Chapter XXVI Pence Defends Kirby
They went over to the other camp immediately after supper. It was still twilight, and the other campers saw them coming in good season. But the only one of Horace Pence’s comrades that got away was Joe Bootleg. He did not linger to meet the fellows from Blackport.
“These are the chaps we can get that shell from, Horace,” Kingdon explained, after the brief introductions. “Fact is, they sort of dare us to get into it and show ’em how much we don’t know about rowing.”
“Perhaps we can surprise them by showing what we do know about it,” laughed Pence.
“No wonder you don’t wear hats over here on Storm Island,” said Yansey. “None made big enough for your heads.”
“Can that fat chap row?” demanded another of the Blackport boys.
“Course I can,” spoke up Pudge resentfully. “I’m not so heavy as I look.” If there was one form of exercise the fat youth did not shy at it was rowing.
“It’s lucky you’re not as heavy as you look to be below the ears,” drawled Yansey. “You’ll make ballast, all right. Five and three are eight, and there’s little nubbin for cox. Didn’t see him at first.”
“I suppose not,” sneered Hicks, who nearly always took offense when his physical proportions came into question. “There’s a whole lot of things you Blackporters have never seen.”
“I suppose we’ll have our eyes opened when you fellows get to rowing,” laughed the skipper of the Nothing To It.
“Quite likely,” Phillips chimed in. “Give us two weeks of good weather and we’ll show you something in the line of rowing that’ll make you blink.”
He said this chaffingly, although he was enthused with the spirit of confidence. Even Midkiff showed interest. Cloudman was the only green hand. He had never given much thought to any sport but baseball.
Before they returned to the cove where the catboats lay, Kingdon said to Horace Pence: “Come on over with me in the Spoondrift to-morrow, and we’ll get the shell.”
“You mean to try it?”
“Try what?” asked Rex.
“To beat those fellows at their own game. All these long-shore chaps can row.”
“It won’t hurt us if they beat us,” Kingdon returned. “It’ll give us something to do for excitement, anyhow.”
“I don’t know that I can get our fellows to agree,” Horace said slowly. It was the first speech Kingdon had ever heard him make that did not reek of self-confidence.
“You’ve got influence enough for that,” Phillips told him. “Get ’em interested, and we’ll keep ’em interested.”
“I’ll try,” Pence promised.
Pence strolled over to the Walcott Hall camp in the morning, soon after breakfast, and signified his readiness to sail for Blackport.
When the Spoondrift was out of the cove and headed down the sound under her engine, the breeze being light, Phillips, the third member of the party, asked:
“All your fellows like the idea of rowing? How about Comas?”
“Didn’t have any trouble with Ben, for a wonder,” Pence answered with a lift of his lip. “Ben kind of likes himself in a boat, anyway. But Harry——”
“That’s Kirby?” Kingdon put in carelessly, as Pence hesitated.
“He’s always been a shark on boating,” the black-eyed chap stated. “I fairly had to tease him to agree to this scheme. I don’t know what’s got into him. Didn’t act like himself at all. Almost as sour as Joe Bootleg.”
Pence said this more as a soliloquy than in open answer to Kingdon’s question. As mentioned before, Horace was no great talker.
When they were moored in the basin off the boat-builder’s yard before noon, Rex and Pence went ashore. The two looked over the Boat Club boys’ abandoned shell, and Kingdon noted with glee that Horace betrayed interest in, as well as familiarity with, shell construction, which seemed to prove that he had not been foolishly boasting about his prowess as an oarsman. The boat was rubbed a good deal, and somewhat battered; but there was nothing serious the matter with her. When she was lifted into the water she didn’t leak enough to keep her “sweet.”
“She’s an all-right shell,” the master boat-builder said. “Only these rich young fellers over to the Boat Club wanted something fancier. Yes, Mr. Yansey was down here this morning, and said I was to let you have her if you showed up.
“By the way,” the man pursued, “you’re the party that’s camping on Storm Island this summer? Well, you’ve got canoes over there, haven’t you? Didn’t two of you come over here t’other day?”
Pence was the one to answer in the affirmative this time, and Kingdon saw that his eyes narrowed and he showed sudden curiosity.
“What of it?” Horace interrogated.
“Nothing,” returned the boat-builder, “only I saw that canoe run down to the channel just before the blow came up, and I was a little worried. They got to the island all safe?”
“Next morning?” Pence said quickly.
“I mean that night. They ran out through the channel about ha’f after five.”
“They made the island all right,” Kingdon coolly interposed, and without looking at Pence. “They landed at Clay Head, and spent the night there.”
Horace was a good actor. He controlled his surprise and postponed his questions. Kingdon spied a light cedar boat with nice lines, and before he got through he had made a bargain with the boat-builder to hire that craft as well.
“We’ve got to have something to try them out in singly,” he explained to Pence. “Canoes are no good for that. Besides, we fellows have felt the need of a tender to the Spoondrift ever since we reached the island.”
When they got under way again the shell was balanced and lashed across the deck of the catboat, while the rowboat bobbed behind, in tow. Red was forward, lying half asleep on the deck, when Horace said in a low tone to Kingdon:
“You knew all the time that Joe and Kirby stayed at Clay Head that night?”
Kingdon nodded. “Thought I saw them making a landing just before sunset. Next morning I went over there and found the place where they spent the night. They must have had a nice dry time of it in that howling rainstorm.”
“I did not know it,” Pence said simply. “I believed what Harry said about their sleeping in the fish shed.”
Kingdon made no rejoinder. After looking at him with apprehensive gaze for a minute, the black-eyed fellow asked: “What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing worth publishing in the newspapers.”
“You’ve got it in your head that they had something to do with shooting that rock down on you fellows?”
“How does it look to you? Somebody had something to do with it, that’s sure. They tried to do it before the rain. I found the lever, and saw an attempt had been made to pry loose the bowlder. That’s why when I thought I saw those two landing at Clay Head just before nightfall, I had the fellows move the tent.”
“Rest of your crowd wise to it, too?” Pence asked.
“Guess not. They think I had a hunch. Call me a wizard.” Kingdon chuckled. “I’m not spilling anything to them about it—yet.”
“Why not?” Horace’s eyes were flashing.
“Because I am not sure who did it—who cut the sapling, dug the hole under the bowlder, and set the other stone there for a fulcrum,” Kingdon told him calmly.
“But you believe it was Joe and Kirby?”
“One of them—or both.”
“Not both.”
“You ought to know about that better than I,” Kingdon returned significantly.
“I can’t be sure about that Indian,” Horace admitted.
“Who ever can be sure about one of those fellows? I have a faint suspicion he’s got it in for me. I punched him hard that first night.”
“But why should Harry take up with him?” Pence’s tone was savage.
“You should know, if Kirby is so thick with the aborigine. Look as though they might be brothers in the same boat, belong to the same lodge, as it were. Kirby may be heap big Injun, too,” Kingdon laughed lightly.
“Oh, he’s an Indian all right,” gloomily agreed Horace Pence, “but not Joe Bootleg’s kind. I never knew Harry to do a really mean thing. He’s too white a fellow, I believe, to lend himself to a job like that.”
Kingdon had it on his tongue to suggest that he did not think Pence the best judge of what was “white” in a chap’s character, but he refrained.
“It seems to me,” he stated, “that whoever tried to roll the bowlder the first time couldn’t make it. One chap wasn’t heavy enough on the end of the lever; but two——”
“I won’t believe it!” cried Horace suddenly. “I’ve known Harry Kirby since he was a little shaver.”
“Keep your opinion of him, then, till you find out you’re wrong,” advised Kingdon. “The truth is bound to come to the surface. You can’t keep a cork under water. Murder will out, and that came near being murder if the rock was actually started by human means. Now, let’s talk about the weather. Do you think it’s going to rain or snow?”
His seriousness tossed aside, Rex was his usual sunny, light-hearted self. But Horace remained grim and thoughtful throughout the return trip.