Suddenly the scouts heard some one back of the hut wall cough. Then another louder cough. Soon two were coughing and strangling desperately, and the Captain patted Julie on the back approvingly.
Then a gutteral voice tried to be heard: "Vee gif up--onny safe us from dis fire!"
Julie held Betty, who was going to shout back that they would be saved.
No one replied to the cry, and the two voices shrieked and screamed, "Help! Help--dis house iss on fire--vee burn to dedt!"
Julie was about to answer, when the Chief and Mr. Gilroy ran up. The latter caught Mrs. Vernon"s look, but the former cried excitedly: "How did the hut catch fire?"
He seemed terribly upset about it and wanted to know if the convicts had set fire to the logs. Mrs. Vernon began to explain, while Julie scrambled up on the roof of Hepsy"s shed and carefully made her way along the framework until she reached the chimney, where she held fast and called down to the men behind the wall.
"Come out and give yourselves up, or roast where you are."
When the Chief heard the scout"s command, he smiled and ordered his men up on the roof to help. Then he followed Julie, and stood beside her with c.o.c.ked revolver aiming at the rocky wall. The other policemen climbed up, too, and the Chief said to Julie:
"You"d better get down and join your friends now. We can handle the rascals better if you are out of the way."
"But you won"t have to use revolvers, "cause they are unarmed," said Julie, anxiously.
"How do you know that?"
"We heard them whispering. Besides, one man has a crushed foot, and we scouts don"t believe in hurting _anything_ that is helpless--even a convict who has made lots of trouble for us."
"All right, little girl; I"ll put my gun away, but we ought to have _one_ to show, so the rascals won"t try to overpower us."
"I guess they are so full of smoke and fear that they won"t be able to fight. Cowards always give up easy, you know," said Julie, creeping down from the roof of the hut, back to Hepsy"s shed.
As Julie had said, the two convicts crawled up from behind the wall, looking the sorriest mortals ever one saw. Their eyes were red and watery from the smoke so that they could hardly see, and they coughed every other second. One limped most painfully, and had to be helped by his pal. Then, just as they stood up on the roof to hold up their hands in defeat, the other one broke through the tar paper roof and stuck fast between the rafters.
"Oh, there goes our roof!" cried Betty plaintively.
"Never mind, Betty dear! You can hire men to put on fifty roofs now, with the reward you scouts will get," exclaimed Mr. Gilroy.
"Reward! What reward?" asked five amazed voices.
Mr. Gilroy laughed delightedly. "The Chief told me that one reason his men and all the men in Freedom were so eager to hunt these convicts, was the hope of the cash reward offered. The State has offered $500 a head for the capture, dead or alive, of these outlaws and aliens. You scouts have captured the men!"
"W-h-y! I can"t believe it! How did we do it?" exclaimed Betty.
"Oh--Julie caught them, didn"t she?" cried Joan.
"Not alone, Jo. You all helped, and the Captain poured the gasoline, you know, and took the risk of being blown to bits!" laughed Julie, excitedly, as she twisted her fingers nervously.
"When the Chief told me of the rewards, I said: "Then the girls ought to have it, no matter who _catches_ the convicts, for they apprehended them and turned in the news of their whereabouts.""
"Oh, but we didn"t, Mr. Gilroy. You did that yourself," Ruth corrected the gentleman.
"I only took the blows from the prisoners--you did the rest. But I never dreamed that you would capture them, too. I might have known that girl scouts are capable of doing anything."
The moment handcuffs were on the convicts, they were placed in custody of the officer. Then the Chief blew his signal so the hunters on the mountainside would know the men were taken.
He congratulated Julie and her friends on having won the much coveted reward, and then said to Mrs. Vernon: "I suppose you will hear from the Government offices in a few days. Meantime, I will need the names and addresses of the members of Dandelion Camp, to enter the report on my records."
The scattered men who had been hunting through the forests now straggled into camp, all eager to hear by whom and how the convicts had been caught. When they learned that a few girls did the work, they looked disgusted.
But one of the officers laughed heartily as he said: "Why didn"t we think of that hiding-place!"
"Wall, I kin say I"m glad th" gals got it! They lost all the camp ferniture and grub, an" has to go home now!" added Lem Saunders, the constable.
"Oh, we forgot to tell you! The food and some furniture was found hidden down the trail in the bushes," exclaimed Joan.
"But ye haint be agoin" to stay out here any more, air yeh?" asked Lemuel, wondering at such a risk.
"Of course! We are safer now than we were before we went to Bluebeard"s Cave, you know," laughed Julie.
"Now we know where those convicts will be, but for two weeks past they were at large and we never knew it. _That_ was when there was cause to fear for us--being in a lonesome camp," added Mrs. Vernon.
"Yeh," agreed Lemuel. "But what one don"t know never hurts one, ye know!"
"That reminds me!" exclaimed the Captain, holding up a hand for attention. "Do any of you men know a young hunter and trapper from up the mountain?"
"D"ye mean Ole Granny Dunstan"s boy?" asked Lemuel.
"I only know he lives up the mountain somewhere, and makes his living through selling pelts. I don"t even know his name," said Mrs. Vernon.
"That"s him! Ole Granny Dunstan"s son," returned Lemuel.
"Is he with you to-night?" continued the Captain.
"Nah! He"s gone to Washerton most ten days ago. They writ him a note sayin" they was holdin" a French paper fer him," explained a young man who was standing on the outer line of the posse.
"He fit so hard in France, yeh know, that th" Frenchys done sent him a fine paper tellin" folks about him. I"ve hear"n said folks over thar nicknamed him an "ace,"" said another man.
"Then he must have been an aviator!" exclaimed Mrs. Vernon.
"Yeh! he can fly in one of them machines--but we don"t keep any in Freedom, so we never seed him ride one," said Lemuel.
"Well, gentlemen, I thank you for this information. But should you see him when he returns from Washington, tell him we want him to stop in and see us--at Dandelion Camp."
The Chief had ordered his men to accompany the convicts to the village, so Mr. Gilroy offered the car to them. He was going to stay at camp with the scouts, he said.
"But we left our suitcases at the hotel, and Hepsy is at the stable in Freedom!" declared the Captain.
"We"ll all have to go back, then, and come up in the morning," added Julie.
So the convicts were tied to horses and two of the officers whose mounts had been chosen for this need sat in the car with the scouts. But they didn"t mind being crowded when the two policemen began telling stories of the narrow escapes they had had in the past while catching criminals.
As the cavalcade entered Freedom, Mrs. Vernon said: "After all those blood-curdling stories, I doubt if my scouts will sleep."
It was past midnight when the hunting party returned to Freedom, and only goodness knows what time it was when all the hunters had finished telling the citizens how the convicts were captured by a few girl scouts.