CHAPTER VIII

A CRACK SHOT AT THE GAME

WHILE the party were thus engaged in discussing the luncheon, the young Randolph referred to, Jefferson being his Christian name, was busy in another room of the bungalow, cleaning alligator rifles.

Jeff was the sixteen-year-old son of Officer Randolph. Despite his youth, this young man, who was tall, slim, wiry and strong, had already led several successful alligator hunts in the Everglades. He had been engaged, on his father’s recommendation, for this expedition. Officer Randolph, in the meantime, had consented to make his headquarters aboard the “Restless,” which fact permitted both Tom and Joe to get their first taste of alligator sport.

Throughout the luncheon, Oliver Dixon, though he had succeeded in obtaining the chair next to Ida Silsbee’s, remained for the most part silent and distrait, a prey to hatred of the young motor boat captain.

“If a few more things like this adventure happen,” Dixon told himself, “I shall be pretty certain to find Ida slipping away from me altogether. It seems absurd to think of a full-grown young woman like her falling in love with a mere boy. Bah! That really can’t happen, of course. Yet it isn’t wholly unlikely that she’ll become so much interested in Tom Halstead’s kind that my sort of man won’t appeal to her. I must be watchful and keep myself properly in the foreground.”

If young Dixon felt himself much devoted to Ida Silsbee, even he knew that he was much more attracted by the fact that, as money went, Ida Silsbee was a rather important heiress.

One of Dixon’s basic faults was that he hated useful work. He would much rather live on a rich wife’s money.

By the time that the meal was over the fortune-hunter had come to one important conclusion.

“If I want to stand well with Ida,” he told himself, “then I must conceal my feelings well enough to keep on seemingly good terms with this young Halstead cub. I’ve got to treat the boy pleasantly, and make him like me. Otherwise, a girl who places her friendships as impulsively as Ida Silsbee does is likely to conceive an actual dislike for me. That would be a fearful obstacle to my plans!”

So, as all rose from the table at Mrs. Tremaine’s signal, Dixon inquired, pleasantly:

“Going back down the lake for a chance at that pair of ’gators this afternoon, Halstead?”

“I don’t know,” Tom answered. “I’m wholly at Mr. Tremaine’s disposal.”

“Jove! I don’t know that it would be such a bad plan,” mused Henry Tremaine. “What do you say, my dear?”

“Would it be necessary for any of us to leave the boat?” asked Mrs. Tremaine, cautiously.

“Not at all necessary.”

“Is there any danger of the horrid things trying to climb into the boat?”

“I never heard of a ’gator trying to do such a thing.”

“Or would an alligator be at all likely to swim under the boat, then rise, overturning us?”

“I think I can promise you that no self-respecting alligator would think of doing such a thing,” laughed Mr. Tremaine.

“Then I’m ready enough to vote for going,” agreed Mrs. Tremaine.

“Halstead—Dawson—you know what that means,” warned the owner of the place.

“How soon will you start, sir?” inquired Tom.

“We ought to be ready within twenty minutes.”

“Then Joe and I will have the boat ready, sir. Anything we can carry down to the launch?”

“No; we’ll take only rifles and ammunition, which will be all we’ll want. Ham, you’ll watch the house while we’re gone.”

“Yassuh.”

Suddenly the colored steward’s eyes rolled apprehensively.

“But Marse Tremaine, yo’ll sho’ly be back befo’ dahk, sah?”

“Why?”

“Because, sah, Ah don’ wanter be lef yere after dahk, sah. Dat yere Ghost ob Alligator Swamp, sah——”

“Oh, I quite understand, Ham,” laughed Henry Tremaine. “Well, we’ll promise to be back quite a bit before early candle-lighting.”

Soon afterwards the launch party started, young Jeff Randolph going along in charge of “the arsenal,” as he termed the shooting outfit.

Joe, after starting the motor and seeing the boat clear the dock, settled back lazily. Tom was up in the bow, beside the steering wheel. Miss Silsbee found the seat next to him. Mr. Dixon took the seat at her other side, exerting himself to be agreeable both to her and to the young captain.

“Take us right to that same island, Halstead, if you can find it,” requested the owner.

“Do you expect the alligators will have remained there all this time?” questioned Dixon.

“It’s hardly likely,” admitted Tremaine. “Yet, that particular island will be a good starting point from which to look about. Of course, the chances are that we shan’t find the ’gators. Isn’t that right, Randolph?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Jeff, slowly. “The only sure way to get some really good sport will be to leave your house some morning before daylight, go right along the lake and be well into the Everglades by ten o’clock. That would give us about six hours to look for ’gators, and we would be pretty sure to bag one or two in that time. But ’gators know how to be wary, sir, as you know from having hunted them before.”

“Yes,” agreed the host. “I’ve known a party to be out four days before one of the rascals was landed at last. But he was a whopping fellow—almost as big as one of the pair Miss Silsbee and Halstead encountered this morning.”

“Don’t you suppose,” laughed Dixon, turning to the girl, “that your eyes magnified, just a bit, the pair you saw this morning?”

“I know my eyes must have exaggerated,” laughed Ida, “for, at the time, I’d have been willing to depose that neither brute was less than a hundred and fifty feet long, which all the natural history books declare to be impossible.”

“There’s the island, isn’t it, Miss Silsbee!” Captain Halstead asked, after a while.

“Yes,” nodded the girl. “I’m sure it must be. Yes! There’s the identical tree you robbed of the moss that we forgot to bring away with us.”

She laughed heartily, her mirth and the resting of her gaze on Tom making Dixon secretly more furious than ever.

“Let me have the wheel, now,” volunteered Joe, moving into place. “You’ll want your eyes on the lookout for game now.”

“Slow down the speed a whole lot,” directed Halstead. “If we’re going to explore this stretch of water we don’t want to travel too fast.”

“That’s right,” nodded Mr. Tremaine. “And, Dawson, if we sight an alligator, we don’t want more than to creep over the water. ’Gators are wary of fast-moving boats, and they’re easily scared below the surface by voices.”

“I see something,” whispered Ida Silsbee, some ten minutes later, pointing over the water.

A dark object floated on the water, some four hundred yards distant. It was plain, too, that the object was moving.

“’Gator snout,” whispered Tremaine, enthusiastically. “Jove, I didn’t think we’d sight anything out on the lake, like this!”

“Shall I steer for it, sir?” asked Joe, in an undertone.

“Yes, but let the boat just barely crawl.”

Tom Halstead’s eyes were gleaming, now, with the spirit of the chase.

“That’s the snout of a mighty big old rogue of a ’gator,” murmured Mr. Tremaine in Tom’s ear. “It must be one of the pair you and Ida saw this morning.”

“Gun, sir,” murmured Jeff Randolph, passing over a loaded rifle.

“Do you know how to shoot, Halstead?” asked the launch’s owner.

“Do I?” murmured the boy, his eyes gleaming.

“Want a crack at that ’gator?”

“_Don’t_ I?”

“Pass Halstead a rifle,” nodded Mr. Tremaine.

Jeff did so, adding:

“If you never shot a rifle of as heavy calibre as this one, Captain, look out for the recoil.”

Tom Halstead caressed the barrel of the rifle lovingly as Joe Dawson made the boat slowly creep toward that floating head.

“I’m going to try a shot now,” announced Mr. Tremaine. “You be ready, Halstead. If I miss, you fire instantly.”

Bang! A bullet splashed the water just beyond that dark head. Before Tom could fire the snout dropped below the surface.

“Stop the speed. Reverse!” whispered Mr. Tremaine, tensely. “There! Hold her just where she is.”

For some moments the launch drifted without headway, while every pair of eyes watched eagerly for the reappearance of the alligator’s snout.

“There it——” began Oliver Dixon.

Bang! As the alligator’s head showed again, some distance from the spot where it had vanished, Tom Halstead sighted swift as thought, and pressed the trigger.

“Jove! You hit the beast!” cried Mr. Tremaine, excitedly, as a commotion started in the water where the huge reptile floated.

Then, suddenly, the whole length of the body appeared. The ’gator rolled over on its back and lay motionless.

“Great curling smoke! You killed the beast, Halstead!” cried Henry Tremaine, a-quiver with enthusiasm.

There could be no doubt that the creature was lying still on its back.

“I fired for one of the eyes,” admitted the young motor boat skipper.

“You hit the eye, then, and pierced what little brain the beast has,” declared Henry Tremaine. “Run us up alongside, Dawson. Jeff, get out one of the towing lines. Jove! What a fine afternoon’s sport, almost within sight of the bungalow.”

“You shoot as splendidly as you do everything else, Tom!” effused Ida Silsbee.

“I guess it was a fluke shot,” Tom laughed, modestly.

But Oliver Dixon noted the use of his first name by the girl, and Dixon’s heart burned with jealousy.

Joe ran the boat up alongside the motionless, overturned alligator. Mr. Tremaine and Jeff bent far out over the gunwale, deftly, expertly slipped a noose taut over the hard, scaled tail of the dead creature, then made the line fast at the stern of the boat.

“We’ll cruise about a bit longer,” decided Mr. Tremaine. “I don’t believe we’ll get anything more like this, though, out in the open lake. I don’t believe I ever heard of a ’gator being shot out here in the lake before.”

“It happens once in a while,” nodded Jeff, gravely.

They cruised for an hour more, after which Henry Tremaine declared they might as well return.

“We may do bigger shooting in the Everglades, to-morrow,” he suggested. “Still, one big brute like this in a day is sport enough for any crowd.”

“I’m sure it’s one of the beasts that crowded us off the island,” asserted Ida Silsbee.

“It looks very much like the one that charged you,” Tom assented.

“Then you two adventurers told no fibs about the size,” laughed Mr. Tremaine. “That fellow is fully a dozen feet long.”

“What are you going to do with your prize, Captain?” asked Mrs. Tremaine, as Joe drove the launch northward at somewhat diminished speed on account of the tow behind.

“Does the ’gator belong to me?” Halstead asked.

“It certainly does,” nodded Mr. Tremaine.

“Then I offer the hide and the teeth to Mrs. Tremaine and Miss Silsbee,” responded the young motor boat captain.

Both ladies expressed their thanks.

“If I get a second one,” Tom continued, “I shall send the hide to a manufacturer to have a genuine alligator bag or two made for my mother.”

“Take this one,” urged Mrs. Tremaine.

“No; it’s only fair that the first prize should go to the ladies of this party,” argued Halstead.