CHAPTER XII

_A Midnight Alarm_

When the boys were well under way with the business of eating dinner, they again asked Tom to tell them the nature of his "negotiation" with the moonshiner.

"Well, I'll tell you what he said and what he demanded and what answer I made. But you must bear in mind that what he said may not have been true, and what he demanded may not have been what he really wanted. You see, I had 'got the drap' on him and naturally he made his explanations as plausible and his demands as small as he could. I had caught him creeping up with a cocked gun in his hand, evidently to take a shot at some one of you fellows, meaning, when the murder was done, to slip back over the rocks yonder without being seen or recognized by anybody. Thanks to the cat that scratched me, I was here to head him off in that. Then he pretended only to want us to remove our chute. I suppose that was a fetch, just to secure a way of escape from the awkward position in which I and your splendid rifle, Doctor, had placed him. They may have a still down there in the line of the chute, or they may not. But they have a still and perhaps several of them somewhere about here and so they are determined to drive us down the mountain. That, at least, is my reading of the riddle."

"It is pretty certainly correct," said Jack, after thinking for a moment. "At any rate that's the understanding upon which we must base our proceedings. We must not for one moment relax our vigilance; we must not be caught napping; we mustn't let any of those people 'git the drap' on us. They have declared war on us, and we must defend ourselves at every point."

The dinner was eaten in doors by all except Harry Ridsdale, who sat outside acting as a sentinel, and took his dinner on a log. After dinner, and again the next morning, Tom volunteered to act as sentinel, inasmuch as the Doctor would not yet let him chop, or hew ties, or lift logs, or do any other work that might reopen his now nearly healed wounds.

Promptly at five minutes after three o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, the first product of their industry was sent thundering down the chute. It was a huge timber thirty feet long and full two and a half feet thick at its smaller end. Jack had cut it at a point very near the mouth of the chute, and by united efforts, with handspikes and the slope of the hill to assist them, the company had rolled it into place.

Jack took out his watch and observed the time carefully.

"Three o'clock was the time agreed upon with the railroad people for having everything clear down there in the valley," he said, "but according to railroad usage we'll allow five minutes for variation of watches."

When the time was fully up the boys at the forward end of the great timber withdrew the handspikes with which they had been holding it securely in place. At the same time those at the rear end of it gave it a push with their handspikes. The log slid slowly into the chute, then with a grinding noise slipped rapidly through it, gave a great leap, and went careering down the precipitous hill, making a noise as of thunder.

Tom, with the Doctor's rifle over his shoulder--for he was acting as sentinel--had come to observe this splendid beginning of their winter's work. As the great timber bounded down the hill, and an echo of its final fall came back to announce its arrival at its destination, Tom quietly remarked:

"There may have been a distillery in the path of that log yesterday, but I wouldn't give much for the remains of it now."

"No," said Jack, "but there's money in that stick of wood. We must send down as many such as we can, and what remains of the tree from which I cut it will make many railroad ties and a lot of cordwood."

Then Jack examined the chute to see what effect the passage of the great timber had produced upon it. He found that pretty nearly all the bark had been stripped off the poles of which the chute was made. That was an advantage, inasmuch as it rendered the chute smoother for the passage of lighter timbers, which would presently render its surfaces glass-like in their polish. On the other hand the great timber in its passage had done no harm of any kind to the structure.

"That's a tribute, Jack," said Ed, "to your skill and the Doctor's, as engineers. For if that great stick didn't break any of your poles or twist any of the posts on which they rest, nothing else that we shall send down the hill will. I call it good construction, when a chute made of such stuff as you have used, carries such a weight as that without giving way anywhere."

"Yes," answered Jim Chenowith, "and, of course, the strain on the chute will never be so great again, now that the bark has been stripped off its poles. It must have been a tremendous trial when that big log slid down, resting so heavily on the poles as to strip off every particle of bark that it touched!"

"Thanks for your compliments, boys," said Jack, "but now we've got to set ourselves to work. Between now and six o'clock we've got to send down all the ties that we've got ready, and all the cordwood besides. So quit talking and come on."

It was hard work. The railroad ties were so heavy that it required two boys to each to handle them comfortably, and the supply of cordwood was large enough to tax all the industry of the camp to complete the work before six.

In the meantime Tom had gone to the cabin to prepare supper, keeping up his sharp lookout all the while.

After supper had been disposed of, Tom quietly took his own double-barreled shot gun, slipped a charge of buckshot into each of its chambers, belted a loaded cartridge holder round his waist, and went out "just to look around," he said. Tom was so given to this sort of prowling, both by day and by night, that none of the boys attached any importance to his present movements. Had they thought anything at all about it, they would have felt certain that little Tom had gone out only to stroll around the outskirts of the camp, as it was his habit to do.

Instead of that, however, he walked straight to the chute and presently clambered over the edge of the cliff, and by holding to bushes dropped to a ledge below. Thence, he had a very precipitous but practicable path before him for at least half way down the mountain.

Hard working and early rising as the boys were, they enjoyed their evenings in front of the great fireplace in their hut, and usually they did not go to bed till ten o'clock. This gave them three or four hours of enjoyable fireside conversation, and, as they arose sharply at six in the morning during these short days it left them eight hours for sleep, and that is quite enough for any well man, however hard he may have worked in the open air during the day.

But when bedtime came and little Tom did not reappear, they all began to feel uneasiness. Still, it was well understood in the camp that "Little Tom knows how to take care of himself," and so one by one the boys went to bed, all but the sentinel.

About midnight, Jim Chenowith, who had been on guard, came into the hut and aroused his comrades.

"I say, fellows," he said, in a deprecative voice, "I hate to disturb you, but I'm getting uneasy about Tom. It's twelve o'clock now, and he hasn't returned to the camp."

Instantly the entire party sprang out of bed and each began to slip into his clothes.

"We must build a bonfire," said the Doctor, as a first suggestion. "You see, Tom may have lost his way, and it isn't easy to find one's way about in these mountains of a dark night. If we build a bonfire, he will be able to locate the camp. If anything worse has happened to the boy, why we will--"

The Doctor did not complete his sentence, but the other boys understood, and with one voice they answered in boy vernacular: "You bet we will!"