The Boy Scouts at the Panama Canal Part 3

"Wonderful how they understand each other, isn't it?" remarked Merritt with a grin. But Tubby was too intent on what he had in hand to resent the gross insult.

Closer and closer shuffled Jake, his greedy little eyes on the apple. All at once he appeared to make up his mind in a hurry. He made a dart for the tempting bait.

"Now," yelled Tubby.

Quick as a flash, as soon as he heard the preconcerted signal, Merritt flung the looped hitching rope about the pig's neck. Jake gave a squeal and wriggled with might and main, but his ears held the rope from slipping off.

"Give him the apple to keep him quiet," suggested Merritt, as Jake squealed at the top of his voice.

Tubby proffered the apple and instantly Jake forgot his troubles in devouring it. In the meantime Tubby slipped to the wagon and selected a poster or two and a brush full of paste. Returning, amidst shouts of laughter from his fellow conspirators, he plentifully "shampooed" Jake with paste, and then slapped the gaudy yellow bills on till it appeared as if the astute Jake had enveloped himself in a bright orange overcoat.

"Now cut him loose," ordered Rob, when Tubby, with all the satisfaction of a true artist, stepped back to view his completed work.

Merritt slipped the noose, and off down the road toward the farm dashed the gaudily decorated Jake, conveying the news to all who might see that on Sat.u.r.day, April --, there would be a Grand Baseball Game at Hampton, Boy Scouts of The Eagle Patrol _vs._ The Hampton Town Nine.

As the boys, shouting and shaking with laughter, watched this truly original bit of advertising gallop off down the road, the one touch needed to complete the picture was filled in. From his dooryard emerged the farmer. The first thing his eyes lighted on was Jake. For one instant he regarded the alarmed animal in wonderment. Then, with a yell, he rushed into the house.

"Ma! ma! Lucindy!" he bellowed at the top of his voice, "Jake's got the yaller fever, er the jaunders, er suthin'. Come on quick! He's comin'

down ther road like ther Empire State Express, and as yaller as a bit of corn bread."

At this stage of the proceedings the boys, their sides shaking with laughter, deemed it prudent to emulate the Arabs of the poem and "silently steal away."

Looking back as they drove off they could see Lucindy and her spouse engaged in a mad chase after the overcoated Jake. Even at that distance the latter's piercing cries reached their ears with sharp distinctness and added to their merriment. Rob alone seemed a bit remorseful at the huge success of Tubby's novel advertising scheme.

"Applegate's a pretty old man, fellows," he remarked, "and maybe we went a bit too far."

"Well, if his age runs in proportion to his meanness, he'll outlive Methuselah," declared Merritt positively.

The road they followed gradually led into a by-track that joined the main road they had left with one that traversed the north side of the island.

It was sandy, and at places along its course high banks towered on each side of it. At length they emerged from one of these sunken lanes and found on their right an abandoned farm. Quite close to the roadside stood a big, rattletrap-looking barn. It had once been painted red, but neglect and the weather had caused the paint to shale off in huge patches, leaving blotches of bare wood that looked leprous with moss and lichen.

"What do you say if we leave a few souvenirs pasted up there?" said Merritt.

"Well, it wouldn't hurt the looks of the place, anyhow," decided Rob. "I doubt if many people come along this road anyway; but I guess we might as well get busy."

"Well, you two fellows can do the work this time," declared Tubby, stretching out luxuriously in the rig.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to drive down the road and hitch up in the shade of that tree and take a nap."

"That's pretty cool!" exclaimed Merritt.

"I know it is, at least it looks so," responded Tubby.

"Seems to me it's up to you to do some work, too," protested Merritt.

"As if I hadn't just done a big job in labeling that pig," replied Tubby, yawning; "it's your turn now."

Seeing that it was useless to try to turn Tubby from his determination to rest, which, next to eating, was his favorite occupation, Rob and Merritt took up their brushes, paste and a roll of bills and set out for the barn. Tubby watched them languidly a minute and then drove off along the sandy track while the other two clambered up a bank.

From the road the barn had appeared quite close; but when they reached the top of the bank they found that, actually, it stood back quite a little distance beyond a strip of gra.s.s and weeds. The boys waded through these almost knee-deep, and finally reached the side of the old barn.

They set down their buckets and brushes and unrolled some bills preparatory to pasting them up.

Suddenly Merritt raised a warning finger. Rob instantly divined that his chum enjoined silence.

"Hark!" was the word that Merritt's lips framed rather than spoke.

Inside the barn some one was talking,--several persons seemingly. After a minute the boys could distinguish words above the low hum of the speakers' voices. Suddenly they caught a name: "Mainwaring."

"I guess maybe we might be interested in this," whispered Rob.

By a common impulse the two Boy Scouts moved closer to the moldering wall of the old barn.

CHAPTER V.

A BIG SURPRISE.

Time and weather had warped the boards of the structure till fair-sized cracks gaped here and there. The boys made for one of these, with the object of peering into the place and getting a glance at its occupants.

At first they had thought that these were nothing more than a gang of tramps, but the name of the engineer, spoken with a foreign accent, had aroused them to a sense that, whoever was in the old barn, a subject was being discussed that might be of interest to their new friends.

Applying their eyes to two cracks in the timbers, they saw that within the barn four persons were seated. One of these they recognized almost instantly as Jared Applegate. By his side sat a youth of about his own age, flashily dressed, with a general air of cheap smartness about him.

The other two occupants of the place were of a different type. One was heavily built and dark in complexion, almost a light coffee color, in fact. His swarthy face was clean shaven and heavily jowled. Seated next to him on an old hay press was a man as dark as he, but more slender and dapper in appearance. Also he was younger, not more than thirty, while his companion was probably in the neighborhood of fifty, although as powerful and vigorous, so far as the boys could judge, as a man of half his years.

"You say that you have duplicates of Mainwaring's plans, showing exactly the weakest points of the great dam?" the elder man was asking, just as the boys a.s.sumed positions of listening.

Jared nodded. He glanced at the more slender of the two foreigners.

"I guess Mr. Estrada has told you all about that," he said.

"Of course, my dear Alverado," the dapper little man struck in, "you recollect that I spoke to you of Senor Applegate's visit to me at Washington."

Rob started. The name Estrada, coupled with a mention of Washington, recalled to his mind something that sent a thrill through him taken in connection with the words of the man addressed as Alverado.

Estrada,--Jose Estrada! That was the name of the amba.s.sador of a South American republic that had several times been mentioned as being opposed to Uncle Sam's plans on the Isthmus. What if--but not wishing to miss a word of what followed, he gave over speculating and applied himself to listening with all his might. Jared gave a short, disagreeable laugh.

"You can just bet I got duplicates of all the plans," he chuckled, "I had an idea that Mainwaring was going to fire me on account of--well, of something, and so I went to work and copied off all of his private papers I could. You see, it was common talk on the Isthmus that the place was alive with spies, and I figured out that anybody who was interested enough to hire spies must be mighty anxious to get at the real plans of the ca.n.a.l, and willing to pay big for them, too," he added with a greedy look on his face, which for an instant gave him a strong likeness to his father.

Rob and Merritt exchanged glances. From even the little that they had heard it was plain enough what was going forward in the barn. There was no doubt now that Jared was bargaining with representatives of a foreign power that had good reason to dislike Uncle Sam; no question but that Mr.

Mainwaring's plans, or at least copies of them, were in the hands of an unscrupulous young rascal who was willing to sell them to the highest bidder, without caring for what nefarious purpose they were to be used.

The Boy Scouts' blood fairly boiled as they heard. They had always known Jared to be weak, unprincipled and dishonest, but that he would descend to such rascality as this was almost beyond belief. Merritt in his anger made a gesture of shaking his fist. It was an unfortunate move. A bit of board on which one of his feet rested gave way with a sharp crack under the sudden shifting of his weight.

Instantly the men in the barn were on the alert.