Afloat Part 5

"Jes' so," chuckled the bound boy.

"Is she loaded, then?" continued Lil Artha, as all of them gravely examined the innocent-looking box.

"I'll show yuh how she works," Johnny said, proudly. "Mebbe my ijee ain't good for nawthin', but she's the best I could think up. Course, the thieves they hain't fotchin' no lantern along, 'cause they'd be afeared we'd see a movin' light. Then ag'in I don't b'lieve sich slinkers ever does own a lantern."

"That's right, Johnny," remarked Toby, impatiently, "let's take it for granted then they come in the dark. What will they do next?"

"Huh! what'd any feller do when he sees sech a nice box awaitin' for him to git up on, so's to grab the nigh turk?" demanded Johnny. "Now, if yuh watch me yuh'll git the ijee in a jiffy."

A stout rope seemed to be hanging from the limb overhead. It had a running noose at the end, which the bound boy was now adjusting on the top of the drygoods box.

Elmer chuckled as he began to grasp the scheme; it seemed pretty smart to him, and he was ready to give the bound boy credit for a bright idea.

"Now," continued Johnny, "jest tuh show yuh how she works I'm agoin'

tuh make a wat yuh calls it, a martin o' myself. Hold the lantern, Elmer, and gimme room."

He climbed up on the big box. The turkeys were craning their necks and observing him with evident wonder, though they were undoubtedly on friendly terms with Johnny who had fed and driven them since hatching time, and knew his raspy voice.

"Yuh see, in the dark he don't notice the loop any," continued the inventor of the trap, "and when he gits real busy with the turks why there's a good chanct o' his foot gittin' caught in the loop. She on'y needs a leetle jerk this-aways!"

He gave the required pull, and instantly a most surprising event came to pa.s.s. That jerk at the rope must have set a hair-trigger going, for there followed a sudden rattling noise, the loop was instantly tightened around his ankle, and in a trice Johnny was hanging head down, as helpless as a snared rabbit.

The scouts clapped their hands in glee.

"Great scheme, Johnny!"

"It sure does you credit!"

"My! what a cwack when your feet hit the limb!"

So the scouts kept giving their views, while Johnny swung there, vainly trying to reach up and catch hold of the limb, with the turkeys twittering, and showing more or less alarm.

"Elmer, git me daown outen this, please!" begged the prisoner.

"But how can we do it, Johnny, when we don't know the combination of the racket?" demanded Lil Artha.

"Foller the rope, and shove the hogshead up the rise agin!" explained the suspended boy, who was probably already beginning to feel the discomforts of "standing on his head."

Several of them rushed off, and sure enough they found the secret of the springing of the trap. Johnny's clever scheme was simple enough when once its secret had been disclosed.

He had an old hogshead perched on the top of a steep little rise near by. It was connected with the long rope that had a noose at the end.

When anyone pulled the rope, as with a foot caught in the loop, a trigger was set free, and the heavy hogshead started to roll down the little descent, jerking the entangled thief up by one or both ankles, as happened to be the case.

Of course, by rolling the hogshead back to its initial position Johnny was enabled to right himself, and get his foot free from the noose.

He started rubbing his shin as though it felt sore after such a rough experience, but they could hear him laughing softly to himself all the while.

"I jest reckoned the old thing'd work to beat the band," he told them; "an' now I knows it. Wait till I set the trap agin, fellers, an' then we'll go back tuh the barn. What d'ye spect's agoin' tuh happen if them chicken thieves kim around tuhnight, Elmer, hey?"

"Well, somebody's liable to meet up with the surprise of their lives, that's all," the scout patrol leader admitted.

The boys were pretty tired, and did not care to remain up too long.

Perhaps Mrs. Trotter might have liked to have these lively fellows in to sing for her, and enliven her monotonous life a little; but considering that they half expected to be hard pushed on the morrow, Elmer advised that they try to get all the sleep possible while they had the chance.

The horses had been well cared for, and arrangements made with the farmer to keep them in his stable until the scouts were ready to return to Hickory Ridge.

"This is what I call a soft snap," ventured Toby, who had burrowed into the hay as far as he thought necessary, and lay there at full length.

"The farmer was mighty careful to ask whether any of us smoked, you noticed," remarked Lil Artha.

"Can you blame him?" demanded Landy. "He must have twenty tons of fine new hay in this big barn, and that's worth all of four hundred dollars."

"Jutht as like ath not, too, he didn't put a cent of inthurance on the barn," Ted remarked; "farmers are careleth that way, you know."

"And so are boys who make out to be men because they smoke on the sly,"

Elmer went on to say. "More than one barn has been set on fire by smokers using matches in the hay. Tramps are responsible for a heap of this waste; and I don't blame any farmer for asking such a question.

I'm glad we could tell him none of us had taken to the habit as yet."

"Or if they had they'd reformed!" chuckled Lil Artha, meaning himself.

"One thing sure," observed Mark, "if we hear that barrel crashing down the hill with all those stones inside it, we ought to be pretty spry getting out there, because a poor wretch might get dizzy hanging with his head down."

"What if n.o.body happened to hear the alarm," suggested Landy, who had a tender heart even when chicken thieves were concerned.

"I take it suh, that would be a bad thing fo' the c.o.o.n that set the trap off," Chatz announced, gravely.

"Oh! Johnny has prepared for even that," said Elmer. "He showed me how he had fixed another cord that runs all the way to his room in the house. When the barrel starts to rolling that cord will be snapped, causing a weight to fall on the floor close to his bed, and bound to waken anybody but the dead."

"Say, that Johnny's a sure-enough wonder!" declared Toby; "he's got the inventive genius developed to beat the band. I'd like to see more of Johnny Spreen. Who knows but that we might hitch together and make a team. I've done a few little wrinkles along the line of invention myself, you remember. Jones and Spreen wouldn't sound bad."

Of course, that brought about a stirring up of old history, for many and humorous had been Toby's attempt to construct a flying machine, and also a parachute that would save the lives of daring aeronauts when their engines gave out a mile or two up in the air.

Finally, the boys began to talk less, and it could be easily seen that they were getting sleepy. Elmer really encouraged them to quit their efforts to keep awake. He himself felt that sleep would be welcome just then; and when that humor seizes a fellow he dislikes being kept awake against his will by the chattering of a comrade who does not know what a bed is meant for.

Then the last word was mumbled, and stentorian breathing here and there in those hay nests announced that the tired scouts had surrendered to the sleep G.o.d. Elmer was, perhaps, the last to drop off, for he had been thinking of a lot of things, running from the chicken-thief trap to the strange conduct of Hen Condit in robbing his guardian, and then leaving that ridiculous note to condemn himself.

Once Elmer chanced to awaken, and more from the habit of the cattle range than anything else, he raised his head to listen. The only sounds he heard consisted of the champing of the horses, still busy with their sweet hay, or it might be the distant cry of a whip-poor-will calling to its mate in the apple orchard.

So Elmer dropped back with a satisfied feeling such as comes on realizing that all is well. Perhaps the thieves would not make a visit to the farm adjoining the big Sa.s.safras Swamp, on that particular night, at least. Perhaps morning would come at last, and find the trap undisturbed.

Elmer was letting these things pa.s.s through his brain in a hazy sort of way peculiar to one who is just yielding to sleep. He had almost reached the point when things would have slipped entirely from his grip when suddenly and without the least warning there started a tremendous racket such as he had noticed came to pa.s.s when that hogshead started rolling down the grade, and the stones with which it was loaded began to rattle about inside.

Almost at the same instant there rang out a shrill scream of agony that could only have come from the throat of someone in mortal distress.

As if by magic every scout sat bolt upright, as though they had been shot into that position by the action of a gigantic galvanic battery.

"Oh! what happened?" Landy was heard to call out in trembling tones.