THE OLD CABIN
Chot and Tom, who had run on a little ahead of Rick, stopped and looked back at their chum as they heard his cries. Rick had also come to a stop, more because he had to, than because he wanted to.
"Come on back and help me!" he called to his friends.
And the boy's appeal for aid was answered at once by the two chums.
"Say, he is 'way down in the muck!" exclaimed Ted. "Isn't he?"
"He must have walked in the wrong place," added Chot.
However it had happened poor Rick was indeed, as he said, stuck in the mud. His two chums saw this as they ran back to him.
"You got off the path, that's what's the matter!" declared Chot, as he looked at Rick—standing at a safe distance, of course, so that he, too, would not get caught in the swamp.
"You ought to have followed us," went on Ted. "We kept to the path. You got to stay up on one side when you cross this field. There's a sort of brook running through the middle of it, and you can't see it 'till you get right in it."
"Well, I didn't see it, and I'm in it all right," announced Rick. "I can't hardly lift my feet. Look!"
He rested his weight on one side, and tried to lift the opposite foot. There was a sucking sound made, as his shoe came partly up out of the mud, but it was hard work for the boy to pull himself loose.
"Look out!" suddenly called Tom, as he saw Rick tottering as if about to fall to one side. "Look out or you'll go all the way in!"
"That's what I think," agreed Rick himself. "Say, get hold of me and pull me out; will you?"
Tom was going closer, intending to take hold of Rick's outstretched hands, but Chot called sharply:
"Don't do that! If you do you'll be stuck, too!"
"But we got to do something!" insisted Tom. "We can't leave him stuck here!"
"Of course not!" assented Chot. "We'll get you out all right, Rick, and we'll help you find your dog, too. Come on over here, Tom, and help me get a fence rail. We can hold that out to Rick and pull him loose that way!"
Tom and Chot were about a year older than Rick, and knew a little better what to do in a case of this kind than did Ruddy's master.
"Don't be scared," Chot called to his chum, as the two boys walked off up a little hill toward a fence. "We'll get you out all right. I've been stuck in the mud here myself. You can wash your shoes off down in the brook. It isn't very cold to-day."
"My shoes'll be terrible muddy," declared Rick, trying to get a look at them, but he could not—they were too deep down in the muck.
It did not take Tom and Chot long to find a long fence rail that was not too heavy for them to lift. They carried it back to Rick and held out one end to him, retaining hold of the other end themselves.
"Now keep a tight grip, and when we pull, you pull and lift your feet and then you'll be loose," advised Chot.
Rick did his share, the other boys pulled and pretty soon, with another queer, sucking, sighing sound Rick felt his feet coming free from the mud and he could lift them out one after the other. He was glad to see his feet again, muddy as they were, for he was beginning to fear they might sink so far down in the swamp of the field that he would never get them back.
"They're terrible muddy!" spoke Rick as he got on firm ground and looked at his shoes. "Terrible!"
"Yes, but it'll wash off," consoled Chot. "Come on down to the brook, and mind you keep on the path, now! You must have got off or you wouldn't have been stuck."
"I didn't know you had to stay on the path," Rick said.
"Sure you do," declared Chot. "There's a lot of water, a regular bog, under this field. If you get off the path you'll be stuck. Now after you wash your shoes you follow Tom and me."
There was, as Chot had said, a sort of path through the field which a half-hidden brook had turned into a swamp. The path led along on top of numbers of big grass hummocks, or "footstools," as Rick called them. By jumping from one grass hummock to the other the boys could keep out of the mud.
Chot went on ahead, while Rick came next, and Tom brought up the rear guard for Rick. He safely reached the brook, and there he washed the worst of the mud off his shoes. He was thinking what his mother would say when she saw them.
"That's good enough!" declared Chot, after Rick had dabbled each foot in the brook several times. "That's good enough. The rest of the mud'll dry off when we run through the grass. Come on!"
"Yes, we don't want to stop here too long," agreed Rick. "I want to find Ruddy."
"We'll be out on the road soon," said Chot. "If that peddler and the sailor drove out of Belemere they'd have to come over on this road we're coming to. And unless they drove terrible fast we ought to be ahead of 'em."
"Junk wagons don't drive fast," declared Tom. "They stop at every house to buy papers and bottles."
"That's the reason I think we'll get ahead of these fellows," said Chot. "Come on, Rick."
The boy's shoes were fairly clean now, and, as his chums had remarked, they would dry and be cleaned more as he ran through the grass. Once again the chase was taken up. By keeping to the path, and by leaping from hummock to hummock, Rick managed to avoid sinking down in any more bog holes. Soon the three chums came out on the solid road.
Rick looked up and down, hoping to get a sight of the junk wagon in which, he felt sure, was his dog Ruddy, enticed away by the old sailor—the tramp sailor.
Chot began looking down in the dust of the highway, walking back and forth his eyes close to the ground.
"What you doing?" demanded Rick, as he watched his friend. "Did you lose something?"
"I'm looking for wagon tracks," answered Chot.
"Wagon tracks?" cried Rick and Tom together.
"Yes," went on Chot, "but I can't make out whether the junk wagon has been along here or not. There's too many other tracks, and marks of auto tires, besides."
"Do you really think you can tell if the junk wagon has been along here?" asked Rick.
"Well, I thought maybe I could," answered Chot. "You see I belong to the Boy Scouts," he went on, "and we're learning how to tell marks on the ground. Course animal marks, like the paws of a dog, are easier to tell than wagon tracks. But if there was smooth ground here, instead of a lot of dust that other wagons and autos had run over, maybe I could tell if the junk wagon had been along. I could for sure if I knew what kind of marks the tires made."
"But as long as you don't know you can't tell very much," spoke Tom. "But I know that Boy Scout business is good. I'm going to join a troop, I guess."
"But which way shall we go to catch up to that junk wagon and get Ruddy back?" asked Rick. He, too, was interested in Boy Scouts, but not at a time like this. He wanted his dog.
"This is the way the junk man would go after coming from Belemere," announced Chot, pointing down the road. "If he went that way," and he pointed in the opposite direction, "he'd be going back where he came from."
"Then let's chase along!" cried Rick. "I want my dog!"
"That's it!" exclaimed Tom. "We got to catch that junk man!"
"And the sailor," added Rick, "he's the one that's got my dog, I'm sure. The junk man is only giving him a ride so he can get away quicker."
"And is this the sailor that had your dog before he come up out of the ocean and the coast guard found him?" asked Chot.
"I guess so," was Rick's answer as the three boys walked along. "But, anyhow, even if that sailor did have the dog, maybe he hasn't any right to him now. Ruddy came to me. Maybe he ran away from the sailor. And if a dog runs away from a man he doesn't belong to him any more."
I do not say Rick was right in this belief, but his chums thought that he was, for they exclaimed:
"Sure! That's it! He's your dog!"
Along the road they hurried, for it was getting late and Rick's mother had told him to come back home before dark. The highway turned around a clump of trees, where the brook ran close to the road. After that there was a straight stretch for some distance. Reaching this, and looking down it, Rick and his chums saw no junk wagon, and no sight of any dog.
"Maybe he didn't come here at all!" murmured Rick, who was much disappointed.
"We'll ask at the next house," suggested Chot. "If the junk wagon came along here the man would ask to buy old rags or bottles. We'll ask, at the next house, if anybody saw him."
And there they received news which showed them that they were on the right track.
"Yep, a junk peddler was here," said the man who was watering his horse in the barnyard back of the house. "He wanted to buy stuff but I didn't have anything to sell. Sold it all last week."
"Did you see a dog—a sort of reddish-brown dog?" asked Rick eagerly.
"No, I can't say I did," answered the man, who ran a small truck farm. "There was another fellow sitting out in the wagon. But I didn't see any dog."
"Did you hear one?" asked Chot, for he was trying to remember what a Boy Scout would do, and to ask questions that would bring the kind of information needed.
"Did I hear a dog—that's so, I did hear one!" exclaimed the farmer. "Come to think of it I did hear a dog whining and whimpering in the junk wagon. I didn't pay much attention then—though it was only half an hour ago—maybe a little more. But I did hear a dog!"
"Near the log cabin stood a junk wagon."
"Then it was Ruddy—I'm sure it was!"exclaimed Rick. "Oh, fellows, come on! Maybe we'll have him, soon, now!"
Hardly stopping to thank the man for his news, though Chot did remember to fling back, over his shoulder, a hasty "much obliged," the boys hurried on.
"We're hot on the trail now!" exclaimed Chot, recalling some of the things his Boy Scout friends had said. "We'll get him!"
It was getting dusk now, but the three chums hardly noticed this. Along the road they raced, looking for a sight of the junk wagon. And, as they came to a lonely stretch they saw, off to one side, in a field a small house—a log cabin it really was, and near it stood a ramshackle old vehicle—a junk wagon beyond a doubt.
"Fellows, we've found it!" cried Rick. He pointed toward the old log cabin. Yes, there was no doubt of it. There was the junk wagon, but there was no sign of horse, or men or Ruddy, the dog.