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CHAPTER XVI – RUTH’S ALARM

“Minnie’s loose!” cried Neale to Mr. Howbridge after the flight of the circus men. “Minnie is one of the worst elephants in captivity! She’s always making trouble, and breaking loose. I imagine she’s the one that wrecked the farmer’s barn Uncle Bill was telling about. If she’s on the rampage in the animal tent it means mischief!”

“An elephant loose!” cried Mr. Howbridge. “And Ruth and the children in the tent! Come on, Neale!” he cried. “Hurry!”

But there was no need to urge Neale to action. He was off on the run, and Mr. Howbridge showed that he was not nearly so old and grave as he sometimes appeared, for he ran swiftly after his more youthful companion.

The shouting continued, and the trumpet calls of the angry or frightened elephant mingled with them. Then, as Neale and Mr. Howbridge came within view of the animal tent, they saw bursting from it a huge elephant, followed by several men holding to ropes attached to the “ponderous pachyderm,” as Minnie was called on the show bills. She was pulling a score of circus hands after her, as though they were so many stuffed straw men.

Mr. Bill Sorber at this time reached the scene, and with him were several men who had hurried after him when they heard the alarm. The ringmaster seemed to know just what to do. He caught an ankus, or elephant hook, from one of his helpers, and, taking a stand directly in the path of the onrushing Minnie, he raised the sharp instrument threateningly.

On thundered the elephant, but Mr. Sorber stood his ground. Men shouted a warning to him, and the screams and cries of women and children rose shrilly on the air. Minnie, which was the rather peaceful name for a very wild elephant, raised her trunk in the air, and from it came the peculiar trumpet blasts. The men she was pulling along were dragged over the ground helplessly.

“Can he stop her, Neale?” gasped Mr. Howbridge, as he ran beside the former circus boy.

“Well, I’ve seem him stop a wild lion that got out of its cage,” was the answer. “But an elephant – ”

And then a strange thing happened. When within a few feet of the brave, resolute man who stood in her path, Minnie began to go more slowly. Her shrill cries were less insistent, and the men being dragged along after her began to hold back as they regained their feet.

Mr. Sorber raised the ankus on high. Its sharp, curved point gleamed in the sun. Minnie saw it, and she knew it could cruelly hurt her sensitive trunk. More than once she had felt it before, when on one of her rampages. She did not want to suffer again.

And so, when so close that she could have reached out and touched the ringmaster with her elongated nose, or, if so minded, she could have curled it around him and hurled him to death – when this close, the elephant stopped, and grew quiet.

“Minnie! Minnie!” said the man in a soothing voice. “Behave yourself, Minnie! Why are you acting in this way? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

And the elephant really seemed to be. She lowered her trunk, flapped her ears slowly to and fro, and then stood in her tracks and began swaying to and fro in the manner characteristic of the big beasts.

Mr. Sorber went up to her, tossing the ankus to one of his men, and began to pat the trunk which curled up as if in anticipation of a treat.

“Minnie, you’re a bad girl, and you oughtn’t to have any; but since you stopped when I told you to I’ll give you a few,” said the ringmaster, and, reaching into his pocket, he took out some peanuts which the big animal munched with every appearance of satisfaction.

“She’s all right now,” said Neale’s uncle, as the regular elephant men came up to take charge of the creature. “She was just a little excited, that’s all. How did it happen?”

“Oh, the same as usual,” replied Minnie’s keeper. “All at once she gave a trumpet, yanked her stakes loose, and set off out of the animal tent. I had some ropes on her ready to have her pull one of the wagons, and we grabbed these – as many of us as could – but we couldn’t hold her.”

“I’m afraid we’ll have to get rid of Minnie, she’s too uncertain. Doesn’t seem to know her own mind, like a lot of the women folks,” and Mr. Sorber smiled at Mr. Howbridge.

“You were very brave to stop her as you did,” observed the lawyer.

“Oh, well, it’s my business,” said the animal man. “It wasn’t such a risk as it seemed. I was all ready to jump to one side if she hadn’t stopped.”

“I wonder if any one in the animal tent was hurt,” went on the lawyer. “We must go and see, Neale. Ruth and the others – ”

“I hope none of your folks were injured,” broke in Mr. Sorber. “Minnie has done damage in the past, but I guess she only just ran away this time.”

With anxious hearts Neale and Mr. Howbridge hastened to the animal tent, but their fears were groundless. Minnie had carefully avoided every one in her rush, and, as a matter of fact, Ruth, Agnes, Dot and Tess were in the main tent when the elephant ran out. They heard the excitement, but Ruth quieted her sisters.

“Well, now we’ll go on with the show,” said Mr. Sorber, when matters had settled to their normal level. “I’ll see you afterward, Neale, and you too, Mr. Howbridge, and those delightful little ladies from the old Corner House.”

“Oh, Uncle Bill, I almost forgot!” cried the boy. “Have you that trick mule yet – Uncle Josh? The one I taught to play dead?”

“Uncle Josh? No, I haven’t got him, but I wish I had,” said the circus owner. “One of the stablemen took him away – stole him in fact – and I’d give a hundred dollars to get him back!”

Neale held out his hand, smiling.

“What do you mean?” asked his uncle.

“Pay me the hundred dollars,” was the answer. “I have Uncle Josh!”

“No! Really, have you?”

“I have! I thought you hadn’t sold him!” exclaimed the boy, and he told the story of the man on the towpath.

“Well, that is good news!” exclaimed Mr. Sorber. “I’ll send for Uncle Josh right away. I sure am glad to have him back. He was always good for a lot of laughs. He’s almost as funny as Sully, the clown.”

A few minutes later Neale and Mr. Howbridge joined Ruth and the others in the main tent.

Tess and Dot especially enjoyed the performance very much. They took in everything from the “grand entry” to the races and concert at the end. They were guests of the show, in fact, Neale having procured complimentary tickets.

When the performance was over, they visited “Uncle Bill” in his own private tent, and the Corner House girls had a glimpse of circus life “behind the scenes,” as it were, Tess’s first experience of the sort.

Neale met many of his old friends and they all expressed the hope that he would soon find his father. Uncle Josh, the trick mule, was brought to the grounds by Hank, and the animal seemed glad to be again among his companions.

“Will you be back again this evening?” asked Neale’s uncle, when the time came for the party to go back to the houseboat for supper.

“I think not,” was Neale’s answer.

He said good-by to his uncle, arranging to write to him and hear from him as often as needful. And then they left the circus lot where the night performance would soon be given.

“Well, I have real news of father at last,” said Neale to Agnes, as he went back toward the canal with his friends. “I would like to know, though, if he got rich out in the Klondike.”

“If he wants any money he can have half mine!” offered Dot. “I have eighty-seven cents in my bank, and I was going to save up to buy my Alice-doll a new carriage. But you can have my money for your father, Neale.”

“Thank you,” replied Neale, without a smile at Dot’s offer. “Maybe I shan’t need it, but it’s very kind of you.”

Mrs. MacCall had supper ready soon after they arrived at the boat, and then, as the smaller girls were tired from their day at the circus, they went to bed early, while Ruth and Mr. Howbridge, Agnes and Neale sat out on the deck and talked. As they were not to go on again until morning, Hank was allowed to go back to the circus again. He said seeing it twice in one day was not too much for him.

“I do hope you will find your father, Neale,” said Agnes softly, as, just before eleven o’clock, they all went to bed.

But Ruth, at least, did not go to sleep at once. In her bosom she carried the letter she had received from Luke, and this she now read carefully, twice.

Luke was doing well at the summer hotel. The proprietor was sick, so he and the head clerk and a night man had their hands full. He was earning good money, and part of this he was going to spend on his education and the rest he intended to save. He was sorry he could not be with the houseboat party and hoped they would all have a good time. Then he added a page or more intended only for Ruth’s eyes. The letter made the oldest Corner House girl very happy.

Soon after breakfast the next morning they were under way again. The circus had left town in the night, and Neale did not know when he would see his uncle again. But the lad’s heart beat high with hope that he might soon find his father.

The weather was propitious, and hours of sunshine were making the Corner House girls as brown as Indians. Mr. Howbridge, too, took on a coat of tan. As for Neale, his light hair looked lighter than ever against his tanned skin. And Hank, from walking along the towpath, became almost as dark as a negro.

One morning, Ruth, coming down to the kitchen to help Mrs. MacCall with the dinner, saw two fat, chubby legs sticking out of a barrel in one corner of the cabin.

The legs were vigorously kicking, and from the depths of the barrel came muffled cries of:

“Let me out! Help me out! Pull me up!”

Ruth lost no time in doing the latter, and, after an effort, succeeded in pulling right side up her sister Tess.

“What in the world were you doing?” demanded Ruth.

“I was scraping down in the bottom of the barrel to get a little flour that was left,” Tess explained, very red in the face. “But I leaned over too far and I couldn’t get up. And I couldn’t call at first.”

“What did you want of flour?” asked Ruth. “Goodness, you have enough on your dress, anyhow.”

“I wanted some to rub on my face to make me look pale,” went on Tess.

“To make you look pale! Gracious, Tess! what for?”

“We’re playing doctor and nurse, Dot and I,” Tess explained. “I have to be sick, and sick people are always pale. But I’m so tanned Dot said I didn’t look sick at all, so I tried to scrape some flour off the bottom of the barrel to rub on my face.”

“Well, you have enough now if you brush off what’s on your clothes,” laughed Ruth.

“And be careful about leaning over barrels,” put in Mrs. MacCall. “You might have been hurt.”

“Yes,” agreed Tess, “I might be but I wasn’t. Only my head felt funny and my legs felt queer, too, when I wiggled them.”

They were approaching the end of the stretch of the canal through which they must travel to reach Gentory River. The boat would be “locked” from the canal to the larger stream, and then Neale could have his wish of operating the motor come true.

Toward evening they arrived at the last lock of their trip. Just beyond lay the river, and they would proceed up that to Lake Macopic.

As the Bluebird emerged from the lock and slowly floated on the little basin into which just there the Gentory broadened, the attention of Ruth and Agnes was directed to a small motor boat which was just leaving the vicinity.

Ruth, who stood nearest the rail, grasped her sister by the arm, and cried an alarm.

“Look! Those men! In the boat!” exclaimed Ruth.

“What about them?” asked Agnes, while Mr. Howbridge glanced at the two sisters.

“They’re the same men who robbed us!” exclaimed Ruth. “The men who took our jewelry box in the rain! Oh, stop them!”

CHAPTER XVII – UP THE RIVER

Neale O’Neil, who had been steering the houseboat during the operation of locking it from the canal into the river, sprang away from the tiller toward the side of the craft at Ruth’s cries. There was no immediate need of guiding the Bluebird for the moment, as she was floating idly with the momentum gained when she was slowly pulled from the lock basin.

“Are those the men?” asked Neale, pointing to two roughly dressed characters in a small motor boat.

“I’m sure they are!” asserted Ruth. “That one steering is the man who grabbed the box from me. Look, Agnes, don’t you remember them?”

Mr. Howbridge, who heard what was said, acted promptly. On the towpath, near the point where the river entered the canal through the lock, was Hank Dayton with the two mules, the services of which would no longer be needed.

“Hank! Hank! Stop those men!” cried the lawyer.

The driver dropped his reins, and sprang to the edge of the bank. Near him was a rowboat, empty at the time, and with the oars in the locks. It was the work of but a moment for Hank to spring in and shove off, and then he began rowing hard.

But of course he stood no chance against a motor boat. The two men in the gasoline craft turned on more power. The explosions came more rapidly and drowned the shouts of those on the houseboat. Hank soon gave up his useless effort, and turned back to shore, while Ruth and Agnes, leaning over the side of the rail, gazed at the fast-disappearing men.

“There must be some way of stopping them!” cried Mr. Howbridge, who was quite excited. “Isn’t there a motor boat around here – a police boat or something? Neale, can’t you get up steam and take after them?”

“The Bluebird could never catch that small boat,” answered the boy. “And there doesn’t seem to be anything else around here now, except rowboats and canalers.”

This was true, and those on board the Bluebird had to suffer the disappointment of seeing the men fade away in the distance.

“But something must be done!” insisted the lawyer. “An alarm must be given. The police must be notified. Where’s the keeper of the lock? He may know these ruffians, and where they are staying. We must do something!”

“Well, they’re getting away for the time being,” murmured Neale, as he gazed up the river on which the motor boat was now hardly discernible as it was turning a bend. “But we’re going the same way, and we may come across them. Are you sure, Ruth, that these are the same men who robbed you?”

“Positive!” declared the girl. “Aren’t you, Agnes?”

“No, I can’t be sure,” answered her sister with a shake of her head. “The men looked just as rough – and just as ugly – as the two who attacked us. But it was raining so hard, and we were in the doorway, and the umbrella was giving such trouble – no, Ruth,” she added, “I couldn’t be sure.”

“But I am!” declared the oldest Kenway girl. “I had a good look at the face of at least one of the men in the boat, and I know it was he who took my box! Oh, if I could only get it back I wouldn’t care what became of the men!”

“It ought to be an easy matter to trace them,” said the lawyer. “Their motor boat must be registered and licensed, as ours must be. We can trace them through that, I think. Neale, would you know the men if you saw them again?”

“I might,” answered the boy. “I didn’t have a very good look at them, though. They both had their backs toward me, and their hats were pulled down over their faces. As Ruth says, however, they looked rough and desperate.”

“We must take some action,” declared the lawyer, with his characteristic energy. “The authorities must be notified and that motor boat traced. We shall have to stop here to register our own craft and get a license, and it will give us an opportunity to make some inquiries.”

“Meanwhile those men will get away!” exclaimed Ruth. “And we’ll never get our jewelry back. If we could get mother’s ring,” she added, “it wouldn’t be so bad.”

“They can’t get very far away if they stick to the river,” said Mr. Howbridge. “The river flows into Lake Macopic and there is no outlet from that. If we have to pursue the men all the way to the lake we’ll do it.”

“Well, then let’s get busy,” suggested Neale. “The sooner we have our boat registered and licensed, the sooner we can start after those men. Of course we can’t catch them, for their boat goes so much faster than ours. But we can trace them.”

“I hope we can,” murmured Ruth, gazing up the river, on which there was now no trace of the boat containing the rough men. “We have two quests, now,” she added. “Looking for our jewelry box, and your father, Neale. And I hope we find your father, whether I get back my things or not – anything but the ring.”

“Let us hope we get both,” said the boy.

Then followed a busy hour. Certain formalities had to be gone through with, in order to enable the Bluebird to make the voyage on the river and lake. Her motor was inspected and passed. Neale had seen to it that the machinery was in good shape.

Mr. Howbridge came back from the boat registry office with the necessary permit and license, and Ruth asked him:

“Did you find out anything about the men?”

“No one here knows them,” he said. “They were never here before, and they came only to get some supplies. It appears they are camping on one of the islands in Lake Macopic.”

“Was their boat registered?” asked Neale.

“Yes. At least it is presumed so. But as we did not see the number on it we can give the authorities no clue. Motor boats up here don’t have to carry their number plates in such large size as autos do. That craft was not registered at this office, but it was, very likely, granted a permit at the office at the other end of the river or on the lake. So we can only keep on and hope either to overtake the men or to get a trace of them in some other way.”

“We can never overtake them if they keep going as fast as they did when they left here,” said Agnes.

“They won’t keep that speed up,” declared Neale. “But we had better get started. We’ll be under our own power now, and can travel whenever we like, night or day.”

“Are we going to take the mules with us – and Mr. Hank!” asked Dot, hugging her “Alice-doll.”

“Hank is going to accompany us,” said Mr. Howbridge. “But we’ll leave the mules behind, having no place for them on the Bluebird. I think I will dispose of them, for I probably shall not go on a vacation along the canal again.”

“But it was a delightful and novel one,” said Ruth.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” her guardian remarked. “It would have been little pleasure to me – this trip – if you young folks had not enjoyed it.”

“I just love it! And the best part is yet to come!” cried Agnes, with sparkling eyes. “I want to see the islands in the lake.”

“And I want to get to Trumbull and see if my father is there,” added Neale. “I think I’ll send him a letter. I’ll mail it here. It won’t take but a moment.”

“You don’t know his address,” said Agnes.

“I’ll send it just to Trumbull,” said the boy. “Post-office people are sharks at finding people.”

He wrote the note while the final preparations were being made for leaving on the trip up the river. Mrs. MacCall had attended to the buying of food, which was all that was needed.

And then, after Neale had sent his letter to the post-office, he went down in the engine room of the Bluebird.

“Are we all ready!” he called up to Mr. Howbridge, who was going to steer until Neale could come up on deck after the motor had been started.

“All ready!” answered Ruth.

Neale turned the flywheel over, there was a cough and a splutter, and then a steady chug-chugging.

“Oh, we’re going! We’re going!” gayly cried Tess and Dot. Almost anything satisfied them as long as they were in motion.

“Yes, we’re on our way,” said Mr. Howbridge, giving the wheel a turn and sending the houseboat out into the stream.

The trip up the Gentory River was no less delightful than the voyage on the canal had been, if one may call journeying on such a quiet stream a voyage. It was faster travel, of course, with the motor sending the Bluebird along.

“The only thing is, though,” said Hank, who sat near the wheel with Neale, “I haven’t anything to do. I miss the mules.”

“Oh, I guess there’ll be enough to do. Especially when we get up on the lake. You’ll have to help manage the boat,” remarked Neale. “I hear they have pretty good storms on Macopic.”

“They do,” confirmed Hank.

They motored along until dusk that evening, and then, as their way led for a time through a part of the stream where many craft navigate, it was decided to tie up for the night. It passed without incident, and they were on their way again the next morning.

It was calculated that the trip on the river would take three days, but an accident to the motor the second day delayed them, and they were more likely to be five than three days. However, they did not mind the wait.

The break occurred on a lonely part of the stream, and after stopping the craft and tying up, Neale announced, after an examination, that he and Hank could make the needful repairs.

“We’ll start in the morning,” said the boy.

“Then we’ll just go ashore and walk about a little,” suggested Ruth, and soon she and her sisters and Mr. Howbridge were on the bank of the beautiful stream.

The twilight lingered long that night, and it was light enough to see some distance ahead as Ruth and the others strolled on. The river bank turned and, following it beneath the trees, the party suddenly heard voices seemingly coming from a secluded cove where the stream formed an eddy.

“Must be fishermen in there,” said Mr. Howbridge. “We had better not disturb them.”

As they were turning away the voices became louder, and then on the still night air there came an exclamation.

“I don’t care what you think!” a man’s voice shouted. “Just because you’ve been in the Klondike doesn’t give you the right to boss me! You’ll give me an even half of the swag or – ”

And then it sounded as though a hand had been clapped suddenly over the speaker’s mouth.