One by one the canoes left. At last there was a string of them being paddled swiftly down the river. Never did the trip to the island seem so long to me as it did that afternoon. I was afraid that night would fling her darkness upon the water before we landed. But at length, the canoes ahead of us were landing, and one by one we took our places in the soft mud of the island and leaped upon the shore.
Now began the drive to the backwater pool, which Link had called so neatly the “lily pond.” It was a drive, I tell you. Even though others had threaded their way through this maze of wild growth every day for a week, the tangle was a torture to go through. Old faded bushes that still held prickly points caught our shins and scratched our hands and faces. Fallen trees that had failed to weather the winter’s storms lay crisscross upon the way, and here and there the dried brushwood upon which we stepped gave only treacherous footing over sunken places. But finally we came to the point where the dead vines hung like one great curtain, through which we caught sight of the old hidden houseboat which lay like a lace-edged valentine in the backwater pool. The stillness of the wilderness lay about it, and although I remembered the story that Perry Stokes had told us, I could not get myself to believe that there had been a soul around to disturb the beauty and the solitude of this wonderful, wild-looking spot.
Here we pulled up and waited for the final orders from our captain.
“See here,” said Perry Stokes, pointing to the ground. “Look at the confusion of footprints here. What would you think of these?”
We all looked at the ground around a big sycamore tree. From this tree to another about twenty-five feet away, dead hanging vines spread themselves like a huge spider web. The ground all around was covered with footmarks of shoes with nailhead soles. Shadow Loomis looked at the tree and said:
“If you should ask me, I would say that somebody has been coon hunting and treed a coon in this sycamore. Look at the bark all peeled off. That’s a sign that a coon’s nest is up in this tree and a plenty coons too, to do all that peeling.”
“The dickens with coons and their peeling,” said Jerry Moore. “Look at these footprints. That’s the thing. That shows that some fella’s been around here with nailheads in his shoes. And there’s only one fella—Stoner’s Boy.”
“Jerry’s right,” I said, softly. “Come, let’s move on to the houseboat. Perhaps we shall find the Gray Ghost there now. He may be—”
“Go easy,” warned our captain. “Wait a minute. Suppose he is there—who’s going in to grab him?”
“You’re not afraid Dick, I hope,” I asked.
“Oh, Hawkins, you know I ain’t afraid,” said Dick peevishly. “I’m careful, that’s all. You know what Stoner is. Suppose he has some trap laid for anybody who breaks in upon him.”
“Quite right,” said Shadow Loomis. “Better know what you’re walking into, Hawkins.”
But the Rolling Stone was paying no attention to our talk. He had wandered up to the old houseboat and was peeping through the window.
“Get that guy away from there, quick,” ordered our captain. “He’s loony. What if Stoner should take a shot at him through the window—”
We all ran forward to grab Rolling Stone John away from the window. But even as we did so, the door of the houseboat opened—
Say, reader, excuse me a minute, but I got to draw a breath and tell you how I felt when the door of that houseboat opened. It was as if the door of an old book had been opened for me—you don’t know how I felt, because you never—
Well, as if a page of the past were being lived all over again. That’s what I mean. Because I had never dreamed of seeing this again. No. Since my return from Cuba, I had never dreamed of seeing this again. I thought everything had been changed. I thought that the Skinny Guy—
Yeah, it was him—Link Lambert, poor old Link—and what made me feel so strange about it was that he was dressed just as he used to be, when we first saw him on our riverbank—dressed in that same old dirty gray shirt, and green trousers with a red patch on the right knee, and no socks, and a pair of old shoes—
“Link?” I yelled.
“Hawkins!” he answered.
CHAPTER 6
The Shadow of the Gray Ghost
WE SAT around the little table in Link’s hidden houseboat and listened to him. He told us that he had received the letter which the club ordered me to write to him and that when he read it, he just couldn’t help wishing that he was back here again with us.
“Ever since Will Standish left,” he continued, “I felt that old longing to come back here with you boys.”
“Will’s gone?” asked Jerry Moore.
“Back to Cuba,” said Link. “His pop came for him, but his old colored servant, Abner, wouldn’t go along. He says never no more Cuba for him. So he stayed. He’s working down on our place now. Well after Will left, I was purty lonesome, fellas. And there’s something inside me which keeps on calling—sounds like somebody I used to know and like awfully well—calling me to come back to the old days, the old life, rough and tumble, as it used to be when me and my pop used to live here. And so I told Pop about it. He didn’t want to listen at first, but when we kept on talking he took me aside and said he heard that same voice a’calling him—it’s the old times a’calling fellas. So I talked to my mother about it—Pop told me to do that—and whatever she said was to go. Well she is awful good to me; she says I should go. I been studying purty hard down there in the State and she said a little vacation would do me good. So I got ready but I didn’t want you fellas to know—I wanted to surprise you. Well, when I got here I came right to this old houseboat—the old place that used to be my home. And soon as I saw it I had to go upstairs and see all through, of course. I found my old clothes hanging up there and I just had to put ’em on. How do I look, Hawkins?”
“Same old Link,” I answered. “It is sure good for sore eyes to see you again Link—looking just like you used to look. I guess there was another reason why you put on them old duds.”
“Can’t fool you, Hawkins,” said Link. “I figured you would guess. Sure.”
“Stoner’s Boy, of course,” I said. “You figured he wouldn’t know you lest you had on the same old clothes you wore when he was here last.”
“That’s right,” said Link. “And I want him to know me. It was because Stoner was back here that I couldn’t rest till I came. I don’t think a letter would have brought me without it had the news in that Stoner’s Boy was back. Now, tell me all about him. When did he show up first? And what did he do? Tell me everything.”
So there we sat and told him about the note on the door and how we figured it out. We told him about the second visit, when we found ourselves locked in our clubhouse while Stoner was knocking on the door.
“Great!” exclaimed Link. “He’s a fine fella to be fightin’, the Gray Ghost is. Let’s see if he don’t play some new tricks this time. I’m good to stay two weeks, anyhow.”
“There’s one thing, though, Link,” said our captain, “that had us puzzled. We thought Stoner’s Boy was in this clubhouse. That’s why we came so careful. Let’s see the shoes you got on.”
Link held up his feet on which he wore a pair of broad toe shoes, that were badly worn. The soles were heavy, filled with nailheads.
“That fooled us,” I said. “The nails in the soles. It’s like Stoner. How came you to be wearin’ them, Link?”
Link laughed.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “But I can tell you now. This is a pair of old shoes that me and Monk Bridges carried away with a lot of other things from Stoner’s hiding place after he had that awful fall. I didn’t notice what shoes I was puttin’ on today when I changed my clothes. Sure, it’s a pair of his’n, all right.”
He pulled off the old shoes and flung them in a corner. Perry Stokes handed him a pair of tan shoes that stood at the steps.
“That’s ’em, Perry,” said Link. “Same old Perry, always on the job. Well, if you boys want
to make this your secret headquarters you know I told you the place is your’n. I give it to you long time ago.”
“We’ve had only one meeting here, Link,” said our captain. “And that ended up with a chase—you should have been here when we had our Red Runner fights. Them were hot times.”
“I missed ’em,” said Link. “But I think Stoner’s Boy can make more excitement in five minutes than all your Red Runners could in five hours. I wonder if he can run as fast as he used to.”
“Faster,” said Jerry Moore. “You can’t catch even a sight of him. He comes and goes. He is here one minute and clean gone the next. I bet you, Link, even as fast as you can run, you’ll never touch your fingertips on him even.”
Link laughed.
“Watch me,” he said. Then, suddenly catching sight of a new fellow in our crowd, he was silent. Shadow Loomis stepped up.
“Excuse me, Link,” he said. “I ought to have introduced him sooner. This is my brother John. He just joined the club a couple weeks ago.”
The Rolling Stone stepped up. He grasped Link’s bony hand and shook it warmly. I didn’t hear what he said, but I thought to myself as I saw those two standing there—the Skinny Guy and the Rolling Stone—that there was a fine pair, a pair of boys who would show us some strange things before we were through with this business. I don’t know what made me think that. But it may be it was on account of their looks—the Skinny Guy and Shadow’s no-account brother. They seemed to shake hands as if they meant it; they looked glad to meet each other. Link grinned.
“I am sure glad to know we got two brothers in our club,” he said. “Most always we have only one fella outer one family. Sometimes we have brothers with us, when the twins come home, but that is only during vacation time and Christmas. And I am glad it is Shadow’s brother, too, because I know he is a fine fella to have in the club. How about it, Shadow.”
Shadow didn’t even smile.
“John’s been around a good deal,” he said. “He knows a few things. He will be a help to us in any trouble with Stoner’s Boy.”
“I was hopin’ to find him here,” said Rolling Stone John. “I ain’t never seen this Stoney fella. I thought you was him when I peeped in the window and saw you.”
“That was on account of the footprints,” said Link. “But I promise you Stoner’s Boy didn’t make those footprints. Stoner hasn’t been around here. This houseboat is just as much a secret as it always was. I made those footprints this morning—look over there and you’ll see the reason.”
He pointed to the opposite wall.
A full-grown raccoon skin hung spread from two nails.
“I thought so,” said Shadow Loomis. “I knew there was a coon in that tree.”
“Lots of ’em,” said Link. “You boys come down here Saturday morning, and we’ll get the rest of ’em.”
“What you gon’a do with it, Link?” asked Jerry.
“Give it to old Judge Granbery,” said Link. “I reckon he still has a hobby for such things.”
We stayed there talking a long time. Seemed like none of us noticed that it was past suppertime and that night had settled her darkness around outside. For Perry Stokes had lighted the three oil lamps in the houseboat when we had come in, and it was bright and cheery inside.
“Boys,” I said. “It’s time for us to be going back. Will you come, Link?”
“Might as well,” said the Skinny Guy. “Been a long time since I saw the old clubhouse and the old place where me and Pop used to live in our houseboat. I’ll go along, I guess.”
Already it seemed to all of us boys as though Link had always stayed here—like as if he never had gone away. Of all the boys that ever belonged to our club, I don’t remember one who seemed to be so much at home here as the Skinny Guy. He told the boys to go to their canoes and wait. Then he motioned for Jerry and me to come along, and he led us around to the other side of the backwater pool—“the lily pond,” as he called it—and stopped before a bunch of trees.
“Got your flashlight, Hawkins?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Never go without it any more.”
“Flash it here—right behind these trees—if I remember right.”
He kicked away some brush with his foot.
“Yeah, here she is,” he said. “Lay your light on that log so she shines on this pile of dead wood. Now Jerry, give us a hand.”
Together we pulled the brush aside. It was as if all the brushwood on the island had been brought together to cover that spot, so deep had he buried it. But at length I got all of it on my side pulled away.
“A boat,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Link. “Catch hold Jerry. Now, come on, all together.”
The three of us had a hard time tugging away at it, but with a lot of snapping of dead twigs and dead wood we pulled her over. It was Link’s longboat. The old canoe he and his father had made before good luck came to them, before they went to Cuba.
“Look, Link,” I said. “Here’s the old chain on her—the same old chain you bought to lock her up with so the Pelhams couldn’t steal her.”
“Let’s go,” said Link.
That trip back to the water with that longboat on our shoulders nearly did me up. I am most too fat to carry things like that on my shoulder. Makes it hard for me to get my wind. Seemed like every time I went a step further my breath came harder. But finally we came in sight of the river where the boys were waiting for us in their canoes. Their flashlights played up and down the shore, flashing on and off like lightning bugs. We slid the longboat in, and she rode the water like a feather. Jerry hitched his green canoe onto the chain on the longboat and took up a paddle.
“You fellas take it easy,” he said. “You’re all tuckered out carryin’ this longboat through the woods. I’ll paddle you up.”
Link laughed and took up a paddle.
“I’ll help a little, Jerry,” he said.
But as for me, I accepted the invitation. I was willing to lay back and rest; I was puffing like a steam engine. I simply got to quit doing that kind of hard work lest I get thinner. Fat people never do have as much fun as skinny ones.
“All ready?” called out our captain.
“Let ’er go,” shouted the Skinny Guy. Same old Link. Not until this minute had he really seemed the same to me. But now, when he hollered, “Let ’er go,” yeah, boy, he was the old, raggedy Skinny Guy of the old days.
“Lights out,” yelled Dick as the paddles dipped beside every canoe. “No lights now till we reach home. Keep your eyes peeled. It’s dark, but looks like a moon will be up soon. Take her slow.”
Slow she was and slow she went. It was dark, sure enough, but there was a sort of a shine on the water which always means that a moon is hiding somewhere, and the line of canoes ahead of us looked like blotches on the surface of the river. Bill Darby started a song once, and Roy Dobel and Lew Hunter joined in, but our captain made ’em cut it out. So the rest of the way we went in silence; only the low voices of some boys talking together came over the air. Link and I talked, mostly about old times, until we reached the bend where the cliffs came into view. They stood out as black as ink against the starry sky. And above the topmost cliff the rim of the full moon was showing.
“Same old moon,” said Link to me in a low voice.
“Yeah, same old place,” I said.
Then we went on. It always seemed like this was the hardest place in the world to paddle. I don’t know why. Maybe because the cliffs go steep into the river here, and the water is squeezed into a narrower bed; maybe that is why. But I don’t know. It takes you longer to paddle past here; that’s all I know. Well, it was as quiet as it could be. Only the soft dip of paddles into water came to our ears. The moon rose higher and threw its light full upon the water. The canoes stood out now like little paper pictures on the silvery surface of the stream, and it made us all a little bit more cheerful. We swung around the bend by the cliffs with a splash and a go, and we started on the last stretch for home shore, w
hen suddenly a short warning came from Dick in the first canoe:
“Watch sharp.”
A dark shadow had fallen across the glittering moonlight on the water. A dark shadow—like a giant-sized shape. It fell from the cliffside to the Pelham bank. I noticed that for an instant every dripping paddle hung motionless out of water as every eye turned to see from where this shadow came.
“Look, Hawkins,” whispered Link, and there was enthusiasm in his voice.
I looked. The moon had risen and hung like a big yellow cheese above the cliff head. Like a silhouette in that circle of golden light was a figure, as though he were cut out of black paper and pasted on the moon, a figure with arms akimbo in a long coat, a cape that reached his elbows, and a shapeless hat upon a shapeless head. It seemed like he stood there on the cliff head just a moment, just long enough to let us see him. Then, before we knew it, he had gone. The big round moon shone down again; the shadow was lifted from the river.
“Stoner’s Boy,” whispered Link to me. I pinched his bony arm and said, “Go ahead.”
We went the rest of the way without a word. We landed on our little wharf and brought in our canoes and then went up to the clubhouse in the hollow. Perry already had the lamps lit. Lew Hunter was sitting at the organ. The boys were gathering around the bench behind him. Lew started an old favorite song, and they all joined in. Link and I were the last to come up. He hesitated on the porch.
“Come on,” I said. “Come on in.”
He shook his head and leaned up against the porch post. I went inside and joined the singing.
Then Boatman row us o’er the stream
With steady hand and splashing oar.
We’ll guide beneath the moon’s soft beam
Till home again we’ll be once more.
I went outside. Link still leaned up against the porch post, his hands in his pockets.
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