Tish: The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions Part 35

"Really," he said, "it's very decent of you. I sent off a grocery order yesterday, but nothing has come."

Tish had got Hutchins to start the engine by that time and we were moving away. He stood there, up to his knees in water, holding the tray and looking after us. He was really a pathetic figure, especially in view of the awful fate we felt was overtaking him.

He called something after us. On account of the noise of the engine, we could not be certain, but we all heard it the same way.

"Send for the whole d--d outfit!" was the way it sounded to us. "It won't make any difference to me."

V

The last thing I recall of Mr. McDonald that day is seeing him standing there in the water, holding the tray, with the teapot steaming under his nose, and gazing after us with an air of bewilderment that did not deceive us at all.

As I look back, there is only one thing we might have noticed at the time. This was the fact that Hutchins, having started the engine, was sitting beside it on the floor of the boat and laughing in the cruelest possible manner. As I said to Aggie at the time: "A spy is a spy and ent.i.tled to punishment if discovered; but no young woman should laugh over so desperate a situation."

I come now to the denouement of this exciting period. It had been Tish's theory that the red-haired man should not be taken into our confidence.

If there was a reward for the capture of the spy, we ourselves intended to have it.

The steamer was due the next day but one. Tish was in favor of not waiting, but of at once going in the motor boat to the town, some thirty miles away, and telling of our capture; but Hutchins claimed there was not sufficient gasoline for such an excursion. That afternoon we went in the motor launch to where Tish had hidden the green canoe and, with a hatchet, rendered it useless.

The workings of the subconscious mind are marvelous. In the midst of chopping, Tish suddenly looked up.

"Have you noticed," she said, "that the detective is always watching our camp?"

"That's all he has to do," Aggie suggested.

"Stuff and nonsense! Didn't he follow you into the swamp? Does Hutchins ever go out in the canoe that he doesn't go out also? I'll tell you what has happened: She's young and pretty, and he's fallen in love with her."

I must say it sounded reasonable. He never bothered about the motor boat, but the instant she took the canoe and started out he was hovering somewhere near.

"She's noticed it," Tish went on. "That's what she was quarreling about with him yesterday."

"How are we to know," said Aggie, who was gathering up the sc.r.a.ps of the green canoe and building a fire under them--"how are we to know they are not old friends, meeting thus in the wilderness? Fate plays strange tricks, Tish. I lived in the same street with Mr. Wiggins for years, and never knew him until one day when my umbrella turned wrong side out in a gust of wind."

"Fate fiddlesticks!" said Tish. "There's no such thing as fate in affairs of this sort. It's all instinct--the instinct of the race to continue itself."

This Aggie regarded as indelicate and she was rather cool to Tish the balance of the day.

Our prisoner spent most of the day at the end of the island toward us, sitting quietly, as we could sec through the gla.s.ses. We watched carefully, fearing at any time to see the Indian paddling toward him.

[Tish was undecided what to do in such an emergency, except to intercept him and explain, threatening him also with having attempted to carry the incriminating papers. As it happened, however, the entire camp had gone for a two-days' deer hunt, and before they returned the whole thing had come to its surprising end.]

Late in the afternoon Tish put her theory of the red-haired man to the test.

"Hutchins," she said, "Miss Lizzie and I will cook the dinner if you want to go in the canoe to Harvey's Bay for water-lilies."

Hutchins at once said she did not care a rap for water-lilies; but, seeing a determined glint in Tish's eye, she added that she would go for frogs if Tish wanted her out of the way.

"Don't talk like a child!" Tish retorted. "Who said I wanted you out of the way?"

It is absolutely true that the moment Hutchins put her foot into the canoe the red-haired man put down his fishing-rod and rose. And she had not taken three strokes with the paddle before he was in the blue canoe.

Hutchins saw him just then and scowled. The last we saw of her she was moving rapidly up the river and the detective was dropping slowly behind. They both disappeared finally into the bay and Tish drew a long breath.

"Typical!" she said curtly. "He's sent here to watch a dangerous man and spends his time pursuing the young woman who hates the sight of him.

When women achieve the suffrage they will put none but married men in positions of trust."

Hutchins and the detective were still out of sight when supper-time came. The spy's supper weighed on us, and at last Tish attempted to start the motor launch. We had placed the supper and the small raft aboard, and Aggie was leaning over the edge untying the painter,--not a man, but a rope,--when unexpectedly the engine started at the first revolution of the wheel.

It darted out to the length of the rope, where it was checked abruptly, the shock throwing Aggie entirely out and into the stream. Tish caught the knife from the supper tray to cut us loose, and while Tish cut I pulled Aggie in, wet as she was. The boat was straining and panting, and, on being released, it sprang forward like a dog unleashed.

Aggie had swallowed a great deal of water and was most disagreeable; but the Mebbe was going remarkably well, and there seemed to be every prospect that we should get back to the camp in good order. Alas, for human hopes! Mr. McDonald was not very agreeable.

"You know," he said as he waited for his supper to float within reach, "you needn't be so blamed radical about everything you do! If you object to my hanging round, why not just say so? If I'm too obnoxious I'll clear out."

"Obnoxious is hardly the word," said Tish. "How long am I to be a prisoner?"

"I shall send letters off by the first boat."

He caught the raft just then and examined the supper with interest.

"Of course things might be worse," he said; "but it's dirty treatment, anyhow. And it's darned humiliating. Somebody I know is having a good time at my expense. It's heartless! That's what it is--heartless!"

Well, we left him, the engine starting nicely and Aggie being wrapped in a tarpaulin; but about a hundred yards above the island it began to slow down, and shortly afterward it stopped altogether. As the current caught us, we luckily threw out the anchor, for the engine refused to start again. It was then we saw the other canoes.

The girl in the pink tam-o'-shanter was in the first one.

They glanced at us curiously as they pa.s.sed, and the P.T.S.--that is the way we grew to speak of the pink tam-o'-shanter--raised one hand in the air, which is a form of canoe greeting, probably less upsetting to the equilibrium than a vigorous waving of the arm.

It was just then, I believe, that they saw our camp and headed for it.

The rest of what happened is most amazing. They stopped at our landing and unloaded their canoes. Though twilight was falling, we could see them distinctly. And what we saw was that they calmly took possession of the camp.

"Good gracious!" Tish cried. "The girls have gone into the tent! And somebody's working at the stove. The impertinence!"

Our situation was acutely painful. We could do nothing but watch. We called, but our voices failed to reach them. And Aggie took a chill, partly cold and partly fury. We sat there while they ate the entire supper!

They were having a very good time. Now and then somebody would go into the tent and bring something out, and there would be shrieks of laughter.

[We learned afterward that part of the amus.e.m.e.nt was caused by Aggie's false front, which one of the wretches put on as a beard.]

It was while thus distracted that Aggie suddenly screamed, and a moment later Mr. McDonald climbed over the side and into the boat, dripping.

"Don't be alarmed!" he said. "I'll go back and be a prisoner again just as soon as I've fired the engine. I couldn't bear to think of the lady who fell in sitting here indefinitely and taking cold." He was examining the engine while he spoke. "Have visitors, I see," he observed, as calmly as though he were not dripping all over the place.

"Intruders, not visitors!" Tish said angrily. "I never saw them before."

"Rather pretty, the one with the pink cap. May I examine the gasoline supply?" There was no gasoline. He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm afraid no amount of mechanical genius I intended to offer you will start her,"