CHAPTER VI

A Wildcat Attacks

"quicksand!" Frank yelled, and Cap echoed the dire word.

Dropping a panful of steaming beans unheeded into the fire, Frank flipped a coil of rope off his saddle, and he and Cap raced in the direction from which Joe's shouts were coming.

"Over this way!" Frank directed with a yell as he caught sight of his brother beyond a cluster of low bushes. "But be careful where you step!"

Cap took one look and called advice to Joe, who had been sucked in up to his thighs and was sinking rapidly.

"Hold still! Stop trying to kick loose!" the coach shouted. "You're only digging yourself in deeper!"

By this time Frank had found the edge of the mire, and braced himself on the nearest bit of solid ground. With a quick heave, he sent one end of the

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44 The Secret of Wildcat Swamp

rope looping toward his brother. Joe made a frantic grab for it.

"Wrap it around yourself and hang on!" Cap commanded. "We'll pull you out."

Together, he and Frank began hauling on the sturdy hemp. Stiffening his body, Joe was slowly dragged up and out of the sucking, oozing sand, and at last lay panting on the hard, firm ground at their feet.

"Whew!" he whispered as the strength began to return to his legs. "That was close. I couldn't do a thing to help myself."

Frank and Cap sat down beside Joe until he had recovered sufficiently to walk back to camp. Still shaken by the experience, they had little appetite for supper. Their campfire was only a bed of coals when they returned.

"Before it gets too dark, we'd better check over our equipment and get the horses hobbled for the night," Cap spoke up finally. "The bedrolls are laid out, but I didn't do anything else."

Frank volunteered to lead the animals to the edge of the stream which had been their guide all day, and he let them drink all they wanted. Then, after tethering them, he stepped back into the little circle of light made by their rekindled campfire.

"All set for the night," he announced. "Hope it doesn't rain."

"Not much chance," Cap predicted. "Look at

A Wildcat Attacks 45

those stars. You certainly don't see them that bright back in the city, do you?"

"Almost bright enough to travel by," Frank remarked. "But say, what's that other light off there to the left?"

All three stood up and studied the distant glow. As they watched, it flickered, and seemed to move from place to place.

"It must be a fire of some kind," Frank decided. "Someone else is camping out here-maybe Flint and Turk."

"I doubt it," Cap disagreed. "The way the fire moves, or seems to, I'm more inclined to think it's a swampfire than a campfire. A campfire, from this distance, would give a pretty steady light. A swamp-fire is bright in one spot for a minute, then flares up in another."

Joe, impulsive as ever, immediately forgot his misadventure of the early evening. "Let's ride over," he proposed.

It was the work of only a few moments to bank their own fire against spreading, and throw saddles on the horses.

Keeping well apart and permitting their mounts to pick their own way in the darkness, the trio moved toward the strange light.

"It's a swampfire, all right," said Joe. "But- look!"

He was first to notice the figures of several men

46 The Secret of Wildcat Swamp

crouched around one small blaze. "That's a camp-fire!" he whispered to his companions. "There must be half a dozen men there. And horses, too."

His own mount had discovered the presence of other horses, and now let out a loud whinny. Immediately excitement broke out around the camp-fire. The men scrambled to their feet, ran to their horses, mounted them, and rode away. It all happened within the space of a moment's time.

The Hardys would have followed them, but Cap forbade this because of their unfamiliarity with the territory. They did inspect the camp, however, but found no clues other than the hoofprints.

"Did you notice that one of the riders went off alone?" Joe asked the others. "I wonder why. The rest of them beat it in the other direction."

"Here are the marks of his horse," Frank said, turning his powerful flashlight on the ground. "Small hoofprints, too, as if it were only a pony, and probably carrying a very light rider."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Joe interrupted him. "Willie the Penman?"

"Could be," was Frank's terse answer. "And say, the prints lead in the direction of Wildcat Swamp!"

"You're right!"

"We can't be too careful the rest of our trip," Cap warned as they made their way back to their own camp site. Nothing had been disturbed, and although each was curious about the mysterious

A Wildcat Attacks 47

riders, his curiosity did not prevent him from dropping off to sleep.

Joe was first awake next morning, and whipped up a solid breakfast before rousing the others. They paid another brief visit to the mystery camp before setting out for Wildcat Swamp but gleaned no further information than they had in the darkness of the previous evening.

"It won't be long before we ought to start looking for that big tree mentioned on the map," Cap spoke up. Since early morning the three travelers had come quite a distance from the camp on the plain.

They were in hill country now. The trail wound up and down through rugged terrain with patches of woodland becoming more frequent. They rode along the rim of one small canyon and through the dry bed of another. After considerable time had gone by, Cap said:

"I certainly expected to see that big tree by this time. If Uncle Alex was right, we should be in plain sight of it, and there's nothing here but this scrubby pine."

"There's no sign of a big tree but that old stump over there a short distance from the edge of the ravine," Frank said, pointing. "Looks as if it had been a whopper, too."

Joe jumped off his horse to examine it, while Frank and Cap checked the map.

48 The Secret of Wildcat Swamp

"Maybe we haven't gone far enough," the science teacher said. "Once we get out of this sandstone area, there ought to be quite a stand of tall yellow pine."

They were interrupted by a shout from Joe. "Come here! This isn't an old stump. It's new. The tree has just recently been cut down!"

When the others reached him, Joe was scraping away at the top of the stump.

"Look, this has been covered with mud to make it look like an old cut," he exclaimed, and clawed a handful of dirt away to reveal comparatively clean, new wood underneath.

"But where's the tree?" Cap demanded.

Frank looked over the edge of the ravine. "Down there," he announced.

The others stood on the rim and stared into the canyon. There lay the big pine, its larger branches sheared off, and thrown in beside it.

"Someone must have wanted to remove this tree mighty bad," Cap at last broke the silence. "What a job it must have been to roll it over the cliff."

"Do you think it was done to destroy our landmark and cause us delay in finding the swamp?" Joe asked.

"It looks like it," Cap agreed. "The tree certainly was cut down within the last couple of days, maybe only yesterday."

"By the men we saw at the campfire last night, I'll bet," Frank conjectured.

A Wildcat Attacks 49

"How about the map that was stolen from you back in Bayport-the unfinished copy? Had you put the tree on that?"

"Yes. That was one of the details I had drawn on it."

Frank stared at the teacher. "Then I'm sure, Cap, it was an attempt to remove something we've been counting on to help us find Wildcat Swamp."

"We may as well go on that assumption," he agreed.

So the trio pushed on, stopping only a short time to rest their horses and eat a quickly prepared lunch.

As they rode through the heat of the afternoon, Cap asked the boys if they had noticed the formations that looked like giant toadstools made of clay and sandstone.

"Yes," Frank answered. "I was wondering what keeps them from crumbling down. It's the column underneath that seems to be made of clay, with the big mass of sandstone up on top."

"It's the overhang which prevents the clay from eroding," the teacher told him. "Back in the glacier age, they were separate deposits, and all the clay except that protected by the sandstone has eroded."

Joe was impressed by the colors of the huge sandstone tops. "Cream, buff, gray-I even saw a couple that looked light green," he remarked.

"As we push deeper into rougher country, you'll see a lot more of the various layers that have covered this section," Cap commented.

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Rougher country was not long in coming. The riders wove in and out of the rocky ridges, their respect for their sure-footed horses increasing as they proceeded.

Frank was in the lead, with Cap next and Joe bringing up the rear with the mule. The cavalcade skirted the edge of a deep ravine, the trail following a bench that dipped gradually toward the stream below and ending in a narrow grassy shelf. Suddenly Frank called out that he could see another giant stump at the edge of the shelf.

Permitting the horses to graze on the scanty grass, they went to examine the stump. Frank was about to remark that this was an old cut, when Joe's voice rang out in alarm.

"Frank! Lookout!"

But his warning was too late. Before Frank could even get his arms up to defend himself, a tawny streak of fur and muscle launched itself through the air from the rocky overhang above.

It was an enormous wildcat!