It was no trick at all to claw through the little tunnel and get out on the other side. It was dark out of doors—dark and cold and lonesome. Around at the front of the house I could hear some one stirring—I don’t know whether it was Jiggins or Collins—and that made me pretty careful.
I crept straight back, keeping the house between me and the enemy until I got to some underbrush. I ducked into this and swung around to the direction where the canoe lay. I don’t want you to think it was easy to find that path through the bushes that led to the canoe. It wasn’t. I came very near to getting lost, but I found where the path began at last and hurried down it, taking all the pains I could to be still. I was making good time, though, because I wanted company. I had all I needed of being alone out there in that woods, and you can believe it, too.
Then all of a sudden something seemed to grab my feet. I let out a yell; I couldn’t help it. You’d have yelled, too. As I say, something seemed to grab my feet and knock them out from under me, and I came down with a smash. The paint-pail went end over end, but I hung onto the other things. I was in a regular panic, but for a minnit I was too stunned to get up. Then I heard Mark Tidd’s voice.
“S-s-sorry to give you a tumble,” says he, “but I had to f-find out.”
“Find out what?” I snapped.
“If it would w-work.”
“Did you do that?”
“T-tied a piece of rope across the path. Tied th-th-three others farther along. They work f-f-fine.”
“Oh,” says I, “they work great. They tickle me most to death.”
“If we were ch-ch-chased they’d come in handy,” says he; and just then we heard Tallow holler loud. “Look out!” says he. “They’re comin’. Look out!”
They had heard me fall, I guess, and the yell I couldn’t stop.
“Now see what you did,” I says to Mark, as I groped for the paint. It was his fault, all right; he should have known better; but I expect he got so interested in his experiment he forgot I might make a racket.
“C-can’t be helped now,” says he. “Come careful.”
We ran as fast as we could. Mark knew where the ropes were, and so we got over them safely, and in a couple of jerks of a lamb’s tail we were at the canoe. Mark had it in the water all ready, and we stepped in.
“Shove off,” says Mark.
Just as we left the shore we heard a crash and a lot of yelling back at the beginning of the path. Somebody had hit Mark’s first man-trap.
“L-lucky I thought of that,” says he.
“If you hadn’t thought of it we never would have been discovered,” says I. I was scratched and bumped and felt pretty cross.
“Paddle,” says he.
The stream was narrow there, but deep enough to float a canoe. The current was swift, but it was so dark we couldn’t see much where we were going. About all we had to go by was that the shore looked blacker than where there wasn’t any shore. One good thing was that there weren’t any stones or dead-heads or brush-heaps.
We had to take chances or we would have gone along slow and careful, but luck was with us, I expect, and we didn’t have any serious accident. A couple of times we scraped the shore, and once we grounded going around a curve, but on the whole we felt pretty well satisfied. We had got away.
The worst of it was that Jiggins and Collins knew which way we’d gone, and would be able to find we left in a canoe. If it hadn’t been for Mark’s man-trap they would have had to guess at that, and, as likely as not, would have guessed wrong. Anyhow, we had a start, and it was too dark for them to chase us along the shore. I don’t know what happened to the men in that path, but I expect they had a couple more tumbles before they came out where we had hidden the canoe.
We paddled along till daylight, and then we kept on paddling. We figured we were safe now, because Jiggins and Collins were left three hours behind; and, besides, we didn’t see how they could possibly chase us. There were several things we didn’t know, though. It isn’t safe to figure up the score till the last man’s out, and we crowed too soon. Uncle Hieronymous’s mine was worth too much money for these men to give it up without trying pretty average hard, and I will say for them they did their best.
“All we have to do now,” says Mark, “is to k-keep on down-stream until we f-f-find your uncle and Ole and Jerry. They’re s-s-somewhere along the river, and we can’t miss ’em.”
The Middle Branch, I guess I’ve said before, was nothing but a little stream. Sometimes it was fifteen feet wide, but very seldom any wider, except once in a great while where the current had worn out a pool at a sharp bend—a place like the one where we rescued Mr. Macmillan’s landing-net. There was hardly a place where we could have landed, because the underbrush grew right down to the water’s edge so thick it would have been next to impossible to get through it without cutting a path with a hatchet. Once, after we had been out about an hour, we jammed into a pile of brush and logs that clogged the stream. It didn’t do any harm, but we had to haul the canoe over the top of it. This took us all of twenty minutes. We didn’t think anything of it then, but, if only we had known it, twenty minutes was a lot to waste just then.
Shortly after daylight we came out into the Père Marquette River. That meant the real start of our voyage.
“Aha!” says Mark. “The great river the Indians t-t-told us of. I never thought to l-l-live to see it.”
“What’s that?” says I.
“I’m Father Marquette,” says he.
“Shucks!” says I. “He never got way inland as far as this.”
“You can’t prove it,” says he, “and, anyhow, this is the Mississippi River, hain’t it?”
“To be sure,” says I, “to be sure.”
“It’s been a wonderful trip, hain’t it?” Mark asked. “Canoein’ way down the shore of Lake Michigan from Mackinac? When King Louis hears of what we’ve d-done he’ll be p-pretty tickled, I bet.”
“Let’s see,” says I; “you’re buried down Ludington way somewheres, ain’t you?”
“There’s about a dozen places claims my grave. Er”—he stopped and scowled at me—“I mean will claim it when I’m dead and buried.”
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