"Come on!" cried Chot. "I know a short cut we can take across the lots, and get ahead of the junk man. Come on!"
He led Rick and Tom down a lane, past the small electric light station, and out into the field. The boys had not gone very far before Rick cried:
"Say this is a regular swamp! There"s a lot of water here!"
""Tisn"t deep!" said Chot. "It won"t no more than go over the tops of your shoes! Come on!"
He was in the lead, but the others were close behind him. Suddenly Rick gave a cry.
"What"s the matter?" asked Chot, turning toward his chum. "Do you see the junk wagon?"
"No, but I"m sinking down! I"m sinking, Chot! It"s way up over the tops of my shoes now! I"m stuck in the mud! I can"t pull my feet out!" yelled Rick.
CHAPTER XIV
THE OLD CABIN
Chot and Tom, who had run on a little ahead of Rick, stopped and looked back at their chum as they heard his cries. Rick had also come to a stop, more because he had to, than because he wanted to.
"Come on back and help me!" he called to his friends.
And the boy"s appeal for aid was answered at once by the two chums.
"Say, he is "way down in the muck!" exclaimed Ted. "Isn"t he?"
"He must have walked in the wrong place," added Chot.
However it had happened poor Rick was indeed, as he said, stuck in the mud. His two chums saw this as they ran back to him.
"You got off the path, that"s what"s the matter!" declared Chot, as he looked at Rick--standing at a safe distance, of course, so that he, too, would not get caught in the swamp.
"You ought to have followed us," went on Ted. "We kept to the path. You got to stay up on one side when you cross this field. There"s a sort of brook running through the middle of it, and you can"t see it "till you get right in it."
"Well, I didn"t see it, and I"m in it all right," announced Rick. "I can"t hardly lift my feet. Look!"
He rested his weight on one side, and tried to lift the opposite foot.
There was a sucking sound made, as his shoe came partly up out of the mud, but it was hard work for the boy to pull himself loose.
"Look out!" suddenly called Tom, as he saw Rick tottering as if about to fall to one side. "Look out or you"ll go all the way in!"
"That"s what I think," agreed Rick himself. "Say, get hold of me and pull me out; will you?"
Tom was going closer, intending to take hold of Rick"s outstretched hands, but Chot called sharply:
"Don"t do that! If you do you"ll be stuck, too!"
"But we got to do something!" insisted Tom. "We can"t leave him stuck here!"
"Of course not!" a.s.sented Chot. "We"ll get you out all right, Rick, and we"ll help you find your dog, too. Come on over here, Tom, and help me get a fence rail. We can hold that out to Rick and pull him loose that way!"
Tom and Chot were about a year older than Rick, and knew a little better what to do in a case of this kind than did Ruddy"s master.
"Don"t be scared," Chot called to his chum, as the two boys walked off up a little hill toward a fence. "We"ll get you out all right. I"ve been stuck in the mud here myself. You can wash your shoes off down in the brook. It isn"t very cold to-day."
"My shoes"ll be terrible muddy," declared Rick, trying to get a look at them, but he could not--they were too deep down in the muck.
It did not take Tom and Chot long to find a long fence rail that was not too heavy for them to lift. They carried it back to Rick and held out one end to him, retaining hold of the other end themselves.
"Now keep a tight grip, and when we pull, you pull and lift your feet and then you"ll be loose," advised Chot.
Rick did his share, the other boys pulled and pretty soon, with another queer, sucking, sighing sound Rick felt his feet coming free from the mud and he could lift them out one after the other. He was glad to see his feet again, muddy as they were, for he was beginning to fear they might sink so far down in the swamp of the field that he would never get them back.
"They"re terrible muddy!" spoke Rick as he got on firm ground and looked at his shoes. "Terrible!"
"Yes, but it"ll wash off," consoled Chot. "Come on down to the brook, and mind you keep on the path, now! You must have got off or you wouldn"t have been stuck."
"I didn"t know you had to stay on the path," Rick said.
"Sure you do," declared Chot. "There"s a lot of water, a regular bog, under this field. If you get off the path you"ll be stuck. Now after you wash your shoes you follow Tom and me."
There was, as Chot had said, a sort of path through the field which a half-hidden brook had turned into a swamp. The path led along on top of numbers of big gra.s.s hummocks, or "footstools," as Rick called them. By jumping from one gra.s.s hummock to the other the boys could keep out of the mud.
Chot went on ahead, while Rick came next, and Tom brought up the rear guard for Rick. He safely reached the brook, and there he washed the worst of the mud off his shoes. He was thinking what his mother would say when she saw them.
"That"s good enough!" declared Chot, after Rick had dabbled each foot in the brook several times. "That"s good enough. The rest of the mud"ll dry off when we run through the gra.s.s. Come on!"
"Yes, we don"t want to stop here too long," agreed Rick. "I want to find Ruddy."
"We"ll be out on the road soon," said Chot. "If that peddler and the sailor drove out of Belemere they"d have to come over on this road we"re coming to. And unless they drove terrible fast we ought to be ahead of "em."
"Junk wagons don"t drive fast," declared Tom. "They stop at every house to buy papers and bottles."
"That"s the reason I think we"ll get ahead of these fellows," said Chot.
"Come on, Rick."
The boy"s shoes were fairly clean now, and, as his chums had remarked, they would dry and be cleaned more as he ran through the gra.s.s. Once again the chase was taken up. By keeping to the path, and by leaping from hummock to hummock, Rick managed to avoid sinking down in any more bog holes. Soon the three chums came out on the solid road.
Rick looked up and down, hoping to get a sight of the junk wagon in which, he felt sure, was his dog Ruddy, enticed away by the old sailor--the tramp sailor.
Chot began looking down in the dust of the highway, walking back and forth his eyes close to the ground.
"What you doing?" demanded Rick, as he watched his friend. "Did you lose something?"
"I"m looking for wagon tracks," answered Chot.