CHAPTER XII
_A Midnight Alarm_
When the boys were well under way with the business of eating dinner,they again asked Tom to tell them the nature of his "negotiation" withthe moonshiner.
"Well, I'll tell you what he said and what he demanded and what answer Imade. But you must bear in mind that what he said may not have beentrue, and what he demanded may not have been what he really wanted. Yousee, I had 'got the drap' on him and naturally he made his explanationsas plausible and his demands as small as he could. I had caught himcreeping up with a cocked gun in his hand, evidently to take a shot atsome one of you fellows, meaning, when the murder was done, to slip backover the rocks yonder without being seen or recognized by anybody.Thanks to the cat that scratched me, I was here to head him off in that.Then he pretended only to want us to remove our chute. I suppose thatwas a fetch, just to secure a way of escape from the awkward positionin which I and your splendid rifle, Doctor, had placed him. They mayhave a still down there in the line of the chute, or they may not. Butthey have a still and perhaps several of them somewhere about here andso they are determined to drive us down the mountain. That, at least, ismy reading of the riddle."
"It is pretty certainly correct," said Jack, after thinking for amoment. "At any rate that's the understanding upon which we must baseour proceedings. We must not for one moment relax our vigilance; we mustnot be caught napping; we mustn't let any of those people 'git the drap'on us. They have declared war on us, and we must defend ourselves atevery point."
The dinner was eaten in doors by all except Harry Ridsdale, who satoutside acting as a sentinel, and took his dinner on a log. Afterdinner, and again the next morning, Tom volunteered to act as sentinel,inasmuch as the Doctor would not yet let him chop, or hew ties, or liftlogs, or do any other work that might reopen his now nearly healedwounds.
Promptly at five minutes after three o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, thefirst product of their industry was sent thundering down the chute. Itwas a huge timber thirty feet long and full two and a half feet thickat its smaller end. Jack had cut it at a point very near the mouth ofthe chute, and by united efforts, with handspikes and the slope of thehill to assist them, the company had rolled it into place.
Jack took out his watch and observed the time carefully.
"Three o'clock was the time agreed upon with the railroad people forhaving everything clear down there in the valley," he said, "butaccording to railroad usage we'll allow five minutes for variation ofwatches."
When the time was fully up the boys at the forward end of the greattimber withdrew the handspikes with which they had been holding itsecurely in place. At the same time those at the rear end of it gave ita push with their handspikes. The log slid slowly into the chute, thenwith a grinding noise slipped rapidly through it, gave a great leap, andwent careering down the precipitous hill, making a noise as of thunder.
Tom, with the Doctor's rifle over his shoulder--for he was acting assentinel--had come to observe this splendid beginning of their winter'swork. As the great timber bounded down the hill, and an echo of itsfinal fall came back to announce its arrival at its destination, Tomquietly remarked:
"There may have been a distillery in the path of that log yesterday, butI wouldn't give much for the remains of it now."
"No," said Jack, "but there's money in that stick of wood. We must senddown as many such as we can, and what remains of the tree from which Icut it will make many railroad ties and a lot of cordwood."
Then Jack examined the chute to see what effect the passage of the greattimber had produced upon it. He found that pretty nearly all the barkhad been stripped off the poles of which the chute was made. That was anadvantage, inasmuch as it rendered the chute smoother for the passage oflighter timbers, which would presently render its surfaces glass-like intheir polish. On the other hand the great timber in its passage had doneno harm of any kind to the structure.
"That's a tribute, Jack," said Ed, "to your skill and the Doctor's, asengineers. For if that great stick didn't break any of your poles ortwist any of the posts on which they rest, nothing else that we shallsend down the hill will. I call it good construction, when a chute madeof such stuff as you have used, carries such a weight as that withoutgiving way anywhere."
"Yes," answered Jim Chenowith, "and, of course, the strain on the chutewill never be so great again, now that the bark has been stripped offits poles. It must have been a tremendous trial when that big log sliddown, resting so heavily on the poles as to strip off every particle ofbark that it touched!"
"Thanks for your compliments, boys," said Jack, "but now we've got toset ourselves to work. Between now and six o'clock we've got to senddown all the ties that we've got ready, and all the cordwood besides. Soquit talking and come on."
It was hard work. The railroad ties were so heavy that it required twoboys to each to handle them comfortably, and the supply of cordwood waslarge enough to tax all the industry of the camp to complete the workbefore six.
In the meantime Tom had gone to the cabin to prepare supper, keeping uphis sharp lookout all the while.
After supper had been disposed of, Tom quietly took his owndouble-barreled shot gun, slipped a charge of buckshot into each of itschambers, belted a loaded cartridge holder round his waist, and went out"just to look around," he said. Tom was so given to this sort ofprowling, both by day and by night, that none of the boys attached anyimportance to his present movements. Had they thought anything at allabout it, they would have felt certain that little Tom had gone outonly to stroll around the outskirts of the camp, as it was his habit todo.
Instead of that, however, he walked straight to the chute and presentlyclambered over the edge of the cliff, and by holding to bushes droppedto a ledge below. Thence, he had a very precipitous but practicable pathbefore him for at least half way down the mountain.
Hard working and early rising as the boys were, they enjoyed theirevenings in front of the great fireplace in their hut, and usually theydid not go to bed till ten o'clock. This gave them three or four hoursof enjoyable fireside conversation, and, as they arose sharply at six inthe morning during these short days it left them eight hours for sleep,and that is quite enough for any well man, however hard he may haveworked in the open air during the day.
But when bedtime came and little Tom did not reappear, they all began tofeel uneasiness. Still, it was well understood in the camp that "LittleTom knows how to take care of himself," and so one by one the boys wentto bed, all but the sentinel.
About midnight, Jim Chenowith, who had been on guard, came into the hutand aroused his comrades.
"I say, fellows," he said, in a deprecative voice, "I hate to disturbyou, but I'm getting uneasy about Tom. It's twelve o'clock now, and hehasn't returned to the camp."
Instantly the entire party sprang out of bed and each began to slip intohis clothes.
"We must build a bonfire," said the Doctor, as a first suggestion. "Yousee, Tom may have lost his way, and it isn't easy to find one's wayabout in these mountains of a dark night. If we build a bonfire, he willbe able to locate the camp. If anything worse has happened to the boy,why we will--"
The Doctor did not complete his sentence, but the other boys understood,and with one voice they answered in boy vernacular: "You bet we will!"