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

"Oh, you did, hey!" he roared. "Well, why didn't you bring a dynamite bomb and touch that off when you arrived? Lucky for you that dog didn't go for you. He'll take a piece out of some of you one of these days." (Colonel Witham did not observe that the dog, at this moment, tail between legs, was flattening himself out like a flounder, trying to squeeze himself underneath the board walk.) "What do you want here, anyway?"

"Some bottled soda, Colonel," said the youngest boy, in a tone that would seem to indicate that the colonel was their best friend. "Bottled soda for the crowd. My treat."

"Bottled monkey-shines and tomfoolery!" muttered Colonel Witham, arising slowly from his chair. "I wish it would choke that young Joe Warren. Never saw him when he wasn't up to something."

But he went inside with them and served their order; scowling upon them as they drank.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Making a fifty mile run, Colonel," replied one of the boys, whose features indicated that he was an elder brother of the boy who had previously spoken. "Tom and Bob – you remember them – are setting the pace on their tandem for Arthur and Joe and me. Whew, but we came up a-flying. Well, good day, we're off. You may see Tim Reardon by and by. We left him down the road with a busted tire."

They were away, with a shout and a whirl of dust.

"Hm!" growled the colonel. "I'll set the dog on Tim Reardon if he comes up the way they did. Here, Cæsar, come here!"

The colonel gave a sharp whistle.

But Cæsar, a yellow mongrel of questionable breeds, did not appear. A keen vision might have seen this canine terror to evildoers poke a shrinking muzzle a little way from beneath the board walk, emit a frightened whine and disappear.

Colonel Witham dozed again, and again slumber overtook him. He did not stir when Grannie Thornton, recovered from her attack of rheumatism, appeared at a window and shook a table-cloth therefrom; nor when Bess Thornton, dancing out of the doorway, whisked past his chair and seated herself at the edge of the piazza.

The girl's keen blue eyes perceiving, presently, an object in the distance looking like a queer combination of boy and bicycle, she ran out from the dooryard as it approached. Tim Reardon, an undersized, sharp-eyed youngster, rather poorly dressed and barefoot, wheeling his machine laboriously along, was somewhat of a mournful-looking figure. The girl held up a warning hand as he approached.

"Hello," said the boy. "What's the matter?"

The girl pointed at the sleeping colonel.

"Said he'd set the dog on you if you came around the way the others did," replied Bess Thornton. "They woke him up. My! wasn't he mad? Here," she added, handing a small box to the boy, "George Warren left this for you. Said they wanted to make time. That's why they didn't stop for you."

"Thanks," said the boy. "Thought I'd got to walk clear back to Benton. But I was going to have a swim first. Guess I'll have it, anyway. It's hot, walking through this dust."

"I'll tell you where to go," said the girl. "Do you know what's fun? See that tree way up along shore there, the one that hangs out over the water? Well, I climb that till it bends down, and then I get to swinging and jump."

Tim Reardon gave her an incredulous glance, with one eye half closed.

"Oh, I don't care whether you believe it or not," said the girl. "But I'll show you some time. Can't now. Got to wash dishes. Don't wake him up, or you'll catch it."

She disappeared through the doorway, and Tim Reardon, leaving his wheel leaning against a corner of the house, went up along shore. In another half hour he returned, took from his pocket the box the girl had given to him, got therefrom an awl, a bottle of cement and some thin strips of rubber, and began mending the punctured tire of the bicycle. The tire was already somewhat of a patched affair, bearing evidences of former punctures and mendings.

"It's Jack's old wheel," he remarked by way of explanation to Bess Thornton, who had reappeared and was interestedly watching the operation. "He's going to give me one of his new tires," he added, "the first puncture he gets."

"Why don't you put a tack in the road?" asked the girl promptly.

Tim Reardon grinned. "Not for Jack," he said.

"Say," asked the girl, "what's Witham mad with those boys about? Why did he send 'em out of the hotel the other night?"

"Oh, that's a long story," replied Tim Reardon; "I can't tell you all about it. Witham used to keep the hotel down to Southport, and he was always against the boys, and now and then somebody played a joke on him. Then, when his hotel burned, he thought the boys were to blame; but Jack Harvey found the man that set the fire, and so made the colonel look foolish in court."

But at this moment a yawn that sounded like a subdued roar indicated that Colonel Witham was rousing from his nap. He stretched himself, opened his eyes blankly, and perceived the boy and girl.

"Well," he exclaimed, "you're here, eh? Wonder you didn't come in like a wild Indian, too. What's the matter?"

"Got a puncture," said Little Tim.

The colonel, having had the refreshment of his sleep, was in a better humour. He was a little interested in the bicycle.

"Queer what new-fangled ideas they get," he said. "That's not much like what I used to ride."

Little Tim looked up, surprised.

"Why, did you use to ride a wheel?" he asked.

"Did I!" exclaimed Colonel Witham, reviving old recollections, with a touch of pride in his voice. "Well, now I reckon you wouldn't believe I used to be the crack velocipede rider in the town I came from, eh?"

Little Tim, regarding the colonel's swelling waist-band and fat, puffy cheeks, betrayed his skepticism in looks rather than in speech. Colonel Witham continued.

"Yes, sir," said he, "there weren't any of them could beat me in those days. Why, I've got four medals now somewhere around, that I won at county fairs in races. 'Twasn't any of these wire whirligigs, either, that we used to ride. Old bone-shakers, they were; wooden wheels and a solid wrought iron backbone. You had to have the strength to make that run. Guess some of these spindle-legged city chaps wouldn't make much of a go at that. I've got the old machine out in the shed there, somewhere. Like to see it?"

"I know where it is," said Bess Thornton. "I can ride it."

"You ride it!" exclaimed Colonel Witham, staring at her in amazement. "What?"

"Yes," replied the girl; "but only down hill, though. It's too hard to push on the level. I'll go and get it."

"Well, I vum!" exclaimed Colonel Witham, as the girl started for the shed. "That girl beats me."

"Look out, I'm coming," called a childish voice, presently.

The door of the shed was pushed open, and Bess Thornton, standing on a stool, could be seen climbing into the saddle of what resembled closely a pair of wagon wheels connected by a curving bar of iron. She steadied herself for a moment, holding to the side of the doorway; then pushed herself away from it, came down the plank incline, and thence on to the path leading from the elevation on which the shed stood, at full speed. Her legs, too short for her feet to touch the pedals as they made a complete revolution, stuck out at an angle; but she guided the wheel and rode past Tim Reardon and the colonel, triumphantly. When the wheel stopped, she let it fall and landed on her feet, laughing.

"Here it is, Colonel Witham," said she, rolling it back to where he stood. "Let's see you ride it."

Colonel Witham, grasping one of the handle-bars, eyed the velocipede almost longingly.

"No," he said. "I'm too old and stout now. Guess my riding days are over. But I used to make it go once, I tell you."

"Go ahead, get on. You can ride it," urged Tim Reardon. "It won't break."

"Oh no, it will hold me, all right," said Colonel Witham. "We didn't have any busted tires in our day. Good iron rim there that'll last for ever."

"Just try it a little way," said Bess Thornton.

"I never saw anybody ride that had won medals," said Tim Reardon.

Colonel Witham's pride was rapidly getting the better of his discretion.

"Oh, I can ride it," he said, "only it's – it's kind of hot to try it. Makes me feel sort of like a boy, though, to get hold of the thing."

The colonel lifted a fat leg over the backbone and put a ponderous foot on one pedal, while the drops of perspiration began to stand out on his forehead.

"Get out of the way," he shouted. "I'll just show you how it goes – hanged if I don't."

The colonel had actually gotten under way.

Little Tim Reardon doubled up with mirth, and rolled over on the grass.

"Looks just like the elephant at the circus," he cried.

"Sh-h-h, he'll hear you," whispered Bess Thornton.

Colonel Witham was certainly doing himself proud. A new thrill of life went through him. He thought of those races and the medals. It was an unfortunate recollection, for it instilled new ambitions within him. He had ridden up the road a few rods, had made a wide turn and started back; and now, as he neared the hotel once more, his evil genius inspired him to show the two how nicely he could make a shorter turn.

He did it a little too quickly; the wheel lurched, and Colonel Witham felt he was falling. He twisted in the saddle, gave another sharp yank upon the handle-bars – and lost control of the wheel. A most unfortunate moment for such a mishap; for now, as the wheel righted, it swerved to one side and, with increased speed, ran upon the board walk that led down to the boat-landing.

The walk descended at quite a decided incline to the water's edge. It was raised on posts above the level of the ground, so that a fall from it would mean serious injury. There was naught for the luckless colonel to do but sit, helpless, in the saddle and let the wheel take its course.

Helpless, but not silent. Beholding the fate that was inevitable, the colonel gave utterance to a wild roar of despair, which, together with the rumbling of the wheels above his head, drove forth his dog from his hiding-place. Cæsar, espying this new and extraordinary object rattling down the board walk, and mindful of the agonizing shrieks of his master, himself pursued the flying wheel, yelping and barking and adding his voice to that of Colonel Witham.

There was no escape. The heavy wheel, bearing its ponderous weight of misery, and pursued to the very edge of the float by the dog, plunged off into the water with a mighty splash. Colonel Witham, clinging in desperation to the handle bars, sank with the wheel in some seven feet of water. Then, amid a whirl and bubbling of the water like a boiling spring, the colonel's head appeared once more above the surface. Choking and sputtering, he cried for help.

"Help! help!" he roared. "I'm drowning. I can't swim."

"No, but you'll float," bawled Little Tim, who was darting into the shed for a rope.

Indeed, as the colonel soon discovered, now that he was once more at the surface, it seemed really impossible for him to sink. He turned on his back and floated like a whale.

And at this moment, most opportunely, there appeared up the road the line of bicyclists returning.

They were down at the shore shortly – Tom Harris, Bob White, George, Arthur and Joe Warren – just as Little Tim emerged from the shed, with an armful of rope.

"Here, you catch hold," he said, "while I make fast to the colonel." The next moment, he was overboard, swimming alongside Colonel Witham.

"Look out he don't grab you and drown you both," called George Warren.

Little Tim was too much of a fish in the water to be caught that way. The most available part of Colonel Witham to make fast to, as he floated at length, was his nearest foot. Tim Reardon threw a loop about that foot, then the other; and the boys ashore hauled lustily.

The colonel, more than ever resembling a whale – but a live one, inasmuch as he continued to bellow helplessly – came slowly in, and stranded on the shore. They drew him well in with a final tug.

"Here, quit that," he gurgled. "Want to drag me down the road?" The colonel struggled to his feet, his face purple with anger.

"Now get out of here, all of you!" he roared. "There's always trouble when you're around. Tim Reardon, you keep away from here, do you understand?"

"Yes sir," replied Tim Reardon, wringing his own wet clothes; and then added, with a twinkle in his eyes, "but ain't you going to show us those medals, Colonel Witham?"

It was lucky for Tim Reardon that he was fleet of foot. The colonel made a rush at him, but Tim was off down the road, leaping into the saddle of his mended wheel, followed by the others.

"Don't you want us to raise the velocipede, so you can ride some more?" called young Joe Warren, as he mounted his own wheel.

The colonel's only answer was a wrathful shake of his fist.

"Colonel Witham," said Grannie Thornton, as her employer entered the hotel, a few minutes later, "here's a note for you, from Mr. Ellison. Guess he wants to see you about something."

"Hm!" exclaimed the colonel, opening the note, and dampening it much in doing so, "Jim Ellison, eh? More of his queer business doings, I reckon. He's a smart one, he is," he added musingly, as he waddled away to his bed-room to change his dripping garments; then, spying his own face in the mirror: 'What's the matter with you, Daniel Witham? Aren't you smart, too? In all these dealings, isn't there something to be made?'

Colonel Witham, rearraying his figure in a dry suit of clothing, was to be seen, a little later, on the road to the mill, walking slowly, and thinking deeply as he went along. He was so engrossed in his reflections that he failed to notice the approach of a carriage until it was close upon him. He looked up in surprise as a pleasant, gentle voice accosted him.

"Good afternoon, Colonel Witham," it said.

The speaker was a middle-aged, sweet faced woman – the same that had appeased the wrath of her husband against Bess Thornton. She leaned out of the carriage now and greeted Colonel Witham with cordiality.

"Oh, how-dye-do," replied Colonel Witham abruptly, and returning her smile with a frown. He passed along without further notice of her greeting, and she started up the horse she had reined in, and drove away.

Only once did Colonel Witham turn his head and gaze back at the disappearing carriage. Then he glowered angrily.

"I don't want your smiles and fine words," he muttered. "You were too good for me once. Just keep your fine words to yourself. I don't want 'em now."

Colonel Witham, in no agreeable mood, went on and entered at the office door of the mill. A tall, sharp-faced man, seated on a stool at a high desk, looked up at his entrance. One might see at a glance that here was a man who looked upon the world with a calculating eye. No fat and genial miller was James Ellison. No grist that came from his mill was likely to be ground finer than a business scheme put before him. He eyed Colonel Witham sharply.

"Aha, Colonel," he exclaimed, in a slightly sneering tone, "bright and cheery as ever, I see. I thought I'd like to have you drop in and scatter a little sunshine. Sit down. Have a pipe?"

Colonel Witham, accepting the proffered clay and and the essentials for loading it, sat back in a chair, and puffed away solemnly, without deigning to answer the other's bantering.

James Ellison continued figuring at his desk.

"Well," said Colonel Witham after some ten minutes had passed, "Suppose you didn't get me down here just to smoke. What d'ye want?"

"Oh, I'm coming to that right away," replied Ellison, still writing. "You know what I want, I guess." He turned abruptly in his seat, and his keen face shaded with anger. He pointed a long lean finger in the direction of the town of Benton. "You know 'em, Dan Witham," he said, "as well as I do. Though you didn't get skinned as I did. You didn't go down to town, as I did twenty odd years ago, with eight thousand dollars, and come back cleaned out. You didn't invest in mines and things they said were good as gold, and have 'em turn out rubbish. You didn't lose a fortune and have to start all over again. But you know em, eh?"

Colonel Witham nodded assent, and added mentally, "Yes, and I know you, too. Benton don't have the only sharp folks."

"And now," added James Ellison, "when I've got some of it back by hard work, you know how I keep it from them, and from others, too. Well, here's some more of the papers. The mill and a good part of the farm and some more land 'round here go to you this time. All right, eh? You get your pay on commission. Here's the deeds conveying it all to you – for valuable consideration – valuable consideration, see?"

The miller gave a prodigious wink at his visitor, and laughed.

"You don't mind being thought pretty comfortably fixed, eh – all these properties put in your name? Don't do you any harm, and people around here think you're mighty smart. Your deeds from me are all recorded, eh? People look at the record, and what do they see? All this stuff in your name. Well, what do I get out of that? You know. There are some claims they don't bother me with, because they think I'm not so rich as I am. There's property out of their reach, if anything goes wrong with some business I'm in.

"Why? Well, we know why, all right, you and I. Here's the deeds of the same property which you give back to me. Only I don't have them put on record. I keep them hidden – up my sleeve – clear up my sleeve, don't I?"

"You keep 'em hidden all right, I guess," responded Colonel Witham; and made a mental observation that he'd like to know where the miller really did hide them.

"So here they are," continued the miller. "It's a little more of the same game. The property's all yours – and it isn't. You'll oblige, of course, for the same consideration?"

Colonel Witham nodded assent, and the business was closed.

And, some time later, as Colonel Witham plodded up the road again, he uttered audibly the wish he had formed when he had sat in the miller's office.

"I'd like to know where he keeps those deeds hidden," he said, apparently addressing his remark to a clump of weeds that grew by the roadside. The weeds withholding whatever information they may have had on the question, Colonel Witham snipped their heads off with a vicious sweep of his stick, and went on. "I don't know as it would do me any good to know," he continued, "but I'd just like to know, all the same."

And James Ellison, his visitor departed, wandered about for some time through the rooms of his mill. One might have thought, from the sly and confidential way in which he drew an eye-lid down now and again, as he passed here and there, that the wink was directed at the mill itself, and that the crazy old structure was really in its owner's confidence; that perhaps the mill knew where the miller hid his papers.

At all events, James Ellison, sitting down to his supper table that evening, was in a genial mood.

"Lizzie," he said, smiling across the table at his wife, "I saw an old beau of yours to-day – Dan Witham. He didn't send any love to you, though."

"No," responded Mrs. Ellison, and added, somewhat seriously, "and he has no love for you, either. I hope you don't have much business dealing with him."

"Ho, he's all right, is Dan Witham," returned her husband. "He's gruff, but he's not such a bad sort. Those old times are all forgotten now."

"I'm not so certain of that, James," said Mrs. Ellison.

CHAPTER VI

CAPTURING AN INDIAN

Tim Reardon, a barefoot, sunburned urchin, who might be perhaps twelve years old, judging from his diminutive figure, and anywhere from that to fifteen, by the shrewdness of his face, stood, with arms akimbo, gazing in rapturous admiration at a bill-board. It was a gorgeous and thrilling sight that met his eyes. Lines in huge coloured letters, extending across the top of the board, proclaimed the subject of the display:

Bagley & Blondin's Gigantic CircusTwo Colossal Aggregations in OneStupendous – Startling – ScintillatingMoral – ScientificApplauded by all the Crowned Heads of Europe

The pictorial nightmare that bore evidence to the veracity of these assertions was indeed wonderful and convincing. A trapeze performer, describing a series of turns in the air that would clearly take him from one end of the long bill-board to the other, was in manifest peril, should he miss the swinging trapeze at the finish of his flight, of landing within the wide open jaws of an enormous hippopotamus – designated in the picture as, "The Behemoth of Holy Writ." An alligator, sitting upright, and bearing the legend that he was one of the "Sacred Crocodiles of the Nile, to which the Indian Mothers Throw Their Babes," was leering with a hopeful smile at the proximity of a be-spangled lady equestrian, balanced on the tip of one toe upon the back of a galloping horse.

The jungle element was generously supplied by troops of trumpeting elephants, tigers with tails lashing, bloated serpents dangling ominously from the overhanging tree branches, while bands of lean and angular monkeys jabbered and chattered throughout all the picture.

Little Tim heaved a sigh.

"Gee!" he exclaimed. "I'd like to see that Royal Bengal tiger that ate up three of his keepers alive."

Little Tim, fired with the very thought, and emulative of an athlete in distorted attitude and gaudy fleshings, proceeded to turn himself upside down and walk upon his hands, waving his bare feet fraternally at the pictured gymnasts. He found himself suddenly caught by the ankles, however, and slung roughly across someone's shoulder.

"Hello, Tim," said his captor, good naturedly, "going to join the circus?"

Little Tim grinned, sheepishly.

"Guess not, Jack," he replied. "Say, wouldn't you like to see that tiger eat up a keeper?"

Jack Harvey laughed, setting Tim on his feet again.

"I'll bet that tiger isn't as great a man-eater as old Witham," he said. "They put that in to make people think he's awful fierce, so they'll go to the show. You going?"

Tim Reardon, thrusting his hands into his pockets and closing his fingers on a single five cent piece, three wire nails and a broken bladed jack-knife, looked expressively at Harvey.

"I dunno," he replied. "P'raps so."

Jack Harvey took the hint.

"Come along with us," he said. "Where's the rest of the crew?"

"They're going – got the money," said Tim.

Harvey looked surprised. His crew, so called because the three other members of it besides Tim Reardon had sailed with him on his sloop in Samoset bay, were generally hard up.

"All right," said Harvey, "you can go with Henry Burns and George Warren and me. Come on. Let's go down town and see the parade."

The blare of trumpets and the clashing of brass was shaking the very walls of the city of Benton. A steam calliope, shrieking a tune mechanically above the music of the band and the roar of carts, was frightening farmers' horses to the point of frenzy. Handsome, sleek horses, stepping proudly, were bearing their gaily dressed riders in cavalcade. And the rumble of the heavy, gilded carts gave an undertone to the sound. Bagley & Blondin's great moral and scientific show was making its street parade, prior to the performance.

Tim Reardon stood between Henry Burns and Jack Harvey on a street corner, with George Warren close by. Tim Reardon's eyes seemed likely to pop clean out of his head.

"There he is! There he is, Jack!" he exclaimed all at once, fairly gasping with excitement.

"Who is?" asked Harvey.

"The man-eating tiger," cried Tim. "It says so on the cage."

Harvey chuckled. "I'd like to throw you in there, Tim," he said. "He'd be scared to death of you. Here's the real thing coming, though. Say, what do you think of that?"

The float that approached was certainly calculated to fire the brain of youth. On the platform, open to view from all sides, there was set up in the centre the trunk of a small tree, to which was securely bound, by hand and foot, the figure of a huntsman, clad in garb of skins, buckskin leggings and moccasins. A powder horn was slung picturesquely from one shoulder, and a great hunting-knife – alas useless to him now – stuck conspicuously in his belt.

Around this hapless captive there moved the figures of three savages, their faces streaked with various hues of paint, their war-bonnets of eagles' feathers flaunting, and wonderful to behold. Each bore in his right hand a gleaming tomahawk, which now and then was raised menacingly toward the unfortunate huntsman. Again one would put his hand to his lips, and a shrill war-whoop would rival the screaming of the steam calliope.