Chapter VII: The Missing Skiff

"Well, I swan!" was the sudden exclamation that broke from the lips of Johnny Spreen, the farmer's bound boy, as he came to a halt.

Elmer, glancing hastily at him, saw the boy rubbing his eyes in a somewhat dazed fashion. He acted for all the world like a fellow who did not feel sure that his sight was as good as usual. Something evidently was amiss.

"What is it?" demanded Lil Artha, in his usual impetuous way.

"The boats!" muttered Johnny Spreen.

"Sure thing, we see 'em!" declared the tall scout.

"How many kin yuh count, tell me?" asked the other, beseechingly, still giving an occasional dab at his eyes, as though doubts clung to his mind regarding their faithfulness.

"Why, let's see, I glimpse three--no, there are only two skiffs afloating in that little bayou," Lil Artha told him.

"Only two, air yuh dead sartin?" continued Johnny.

"That's correct, two boats and no more. I c'n see each one as clear as anything. Why, what difference does that make, Johnny?" asked Toby.

"But ther ought tuh be _three_, I tells yuh," insisted the bound boy; "wun two-year old, another built larst season, and the last un just this Spring. Yessir, three on 'em in all."

"Well, I gueth your old boat took a notion to go to the bottom then, Johnny," asserted Ted, "becauth there are only a pair floating there, I give you my word."

"They was every wun thar yist'day," persisted Johnny.

"Are you sure of that?" Elmer asked him.

"Well, my name's Johnny Spreen, ain't it?" demanded the other, grimly; "I'm workin' out my time with Mister Trotter hyar, ain't I? Then I still got two eyes, and I ain't turned loony yit by a long shot. I tell yuh, Elmer, I handled three skiffs yist'day--seen as they was tied securely. And now yuh tells me they be but two."

"Yes, that's a fact," the patrol leader assured him.

"All right then, they gut one, thet's boz."

Elmer expected some such result as this, so after all he did not seem to be very much staggered.

"I suppose by 'them' you mean the chicken thieves, Johnny?" he remarked.

"No other."

"But if the man has been moving around in the swamp for a couple of weeks, more or less, could he do without a boat all that time?" continued the leader.

"I guess he cud, Elmer, though w'en yuh wants tuh trap muskrats yuh need sum sort o' craft the wust kind. P'raps he didn't chanct tuh run across our skiffs up tuh last night. Then agin mebbe he was askeered tuh snatch one, fur fear we'd hunt arter it, an' bother him in the swamp."

"All right, Johnny, I believe you're barking up the proper tree," said Elmer; "but it looks as if the man changed his mind last night, and took a boat."

"Yep, an' by gosh! the newest one o' the lot, too!" groaned the bound boy, as he led them closer to where the other skiffs floated, secured to stakes.

"After all that row," suggested Lil Artha, "it might be they thought we'd give a quick chase, and they couldn't afford to take any more chances. So as a boat'd come in handy for them they gobbled it."

"Anybody'd pick the best in the bunch, come to that," added wise Toby.

"I don't know about that," Mark went on to say; "a really smart fellow would be apt to reason that if he took only the old tub the owner mightn't think it worth while to make much of a hunt for it, not caring whether he got the same again or not."

"I consider that sound reasoning, Mark," observed the patrol leader, who was never happier than when he found some of his followers displaying good judgment in such matters. "But the boat's gone, and our next duty is to take a look around the bank before we get to trampling things up too much. We ought to make sure of things by finding that marked track again."

"It can be done as easy as turning a handspring," vowed Toby Jones, as all of them immediately spread out, fan-shape, like hounds that had lost the scent temporarily, and were searching for it again.

Hardly half a minute had gone when there was an exultant cry raised.

"Didn't I say so?" demanded Toby, triumphantly; "but I never thought Landy of all fellows'd be the one to find the trail."

"Oh! sometimes queer things do happen in this world," asserted the fat scout, swelling with his triumph; "they say the race ain't always to the swift. But take a look, everybody, and see if I'm right."

They looked and unanimously pronounced Landy's judgment correct. There was the imprint of a shoe, a _left_ shoe in the bargain, beyond doubt, and anyone who had eyes could detect that diagonal mark running across the sole, which Landy had pointed out before as the line of the new leather, placed there while he waited for Hen Condit in the Italian cobbler's shop.

"As plain as the nose on your face, Landy!" admitted Lil Artha, with a trifle of disappointment in his voice, for he had calculated on discovering the tracks himself, and for one who was next door to a greenhorn to do it humiliated the tall scout.

"No personal remarks, please, Lil Artha," said Landy; "I know my nose isn't as prominent as yours, and some others in the crowd, but it answers my purpose all right, and I'm not ashamed of it."

"Well, now we know where we're at," remarked Ted, with a satisfied air, as though it might be a maxim with him to always start right.

"And it's up to us to divide our forces, choose our boats, and make a start," Mark Cummings was saying.

"Ginger! don't I on'y wish I cud be goin' along!" said Johnny Spreen with an expression on his face that could only be described as compound disappointment.

"All of us would be glad if you were, Johnny," Elmer told him, feeling for the boy, whose company would certainly be of considerable help to the expedition, for Johnny knew the watery paths and the tangles of Sassafras Swamp as, perhaps, no other fellow possibly could, since he had long haunted its recesses, laying traps, and looking for new haunts of the wily muskrats.

"As there are seven of us, all told," remarked Lil Artha, "that means three in one boat, and four in the other. Elmer, you divide up. This newer skiff looks to me just a weenty bit the bigger."

"It is by a foot, and wider, too," asserted Johnny, quickly.

"Then it ought to carry four, of course; but how's this, Johnny, where are the oars for both craft; I don't see any!"

"Shucks! we don't use oars in the ole swamp," declared the other. "A push pole's the best way tuh git along. Yuh see it's soft mud everywhar, and so we cuts poles with a crotch at the end. That keeps 'em frum sinking deep in the mud, so yuh kin git a chanct tuh shove."

"And a mighty good idea, too," avowed Toby; "I've had a little experience with just plain everyday push poles, and even got hung up when one stuck in the mud, so the boat left me. But Elmer, how'll we divide?"

The patrol leader glanced over his force. It was only fair that he arrange it so the weight would be as nearly equal as possible.

"Lil Artha, take Mark and Landy in the smaller skiff; the rest will go with me," he announced immediately.

Mark was the nearest chum of the patrol leader, but Elmer disliked favoritism, and hence he thus tacitly placed Lil Artha in command of the second boat. But then there was also another good reason for doing this, since the tall scout had always shown himself to be clever on the water, much more so than the bugler of the troop.

Johnny was already showing them how to pull the skiffs in by means of a rope attached to each. It was a good way of mooring them when not in use.

"Yuh see the third boat was drawed up on the shore here," he remarked in a disconsolate tone; "'cause I was ausin' her right along. I guess that's the reason they took the best o' the lot."

When the two boats had been brought to the shore, packs were distributed in the same, according to the directions of the leader. These were not hastily tossed aboard, but placed where they would be out of the way of the one who was using the long push-pole.

"Thank goodneth we've got our camp hatchet along," remarked Ted, as he took his place, "tho even if we do lose or bweak our pole we can alwayth cut another one."

"Yep, I never go intuh the swamp without my hatchet," asserted Johnny. "Yuh see it comes in mighty handy when yuh want tuh make a fire, or cut a way through sum tangled snarl o' brush. Then, besides, I find a use fur the same in setting traps, fur mushrats ain't ther on'y kind o' fur we bags araound these diggings."

Some of the boys might have liked keeping up the talk, especially when it bordered on such an interesting subject. Elmer, however, knew that time was valuable to them just then, with such a difficult task ahead. They had to find two parties who were secreted somewhere in the swamp; and as Lil Artha declared it was "pretty much like looking for a needle in a haystack."

Johnny stood there on the bank, and waved his hat to the scouts as he watched them poling away. They could almost imagine they heard the tremendous sigh that came from his breast as he saw a glorious chance for real fun pass from his grasp.

"Good-bye, an' good luck tuh yuh all!" he called out.

Following the serpentine passage of clear water, the two boats soon passed from the sight of the bound boy, though doubtless he could still hear gurgling sounds as the push-poles were worked, and the flat prows of the skiffs passed over the numerous water-lily pads.

And now the swamp was before them.

All of the scouts surveyed the scene with lively anticipations. They could easily understand that the immediate future might throw all manner of strange adventures across their path, and, like most boys, Elmer and his chums were ever hungry for exciting things to happen--it was in the blood.

But, then, at first the borders of the big Sassafras Swamp did not look so very forbidding. Elmer warned them not to expect that this condition of affairs would last long.

"You remember what Johnny told us," he remarked so that all of them could hear his words; "it keeps getting worse the further you go in. Things are easy to begin with, but after a while we'll have our hands full. Above all things we must keep our heads about us, for if we do that we'll escape getting lost."

"Then Johnny did admit a fellow could get lost in this place, did he?" inquired Landy, uneasily.

"He used to lose his way often when he first started coming in here after muskrats," confessed Elmer; "and then he began to have some system about his excursions so that by degrees he got it all down pat."

"Yes, Johnny said he believed he could pole a boat pretty much into the heart of Sassafras with his eyes shut or bandaged," remarked Lil Artha.

"Too bad he couldn't get off and be along with us," lamented Landy; "and Elmer, if we'd only promised Farmer Trotter five dollars a day he'd have let his help join us, I'm sure of that."

"Huh! too bad you didn't think of that before, Landy, and put it up to Elmer," jeered Lil Artha; "but I wouldn't bother too much about it if I was you. Chances are we won't get lost much; and by the same token, even if we do it'll be some kind of a sensation to wake us up."

Landy scratched his head, but not knowing how much of this was intended by his tormentor he did not reply. As they were gradually working further into the dense growth by now there was enough around them to chain their attention and arouse their interest.

In some places they could see that the shore stood above the sluggish water, although covered for the most part with dense shrubbery that would be difficult to pass through. Channels began to be met with running to the right and left, so that it behooved Elmer to remember the explicit directions given by the muskrat trapper if he wished to avoid getting side-tracked in the start.

Lil Artha, in the other boat, was also using his knowledge of woodcraft to some purpose. When it happened that the two skiffs came alongside he called out to Elmer, as if to settle some point he had in mind.

"Even if I hadn't listened when Johnny was laying down the law to us about the main channel in here, Elmer, I reckon I'd had no trouble stickin' to the same, up to now, anyhow."

"Why tho, Lil Artha?" asked Ted Burgoyne.

"It's just this way," continued the other, briskly, as though only too willing to show his hand, "you see Johnny has followed the same passage in here so often now he's actually gone and left a trail behind him."

"Say, what are you giving us, Lil Artha?" demanded Toby; "on shore a trail is all very well, but the water leaves none. Once it settles down after a boat's passed, I defy anybody to tell a thing about the same."

Lil Artha grinned as though he really pitied the dense ignorance of some people.

"You've got another think coming, Toby," he said, drily. "I suppose if you sat down and racked your poor brain a whole week you'd be no nearer knowing what I mean, so I'll have to explain."

"Guess you will, that," muttered Toby; "if you know yourself what you're getting at, which I doubt."

"Looky there," said the skipper of the second skiff, "do you notice that where we make this turn to the left the bushes along the point are kind of frayed, like something had rubbed against 'em a heap of times?"

"Why, yes, it does seem so," admitted Toby, reluctantly.

"All right then," continued Lil Artha; "if you'd kept your eyes about you all the while you'd seen that same thing at near every turn. Trying to cut short when he poled along, Johnny has left a track of his passage at every bend. I always look sharp, and I can tell as easy as falling off a log whether he went on, or cut into another passage. And Elmer will bear me out on that explanation, too!"