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Updated: June 15, 2025
"I believe you," answered Dan Baxter. "It is certainly a dandy hiding place." "Those girls can't very well get ashore neither," said Hamp Gouch. "If they tried it they would get into mud up to their waists." "Is this Shaggam Creek the place you spoke about?" asked Lew Flapp. "Yes." "You said there was an old man around here named Jake Shaggam."
"If you'll take us to that houseboat without delay I'll give you another five dollars," put in Dick. "I'll do it. But I don't want them fellers on the houseboat to see me." "Why not?" "Cos Pick Loring and Hamp Gouch thinks I am their friend. Ef they knowed as how I give 'em away they'd plug me full o' lead." "Then the two horse thieves are with Baxter and Flapp," said Songbird.
"We have got to get out of this neighborhood in railroad time or the jig's up," he added. "Well, I'm willing." It did not take long to catch up to the houseboat, which was drifting down the river in the fashion it had pursued before being towed by the Lunch. Flapp and Hamp Gouch were waiting impatiently on the deck. "Got 'em?" asked Lew Flapp.
"I can't get a sound out of them, and the keyhole is stuffed," he said. "We'll break in the door," said the leader of the evil-doers. It took but a minute to execute this threat, for the door was thin and frail. Both gave a hasty look around. "Gone!" "They must have taken the rowboat and rowed away," said Lew Flapp. Both went back to where they had left Pick Loring and Hamp Gouch.
In the meantime Baxter and Flapp were much disturbed by the condition of affairs on board the houseboat. Both Loring and Gouch had been drinking more or less all night and were in far from a sober condition. "I don't mind a drink myself, but those chaps make me sick," growled Dan Baxter. "I guess we made a mistake to take them into our scheme," said Lew Flapp.
"Confound the luck!" came in another voice from the launch. "What's the matter?" asked Paul Livingstone. "Hullo, Mr. Livingstone, is that you?" called out one of the officers of the law on the launch. "It is, Captain Dixon. What's the trouble?" "We are looking for those two horse thieves, Pick Loring and Hamp Gouch. I suppose you know they escaped." "So I heard.
"Take this, please do!" she whispered, and gave him one of the notes, folded in a dollar bill. "Thank you," answered Jake Shaggam. "Say nothing, look at it as soon as you get away," added Dora. The old hermit nodded, and in a few minutes more he followed Gouch to another part of the boat. "Do you think he will deliver that message?" asked Nellie.
"Look how Gouch blabbed to that old man last night." "Where are they now?" "In the captain's stateroom opening a new bottle of liquor. Neither of them can stand up straight." "For two pins I'd pitch them overboard. Where is Sculley?" "He is with them, drinking hard, too." "If we only knew how to run that launch we could leave them behind and sail out of here."
"Pick Loring." "You're a horse thief, it seems." "I don't deny it." "My name is Dan Baxter, and this is my friend, Lew Flapp." "Glad to know you. This is my pard in business, Hamp Gouch. We had to quit in a hurry, but I reckon we fell in the right hands," and Pick Loring closed one eye suggestively and questioningly. "You're safe with us, Loring, if you'll give us a lift."
"Oh, it's all right, you can trust Jake Shaggam," replied Gouch, with a swagger. Liquor had deprived him of all his natural shrewdness. He insisted upon talking about the girls and tried to open the door. Failing in this he took the hermit around to the window. "Nice old chap this is, gals," he said. "Finest old chap in old Kentucky. Think a sight o' him, I do. Shake hands with him."
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