Danny Orlis and the Angle Inlet Mystery

by Bernard Palmer

  They began to dig madly in the hard, rocky soil, hacking at the ground with the spade and clawing at the tree roots with the dull hatchet they had brought along.

  For two or three minutes Danny watched them in their frenzied efforts to get down to the treasure. Then he turned and began to crawl around the narrow clearing to where Bob and Mike were tied. He moved quietly, always keeping a screen of trees between himself and the men, but they were too excited, too wild for gold, to hear anything. They were both trying to dig at once, and every now and then their spades would ring as they clanged together.

  Danny slipped up behind the twins, slit the ropes that bound their hands and feet.

  "S-s-sh," he whispered from behind the tree. "Are you ready?"

  They both nodded grimly.

  Cliff and Jack had dug a hole about knee deep and two or three feet across. One of them was standing in the hole, and the other was bending over it, working so hard the sweat ran down his face and soaked through his shirt.

  "Laddie," Danny whispered to the dog crouched beside him, "Sic 'em! Sic 'em!"

  The big dog let out a growl and sprang across the little clearing, hitting Jack squarely in the middle of the back with his front feet. The startled man went sprawling into the hole on top of his companion, and they both went down in a heap with the snarling, biting dog on top of them. An instant later the three boys jumped into the fray, and before Cliff and Jack realized what had happened, Danny, Mike and Bob had them securely tied. Both of the men were screaming loudly. "Call off the dog!" they cried. "Call him off! Call him off!"

  "Down, Laddie!" Danny ordered, and the dog dropped back instantly, and without growling; but his shoulders were tense and his eyes never left the two men.

  "Boy, you came just in time," Bob gasped when the excitement was over and they had the two men tied to a tree.

  "Yes, the Lord certainly guided me this morning," Danny said.

  "You know," Bob went on, "we weren't too worried and scared. We both kept praying all the time."

  "We were praying that you'd be able to set us free, only we didn't expect you quite so quick."

  "Well," Danny asked, smiling as he saw that Cliff and Jack were staring angrily at him, "do you suppose that mine detector really found the treasure?"

  "There's no time like now to find out," Bob said, picking up a spade.

  "Here, I'll help you," Danny said. "Watch 'em, Laddie."

  The big dog planted himself squarely before the two men and growled every time one of them moved.

  "Don't sic him on us again," Cliff pleaded. "We won't try to get away. Honest we won't. Only don't sic him on us again."

  "You just behave yourself and you and Laddie'll get along fine," Danny said. "But don't try any funny stuff or he'll jump right in the middle of you."

  The first time Bob thrust the spade in the ground it hit something solid.

  "I—I hit something!" he said excitedly.

  Mike grabbed up the other spade and began to dig, too, and in a twinkling, they had uncovered a small rusty box.

  "That's it!" Danny cried.

  "We've found it! We've found it!" Mike and Bob both echoed together.

  "Here," Danny said. "I'll give you a hand!" It was all the three of them could do to lift it out of the hole.

  "Hurry up!" Bob exclaimed. "Let's get it opened up and see what it is!"

  "I'm afraid we're going to have to wait until we get it back to Angle Inlet to do that," Danny replied. "Look at that padlock. We haven't got anything along that can break that."

  "Here," Bob said. "Let me see it." He whacked it a dozen times with the hatchet, but couldn't dent the tough metal. "I guess you're right."

  Laddie guarded the prisoners while the boys carried the treasure down and loaded it into the big canoe which Jack and Cliff had stolen. Then they got the men and the dog, and towed all three in the second canoe back to Angle Inlet.

  "Aren't you afraid they'll get away?" Mike asked when Danny ordered them into the canoe.

  "Not with Laddie along," Danny said.

  "Nor with their hands tied, either," Bob added. "They aren't going to want to get out of that canoe when their hands are tied so they can't swim."

  Back at Angle Inlet the boys found Danny's mother and father, and a Royal Canadian Mountie, and the crew of the boat standing on the dock waiting for them. The Mountie's fast speedboat was idling at the end of the dock.

  "Another five minutes and we'd have been out there after you boys," Mr. Orlis said as they docked. "We were just going to gas up the speedboat and go."

  "They’re the troublemakers," the Mountie exclaimed. "That's them, all right. They've made a racket of going into a territory and making fake treasure maps to sell to unsuspecting people; maps like those we found in their cabin."

  "We found a real treasure map," Bob said. "We've got the treasure to prove it!"

  They all gathered about while Mr. Orlis broke the lock with a crow bar.

  "Gold!" Mike and Bob exclaimed. "Gold!"

  "I-I guess we've got enough to build our church now," Danny stammered excitedly.

  "I guess so," Bob said. "And some to spend for missions, and still have enough left for ourselves."

  Later, after the Mountie had loaded Jack and Cliff into his boat and roared off across the lake, Bob said to Mike and Danny, "You know, it was something to find that treasure. But the treasure isn't the most important thing I found up here at Angle Inlet. The important Person I found up here is the Lord Jesus Christ, my personal Saviour."

  Mike was silent for a long while. "I guess you're right about that," he said at last.

  Danny looked up at them and grinned. "I've been praying for you two fellows ever since I heard you were coming up here to spend the summer," he said. "And if I'd had to take my choice, I'd have taken you two as Christians any day before I'd have taken my share of the treasure."

  "But God gave us both salvation and the treasure," Bob said. "I guess that just goes to show how He does bless if we try to be faithful." And, there on the floor of the little cabin, the three of them knelt in prayer, thanking God for His goodness to them.

  The dog sprang across the little clearing.

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  Turn to read a sneak preview of

  Danny Orlis and the Hunters

  About the book:

  DANNY ORLIS and his friend are helping Danny’s dad with a hunting expedition. One of the hunters doesn’t follow instructions and appears to be lost. While searching for him, Danny finds evidence of illegal hunting. As the boys determine to find out who has been threatening the game population, they find themselves trapped by the criminals. Trusting God and doing the Christlike thing brings another opportunity for Danny to bear fruit for the Saviour.

  1–Strange Hunters

  The little packet boat, the Island Queen, was plowing through the rough seas toward the Canadian side of the Lake of the Woods. The wind had come up during the night, and snow was spitting from dark, overhanging clouds. Danny Orlis and his companion, Jim Smith, tightened the draw cords on their parkas and stepped out into the biting cold wind.

  “It’s a good day for hunting,” Danny said, looking out over the island-dotted water.

  “It’s a better day for hunting than for going to school,” Jim replied. He was not so tall as Danny by two or three inches, and his face was white and sallow.

  He had been living on the Angle with his grandparents only a month or so, and he didn’t have that bronzed, healthy look of Danny and the other kids.

  “It was too bad Mrs. Olson had to get sick,” Danny said, “but as long as she did, I’m kind of glad it was today, so we didn’t have to go to school. I was afraid we were going to have to miss out on this trip.”

  “Me too.”

  The boys were with Danny’s dad, Carl Orlis, and a party of hunters from Minneapolis who were headed for the deer-inhabited islands on the Canadian side. They woul
d help the cook in the galley, help dress the deer, ducks and geese that were shot, or do any of a hundred other things that needed to be done on a hunting expedition.

  “Boy, this is a lot more fun than I ever had in the city.” Jim grinned excitedly, wrinkling up his freckled nose. “I was kind of mad when Aunt Elizabeth said she couldn’t keep me any longer, and that I’d have to come up here and stay with Grandpa Bates, but I’m not any more. This is more fun than I ever had in my life before.”

  “You just wait until the lake freezes over and we get a lot of snow,” Danny told him. “That’s when we really have the fun.”

  They sat down in the stern of the boat with their backs to the wind. The men were huddled in the cabin keeping warm, and Carl Orlis was forward, breaking out the hunting gear.

  “I thought for a while Dad wasn’t going to let us come along,” Danny went on. “He doesn’t like this bunch of hunters very well. I heard him tell Mother last night that he wished he hadn’t promised to take them on.”

  “Why?” Jim asked quickly.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Danny replied, “but some of these fellows sure don’t look very much like hunters to me.”

  “What would they be doing up here if they weren’t hunters?” Jim persisted. “You—”

  At that instant the cabin door opened and a tall, swarthy hunter bundled in a heavy wool mackinaw came out. Danny jabbed Jim in the ribs to silence him.

  “What are you two doing out here?” the stranger asked. He sounded pleasant enough, but Danny shivered involuntarily. This Eric Densmor, for that was the hunter’s name, had piercing eyes, and his mouth was set in a thin, hard line. A faint scar was visible across his cheek. He had a quick, nervous way about him. “What are you doing out here in the cold?” he asked again.

  “Just sitting here talking,” Danny told him.

  “That’s a good way to keep out of trouble.” Eric lifted a powerful pair of binoculars and began to scan the horizon carefully, searching out first one island and then another.

  Danny poked Jim in the ribs and nodded significantly toward the stranger with the field glasses. A hunter on vacation was relaxed and carefree. Eric was as taut and nervous as the tiger Danny had seen at the zoo in Duluth.

  After a few minutes Eric put down the binoculars and began to rub his bare hands to warm them. “Thought maybe I could see a deer or a moose,” he explained, “but no such luck.” With that he turned and went quickly back into the cabin.

  “Now what do you make of that?” Jim asked as soon as the hunter was gone.

  Danny shook his head. “He wasn’t looking for deer. I know that much,” he replied. “Even a tenderfoot knows that as cold and raw as the wind is this morning, no deer’s going to stand out along the shore like they do in the summer time.”

  “I—I’m beginning to get sort of scared,” Jim chattered. “Aren’t you?”

  “No,” Danny said truthfully. “I’m just awfully curious about Eric and what he’s doing here, but I’m not scared. You see, I put my trust in the Lord to watch over me, so I’m not afraid.”

  His friend looked at him quickly. “Now what do you mean by that?” he asked.

  “The Bible tells us that Jesus watches over us and cares for those who believe in Him,” Danny went on. “It tells how He healed the sick, and made blind people see, and even raised people from the dead. If He could do all those things, He can surely watch over me. It’s like Dad says. Jesus is the same now as He was then.”

  Jim was quiet for a long while, “I never thought about it like that before,” he said at last.

  “The important thing,” Danny continued, “is for us to realize that we’re sinners, then to confess our sins and take Jesus as our Saviour.”

  “I don’t know that I’m so bad as all that,” Jim said defensively. “I’ve never been in any real trouble. I mind Grandma, and do my chores, and don’t lie or cheat or steal. I don’t see why I’d need a Saviour.”

  “The Bible tells us that ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,’” Danny said. “And in another place, that ‘all we like sheep have gone astray.’ That means you and me and everyone—”

  Just then Mr. Orlis and Eric Densmor came out onto the deck.

  “I tell you, Orlis,” Eric was saying angrily, “I’m paying good money for this trip, and I’m not going to be on a stand with anyone else. I’m going to be alone.”

  “But that isn’t the way we hunt,” Danny’s dad said evenly. “We go out by two’s to our stands, and the guides will drive the deer toward us. You’ll get plenty of shooting, and be safer than you would be alone.”

  “Just the same I’m going to be alone!”

  Carl Orlis shook his head, and Danny saw his eyes narrow like they did when he had been pushed just as far as he could be pushed. “If you don’t care to hunt the way we hunt, Mr. Densmor, I’ll be glad to refund your money and send for the plane to pick you up and take you back to Warroad or Kenora.”

  “Oh, no—no,” Eric said hurriedly, his manner softening. “I’d much rather be alone, but if that’s the way it is, I guess I can hunt with someone else.”

  “You can suit yourself about that,” Mr. Orlis said mildly, but with unmistakable firmness. “We don’t want you to feel that we’re forcing you to do something you don’t want to do.”

  “Not at all. Not at all.” He laughed heartily and clapped Mr. Orlis on the back with his big soft hand. But Danny and Jim both saw the scowl on his face as he followed Danny’s dad back into the cabin.

  **End of sample**

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