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CHAPTER IX.
THE VOYAGE OF THE ANN

“I wouldn’t call that much of a joke!” Carl replied. “Turn out the light and perhaps they won’t see us!”

“What’s the use?” the boy answered. “They’ve seen our light before this, and they’ve heard us talking.”

“That’s right, kiddo!” a voice said in the darkness. “We’ve seen your light and we’ve heard you talking. Now, if you’ll lay your revolvers on the head of the barrel where you are standing, you’ll save us mussing up the floor.”

“You win!” exclaimed Jimmie.

The boys deposited their automatics on the barrel and stood waiting for the speaker to advance out of the darkness. When at last he made his appearance the boys noted that he was exactly the type of the man who had visited the camp on the previous day.

“We didn’t expect company here to-night!” the fellow said, taking the electric from Jimmie’s hand and directing the circle of light on the boy’s face. “Why didn’t you send in your cards?”

“Wasn’t any one to take them in!” grinned Carl.

The big fellow chuckled softly to himself and pointed to two casks not far away. Following the motion the boys seated themselves.

“Where are your machines?” was asked.

“Say,” Jimmie broke in without answering the question. “Are you the man who shot the bear yesterday?”

“I’m the man who shot the bear!” was the reply.

“I thought so!” answered the boy.

“You didn’t tell me where you left the machines,” insisted the other.

Jimmie explained that two were at the camp and one somewhere near the peak unless the thieves had again removed it.

“What did you boys come over here for?” was the next question.

“To look up the red and green signals.”

The captor laughed softly to himself for a moment and then asked:

“Did you look them up?”

“We didn’t get a chance!” was the reply.

“What did you come into the country for?” asked the captor.

“To have a good time hunting.”

“You said something like that yesterday,” the man continued, “but I didn’t believe it! I’ve less reason to believe in the truth of it now! Boys out on hunting trips don’t travel in expensive aeroplanes, nor do they wander about in the night, trying to read signals not intended for them to understand. You’ll have to come again, boys!” he added.

“That’s all there is to it!” Jimmie returned. “We came here hunting.”

“For smuggled goods?” asked the other with a laugh.

“Never heard of smuggled goods in this section of the country!”

“I’m sorry you blundered in here, lads,” the man said, after a short silence. “You’ve made us a lot of trouble. We’ve got to do one of two things. Either get rid of you boys for good and all, or change our entire system of operation.”

“I should advise the change!” grinned Jimmie.

“Look here!” Carl demanded whimsically, resolved to mislead the man if it were possible to do so, “can you give us a line on a country where there’s nothing but mountains and rivers and blue sky? This is the fourth mountain trip we’ve made, and every time we’ve run into a lot of people where none were supposed to exist.”

“That’s right!” Jimmie cut in. “When we landed in the valley we thought we’d have the whole place to ourselves. Then you come along and rolled the bear down on us, and asked a lot of impertinent questions. Then three men steal our aeroplane so we can’t return to camp from our midnight joy-ride. Then we see two men in front of a fire and hear others coming down the gully. How many people are there around here, anyway?”

“Quite a few!” laughed the captor. “In fact,” he went on, “I don’t think you can find any spot on the American continent where you won’t find more or less human beings.”

“What are you going to do with us?” asked Carl.

“Tell you what,” Jimmie cut in before the man could answer the question, “if you’ll get the Louise away from the thieves and go back to camp with us, we’ll cook you the biggest bear steak you ever saw, and cook you a cup of coffee that will hold up an iron wedge!”

“If you only hadn’t entered this storehouse,” the man said thoughtfully, “your proposition might be worthy of consideration.”

“We’ll never say a word about the smuggled goods,” said Carl.

The man seemed inclined to consider this statement, but in a moment the two figures who had been seen before the fire came into the cavern on a run. They conferred with the big fellow for a few moments and then went out.

“Now, boys,” said the man, who appeared to be custodian of the cavern, “there’s trouble outside, and we’ve got to take you into the other arm of the cavern and make sure that you don’t get away from us.”

“I don’t know who could be making you trouble,” Jimmie retorted. “You mounted police fellows seem to have everything your own way up in this country. Only,” he went on with a whimsical smile, “I never knew that mounted policemen stood guard over caves full of smuggled whiskey.”

“That story about being mounted policemen did sound rather thin, didn’t it?” asked the fellow.

“It was too thin for us to take stock in,” replied Carl.

“Well, come on, boys!” the captor said. “We may as well be moving back to your private suite. You’ll be well taken care of for the next few days. You fed me well and I’ll feed you well!”

“Are our friends outside?” asked Jimmie.

“That’s just it!” cried Carl. “I thought a short time ago that I heard the motors of the Ann.”

“The sparking you heard probably came from the Louise,” suggested the man. “All motors sing the same song.”

“Not much!” exclaimed Carl. “I can recognize the song of the Ann as far as I can hear it!”

“Well, come on!” the man exclaimed rather gruffly, “I’ve got to get you boys out of sight! You’ll be safer farther in, anyway, for there may be shooting. I’ll see you a little later on.”

The boys were conducted to a low, tunnel-like place leading out of the south arm of the cavern. It was not a desirable apartment, by any means, but the boys stepped inside without expressing the disgust they felt. The walls were damp as if underground springs existed not far away.

“Now,” the big fellow said, “I’m going to leave a man here to guard you boys. You’ll find he’s a pretty good sort of a chap, if you don’t try any funny business with him. If you try to get away, you’ll probably make the acquaintance of a clip of bullets!”

The guard referred to made his appearance in a moment. The boys saw little except his face by the flashlight, and they were not at all pleased with that. He motioned them farther back and sat down at the entrance.

“Cripes!” whispered Jimmie. “He looks like he’d been eating something that had caused a misery in his tummy!”

“Looks mad enough to bite nails!” agreed Carl.

The guard, sitting with the finger of light from the electric pointing down the passage, turned it for an instant on the boys’ faces and favored them with a most malignant scowl.

“Keep still, now, you fellows,” he demanded.

“All right,” laughed Jimmie, “we’ll be good!”

“I know what’s the matter with that fellow!” Carl declared in a moment. “He’s got a hangover! He was probably spiflicated last night, and he’ll be picking bumble-bees out of the wall in a minute if he don’t get a couple of drinks. Do you see anything significant in that, kid?” he added giving his chum a nudge with his elbow.

“He’s a tank, all right!” Jimmie agreed. “And he’ll be looking for the joy water in about ten minutes. When he gets good and gay, we’ll make a sneak! What do you think of our being down here in a hole like this, anyhow, when we came out to ride on flying machines?” the boy added, in a tone of disgust. “It’s just rotten, that’s what it is!”

“And we’ll get the razzle-dazzle from Ben, too!” complained Carl.

“Do you really think it was the Ann’s motors you heard?” asked Jimmie, in a moment. “If the boys are up in the machine, they ought to soon find out what’s going on here.”

“If Ben is up in the machine, you mean. Mr. Havens isn’t able to take a trip in the air and won’t be for several days.”

“That’s a fact,” Jimmie answered gravely, “and I’m afraid Ben can’t do very much alone.”

In ten minutes the boys heard footsteps proceeding stealthily down the cavern. The searchlight still showed at the entrance to the dungeon-like place where the boys sat, but Jimmie seemed to think its round eye remained too steadily on one point.

“Look here,” he said in a whisper to Carl, “this lovely guard of ours has propped up the electric so as to make us think he’s holding it and gone out after some of the funny stuff in the barrels!”

“Then we don’t need any one to tell us what to do!” Carl answered.

The boys moved forward and looked out into the passage. The electric was propped against the wall and the retreating figure of the guard could be seen at the point where the cavern was divided by the wall of rock.

“Put out the light and we’ll sneak along!” whispered Carl.

“Nix!” answered Jimmie. “We’ve got to let it burn until he turns into the passage where the whiskey is. If he sees there’s no light where he left one, he’ll come chasing back on the run.”

Directly the man turned into the north passage and then Jimmie shut off the light. Together the boys moved softly toward the entrance. They passed the junction of the two corridors with extreme caution for they had no means of knowing how far into the interior the guard had wandered.

When they came nearer to the entrance they saw a mist of daylight. They moved faster now, for they knew very well that their figures were outlined against the dawn. Should the guard suddenly make his appearance he would not need to travel back to the dungeon in order to inform himself of their escape.

“Do you hear the motors of the Ann now?” whispered Jimmie.

“Not a sound!” was the answer.

“If we only had our automatics,” Jimmie wailed, “we could step out into the gully with some confidence.”

“I don’t believe there’s any one out there!” declared Carl.

The boys, however, were not permitted to remain long in doubt as to the situation in the gully outside the cavern. While they waited the guard came running down the cavern shooting wildly as he advanced.

“Me for daylight!” shouted Jimmie.

When the lads reached the gully, they saw the Ann hovering over the mountainside. Her planes glistened in the sunlight, and she seemed to the anxious boys to represent everything that was desirable, freedom, breakfast, and the chance to sleep!

While they looked, however, the aeroplane shot away toward the valley. A moment later the Louise rose over the summit to the east and followed.

The report of a revolver brought the boys’ eyes back to earth again and they saw three men rushing down the gully toward the camp-fire, which still blazed dimly in the light of the morning sun. As they came nearer to the boys, they leveled their weapons as if determined to prevent further escape. Then additional shots came from somewhere. The boys hardly realized the exact location of the shooters, and two of the men crumpled down and rolled along the bottom of the gully.

The third man threw up his hands and faced about. The two aeroplanes again circled over the gully and the boys saw Ben looking down from the seat of the Ann. They could not distinguish the face or figure of the aviator on the Louise for she was now making for the summit.

What followed took place so unexpectedly and with such rapidity that the boys hardly knew what was going on until three men sprang out of a shallow depression on the east side of the gully and moved toward the burly fellow who had been their captor a short time before.

They saw one of the men slip a pair of handcuffs over the wrists of the man they had talked with in the whiskey cavern and point toward the summit, over which the aeroplanes were now moving.

CHAPTER X.
AN UNEXPECTED HAPPENING

“Hit me a clip on the wrist and wake me up!” exclaimed Jimmie.

The three men were entire strangers to the boys, and yet they appeared to be friendly. They had expected only hostile meetings in the gully. The men smiled at the evident surprise of the boys and pushed the burly prisoner on in advance.

“Who rubbed the lamp?” asked Carl, as he clambered laboriously up toward the summit. “I never saw anything exactly like this!”

“Say, Mr. Policeman,” Jimmie called out to a man in citizen’s dress whose smutty face disclosed a week’s growth of beard, “me friend here wants to know who rubbed the lamp for this last scene.”

“You’ll find out when you get to the top of the summit,” replied the other. “You’ll find friends up there!”

“This comes out of a dream-book, all right!” Jimmie declared.

“Say,” Carl exclaimed, “can’t we go back into the cavern and get our automatics? They’re perfectly good guns!”

“I’ve got your guns, boys!” said the prisoner. “I thought I might get a chance to use them, but it seems I didn’t. I didn’t expect to meet Dick Sherman in this neck of the woods.”

“Dick Sherman?” repeated Jimmie.

“Is that the Canadian revenue officer we’ve heard so much about?” asked Carl. “I wouldn’t mind meeting Dick Sherman.”

“Well, there he is!” snarled the prisoner pointing to the man who had spoken to the boys before, the man who had so used his imagination at the camp sometime before!

The party toiled on up the gully until they reached the snowy summit. Off to the east they saw the great planes of the Ann tilting in the morning sunlight. Just beyond her, and veering to the south, raced the Louise. While the three men started down the declivity with their prisoner the boys stood at the cold summit and watched the two machines.

“That’s a race all right!” Jimmie exclaimed.

“Of course!” answered Carl. “Ben is chasing up the fellow who stole the Louise. I’d just like to know how the kid got wise to the fact that we needed help, and how these three men happened to come here just in the nick of time.”

“I presume it will all be explained before many hours,” Jimmie answered. “What I’m most interested in now is this race. Suppose Ben catches the Louise. How’s he going to get the machine down without shooting the aviator? And that wouldn’t be good for the machine!”

“He’s got some scheme on foot,” Carl answered. “Just watch him whirl around the Louise. There! Now, don’t you see he’s got the other aviator buffaloed? I’ll bet he’s holding a gun on him!”

The two machines came back side by side. The Ann landed on the ledge and the two boys were hustled into the seat by the side of their chum who sat grinning at their bewildered faces.

Before they could ask any questions the Ann shot away and in an incredibly short space of time Jimmie and Carl were landed by their own fire!

“Get a move on, now!” Ben cried, as he again sprang into the seat of the aeroplane. “Mr. Havens will be wanting breakfast, and I’ve got a date with Dick Sherman!”

The boys stood watching the Ann lift into the air and make toward the summit. Their faces expressed both wonder and impatience.

“Now, what do you think of that?” demanded Jimmie.

“This is one of the mysteries you read about in books but never see in real life!” laughed Carl. “I wish we’d choked the story out of Ben. He’s laughing in his sleeve this minute, I know he is!”

“Boys!” Mr. Havens called from the tent.

Jimmie and Carl hastened forward and looked in.

“Perhaps you can tell us what’s been going on here?” asked Jimmie.

“If you’ll go and fix up a big breakfast, I’ll tell you all about it!” laughed the millionaire.

“We’ll cook you some steak,” replied Carl, “and make you some coffee.”

“I think,” smiled the millionaire, “that you’d better bury that bear.”

The boys made an onslaught on the store boxes, which had been brought from the aeroplanes to the vicinity of the fire, and soon had ham and eggs frying over the ruddy coals. Potatoes were boiling in a great kettle before many minutes, and coffee was bubbling not far away.

Jimmie snatched a loaf of bread from the box and began eating, while Carl opened a tin of pork and beans and began searching for a spoon.

“Hungry, boys?” asked Mr. Havens.

“Hungry?” repeated Jimmie. “We’ve been frozen to death, and shot to death, and held captive in a mountain dungeon, and had several other disagreeable things happen to us, but the worst of the whole business is that we haven’t had anything to eat since last night!”

“Tell us what’s been going on,” requested Carl.

“After you went away,” Mr. Havens began, “three men came into camp declaring that they had been lost in the mountains. Ben prepared supper for them and then proposed going out after the Louise. At the last moment one of the men sprang into the seat beside him and they went away together.

“The next I knew Ben came swinging back in the Ann alone. He talked with the two men who had been left here for a moment and then they all went away together, flying like mad in the aeroplane.”

“Didn’t Ben explain the situation to you?” asked Jimmie.

“He said that the three men who had represented themselves as hunters lost in the hills were Canadian revenue officers in search of smuggled whiskey, and that their leader, the man who had gone away with him, was the famous Dick Sherman.

“He said, too, that Sherman had discovered a nest of outlaws and a cavern which he believed to be the storehouse of the gang. At that time we knew little regarding the whereabouts of the two rattle-brained boys who had gone away in the Louise.”

“They stole it while we were watching the camp-fire,” Jimmie explained in a hesitating way.

“What’s Ben gone back for, now?” asked Carl.

“I suspect from what he said to me,” laughed Mr. Havens, “that he’s gone back after the revenue officers and the prisoners.”

“Then perhaps I’d better be getting more breakfast ready,” suggested Carl. “We’ll be running a hotel next, just like we always do when we get out into the mountains.”

In less than an hour the Ann and Louise lay on level ground near the fire, two prisoners sat handcuffed together not far away, and the three revenue officers were enjoying a plentiful breakfast supplied by the lads. Ben and Jimmie sat with Mr. Havens in his tent.

“There goes my dream!” exclaimed Ben pointing to the two prisoners.

“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Havens.

“Why, I had it all doped out that the men Dick Sherman captured were the men who abducted Colleton.”

“That’s just the way I had it figured!” exclaimed Jimmie.

“And now they turn out to be just whiskey smugglers!” exclaimed Ben in disgust. “They probably never saw Washington, nor heard of Colleton, nor even read one of the lying advertisements of the Kuro company.”

“We’ve been through a rotten bad night,” Jimmie agreed, “without getting anywhere! Say, Ben,” he added, “how did you induce the aviator on the Louise to swing back to the landing and give himself up?”

“I got the drop on him!” laughed Ben.

“But didn’t he have just as good a chance to get the drop on you?”

“He emptied his automatic before I did mine,” was the modest reply.

“Did you look after the men who were shot in the gulch?” Carl inquired in a moment.

“When I made the last trip,” Ben explained, “I found a drunken man sitting by the fire. He said the men were dead and that he would give them burial.”

“What’s this Sherman fellow going to do now?” asked Jimmie.

“He’s going to try to get this smuggled whiskey into a government warehouse somewhere,” answered Mr. Havens. “I don’t know just how he’ll do it, but it’s got to be done.”

“What do we get out of it?” asked Jimmie.

“You’re the merry little savings bank boy!” laughed Ben.

“I didn’t mean money!” retorted Jimmie scornfully. “What I meant was how does all this smuggled whiskey business help us find this post-office inspector?”

“It doesn’t,” replied Ben. “Ask something hard.”

“You don’t know that yet,” advised Mr. Havens.

“Come to think of it, of course we don’t!” cried Ben. “The abductors would be apt to bring Colleton into just such a hole as this, wouldn’t they? The outlaws would, in a measure, protect them from hunters, who are said to give a wide berth to any region known to contain outlaws.”

“Well,” Jimmie cut in in a moment, “I’m going to go and get Carl, and romp merrily off to the hay. We didn’t have any sleep last night and I guess we can get in a few lines of slumber to pretty good purpose.”

“Then you’ll be ready for another crazy midnight trip,” smiled Ben.

“I guess it wasn’t so very crazy after all,” replied Jimmie. “If we hadn’t gone out to look into those signals, the smugglers wouldn’t have been captured.”

“Have it your own way,” laughed Ben.

Jimmie and Carl went away to the other tent and were soon sound asleep. When they lay down the camp-fire was surrounded by the revenue officers and prisoners. Ben was making arrangements to sleep on a roll of blankets in the Havens’ tent. When they awoke, twilight was settling over the valley and Ben was rolling them about on their blankets.

“Get up!” the boy said. “You’ve slept all day!”

Jimmie sat up and rubbed his eyes. Carl aimed a kick at the boy who had aroused him and then lay back on the blankets.

“Where are the others?” asked Jimmie tumbling out of the tent.

“They went away in the machines,” answered Ben.

“You never let them take the Ann and the Louise!” almost shouted Jimmie. “They’ll be sure to break ’em!”

“Don’t get excited, now,” laughed Ben. “I took them over the ridge in the Ann and came back more than an hour ago. Since then I’ve been getting supper and helping Mr. Havens fix up his porcupine feet.”

“Can he walk yet?” asked Jimmie sleepily.

“He won’t be able to walk for a week!” was the reply.

“Say,” Jimmie said to Ben in a moment, as they approached the fire, “did you see that pirate with the package when you went back after the prisoners?”

“Of course, I saw him!” answered Ben.

“What was he talking about?”

“I don’t know what he was trying to say,” replied Ben, “but I got the impression that before long he would be umpiring a fight between a green rattlesnake and a pink lion with a red tail.”

“It’s a wonder this Dick Sheman left him there alone with all that whiskey,” commented Jimmie. “If he had my disposition, he’d set fire to the whole bunch of it!”

“Sherman won him over to the side of law and order,” laughed Ben, “by promising him immunity and a position in the government service. He’ll be there when they came back for the whiskey, all right. Sherman seemed to know something about the fellow. At least, he told me that Crooked Terry, as they call him, has been in crooked games all his life. He told me, too, that the old fellow knows this country better than any person in the world. He’s got a map of it in his head.”

“That’s just what I wanted to know!” cried Jimmie. “If you don’t mind, Ben,” he added with a sly wink, “we’ll go up there to-night and get a copy of that map! I’ll just bet you,” he went on, “that our little scrap with the smugglers will get us somewhere in the game we’re playing, after all! What do you think about it?”

“That seems to me to be the very thing to do!” replied Ben. “If Crooked Terry knows all about this country, he’s the man we’ve got to do business with. If we find Colleton, we’ve got to know where to look!”