Chapter XXI: Dodging a Police Boat

"You little coon!" Clay gasped.

"Hurrah for Mose!" cried Alex.

"If you'll come down here I'll hug you!" shouted Gregg.

"How did you ever think of it?" Case called out.

Mose, now the happiest little negro boy in the United States, sat astride of his limb and grinned until it seemed that the top of his head would drop off backward!

In the meantime, the river pirate had remained unnoticed on the deck, the rope so deftly dropped by Mose still around his neck. Case finally bent over him.

"Why!" he exclaimed, shrinking back. "The man is dead!"

"Dead!" echoed Clay. "What killed him?"

Then they all bent over the still figure for a closer examination. Just as Case had declared, the robber was dead. His neck had been broken by the rope when Mose had drawn him off his feet! Alex. looked up at the boy.

"You must have a good pull in your arms!" he cried. "How did you manage to swing him up? You're a wonder, Mose!"

Mose only grinned in reply, but Clay explained the matter by saying that the boy had thrown the rope over a limb higher up and used that as a pulley.

"Still," he added, "it took a lot of muscle to jerk that heavy man off his feet. I didn't think the boy had it in him."

Then came the question as to what disposition should be made of the body. There was no hard ground near at hand so that a decent grave could be prepared. There were marshy knolls, it is true, but any excavation made there would instantly fill with water.

"Well," Gregg said, "the best we can do is to bury him in the water. I don't mean in the lagoon or in the river, but in a grave which will fill with water. There he will at least be out of the reach of reptiles and wild animals when the water subsides."

"But how are we ever going to get out there and dig a grave?" asked Jule, who was not inclined to waste much effort on the body of a man who, in life, would have robbed, perhaps murdered, them!

"With your permission," Gregg said, "we'll take the body out and bury it. I haven't much use for men of his type, but he's dead, and that settles all accounts!"

"We may be able to get a couple of birds for supper while we are away," suggested Eddie Butler. "We have been so busy lately, that we haven't eaten, or provided anything to eat! I'm empty clear to my toes!"

"And I'll catch a fish off the boat!" Jule volunteered. "I saw some big ones jumping up not long ago! They've been driven out of their nests by the flood."

So Gregg and his friends went away in the rowboat to bury the outlaw and get a couple of ducks for supper, while Jule and Alex. angled over the stern of the boat for a fish. The first rush of the flood was past, but the water was still high. There was a strong current rushing past the stern of the _Rambler_, and this indicated that there must be a channel open to the main river not far below.

The boys caught a great catfish and two awkward-looking buffalo-fish and turned them loose in the stream before they succeeded in getting anything they wanted for supper. Then they caught a dozen perch of good size and proceeded to clean them.

By the time the fish were ready for the pan Gregg and his friends were back from their expedition with half a dozen fat ducks, already dressed.

"We'll have some for breakfast, and some for dinner!" Eddie declared. "I feel now as if I'd never get enough to fill me up again!"

Something long and twisting dropped on the man's shoulders and fell off to the deck.

"Holy smoke!" he shouted. "Look at the snake!"

A shout from up the tree told of the trick Mose had played on the man, and the rope was coiled away. In a short time Mose came sliding down the trunk.

"He smells supper!" explained Clay. "I've a notion to set Captain Joe on him!"

"Dat dog don't bite dis coon!" Mose replied. "Ah'm in lub wid dat dog!"

Captain Joe and Teddy came forward and looked the three visitors over approvingly.

"That bear would make a good meal!" Gregg declared, with a wink at Case.

Mose's eyes stuck out for a minute, and then he tickled his own chin and gave out a sound like a goat.

"B-a-a-a-a-a-a! B-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!" he bleated.

"What's the matter with the coon?" asked Gregg, with a look of surprise.

"He's telling us to get wise to the alfalfa!" Jule cut in. "Alex. don't know how to translate so white men can understand."

"You'll both wash dishes for a month!" roared Clay, doubled over with laughter. "We make that a penalty for talking slang," he explained, turning to Gregg.

"But I don't understand yet," the other went on. "What is the matter with the boy? Has he turned himself into a billy goat?"

"He's suggesting that you mow the lawn!" Case explained. "He doesn't like the fire-escapes!"

Clay roared and pointed to the beards worn by the three, and then they understood and joined in the laugh until the swamp echoed back the sounds.

"You'll all have to wash dishes, I take it!" Gregg declared.

"That's about the way it usually turns out, when one starts talking slang," Clay explained. "We're all so full of it that it just bubbles out."

"It is fine that we have something to be jolly over," Gregg hastened to say, "for the prospects of getting out of here are not alluring."

"Wouldn't be no fun if everything went right!" Alex. insisted. "We have the most sport when we're lost, or stolen, or strayed away. Now, you watch me cook these ducks."

The boy got out a baking pan standing on three short legs. The bottom was double so as to prevent burning. Then he put two fat ducks inside, secured the cover, and removed what seemed to Gregg to be the whole top of the stove.

The short legs of the pan rested on the red-hot coals in the firebox, while the cover was always within reach. As soon as the ducks, which had previously been hastily parboiled, began to simmer and send forth appetizing odors, the boy watched them every minute, turning and basting until they were a beautiful golden brown.

In the meantime coffee had been made and the fish fried on the electric coil.

"I presume you'll want hot biscuits for supper, too?" asked Clay.

The visitors were too busy with the game to do more than shake their heads.

"We usually have three kinds of meat, fish, baked potatoes, pancakes, light bread, pie, honey, and three or four vegetables on the side," Alex. explained, with a wink at Mose, who sat in a corner next to the deck with Joe and Teddy watching the meat disappearing from a "drumstick" he was busily engaged on.

"An' possum pie!" the little negro boy added, licking his chops.

"Sure! I forgot the possum pie!" Alex. declared. "Excuse me!"

"Certainly!" laughed Gregg, "and we'll excuse you, too, for all future products of the imagination! The twenty course dinners at the La Salle haven't got anything on this little banquet! For my part, I don't care whether we ever get out of here, now, or not."

"Some day," Alex. observed, "I'll show you how to cook a steak a la brigand! After you eat one of them you'll go hungry for a week before you'll touch anything else!"

"You may lead me to one of them any time you see fit!" Eddie laughed.

The river was still roaring and foaming about the _Rambler_, caught in the narrow space between the two cypress trees. Just where the boat lay the current turned away to the east, that is the current of the lagoon. The Mississippi was, of course, across the inundated spit of land which lay on the west shore of the river and on the east side of the bayou or lagoon.

Just as the boys finished their somewhat delayed supper the lights of a steamer showed up the stream. It passed the mouth of the bayou and hugged the opposite shore of the Mississippi for a time, then headed for the west shore.

"That's strange!" Case exclaimed. "She sees our lights, but what is she coming over to this side for?"

The mystery became more of a mystery still when, reaching the west side, the steamer turned prow up stream and started to breast the flood, still carrying great masses of wreckage down stream. She made her way up to the mouth of the bayou and stopped, her propellers going just fast enough to keep from dropping back.

"If I'm not mistaken," Gregg suggested, "that is a boat carrying officers on a hunt for the escaped convicts. Can't we get out of here before they reach us?"

"Why should we run away from them?" asked Clay, suspiciously.

"Because they will mistake us for convicts," replied Gregg. "An officer in a position to abuse his authority always does so. Many of the man-hunters along the river are little better than the men they hunt. Some of them are worse. This, of course, does not apply to the sheriffs and deputies of the counties touching the river, but to hired detectives and gunmen who come here to make a living hunting others."

"You must be sore on the police," Alex. exploded. "I've got a lot of friends on the Chicago police force. They're good fellows, at that!"

"All right!" Gregg assented. "There are a lot of good men there. But if you want to remain here and permit those ruffians to overrun your boat, insult you, and hold you prisoners until you can get to some town where identification is possible, you can do so. We can stand it if you can."

"There may be some sense in what he says," Clay urged, "and if we could get out of the trap we are in and make the propellers go, I'd be willing to go on down the river and let the officers have the whole country to themselves."

"Can't we follow this bayou current and get out on the river below them?" asked Jule.

Clay said no; Gregg and his chums said yes.

"The water has been cutting a channel for a long time," Gregg explained. "It needed only a slight push to send the remaining bank down. There are few obstructions in the new channel, as I figure it out, and I believe we would go through like a top once we got started. And we'd better hurry, if we are going to do anything, for, of course, they have seen your lights. They wouldn't have stopped here if they hadn't."

"But the propellers!" urged Clay. "They're broken."

In a moment one of the men had his clothes off to the undersuit and was diving down at the stern of the _Rambler_. He remained under the water so long that the boys began to fear that he had met with some accident, or been attacked by a snake or an alligator. He came up smiling, however.

"Only clogged!" he cried. "You, Gregg and Eddie, get axes and chop the east tree down! The boat will then swing away from the other. You must make the cut down in the water, then we'll have to lift the prow over the stump."

The plan suggested proved successful, and the _Rambler_, under power, and trailing the mattresses, was soon feeling her way down the new channel. Then excitement was observed on the steamer, and she was headed about for the main stream again. It looked like a race was on!