“He must ’a’ been a stranger,” deduced Anderson mechanically.
“—an’ Bud said you lived right on ahead where the street lamps was. Jest then a big sleigh turned out of the lane back of Mis’ Luce’s an’ drove up to where we was standin’. Bud was standin’ jest like this—me here an’ Rosalie a little off to one side. S’posin’ this chair was her an’—”
“Yes—yes, go on,” from Anderson.
“The sleigh stopped, and there was two fellers in it. There was two seats, too.”
“Front and back?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I understand. It was a double-seated one,” again deduced the marshal.
“An’ nen, by gum, ’fore we could say Jack Robinson, one of the fellers jumped out an’ grabbed Rosalie. The feller on the groun’, he up an’ hit me a clip in the ear. I fell down, an’ so did Bud—”
“He hit me on top of the head,” corrected Bud sourly.
“I heerd Rosalie start to scream, but the next minute they had a blanket over her head an’ she was chucked into the back seat. It was all over in a second. I got up, but ’fore I could run a feller yelled, ‘Ketch him!’ An’ another feller did. ‘Don’t let ’em get away,’ said the driver in low, hissin’ tones—”
“Regular villains,” vowed Anderson.
“Yes, sir. ‘Don’t let ’em git away er they’ll rouse the town.’ ‘What’ll we do with ’em?’ asked the feller who held both of us. ‘Kill ’em?’ Gosh, I was skeered. Neither one of us could yell, ’cause he had us by the neck, an’ he was powerful strong. ‘Chuck ’em in here an’ I’ll tend to ’em,’ said the driver. Next thing we knowed we was in the front of the sleigh, an’ the whole outfit was off like a runaway. They said they’d kill us if we made a noise, an’ we didn’t. I wish I’d’a’ had my rifle, doggone it! I’d’a’ showed ’em.”
“They drove like thunder out to’rds Boggs City fer about two mile,” said Bud, who had been silent as long as human nature would permit. “’Nen they stopped an’ throwed us out in the road. ‘Go home, you devils, an’ don’t you tell anybody about us er I’ll come back here some day an’ give you a kick in the slats.’
“Slats?” murmured Anderson.
“That’s short fer ribs,” explained Bud loftily.
“Well, why couldn’t he have said short ribs an’ been done with it?” complained Anderson.
“Then they whipped up an’ turned off west in the pike,” resumed Bud. “We run all the way home an’ tole Mr. Lamson, an’ he—”
“Where was Rosalie all this time?” asked Anderson.
“Layin’ in the back seat covered with a blanket, jest the same as if she was dead. I heerd ’em say somethin’ about chloroformin’ her. What does chloroform smell like, Mr. Crow?”
“Jest like any medicine. It has drugs in it. They use it to pull teeth. Well, what then?”
“Well,” interposed Roscoe, “Mr. Lamson gave the alarm, an’ nearly ever’body in town got out o’ bed. They telegraphed to Boggs City an’ all around, but it didn’t seem to do no good. Them horses went faster’n telegraphs.”
“Did you ever see them fellers before?”
“No, sir; but I think I’d know ’em with their masks off.”
“Was they masked?”
“Their faces were.”
“Oh, my poor little Rosalie!” sobbed old Anderson hopelessly.
CHAPTER XVI
The Haunted House
Days passed without word or sign from the missing girl. The marshal haunted the post-office and the railroad station, hoping with all his poor old heart that word would come from her; but the letter was not there, nor was there a telegram at the station when he strolled over to that place. The county officials at Boggs City came down and began a cursory investigation, but Anderson’s emphatic though doleful opinions set them quite straight, and they gave up the quest. There was nothing to do but to sit back and wait.
In those three days Anderson Crow turned greyer and older, although he maintained a splendid show of resignation. He had made a perfunctory offer of reward for Rosalie, dead or alive, but he knew all the time that it would be fruitless. Mark Riley, the bill-poster, stuck up the glaring reward notices as far away as the telegraph poles in Clay County. The world was given to understand that $1000 reward would be paid for Rosalie’s return or for information leading to the apprehension and capture of her abductors.
There was one very mysterious point in connection with the affair—something so strange that it bordered on the supernatural. No human being in Bramble County except the two boys had seen the double-seated sleigh. It had disappeared as if swallowed by the earth itself.
“Well, it don’t do any good to cry over spilt milk,” said Anderson bravely. “She’s gone, an’ I only hope she ain’t bein’ mistreated. I don’t see why they should harm her. She’s never done nobody a wrong. Like as not she’s been taken to a comfortable place in New York, an’ we’ll hear from her as soon as she recovers from the shock. There ain’t no use huntin’ fer her, I know, but I jest can’t help nosin’ around a little. Mebby I can git some track of her. I’d give all I got in this world to know that she’s safe an’ sound, no matter if I never see her ag’in.”
The hungry look in his eyes deepened, and no one bandied jests with him as was the custom in days gone by.
* * * *
There were not many tramps practising in that section of the State. Anderson Crow proudly announced that they gave Tinkletown a wide berth because of his prowess; but the vagabond gentry took an entirely different view of the question. They did not infest the upper part of the State for the simple but eloquent reason that it meant starvation to them. The farmers compelled the weary wayfarer to work all day like a borrowed horse for a single meal at the “second table.” There was no such thing as a “hand-out,” as it is known in the tramp’s vocabulary. It is not extraordinary, therefore, that tramps found the community so unattractive that they cheerfully walked miles to avoid it. A peculiarly well-informed vagrant once characterised the up-state farmer as being so “close that he never shaved because it was a waste of hair.”
It is hardly necessary to state, in view of the attitude of both farmer and tramp, that the misguided vagrant who wandered that way was the object of distinct, if not distinguished, curiosity. In the country roads he was stared at with a malevolence that chilled his appetite, no matter how long he had been cultivating it on barren soil. In the streets of Tinkletown, and even at the county seat, he was an object of such amazing concern that he slunk away in pure distress. It was indeed an unsophisticated tramp who thought to thrive in Bramble County even for a day and a night. In front of the general store and post-office at Tinkletown there was a sign-post, on which Anderson Crow had painted these words:
“No tramps or Live Stock Allowed on these Streets.
By order of A. CROW, Marshal.”
The live stock disregarded the command, but the tramp took warning. On rare occasions he may have gone through some of the houses in Tinkletown, but if he went through the streets no one was the wiser. Anderson Crow solemnly but studiously headed him off in the outskirts, and he took another direction. Twice in his career he drove out tramps who had burglarised the houses of prominent citizens in broad daylight, but what did it matter so long as the “hoboes” were kept from desecrating the main street of the town? Mr. Crow’s official star, together with his badge from the New York detective agency, his Sons of the Revolution pin, and his G.A.R. insignia, made him a person to be feared. If the weather became too hot for coat and vest the proud dignitary fastened the badges to his suspenders, and their presence glorified the otherwise humble “galluses.”
On the fourth day after the abduction Marshal Crow was suddenly aroused from his lethargy by the news that the peace and security of the neighbourhood was being imposed upon.
“The dickens you say!” he observed, abandoning the perpetual grip upon his straggling chin whiskers.
“Yes, sir,
” responded the excited small boy, who, with two companions, had run himself quite out of breath all over town before he found the officer at Harkin’s blacksmith shop.
“Well, dang ’em!” said Mr. Crow impressively.
“We was skatin’ in the marsh when we heerd ’em plain as day,” said the other boy. “You bet I’m nuvver goin’ nigh that house ag’in.”
“Sho! Bud, they ain’t no sech thing as ghosts,” said Mr. Crow; “it’s tramps.”
“You know that house is ha’nted,” protested Bud. “Wasn’t ole Mrs. Rank slew there by her son-in-law? Wasn’t she chopped to pieces and buried there right in her own cellar?”
“Thunderation, boy, that was thirty year ago!”
“Well, nobody’s lived in the ha’nted house sence then, has they? Didn’t Jim Smith try to sleep there oncet on a bet, an’ didn’t he hear sech awful noises ’at he liked to went crazy?” insisted Bud.
“I do recollect that Jim run two mile past his own house before he could stop, he was in sech a hurry to git away from the place. But Jim didn’t see anything. Besides, that was twenty year ago. Ghosts don’t hang aroun’ a place when there ain’t nothin’ to ha’nt. Her son-in-law was hung, an’ she ain’t got no one else to pester. I tell you it’s tramps.”
“Well, we just thought we’d tell you, Mr. Crow,” said the first boy.
In a few minutes it was known throughout the business centre of Tinkletown that tramps were making their home in the haunted house down the river, and that Anderson Crow was to ride forth on his bicycle to rout them out. The haunted house was three miles from town and in the most desolate section of the bottomland. It was approachable only through the treacherous swamp on one side or by means of the river on the other. Not until after the murder of its owner and builder, old Johanna Rank, was there an explanation offered for the existence of a home in such an unwholesome locality.
Federal authorities discovered that she and her son-in-law, Dave Wolfe, were at the head of a great counterfeiting gang, and that they had been working up there in security for years, turning out spurious coins by the hundred. One night Dave up and killed his mother-in-law, and was hanged for his good deed before he could be punished for his bad ones. For thirty years the weather-beaten, ramshackle old cabin in the swamp had been unoccupied except by birds, lizards, and other denizens of the solitude—always, of course, including the ghost of old Mrs. Rank.
Inasmuch as Dave chopped her into small bits and buried them in the cellar, while her own daughter held the lantern, it was not beyond the range of possibility that certain atoms of the unlamented Johanna were never unearthed by the searchers. It was generally believed in the community that Mrs. Rank’s spirit came back every little while to nose around in the dirt of the cellar in quest of such portions of her person as had not been respectably interred in the village graveyard.
Mysterious noises had been heard about the place at the dead hour of night, and ghostly lights had flitted past the cellar windows. All Tinkletown agreed that the place was haunted and kept at a most respectful distance. The three small boys who startled Marshal Crow from his moping had gone down the river to skate instead of going to school. They swore that the sound of muffled voices came from the interior of the cabin, near which they had inadvertently wandered. Although Dave Wolfe had been dead thirty years, one of the youngest of the lads was positive that he recognised the voice of the desperado. And at once the trio fled the ’cursed spot and brought the horrifying news to Anderson Crow. The detective was immediately called upon to solve the ghostly mystery.
Marshal Crow first went to his home and donned his blue coat, transferring the stars and badges to the greasy lapel of the garment. He also secured his dark lantern and the official cane of the village, but why he should carry a cane on a bicycle expedition was known only to himself. Followed by a horde of small boys and a few representative citizens of Tinkletown on antiquated wheels, Mr. Crow pedalled majestically off to the south. Skirting the swamp, the party approached the haunted house over the narrow path which ran along the river bank. Once in sight of the dilapidated cabin, which seemed to slink farther and farther back into the dense shadows of the late afternoon, with all the diffidence of the supernatural, the marshal called a halt and announced his plans.
“You kids go up an’ tell them fellers I want to see ’em,” he commanded. The boys fell back and prepared to whimper.
“I don’t want to,” protested Bud.
“Why don’t you go an’ tell ’em yourself, Anderson?” demanded Isaac Porter, the pump repairer.
“Thunderation, Ike, who’s runnin’ this thing?” retorted Anderson Crow. “I got a right to deputise anybody to do anything at any time. Don’t you s’pose I know how to handle a job like this? I got my own idees how to waylay them raskils, an’ I reckon I been in the detectin’ business long enough to know how to manage a gol-derned tramp, ain’t I? How’s that? Who says I ain’t?”
“Nobody said a word, Anderson,” meekly observed Jim Borum.
“Well, I thought somebody did. An’ I don’t want nobody interferin’ with an officer, either. Bud, you an’ them two Heffner boys go up an’ tell them loafers to step down here right spry er I’ll come up there an’ see about it.”
“Gosh, Mr. Crow, I’m a-skeered to!” whimpered Bud. The Heffner boys started for home on a dead run.
“Askeered to?” sniffed Anderson. “An’ your great-grand-dad was in the Revolution, too. Geminy crickets, ef you was my boy I’d give you somethin’ to be askeered of! Now, Bud, nothin’ kin happen to you. Ain’t I here?”
“But suppose they won’t come when I tell ’em?”
“Yes, ’n’ supposin’ ’tain’t tramps, but ghosts?” volunteered Mr. Porter, edging away with his bicycle. It was now quite dark and menacing in there where the cabin stood. As the outcome of half an hour’s discussion, the whole party advanced slowly upon the house, Anderson Crow in the lead, his dark lantern in one hand, his cane in the other. Half way to the house he stopped short and turned to Bud.
“Gosh dern you, Bud! I don’t believe you heerd any noise in there at all! There ain’t no use goin’ any further with this, gentlemen. The dern boys was lyin’. We might jest as well go home.” And he would have started for home had not Isaac Porter uttered a fearful groan and staggered back against a swamp reed for support, his horrified eyes glued upon a window in the log house. The reed was inadequate, and Isaac tumbled over backward.
For a full minute the company stared dumbly at the indistinct little window, paralysis attacking every sense but that of sight. At the expiration of another minute the place was deserted, and Anderson Crow was the first to reach the bicycles far up the river bank. Every face was as white as chalk, and every voice trembled. Mr. Crow’s dignity asserted itself just as the valiant posse prepared to “straddle” the wheels in mad flight.
“Hold on!” he panted. “I lost my dark lantern down there. Go back an’ git it, Bud.”
“Land o’ mighty! Did y’ever see anythin’ like it?” gasped Jim Borum, trying to mount a ten-year-old boy’s wheel instead of his own.
“I’d like to have anybody tell me there ain’t no sech things as ghosts,” faltered Uncle Jimmy Borton, who had always said there wasn’t. “Let go, there! Ouch!” The command and subsequent exclamation were the inevitable results of his unsuccessful attempt to mount with Elon Jones the same wheel.
“What’d I tell you, Anderson?” exclaimed Isaac Porter. “Didn’t I say it was ghosts? Tramps nothin’! A tramp wouldn’t last a second up in that house. It’s been ha’nted fer thirty years an’ it gits worse all the time. What air we goin’ to do next?”
Even the valiant Mr. Crow approved of an immediate return to Tinkletown, and the posse was trying to disentangle its collection of bicycles when an interruption came from an unsuspected quarter—a deep, masculine voice arose from the ice-covered river hard by, almost directly below that section of the bank on which Anderson and his friends were herded. The result was st
artling. Every man leaped a foot in the air and every hair stood on end; bicycles rattled and clashed together, and Ed Higgins, hopelessly bewildered, started to run in the direction of the haunted house.
CHAPTER XVII
Wicker Bonner, Harvard
“Hello, up there!” was what the deep, masculine voice shouted from the river. Anderson Crow was the first to distinguish the form of the speaker, and he was not long in deciding that it was far from ghost-like. With a word of command he brought his disorganised forces out of chaos and huddled them together as if to resist attack.
“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded, addressing his men in a loud tone. “Don’t get rattled!”
“Are you speaking to me?” called the fresh voice from below.
“Who are you?” demanded Mr. Crow in return.
“Nobody in particular. What’s going on up there? What’s the fuss?”
“Come up an’ find out.” Then Mr. Crow, observing that the man below was preparing to comply, turned and addressed his squad in low, earnest tones. “This feller will bear watchin’. He’s mixed up in this thing somehow. Else why is he wanderin’ around here close to the house? I’ll question him.”
“By gosh, he ain’t no ghost!” murmured Ed Higgins, eyeing the newcomer as he crawled up the bank. “Say, did y’ see me a minute ago? If you fellers had come on, I was goin’ right up to search that house from top to bottom. Was you all askeered to come?”
“Aw, you!” said Anderson Crow in deep scorn.
The next instant a stalwart young fellow stood before the marshal, who was eyeing him keenly, even imperiously. The newcomer’s good-looking, strong-featured face was lighted up by a smile of surpassing friendliness.
“It’s lonesome as thunder down here, isn’t it? Glad to see you, gentlemen. What’s up—a bicycle race?”
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 294