"No use talking," observed the disgusted Toby, "George never will be convinced till he begins to load up the wagon with bags running over with nuts. And even then he'll expect some white-sheeted ghost to step up, and demand that we throw every one of the same back again where we found them. You couldn't convince him of a single thing till he's had a chance to prove it over and over again."
"Learned that in school when I was doin' problems," George declared with one of his most exasperating grins; "which was why I always passed with such a high percentage in arithmetic and algebra. They said I'd make a fine carpenter, because I'd always measure my boards again and again before I cut 'em, and that way there never'd be any mistakes about my sawing."
"And a great carpenter you'd make, George," chuckled Toby; "why, you'd take everlasting and a day just to get your foundation started. The folks would all die off waiting for you to finish your job. A carpenter--whew! excuse me if you please from ever employing a mechanic who spends all his time figgering out how things could be so and so."
"But we must be within a mile or two of the place by now, fellows,"
Elmer told them about that time, "so if you hold up a little we'll soon know the worst or the best. I'm of the opinion myself that what Toby says is going to turn out true; for nobody ever goes near the Cartaret place these days. Lots of boys around home never even heard about it; and others couldn't be coaxed or hired to explore around a place they call haunted."
"Yes, I'm not the only silly believer in ghosts," Chatz told them, looking pleased at what Elmer had just said, "for misery always likes company, and you'll remember, suh, how the sly old fox that had fallen into a well told the goat looking down that it was a lovely place to drop in; and when Billy had taken him at his word he hopped on the goat's back and jumped out. But if I have half a chance I expect to prowl around more or less while we're up heah, and see if the stories I've heard about this queer old rookery could ever have been true. Why, they even say the judge had the house built so that it was like a big prison, or some sort of asylum."
Chatz was full of his subject, and might have wandered on still further, once he got fairly started, only for a sudden movement on the part of Elmer. Sitting alongside the driver it was the easiest thing going for that worthy to seize the reins and with a quick strain on the same bring the mare to a full stop.
"Why, what under the sun!" began the astonished Toby, when Elmer clapped his hand over his mouth and immediately said:
"Hush! be still! Look what's coming out of that side road ahead there!"
and at the same time he pointed with his disengaged hand.
All of the others hastened to do as he requested. There, in plain sight, though their own vehicle was partly hidden by the foliage still clinging to the bushes that jutted out at a bend of the road, was a two-horse wagon, containing four boys, in whom they readily recognized some of the toughest elements around the town of Hickory Ridge.
As the other wagon rattled into the main road, and went speedily on without the occupants once looking toward them, Elmer and his chums exchanged troubled glances.
CHAPTER III
NEAR THE HAUNT OF THE "SPOOKS"
"WE might as well hold up here a little bit, so as to let that crowd pass on," suggested George. "I never did take any stock in Connie Mallon anyway. He's got a pretty bad name down around our way. My father says he'll land in the penitentiary before he's two years older, except he reforms, and I'd never believe he'd change his ways."
"Oh! Elmer, I wonder now, could they know about those splendid nuts, and mean to skin the trees ahead of us?" exclaimed Toby, as though nearly overwhelmed by a staggering thought.
"You've some reason for saying that, Toby?" Elmer told him.
"Why, don't you know, it flashed over me just like a stroke of lightning," was what Toby went on to say, excitedly, a troubled look on his face. "You remember that when I was talking to you over the telephone, Elmer, and telling you about wanting to get the boys to come up here with me Saturday, I said several times somebody was rubbering, and once even told 'em to get off the wire, which they did, only to come on again."
"Yes, I do remember something like that," admitted the other scout.
"Well, our telephone is on a four-party line, and one of the other three houses is Jackson's down the street. Phil Jackson is one of the cronies of Connie Mallon, and he's sitting there in that wagon right now."
"Then you think he must have heard all you were telling me that man said about the immense crop of nuts up here at the Cartaret place, and has put the others wise to it?" Elmer asked.
"I wouldn't put it past Phil a minute!" Toby declared, with an expression of pain, "and now it looks like we mightn't get what we came after, unless we fight for it."
"I knew it!" muttered George; "call me a doubter all you want, but let me tell you things ain't always what they seem. There's a string tied to nearly everything you think you're going to get so easy. Oh! I know what I'm talking about, and for one I'm not surprised at anything happening."
"Don't throw up the sponge so easy, George," Elmer told him. "We may have our troubles, but scouts are supposed to be wide-awake enough to know how to overcome any kind of difficulties that happen along. As Sheridan said at the battle of Cedar Creek, we'll have those camps back, or the nuts in our case, or know the reason why."
"Lithen to that kind of talk, would you?" burst out Ted, brimming over with confidence in their leader; "why, we haven't begun to get buthy yet. That Connie may think he'th tholen a march on our crowd, but thay, he'll have to cut hith eye-teeth before he can beat Elmer here laying planths."
"It may turn out to be a false alarm, after all, boys," Elmer continued, while Toby still restrained the impatient Nancy; "but even if we get there to find that they're on the ground ahead of us, we'll hatch up a scheme to turn the tables on that crowd, I give you my word for it."
"That's the ticket!" Chatz exclaimed, being inclined to display an impetuous style of talk and action, as became his hot Southern blood; "if they've sneaked this idea from Toby by listening over the wire they've got no business up here. I'd call it rank piracy, and treat the lot like I would buccaneers of the Spanish Main. Why, it'd serve 'em right if that ghost they tell about jumped out at them, and sent the lot scampering off like crazy things."
"That's just what I had in my mind, Chatz," said Elmer, chuckling; "and perhaps we'll find some way to coax the spook to help us out."
"Elmer's got the dandy idea, all right," said George; "you leave him alone, and he'll sure bring home the bacon. But how much longer do we have to stay here? I wonder if anybody's getting cold feet about now?"
"Speak for yourself, George!" cried Toby; "I'm for going on three times as much as I was before we saw that bunch cutting in ahead of us. When Elmer gives me the word I'll start things moving."
"You might do that now," said the leader, "but take it slow, Toby. I want to keep an eye on the track of their wheels. If they turn off at any fork in the road, or into the woods, we want to know it."
"Thith theems to be getting mighty interethting," observed Ted; "and I want to thay right now that I've got tho much confidence in Elmer and the whole of our crowd that I'd call the chances five to one we'll go home with a full cargo thith afternoon."
"Good boy, Ted; and I second that motion!" Chatz announced, heatedly.
The mare was allowed her head, but Toby kept a tight rein, so that they did not begin to whirl along with half the speed the other wagon had displayed as it came out of the side road on to the main thoroughfare.
Elmer kept his gaze firmly fixed ahead, where he could plainly see the marks of that other vehicle in the dust of the road. Thus they continued for a short time; then the leader put out his hand, and Toby again pulled in.
"They've left the road, and entered the woods back there twenty feet or so," the acting scout master told them.
"On the left, wasn't it, Elmer, that they turned out?" asked Chatz, eagerly.
"Just what it was, which shows that you were using your eyes, as a scout should always do," came the reply. "Back up, Toby, and we'll follow suit."
"Do you think we're at the place already?" asked Toby.
"I certainly do, though I'm some surprised that they knew where to hit that little grass covered wagon-road that led off among the trees,"
Elmer replied. "It was once used as a way through the forest to the rear of the Cartaret place, so I was told when I asked a man about it who used to work for the judge long ago. They must have been busy doing some of the same kind of missionary work, because I don't believe any of them has ever been up here before--to stop I mean."
"Well, what if we get in where the nut trees are growing to find that lot skinning every tree, and ready to put up a rattling fight before they'll let us have even a look-in; what are we goin' to do about it?"
Toby wanted to know.
"First of all we'll just hang around, and watch them work," Elmer declared.
"That's all very fine, Elmer," interposed George, who was always the first one with any objection; "but once they cover the ground with nuts, we'd find it a hard proposition to chase the bunch away, and lay claim to what they'd gathered."
"But they'd be really _our_ nuts," interrupted Toby, "because didn't the bright idea flash right into this brain of mine; and ain't first discoverers entitled to the land always? It's the rule of the world.
They hooked the idea from me by unfair means, and ain't entitled to any consideration at our hands. If Elmer can manage to scare them away you watch and see how quick I'll start to filling my bag with some of the nuts they've knocked down."
"I only want the chance to do the thame," Ted insinuated.
"Ditto here, because, as we said, they're only a pack of wolves or pirates, and have no rights honest people are bound to respect," Chatz added as his quota to the discussion; "after we've filled all our bags, if there happens to be some more nuts to be had why they're welcome to the same. Gentlemen first, every time, we believe, down our way."
"Pull up, and let's listen, Toby," Elmer counseled; "I thought I heard a shout or two just then; and perhaps they've started to work."
When the mare had been made to stand they could all readily hear the sounds that welled up some little distance ahead. Loud laughter and boyish shouts attested to the fact that a party of nut gatherers must be busily engaged in the grove; for with other sounds could be heard the plain swish of poles beating the branches of the trees in an effort to rattle the nuts down.