It was the principal inlet of the pond, flowing hence from another and larger pond some miles to the westward.

"Well, Henry, what do you say?" said the larger boy. "Looks great, doesn't it?"

"Ripping, Jack!" exclaimed the other. "I feel like paddling a mile a minute. Let's pick her up and get afloat."

They reached for the "her" referred to – the light canoe – when the station agent, welcoming even this trifling relief from the monotony of Spencer's, approached them.

"That's a right nice craft of yours," he remarked, eying it curiously. "Going on the pond?"

"No, we're going around through the streams to Benton," replied the elder boy. "Think there's water enough to float us?"

"Why, p'raps," said the station agent. "It's a long jaunt, though – twenty-five or thirty miles, I reckon. Calc'late to do it in one day?"

"Why, yes, and home in time for a late supper. We didn't think it was quite so far as that, though. How far do you call it to the brook that leads over into Dark Stream?"

"Oh, two or three miles – ask Spencer. He knows more'n I do 'bout it."

Spencer, a deliberate, sleepily-inclined individual, much preoccupied with a jack-knife and a shingle, "allowed" the distance to be a matter of from a mile and a half, to two miles, or "mebbe" two and a half.

"Henry Burns, old chap, get hold of that canoe and let's scoot," exclaimed his companion, laughing. "Tom and Bob said 'twas a mile. Probably everyone we'd ask would say something different. If we keep on asking questions, we'll go wrong, sure."

Henry Burns's response was to pick up his end of the canoe, and they went cautiously down through the tangle of grasses to the stream. The buoyant craft rested lightly on its surface; they stepped aboard, Henry Burns in the bow, his companion, Jack Harvey, in the stern, dipped their paddles joyously together, and went swiftly on their way.

It was about half-past seven o'clock of a June morning. The sun was lightening the landscape, yet it was by no means clear. The day had, in fact, come in foggy, and the mist was slow in burning off from the hills. Often, at intervals, it hung over the water like a thin curtain. But the mystery of an unknown stream, hidden by the banks along which it wound deviously, with many a sharp twist and turn, tempted them ever to vigorous exertion.

Just a little way ahead, and it seemed as though the narrow stream were ending against a bank of green. Then, as they approached, an abrupt swerving of the stream one way or the other, opened up the course anew for them. This was a matter of constant repetition. Theirs were the delights, without danger, of exploration.

"Warming up a bit, isn't it, Jack?" said Henry Burns, laying aside his paddle for a moment and peeling off a somewhat dingy sweater. "I'm not so sure about getting the sun for long, though."

"Nor I," replied his companion, driving the canoe swiftly with his single paddle till the other had freed himself of his garment and was braced, steadily, once more; when he, too, laid his paddle across the gunwales and stripped for the work. "I don't just like the looks of those clouds. If we were in the old Viking now, I'd say put on all sail and make for harbour; for it looks like rain by and by, but no wind."

"Well, this is all one big harbour from here to Benton," laughed Henry Burns. "Avast, I sight a cow off the port bow. Never mind the cow? All right, on we go. If it rains hard, we'll run ashore and hunt for a barn. Wouldn't Tom Harris and Bob White laugh to see us poking back by train, instead of making the trip?"

"Oh, we won't turn back," said Harvey. "Besides, there's no train in to Benton till night. Fancy spending the day at Spencer's station! It's through the streams for us now, rain or shine."

As though to demonstrate more fully his determination, Harvey dipped with a sharper, quicker stroke, put the strength of two muscular arms into his work, and they sped quickly past the turns of their winding course. Perhaps either Tom Harris or Bob White, of whom Henry Burns had spoken, might have wielded the paddles with a bit more of skill, have kept the course a little straighter, or skimmed the turns a trifle more close; but neither could have put more of life and vim into the strokes. A large, thick-set youth was Harvey, strongly built, with arms bronzed and sinewy – clearly a youth who had lived much out of doors, and had developed in sun and air.

Harvey's companion was considerably slighter of build, but of a well-knit figure, whose muscles, while not so pronounced, played quickly and easily; and whose whole manner suggested somehow a reserve strength, and a physique capable of much endurance.

Had they possessed, however, more of that same skill and familiarity with canoeing which comes only with practice, they would have perceived more clearly the speed with which they were travelling, and how great a distance already lay between them and the point where they had embarked.

"Queer we don't come to that inlet," remarked Harvey, at length. "I haven't seen anything that looked like the land-arks: the two houses, the road and a bridge, that Tom spoke of."

"No," replied Henry Burns, but added, reflectively, "unless we passed them at least three-quarters of a mile back. But there wasn't any inlet there. Hang it! Do you suppose Spencer was right after all?"

"May be," said Harvey. "Let's hit it up a little harder; but watch sharp for the brook."

"Aye, aye, skipper," said Henry Burns.

But at this moment the glassy surface of the stream dimpled all over with the sudden fall of raindrops; a compact, heavy cloud wheeled directly overhead and poured its contents upon them, while, afar off, the fields were still lit with patches of sunlight. They scrambled as hastily as they could into their sweaters again.

"Let it come," said Henry Burns, resuming his wet paddle; "it's only a cloud-bank that's caught us. We'll work out of it if we keep on. Then the sun will dry us."

They pushed on in the rain, peering eagerly ahead for some signs of the landmarks that would show them the brook. Then, all at once, to their amazement, the stream they were following divided into two forks; the one at the right coming down from higher land, broken in its course, as far as they could see, by stones and boulders that made it impassable even for the light canoe; the other branch emerging from a thick tangle of overhanging alders and willows.

"Well now, what do you make of that?" cried Harvey, in disgust. "That can't be the brook, to the right, and the other doesn't look as though it led anywhere in particular." He stopped paddling, and squeezed the water out of his cap.

"We've come past the brook," replied Henry Burns. "It's rainy-day luck. We've got to go up to that farmhouse on the hill and find out where we are."

"I haven't seen a farmhouse for more than half an hour," exclaimed Harvey.

"No, but there are cattle in that pasture, and a track going up through the grove," said Henry Burns. "We'll follow that. It won't be any blinder than this stream."

They brought the canoe in upon the muddy bank, slumped into the ooze, pulled the canoe half out of water and started off.

"Nice trip!" said Henry Burns. "And the worst of it is, I have a suspicion I know just where that brook is. I can see it now. There was a tiny bit of a cove, a lot of rushes growing there, and two houses back about a quarter of a mile. But it was dry – no water running – and it was so near the station I didn't suppose that could be the place."

"It isn't so dry by this time," remarked Harvey.

"No, and neither are we," said Henry Burns. "Look out!"

He dragged one leg out from a mud-hole into which he had sunk to the knee. The path they were following led through clumps of fern and brake, almost waist high. These, dripping with rain, drenched them as they pushed their way through. Some fifteen minutes of hard travelling brought them to a little rise of land, from the top of which they could see, down in a valley beyond, a farmhouse.

"More wet day luck," muttered Harvey. "We're in for it, though. It's a good half mile more."

They tramped on, in silence. The particular cloud that had first wet them had blended much with others by this time, and it was still raining. But they came up to the house soon, and, the big barn door standing open invitingly, they entered there. A man and two boys, busily engaged mending a harness, looked up in surprise.

"Sort er wet," the man commented. "Come from the city, eh? Well, I guess it's only a shower. What's that? The brook that runs into Dark Stream! Huh! You're two miles past it."

Henry Burns and Harvey looked at each other helplessly. Then Harvey grinned.

"It's so tough, it's almost a joke, Henry," he said.

"Great – if it had only happened to somebody else, say your friend Harry Brackett," replied Henry Burns. "Guess we won't tell much about this part of the trip to Tom and Bob, though. What do you want to do, go back to the station, or keep on?"

"Back!" exclaimed Harvey. "Say, I'm so mad, I'd keep on now if every drop of rain was as big as a base-ball. I'll never go back, if it takes a week – that is, if you're game?"

"Come on," said Henry Burns quietly.

CHAPTER II

TURNED ADRIFT

Soon they were on their way again, with the sky lightening a little and the rain almost ceased. They plunged through the tangle of dripping brakes, down to the shore; pushed off once more in midstream, and started back the way they had come.

There was not quite so much spirit to their paddling as there had been on the way up. Every stroke had meant to their minds, then, just so much of their journey accomplished. Now they knew they were striving only to put themselves on the right track again, and that there would be four wet miles of wasted effort. However, they were still strong, and the canoe went rapidly down stream.

The two miles seemed nearer four when Henry Burns suddenly pointed with his paddle ahead and said, soberly, "There's the place, Jack. I saw it, coming up, but I thought it was only a patch of bull-rushes. We can't get a canoe through, anyway. Let's go ashore and have a look at the country."

They paddled in and scrambled up the bank. Sure enough, there was what would be a small brook, at some stages of water, coming in from across country; doubtless with water enough, in the spring of the year, to float a canoe; but now impassable. They followed it up through a wheat field to a road, from which, to their relief, a stream of about the dimensions of the one they had been following – not quite so large – was to be seen. A horse drawing a wagon at a jog trot came down the road, and they accosted the occupant of the seat.

"How many miles to Mill Stream by the way of Dark Stream?" he said, repeating their question. "Well, I reckon it's fifteen or sixteen. Water enough? Oh, yes, mebbe, except p'raps in spots. Goin' round to Benton, you say? Sho! Don't esactly envy yer the jaunt. Guess there'll be more rain bime-by. Good day. Giddap."

"Wall, I reckon," said Henry Burns, dryly, imitating the man's manner of speech, "that I don't ask any more of these farmers how many miles we've got to travel. According to his reckoning, we'd get to Benton sometime to-morrow night. The next man might say 'twas fifty miles to Benton, and then you'd want to turn back."

"Never!" exclaimed Jack Harvey, grimly. "Let's go for the canoe."

They got the canoe on their shoulders, and made short work of the carry. But it was after ten o'clock when they set their craft afloat in Dark Stream; and the real work of the day had just begun.

Knowing they were really on the right course, however, cheered them.

"Say," cried Harvey, in a sudden burst of enthusiasm, "we'll not stop at Benton, at all, perhaps; just keep on paddling down Mill Stream past the city, down into Samoset river, into the bay, and out to Grand Island. Make a week of it."

But even as he spoke, a big rain drop splashed on his cheek, and another storm burst over them. Down it came in torrents; a summer rainfall to delight the heart of a farmer with growing crops; a shower that fairly bent the grass in the fields with its weight; that made a tiny lake in the bottom of the canoe, flooded back around Harvey's knees in the stern, and which trickled copiously down the backs of the two boys underneath their sweaters.

"What was you saying about Grand Island, Jack?" inquired Henry Burns, slyly.

"Grand Island be hanged!" said Harvey. "When I start for there, I'll go in a boat that's got a cabin. I guess Benton will do for us."

They looked about for shelter, but there were woods now on both sides of the stream, and through them they could get no glimpse of any farmhouse.

"Well, I wouldn't go into one if I saw it, now!" exclaimed Harvey. "I can't get any wetter. Pretty soon we'll begin to like it. I'll catch a fish, anyway. This rain will make 'em bite."

He unwound a line from a reel, attached a spoon-hook, cast it over and began to troll astern, far in the wake of the canoe. It was, in truth, an ideal day for fishing, and the first clump of lily pads they passed yielded them a big pickerel. He came in fighting and tumbling, making the worst of his struggle – after the manner of pickerel – when he was fairly aboard. Once free of the hook, he dropped down into the puddle in the canoe and lashed the water with his tail so that it spattered in Jack Harvey's face worse than the rain. Harvey despatched the fish with a few blows of his paddle.

"Guess I won't catch another," he said shortly. "I can't stand a shower coming both ways at once."

Henry Burns chuckled quietly to himself. "Let's empty her out," he suggested.

They ran the canoe ashore, took hold at either end, inverted the craft and let the water drain out. Then they went on again. It was a fair and pretty country through which the stream threaded its way, with countless windings and twistings; but the rain dimmed and faded its beauties now. They thought only of making progress. Yet the rain was warm, they could not be chilled while paddling vigorously, and Henry Burns said he was beginning to like it.

Presently, in the far distance, a village clock sounded the hour. It struck twelve o'clock.

"My, I didn't know it was getting so late," said Henry Burns. "What do you say to a bite to eat?"

"I could eat that fish raw," said Harvey.

"No need. We'll cook him," responded Henry Burns. "There's the place," and he pointed in toward a grove of evergreens and birches. "That village is a mile off. We don't want another walk through this drenching country."

They were only too glad to jump out ashore.

"You get the wood, Jack, and I'll rig up the shelter and clean the fish," said Henry Burns. Drawing out a small bag made of light duck from one end of the canoe, they untied it and took therefrom two small hatchets, a coil of stout cord, a fry-pan, a knife and fork apiece and a strip of bacon; likewise a large and a small bottle. The larger contained coffee; the smaller, matches. They examined the latter anxiously.

"They're all right," said Harvey, shaking the bottle. "Carry your matches in a bottle, on a leaky boat and in the woods. I've been in both."

Taking the cord and one of the hatchets, Henry Burns proceeded to stretch a line between two trees; then interlacing the line, on a slant between other trees, he constructed a slight network; upon which, after an excursion amid the surrounding woods, he laid a sort of thatch of boughs.

"That's not the best shelter I ever saw," he said at length, surveying his work, "but it will keep off the worst of the rain."

It did, in fact, answer fairly well, with the added protection of the heavy branches overhead.

In the mean time, Harvey, having hunted for some distance, had found what he wanted – a dead tree, not so old as to be rotten, but easy to cut and split. Into the heart of this he went with his hatchet, and quickly got an armful of dry fire-wood. He came running back with the wood, and a few sheets of birch-bark – the inner part of the bark – with the wet, outer layer carefully stripped off. They had a blaze going quickly, with this, beneath the shelter of boughs.

They put the bacon on to fry, and pieces of the fish, cut thin with a keen hunting-knife. The coffee, poured from the bottle into a tin dipper, they set near the blaze, on some brands. They they gazed out upon the drizzle, as the dinner cooked.

Harvey shook his head, gloomily.

"We're in for it," he said. "It's settled down for an all day's rain."

"I hope so," responded Henry Burns, with a twinkle in his eye, "I like it – but I wish I could feel just one dry spot on my back."

They ate their dinner of fried bacon and pickerel and coffee beside a fire that blazed cheerily, despite an occasional sputtering caused by the rain dripping through; and when they had got half dry and had started forth once more into the rain, they were in good spirits. But the first ten minutes of paddling found them drenched to the skin again.

They ran some small rapids after a time, and later carried around a little dam. The afternoon waned, and the windings of the stream seemed endless. It was three o'clock when, at a sudden turn to the right, which was to the eastward, they came upon another stream flowing in and mingling with the one they were following. Thenceforth the two ran as one stream, the banks widening perceptibly, the stream flowing far more broadly, and with increased depth and strength. The way from now on was to the eastward some three or four miles, and then almost due south to Benton, a distance of ten of eleven miles more.

They were soon running swiftly with the current, shooting rapids, at times, of an eighth of a mile in length, going very carefully not to scrape on submerged rocks. And still the rain fell. There were two dams to carry around, and they did this somewhat drearily, trudging along the muddy shores, climbing the slippery banks with difficulty, and with some danger of falling and smashing their canoe.

Five, six and seven o'clock came; darkness was shutting in, and they were three miles from Benton. To make matters worse, with the falling of night the rain increased, pouring in such torrents that they had frequently to pause and empty out their canoe.

A few minutes after seven, and a light gleamed from a window a little distance back from the stream, less than a quarter of a mile.

"There's our lodgings for the night, Jack," said Henry Burns, pointing up through the rain. "I don't mind saying I've had enough. It's three miles yet to Benton, or nearly that, there are three more dams, and as for walking, the road must be a bog-hole."

"I'm with you," responded Harvey. "If it's a lodging house, I've the money to pay – three dollars in the oiled silk wallet. If it's a farmhouse, we'll stay, if we have to sleep in the barn."

Presently they perceived a landing, with several rowboats tied up. They ran in alongside this, drew their canoe clear up on to the float, turned it over, and walked rapidly up toward the house from which the light shone.

"We're in luck for once," said Harvey. "There's a sign over the door."

The sign, indeed, seemed to offer them some sort of welcome. It bore an enormous hand pointing inward, and the inscription, "Half Way House."

"I wonder what it's half way between," said Henry Burns, as they paused a moment on the threshold of the door. "Half way between the sky and China, I guess. But I don't care, if the roof doesn't leak."

The picture, as they entered, was, in truth, one to cheer the most wretched. Directly in front of them, in line with the door, a fire of hickory logs roared in an old-fashioned brick fireplace, lighting up the hotel office almost as much as did the two kerosene lamps, disposed at either end. An old woman, dozing comfortably in a big rocking chair before the blaze, jumped up at their appearance.

"Land sakes!" she ejaculated, querulously. "What a night to be comin' in upon us! Dear! Dear! Want to stay over night, you say? Well, if that ain't like boys – canooering, you call it, in this mess of a rain. Gracious me, but you're wet to the skin, both er yer. Well, take them wooden chairs, as won't be spoiled with water, and sit up by the fire till I make a new pot of coffee and warm up a bit of stew and fry a bit of bacon. Canooering in this weather! Well, that beats me."

"The proprietor, you say? Well, he's up the road, but he'll be in, soon. You can pay me for the supper, and fix 'bout the stay in' over night with him. I jes' tend to the cookin'. That's all I do."

She called them to supper in the course of a quarter of an hour, and had clearly done her best for them. There was coffee, steaming hot, and biscuit, warmed up to a crisp; bacon, freshly fried, with eggs; a dish of home-made preserves, and a sheet of gingerbread.

"Eat all yer can hold," she chuckled, as they fell to, hungry as panthers. "Canooering's good fer the appertite, ain't it? It's plain vittles, but I reckon the cookin's good as the most of 'em, if I say it, who shouldn't."

She rambled on, somewhat garrulously, as the boys ate. They did full justice to the cooking, stuffed themselves till Henry Burns said he could feel his skin stretch; paid the old woman her price for the meal – "twenty-five cents apiece, an' it couldn't be done for less" – and went and seated themselves comfortably once more by the fire in the office. They settled themselves back comfortably.