_ CHAPTER VI. TO THE RESCUE!
This much of the interview was perfectly clear to Jerry afterwards, but what followed he could not quite understand at the time or later. For a moment it was almost laughable. There stood Aikens fiercely clutching one arm and waving it up and down as if to pump further information from him. Mr. Fulton, after the first dazed instant, darted across the room and grabbed Jerry's other arm.
"
Where is he? Tell me--quick!" he demanded.
Then it was that Jerry could not understand, for the look that came over Mr. Fulton's face at his reply was neither belief nor doubt. His eyebrows almost met in a frown as he repeated mechanically:
"On Lost Island, you say? But--but--how do you know? You weren't
on Lost Island, were you?"
"No--o," answered Jerry slowly.
A look of relief, quickly hidden, came to Mr. Fulton's face, but Jerry saw it, and wondered.
"Did someone tell you he was there, then?"
"Someone told me he
wasn't there----" began Jerry, when the ting- a-ling of a telephone bell cut him short.
"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Fulton and hurried from the room. His muffled voice could be heard in a lengthy conversation. Jerry impatiently awaited his return, anxious to tell the rest of his story. Imagine then his surprise when Tod's father delayed his return unreasonably, and his only response to Jerry's eager sentences was, "Yes, yes, I know."
Jerry's heart sank unaccountably--he sensed the fact that Mr. Fulton was not listening, was only waiting, in fact, till the boy should finish and he could decently get rid of Jerry. The story was consequently hurried through. Disappointed beyond description, Jerry left the house, not even noticing that Mr. Fulton had left the room even before Jerry had reached the door.
Something was wrong somewhere; Jerry had expected that his story would be literally snatched out of his mouth; instead it had been smothered under the dampest kind of wet blanket. Feeling not a little sore over his failure to impress the two men with the importance of his discoveries, Jerry plodded along home, determined that as soon as he had gulped down a little breakfast he would hike back to Lost Island alone and make one more attempt to gain the cover of its wooded banks.
Even that plan was doomed to disappointment. Jerry's mother had saved a goodly breakfast for him, and bustled about making him comfortable. Contrary to Jerry's expectations, she had no word of blame for his having remained away overnight without asking consent, and even listened with sympathetic ear to the story of his adventures. But just at the moment when Jerry was about to announce his intention to return, Mrs. Ring was called to the back door, to return a few minutes later with the announcement that it had been Mr. Aikens, and that Jerry was not to worry any more about Lost Island.
"But I've simply got to go back, ma," sputtered Jerry, his mouth uncomfortably full of pancake. "Mr. Fulton isn't going to--well, he didn't show much interest in my theories---"
"But Mr. Aikens seemed to think he did. You just rest easy, son. If two grown men can't take care of your Lost Islander--and your theories, too, why, well--you just get ready to pile into bed, that's all."
"But, ma--there's the boat."
"It'll take care of itself till you get there."
"But, ma----"
"Hush up, now. Into bed with you."
"But can I go after the boat when I----"
Mrs. Ring caught up a flat piece of wood from the back of the kitchen range, and laughingly but firmly put an end to the coaxing, Jerry retreating hastily to the shelter of his bedroom.
Both Jerry and his father stood in awe of tiny Mrs. Ring, who barely reached to overgrown Jerry's shoulder.
"Wake me up at twelve, will you, ma?" called Jerry, in his most wheedling voice. His mother only laughed, but Jerry felt sure she would. Besides, there was his dollar alarm clock.
Jerry repented his request when sharp at twelve o'clock he was called for noonday dinner. He was sleepy and cross and not a bit hungry. His muscles were sore, and the drill to Lost Island did not have quite the romance by broad daylight that it had had a few hours before.
Jerry watched his father put on his hat and hurry back to work, with a great deal of relief. His mother was much easier to handle in a case of this sort.
"You won't mind if I don't get back till late?" he asked, hoping she would give her unqualified consent to his remaining away as long as he saw fit. "You promised me I could go camping this summer--let me take it now,
please, ma."
"Will you promise me to come back and let me pick the birdshot out of you after you've made a landing on Lost Island?" she asked in mock anxiety. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Ring was about as proud of her big boy as a mother well could be without making herself a nuisance to the neighbors. From his earliest boyhood she had cultivated the independence of spirit he showed with his first pair of real trousers, and now she often strained a point to let him exercise it. To be sure, she sometimes wondered how much was genuine self-confidence and how much was a reckless love of adventure.
Now she raised her eyebrows in denial, but at the eager look on the boy's face she relented. "Trot along, Jerry," she agreed, with a quick pat at his shoulder--the Rings were not much at kissing each other. "If you can't take care of yourself by now, you never will be able to. I know you're as anxious as you can be about Tod--I do hope it turns out that you are right about him."
With a muttered, "I've got to be right," Jerry set about making himself a couple of substantial sandwiches and stuffing them in the pocket of his canvas hunting coat, which he took along for emergencies. "Good-bye, ma," he called over his shoulder. "I'll be back as soon as I can bring Tod with me."
Once outside, he wasted no time but struck off at once cross-lots to rout out Dave Thomas and Frank Ellery. Fortunately Frank came first, otherwise Jerry might not have been equal to the task of waking up Dave. They tried everything they had ever heard of. They tickled his feet; they set off a brass-lunged alarm clock under his very nose; they dumped him roughly out of his bed, but even on the bare floor he slumbered peacefully on. Cold water brought only temporary success. They were in despair.
It was Frank who finally solved the problem. Seating himself on the foot of the bed, he raised his head much in the fashion of a hound baying at the moon--the sound that issued from his throat would put to shame the most ambitious hound that ever howled. Jerry caught up a pillow and would have shied it at the head of the offender, but the perfectly serious look on Frank's face withheld his arm. Gradually it dawned on him that the boy was trying to sing--and, more than that, it was one of Dave's favorite songs he was murdering.
Then it was that Jerry understood Frank's strategy. The bed-clothes began to heave; they had piled them all atop Dave as he lay on the floor. Frank began on the chorus. A wriggling leg emerged from beneath the comforts. Jerry joined in, his voice a villainous imitation of Frank's discords. Another leg came to view.
They began to repeat the chorus, further off key than before. One line was all they were suffered to torture. A catapult of boy, bedclothes and pillows bounded from the floor and sent Frank spinning into the bed, while Jerry barely saved himself from a spill on the floor.
"You will yowl like a lot of bob-tailed tomcats, will yuh!" yelled Dave, dancing up and down on one foot--he had stubbed his toe against one of his shoes in his charge across the room.
"You will snore away like six buzz-saws on circus day, huh?" snorted Frank, neatly catching Dave in the pit of the stomach with a pillow caught up from the floor.
For a second it looked like a free-for-all, but Jerry had no time to waste.
"Get your clothes on--hustle. We're going back to Lost Island."
"Suppose my mother won't let me?"
"Suppose you tell her we've got to go and get our boat? She'll let you go all right. You just want to get back to bed, that's all that's worrying you. Hustle, Dave. We can't lose a minute."
"But didn't you tell Tod's dad about what we--found out?" Dave hesitated over the last. It was plain to be seen that he was none too sure in his own mind of the importance of their discovery.
"I did, and he--well, he acted so queer about it that I don't know what to think. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they--he and Mr. Aikens, you know--never went near Lost Island. They think we're just kids."
"But we don't really
know anything, Jerry; we're only just guessing."
"Guessing, huh? Well, I'm only just guessing that you're wasting a lot of time about getting your clothes on, but in about half a minute I'm going to climb all over you."
At that Dave bristled up a bit, but his fingers became spryer with buttons and hooks and very shortly he stood fully dressed and ready to go downstairs. Jerry had already made peace with Mrs. Thomas, so little time was lost in waiting for Dave to snatch a bite to eat and be on his way.
"I've got four bits loose in my pocket," announced Jerry, once they were out on the street. "If we don't let any grass grow on the side streets while we're moving we can make the two-five express on the Dellwood Interurban. We can drop off when they slow down at Downers Crossing; that must be almost opposite Lost Island. It's hard going through the swamps to get to Plum Run, but I guess we're good for it."
They made the two-five--with about three seconds to spare. Their car was empty, so each dropped into a seat and sprawled out comfortably. Jerry smiled grimly to himself as he looked back perhaps five minutes later and saw how the two had slumped down in their seats. It did not need a throaty gurgle from Dave to convince him that the pair were sound asleep. "A fine pair of adventurers," he muttered to himself, not entirely without some feeling of resentment. It was well enough to be the leader, but--well, he wouldn't have minded a little snooze himself.
He did not feel quite so critical, however, when, perhaps a half hour later, at a terrific jolt of the train, he was roused from the doze into which he too had fallen. A hasty glance out the window told him that they were at Downers Crossing. With a yell that would have done credit to a whole war-party of Comanches, he pounced upon the two sleepers and dragged and pushed and pommeled them out onto the platform of the car. The train was beginning to move, so their descent was none too dignified.
"Why in thunder didn't you wake us in time so I could have got a drink?" complained Frank.
Jerry said nothing; he felt too guilty to risk any answer. After they had cut across to the wagon road that led in the general direction of the river, he consoled his chum with: "Downer's farm is only about half a mile in, and we can get all the buttermilk we want there----" adding mischievously: "----on Wednesdays, when they churn."
Both Dave and Frank promised instant murder for that, so he had to admit that they would reach the best spring in Winthrop County within three minutes.
"Saved your hide by just twenty-nine seconds," declared Dave as he plunged his face into the bubbling surface of the clearest, coldest kind of a hillside spring.
Their gait was much livelier after that, and in less than ten minutes Plum Run was sighted, But they did not come out as close to Lost Island as Jerry had predicted. In fact, they were not certain in which direction it lay, for to the north lay a cluster of trees apparently surrounded by water, and which might well be the place they sought. To the south lay another green spot away from shore.
"It's north of here," declared both Dave and Frank, but Jerry exclaimed triumphantly, after the first tangle of argument:
"It must be south. If Lost Island was north the wagon bridge'd be between us and it."
So south they went; and as they drew nearer they saw that the patch of green was indeed Lost Island. Once they were within close sight of it, they went forward with all caution. The last hundred yards or so they made on hands and knees, finding cover in every clump of bushes or willows on the way.
But finally they were ready to break through the last fringe of willow and spy out the prospect. Jerry, who was ahead, waited for his two companions to catch up with him.
"Not a sound, now," he cautioned as they crouched beside him.
Stealthily they pushed aside the leaves that obscured their view. Suddenly, from behind them a yell, blood-curdling, absolutely hair- raising, rang out through the stillness. The three turned.
But it was too late. Breaking cover at the same instant, a half- dozen husky young chaps charged on the surprised trio.
"Up and at them, fellows!" came a roar. "They're part of the gang!" _