Smith Ruel Perley
The Rival Campers: or, The Adventures of Henry Burns

CHAPTER VI.
JACK HARVEY INVESTIGATES

Tom’s heart sank as he approached the tent, stepping over stones and fragments of wood that lay all about. Pulling open the flap of the tent, he looked anxiously inside. There lay the crew, to a man, stretched upon the ground, motionless. A sudden fear seized on Tom that the shock had killed them as they lay sleeping, and he reeled and clutched one of the guy-ropes to keep from falling.

The next minute the crowd of villagers had arrived, and several heads were thrust inside the tent. Just at that moment one of the crew slowly raised himself on an elbow and said, angrily:

“What’s all this fuss about? Aren’t you people satisfied with trying to blow us up, without coming around and making such a rumpus and keeping us awake?”

It was Jack Harvey. The others of the crew, taking their cue from him, made a pretence of rousing themselves up from sleep, yawned and rubbed their eyes, and asked what was wanted.

Then, perceiving for the first time that there were several stalwart fishermen in the party, and not daring to go too far, Harvey added, in a sneering tone:

“Oh, we’re obliged to you all for coming down here. It wasn’t curiosity on your part – of course not. You came down because you thought we were hurt, and we’re much obliged to you. Of course we are. We’re glad to see you, moreover, now we’re awake. Wait a minute, and we will stir up the fire and boil a pot of coffee.”

This was maddening to the rescuers. Some of the fishermen suggested pitching in and giving the crew a sound thrashing; but, so Squire Brackett said, “there was really no ground for such a proceeding, though he, for one, would be more than glad to do it.” They could blame themselves for trying to help a pack of young hyenas like these. For his part, he was going back home to bed. “They’ll drown themselves out in the bay if let alone,” he commented. However, he ventured the query to Harvey: “Guess you boys had a little powder stored around here, didn’t you?”

“Guess again, squire,” answered Harvey, roughly. “Maybe we had a fort with cannon mounted on it, – and maybe we’d like to go to sleep again, if you people would let us. We’re not trespassing. We’ve got permission to camp here, so don’t try to go bullying us, squire.”

This was the satisfaction, then, that the rescuers got at the hands of the crew. They had come, burying their grievances, and with hearts full of sympathy and kindness for the unfortunate boys, and they had encountered only the same reckless crew, that mocked them for their pains. So they turned away again, angry and disappointed, and nursing their wrath for a day to come.

And then, as the sound of the last of their footsteps died away through the woods, Jack Harvey, chuckling with vast satisfaction to himself, said: “Wasn’t that fine, though? Wasn’t old Brackett and the others furious?”

“Wild!” exclaimed Joe Hinman. “But I don’t think, after all, Jack, that it paid. We ought to have treated them better, after they had come all the way down here to help us.”

“Pshaw!” answered Harvey. “Don’t you go getting squeamish, Joe. For my part, I’m mad enough at somebody to fight the whole village. There’s our cave that it took us weeks to dig, and hidden in the only spot around here that couldn’t be discovered, gone to smash, with everything we had in it. Those two guns that the governor bought me were worth a pretty price, let me tell you. They must have gone clear into the bay, for I can’t even find a piece of the stock of either one of them.”

“It looks to me as though somebody did discover the cave, after all,” said Joe Hinman. “You can’t make me believe that it blew itself up.”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Harvey – and then he paused abruptly; for, of a sudden, there came sharply to his mind the white face of Tom Harris, peering in at the tent door, with a haggard, ghastly expression. He recalled how Tom had started back and nearly fallen at the sight of the crew lying still.

“He was the first one at the tent, too,” muttered Harvey to himself.

“What’s that?” asked Joe Hinman.

“Nothing,” said Harvey. “But you may be right, Joe. You may be right, after all. Come, let’s all go out and look over the ground once more. There may be a few things yet, to save from the wreck.”

The explosion, strangely enough, had not injured a single member of the crew. Not a piece of the wreckage had struck the tent. Pieces of rock and bits of branches and boards lay on every hand about the camp, and a stone, torn from the bank, had crashed down on the bowsprit of the Surprise, breaking it short off, carrying away rigging and sails. There was also a hole broken in the yacht’s deck by a falling piece of ledge.

The crew, awakened from sound slumber by the awful crash and by the shower of earth and stones, had rushed out, frightened half out of their wits, and at an utter loss at first to know what had happened. The full discovery of what had occurred only served to deepen the mystery. How it had happened no one could tell. To be sure, they knew what had escaped the notice of Tom and Bob, that four lanterns in a corner of the cave were filled with kerosene oil, and that in another corner, in a hole under the floor, covered with a few pieces of board and a thin sprinkling of earth, were two kegs of blasting-powder.

It had been a narrow escape for them. A hole was torn in the bank big enough to hold several yachts the size of the Surprise. Not a vestige remained to show that a cave had ever been dug there. Several boulders had been dislodged from the bank and carried bodily down to the water’s edge, besides the one that had hit the bowsprit of the Surprise. Of the stuff that Tom and Bob had placed carefully outside the cave, not a scrap remained. Every bit of it must have been blown into the sea. But not a rock nor so much as a stick had struck the tent. Beyond being dazed for some moments by the shock of the explosion, not one of the crew was hurt.

When they had made a second and unavailing search for anything that might have escaped the destruction, and some half-hour after the villagers had departed, the crew went back to the tent and laid themselves down again for a morning’s nap. They were soon off to sleep, save one.

As often as he closed his eyes, Jack Harvey could see, in his mind’s eye, Tom Harris come again to the door of the tent; and he could see him start back and almost fall. Could Tom Harris have had anything to do with the explosion? And if so, how? It hardly seemed possible, but Harvey could not put the idea out of his head. Tom’s frightened face looked in at him, in his troubled sleep that morning, and, long before his crew were awake again and stirring, he rose and stole out of the tent to the shore, where the cave had been.

And so, while Tom and Bob rolled in on to their bunks that morning, thankful in their hearts that no harm had come to the crew, Jack Harvey was down there by the shore, examining the ground over and over again, every inch of it, from the place where the entrance to the cave had been to the place where the canoe had been made fast. Much of the bank had been torn away there, but where the canoe had been moored there was a spot for some few feet that was undisturbed. Jack Harvey, after studying the spot carefully, went back to camp. If he had found anything that surprised him, he did not, for the present, mention it to his crew.

Jack Harvey was a curious mixture of good and bad qualities. His parents were wealthy, but uneducated and unrefined. They allowed him to have all the money he wished to spend, and permitted him to do pretty much as he pleased about everything. Harvey’s father had been a miner, and had “struck it rich,” after knocking about the California gold-fields for nearly a score of years. Because he had managed to get along well in the world without any education, and without the influence of any restraint, such as society imposes, he had a theory that it was the best thing for a boy to work out his own upbringing. As a consequence, his son was rarely thwarted in anything. Left to himself, Harvey, though not naturally bad, fell in with a rough, lawless class of boys, read only the cheapest kind of books, which inspired him to lead an idle, good-for-nothing life, and, as a result, went wild.

He was strong and, among his associates, a leader. They gladly awarded him this distinction, as they were, for the most part, poor, and he spent his allowance freely. He was captain of a ball nine, for which he bought the uniforms and the necessary equipment; captain of his yacht’s crew, and, in all things, their acknowledged leader. His companions came generally to be known as Harvey’s crew.

Tom and Bob had a mere speaking acquaintance with him, as they all attended the same school at home, – from which, however, Harvey was more often truant than present. Beyond that association they had nothing to do with him. There were four members of the yacht’s crew, although that term was applied by the people of the town to some dozen or more boys. Of these four, Joe Hinman was a thin, hatchet-faced, shrewd-looking boy, whose father was employed by a railroad in some capacity that kept him much away from home; George Baker and Allan Harding were cousins, whose parents had a rather doubtful reputation, as dealers in second-hand goods and articles pawned, at a little shop in an obscure quarter of the town. Tim Reardon had no parents that he knew of, and earned an uncertain living, doing chores and working at odd jobs through the winter. In the summer, he was usually to be found aboard Harvey’s yacht, where he was fairly content to do the drudgery, for the sake of the livelihood and the fun of yachting and camping.

It was not the sort of companionship that a wise and careful parent would have chosen for his son, but they sufficed for Harvey, and no one interfered with him. These boys did as he said, and that was what he wanted.

Nearly every one in the entire village had gone down to Harvey’s camp in the next hour following the explosion. Curiously enough, however, Henry Burns was not of this number. He had jumped out of bed at the crash and the shock, and had hastily dressed and rushed down-stairs, ready to go with the crowd. For once, however, Mrs. Carlin got ahead of him.

“Why, Henry Burns,” she had exclaimed, catching sight of him as he dodged out of the door. “Where do you think you are going at this hour of the night, and you that was feeling so bad only a few hours ago. You’re not going off through those woods to-night, not if I know it. You can just take yourself back to bed, if you don’t want to be laid up with a sick spell.”

And Henry Burns, now that attention was thus publicly attracted to him, did not dare to steal out later and join the others, lest Mrs. Carlin should hear of it, and, perchance, become suspicious of him. So he went back unwillingly to bed, but not to sleep. He was wide-awake when the angry party returned. Listening from his window, he heard their description of the explosion and their impudent reception by Harvey’s crew; and proceeded to draw his own conclusion from it all.

The more he thought of it, the more his suspicion grew that, in some way, Tom or Bob, or both, had had a hand in the thing. Tom, indeed, had expressed his intention to Henry Burns of spying on the camp in his hunt to find the missing box; and, although it seemed a most unlikely hour for him to have gone down there, Henry Burns wisely conjectured that that was what he must have done.

Accordingly, shortly after Henry Burns had arisen that morning, and after he had gathered from a few villagers who were abroad some fuller details of the night’s adventures, he made his way to the camp on the point. There were no signs of life about the camp, and, softly opening the flap of the tent, he peered within. Tom and Bob lay stretched out, sound asleep.

Henry Burns stepped noiselessly inside. He called them by name in a low tone, but they did not awaken.

“Last night’s excitement was too much for one of them, at least, I guess,” was his comment. And then he added: “If my suspicions are true, their fun lasted later than mine, and was far more exciting – but I’ll find that out.”

There was a camp-stool beside each bunk, upon which Tom and Bob had thrown their clothes before turning in. Henry Burns quietly removed the clothing from these chairs, made them into a bundle, and, tucking the bundle under his arm, walked out of the tent and lay down on the grass, just outside.

It seemed to him as though another hour had passed before he heard a creaking of one of the bunks, and a voice, which he recognized as Bob’s, said: “Hulloa, there, Tom, wake up!”

“Ay, ay,” growled Tom, sleepily, but made no move.

Again Bob’s voice: “Say, Tom?”

No answer.

“Tom – hulloa, old fellow – come, let’s get up. It’s late.”

“All right, all right, Bob, so it is.” And Tom roused up on an elbow and rubbed his eyes. Then he gave a prodigious yawn.

“Whew!” he exclaimed. “What a night I had of it. I don’t wonder we slept late, do you?”

“Well, hardly,” answered Bob. “My! But I can hear that explosion go off now, it seems to me. And wasn’t that an awful sight when the flame shot up against the sky? I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”

“We’ll have to keep our eyes on Harvey after this for awhile,” said Tom. “Hulloa!” he exclaimed, suddenly, as they tumbled out on to the floor. “Where are our clothes? We left them right here when we turned in, didn’t we?”

The boys looked at each other and stared in astonishment.

“Of course we did,” answered Bob.

“What can it mean?” gasped Tom.

“Hope to die if I can guess,” said Bob. “It’s plain enough, though, that some one has been in here while we were asleep and cleaned out our wardrobe. Not a thing left. You don’t suppose that Harvey – ”

“Nonsense,” interrupted Tom. “It’s that young scoundrel of a Joe Warren. He’s always up to his monkey-shines. It’s some of his doings. He was the one, mind you, that proposed yesterday that we carry our change of good clothing up to his cottage for safe-keeping. Here we are, now, without a rag to put on.”

“I suppose he thinks we’ll have to march up to his cottage in blankets, like Indians,” said Bob. “Well, if it comes to that, I’ll stay right here till night. You don’t catch me parading around in a blanket in the daytime, to be laughed at by everybody.”

“We’ll have to pay him up for this,” said Tom.

At this moment Henry Burns appeared at the doorway.

“I have some cheap second-hand clothes here,” he said. “They’re pretty well worn out, and you can have them for a small consideration, seeing that you need them so bad. I want the money for my poor mother, who’s sick at home with the smallpox.”

“Scoundrel!” yelled Tom.

“Pirate!” muttered Bob.

They rushed fiercely at Henry Burns, who, however, smiling serenely, still held on tightly to the bundle of clothing.

“Pay me my price for them, and you can have them all,” he said.

“How much?” asked Tom.

“Wait till we try them on and see if they still fit,” said Bob.

“My price,” answered Henry Burns, depositing the bundle on a chair and seating himself upon an end of one of the bunks, “is that you tell me how you came so near to blowing up Jack Harvey’s camp last night.”

It was a long shot on his part, but it went straight to the mark. There was an awkward silence for almost a minute. Finally Tom said:

“There’s no use trying to keep a secret from him, Bob. He knows half already. We may as well tell him all, and see what he thinks of it.”

“Fire away, Tom,” said Bob. “No one was injured, anyway, so no great harm can come of it.”

So Tom related to Henry Burns the story of the night’s adventure. Henry listened with the greatest interest.

“I’d have given a good deal,” he said, “to see Jack Harvey when he found his cave blown up, with all their spoils along with it.”

When the story was finished, however, he was inclined to treat the matter more seriously than they had supposed he would.

“I’m afraid it’s a bad scrape to be in,” he said at length. “From what I have heard about our friend Harvey, I judge he is not one of the kind to let a thing of this sort go without paying somebody back for it. And I believe he is as sure to find out who blew up that cave as I am that I am sitting here.”

“How can that be?” asked Bob.

“I can’t say,” replied Henry Burns; “but if you keep your eyes open, you will see that he suspects you. I’ll warrant if we could see Jack Harvey now, we should see him out examining every inch of the shore, looking at the rocks on the beach for any paint that might be scraped off your canoe, and all such things as that. He is a shrewd one, and, when he has once satisfied himself that you and Tom wrecked his cave, why, I wouldn’t give a fig for your camp here, – that is, unless you propose to stay at home all the time to guard it.”

Strange to say, if they could have seen Jack Harvey just then, they would have witnessed a most startling confirmation of Henry Burns’s words. For Jack Harvey, at that moment, was at the shore once more. He was examining every inch of it. He was scrutinizing every rock along the beach. He was out among the ledges, looking carefully along their sides. He was searching here, and he was searching there, – but what he found he neither confided to his crew nor to any one else, but kept locked for the present in his own breast.

“I believe Henry is right,” said Tom. “And it isn’t the most pleasant prospect to think that our camp may be overhauled at any time, whenever we happen to be away, and perhaps disappear altogether some dark night, if we happen to be caught out on the bay or down the island. But what to do I don’t see, for the life of me, – except to keep as quiet as possible about it.”

“I may not be right,” suggested Henry Burns, “but my advice would be to do just the opposite, – that is, when you once feel certain that Harvey is hunting for you.

“Tell Harvey,” continued Henry, “that you blew up his camp, and how you did it, and why. Tell him what you saw in that cave. Ask him point-blank if he would want the villagers to know what you saw in there. Strike a bargain with him to call it even. He will be glad to do it; whereas, if he finds you and Bob out, without your knowing what he is up to, he will watch night and day for a chance to harm you.”

“The fact is,” added Henry Burns, as he arose to go, “what with Jack Harvey and Colonel Witham on the war-path after you, you are likely to have quite a lively summer before you get through. So keep your eyes open and look out. And remember, when in trouble, always apply to H. A. Burns, care Colonel Witham – always ready to serve you.” And Henry Burns walked away, whistling.

Tom and Bob went about their breakfast preparations, looking rather serious for a time; but a hearty meal made them look at the matter somewhat less seriously.

“Henry Burns is quite apt to be right about things, so the Warrens say,” commented Tom, after awhile, as they were finishing their meal. “But I guess he likes to talk some, too, just to make an impression. I don’t see how Harvey can find out who blew up his cave in a hundred years, if we only keep quiet and don’t give it away ourselves.”

“I’m not so sure,” answered Bob. “Those things do get out.”

Jack Harvey, in the meantime, having completed a careful survey of the shore, and either finding or not finding what he sought for, went back to his camp and crew. Toward noon, however, he left his camp, and a little later Tom saw him coming up along the shore.

When he came to where the canoe lay on the beach, Harvey paused and examined it closely. Then, as though to test its weight, he lifted it up on his broad shoulders, and then set it down on the beach again, this time bottom up.

Tom and Bob started down to the shore at this, but, before either they or Harvey had spoken, they had seen plainly that which, perhaps, Harvey had looked for, a long broad scratch upon the bottom of the canoe, near the middle, where the fresh paint had been scraped off.

“Hulloa, there,” said Harvey, as they approached. “That’s a fine canoe you’ve got there. Guess I’ll have to get the governor to buy me one. I saw your tent yesterday, but didn’t have a chance to come around. You fellows got ahead of me, by coming over last night – with the crowd.”

“Yes,” answered Bob. “We expected to find you all blown into the sea. What was the matter over at your camp?”

“Why, between you and me,” replied Harvey, eying them cautiously as he spoke, “I think some one of the crew did it, as a joke. They’re up to that sort of thing, you know. They’d just as lieve do it as not, any one of them. Like as not that young Tim Reardon did it, because I make him lug water, and don’t let up on him when he has lazy spells. To tell you the truth, we had a little powder stored away in a hole under a tree, and I guess one of them touched it off.”

Harvey tried to speak carelessly; but there was an angry light in his eyes and an expression around his mouth which would not be concealed, and which boded no good for somebody, and this was not lost on Tom and Bob.

“Come up to the camp, won’t you?” asked Tom. Harvey first declined, as though it had not been his intention to stop, and then accepted, and the three went toward the tent. On the way there Tom found a chance to say to Bob, “I guess Henry Burns was right, wasn’t he, Bob?” And Bob answered, “Yes.”

“Snug quarters you have here,” said Harvey, as they entered the tent. “Tight and dry, – and bunks, too. We can’t beat these accommodations aboard the Surprise. And here’s camp-chairs, like a steam-yacht or a cottage. You’ll be having pictures on the walls next, and a carpet on the floor, – and then you won’t allow each other to have mud on your boots.”

Harvey was still watching them sharply as he spoke, and may have made the last remark with a purpose, inasmuch as the boots of both Tom and Bob were begrimed and smeared with the clay from the bank near Harvey’s camp, and their clothes, for that matter, were muddy in spots.

“Sure enough,” answered Tom, “we have things as shipshape as we can. We’ve got a camp-kit here that can’t be beaten on the island. Maybe you would be interested to have a look at it.” So saying, Tom deliberately unlocked the big packing-case and threw back the cover.

“There,” cried Tom, pointing to the box that had been stolen, “what do you think of that?”

Harvey drew back quickly, and looked as though he were about to strike Tom a blow, while his face flushed angrily. Bob sprang quickly from his seat on one of the bunks, and he and Tom stood confronting Harvey. If the latter had intended to strike a blow, he changed his mind and did not do it. Instead, he gave a half-laugh and said:

“That’s what I came up to see you about. The fact is, I have known you fellows blew up our cave ever since I saw your face” – looking at Tom – “at the door of our tent last night. Then I found, too, where your canoe had landed on the edge of the shore, and just where that big scratch was made. The paint is on the rocks yet. Now I don’t think you fellows used me square, though I know you did it because you thought we stole your box – ”

“Which you did,” interrupted Tom.

Again the quick flush in Harvey’s face, and again the gesture as though he would strike Tom a blow; but he did not do it, as he had refrained before.

“No, there’s where you are wrong,” he said; “though I don’t deny that one of the crew took it, – not knowing it was yours. They wouldn’t one of them take anything from you.”

“Which is not true,” said Tom, quietly.

This was more than Harvey could stand. With clenched fist, he rushed at Tom, aiming a heavy blow at his face, and crying, as he did so: “I lie, do I? Then take that!”

Tom partially avoided the blow by stepping back and guarding his face with one arm. The blow fell short, striking him near the shoulder. At the same time, however, he tripped over the packing-case, and that, with the force of the blow, sent him over backwards, so that he fell all in a heap in one corner of the tent.

Harvey darted for the door, to make his escape; but Bob sprang at him and the two clinched. Harvey was larger and more than a match for either one of them, and, with a quick twist, threw Bob violently to the floor. But the latter clung to him and brought him down, too. Then, before Harvey could break Bob’s hold, Tom had recovered himself and thrown himself upon him. He rolled Harvey over, and the next moment he and Bob had him securely pinned to the floor.

“Now,” said Tom, as they held him fast, “we are not going to hurt you, Jack Harvey, because we are no such cowards; but I’ve got something to say to you which it will be for your advantage to listen to.

“In the first place, let me tell you that you are a coward and as good as a thief. You didn’t steal our box because one of your crew did it for you and saved you the trouble; but you knew it was stolen from us, and would have taken it yourself if you had had the chance. You need not tell us that your crew would not steal from us, for we know better, and so do you. In the second place, I want to tell you that we blew up your cave without intending to do more than burn some of the things in it. The rest we took out, – though it doesn’t make much difference now what our intentions were.

“And, last of all, let me tell you that neither you nor your crew are going to try to be revenged on us. Why? Because you don’t dare to. It wouldn’t be healthy for any of you, if it became known in the village what was in that cave, and nobody knows that better than you. Not that Bob and I intend to tell, ever, unless you give us cause to. But let me tell you that it won’t do for you to play any tricks on us.

“Please don’t forget that neither you nor a single one of your crew dares to disturb so much as a rope around this camp. Now you can get up.”

Harvey rose, white with rage, and stood for a moment, as though undecided whether or not to continue the unequal combat; but his better judgment prevailed, and he walked slowly out of the tent, pausing at the door long enough to say:

“You need not have any fear of our troubling you or your camp. You have been too smart for us, and we shall steer clear of you after this.

“In fact,” he added, sneeringly, “any little thing we can do for you at any time, just let us know. We shall think a great deal of two such smart fellows as you, I assure you.” And so saying, he left them.

“Sorry we can’t say as much for you,” Bob called out after him, and was half-sorry for the words the next moment; for it was foolish to increase an enmity which could only lead to trouble.