CHAPTER VIII

SELLING THE LAND

Though Jerry thought it rather strange that the professor and the foreman should be in such close conference, and, though he wondered very much what it could be about, his cogitations did not “get anywhere.”

That is, he could formulate no theory that made matters plain to him. He had an idea, once or twice, of speaking of the matter to his chums, but he did not know exactly how to go about it.

Then, too, both Bob and Ned seemed so sure that the professor had come to the swamp, as he went to other queer places, merely to collect bugs, that it would be hard to make them believe otherwise. Not that Jerry himself was sure of anything else, but he was somewhat given to fancies, and he had some queer ideas in his head just then.

He said nothing, however, and the motor boat chugged her way out of the tortuous channel into the creek, thence to the river, and so to her dock.

“Well, I sure am glad to get out of that place,” observed Ned, looking at several large and rapidly-swelling mosquito bites on his hands. “If we’d stayed there much longer they’d have eaten us alive.”

“Speaking of eating----” began Bob, with a hopeful expression on his face.

“Let’s go and have some pie!” mocked Ned. “Go to it, old man! I’m with you. That swamp air seemed to give me an appetite.”

“All right,” agreed Jerry. “But if you fellows want to eat, why not go down the river a ways, and have some good grub at Fletcher’s?”

“Go ahead,” exclaimed Ned. “Then we won’t have to go home to dinner.”

“I’m with you!” cried Bob. He generally was when the “eats” were concerned.

The boat, which had approached the dock, was turned out into the river again by Jerry. Then over the water floated a plaintive voice, calling:

“I say, fellows! Hold on! Come back! It’s fearful hot! I want a ride--come and get me--I’ll stand treat--ice cream--lollypops--lemonade--come on back and take me!”

“It’s Andy Rush!” observed Jerry, not looking around. He knew the voice well enough.

“Yes, and he’s hopping up and down on the dock,” said Bob.

“Let him hop,” went on Jerry. “He’ll give us all the fidgets on a hot day like this. Let him hop.”

And let him hop they did, much to the disgust of small Andy Rush, who ran back and forth, begging and pleading to be taken for a ride in the motor boat. But our friends had other plans.

They very much enjoyed their dinner at the river-house pavilion, but, through it all, Jerry could not forget the sight of the professor and the foreman talking about the clay.

“But I guess the plaster company--whatever sort of a concern it is--thinks it can make use of the mud as a sort of by-product,” mused Jerry. “Probably there’s so much of it they don’t want to cart it away unless they can find a use for it. Well, I wish, for mother’s sake, it had some value; but if it hasn’t--it hasn’t--that’s all.”

“Well, we’d better begin to think of where we’re going for our vacation,” remarked Ned, a little later, shoving back his chair, for the meal was finished.

“That’s right,” agreed Bob. “I hope if we go anywhere we have as----”

“Good grub as this--isn’t that what you were going to say, Chunky?” finished Jerry, with a laugh.

“Well, what if it is?” asked the stout lad. “I guess you fellows are as fond of eating as I am, when it comes to that.”

“Sure we are, Bob,” spoke Ned. “Now let’s talk of where we can go.”

“Maybe we’d better wait and see where the professor thinks is the most likely place to find the two-tailed lizard,” suggested Jerry. “It doesn’t make much difference to us where we go, and it does to him.”

“That’s right,” chimed in Ned. “We’ll have a talk with him.”

But it was some time before the boys had a chance to carry out their plans, and talk with the professor, for, from the moment they had seen him in consultation with the foreman in the swamp, there set in such a chain of old happenings as the boys had never known. And these took the professor out of communication for a considerable period.

“I can’t see what keeps Dr. Snodgrass,” said Mrs. Hopkins to Jerry, some hours after her son, and the other boys, had returned from the river. “He never stayed out as late as this before.”

“Not unless he was after specimens that fly after dark,” agreed Jerry.

The scientist had not been home all that afternoon. Jerry told of having seen him in the swamp, though they did not stop to speak to him. Now it was after supper, and dark, and he had not returned to the Hopkins home, where he was a guest.

“I wonder if I’d better get the boys and go out after him?” mused Jerry. “That swamp is a bad place to be lost in.”

“Oh, I don’t like to think of you going out there at night, Jerry,” objected his mother. “Though of course, if anything were to happen to the professor, it would be----”

“Here he comes now!” interrupted Jerry, with a note of relief in his voice. Steps were heard on the front steps, but they did not prove to be those of the little scientist. Instead they were those of a messenger with a note.

“It’s from the professor!” exclaimed Mrs. Hopkins, as she read it.

“What does he say?” asked Jerry, quickly.

“Why, he isn’t coming home to-night,” answered the widow, some surprise manifest in her voice. “He is on the track of some insect--he gives the Latin name of it, but I can’t pronounce it. He’s too far away from Cresville to get back until late, and he doesn’t want to put us out. He will stay at a hotel all night, and come here to-morrow or next day.”

“Well, he’s considerate, at all events,” yawned Jerry. “Now that I don’t have to worry over him I think I’ll go to bed.”

It was not unusual for the scientist to remain away several nights when he was on the trail of some rare specimen, and Mrs. Hopkins and her son were not alarmed, now that they had received word from him.

“Where did he send that from?” asked Jerry, wondering how long the professor had remained in the swamp.

“It’s from the hotel at Bellport,” replied his mother. “He telegraphed here from there.”

“He must have had a ride in someone’s auto then,” commented the tall lad, “for he never could have walked to Bellport from the swamp. That’s what happened--he got a ride on the road.”

“All his things are here,” said the widow.

“He’s got his net and a specimen box,” commented Jerry. “They’re all the baggage he needs.”

The professor did not come back the next day, or the next. Instead came another note saying he might remain away a week, for he had not yet obtained the specimen he was after.

There was nothing strange in this, for he had done the same thing before.

“But if he wants to go with us on a trip he’d better come back pretty soon,” said Bob, one day when he and Ned were calling on Jerry.

“Oh, he’ll be back soon now,” declared the tall lad.

Meanwhile the matter of Mrs. Hopkins’s land came to an issue. The Universal Plaster Company served formal notice on her that if she did not agree to their terms they would drop all negotiations, and her land would be of little value, since there would be no right of way to reach it. Then, too, their lawyer pointed out, Mrs. Hopkins did not have the best title in the world. It was threatened that her claim could not be substantiated in the highest court, and suit was threatened if she did not agree to sell without litigation.

“Why, they’re practically forcing you to sell that land, Mother!” cried Jerry.

“I know it, my boy,” answered the widow. “But what can I do? I really need the money from it, though it isn’t so much. I need it at this time especially, for some of my securities are so depreciated that it would be folly to sell them. Later on they may increase in value. Meanwhile the money from the land will tide us over.”

“But, Mother, I have some money from the mine.”

“No, no, Jerry!” she exclaimed, with a gentle smile. “I am not so poor as all that. You keep your little fortune. I dare say my affairs will come out all right after all. I shall sell the swamp land, even though the company is practically, as you say, forcing me to do by threats.”

“If only that yellow clay was of some value,” observed Jerry. “But the professor said it was not.” So the swamp land was sold, and Professor Snodgrass did not appear.