Pemrose Lorry, Camp Fire Girl

by Isabel Hornibrook

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE MAN KILLER

  "We must lift him out of the mud! Oh-h! even if it hurtshim--terribly--we'll have to lift him to a dry spot."

  It was Pemrose Lorry who spoke. Together with her Camp Fire sisters shehad taken some training in first aid. And one agonizing accident whichshe had been told how to deal with was the case of a knee-cap displacedor broken.

  There almost seemed to be a broken head on her own young shouldersthrough which wild, streaky lights and shadows came stealing, likemoonlight through cracked shutters whose chinks are not wide enough toreveal clearly any object in a room.

  It was the same breathlessly unreal feeling--the same dim moonlitgroping, that she had felt as she sat on the cliff-brow with Stud, whenhe talked of the nickum and his father--and called the latter a "queerfish!"

  For one thing she knew at a glance! She had seen the injured man, wholay calling for help in a miry spot of the Man Killer trail, before.Three times before, said lightning perception!

  And it came upon her now, as emergency's stiff breeze blew the cobwebsfrom her brain, the occasion of the second time, sandwiched in betweenthat zero day when he had dragged her up a snow-bank, the youth whosaved her addressing him as Dad, and the smiling June one when he lay ona fernbed before his lake-shore camp, grumpily fishing.

  "I--I saw him: I know I saw him--again--crossing the street outsideUna's home on the day when the last installment of the Will was read,"she realized, her hands coming together convulsively at the thought ofthe blighting codicil which hung up the fortunes of the moon-goingThunder Bird for twelve long years.

  "He--he was wearing the same gray cap!" was the next cleaving flash ofmemory.

  He was not really wearing it now. It bobbed in the rill beside him.

  As one eye turned feverishly towards it, the third thunder clap ofperception came in the staggering sense of how like he was to Una.

  She might have been his daughter--Una--with that little fixed star offeeling set like a shining pebble now in her right, fascinated eye,reflected, exaggerated in the glazed cast of pain in the stone-gray eyeof the man beneath her, whose climber's suit of homespun was daubed withmountain mud,--whose tweed cap was the brooklet's toy.

  He had been trying to scoop up water in it.

  And that brought Pemrose Lorry, Camp Fire Girl, to herself again, withinquarter of a minute of her first laying eyes on him.

  For there is one gallant anchor that will hold in any pinch,--whenthought is shattered and speculation the maddest blur: the Camp Firelaw: Give Service!

  She unhooked her little camper's cup from where it hung at her greenbelt, and offered him a drink.

  She dipped her handkerchief in the trickle of water and wiped the colddrops of faintness and agony from his forehead.

  And then, when he had confided to Andrew, who knelt beside him, that hehad slipped upon the wet, slimy moss beside the rill, as he ascended thetrail, and broken his knee-cap by striking heavily against a confrontingrock, she said that they must lift him to a dry spot.

  "That's--r-right. She knows what to--do. Ouch! a--a knee-cap slipped, orbroken--is--the deuce of a rack," groaned the victim, as they proceededto raise him, the girls supporting, each, a knickerbockered leg, Pemrosethe injured one, while Andrew took the main weight of the writhing body,until they laid it upon some dry moss.

  Yes! and she knew further what to do, that Camp Fire Girl who wore theFire Maker's bracelet upon her wrist, for plucking off her soft, greensweater she rolled it into a wad and placed it under the hollow of theinjured knee, so flexing it, supporting it, while Una doubled hers intoa pillow for his head,--Una who moved as if in a fantastic dream.

  And then arose the question as to the next move; how to go aboutobtaining further help.

  "We might--might make a stretcher with poles, saplings, with oursweaters, your coat, Andrew, and--and carry him down to the nearestfarmhouse," Pem suggested.

  "No-o thank--you!" The injured man shifted his shoulders ever soslightly upon one elbow and looked at her; the tiniest laugh shot therapids of pain in his eye. "My son said you had a whole lot of'pep'--same that's in your inventor-father, I suppose, who wants tobombard the moon!... My son who's play-ing baseball now down on theGreylock field--mountain's foot!" The sufferer here appealed to Andrew."If you could--only--get him up here, I'd be all right! There's an autoat the nearest farmhouse--maybe they'd let you take it. Any one--any onecan point out 'Starry'"--in a lame rush of pride--"player who made thathome run--"

  "Hadna I better bid him bring a doctor along too--a stretcher as weel?"put in the Scotchman dryly.

  The victim nodded, looking at the other's cap.

  "You're a chauffeur," he pleaded; "you'll drive fast?"

  "Aye, fegs! Fast as God and gasoline will let me!" answered Andrewdevoutly, with an anxious glance at the two girls.

  As his tall, spare figure scrambled on down the trail, the suffererraised his eyes to Pemrose.

  "If--if you could t-twist my knapsack round from under me," he murmured;"there's a restorative in it--a few drops of ammonia--I'm faint!"

  She did so--and turned for the moment as faint as he was.

  The whole trail swam, grew black--black as the wisp of thin, ebony silk,parachute silk, with a fraction of a bent wire frame peeping out fromone corner of that roomy knapsack.

  "Well! are you going to desert me now-ow?... Now that the thief is so-onice-ly bagged!"

  The man looked up at her, some dash of whimsical fire in him masteringweakness; at the girl kneeling, bolt upright, with the black rag betweenher hands, and the twisted scrap of frame,--the frame which had drifteddown two hundred miles.

  The man looked up at her, some dash of whimsical firemastering weakness. Page 268.]

  "Ar-re you--going--to desert me now?"

  Again the anchor held; the noble anchor: Give Service: it was as if avoice outside of her numbed self spoke the words.

  The raven rags dropped from between her fingers,--their reflection fromher face.

  Steadily enough, she found the little vial lying amid the top layer inthat pigskin knapsack, shook a few drops from it, into the thimble-likeglass accompanying, mixed them with water, held them to his lips.

  At the same time she dipped her handkerchief again and passed it overhis forehead.

  "Ha! Pity as well as 'pep' in you, eh? Good!" The sufferer actuallywinked one eye as the stimulant trickled down. "Well! my dear, thelittle recording apparatus is in that knapsack too; I--I make you apresent of it--and of the codicil to my brother's will, as well.... Youwon't have to wait twelve years."

  Then, indeed, the trail seemed to double up, to wind itself around Pem'sbrain, rocks and all,--only every rock was gold-edged, a nugget.

  Her eyes stared straight before her,--blue as the June violet thatcaught a drop from the spring near.

  "Who--who are you?" screamed Una, forgetting that she was speaking to abroken man.

  "How about my being your uncle, Treffrey Graham, my dear, who--who wassuch a mad fellow--in--youth; s-such an oddity? Oh-h! you've heard ofhim--have--you?"

  The whimsical light in the pain-reddened eyes burned to mockery now. Itshowed the hippogriff, the "hot tamale", still there. Evidentlyeccentricity wasn't all dead.

  "Humph! By Jove! I'm having some fun out of my broken knee, afterall--electrifying you girls," gurgled the still racked voice. "Dramaticsetting for a denouement, too, the old Man Killer trail!"

  "But why--oh! why-y did you do it?" Pem snatched up the rag of parachuteagain, her eyes going wildly from the soot-like scrap of silk to awonderful, antique ring upon the little finger of the pale hand whichtwitched so strangely below her.

  "What! S-steal the little record, you mean!" The bushy eyebrows weretwitching, too. "Well! maybe I want-ed to make sure, for myself, thatthe rocket really had gone higher than anything earthly ever flew yet,before--before I resigned a fortune to it."

  That was the moment when the nuggets all turned to rocks again forPemrose. He saw the ch
ange in her face.

  "Oh! I don't mean anything der-og-a-tory to your father, my dear"--painsnatched at the man's breath--"or to his invention, either. I knew himbefore you did. 'Why did I do it?' Curiosity--eccentricity, Isuppose--anything you like to call it! I always was such a 'terror'--aregular zany, my college friends used to call me."

  A flash from those prankful days, erratic as a shooting star, shot theglaze in the sufferer's eye.

  "And, then--and then, I really am interested in everything connectedwith the conquest of the air--of space--myself," the hampered speakerwent on. "I've done a little flying, out West,--my son, too! I found outwhen the experiments with your father's in-vention--"

  "We call it the Thunder Bird," put in Una, as pain again called for abreak.

  "Ha! Good name for it! Piles up the moon-going romance, eh? Well-ll,"wearily, "having found out the par-ti-cu-lar night on which the lit-tlemodel rocket was to fly, I came up the mountain to a small camp that myson and I have ne-ar the summit--east side of Greylock. I was standingon the edge of the spruce woods, watching the whole performance.Then--then, when the parachute dragging the little recording apparatusblew towards me in the darkness, almost into my hand, I--why! I snatchedit up and ran with it. Why? Oh, because I suppose the boy has never diedin me: the boy that's 'part pirate, part pig!'" with a grating chuckle.

  Incredible as it seemed, the low laughter, the treacherous tinkle, wasechoed by girlish lips as that renascent urchin momentarily swaggered inthe glaze of the suffering eye!

  "And then--and then something told me--an aberration, I suppose, as myimpulses usually are--that I had some sort of r-right to see the veryfirst record man had ever got of that upper air, of Space, if--if I wasgo-ing to turn over a couple of hundred thousand dollars, for thepursuit of the--sov-er-eign invention."

  "I--I can't believe it," murmured Pem into the stony teeth of the ManKiller.

  "I meant to return the record next morning, but I was a-fraid yourfather might shoot me," to Pemrose. "Then, later, I heard he had gonedown the mountain--that was yesterday and a mistake--I went-down, too,to beard him. A--a little more water, please! I could not climb againuntil to-day; I took the Man Killer trail, as being the shortest.And--here I am!" grimly.

  "Incidentally, I gave our family lawyer a shock, little niece," he wenton, as Una, plucking up courage, adjusted her sweater under his head;she began to like this uncle with the pebble-like cast in his stone-grayeye, she began to think that girls--Camp Fire Girls, especially, withtheir love of the fanciful--might have more patience with him thanothers had had.

  "Yes! you bet I gave old Cartwright the staggers!" He laughed down thetwinge of agony in his voice. "Called him up on the long distancetelephone, told him I was Treffrey Graham back; that I had been in theEast nearly six months, with my son; that I came pretty near disclosingmyself on the--on the day when the third installment of my brother'swill was read--actually walked up to the door of my sister's house, thenshied off, because ... Oh, gosh! this knee."

  The voice broke; it had really become a feverish babble of excitementnow--pain's wild excitement.

  "Well! What was I saying--yes! I didn't ring the bell because I hadn'tmade up my mind whether I wanted to claim any share of my brother'sfortune, or not; you see he hadn't been very fair to me in youth--takingaway my sweetheart. None of my family had--for--that--matter! I didn'tknow whether I wanted to meet them again. Although I liked the look ofmy little niece; I had seen her, at a distance, with her mother. Andthen, we didn't need the money, my boy and I! Had enough of our own;Treffrey Graham may be a terror, but he isn't a failure--financially!"

  No--not by a long shot! said the flame of the pigeon-blood ruby upon thepale little finger, now curling significantly in air,--the gem whosefire in this wild spot seemed as erratic as his own, seeing that nonebut a zany would have worn it here.

  "So--so I told old Cartwright this morning that I stepped out of thatstrung-out will," a smile curled the pallid lips now; "that I authorizedhim to make preparations, at once, for the turning over of the remainderof my brother's wealth, in his name and mine, to the University of ournative city, to be used for the furtherance of Professor Lorry'swon-der-ful invention for r-reaching in-de-finite heights."

  "My father!... Oh! my fa-ther!" It was a wild little cry to which theMan Killer rang now, as the head of Pemrose Lorry went down upon herknees.

  "Yes, I'm glad his way is clear--though, I suppose, only a man 'whosehead grew under his arm' would have managed the thing as I have done."The sufferer winked through the veil of pain. "Now! my son is different.He's a dare-devil too--but he knows where to stop. You couldn't havebribed him to steal that record--though somebody played a trick on himthe other night--robbed him of his oars and a dance--just when he had'taken the bit between his teeth', too; said he was tired of thiscamouflage business, and he was going--going whether I liked it, ornot!"

  "_Ah-h!_" That was the moment when Pem's shoulders trembled likethe needles upon the little green cedar sapling that grew by the rill:all because the Wise Woman in her was shaking the Elf, bidding her go tosleep for ever--which the Elf, very properly, refused to do, for, afterall, undiluted wisdom would be a colorless cloak for any young back.

  "Well! he--he wouldn't speak to us when we just wanted to thank him forsaving us in that terrible train-accident," put in Una defensively.

  "Ha! That was my fault, little niece. I made him promise, on comingEast, that he wouldn't go near any of his relatives, risk beingidentified by them, until I had decided what to do about the legacy--andwhether I was going to make myself known to them, or not. Now-ow, I hopeyou'll be friends. He's your own cousin--Treff junior."

  And so Jack at a Pinch at last came into his own in the shape of a name!

  "Yes, called after me, he is! Goodness! don't I wish he'd hurry up andget here, now--with the doctor?"

  It was a hollow groan. Pain was, at length, getting the better of thatcapricious spirit.

  "Can't--can't I do--anything--to make you more comfortable?" Pemroseasked.

  Then suddenly remembering that it was he who was making the ThunderBird's fortune, as impulsively as the little cedar tree leaned to theswollen rill, she bent and kissed the cold sweat of pain from hisforehead.

  "That--that's worth coming East for," murmured the man, his own eyesgrowing wet. "Little niece! don't you want to--follow--suit? I suppose,a year from now, your Thunder Bird will fly."