Blacksheep! Blacksheep!, Meredith Nicholson [reading women .txt] 📗

That person in the launch can't harm you in the least. He may be annoying, yes; and his voice is extremely disagreeable, but really his utterances are unworthy of the attention of honest men."

"Who the deuce are you?" demanded Eliphalet, leveling his umbrella at the Governor. "It occurs to me we have met before."

"Thanks for the compliment!" the Governor answered, dodging a heavy crate, the first of the freight to be swung ashore.

Perky was thoroughly prepared for the expeditious delivery of his cargo, even to wheelbarrows in which three men now began trundling supplies up the wharf and along the beach to the camp store house. The work was proceeding rapidly, without noise or confusion, and Archie and the Governor were busily assisting when the shore was startled by a yell.

Leary and Congdon in the row boat had been stealing up behind Carey's launch. Leary sprang aboard while the two occupants were watching the landing of the stores.

Carey, diving under Leary's arms, seized a club and knocked him overboard. The detective jumped into the water and swam to the wharf, where he was immediately overpowered and hauled aboard the tug. By this time Carey was steering for the middle of the bay, where he watched the tug for a while and then retired toward his camp.

Leary had crawled upon the pier and was disconsolately shaking the water out of his shoes.

"It was a good try, old man," said the Governor cheerily. "That fellow's not going to be easy to bag, but we've got a detective on our hands," he chuckled, "and I don't know just how we're going to let loose of him."

Putney Congdon had rowed close to the wharf to pick up Leary. As the Governor had predicted, Eliphalet Congdon emitted a loud and not wholly melodious howl as he recognized his son.

"Hey there! You've been following me! I told you to stay at the farm and here you come sneaking after me away up here where I've come for rest."

"You were never more mistaken in your life!" replied Putney. "I came up here to see Edith and found that that fellow you saw in the launch was trying to starve out this camp."

"Edith here? Who says Edith's here? You're out of your senses! You know perfectly well the child's in Ohio!"

"Break in on that dialogue," said the Governor to Archie. "Those men will never get anywhere yelling at each other. I'll attend to Eliphalet after we land the freight."

"If that wife of yours has stolen Edith I'll have the law on her!" screamed Eliphalet. "She's not fit to have the care of children!"

Archie walked to the edge of the wharf and commanded Eliphalet to hold his peace.

"Putney, row out a few hundred yards and watch Carey. You needn't worry about your father. We'll find some way of getting him out of his scrapes."

The detective, who had been lashed to the pilot house, reused himself to shout:

"You'll make a nice mess of it trying to get him away from the Government. The whole lot of you are crooks, and you're holding me at your peril."

The discharge of freight had not ceased during this colloquy. The crane swung over the wharf at regular intervals, and the men with the wheelbarrows trotted back and forth with the spirit and agility of men intent upon finishing an honest day's work. As Putney Congdon, mystified but obedient, rowed away, his father began begging Perky to leave the place and steer for Canada.

"You promised to protect me but you've made a fool of me," the old man wailed. "You betrayed me to the police; you—"

The Governor flung a sack of potatoes into a wheelbarrow, and surveyed the infuriated Eliphalet for a moment.

"Pray calm yourself, Mr. Congdon, and please be careful how you charge people with serious crimes. It seems to be an obsession with you that everybody on earth is a crook. The proposition interests me psychologically. When I get through with this freight I'll look at your data. Meanwhile I solemnly warn you to make no charge against me or any friends of mine that you can't prove."

It was five o'clock when the last of the cargo was landed in the store house. The engineer (a gentleman whose grimy face and mournful eyes belied his record as a hold-up man) sounded the whistle.

Ruth ran down to the shore and Archie and the Governor went to meet her.

"O you angels!" she cried. "I've just taken a peep into the store house and you've given us enough food to last all next summer. It's perfectly splendid. I wasn't watching—really, I wasn't—for I had to keep the girls busy; but you did have trouble of some sort?"

"Nothing of the slightest consequence," the Governor answered. "We tried to catch Carey but he was too quick for us. But we did pick up a friend of his—the gentleman you see giving an exhibition of haughty disdain out there on the tug. Keep everybody well under cover tonight and don't be alarmed by anything you hear. We'll soon be through with this business."

"Who's that funny little man on the tug? He seems anxious to attract attention!"

Eliphalet Congdon was engaged in an argument with the detective, who, being helpless, was obliged to endure a tirade the old gentleman was delivering to the accompaniment of an occasional prod of the inevitable umbrella.

"That," said the Governor, "is Edith Congdon's paternal grandfather; an estimable person fallen upon evil times."

"You don't mean Mr. Eliphalet Congdon!"

"Most emphatically I do."

"And have he and his son settled their differences?"

"Not so you would notice it! But they'll be loving each other when I get through with them."

"Do you know," said the girl, looking wonderingly into the Governor's eyes, "I don't suppose I could ever learn to know when you're fooling and when you're not."

"After we're married I shall never attempt to fool you. By the way," he added hastily as she frowned and shrugged her shoulders, "when does the camp close?"

"August twenty, if Mr. Carey doesn't close it sooner."

"The date shall stand without reference to Carey's wishes, intentions or acts. Please write your father to be here on that last day and bring his episcopal robes with him. And by the way, you spoke of your embarrassments about mail. We'll send to the Calderville post-office for all the Heart o' Dreams mail; a boat will deliver it tonight and pick up the camp mail bag. Have you anything to add, Archie?"

"You might say to Isabel," said Archie slowly, "that August twenty strikes me as the happiest possible date for our wedding."

"You two talk of weddings as though we were not in the midst of battle, murder and sudden death!"

She folded her arms and regarded them with an odd little smile, half wistful, half questioning, playing about her lips. The tug was drawing away from the wharf. Perky sat on the rail placidly sucking an orange, a noble picture of an unrepentant sinner. From the woods floated the far, faint cries and light-hearted laughter of the camp youngsters at play. In spite of his attempt to imitate the Governor's jauntiness Archie felt again, as so often since he left Bailey Harbor, the unreality of the events through which he had been projected with his singular companion, who had drawn him so far out of his orbit that it was hard to believe that he would ever slip into it again. Their affairs had never presented so many problems as now, when the Governor was predicting and planning the end with so much assurance. In the few seconds that Ruth deliberated he plunged to the depths in his despair that Isabel would ever seriously consider him as a lover.

"I was just thinking," said the girl, stepping back a little into a path that led from the beach to the woods, "how we seem to be living in the good old times, when knights hastened by land or water to the rescue of ladies in distress. This is all very pretty and be sure we all appreciate what you have done for us. But I don't quite see through to the end!" The smile was gone and there was no doubt of the sincerity of the anxiety that darkened her eyes as she ended with a little, quavering, despairing note: "Something serious and dreadful threatens us, one and all of us maybe! It's only—what do you call such a thing—a presentiment!"

"Please don't think of it!" pleaded Archie; "things are bound to come out all right. You mustn't lose faith in us."

"Yes; it will be only a little longer," muttered the Governor listlessly.

He had responded instantly to Ruth's confession of her premonition of impending evil, and Archie, troubled by his friend's change of mood, hastened to end the interview.

"We're not going to lose!" he declared. "It's when the world is brightest that the shadow of a cloud sometimes makes us fear to trust our happiness. Good-by and good luck!"

She was not reassured, however, and as she shook hands with them there were tears in her eyes.

V

The Governor quickly recovered his spirits and with characteristic enthusiasm began putting the new launch through its paces. Like everything that pleased him, the launch was wonderful. He called upon Archie to bear witness to its unsurpassed merits, and they ran out to the row boat to invite the admiration of Putney and Leary. Putney, they found, was skilled in the handling of such craft, and the Governor cheerfully turned the launch over to him.

"You take it and run up to Calderville, where you'd better get supper. Pick up the Heart o' Dreams mail and bring it back to Huddleston, and meet us on the wharf at nightfall. We've got a heavy night's work ahead of us. Carey's probably jarred a good deal to find that we've got a tug and a launch to play with."

"That's all right, and I'll obey orders, of course," said Congdon, wiping the oil from his hands; "but don't forget that my father's out there on that tug. I don't know what trouble he's in, but I can't forget that he's my father—"

Archie, touched by his display of feeling, turned with a pleading glance to the Governor, but the Governor needed no prompting to be kind.

"My dear boy," he said, "you may rely upon me to extricate your father from his embarrassments. Archie and I are going aboard the tug to study his case carefully. If we don't do anything else this summer we're going to take the kink out of your family affairs."

"There's no reason why you should—" Putney began.

"Reason!" exclaimed the Governor, snapping his fingers contemptuously, "reasons for things are a horrible bore. In this pretty good old world we must apologize for our sins and weaknesses but not for our kind intentions."

As they boarded the Arthur B. Grover Eliphalet made no attempt to speak to Putney though he leaned over the side and shook his umbrella at the launch as it drew away. The Governor told Perky to produce food and invited Eliphalet and the detective to supper. The officer, churlish from his bath in the bay and his enforced appearance in jumper and overalls during the drying of his garments, replied to a polite inquiry that his name was Briggs but that his credentials had been lost in his tumble into the water.

"We shall waive all formalities," said the Governor, "as my guest your official connections, real or fictitious, concern me not at all."

Corned beef, crackers, fruit and coffee composed the supper, and Eliphalet Congdon, Briggs, Archie and the Governor sat cross-legged on the deck and partook of it picnic fashion.

"A truce to our difficulties, gentlemen!" the Governor cried, lifting his tin cup of coffee. "I'm sure there are misunderstandings involving all of us that time will clear up. It's mighty lucky for you, Briggs, that we succeeded in detaching you from that chap who brought