Ruth Fielding Down in Dixie Part 28

We'll have it in the bed chambers, for a fact!"

"What do you mean?" asked the puzzled Nettie.

"Why, the audience can sit in their rooms or on the stairs or in the long hall up here. We will give the concert downstairs. I don't know but we'll have to give it barefooted, girls!"

The laughter that followed was interrupted by a shout from below. They heard somebody say that there was a boat coming.

"Well, maybe there will be something for Curly after all," Helen cried, as she followed Ruth out of the room.

Through the wide doorway they could see the boat approaching. And they could hear it, too, for it was a small launch chugging swiftly up to the submerged island.

"Oh, goody!" cried Nettie. "Maybe we can get across the river and back to Merredith."

It looked as though the launch had just come from the other side of the swollen stream. Jimson and several of the negroes were on the porch to meet the launch as it touched.

There were but two men in it, one at the wheel and the other in the bow.

The latter, a gray-haired man with a broad-brimmed hat, blue clothes, and a silver star on his breast, stepped out upon the porch in his high boots.

"Hullo, Jimson," he said, greeting the warehouse boss. "Just a little wet here, ain't yo'?"

"A little, Sheriff," said Jimson.

"I'm after a party they told me at your house was probably over here. A boy from the No'th. Name's Henry Smith. Is he yere? I was told to get him and notify folks up No'th that the little scamp's cotched. He's been stealin' up there, and they want him."

CHAPTER XXIII-"HERE'S A STATE OF THINGS!"

The words of the deputy sheriff came clearly to the ears of Ruth Fielding and her two girl friends as they stood on the lower step of the broad flight leading to the second floor of the hotel.

Jimson, the warehouse boss, who had already shown his interest in Curly, looked quickly around and spied the girls. He made a crooked face and began at once to fence with the deputy.

"What's that?" he said. "Said I got an escaped prisoner? _Who_ said that, Mr. Ricketts?"

"Yo' wife, I reckon 'twas, tol' me the boy was yere."

"She's crazy!" declared Jimson with apparent anger. "I dunno what's got into that woman. I ain't seen no convict--"

"Who's talkin' about a convict, Jimson?" demanded Mr. Ricketts. "D' yo'

think I'm after some desperado from the swamps? I reckon not."

"Well, who _are_ you after?" demanded the boss, in great apparent vexation. "I ain't got him, whoever he is!"

"Not a boy named Henry Smith?"

"What's he done?"

"I see you're some int'rested," said Ricketts, drily. "Come on now, Jimson! I know you. The boy's a bad lot."

"Your say-so don't make him so. And I dunno as I know the boy you mean."

"Come now, your wife tol' me all about him. He's a curly-headed boy. He come along on a flatboat. You took him on as a hand in the warehouse."

"Huh? I did, did I?" grunted Jimson, not at all willing to give in that he knew whom the deputy sheriff was talking about.

"I mean a curly-headed Yankee boy that come over yere last night in that old boat of yours, Jimson," said the deputy sheriff, chuckling. "And your woman wants to know when you're going to bring the boat back?"

"Huh?" growled Jimson.

"Don't yo' call him Curly?"

"Oh! you mean _him_?" said the boss. "Wal-I reckon he's yere. Got a broken laig. Doctor won't let him be moved. Impossible, Mr. Ricketts.

Impossible!"

"I reckon I'll look to suit myself, Jimson," said Ricketts, firmly.

"This ain't no funnin', you know." Then he turned to the man in the boat. "Tie that rope to one o' these posts, Tom, and come ash.o.r.e. I may need you to hold Jimson," and he winked and chuckled at the chagrined warehouse boss.

The big deputy sheriff strode across the porch, in at the door, scattering the wide-eyed negroes right and left, and came face to face with three pretty young girls, dressed in the party frocks donned for the ball the night before, all the frocks they had to wear on this occasion.

"Bless my soul, ladies!" gasped the confused Ricketts, sweeping off his hat. "Your servant!"

"Oh, Mr. Ricketts!" exclaimed Nettie Parsons, her hands clasped, and looking in her most appealing way up into the big man's face. Although Nettie stood a step up from the hall floor, the deputy sheriff still towered above her head and shoulders. "Oh, Mr. Ricketts!"

"Ya-as, ma'am! that's my name, ma'am," said the embarra.s.sed deputy.

"We heard what you just said," pursued Nettie. "About Curly Smith, you know."

"I-I--"

"And we're awfully interested in Curly," put in Helen, joining in the attempt to cajole a perfectly helpless officer of the law from the path of duty.

"Your servant, ma'am!" gasped the deputy, very red in the face now, and bowing low before Helen.

"There are three of us, Mr. Ricketts," suggested Ruth, her own eyes dancing with fun, despite the really serious distress she felt over Curly's case.

"Bless my soul!" murmured Mr. Ricketts, bowing in her direction, too.

"So there are-so there are. _Your_ servant, ma'am."

"Then, Mr. Ricketts, if you are the servant of _all_ of us, I know you will do what we ask," and Nettie laughed merrily.

Little drops of perspiration were exuding upon the deputy's broad, bald brow. He was not used to the society of ladies-not even extremely young ladies; and he felt both ridiculous and in a glow of delight. He chuckled and wabbled his head above his stiff collar, and looked foolish. But there was a grim firmness to his smoothly shaven chin that led Ruth to believe that he would not be an easy person to swerve from his path.

"You know," repeated Nettie, taking her cue from Helen, "that we are awfully interested in that boy that you say you have come after."

"The young scamp's mighty lucky, then-mighty lucky!"

"But he has a broken leg-and he's awfully sick," said Nettie, her lips drooping at the corners as though she were about to cry.