“Everybody get out in a hurry!”
called Elmer, suiting the action to the word himself
by scrambling erect and making for the open door of
the big barn.
It was far from light in there; but
as they could easily see the opening all they had
to do was to make for it. Elmer had been careful
to make sure that there were no pitchforks lying around
loose, to be run upon by accident.
Hardly had the scouts managed to stream
from the interior of the barn than they became aware
of the fact that someone was running headlong toward
them. Toby threw himself into an attitude of
defense, raising the piece of wood he had grasped
for a club; but Elmer realized that the runner was
approaching from the direction of the farmhouse and
therefore must be a friend rather than a foe.
“Steady, boys, it must be Johnny!”
he told his comrades as they clustered there.
Johnny it proved to be. The
bound boy must have lain down on his cot fully dressed
and equipped, for he had on even his cowhide boots,
and was minus only a hat. Of course, the boy
was fairly brimming over with intense excitement.
“Didn’t yuh hear him yell?”
he was crying. “We’ve kotched the
chicken thief fur sure, fellers. Whoop la! kim
on, everybody, and nab him afore all the blood runs
tuh his head!”
Lil Artha and Elmer, of course, had
snatched up their guns, although they hardly believed
they would find any use for the weapons. All
of them started on the run toward the spot where the
turkeys roosted in the favorite tree.
The sky was clouded over, and while
it was not actually dark the boys had some little
difficulty in seeing as well as they might have liked.
Now and then one of the sprinters would stumble over
some impediment, and perhaps measure his length on
the ground, only to scramble erect again and tear
after the rest.
It was usually clumsy Landy who met
with these mishaps; but even such things did not seem
to subdue his ambition to keep after the crowd.
Elmer was listening as he ran.
He wondered why they did not already hear the groans
or whines of the wretched thief who had been hung up
by the heels without receiving a second’s warning.
Remembering how Johnny had been whisked
aloft, Elmer felt sure no one could be blamed for
letting out that shriek when the catastrophe came
about. Nor would he have thought it queer if
the suspended rascal kept up his groans as he writhed
and twisted in a vain effort to reach up to the limb;
which only a circus contortionist would have been able
to do.
He imagined he heard some sort of
sound ahead of them. But even at that Elmer
could not be certain. It might be the night breeze
sighing through the upper branches of the tall tree,
or the alarmed turkeys holding a confab among themselves,
for all he could tell.
But they were rapidly bearing down
upon the spot now, and in another half minute ought
to be where they could see the swaying figure of the
caught thief.
“I don’t seem to get him,
Johnny!” ventured Lil Artha, in a disappointed
tone.
“Huh! somethin’ gone wrong
I guess!” grunted the inventor; and if the tall
scout could feel chagrin, fancy what a shock it must
have been to Johnny when he realized that there was
no dangling figure to greet him, despite that wild
yell so full of mortal agony.
Perhaps already wise Elmer had begun
to hazard a shrewd guess as to the why and wherefore
of this vacancy. He was a great hand to see through
things long before the answer became apparent to his
chums. If this were so, at least he did not
venture to say anything to them about it.
By now all of them, save slow-poke
Landy, had arrived at the tree. They could hear
the alarmed turkeys making some twittering sounds
above, but if any of them had flown off the rest remained
on their roosts.
Johnny had been smart enough to fetch
his lantern along. This he now proceeded to
light, and as soon as the wick took fire he began to
examine the trap.
“Dog-gone the luck, she went
and broke on me!” he wailed, as though his boyish
heart were almost broken by the catastrophe.
“That’s what comes of
not testing things before-hand!” said Toby, with
the air of a wise-acre who knew it all; and yet Toby
was himself a most notorious offender along those
very same lines, as his chums could have informed
the bound boy had they chosen to give a fellow-scout
away.
“Gee whiz! he did test it, Toby,”
said Lil Artha, indignantly; “didn’t we
all of us see him ahangin’ head-down. There’s
some sort of a mystery about it, that’s what.”
“Not much,” said Elmer,
who, while the others were talking, had been examining
the end of the rope that lay on the ground near by;
“it’s been cut, that’s all.”
“Cut with a knife d’ye
mean, Elmer?” cried Johnny, aghast.
“Just what it has,” continued
the patrol leader firmly; “you can see that
with one eye, for the edges are smooth, and not ragged
as they would be if the rope had broken a strand at
a time.”
Every fellow had to push up and examine
it to make sure, and there was no dissenting voice
after that. They knew Elmer was right, as he
very nearly always appeared to be in matters like
this.
“But say, however could he have
twisted up to get at the rope while he was hanging
here by one leg, I’d like to know?” demanded
Landy.
“Mebbe the second thief helped
him git loose,” suggested the bound boy.
“Just what happened as sure
as anything,” assented Elmer. “They
were too smart for you that time, Johnny. Instead
of running away when the alarm went off, this second
fellow whipped out his blade, and finding the rope
where it ran from the tree, he cut it.”
“Then the other dropped down,
and got his legs loose,” added Toby. “See,
here’s the loop lying on the ground.”
Sure enough, it was just as he said.
The loop was there in plain sight, just as it had
apparently been hurled aside by the trapped thief
after he had a chance to use his hands.
Johnny was the most bitterly disappointed
fellow Elmer had come across in a long time.
He kept muttering to himself as he examined the fragment
of rope. Lil Artha said he was “chewing
the rag,” whatever that might mean; but, at
any rate, Johnny did not seem to be in a very happy
frame of mind, so the operation could hardly have been
of a pleasant nature.
“Now, I understand that second
little rumble I heard,” said Elmer. “It
was just as Johnny reached us in front of the barn,
and sounded like the barrel had started on again.
That happened when the rope was cut, allowing the
weighted hogshead to keep on a little further to the
bottom of the drop.”
“Let’s see if you hit
the nail on the head with that guess,” suggested
Toby, who liked to be convinced by his own eyesight
when anything came to pass.
So, led by the inventor of the trap,
they hurried to where the hogshead had been perched
on the brink of the steep little descent. It
could be seen at the bottom; and this confirmed the
theory Elmer had advanced.
“And we didn’t get a glimpse
of the thieves after all,” lamented Landy; “now
I was hoping I’d see a fellow dangling there
when we came up. Not that I’d like him
to suffer too much, you know; but for Johnny’s
sake I wanted him to be nabbed.”
“Yes, it’s all off now,” admitted
Lil Artha.
“Of course, after that row they
wouldn’t be silly enough to come again for another
try?” suggested Toby.
“Huh! that olé trap ain’t
no good after that mess,” grunted Johnny, disdainfully.
“I reckons as how I’ll hev tuh think up
sum other kind. But they ain’t agoin’
tuh git any o’ them turks if I have to sot up
all night, and borry a gun frum you fellers in the
bargain.”
“What’s the matter with
tying Moses the bulldog to the tree here?” remarked
Elmer; “he’s barking now at the kennel
near the house. I’d certainly make use
of the old dog if I were you, Johnny.”
“Jest what I will do, Elmer.
Moses ain’t a great hand tuh bark, yuh see;
bulls do the business with their teeth ‘stead
o’ with their noise. But he kin give tongue
when he wants tuh. I’ll fix him here fur
the rest o’ the night.”
“How does it come the farmer
hasn’t shown up?” asked Mark, who thought
it a bit queer Mr. Trotter displayed so little interest
in the safe keeping of his young turkeys.
“Oh! him,” chuckled Johnny;
“nobody never ain’t agoin’ tuh get
him waked up once he hits the hay. Talk tuh
me baout sleepin’, he kin beat anything yuh
ever met. I bet yuh the missus is up and waitin’
tuh know if we grabbed one.”
“Do you think they got a turkey
after all?” asked Landy, as he picked up several
feathers from the ground near the tree.
“What do you say about that, Johnny?”
Elmer inquired.
“Well, it daon’t stand
tuh reason he did,” replied the other, gravely;
“even if he had holt o’ one at the time,
he never’d a held on tuh hit arter that rope
had slung him head down’ards. Guess I ort
tuh know. If any o’ yuh wants tuh feel
what it’s like, I’ll rig the trap up agin
in the mawnin’ for yuh. Hold a turkey nawthin’.
He couldn’t even hold his breath, but had tuh
give a yell like he was killed.”
Indeed, they were all of pretty much
the same opinion. No matter how brave a fellow
the trespasser might be, when he met with such a sudden
and unexpected upheaval as that running noose brought
about, his wits were bound to desert him for the time
being at least.
It may have been noticed also that
no one, even bold Lil Artha, the most venturesome
of them all, volunteered to make the additional test
when morning came. They seemed perfectly satisfied
to accept the will for the deed. They had witnessed
the speedy working of Johnny’s trap, and evidently
had no itching to try what it felt like to hang head
downward from the limb of a tree, with a leg almost
dislocated by a sudden jerking, powerful lever.
“Well, ‘tain’t no
use acryin’ over spilt milk, they sez,”
remarked Johnny, who, after all, seemed to be of a
philosophical turn of mind; “the thing’s
done, an’ that’s all they is tuh hit.
Might as well git Mose and fix him here tuh the tree.
Them turks has jes’ gut tuh be saved, no matter
how much trouble it takes.”
“Elmer, what are you thinking
about?” asked Mark just then; for being used
to the ways of his best chum he could see that the
patrol leader was pondering something in his mind.
“If you want to know it was
about that yell,” Elmer admitted.
“A pretty husky whoop in the
bargain, let me say,” observed Lil Artha; “I
used to think I could beat all creation letting out
a yell, but that went one better, you hear me talking.”
“Yes,” added Toby, “it
sounded as if the top of the world had blown off,
the fellow made such a howl. Anyway, that’s
how it seemed to me when I was waked up so suddenly.”
“Have we ever heard a whoop
like that before?” asked Elmer.
“Now you’re thinking of
Hen Condit, of course, Elmer,” came from Toby.
“Well, Hen’s got a good
strong pair of lungs, let me tell you,” admitted
Landy. “I remember the time that cow tossed
him when he was a small boy, and say, he made everybody
inside of half a mile run outdoors to see what was
the matter. They found Hen straddlin’ a
limb of a tree, and whooping it up for all he was
worth. It might have been him, Elmer, no telling.”
“And just as well any other
person badly scared,” Mark observed. “I
think I’d be able to do some fine work along
those lines under the same conditions.”
“Then it seems that we’ll
never be able to identify Hen by that shout,”
laughed Elmer; “but there’s a way we can
find something out, as all scouts ought to know.”
That remark immediately put them all on their mettle.
“Sure thing, Elmer,” agreed
Lil Artha, “for, of course, you mean if we could
find a trail around here we might pick out the different
footprints; and one of us ought to know something about
the kind of shoes Hen wears.”
“That’s me,” admitted
Landy, “because I happened to be going with Hen
more or less lately. Show me the footprints and
I’ll tell you soon enough if it’s him.”
Of course, nothing could be done without
the lantern, so they kept close to Johnny, who carried
the same. From time to time he was given instruction
how to hold the light so they might examine certain
spots.
“Hello! Elmer’s
found something!” suddenly exclaimed keen-eyed
Lil Artha, when he saw the scout leader stoop over
almost under the tree, and alongside the large drygoods
box.
“That so, Elmer; what was it?”
several asked him in a breath.
“Gather around me,” the
other commanded, “and let’s see if you
can recognize what I picked up.”
“Huh! bet you it fell from his
pocket when he was dragged upside-down,” was
the way Lil Artha put it; quick to guess the truth,
though he had not himself thought of this possibility
before.
“Correct for you, Lil Artha,
for that’s what happened,” Elmer acknowledged.
“Is it a knife, Elmer?” continued the
tall scout.
“Once more you hit it,”
said the other; “and Landy, since you say you’ve
been going more or less with Hen lately, perhaps you’d
be apt to know his knife if you happened to set eyes
on it?”
“To be sure I would, Elmer.”
“You’ve handled it then, have you?”
“Lots of times, because you
see I lost my own frog-sticker some weeks back, and
I ain’t had a birthday since to get a new one,”
Landy confessed.
“That sounds good to me,”
Elmer told him; “so now take a look at this,
and tell us what you think.”
With that he brought his hand around,
having been keeping it behind his back all this time.
When he opened it there was disclosed a common, every-day
jack-knife with a buckhorn handle, such as might be
expected to be found in the pocket of almost any lad,
and capable, when given a keen edge, of performing
miracles in the way of shaving sticks and cutting
up apples.
So Landy gravely, though eagerly,
took up the knife. He opened the big blade and
seemed interested in a certain nick he found there.
“Elmer, that settles it,”
he said, finally; “it’s Hen’s knife,
I’m positive; and it must have been him that
was hanging from this tree a bit ago!”