_ CHAPTER IX. AN AWESOME RIVER DISCOVERY
"Want to come, fellows?" asked Greg, halting Dick and Dave on Main Street Saturday morning.
"Where?" asked Dick.
"Jim Haynes told me I might take his big canoe this morning."
"So you're going canoeing?" queried Dave.
"Yep; and better'n that, too," glowed Greg. "You know Payson, the farmer, up the river?"
"Of course."
"This being an apple year, Payson told me I could have a few barrels of apples if I'd pick 'em and pay him twenty cents a barrel. His orchard is right along the river bank. Isn't that a cinch?"
"I'd like to go," rejoined Dick wistfully. "But I can't, very well. You see, I've got to work in the store this afternoon. Dad is going to be away."
"Your mother'll let you go, if you tell her what a fine time you can have."
"That wouldn't be quite fair," replied Dick, shaking his head. "Mother would let me go, I know; but the trouble with her," he added, with a smile, "is that she's always too easy. And I know there's more work to do in the store this afternoon than she can handle alone."
"I'd go in a minute," Dave chipped in, "but you see I've agreed to go to the express office this afternoon and help check up bundles. I'm to get a quarter for it."
"Huh," returned Greg candidly. "I'm disappointed about you two. It takes money to buy apples, even at twenty cents a barrel. You two generally have some money."
"I've got five cents," laughed Dave. "Here it is."
"I've got a whole quarter, as it happens," added Dick, producing the coin. "I'm not going to be mean, either."
"Whew, but I'll have a job pulling the canoe alone," muttered Greg ruefully. "And it isn't much fun picking apples all alone. However, I'm going. Maybe Harry Hazelton can go with me. Tom can't and Dan won't. I'll see that you two get your shares of apples for the money you've turned over to me."
"My share will be half a hat full," laughed Dave.
"And then some more, and still some more," added Greg readily. "I won't forget that you two financed my expedition."
"I wish awfully that I could go with you, Greg," spoke Dick truthfully. "But it wouldn't be fair for me to think of leaving everything at the store for mother to do this afternoon."
"Oh, that's all right," nodded Greg.
"And you can bet that I wish I were going with you," supplemented Darrin. "But I get a lot of snaps like this one at the express office, and there are too many fellows hanging around there looking for my chance. It isn't the easiest thing in the world for a fellow to pick up silver quarters, Greg."
"Don't I know!" muttered Holmes.
So Greg went on his way.
"Say, wouldn't that be a great way to put in the afternoon?" sighed Dave. "These fine September days get into a fellow's blood and make him itch for the river and the fields."
"Don't tempt me," begged Dick Prescott plaintively. "I'm trying to do the square thing by mother, and I do want to go with Greg!"
"Oh, well, a fellow can't always act on the square and have a good time, too," philosophized Dave. "On the whole, I guess I'd rather have the satisfaction of acting on the square."
Afternoon toil brought its rewards, however. Five members of Dick & Co., released from further responsibilities, met as usual on Main Street that evening. They strolled about, met other fellows from the Central Grammar, discussed football and talked over all the other topics dear to the hearts of Grammar School boys.
"I wonder how Greg got along this afternoon?" suggested Dave. "Any of you hear?"
The others shook their heads.
"We could go down to his house and ask him, only it would look as though we were just hunting for apples," said Dick.
"Oh, Greg knows us better'n that," declared Tom Reade. "And Greg will simply bring the apples to us, if we don't go to his house. What' say if we take a trip down Greg's way? Maybe we'll meet him coming up to find the crowd."
This counsel prevailing, the five set out on a direct walk to Greg's home. A block away they met Mr. Holmes coming in their direction.
"You're just the ones I wanted to see, boys," was Mr. Holmes's greeting. "Where's Greg?"
"We were going down to the house to find him, sir," Dick responded.
"I'm a good deal worried," confessed Mr. Holmes. "Greg went up river this afternoon, after apples, and he hasn't been home yet."
"Not home yet?" gasped Dave Darrin.
Then he and Dick gazed at each other in an amazement that quickly turned in both hearts to a sickening fear.
Dave recalled the stone flying past his head; Dick remembered the flying hod of bricks. And Greg had been the third of their party who had blocked Ab. Dexter's plans!
"Oh, Greg's all right," spoke up Tom Reade cheerily.
"Then why isn't he home?" demanded Mr. Holmes. "He has had time to paddle down from Payson's three times since dark."
There was no gainsaying this statement. All five of the youngsters plainly showed their uneasiness.
"Maybe Jim Haynes knows something about the canoe," suggested Dan Dalzell.
"No; for Jim has just left our house," replied Mr. Holmes. "Jim came over to see what luck my boy had had. I'm growing more worried every minute. I think I'll go down to the river."
"We'll go with you, sir, if you don't mind," urged Dick.
"I'll be glad to have you, boys."
But the trip to the river did not lessen their worry. At the boathouse, where Jim Haynes kept his canoe, Jim's craft was the only one absent.
"There won't be any sleep in our house to-night until Greg gets home," spoke Mr. Holmes plaintively. He saw by their faces that Greg's five chums were equally uneasy. Yet all five dreaded equally to mention the bare thought that Greg might have fallen in with violence at the hands of cowardly Ab. Dexter.
"What in the wide world are we going to do?" whispered Dave aside to Dick.
"Oh, dear, I don't really know. At any rate, we'll have to leave that to Mr. Holmes."
"Boys," spoke that gentleman suddenly, "who owns that gasoline launch yonder?"
"Mr. Edward Atwater," Dick answered.
"That looks like a powerful reflector light on the bow."
"Yes, it is, sir," Dave volunteered.
"Where does Mr. Atwater live?"
"On Benson Avenue," Tom Reade replied.
"Boys, I'm going over and see if I can induce Mr. Atwater to take us up the river to-night."
"May we go, too, sir?" begged Dick anxiously.
"Yes; if you get your parents' permission. We may be up the river late to-night."
Mr. Holmes turned on his heel, going away at a walk that was close to a run.
The five members of Dick & Co. scurried homeward. Every one of them secured permission to go with Mr. Holmes, and to be out as late as necessary. Dan Dalzell, the last of the five to get back to the boathouse, was there for some minutes ere Mr. Holmes turned up with Mr. Atwater.
The owner of the roomy launch speedily had things in running order. The "Napoleon," with the reflector light going brightly, turned out of the berth and headed up the river.
"My notion, Mr. Holmes," called the owner, sitting over the steering gear, "is that we had better go rather slowly. If you'll turn that light from side to side we ought to be able to scan the whole river as we move."
Mr. Holmes was already busy swinging the light on its pivot. Behind, peering ahead in all directions, crouched Dick Prescott and his chums.
They had gone about a mile upstream when Dick suddenly called out:
"Turn the light to the right again, Mr. Holmes, please. Yes; there it is. Don't you make out a canoe over close by the shore?"
"Turn over there, Mr. Atwater," called Mr. Holmes, his hands shaking as he tried to hold the light steadily on the floating object that Dick's keen vision had picked up.
"Is--is that Jim Haynes's canoe?" asked Mr. Holmes in a choking voice, as the launch swung in close to the drifting craft.
"Yes, sir," spoke Dick huskily. "See, there's an 'H' in a circle on the bow."
Mr. Atwater ran up so close that the boys reached over and held the canoe by its rim. There could be no doubt that it was Haynes's canoe. All of the boys recognized it.
"There are no apples in the canoe," murmured Tom Reade.
"You glutton!" muttered Dan Dalzell angrily.
"No; I wasn't thinking of that," Tom retorted indignantly. "But there being no apples shows that Greg didn't get as far as getting any. If anything happened, then it happened before he had time to load the canoe with apples."
"And that must have been hours ago," spoke Mr. Holmes with a noise in his throat that was curiously like a sob.
Silently Dick and Dave fished for the bowline of the canoe, then went back and made it fast astern.
"What now?" queried Mr. Atwater, looking at Greg's father.
"I think, perhaps, we had better go on up to Mr. Payson's," suggested Mr. Holmes. "It isn't too late to call on him, and he will be able to tell us whether Greg showed up at his house at all."
The launch was soon alongside the little landing at Mr. Payson's place. Taking a lantern from the boat, Dick and his friends explored the orchard for signs of Greg until Mr. Holmes returned.
"Mr. Payson tells me that he didn't see my boy," stated Mr. Holmes. "What can we do now, I wonder?"
"I should think, sir," Dick suggested, "that it's plain enough that Greg didn't try to go home by the river. The canoe may have gotten adrift, and he may have started toward home on foot. Some of us, I think, ought to follow the road. We may find Greg somewhere along the road, injured as a result of some accident."
"That's a good idea," nodded Mr. Holmes. "Yet I shall want Mr. Atwater to keep on searching along the river, and some of you boys ought to be with him, using your sharp eyes."
A conference was held at the landing. Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton boarded the "Napoleon," after which Mr. Holmes and the other boys set out for the road.
Truth to tell, neither those aboard the launch nor those who slowly followed the road back to Gridley had much hope of encountering news of the missing Greg.
"He has fallen in with Ab. Dexter or Driggs," whispered Dave to Dick when they were so far from Mr. Holmes that the latter could not overhear them.
"That's the way I feel about it," nodded young Prescott. "First, the affair of the bricks for mine; then the big stone that whizzed by within an inch of your head at night. And now Greg, the third of us to spoil the abduction plan, is mysteriously missing."
"There's some scoundrelly plan back of all three affairs," replied Dave Darrin with conviction. "Yet why should Dexter take all this trouble to punish boys?"
"First of all, because we interfered with him, and spoiled his bold stroke," guessed Dick Prescott. "Next, through hitting so mysteriously at us all, he probably hopes to scare Mrs. Dexter out of her life. If Dexter gets her thoroughly nervous and cowed probably she'll buy him off with a lot of her inherited money. That fellow Dexter would do anything on earth to escape the penalty of having to work for his living."
"The mean rascal!" was all Dave could mutter, and he said it with pent-up savagery.
Wherever a light showed along the country road the seekers after Greg knocked at doors. Invariably the answer was the same--no tidings.
It was after one o'clock Sunday morning when the Grammar School boys returned to their several homes, discouraged and heartsick.
Of course the "Blade" got wind of the affair and had Len Spencer and another reporter out working on the mystery.
The police, too, took a hand, though there was an absolute lack of clues upon which to work.
Broad daylight came Sunday morning, and still no Greg Holmes accounted for. Now, the police took a further hand by beginning to drag the river.
The mystery continued throughout that long, dreary day. The Grammar School boys felt as though "there had been a death in the family." Len Spencer was aware of the suspicions against Ab. Dexter, but, through fear of the libel law, he was restrained from putting his suspicions into print until there was some real proof against Dexter. _