CHAPTER VII

A QUEER CONFERENCE

That Jerry Hopkins, especially, and his two chums, relatively, were disappointed by the verdict of Professor Snodgrass may easily be imagined--and “disappointment” is putting it mildly. True, there had been no real grounds for thinking that the queer, yellow mud was of any value, and yet Jerry had chosen to assume as much. And his half-belief had affected his chums. Now to find out that it was worthless was something of a shock.

“No, I can’t imagine any use for it,” went on Dr. Snodgrass, as he fingered the sticky, yellow lump Jerry had handed to him. “I am familiar with most kinds of clay in this region, and this is not among the valuable sorts. What made you think it was, Jerry?”

“Well, the way those fellows seemed to be taking it out for one thing, and the eagerness with which they are trying to get mother’s land for another.”

“Are you sure they were taking out the clay itself?” asked the scientist.

“They said they were merely excavating ditches to drain the swamp,” spoke Ned.

“Well, I think that is more likely to be right than that they are trying to utilize the clay itself,” went on the professor. “I am sorry, boys, but--Oh, there’s one of those queer green flies I’ve been trying so long to capture. One moment, Mrs. Hopkins. He is on your dress! Please don’t move, and I’ll have him!” and with that, dismissing from his mind, for the moment, all thoughts of the clay the professor “concentrated” on the fly in question.

He stole softly up to the side of Jerry’s mother, and, with a little net, which was never absent from him, Mr. Snodgrass made a neat capture of the buzzing insect.

“Ah, there you are, my beauty!” he exclaimed, as he clapped the fly into a small wire box. It was anything but a beauty, being very large, with a green body, and unpleasantly mottled wings--a vicious-appearing fly. But to the professor it was beautiful from a scientific standpoint.

“A rare insect!” he murmured, holding the wire box up to the light to examine his catch more closely. “A rare find. This has been a lucky day for me.”

“And an unlucky one for us,” remarked Jerry, disconsolately, as he tossed the lump of clay out of the window.

“Maybe someone else could give you another opinion about it, Jerry,” suggested Bob, as the three chums went out. They knew it was of little use to question the professor further. He had given his ultimatum, and, besides, he would be so interested now in his new specimen--preserving it and making notes about it--that he would find time for nothing else.

“No, I’m not going to bother any more about it,” declared Jerry. “The professor evidently knows what he’s talking about. I guess I was on a wrong lead. Those fellows must have been telling the truth, though it didn’t seem so. I was foolish to dream that the clay could be valuable. I guess mother will have to sell the swamp land as a bog tract and nothing else. Come on, let’s go for a spin in the car.”

“Maybe it’ll do him good,” whispered Bob to Ned, while their tall chum was filling the gasoline tank from a supply in the garage. “He sure has got the blues.”

“That’s right,” agreed Ned. “We don’t often see Jerry that way, either. His mother must have lost considerable money, and he depended on the swamp land to make up the shortage. Well, it’s too bad!”

“That’s what it is!”

If Jerry had been absent-minded on the occasion of the ride following the ball game, he was much more so on this occasion. He was so careless in his steering that once he nearly ran into a tree, and another time he came so close to running down an elderly man that Bob and Ned, in the rear seat of the automobile, leaped up in alarm.

“What’s the matter, Jerry?” cried Ned, when the machine was slowed down.

“I don’t know,” confessed the tall lad. “I guess one of you fellows had better take my place. I get to thinking about that yellow clay, and I can’t put my mind on anything else. You’d better steer, Ned.”

“Well, perhaps I had, old man, if we count on getting home safely.”

“But say, you aren’t still thinking that clay is any good; are you?” asked Bob. “Not after what Professor Snodgrass told you?”

“I guess it’s foolish, but I am,” admitted Jerry, as the auto proceeded after the change of seats. “Somehow I can’t help thinking that there’s more in it than appears on the surface.”

“Oh, forget it!” advised Ned.

“Well, I’m going out there to have another look in a day or so,” decided Jerry. “Maybe those fellows will show a bit more of their hands, and I can get a line on what their game is. Yes, I’m going to have another look.”

“Will you have time before your mother makes up her mind to sell?” asked Bob.

“Oh, yes. There’s a new slant to the affair now. It seems those fellows have bought up all the swamp but the tract mother owns. And, if she doesn’t sell, they threaten to shut off her right of way--that is, even if she owns the land she won’t be able to get to it unless she goes up in our airship.”

“Can they do that?” asked Ned.

“It seems they can. No one ever thought much of that swamp land, and deeds and papers regarding it weren’t as carefully drawn as they would have been if the land had been on the main street. So if mother doesn’t sell, her land won’t be worth anything, anyhow.”

“That’s too bad!” sympathized Bob. “Still, it may be for the best after all.”

“I hope so,” murmured Jerry.

In the days that followed the professor’s characterization of the yellow mud as worthless, the boys saw little of him. He was off, presumably searching for the two-tailed lizard, a reptile in which our heroes, for the time being, took little interest.

“The professor sure has found some queer things in his day,” admitted Ned, “but this is the limit! I wonder if he really believes there is such a thing?”

“Well, of course such a thing is possible, as a freak,” spoke Jerry. “I saw a two-headed calf at a fair, once, so a two-tailed lizard wouldn’t be so much out of the way.”

The professor seemed willing to search indefinitely around Cresville for the lizard, or other specimens, though, once or twice, he did ask the boys when they expected to start off on a tour, for no summer went by without seeing them off after some sort of adventures.

“We’ll go next week,” decided Jerry. “By that time this land business will be settled, one way or the other, and I’ll feel easier in my mind. Now let’s go out there, and see what’s up.”

They went up Cabbage Creek to Ryson’s swamp in the motor boat, as on a former occasion, making their way to the land owned by Mrs. Hopkins, wading with their big rubber boots.

“Well, boys, here you are again!” called Fussel, with what he probably meant to be cordiality. “Better make the most of your trips here,” and he laughed.

“How’s that?” asked Jerry, though he guessed at the other’s meaning. Jerry looked around. Considerably more work had been done in excavating, and it did look as though only drainage was the object, for long ditches had been dug, the yellow clay being piled about promiscuously.

“Well, we’re going to close up that right of way, if we don’t get that tract there,” and Fussel motioned to Mrs. Hopkins’s land on which the boys were standing. “Have to use an airship on your next visit, I guess,” and he smiled, showing his big, white teeth.

“That’s what we thought,” spoke Jerry, with a laugh. He was not going to let the foreman gain an advantage on him by being good-natured. Jerry could play that game, too, if it meant anything.

The boys looked about them. There seemed to be more men digging in the swamp than on their former visit. The laborers were delving in the mud and water with their long-handled shovels, taking out the sticky mud and clay. The yellow stuff lay beneath a layer of black peat, and Jerry noticed that the peat was piled on one side of the ditches, while the yellow clay was stacked on the opposite bank.

They made their way to where the motor boat was moored, and, as they reached it, Jerry looked back for a moment in the direction where the men were digging in the swamp. As he did so he uttered an exclamation of surprise.

“What’s up? Another bite?” asked Ned.

“No! But look!” whispered Jerry. “Isn’t that Professor Snodgrass?” and he pointed toward the place of the yellow mud.

“It sure is,” agreed Ned. “He must be looking around here for the two-tailed lizard.”

They saw the little scientist, with his green specimen box and his butterfly net, talking to Fussel.

“Seems like they have met before,” observed Bob, and indeed the boys noted a cordial greeting between the professor and the foreman of the diggers.

“Oh, the professor would make friends with anybody who could tell him where to find a new kind of pink-nosed mosquito,” laughed Jerry. “Shall we wait for him?”

“Better not,” recommended Ned. “Dr. Snodgrass will want to stay here all day, gathering specimens, and if he has a liking for being eaten up by swamp mosquitoes, I haven’t. He wouldn’t want to come with us, anyhow, very likely. Let’s leave him to his own devices.”

“All right,” agreed Jerry, but, as the tall lad set the motor going he looked back at the place whence they had come. He was somewhat surprised to see Professor Snodgrass and Foreman Fussel in apparently earnest conversation. And the subject seemed to be the yellow clay, for the foreman was holding a lump of it out to the scientist.