CHAPTER I
OUT FOR SHELL-BARKS
"TOBY, we must be half-way there now; don't you think so?"
"Guess you're right about that, Mr. Scout Master; as near as I cancalculate."
"Glad to hear you say so, Toby, because, excuse me for saying it, butuntil I hear something that sounds like business I'm all up in the air.I've known you to fool your trusting scout comrades before this."
"There you go, George Robbins, suspicious as ever. No wonder they callyou Doubting George. You never will believe anything till you see itwith your own eyes, and then you often wonder whether you're awake ordreaming. Now, I told Elmer here, our Assistant Scout Master, about myplan, and he took my word for it."
"That's all right, Toby, but unfortunately I was born different; I'm notso trusting, and things are mighty deceptive in this world, sometimes."
A fourth boy of the party in the big wagon broke into the conversationat this point, by laughing hoarsely, and going on to remark, with adecided lisp:
"I bet you were, George; and I can thee you looking up at the doctor andthaying the very first thing: 'The moon _ain't_ made of green cheeth;and I won't b'lieve it till you prove the thame to me, tho there!'"
"Hold on, Ted Burgoyne, don't fall all over yourself about myshortcomings; I'm not the only pebble on the beach when it comes tothat; there are others. But to return to the subject. Toby, here arethree of us burning up with curiosity to know where you're piloting thisshell-bark hickory nut-gathering expedition. You let it out to Elmer inthe start, but the rest of us don't know a thing about it. You promisedto open up when we'd got far enough along the road so there wouldn't beany turning back. And there was something said about half-way; so now'syour chance."
"I can see you all looking my way," remarked the fifth boy in khaki,with a peculiar little drawl, quite musical, to his voice, that stampedhim of Southern birth; "and to hurry things up I move to make therequest unanimous."
"There, you heard what Chatz Maxfield said, Toby; take the cover off,and tell us where this wonderful bonanza lies. You promised that we'dget every sack we're carrying along filled to the brim with dandychestnuts, hickories, and black walnuts. Why all this mystery? It looksmighty suspicious to me--excuse me for saying it."
These five lads, sturdy looking chaps all of them, belonged to theHickory Ridge Troop of Boy Scouts, Elmer, Ted, Toby and Chatz to theWolf Patrol, and George to the Beaver. The troop was in a flourishingcondition, since both patrols had their full quota of eight members, anda third one, called the Eagle, was almost complete.
Elmer Chenowith had long been leader of the Wolf Patrol, and being afull fledged first-class scout he had quite some time back secured fromScout Headquarters his certificate enabling him to act as AssistantScout Master in the absence of the young man, Mr. Roderic Garrabrant,who usually fulfilled the duties of that important office.
These bright, wideawake lads, with others of their chums, had seenconsiderable in the way of excitement during the preceding summer. Someof their adventures and victories have already been placed before thereaders of this Series of scout books in preceding volumes, so that anextended introduction to Elmer and his four comrades is hardly necessaryhere. What has been said has only been for the benefit of such readersas are making their acquaintance for the first time.
It was on a Saturday morning in Fall that they were driving over theroad some four miles away from the home town. A sharp frost on thepreceding night was just the thing to make nutting a success, for ithelped open the burrs on the chestnut trees, as well as caused thehickory nuts and black walnuts to drop.
Just before Thanksgiving holidays boys may be expected to develop afeverish longing for an outing of some sort. It had struck these scoutsin full force when Toby Jones confided to them that he knew a placewhere almost unlimited amounts of splendid nuts were to be gathered withvery little trouble, only he declined to reveal his secret until theywere well on the road.
The consequence was that he had three boys guessing for the balance ofthe week; and plaguing the life out of him in the endeavor to coax himto tell. But Toby was nothing if not stubborn, and he only shut thosejaws of his tighter, and waved the tempters away with the remark thatsome people called him a clam because he knew how to keep his lipsclosed.
Toby was himself driving the big strong horse between the shafts of thewagon. The conveyance belonged to his father, and it sometimes took allof Toby's strength to hold the frisky animal in.
Toby's middle name was Ellsworth, given to him because his grandfatherhad in the Civil War been connected with a regiment of Zouaves under thefamous colonel whose death at Alexandria, Virginia, occurred just aboutthe time hostilities opened between the North and the South.
Toby was a strange boy in many ways. He cherished a burning desire tobecome a celebrated aeronaut, and by means of some wonderful inventionthat would turn the world upside-down make the name of Jones famous. Asyet, however, Toby had only succeeded in patching up severalsupposed-to-be flying machines, which had managed to give him a fewrough tumbles, though luckily not any broken bones. His chums neverknew what he would spring on them next, for he was constantly grapplingwith puzzling questions connected with the science of aviation, anddeploring the fact that there was always something magnificent justahead of him that seemed to be eluding his eager clutch like awill-o'-the-wisp in the swamp.
Ted Burgoyne had the misfortune to possess a hare-lip, which made himlisp. He was not so sturdy in build as some of his mates, but as smartas they make them, and with a decided leaning for the profession of adoctor. Indeed, such was the extent of his knowledge of surgery andmedicine that he often went by the name of "Doctor Ted." And having hadoccasion to perform certain necessary operations along the line ofsetting broken limbs, and bandaging severed arteries, his work had beencommended by several professional M.D.'s as marvelous.
When Doubting George made that last plea of his the driver turned hishead and looked at his companions. He saw an eager glow in the eyes ofthe trio who had been kept in the dark up to that moment with regard totheir mysterious destination.
"Well, we've got along so far that it ain't likely anybody'll want toturn back, and show the white feather," he observed, with a quick glancedirectly at Chatz Maxfield; "so here goes. We're headed right now forthe old Cartaret place!"
"Whew! Cartaret's Folly they call it, because the man who built the samesank a fortune there making it beautiful, and then the owls and ratstook charge, which was all of twenty years ago, I reckon!" George wenton to say, first whistling to mark the surprise he felt over thedisclosure.
"And there's a lot of talk going around to this day about ghosts beingseen in the windows and around the grounds of that deserted place; butmost people would say that's only old women's stories. All the samethose people who don't believe in spooks and goblins and all such thingscouldn't be hired for any amount of money to camp out in that big housefor just one dark night."
It was Chatz who made this assertion. All of his chums knew that Chatzhad a deep-rooted vein of superstition in his system, which it seemedimpossible for him to get rid of. He believed in spirits coming back tohaunt graveyards, and empty houses where perhaps some violence had onceoccurred. Elmer and other scouts had laughed at him many times, andChatz even took himself to task because of his weakness, which he hadprobably imbibed through association as a small child with coloredpickaninnies down on the plantation in South Carolina. Sometimes heboldly declared he was done with such childish beliefs; but when anoccasion chanced to come along bearing on the subject it was strange howChatz again found himself standing up for his old-time faith inhobgoblins, and the efficacy of the left hind-foot of a rabbit shot in agraveyard in the dark of the moon, to ward off evil influences, andrepel the power of spooks to do bodily harm.
It was well known that many people shunned the vicinity of the oldCartaret place, some eight miles away from Hickory Ridge, because queerstories passed current concerning white figures seen stalking about theweed-grown groun
ds, and looking out of the open windows of the ruinedhouse. That was why Toby had been wise enough to keep his secret untilthey were so far on the road that there was little likelihood of any boyventuring to propose that they abandon the nutting expedition and returnhome.
"Well, I knew some of you fellows would be saying that," he nowremarked; "so I asked Elmer about it, and he advised me to bottle uptill we'd gone half-way to the place. So now, I hope nobody wants to goback?"
"Oh! you needn't look at me that way, Toby," Chatz hastened to exclaim;"p'raps I may be silly enough to believe in ghosts, but nobody evercalled me a coward; and where the rest of you go, suh, Chatz Maxfieldcan be counted on to follow."
"Me too!" chirped Ted.
"P'raps now you may remember that once before we ran foul of a hauntedplace up at that old mill," remarked George, "and it turned out to beonly a bunch of game-fish poachers at work there. I never did take muchstock in ghosts."
"You never take much stock in anything, suh, I notice, till you'vepulled the same to pieces, and examined it all ovah," the Southern scouttold him, quickly.
"Then it theems that you know about the thupply of nuts up at the oldCartaret place, do you, Toby?" asked Ted.
"I asked a man who was sent up there only a couple of weeks back by thelawyers that have the estate in charge, to look it over and see if itwas worth while to try and repair the ruined house. And say, he told mehe never saw trees loaded with such a crop of dandy nuts as there werein that woods back of the house. You never heard of any fellows going upthere to gather hickories, did you? I guess nobody ever goes inside halfa mile of the place if they c'n help it. And Elmer, he fell in with myscheme right away. Besides, you see, I'm taking something with me that Ihope to get a chance to try out on this trip," and Toby pointed back toa mysterious bundle lying in the bed of the wagon, on the manygunny-sacks that had been brought along in order to hold the anticipatedharvest of nuts for winter use.
"Well, well, well!" George exclaimed, in his skeptical way, "now chancesare that's some other foolish invention of yours, Toby--a new kind offlying machine that'll drop you ker-plunk in a frog pond, or crack yourhead on a log when you try it out."
"Nothing'd ever be accomplished in this world if everybody had yourdoubting nature, George," the driver of the wagon told him; "I happen tobe built on a different model, and p'raps you may live long enough tohear the name of Jones go thundering along the pathway of fame oneverybody's lips."
"Mebbe I will," George told him, "because they say it's getting mightynear as common as Smith. But I'd better not say that when my cousinLandy Smith is around. I only hope this don't turn out a hoax, that'sall. It's going to be an all day trip, and I'd hate to be sold, and comeback with one measly bag of poor little nuts to be divided among five."
"Well, now that you know the dreadful dark secret, and nobody says turnback home," Toby announced, with a broad grin, "I'm goin' to invite thewhole bunch to stop off at this wayside grocery at the crossroads here,and have some sarsaparilla with me. It's my treat this time."
As the road had been more or less dusty, and their throats wereaccordingly somewhat parched in consequence, there was no dissentingvoice heard to this generous proposition.
"Plenty of time to gather all the nuts we want, and then make an earlystart for home," Elmer told them, as Toby pulled near a series of postswhere the horse could be securely hitched.
"And the best of it is that we've thought to fetch some stuff along sowe can build a fire and have a cooked dinner," George went on to say,with a pleased smile; for while he might be given to doubting manythings, he never had occasion to question his appetite as every oneknew--that was always in positive evidence.
All of them jumped from the wagon, which had two seats, so that threeboys could sit behind, and one with the driver. While Toby was doingthe needful with his hitching halter made of rope, the others stretchedtheir legs, and waited, because it would be hardly proper for them totroop into the road grocery ahead of the scout who had invited them tojoin him in a refreshing drink.
A hulking boy was leaning against the fence near by, and observing thefive scouts in a leering sort of way.
"Huh! that's Angus McDowd, one of that Fairfield bunch we beat atbaseball last summer," muttered Toby, as he happened to glance over, andnoticed the other observing them with a sneer on his face.
"Never liked him for a thent!" Ted was heard to say in a low cautioustone; for the other boy was a strapping big chap, and if provoked mightgive them more or less trouble, in a desire to fight them one after theother, as he had the reputation of being something of a bruiser.
"My stars! but he was mad that day we won the game, though, let me tellyou, suh!" observed Chatz; "and he did his level best to get in a scrapwith some of our fellows. Felix Wagner and Tom Ballinger had to lead himaway, you remember. He doesn't like the boys of Hickory Ridge any toowell, believe me, fellows."
They all went inside the little dusty-looking building, where someenterprising man had started a wayside grocery, and general store, atwhich you could purchase nearly anything from a paper of needles to acoffin, or an automobile tire, and gasoline.
Fortunately the man happened to have some stray bottles of soft drinkslike sarsaparilla and root beer that must have been left over from hissummer trade; and presently each of the scouts was washing the dust downhis throat.
Altogether they may have spent about ten minutes in the store; and thenafter Toby had settled the account, they again passed out to the wagon.
The loitering Fairfield boy had disappeared, as Elmer noted when helooked over toward the fence where Angus McDowd had been standing ontheir arrival.
"Now, what ails you for a silly thing, Nancy?" said Toby, as the marelaid back her ears, and pranced at their approach. "Been getting toomuch oats lately, I reckon, with too little exercise. Well, you won't befeeling so fresh and frisky by the time we get back home to-night. Thatload of nuts is going to make you puff, let me tell you. Pile in,fellows, while I unfasten the hitching rope. Whoa! there, don't you daretry to bite me, you horse with the nasty temper! Why, this is a newtrick for you to show. Grab the lines, won't you, Elmer? The blame nag'sthat anxious to show off she'd leave me in the lurch! Let up, there,can't you?"
It was only by making a hasty jump that agile Toby managed to gain hisseat, to take the taut lines from Elmer's hands. Immediately the marecommenced to rear up in a most remarkable manner. Then, taking the bitbetween her teeth, she started along the road, fortunately in the rightdirection, at a whirlwind pace, amidst a cloud of dust, and with thethree scouts who had been sitting on the second seat tumbling around ina heap in the bed of the wagon, all of them having been thrown backward.
Even as the grocery keeper came running out of the door to see what wasthe matter, and while they were still within hearing distance of theplace, Elmer felt sure he saw a head rise into view above the pig-pensituated on one side of the road, and could recognize the grinning faceof that Fairfield loafer, Angus McDowd.
There was no time to say anything. The mare was undoubtedly runningaway, and the wagon flinging from side to side in the road, as Tobystood half erect, pulling with might and main on the lines in theendeavor to hold the frantic animal in.
It began to look like croaking George might have been right when he saidhe doubted whether the nutting expedition would be much of a success.