CHAPTER XI
TOM HAS A SPOOK HUNT OF HIS OWN
“WHY, my boy,” murmured Mr. Tremaine, in a kindly tone, “you appear tobe altogether demoralized.”
“I am a bit upset, just for the moment,” Dixon admitted. “Yet I am nota coward.”
“You don’t believe, actually, there are any such things as ghosts?”queried his host.
“Certainly not!”
“Then——”
“But I can’t begin to account for what I saw, nor for what happened.Tremaine, what would you say if you saw a white apparition—a bigone—and if you fired four shots through it, almost at arm’s length,without injuring that apparition? What then?”
“I’d be puzzled, I admit,” assented the older man. “I can’t understandyour experience.”
“I guess I’m a bit steadier, now,” laughed Oliver Dixon, presently.“Now, what do you want to do, Tremaine? I’m with you for whatever yousay.”
“Why, we can’t both leave the house. Will you watch here while I gointo the woods where you met with your adventure?”
“Are you going alone?” demanded the younger man, as though a good dealastonished.
“Why, yes; certainly.”
“Don’t you think it foolhardy?”
“Well, _you_ got out alive, didn’t you?” questioned Henry Tremaine,with a quizzical smile. “I’ll hope for at least just as good luck.”
“Shan’t I call the boys, and have at least one of them go with you? Orelse, leave them on guard here, while I go with you?”
“It isn’t necessary,” decided the owner of the bungalow, promptly. “Theboys need some sleep to-night. Let them sleep. You stay here and I’lltry to pick up your route through the woods. Now, describe to me, aswell as you can, where you went.”
This Dixon either did, or pretended to do.
“Keep your eyes all around the outside of the house here,” wasTremaine’s last word, after which, holding his rifle at ready, hetrudged off over the grounds and into the woods.
More than an hour passed before the owner of the bungalow came back.
“I saw nothing—absolutely nothing, nor heard anything,” reported Mr.Tremaine. “Dixon, I can’t fathom your experience in the woods.”
“I can’t either,” admitted the younger man.
It did not occur to the older man to doubt Dixon. Though theiracquaintance was recent, Dixon had impressed Henry Tremaine as being agentleman, and dependable.
For some little time the two discussed Dixon’s alleged experience withthe ghost, as they strolled around the house through the dark. At lastit came time to call Tom Halstead and Joe Dawson for their next tour ofwatch duty, and Tremaine went inside to arouse them.
Though gaping a bit drowsily, both boys responded promptly, taking overthe rifles and a supply of ammunition from the men whom they were torelieve.
“When you two get through it will be daylight,” announced Mr. Tremaine.“Slip into the house, then, and get at least a bit of a nap. I’ll seeto it that you’re called in plenty of time for the day’s sport. Get allthe sleep you possibly can.”
Following this, Mr. Tremaine gave a brief account of Dixon’s“adventure.” Then Dixon himself gave a more detailed description of hisalleged meeting with the “ghost.” To him, however, Tom and Joe listenedwith but scant attention. Their dislike of Dixon had grown to a pointwhere it was difficult even to pretend politeness to him.
“Humph!” uttered Joe, when the two men had gone inside the bungalow.
“That’s your opinion of Dixon’s yarn, is it?” demanded Halstead.
“He’s either lying, or dreaming,” proclaimed young Dawson, bluntly.
“I’d like to find out which,” muttered Captain Tom, “though I canguess, already. Joe, old fellow, you don’t say much, but I’m fastlearning to pin to your judgments of people. You didn’t like Dixon fromthe first moment he showed himself on board the ‘Restless,’ did you?”
“I don’t believe I enthused over him,” grimaced Dawson.
“Dixon couldn’t really be responsible for the Ghost of Alligator Swamp,could he?” demanded Tom Halstead, suddenly.
After that abrupt query both boys were silent for a while as theytrudged about the grounds together.
“No,” decided Joe, at last. “It isn’t at all likely, for, according toHam Mockus, and also according to some of the white people we talkedwith in Tres Arbores, the Ghost of Alligator Swamp has been doingbusiness for the last three years, at least.”
Twice more around the house they went. Tom, thinking deeply, at lastburst forth:
“Joe, I’m going to do just what Dixon did. I’m going into the woodsyonder, and see whether _I_ can have the luck to encounter that bigwhite spook.”
Joe Dawson halted, peering queerly into his chum’s face.
“Tom, you don’t mean that!”
“Yes, I do.”
“But the risk? I don’t mean the spook. You’d like only too well to meetthat, I know. I mean the snakes. In a country as full of rattlers asthis section is, it’s mighty dangerous to go stepping about through thewoods on a dark night.”
“Dixon braved ’em, didn’t he?” challenged Tom Halstead, defiantly.
“He only says he did, remember. My idea is that he didn’t go very farinto the woods.”
“Well—I’m going,” said Tom, deliberately, after a thoughtful pause.
“Be careful, then, old fellow!”
Joe, who seldom said much, and who rarely did anything demonstrative,reached out his hand, gripping Halstead’s.
“I’m wishing myself good luck,” laughed Halstead, over his shoulder,as he started away. “If I’m gone a goodish while, don’t worry. Andremember that your post is guarding the house!”
Joe Dawson felt a sense of almost unaccountable uneasiness steal overhim as his straining eyes watched his chum slowly vanish into thegloom, and then finally disappear under the shadows of the trees at theedge of the forest.
“I wonder if I ought to have kept him back?” chafed Joe Dawson, againand again, as he trudged vigilantly around the bungalow, pausing topeer off into the darkness whenever he came around to the side fromwhich Skipper Tom Halstead had departed.
Joe became more worried every moment. Yet the time slipped by. From theforest came not a sound or a sign of any kind. At last the first palestreaks of dawn appeared.
“Say!” muttered Joe, almost angrily, halting to glare off at theforest. “What on earth is Tom doing—taking a nap under the trees?”
Daylight became more pronounced. Surely, there could be no harm inleaving the yard for a moment or two—now. Joe darted into the bungalow,up the stairs, and into the room where Jeff Randolph slept.
“Come, get up!” commanded Dawson, energetically. “Get a gun and comedown by the door. Tom Halstead is missing, and I’ve got to go afterhim.”
Though Jeff was, at first, inclined to resent the arousing, as soon ashe understood what was in the wind the Florida boy tumbled off his cotin lively fashion and began to pull on his clothes.
“Anything up, Dawson?” softly called Henry Tremaine, poking his headthrough the doorway of his bedroom.
“Tom Halstead went into the woods, and hasn’t come back,” quivered Joe.“I’m going to look for him.”
“Don’t stir until I get down below,” called Henry Tremaine, sharply.“I’ll be there in a minute and a fraction.”
Nor did Joe Dawson have to wait long ere Henry Tremaine, with huntingrifle in hand, bounded out from the house, followed by Oliver Dixon.
“Dixon will stand on guard here, while the rest of us go into thewoods,” declared Tremaine. “Now, lead on quickly, the way you sawHalstead go.”
Off at a quick run started Joe Dawson. They entered the woods,spreading out in a line as they went.
“Here—everybody!” yelled Henry Tremaine, within two minutes. His hailbrought Joe and Jeff to him on the jump.
“Look at the ground here,” cried the owner of the bungalow, hoarsely.“T
here’s been a struggle here.”
“And good old Tom was in it!” panted Joe, making a dive for the ground,then holding up one of the brass uniform buttons bearing the monogramof the Motor Boat Club.
The three discoverers stood staring blankly at one another for the nextfew seconds.
“See if there’s a trail—look about for it,” commanded Tremaine, himselfbeginning to search about over the ground.
“Here’s the start of one,” called Jeff, presently. “And now it diesout. Hunters of the Everglades, I reckon, were the men who did thistrick. They know how to cover trails. Yet perhaps they’ve given us aclue, for the trail, as it starts, heads toward the water.”
Feverishly these startled ones pressed on to the lake’s edge. As theycame down to the water they saw no craft out yonder—nothing but themorning mist over the surface of the lake and the many small islandsvisible from where they stood.
“Great Scott!” roared Joe. “Look at the pier! The launch is gone—takenfrom under our very noses!”
It did not require a second look to make sure that the motor boat was,indeed, gone!
The Motor Boat Club in Florida; or, Laying the Ghost of Alligator Swamp Page 11
