The Firebug

  CHAPTER XII THE MYSTERY MAN OF THE MARSH

  The moon was just rising out of the marsh; turning the dark rushes to adeep bottle green and spreading a bar of gold down a channel. For twosolid hours Johnny had managed to throw off his problems and worries andthe strange grip of mysteries that had held him so long. In those twodelightful hours he had been just a boy, paddling about an enchantedmarsh in twilight and gathering darkness.

  With his good pal Mazie, he had eaten the lion's share of a lunch such asonly Mazie could prepare; strangely delicious little sandwiches and cakethat melted in your mouth, pears from a glass jar, cold chicken, and athermos bottle of steaming cocoa. Johnny had enjoyed all this.

  And now, side by side on the narrow seat of the flat-bottomed boat, theysat through a half hour of deep enchantment, watching the moon rise. Fora long time they sat in silence, and who can know what were the long,long thoughts that came to them?

  Whatever they were, they were destined to come to an abrupt end.Suddenly, as his ear caught an unaccustomed sound, Johnny put a fingerover Mazie's lips, then stood straight up to allow his eyes to sweep themarsh. The next instant he motioned Mazie down as he dropped flat in thebottom of the boat. For a moment they lay very still.

  "Wha--what is it?" Mazie whispered.

  "Sh!" Johnny's all but inaudible whisper answered back. "Not so loud.Some men can shoot accurately at sound. It was often done during the war.I heard the dip of an oar and caught the gleam of a rifle. It's--it's themysterious one! It must be. Lie perfectly still. Not a sound. Perhaps hedidn't see me."

  "I--I won't move, Johnny."

  Johnny knew that Mazie was frightened, for he felt the wild beating ofher heart against his shoulder. But he knew she was game, too, and wasproud of her for that.

  Fifteen minutes they lay there in the bottom of the boat. Speaking in thelowest whispers, scarcely daring to breath, they listened intently, butcaught no further sound.

  "Listen, Mazie," whispered Johnny at last, "we can't stay here allnight."

  "No, we can't."

  "Are you afraid to stay here alone for a minute or two?"

  "N--no. But what are you going to do?" she asked in sudden alarm.

  "I'm going after that fellow."

  "Johnny! You'll be killed!"

  "He'll not harm me. It's the only way out. I'm going."

  With a grip of her hand he signalled farewell, then with astonishingdexterity he got over the side of the boat and into the water without asound.

  Swimming down the channel until he was opposite the spot where he judgedthe man to have been, he at last began parting the rushes and making hisway slowly through them. He had not gone ten yards when he caught sightof a black form directly before him.

  "That's him!" he breathed. "He's in a boat. There's a channel there."

  Lest he be detected and fired upon, he worked his way back to his ownchannel, swam rapidly up this channel and then crossed the stretch ofrushes to the other side.

  For a time after that he swam noiselessly in the shadow of rushes downthe channel toward the mysterious one's boat, swam until he made out theform of an oval bottomed, clinker-built boat. A tall man was standing upin it. Johnny again caught the gleam of a rifle barrel.

  Johnny took one deep, silent breath, then disappeared under the water.

  Swimming strongly under water, he came up to the right of the boat andalmost directly beneath it. He could hear the man's deep breathing andcaught fragments of husky mutterings.

  "Now's the time," Johnny thought to himself.

  Gripping the edge of the boat he gave it a sudden upward thrust which allbut capsized it. There followed at once a small splash and a large one.

  "His rifle goes--now he takes the plunge," thought Johnny as his heartwent racing.

  "He's safe enough now. He'll not find his rifle at the bottom in thisdarkness. He's a tiger without his fangs."

  Johnny even had the temerity to lift himself up as high as he could inthe water and peer over the boat.

  It was then that he got a real shock. The man was nowhere to be seen.

  "Huh! He can't have drowned," Johnny reasoned.

  The next instant a thought struck him which set him doing the Australiancrawl with a vengeance. The man may have known the general direction oftheir boat and might have gone for it. If he had, what of Mazie?

  After three minutes of breathless swimming, Johnny arrived in theirchannel to find his fears unfounded. Everything was as serene as when hehad left it.

  "Come on," he said to Mazie as he climbed into the boat, "we're going toget out of here."

  Seizing a long pole, he stood boldly upright in the boat and sent itshooting through the water. Ten minutes later he beached his boat, thendragged it to a low shed which served as boat-house.

  As he turned about from snapping the padlock, the moon came suddenly outfrom behind a cloud and shone down one of those long channels of themarsh. In the midst of a channel was a clinker-built boat--and a man wasstanding in it.

  "That's him," Johnny chuckled, "I--I'm sort of glad he didn't drown. Bethe hasn't got his rifle, though. I'd like to swim back there and beat himup."

  He did not yield to this mad impulse. Mazie was pulling at his sleeve andsaying in her most persuasive tone:

  "Come on. Let's go home."

  "All right," smiled Johnny, slapping the water from his soaked trousers,"guess we'd better."

  "All the same," he mused, "I'd like to know where that fellow stays andhow he always happens to be about the marsh at the same time I am."

  "It's something more than a happening," said Mazie seriously, "and sinceyou don't learn anything by coming, it might be well to stay away."

  "Might," agreed Johnny.

  "But for all that," he thought to himself, "I'm going back out there sometime and prowl about the edge of the marsh a bit. That fellow may liveout there somewhere." He thought of the black shack at the edge of themarsh.

  "Johnny," said Mazie as they rode home, "let's go somewhere to-morrownight; some place where we won't be bothered and where we can have somefun."

  "For instance?"

  "Why not Forest City?"

  "I don't mind. Chute the chutes, roll down the roller coaster, andeverything; good old stuff that never grows old."

  "Something like that," smiled Mazie. "Anyway, it's a lot of fun to seepeople having a roaring time of it. And they really do enjoy it. Don'tyou think so?"

  "Yes," said Johnny, "and I might as well admit it, I enjoy it myself;makes me think of the picnics and county fairs I used to go to when I wasa small boy. All right, we'll go."