"Yeah," Bob cut in, "but you didn't have a couple of bad apples like Jack and Cliff along. Why, they could clonk him over the head with a hammer and throw him in the lake, and no one'd know anything about it."
"That's just the way I've got it figured," Mike said. "Don't you think we ought to go out and try to find them?"
Danny got up and crossed over to the window and looked out. The sun was dropping behind the forest, and the shadows were creeping across Pine Creek.
"Do you s'pose we could find them if we did go out?" Bob asked excitedly. "Or do anything about it if we did find them?"
Danny turned around slowly, and both Mike and Bob eyed him as he walked over to the table and picked up his Testament. "I think the first thing to do is pray," he said slowly. "The Bible tells us that we should turn to Jesus when we have problems and troubles."
Mike and Bob just looked at one another, not knowing what to say.
"You—you mean that God will answer your prayer?" Mike asked. "Like if you pray, God will send your dad back home safe?"
"If it's in His will, yes," replied Danny.
In the silence that followed there was a low, even hum in the distance. "Listen!" Mike said suddenly. It was so faint at first that he could scarcely be sure he had heard it at all. But as they listened it grew louder and louder.
"It's a motor."
"And it sounds like Dad's new Lawson!" Danny exclaimed.
"A-a-are you sure?" Mike asked.
"Positive. There isn't another motor on this side of the lake that sounds like that one."
"That was quick answering on that prayer," Bob said, laughing scornfully.
"Yes," Danny told him in a voice so serious and earnest that it wiped the smile from the dark-headed twin's face. "Sometimes God answers our prayers even before we get them into words. I—I guess I've been praying in my heart ever since we talked with Mom, and she told us how worried she was getting."
While they stood there listening, the sound of the motor grew louder and louder until at last the dark, hulking shape of the boat came into view. A few minutes later the men came in laughing and talking loudly.
"Come on," Danny said, "let's go into the house. I want to hear what they've got to say."
"I never saw such fishing in all my life," Jack was saying as the boys went into the living room and sat down. "But what I really liked was getting a chance to look over the exact island where old Fort Charles used to be."
"Me too," Cliff Myers said. "Me too. We saw where the stockade used to be, and the cabins and the storehouses and the drill grounds."
"And tomorrow we're going to take a look at the cemetery. Aren't we, Carl?"
"Tomorrow's Sunday, Jack," Danny's dad said slowly. "And I've made it a policy never to work on Sunday."
"But we'll pay you for it," Cliff blustered. "We'll pay you good."
"That isn't the point," he went on. "Sunday's the Lord's day, and we try to keep it holy."
"Hmph," Cliff snorted. Jack Crawford changed the subject quickly.
A little later Bob began to squirm uncomfortably as Danny's mother brought out the dessert. In another couple of minutes Mr. Orlis would be reading the Bible again. Those words would be like so many swords thrusting into his heart. And every now and then Danny would look at him with clear blue eyes that seemed to look right into the very depths of his soul and see the sin and wrongdoing there. But they were as nothing compared to the prayers. For it was when they prayed that he was gripped the most. It was the prayers for righteousness and clean hearts that made him long so desperately to be rid of the weight of his own sins. It was the prayers for the lost that tore at him until he had to fight desperately to keep from yielding. He looked over at Jack and Cliff. What would they think if he lost his head and blurted out his need for salvation right before them all? No, he just couldn't risk it.
As soon as he had finished eating his pie, he excused himself and went outside. He could feel Danny's gaze upon him as he walked across the room and out the front door. He rather expected them to stop him, to ask him to come back and wait until the devotions were over. But they didn't. He was half disappointed as he stepped out onto the porch.
In a moment or two Cliff Myers got up and walked noisily to the door, without a word to anyone.
"I can't stand that stuff either," he said loudly, as he came outside. "This family'd be pretty much all right if it wasn't for all this Bible reading and praying. I don't see how they put up with so much religion."
"Me either," Bob said.
"Where'd you fellows go today?" the stubby stranger said casually as he leaned against a tall oak tree just a step or two off the porch.
"Oh, just around," Bob said.
"We're going to start digging tomorrow or the next day," Cliff said in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Y-y-you are?" Bob said, his heart jumping to his throat.
"Yeah, Jack thinks he's going to get some good specimens out of the old Fort Charles site."
"B-b-but how do you know you're going to find it there?" Bob asked.
"Oh, we'll find it all right," Cliff went on. "Our guide showed us right where it was, and it checked out with the map."
"It—it did?" Bob said.
"The university's been wanting to get some relics from Fort Charles and the old Hudson Bay town of Angle Inlet," Cliff went on. "So Jack and I came up to see what we could find during the summer vacation."
"Is that what you're doing up here?" Bob asked.
"Sure," he said, grinning at Bob. "What did you think we were doing?"
That night when the boys were in their cabin, Bob told Mike and Danny what Cliff had said. "They can't tell me that's what they're doing up here," Danny replied.
"Nor me," Mike said. "I think they believe that gold's buried over there where Fort Charles used to be, or maybe at the Hudson Bay town site. They're just using that university stuff to hide what they're really up to."
"I'll bet you're right, Mike," Bob told him, but Danny was not so sure.
"That could be, all right," he said. "But I just can't help thinking that there's more to this than just finding the treasure. I think the treasure's got something to do with it, all right. But I'm just sure there's something bigger behind it."
The next morning Mike and Bob went by boat with Danny and his folks over to church in the little schoolhouse. Bob hadn't wanted to go very bad and was the last one dressed and down to the boat.
"Do you suppose Cliff and Jack would want to go with us, Dad?" Danny asked.
"You could go see," his dad said. "We'll wait for you."
In a moment or two he was back. "They said they didn't think so this time, but maybe they'll go next week."
When they got out of the boat and started up to the schoolhouse to Sunday school, Danny hung back a little. "Do you know what Jack was doing when I went up to the cabin door?" he asked in a tense whisper.
Mike and Bob shook their heads.
"I could see him through the window. He had some sort of funny contraption about twice as big around as a stove lid and just about as flat. It had a long handle on it."
"What was it?" Bob asked excitedly.
"I don't know," Danny said, "but he jumped like he was shot when I knocked on the door."
Bob liked Danny's teacher from the start, even if he did try hard not to. He was a tall, grizzled trapper who had lost one eye in a bare-handed fight with a wounded bear.
Bob had never been in a Sunday school class quite like this one. One of the boys prayed and another read the Scripture lesson, and then everybody took turns answering and asking questions. The teacher didn't say very much; but when he did, it really meant something.
"You know, some boys think they're smart in doing things that the world does," he said in summing up the lesson. "They think they're really somebody when they stick a cigarette in their mouths, or lie, or tell dirty stories. But you know anybody can do those things. They can teach a monkey to put a cigarette in his mouth. The thing that takes c
ourage and real strength of character and really shows that you are a man, is to be able to say "No, I've taken Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour, and it's better for a Christian not to do those things.'"
Bob looked out the window. Why was it that everywhere he went the things that were said twisted and tore at his heart? He had to get out of there, or he was going to make a fool of himself.
As soon as Sunday school was over, Bob said to Danny, "Is there any way of getting back to your place except going by boat?"
"Sure, we walk to school through the woods all the time," Danny said. "That trail over there leads right to our house." He pointed to a narrow twisting path through the trees.
"How far is it?"
"Oh, about a mile and a half. Why?"
"I'm not going to sit through another stuffy church service today," Bob said. "I'll be seeing you when you get back." With that he ran out of the schoolhouse toward the trail. Danny called to him but he did not stop.
Bob ran along the trail for two or three hundred yards, twisting and turning among the trees before he stopped to look back. It was dark in the forest, so dark that it seemed to Bob that the sun had suddenly gone down, leaving only the faint half-light of evening. It was quiet too. He could hear his own heavy breathing and the beating of his heart. He looked about him quickly, as though he was suddenly afraid some ferocious animal was about to pounce on him. But there was nothing. Not even a rabbit or a chipmunk! Why, there wasn't anything in the woods to scare anyone. It was just an idea a fellow got. The woods were as safe as the streets in Minneapolis—safer maybe.
Bob began to feel better as he walked along. This was fun—a lot better than being back there in church hearing—he stopped suddenly. His eyes bugged wide, and his mouth dropped open. There on the path ahead of him stood a huge, towering moose!
The sweat came out on Bob's forehead, and he began to tremble. He tried to move, to turn and flee before the great beast charged him; but for an instant he could not. He stood there as though he had grown roots like the trees, roots that held him captive and would not let him go. The moose, who had caught wind of Bob about the same time Bob spotted him, held his head high. His massive rack of horns was in the tree branches, and his whole body was tense and quivering. Bob tried to cry for help, to scream for Danny or Mike or anyone, but the sounds were stuck in his throat.
There stood a huge, towering moose!
Chapter Five
Rick Returns the Call
BOB LANCE was rooted to the ground. The great hulking moose was standing about ten yards away, with his head high, his nostrils quivering and his eyes riveted on the boy. Suddenly Bob found his voice and his legs. He let out a long, piercing scream, turned and raced back down the narrow, crooked path at top speed. At any moment he expected to hear the thunder of hooves behind him, to feel the moose's hot breath on his neck and those heavy horns in his back. He ran harder and harder. Then he slipped and fell down over a dead birch log, but he scrambled to his feet and began to run again. He had been too frightened to hear the big moose snort with terror and go charging off through the woods in the opposite direction. Though he ran until he thought his lungs would burst, he didn't stop until he reached the little clearing and the schoolhouse.
For a couple of minutes he stood on the porch, his breath coming in long, rasping gasps. There was sweat on his forehead, and his hands were skinned and bleeding. He went down to the lake and washed himself as best he could, then went into the schoolhouse and sat just inside the door. The minister, one of the settlers who lived close by, had just begun to talk.
When the service was over and everyone had filed outside, Danny came over and said, "Why, Bob, I thought you went home."
"Nope," Bob said. The color came up in his cheeks. "I changed my mind."
As the light aluminum boat turned into the creek where they lived, Danny saw a canoe pulled up on shore.
"Look," he said, "we've got company."
"I guess we have," Bob exclaimed, pointing to a tall, dark figure standing on the dock. "It's that old Indian we went to see. It's old Thunderbird himself."
"It is, for a fact," Danny's dad said. "Old Rick hasn't been over here for months. I wonder what brought him this time."
"I want to see the young one," Rick Thunderbird said when Mr. Orlis stopped to talk with him.
"Do you mean Danny?"
"I mean him," the Indian said, pointing to Danny. "I want to talk to him."
"Why, sure. Danny!" Mr. Orlis called. "Come on over here. Rick Thunderbird wants to talk to you."
"Someplace where the walls do not have ears," the old Indian said pointedly.
"Let's go out to our cabin, then," said Danny.
Danny and Thunderbird and Mike and Bob walked single file to the log sleeping cabin. When the door was closed, the old Indian said, "You brought back my canoe."
"That's right," Danny told him. "We found it washed up on another island and figured that it must've gotten away from you in a storm."
"I knew we shouldn't have taken that canoe back," Bob whispered softly to Mike. "Now we're in the soup."
"Rick would have starved, maybe, without his canoe," the Indian went on, talking about himself as he would someone else. "No one ever stops to see him, and it's months till the lake freezes over."
"We knew you couldn't get along without your canoe," Danny said.
Rick nodded solemnly. "You brought Rick's canoe back," he went on, "after he had sent you away without answers to your questions. That is not the way of the white man—or the Indian either."
"It's the Christian way, Mr. Thunderbird," Danny said. "The Bible tells us that we should do unto others as we'd like to have them do to us."
"Your father, he tell me about being Christian," the old Indian said. "He tell me how it makes a man love his neighbors, how it makes him good and kind, how it makes him live clean and honest. But I not see that in any besides your father. I think maybe it not for me." Thunderbird sat down on the side of the bunk next to Bob and clenched his long, gnarled fingers nervously. "But you bring back my canoe. That's the first kind thing anyone besides your father ever do for Rick." He got up and hobbled over to the chair beside the window. "All night I could not sleep, young one. I think about this thing you do for a poor old Indian. I think about this Jesus I knew had caused you to do it. I want to know this Jesus who makes you so kind."
Bob stared at old Thunderbird as though he could scarcely believe what he had heard. Here was a hard, bitter old Indian who had been a chief in his younger days—an Indian chief who had fought against the whites and resisted every effort to be put on a reservation, a chief who preferred to suffer hardships and hunger and cold rather than bow to the white man's will. And yet he was talking of his need for Christ Jesus as his personal Saviour. It was enough to tear at Bob's heart with claws of steel.
"Well," Danny said, fumbling with his Testament, "the Bible tells us that first of all we've got to realize that we're sinners and need a Saviour."
"Sinners?" Rick asked. "What do you mean?"
Mike moved quietly to the bed and sat down while Danny turned to the third chapter of Romans. "The Bible explains it a lot better than I can," he said. "Here in the tenth verse of the third chapter it says, 'As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.' And down in the twenty-third verse of the same chapter, 'For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.'" Danny stopped a moment, struggling for words. "That means that everyone, you and me and Rick and Bob here—all of us have sinned. We've all done things we shouldn't do, things that we know are wrong; but we go right ahead and do them anyway. I guess the only way you can explain it is that we're just naturally wicked."
Rick nodded solemnly. "One who has lived all his life in sin well knows that his heart is evil." Rick Thunderbird's eyes were clear and his voice steady. But Danny could tell by the serious look on his face that he was thinking of those things he had done which were sinful in the eyes of God and man.
"If God had ju
st left it there," Danny said, "there wouldn't be any hope for any of us. But He didn't. He gave a remedy for sin." The sandy-haired boy turned to his Testament again. "'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' Jesus gave Himself for us."
"Gave Himself?" Rick asked pointedly. "How He give Himself?"
"The Bible tells us that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures," Danny continued. "That is the way Jesus gave Himself for us so we can have eternal life if we just put our trust in Him."
"God sent His Son for me?" the old Indian repeated slowly. "For old Rick Thunderbird?"
"That's right."
There was a long, painful silence. Once or twice Danny started to speak, but did not. Instead he waited until finally Rick said softly, "I—I—don't know how to pray."
"But you don't need to know how," Danny said quickly. "I don't think God pays much attention to the words, anyway. The important thing is to pray with your heart."
He asked old Rick to kneel, and Danny taught him the prayer of the sinner, "God be merciful unto me a sinner." When at last they got to their feet, there was a wide smile on Thunderbird's wrinkled face.
Without saying a word he took Danny's hand and squeezed it warmly.
Bob and Mike looked at one another and then back at the aged Indian chief and their wiry young cousin. Bob felt his lower lip quiver, and he turned suddenly away. If only he had the courage old Thunderbird did!
"Danny," Mike said, his voice choking strangely and his lips scarcely forming the words, "sometime I want to talk to you—alone."
"Why, sure, Mike," Danny said. "Can't we talk now?"
Danny excused himself for a moment and went into the house. As he went out the door, Bob said to his twin brother, Mike, "What's the matter, Pantywaist? Are you going soft on me?"
"Oh, keep still," Mike snapped, and turned away.
"You should not fight with Jesus," Rick said evenly. "For eight year I fought Him, and not until today am I happy."
Danny Orlis and the Angle Inlet Mystery Page 3