The Boy Scouts of the Air at Cape Peril/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
THE HAUNTS OF BUFFALO DARE
When the pilot had safely landed at Dareville, inquiry brought out the news that Smith had gone to Manteo, a settlement two miles away. It was getting to be a needle hunt in a haystack and, with the wind rising every moment, Hardy was growing desperate. He felt very much as an angry porcupine looks, and expressed himself accordingly to a group of villagers. The offer of an obliging citizen to go post-haste in his auto for the elusive Smith was eagerly accepted.
"If this ain't the dickens!" exploded Hardy to Legs. "If I ever get my hands on that son of a gun, fat chance he'll have to wriggle out till I drive his head into the Kitty Hawk lighthouse. What's the use of getting hot, though!" he concluded. "It's all in a lifetime. Let's go over to that swell hotel there and eat while we're waiting."
Legs began to press the Buffalo Dare mystery.
"Look here," argued the pilot, "my first job is to load and unload Smith. In an hour and a half, at the outside, I'll be back, and it looks like a dead certainty we'll be marooned here all night and maybe all tomorrow and, for all I know, a whole week. Oodles of time for detective work. But to tell you the honest truth, Hatton, I don't see why you plague yourself about that boat business. Don't look so bilious. You'll have some fun before you die."
Legs quieted down and Hardy was busy with his own thoughts till the pair reached the Sir Walter Raleigh Tavern, a dilapidated two-story building just opposite the general merchandise store known as "The Emporium," which latter also housed the postoffice. Through this last fact the loafers on the Raleigh porch had the tremendous advantage of gazing on every man, woman, and child in the village at some period of the day. The newcomers passed some of these idle gentry as they entered the doorway and found themselves in a long dining room, one corner of which served as the office of the landlord, the principal function of whose desk seemed the support of his pair of very dirty boots.
Of the eight tables, one was occupied by a tall individual whose back was turned to the pilot and his companion. A waiter was sauntering around, apparently trying to persuade himself that he was busy with a mop and a bucket. Two clodhoppers, one with the round, yellow face of a Hallowe'en pumpkin and the other possessing the sharp, startled look of a rabbit, were standing by a window lazily engaged with their toothpicks.
Hardy, addressed as "Brother" by the landlord, was informed he could get coffee and ham and eggs.
"Long sweetenin' or short in yo' coffee?" inquired the negro waiter when he found time for the order.
Hardy decided on "short," explaining to the puzzled lad that "long" was molasses, very popular in these regions—a fact which had not escaped the attention of the flies, as attested by their swarming over everything.
For a minute or so, the two men by the window stared at the newcomers in solemn silence; then, removing their toothpicks, they abruptly launched into the following dialogue:
"Looks like we was goin' to have some weather," drawled Rabbit-face, casting an eye up toward the window like a duck looking for thunder. "Blowin' right smart, ain't it?"
"Certain sho' is!" returned his friend, on the same key. "Tain't no fittin' time fer them submarines to be flyin' in, is it?"
"What you talkin' 'bout, Bill Hulfish? Submarines don't fly; they swims and dives in the ocean same as fish do. Them's airyplanes you mean. I seen two o' them there things at the State F'ar 'bout a mile up in the air, and a fool stepped off'n one smack on t'other same as you step out o' yo' kitchen back do' right spank in the hawgpen."
"Git out, Jim," observed Pumpkin-face, without showing any heat at the insinuation that he lived cheek by jowl with his porkers.
"Fac'," asserted Rabbit-face.
"Well, I'll be jiggered! He was danged crazy," inferred Pumpkin.
"If fools is fools 'taint no business o' mine or yourn, is it?" queried Rabbit-face. "Ev'ybody to their taste as the old woman said when she up and kissed the heifer."
"I don't say contrary. All the lunytics ain't been put in the 'sylum yet, or if they has been, some has bus' loose."
"Ought to be a open season fer huntin' them sort o' birds all the year roun'," decided Rabbit.
Whereupon they looked at one another, laughed hoarsely, and dropped into a stare at the birdman and his fledgling, showing as clearly as glances can that they were the target of the last remark. Hardy was not touchy, but he couldn't resist twisting about and returning a challenging stare. As this movement brought to view the weapon at his belt, the rustics decided the season was not quite so open as they had thought, hitched at their breeches, sidestepped, and scuttled out of the door, much to the amusement of Legs as well as of the landlord.
During the wait for the lunch and while they were eating, Hardy answered Legs' questions with regard to the famous Blackbeard who met his end in these regions. From this he passed on to mention of the early explorers.
"Near here," he related, "were the Indian villages discovered by the expeditions sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh, who named this country Virginia in honor of the Virgin Queen. The first expedition landed in July, 1584. At the north end of this island, I've seen the spot where they say the original village of the Indians stood—nine houses built of cedar and fortified with stakes.
"In 1585, the next year, another expedition came out, and the white men were well treated by the savages. These Englishmen brought with them a painter named John White, who carried back to Queen Elizabeth water-color pictures he made of the natives. One funny thing he said in his account was that the savages built platforms in their cornfields and made a squaw sit on a chair up there and keep up a terrible squawking and howling to scare off the beasts and birds from the crops—human scarecrows and pretty lively ones, I'll say.
"Now the last expedition sent out is supposed to have been cleaned out completely by the Indians. The word Croatan carved on the bark of a tree was the only mark left by them that could be found. By the way, before this, the wife of a man who rejoiced in the cheerful name of Ananias Dare, kin to our friend Buffalo, I dare say, gave birth to a daughter named Virginia Dare, and she was the first English child born on American soil. Some people claim the lost Englishmen married into the Indian tribes and that descendants of theirs are still living, but that's all hot air."
While Hardy, to cover his impatience, was enlightening the interested lad, the individual eating with his back turned had begun to show more attention to the pilot's story than to his own meal. He started to clear his throat, rattle his knife and fork, work his shoulders and display other marks of bodily disturbance. But when Hardy paused after his "hot air" statement, the stranger, a tall gaunt man with a shock of red hair, bounded up and displayed flaming eyes to the pair at the other table.
"I'm hot air, am I? Hot air, hot air, hot air!"
And then, without attempting any violence against Hardy and Legs, who jumped up ready to defend themselves, he seized his hat and, tossing his head, rushed from the room.
Before the two guests had quite recovered from their astonishment, the landlord, his sides shaking with mirth, came over to explain.
"Crazy as a Junebug, but harmless, only you tread on his toes good and proper. His name is Ketcham, but he thinks he's a descendant of that Virginia Dare, so the kids around here call him Buffalo Dare and run after him yelling, 'You ketch him; I'll skin him.'"
"Buffalo Dare!" exclaimed Legs, popping his eyes.
"Does this man ever row around in a boat?" asked Hardy eagerly. "Does he ever go over to Knott's Island?"
"He never rowed nothin' but a herring," returned the landlord, chuckling at his own jest. "Row nothin', and I've seen him every day fer years. He eats here on a meal ticket his brother pays for. He's harmless, so they don't put him in the bughouse. Just gets daffy when the kids pester him about that Buffalo business."
"But, say, Hardy," interposed Legs, not fully recovered from his start, "I bet he is the same man, though."
"Couldn't be," objected Hardy. "The fellow seen on the island was short and smooth-faced and black; this crazy loot has red whiskers."
Legs was about to push the subject further when there was commotion in front of the inn, announcing the arrival of the auto with Smith.
"Can't talk, boy," shouted the pilot, throwing Legs some money to pay for the lunch. "Here, stay here and wait for me. Good-bye, I'm gone. Back in less'n two hours, sure."
Out of the door flashed the birdman, seized the protesting Smith, swore the wind wouldn't hurt a kitten, and dragged him off almost bodily in the direction of the plane. Legs followed, but in the excitement got no attention and very forlornly watched the hurried preparation of the pilot and his speedy departure in the teeth of a good stiff wind sweeping over the Sound.
The hours dragged heavily by, one, two, three, four, still no Hardy. At the end of two hours, in fact, no rational person could be expected to venture anywhere in an airship. The first good, strong whip of the gale was in evidence, and with it came dark and threatening rain clouds. Time and again, Legs hurried down to the shore and gazed over the waters in the direction of Kitty Hawk. Gulls were circling landward with plaintive cries. Every now and then, one of these marine birds, a speck in the far distance, would tempt him for a moment to believe the plane was on its way.
Boats speeded shoreward under all the force of the oars; but none of the disembarking longshoremen reported having seen the plane since it sailed seaward. Indeed, they thought it an idiotic question to ask. With the fourth hour of Hardy's absence, the wind was blowing with such velocity and driving the rain in such torrents, that Legs, unable to hold out any longer, wended his way back to the shelter of the hotel.
"No use to worry," consoled the landlord. "You might 'a knowed he wouldn't try to get back a evenin' like this. If he didn't get spilled on his way over he's high and dry in the lighthouse. I'll take care of you, and won't let Buffalo Dare get your scalp. "
Legs, irritated by the last part of this speech, and alarmed by the first, gazed disconsolately out of the window at the driving rain and listened with sinking heart to the dismal howling of the wind. What with the lifeboat mystery on his mind, the appearance of the madman and his own loneliness, he had never felt quite so miserable before in all his days.