Читать книгу: «The Boy Scouts at the Canadian Border», страница 7
CHAPTER XIII
A THRILLING DISCOVERY
The light of Rob’s lantern showed them a boy of about their own age. He was half on his knees, and seemed to be caught in some way so that he could not get away.
“Why, he’s got his leg in a trap, don’t you see, Rob?” gasped Andy, filled with horror at the very idea, for it seemed to portend the most serious consequences.
“It does look like an old rusty bear trap!” Rob admitted as they hurried on; Zeb instantly corroborated what he said by exclaiming:
“Jest what she are, an’ no mistake. Jingo! I sartin sure hopes as how the boy ain’t bad hurted. I’ve seen men that was lamed fur life arter being ketched by the jaws o’ a bar trap. But this un seems old like, and mebbe the springs are weak.”
All the same the unlucky victim of the trap had apparently not been able to free himself.
“I’m right glad ye’ve come!” called out the boy, showing a wonderful amount of nerve. “I shouted till I could hardly call above a whisper, and I was nearly crazy with fear that I’d have to stay here till mornin’, when I heard you answer.
“Hurry, please, and get this old thing off me. Ye see I couldn’t reach the second spring nohow, try as hard as I might. It hurt something fierce whenever I twisted around that way.”
They were all bending down now. The first thing Rob noticed with a great feeling of relief, when he brought his lantern close to the prisoner of the rusty old bear trap, was that there were no signs of blood. This gave him fresh hope that the misfortune might not turn out to be quite so serious as he had at first anticipated; and also it proved that Zeb, a trapper of long experience himself, had hit the nail on the head when he said that the trap looked as if it might be old, and the springs weak in their action.
Apparently it had enough power to snap shut and hold fairly firm. Could the boy have borne heavily on both springs, he might have succeeded in effecting his release in the beginning.
Zeb immediately put his weight on the obstreperous spring. Andy pried back the unwilling jaws; whereupon Rob was able to take out the boy’s leg from the trap.
The boy rubbed his hand tenderly up and down his leg at the point where it had been seized. He gritted his teeth, and winced a little, but quickly exclaimed as if in deepest gratitude:
“Hurts some, but the bone wasn’t broken, and I’m unco’ lucky. What’s a black and blue bruise anyway? I can stand it, ye ken.”
With Rob’s help he managed to get on his feet, after which he immediately began to limp around, muttering to himself as he went, as though controlled by a mixture of emotions – thankfulness that it was no worse, gratitude because of the coming of these rescuers, and chagrin at having been caught in such a ridiculous situation.
Zeb meanwhile was examining the trap with the eye of an expert.
“Jest about worn out,” he was saying, “an’ she never’d hev held a bar in the wide world. Now, I wonder who put that no-good thing thar – no trapper as knowed his business, I’d say. Looks more like a kid’s work than anything else.”
“Yes, it was a boy,” explained the late victim, “and the funny part of it all is that I should have happened on to the trap my cousin Archie told me he’d kept set for a month, over near the old logging camp.”
“Archie was the lad’s name, was it?” demanded Zeb quickly. “I remember that Cameron, the guide I used to pull with, and who came up this way last summer to settle, had a lad by that name.”
“Well, Archie Cameron is my full cousin,” explained the stranger. “I’m Donald McGuffey, ye ken, and I live over the line in a Canadian village. I’d been visitin’ my relatives, and was on my way back home when this happened. Now I’m lame, and perhaps I can never get there in time to save them.”
“What’s that?” asked Rob suspiciously. “Are your folks in any danger? Did you get word that they were sick? Tell us what you mean, Donald, and if we can be of any further assistance to you we stand ready to do all we can, for we’re scouts, you know, and it’s our duty to hold out a helping hand every time.”
“Oh! but that’s fine of you!” cried the Canadian boy, shaking with emotion, which, of course, none of the others could as yet begin to understand. “Why, I’m a scout, too, though now I haven’t got my uniform on. But, oh! I wonder if you would dare take it upon yourselves as comrades to stand by me through this terrible thing?”
“Terrible thing, what, Donald?” almost shouted the aroused Andy. “Speak up and let’s know what it’s all about. Why should we hesitate about helping you out? Who’s going to hurt us for sticking to a comrade that’s in distress?”
“Those awful men – they would be furious if they knew any one meant to interfere. Yes, they would even do muckle mair than tie ye up. I believe, in my bones, they are that wrapped up in their diabolical scheme they’d murder anyone who tried to break it up!”
“Speak plainer, Donald,” snapped Rob. “We are wasting precious time while you throw out hints in that way. Tell us everything!”
The Canadian boy stopped limping around. He seemed to straighten up his figure, and they could now see that he was a tall and spare lad, as wiry as they make them over in the country beyond the border.
“It’s just this, ye ken,” he said earnestly. “They mean to blow up the bridge this verra nicht, in time to trap the regular munition freight that goes over at two in the mornin’!”
Rob and Andy exchanged horrified looks. Their worst fears were confirmed. Only for their having seen the evolutions of that spying aeroplane that crossed the line and hovered above the railroad embankment near where the trestle leading to the bridge lay, they might have been at a loss to comprehend what these startling words meant. But that much was very plain to them; in fact, as we have seen, Rob at least had been confident that the terrible plot had only been delayed, and not given up.
How had this Canadian boy learned of the truth? Plainly there was more for him to explain, though Rob could now understand the fearful mental suffering he must have endured, as well as the physical pain, on finding himself detained in that astounding fashion, when he was undoubtedly hastening as fast as he could go to carry his news to those guarding the threatened railroad.
“Come, tell us as quick as you can how you learned this, Donald,” said Rob. “Two days ago we saw an aeroplane cross over, and we guessed then that perhaps the pilot was spying out the land, for there has been some talk of plotters here in the States in sympathy with Germany, who were trying to blow up munition plants in Canada, or doing something just as dreadful.”
“Aweel, they’ve settled on destroying the long bridge across which so many loaded trains pass every twenty-four hours,” said the other hurriedly, and with bated breath, owing to his increasing excitement. “I happened to overhear them talking while on my way to the river, after saying good-bye to my cousin, who was sick abed. I knew they were up to something, for I saw that they had a small German flag, which each one of them kissed as they sat around the fire. So I crept close up and listened, oh! with my heart nearly in my mouth. I soon learned that they were sure enough enemies of my country, and that they meant to strike a blow against the Allies before another morning, that for weeks and weeks would paralyze all traffic flowin’ to the sea by this railway line.”
“It was a brave act in your crawling up and listening,” said the admiring Andy, as he laid a hand on the arm of the Canadian lad. “And make up your mind we’re going to stand by you through thick and thin, Donald. Scouts should help each other, and that, you know, means just what it says.”
“Go on and tell us the rest, please!” urged Rob.
“Why, after I had learned what they were scheming to do,” continued the other promptly, greatly pleased at hearing those generous words spoken by impetuous Andy, “I knew I must get alang, if I wanted to be ahead o’ the gillies. Ye ken I remembered hearing my cousin say he believed a Yankee sportsman and his guides would be over at the old logging camp; and sae I changed me course a bit, meanin’ to drap in and see if they would nae helpit me carry the news across the line. Then, bad luck to it all, I had to deliberately step into the auld bear trap my cousin Archie had tawld me that he put out here a wheen o’ time back.”
“It was doubly unfortunate,” said Rob, his voice full of sympathy.
“It made me verra mad, I assure ye,” confessed Donald frankly. “Try as I would I could nae get me leg free, nor could I yet reach the spring to bear down on the same. I stood the pain the best I was able whenever I reached out, but it was a’ no gude. And only for the luck o’ ye hearing my shouts there I must ha’ remained till the day came, and then it would ha’ been far too late. But now I hae telled ye a’ I must be on me way again, no matter how I hae to limp it.”
“Hold on, Donald, not so fast,” said Rob. “We are going with you!”
“Across the border, do you mean, Rob?” exclaimed Andy gleefully, for being of an adventurous spirit, nothing could have pleased him more than this.
“There seems to be no other way to foil those desperate conspirators. The Canadian authorities are none too friendly to us right now on account of numerous things that have happened and which they lay to German sympathizers crossing over secretly from our side. Yes, we must try to help our fellow scout do his duty to his country, which he loves just as much as we do our own native land.”
“Oh, it makes my heart fairly jump to hear ye say that! It’s braw lads ye air, baith o’ ye, and I’ll never forget it, never! My leg hurts, but I think it will get better after I use it a while. No matter how it pains me, I shall go on and on, even if I have to crawl and drag it after me, for I must carry the news to the guards. I would gie ten years o’ life if only there was a way to flash it across the border to them richt now.”
“First we must go back to the cabin,” said Rob.
“Is it necessary, then?” asked Donald anxiously, as though fairly wild to be on his way.
“Yes, because there are several reasons,” he was told. “We have a chum there who would never forgive us if we started on such a glorious expedition and left him behind. Then again, I have some salve that, rubbed on your leg, would do a lot of good and relieve the pain considerably. So let’s start.”
Donald may have had a good Scotch will of his own, but as he too was a scout, he had also learned to yield to those in authority. He seemed to guess intuitively that Rob must be a leader, perhaps from his positive way of saying things and possibly from Andy’s deferring to his opinion.
They were soon hurrying along, Donald suppressing any groan as he continued to limp more or less.
“I hae not tauld ye all,” he was saying. “I learned from what I heard them say while I hid in the bushes that they expected to set a mine under the trestle and connect it with a battery by a long wire. Then from a distance they could destroy the bridge just when the heavy freight train was passing over. Ye can understand what I suffered when I tell ye that my fayther is an engineer in the employ of that same railway and that he pulls the munition freight this verra nicht!”
CHAPTER XIV
ROB MAKES UP HIS MIND
“Whew, but that’s doubly tough, I should say!” ejaculated Andy, when he heard this astounding declaration on the part of the boy whose cause they were about to champion.
Rob, too, was deeply concerned.
“Then it’s easy to understand why you were so wild to get there in time to stop this horrible act,” he told Donald. “It might be bad enough for the wretches to do something to cripple the railway services, so as to stop the flow of munitions; but it means a whole lot more to it when it’s your own father whose life is placed in danger.”
“Yes, and a fayther like mine, in the bargain,” said Donald, so proudly that it was plain to be seen that the engineer was not without honor and love in his own family.
“If you hadn’t thought that you possibly could get help here at the old logging camp,” said Rob, “and cut across this way to see if the hunting party was still there, I suppose you’d have taken a different route?”
“Oh, ay,” promptly answered the other.
“In that case you wouldn’t have found yourself caught in that trap?” asked the leader of the Eagle Patrol, as the quartette hastened toward camp.
“I couldnae well be ketched in the auld bear trap set by me cousin Archie if it was half a mile awa’ I ran, ye ken,” Donald asserted naïvely.
“Well, we will be at the camp in a few minutes now,” Rob went on to say, thinking to further encourage the poor chap, whom he knew to be suffering more mentally than he was physically. “Once we make it, we needn’t be detained very long. I’m going to depend a whole lot on you to take us across the boundary by the shortest route possible.”
“Ye can wager your last bawbee that I’m capable o’ doin’ it,” came the reply, in such a tone of positive conviction that if Rob had been entertaining any doubts on that score they were quickly put to rest.
“If you need any extra pilotin’,” spoke up Big Zeb, “count on this chicken to do his best to kerry ye through.”
“Then you mean to keep with us, do you, Zeb?” asked the scout master.
“I sartin do; that is, if ye want me along,” the guide replied. “I’m an American born, and p’raps haven’t had as much friendly feelin’ for the Canucks ’cross the line as I might in times past, but, sir, when I hears how they are volunteerin’ by the tens of thousands an’ goin’ away ’cross the ocean to fight ’ginst the Kaiser, I begins to change my idees consarnin’ that brood. Now I thinks they air all to the good, an’ I takes off my hat to them. Yes, an’ arter hearin’ what meanness this ’ere batch o’ schemers is up to, I’d walk all the way to Labrador to upset their ugly game; that’s me, Zeb Crooks, Maine woods guide.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that, Zeb,” said Rob heartily. “If you’d seen the terrible sights we did in Belgium and northern France, you’d feel that there was need for sympathy for those who are risking their lives to crush all military spirit and prevent a world war like this from ever happening again as long as men people the earth. That’s what’s taking these Canadian boys away from their homes, nearly four hundred thousand of them. It isn’t alone that the empire they belong to is in danger, but the whole world is on fire, and the conflagration must be quenched. They believe it can be done only in one way, which is by winning this war. Of course, the Germans and their allies say it’s just the opposite and that they are fighting for their very existence. Well, there’s the camp!”
They could just glimpse delicate lances of light which managed to escape through the cracks or chinks between the logs that had not been fully filled afresh when the hunting party took possession of the bunk-house.
A minute afterward Andy was pounding at the door, but there was little necessity for this summons, because the listening scout within had heard the murmur of their voices and was already fumbling with the bar. So the friendly door was quickly flung wide open, and Donald found himself ushered into a warm and hospitable interior.
He and Tubby stared at each other, and with reason. Donald on his part may have thought that never before had he run across so fat a youth as Tubby Hopkins, who seemed to be fairly bursting his khaki clothes with plumpness. On his part, Tubby was naturally consumed with a burning curiosity concerning this young stranger – who he could be; what had happened to make him have such a perceptible limp; and, above all, why were Rob and Andy seeming to be in such a stupendous hurry?
“Sit right down here, Donald,” said the scout master, indicating a rude bark chair close to the cheery blaze, “and I’ll look up that magical salve. I know where I put it away in my pack. I give you my word you’ll find it just the thing to soothe that bruised leg of yours. Andy, tell Tubby what’s happened, and about our plan of campaign for invading Canada this very night.”
“W-w-what?” gasped the other, his face the picture of both amazement and consternation.
“Oh, that’s nothing, Tubby!” remarked Andy airily. “Now don’t go to suspecting that we’re meaning to do anything that’s wrong. Just the other way, for the boot’s on the other foot, since this is going to be an errand of mercy and meant to keep Uncle Sam from being accused of a grave breach of neutrality by the folks up in Ottawa.”
“For pity’s sake, what do you mean, Andy?” cried poor bewildered Tubby. “Please be good and explain it all in a jiffy. I’ll certainly burst if you don’t, I’m that keyed up now.”
“I believe you will, sure enough, for I can hear the hoops of the tub creaking under the strain right now,” chuckled the other; and then making a fresh start, he went on to say: “This is our jolly chum, Tubby Hopkins, Donald. We call him our Friar Tuck when we play at Robin Hood of the Greenwood Forest, you know. It is his uncle who has been hunting here and making his headquarters in this old logging camp, though just now he’s up at the Tucker Pond trying for the big bull moose. Donald McGuffey, Tubby, a Canadian boy who belongs to the scouts in his town across the line and who’s been visiting a cousin on our side.”
Rob came hurrying up bearing a small zinc box such as salve is often kept in. He was down on his knees without asking questions and assisting the injured lad to roll up his trousers leg to the knee. It seemed that Donald had a wise and careful mother, for he was wearing, in addition to the corduroy trousers, a pair of extra thick drawers.
“You’re lucky, Donald,” Rob told the other, “for these corduroys would serve as a mighty good buffer; and, besides, you’ve had a pad in the other garment. Bad as your leg may be bruised, it would have been a whole lot worse only for these shields.”
By this time he had bared the lower part of Donald’s limb. The boy had his teeth clenched tightly together, as though necessarily there was more or less acute pain connected with this business; but it could not make him even wince, such was his astonishing grit. Andy surveyed him with renewed admiration, for if there was one thing that he liked to see it was this quality in a fellow. Andy himself was in the habit of also setting his teeth grimly when in pain and suppressing all groans.
As for Tubby, he stared as though he half believed he might be asleep and dreaming all this. He saw a dark black-and-blue bruise on the white skin of the boy’s leg, halfway up to the knee. Doubtless there was another just like it on the opposite side. Tubby knew it must hurt like anything. He also wondered greatly what could have given such strange bruises. Then Rob, speaking, excited his curiosity still further.
“You see,” said the scout master, as he started to gently rub some of the soothing salve on the leg of the Canadian boy, “if the springs of that trap had been new and vigorous instead of rusted out and weak, they might have broken the bone here. As it was, they just gripped you and held tight enough to keep you from breaking away, seeing that you couldn’t possibly manage to get around so as to press down one of the springs.”
“Trap!” ejaculated Tubby. “Oh, why don’t you hurry up and explain it all to me, Andy Bowles? Rob, you tell me, won’t you? What sort of a trap was this poor fellow caught in?”
“It was an old bear trap, you see, that his own cousin had set a while ago, thinking to make use of it, as he had seen the tracks of a big black bear over this way,” Andy hastened to say. “Donald was hurrying along through the woods, never thinking about anything of this kind, when all at once he found himself caught. He’s been held fast there for more than an hour, calling out for help as loudly as he could. He was in a desperate hurry to get across the line, because by accident he overheard some rascals scheming to blow up the railway bridge this very night.”
“Great thunder!” was all Tubby could gasp, but the look on his face spoke volumes.
“That’s pretty lively stuff, of course, Tubby,” continued Andy, with the skill of a diplomat, “but the worst is yet to come; for, do you know, Donald’s father is an engineer in the employ of the Canadian railway, and it happens that he pulls the munition train this very night, that these fiends are planning to destroy along with the bridge!”
Tubby was fairly holding his breath as he drank in all these amazing details. His round face began to grow furiously red with a riot of emotions that made his heart beat twice as fast as was its wont. Then, as if he dimly suspected that Andy, given to practical jokes, might be taking advantage of his confiding nature, Tubby turned toward the scout master and implored him to corroborate the story.
“Oh, is it all true, Rob?” he asked tremulously. “Would Andy be so mean as to deceive a trusting comrade in khaki? Please tell me, Rob!”
“Every word is just as he tells you, Tubby,” said the other, still engaged in gently, but more vigorously than before, rubbing the discolored leg of the boy; and, singularly enough, it did not seem to hurt quite as much as at first, from which Donald must be inclined to believe there was considerable virtue in that “magical compound” as a pain remover and a balm in time of trouble.
“And are we going to stand by him, Rob, and try to break up the dastardly game of those criminal plotters?” continued Tubby.
“You give them a pretty hard name,” laughed Rob. “I reckon they’d deny anything of that sort indignantly, saying anything is fair in war time. All the same, we believe they deserve to be called scoundrels. Yes, we mean to stand back of Donald, if that’s what you mean, Tubby. We settled all that on the way here.”
“Going over into Canada, and warn the bridge guards, you mean, Rob?”
“Nothing more or less,” he was informed steadily. “Our only fear is that we may not get there in time to save the bridge.”
“’Course we’re all in this, Rob?” asked Tubby. “You wouldn’t dream of asking me to stay behind, when anything of this sort was being pulled off? I’ve never balked when ordered to obey by a superior officer, but in such a case as this – well, you wouldn’t treat me so mean as that, I just know it, Rob.”
“Make yourself easy on that score,” said Rob, wishing to relieve the strain of suspense under which he knew only too well Tubby was laboring. “We’re all going, all but Wolf here, and we’ll leave him behind to guard the cabin, with plenty of grub to keep him alive for a week. I hope that satisfies you, Tubby.”
“Thank you, Rob; I’m more than glad to hear you say that. I never would have gotten over it if I’d been left in the lurch when this glorious stunt was being pulled off. I promise you that I’ll keep up with the procession. Surely I can walk as fast as poor injured Donald here, who has such a game leg. Yes, I’m satisfied.”
