Afloat on the Flood | Page 9

little lunch by the wayside, was left in suspense.
"What's this farmer's name?" asked Toby.
"Trotter," replied Elmer. "You know Johnny Spreen is really a bound boy, and he has to work for the farmer until he gets a certain age, when he is supposed to be given a sum of money, and be his own boss. That's the law."
"Well, all I hope is that we pick up some decent clue around here," said Lil Artha; "Yes, and a bully supper in the bargain, that'll fill a horrible vacuum, and put us all in fighting condition."
Their arrival created something of a sensation. Dogs began to bark, roosters to crow, cows to moo, and even a donkey started to bray in a fearful fashion. Immediately Johnny Spreen, the boy who trapped muskrats in the winter, came running out from the big barn where he was probably milking some of the cows, for he held a three-legged stool in one hand as though it might be a weapon of defense.
The farmer, a long, lanky individual with a keen face, also bobbed in sight, holding a currycomb; while at the kitchen door could be seen the buxom figure of his wife, evidently bound to learn what was happening even if her dinner did burn in consequence.
Three tow-headed, wild-eyed little Trotters, who had been playing at teeter with a plank laid over a carpenter's "horse" for a seesaw, ranged themselves all in a row, and gaped their fill at the strange spectacle of a wagonload of boys all dressed pretty much alike.
"Are you Mr. Trotter?" asked Elmer, as he jumped down, and the other came forward toward him.
"That's my name, son; what fetches the hull lot of you up this way? Ameanin' to camp on the lake-shore, it might be? I've heard about the scouts daown at Hickory Ridge; Johnny yonder's been apinin' to jine 'em this long time back, but, of course, it ain't to be thunk of, with him so far away."
"Yes, we are the members of the Wolf Patrol, Mr. Trotter," said Elmer, who wanted to make a good friend of the farmer in the start. "I'm Elmer Chenowith; perhaps you know my father, or some of the other fellows' parents."
He thereupon introduced each one of the boys by name, and even mentioned the fact that the father of this one or that occupied a prominent place in the business or professional world of Hickory Ridge town.
"We haven't exactly come up here to camp out this trip, Mr. Trotter," continued the patrol leader, after bowing to the farmer's wife who had first darted indoors to see that her supper was not burning, and then hurried to join them.
Elmer knew that the truth might just as well come out in the beginning as later. On this account he did not intend to hold anything back, but be perfectly frank with the owner of the lake farm.
"What might be your object then, son?" asked the tiller of the soil, possibly feeling a bit of natural curiosity in the matter.
"Ask him first of all, won't you Elmer," pleaded Lil Artha, as though he feared lest this important matter be lost sight of in the confusion of affairs; "whether he c'n spare us some eggs, and a few broilers to take into the old swamp with us?"
"I guess ma c'n let you have what you want along them lines," replied Mr. Trotter, "though seems like somebody's been amakin' free with her layin' hens lately. They keep disappearin' right along. Sometimes I think it's a mink that's gettin' 'em, but they ain't any signs of sech a critter around; 'cause you know a mink'll kill as many as a dozen fowls in one night, and jest suck their blood."
Elmer exchanged suggestive looks with his mates.
"From what you say, sir," he remarked quickly, "your fowls are carried off bodily. Is that it?"
"They jest keep on gettin' less an' less right along," the farmer admitted. "Me and Johnny here was thinkin' o' settin' up with guns to see if we could get a crack at the chicken thief, whether he was a mink, a badger, or a two-legged raskil."
"That's what we was meanin' to do," agreed the said Johnny, glad to have his name mentioned in the matter at all.
"Well, we've got a hunch, Mr. Trotter," said Lil Artha, bound to get his say in the affair, "that we might put you wise about that same thief."
"I'd shore be glad to hear it," declared the farmer; "Johnny here has been asayin' as heow he b'lieves thar's a feller ahidin' out in the swamp, 'cause he seen his tracks. I even reckoned on sendin' for a neighbor o' mine, Bay Stanhope, that's got some hounds used to follerin' people, an' see if we could run him daown."
"Well, Mr. Trotter, that is