“TALKING BUSINESS”

Naturally the boys were too much excited over their capture to talk of anything else, and for a time they did not even think or talk of the most important phase of that. They discussed the shooting, which all of them saw to be reason enough for the arrest, but it was not until well on into the night that any of them thought to ask Phil about the results of his search of Jim’s satchel.

Meantime they had carried the pinioned man below and securely bound him to his bunk. Then they had cooked and eaten their supper, talking all the time, each playfully describing his own consternation at every step of the late proceeding. Finally Will Moreraud said:—

“By the way, what does it all mean?”

“Yes,” joined in Irv Strong, “it at last begins to dawn upon my hitherto excited consciousness, that we have not yet heard the results of Phil’s explorations among Jim’s effects. Tell us all about it, Phil.”

They were sitting in the cabin, or half way in it. That is to say, Phil was sitting in the mouth of the scuttle above, watching the river and the course of the flatboat; Irv sat just below him on the steps, and the other boys were gathered around the little table at the foot of the ladder.

“One of you come up here, then,” said Phil, “and keep the lookout while I tell you about it. I thought you’d ask after you got through relating your personal experiences.”

Ed volunteered to take the place at the top of the stairs, although his frail nerves were now quivering after the strain he had been through. Phil seized the carpet-bag which he had instinctively kept under his hand all the time, and descended the ladder.

There he opened it and spread its contents on the table.

“These are what I have found,” he said, suppressing his excitement. “This big bundle of government bonds,” laying it on the table; “this big bundle of railroad and other securities,” laying that down in its turn; “this great wad of greenbacks, and, best of all, these!”

As he finished, he held up a bundle of letters.

“What are they? Why are they the best part of all?” queried the boys in a breath.

“They are letters from Jim Hughes’s fellow criminals. I called them ‘best of all’ because they will enable the authorities to catch and convict the whole gang!”

The exultation of the crew was great.

“We shall have rendered a great service to the public, shan’t we?” asked Constant.

“A very great service, indeed. And that’s what we must rejoice in,” answered Ed. “But we mustn’t fail to render it. We mustn’t let the thief slip his bonds and escape.”

Hughes was lying there in his bunk all the while, but they paid no attention to him. They had ceased to think of him as a man. To them he was only a criminal, just as he might have been an alligator or a rattlesnake.

“Oh, we’ll take good care of that,” responded Phil. “From this moment till we deliver him to the officers of the law, we’ll keep one fellow always right here on guard over him. It will mean double duty for some of you to-night, for I’m going ashore presently.”

“Going ashore! What for, and where?” was eagerly asked.

“There’s a little town down here somewhere, as I see by the map, and when we get to it I’m going ashore to send telegrams. You see, Hughes’s ‘pals’ might have somebody at Memphis armed with a habeas corpus or something of that sort, and take him away from us. I’ve a mind to deliver the fugitive myself. So I propose to have officers to meet us with warrants and things when we reach Memphis.”

“Good idea,” said Irv.

“And there’s the town just a little way ahead,” called out Ed, from the top of the ladder.

Phil went at once on deck, leaped into the skiff and rowed rapidly ahead of the slowly floating flatboat, or as rapidly as the drift would let him. When he reached the village he found to his disappointment that there was no telegraph office there. But he learned that there was one at the hydrographic engineer’s station a few miles below, on the opposite side of the river.

By this time the flatboat had passed him, and he had a long “stern chase” through the darkness and drift before he could overtake and board her again.

Then, assigning Ed to guard their prisoner in the cabin, he called the other boys to the sweeps.

“The river is very wide here,” he explained, “and the telegraph station is on the other side. We must take the boat well over there.”

The boys pulled with a will, and long before the station came in view the flatboat was close in shore on the farther side of the river.

Meantime, or a little later, something happened in the cabin. Ed was reading a book, when suddenly the prisoner called out:—

“Ed.”

“Yes?” said the boy, laying down his book.

“I’m awfully tired, lying in one position. Can’t you turn me over a bit?”

Ed went at once to his relief. His torture was no part of the purpose of anybody on board. But after Ed had readjusted the ropes so that the fellow could rest more comfortably, the prisoner said:—

“See here, Ed, I want to talk to you. You fellows have made a tremendous strike, for of course there’s no use in disguising the truth any longer, to you at least, or pretending to be what I have tried to appear. You’ve got your man and you’ve got the proofs dead to rights. You’ve found me with the swag in my possession. If you turn me over to the law, I’ll go up for ten or twenty years to a certainty. There is no use in defending myself. The case is too clear, too complete. Do you see?”

“Certainly” responded Ed. “You must pay the penalty of your crime. We have no personal hard feeling against you, Jim, except that you ought not to have tried to involve us boys as you have done, and—”

“Well, you see, Ed,” interrupted the bound man, “I was desperate. There was a big price on my head, and hundreds of men were looking for me everywhere. On the one hand, a prison stared me in the face, on the other was freedom with abundant wealth to enjoy it with. If I could get down the river, I thought I should have everything snug and right. I didn’t mean to get you boys into any trouble—really and truly I didn’t, Ed. My plan was to blunder into that chute, and while you fellows were all scared half to death about it, to slip ashore. I had those men on the bank just for safety’s sake. They don’t really know anything about me or what I’ve got—what I did have,” he corrected, with sudden recollection that his carpet-bag was no longer in his possession.

“Those men were hired by my partners to have horses there and run me off into Mississippi, and I was to give them a hundred or two for the job, besides paying for the horses we might ride to death. Really and truly, Ed, that’s all there was of that.”

“I see no particular reason to doubt your statement, Jim,” replied the boy. “But what of it?”

“Well, you see, I want to talk business with you, Ed, and I wanted you to know, in the first place, that I hadn’t tried to harm you boys in any way—at least, till I was caught in a trap by that sharp brother of yours.” There was a distinct touch of malignity in the man’s tone as he mentioned Phil, to whom he justly attributed his capture.

“Never mind that,” he resumed after a moment. “I want to talk business with you, as I said. Here are you five boys, all alone on the river. Anything might happen to a flatboat. You’re likely to make, as nearly as I can figure it out from your talk, about fifty or a hundred or at most a hundred and fifty dollars apiece out of the trip, after paying steamboat passage back. Now you’ve caught me. If you surrender me—”

“Which of course we shall,” broke in Ed, in astonishment.

“As I was saying” continued Jim, “if you surrender me, you’ll probably get the reward offered, though that’s never quite certain.”

“What possible difference can that make?” asked Ed, indignantly. “You’re a thief. We have caught you with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of other people’s property in your possession. We have only one thing to do. We must deliver you to the officers of the law. We should do that if not a cent of reward was offered. We should do it simply because we’re ordinarily honest persons who think that thieves ought to be punished and that stolen property ought to be returned to its owners. What has the reward to do with it?”

“I’m glad you look at it in that way,” said the prisoner. “At most the reward is a trifle, as you say. Five thousand dollars to five of you means only a thousand dollars apiece. Now I’ve a business proposition to make. Suppose you let me slip ashore somewhere down here, I’ll leave behind me—I’ll put into your hands all the coupon bonds. They’re better than cash—they are good for their face and a good deal more anywhere. You boys can sink the old flatboat down the river somewhere, sell out the bonds to any banker, and go ashore rich—worth more than anybody in Vevay’s got, or ever will have.”

The man spoke eagerly, but not excitedly, and he watched closely to see the effect of his words.

Ed preserved his self-control. Indeed, it was his habit always to grow cool, or at least to seem so, in precise proportion to the occasion for growing hot. He waited awhile before he spoke. Then he said:—

“Jim Hughes,—or whatever your name is—well, I’ll simply call you Thief, for that name belongs to you even if nothing else that you possess does,—you thief, if you had made such a proposition as that to my father, he would have—well, he was said to be hot-headed. I’m not hot-headed—”

“No. You’re reasonable. You’re—”

“Stop!” shouted Ed. “If you weren’t tied up there and helpless, you’d make me hot-headed, too, like my father, and I’d do to you what he would have done. As it is, I’m cool-headed. I’ll ‘talk business’ with you; and the business I have to talk is just this: I forbid you from this moment to open your mouth again, except to ask for water, while you are on this flatboat. If you say one other word to me or to any of my companions I’ll forget that I am not my hot-headed father, and—well, it will be very greatly the worst for you. Now not a word!” seeing that the fellow was about to speak. “Not a word, except the word ‘water,’ till my brother turns you over to the officers of the law. I’m not captain, but this particular order of mine ‘goes.’ I’m going to ask my brother to pass it on to the others, and it will be enforced, be very sure. They are not cool-headed as I am, particularly Phil. He’s like my father sometimes. Remember, you are not to speak any word except ‘water’ till you pass from our custody.”

The high-strung boy tried to control himself, but he was livid with rage. He choked and gasped for breath as he spoke. Weak as he was physically, he would certainly have assaulted the man who had deliberately proposed to make him a partner in crime, but for the fact that the fellow was bound, hand and foot, and therefore helpless. In his rage Ed ran up the ladder and called for his brother, meaning to ask that the man be released from his bonds in order that he, Ed Lowry, might wreck vengeance upon him for the insult.

Phil had gone ashore to send his telegrams. Irv Strong had been left in command of the boat. He asked Ed what was the matter. Ed, still choking with rage, explained as well as he could, growing more excited every moment, and ended by demanding:—

“Let the scoundrel loose! cut the ropes that bind him, and give me a chance at him!”

“Hold on, Ed,” said Irv. “The wise Benjamin Franklin once said: ‘No gentleman will insult one; no other can.’ This thief, burglar, bank robber, that we’ve got tied in a bunk down there, can’t insult you. He doesn’t know our kind. He isn’t in our class. It never occurs to his mind that anybody is really honest. It seems to him a question of price, and he thinks he has offered you mighty good terms. If any man who understood common honesty and believed in its existence had made such a proposition to you, your wrath would be righteous. As it is, your wrath is merely ridiculous. Of course a trapped bank burglar tries to buy his way out with his swag. Of course such a creature doesn’t know what honest people think or feel—he has no capacity to understand it any more than he could understand Russian. Go below, Constant, and watch that thief. Ed, you must recover yourself. Phil will come aboard presently, and I really don’t suppose you want to tell Phil precisely what has happened and leave him to—well, let us say to discipline Jim Hughes.”

“No, no; oh, no!” said Ed, suddenly realizing what that would mean. “Phil would—oh, I don’t know what he wouldn’t do. For conscience’ sake don’t tell him what happened!”

“Suppose you go forward then,” suggested Irv, “and sit down on the anchor and cool off, and so far recover yourself that Phil won’t notice anything or ask any questions when he comes aboard.”

The suggestion was very quietly given, quite as if the whole matter had been one of no consequence. But it was instantly effective. Irv well knew that Ed’s greatest dread was that Phil’s fiery temper might get the better of him sometime. So Irv had shrewdly appealed to that fear.

“I will; I’ll cool down at once,” said Ed, rising in his earnestness. “Nobody knows what Phil would do or wouldn’t do if he knew of this. Irv, you must prevent that. Make all the boys pledge themselves not to let him know, at least till Hughes is out of our hands.”

Irv was glad enough to make the promise and to fulfil it. For he, too, knew with what reckless fervor the high-mettled boy would be sure to inflict punishment for the insult should he learn of it.

“Phil is the jolliest, best-natured fellow in the world,” explained Irv, when he asked the other boys not to tell their captain what had happened, “but you know what a temper he has—or rather you don’t know. None of us does, because nobody has ever made the mistake of stirring him up with a real, vital insult.”

“No,” said Will, “and I pity the fellow that ever makes that particular mistake.”

“We’ll never tell him,” said Constant. “If we did, we mightn’t be able to deliver our prisoner.”