“He doesn’t look to be such a bad fellow,” Florence told herself. And so he didn’t. On his face there was such an expression as one might expect to find upon the countenance of one who, having lived through a long and hard fought battle for self and self interests, had at last found peace in service for another.
Florence read the look pictured there, but she could not account for it. She could not guess why the boy was there at all, nor why he had made the attack that had resulted in the broken arm. It was all very strange and puzzling.
Strangest of all was the thing the one-armed giant was engaged in at that particular moment. On a small chair that emphasized his hugeness, with head bent low and lips constantly moving, he sat whispering over an old Bible, spelling out the words one by one. As the fire regained courage to do its best, lighting up his aged face with a sort of halo, the girl thought she had never seen upon any face before a look so restful, benevolent and benign.
At that moment a hand touched her shoulder. She turned about and found herself looking into the wrinkled face of the old woman.
“Thought y’ might like to lay down a spell,” she said, jerking her thumb toward a door that led to the other room.
Without a word Florence followed her and, fifteen minutes later, buried beneath a pile of home woven coverlids, she lay lost in dreamless sleep.
* * * *
Marion sat upon a bed of moss well up the side of Big Black Mountain. Three days had passed since the mysterious disappearance of Florence and little Hallie, three days of tormenting anxiety. Every creek and runway had been searched, but to no purpose. They had vanished as completely as they might had the earth swallowed them up.
Only one spot remained to be searched—the head of Laurel Creek, beyond the natural gateway.
“They can’t have gone up there,” Mrs. McAlpin had said in a tone of deep conviction. “Florence knew well enough the reputation of those strange people. Nothing could have induced her to pass that forbidden barrier.”
Not satisfied with this, Marion had gone to Ransom Turner about it.
“Hit’s past reason!” he said emphatically. “Them’s the killingest folks in the mountains. That’s a fact, though they’ve never been made to stand trial. She’d never dare to go up there. An’ besides, if hit were best to go there to search, you’d have to git you up half the men in these here mountains, and there’d sure be a big fight right thar.”
So the other hillsides had been searched and the tongues of local gossipers had wagged incessantly. Bitter enemies had it that, seeing herself defeated in the coming election and being ashamed or afraid to stand trial for carrying concealed weapons, the girl had fled in the night and had taken the child with her to the “Outside.” All this, they argued, was known well enough by Mrs. McAlpin and Marion, but they did not care to admit it.
In spite of all this, Ransom Turner and Marion had continued, almost against hope, to carry on the election fight. Black Blevens had sent word to Lige Howard up on Pounding Mill Creek that his mortgage would be foreclosed if he and his three boys did not promise to come down on election day and vote for him as trustee. Ransom Turner, on hearing this had sent word to Lige that his mortgage would be taken care of—that he was to vote for the best man.
Mary Anne Kelly, a niece of Black Blevens, who lived down at the mouth of Ages Creek, sent word to her fiance, Buckner Creech, that if he did not vote right she would break her engagement. That had put Buckner on the doubtful list. Pole Cawood’s wife, who was a daughter of Black Blevens, threatened to leave him and his four small children if he did not vote for her father.
“Such,” said Marion, rubbing her forehead with a groan, “is a school election in the Cumberlands. Nothing is too low or mean if only it helps to gain an advantage. We have fought fair, and lost, as far as I can see. Ransom says we will lack ten or twelve votes, and he doesn’t know where we can find a single other one.”
And yet, with the cheerful optimism of youth, the girl still hoped against hope and looked forward with some eagerness the coming of tomorrow and the election.
Needless to say, with worry over Florence and Hallie, and interest in the election, she had found neither time nor interest for further exploration of the attic nor a search for Jeff Middleton’s treasure.
* * * *
Strange were the circumstances that had held Florence within the forbidden gates these three long days.
She had wakened with a start on the morning following the storm and her strange experiences in the cabin. The sun, streaming through a small window, had awakened her. At first she had been utterly unable to account for her strange surroundings. Then, like a flash, it all came to her. The aged giant, Bud Wax with his arm in a sling, the women, the other man, little Hallie, the storm,—all the strange and mysterious doings of the night flashed through her mind and left her wondering.
The very window through which the sunlight streamed suggested mystery. Whence had it come? These mysterious people who lived beyond the stone gateway had come from below, had travelled up Laurel Creek and had not come back to the settlement. Where had the glass for the window come from? Had it been taken from some older cabin? This log cabin seemed quite new. Had these strange people some hidden trail to the outside world? Ransom Turner had said there was no mountain pass at the head of Laurel Branch. Could it be possible that he was wrong?
All the wondering was cut short by thought of little Hallie. How was she? Had consciousness returned? Perhaps she needed care at this very moment.
With this thought uppermost in her mind, Florence sprang from her bed, drew on her outer garments, then pushed open the door that led to the other room.
She found Hallie feverish, and somewhat delirious. Upon discovering this, without begging leave of her strange host and with not one thought for her own safety, she set herself about the task of bringing the bloom of health back to the child’s cheek.
The people about her brought the things she asked for, then stood or sat quietly about as they might had she been a doctor.
During the course of the day some twenty men and women, and quite as many children, came to peek shyly in at the door, or to enter and sit whispering together.
“More people in this neighborhood than one would think,” was Florence’s mental comment.
A day came and went. Hallie improved slightly. The next day she was so much better that Florence took time for a stroll out of doors. It was then that she received something of a shock. Having wandered down the creek trail until she was near to the stone gateway, she saw a tall, gaunt, young mountaineer step out into the path. With a rifle over his arm, he began to pace back and forth like a sentry on duty.
“I—I wonder—” she whispered to herself, “if he would let me pass?”
She had no desire to leave without taking Hallie, she did not try, but deep in her heart was the conviction that for some strange reason she was virtually a prisoner within those gates.
At once her mind was rife with speculation. Who were these people? What had they to fear from contact with the outside world? Were they moonshiners? She had heard much of mountain moonshine stills before she came to the Cumberlands. If they were moonshiners, where had they sold the product of their stills?
“No, it couldn’t be that,” she shook her head.
Were they a band of robbers? If so, whom did they rob? She thought of the peddler and the one-armed fiddler, and shuddered.
Still, as she thought of it now, she had seen very little in these cabins that could have come from a peddler’s pack. The bare-topped wooden tables were innocent of linen. Towels were made of coarse, hand-woven linen. The women wore no jewelry such as might have come from a peddler’s black box.
“It’s all very strange and mysterious,” she said with a shake of her head.
Only one thing came to her clearly as she returned to the cabin—she must remain beside little Hallie until she was out of danger.
“After that—what?”
This question
she could not answer.
CHAPTER XII
THE MYSTERY TRAIL
As Florence halted in her upward march she felt herself overawed by a terrible sense of desolation. For an hour she had traveled over the most silent, lonely trail her feet had ever trod. Little more than a footpath, possible mayhap to a sure-footed horse, the trail wound up and up and up toward the point where the green of forest ended in massive crags of limestone. She was now among the crags.
Far away on the opposite mountainside the sun was still shining, but on this trail there fell neither sunlight nor form of shadow. The north slope lay bathed in the perpetual chill of a cheerless autumn. No sound came to her from above, not a whisper from below. Beneath her feet was solid rock, above her more rock.
“What’s the use?” she asked herself as she stood there irresolute. “There couldn’t be a pass. There just couldn’t. Yet it seems there must be! And some way, some way, I must escape! Tomorrow is my trial. To fail to appear is to face disgrace. Besides, there are my faithful friends, my bondsmen. I must not fail them!”
Once more, with an eagerness born of despair, she pressed forward.
It was, indeed, the day before the trial. Three days has passed since she had entered the forbidden portals of the rock made gateway. Little Hallie was now so far recovered that she at this moment sat wrapped in a blanket, smiling at the flames in the great fireplace. Yes, Hallie was all right now, but she, Florence, was in trouble. It was necessary that she return to the settlement. But how was she to do it? Three times that day she had approached the stone gateway. Each time the silent sentinel had appeared, treading his monotonous watch before the trail. She had not mustered up the courage to ask him to let her pass.
“There must be another trail, a pass over the mountains at the head of the creek,” she had told herself. So, before the day had half gone, she had walked slowly up the creek trail until far beyond sight of the farthest cabin. Then she had quickened her pace almost to a run.
One thing she had seen in passing the cabins had surprised her not a little. As she rounded a corner she had caught a gleam of white and had at once recognized the forms of three persons standing in the shadows of a great pine. Two were men, one a grown boy. That boy, there could be no mistake, was Bud Wax. The white she had seen was the wrappings on his arm, which was still in a sling.
With his back to her he was so engrossed in the conversation which he was carrying on with the other man that he did not so much as see her.
From that distance she caught only fragments of the talk. As the boy’s voice rose shrill and high, almost as if in anger, she heard:
“Hit’s your bounden duty. That’s what hit are! Look what she’s been doin’. Look—”
But here she passed behind a clump of young pines which muffled the sound of his voice.
As she pushed on through the deepening shadows she thought of this and wondered deeply. Bud had disappeared before she was up that first morning. She had always supposed that he had escaped to his home in the darkness of night and storm. But here he was. What was she to make of that? Why had he come in the first place? Why had he stayed? Was he, also, virtually their prisoner? Or had he gone out and returned for a reason? What was his feeling toward her? There had been times during that last week of school that she had surprised on his face a look almost of admiration. The look had vanished so quickly that she had doubted its existence.
And that night? Why had he leaped at the one-armed giant when he put out a hand to seize her? It looked like a desire to protect her. But why? Was he not from the camp of the enemy—Black Blevens’ camp? Had she not destroyed his most priceless possession, hammered it to bits between two rocks? What could she think?
Her thoughts were suddenly cut short. Before a wall of stone that towered a hundred feet in air, she had come to the end of the trail.
* * * *
In the meantime, all unknown to Marion and Mrs. McAlpin, a clan was gathering at the mouth of Laurel Branch. It was Ransom Turner’s clan. A strangely silent, uncommunicative people, the mountaineers of the Cumberlands seldom confide fully in those who have but late come to live among them. Ransom Turner and the men of his clan had not confided their suspicions, nor even all that they knew about Florence’s strange disappearance, to either Marion nor Mrs. McAlpin.
Having always suspected that the mysterious child, Hallie, had somehow strayed beyond the portals of the gate that led to the head of the creek, and that she belonged to that silent, forbidden land beyond, they had assumed that she had found her way back to her home.
That Florence had followed Hallie beyond the gate, they had suspected at once. As time passed and she did not return, this suspicion, aided by certain rumors that came to their ears, became a conviction.
“Hit’s up there she are!” Ransom Turner had been heard to whisper more than once.
“Hit certain are!” came with a nod of wise heads for answer.
Now it was the day before Florence’s trial, and the school election as well. Ransom’s men did not like the stinging remarks that came from the camp of Black Blevens.
“Tomorrow’s the trial,” Ransom had said. “She’s bound to be here. Go tell the boys to git up their rifles an’ pistol guns an’ come here at sunset.”
This was said to a trusty henchman, who was away at once. In a small clearing a little way up the side of Big Black Mountain, a clearing completely surrounded by thickets of laurel and mountain ivy, the men were now straying in to drop silently down upon the grass.
A grim, silent group they were. Here was a lanky, long-bearded patriarch with a squirrel rifle that stood as tall as he, and here a boy of sixteen with a shiny modern rifle. Here were dark-bearded, middle-aged men with leather holsters buckled to their belts.
Conversation was all in whispers. One caught but fragments of it.
“Hit’s whar she are.”
“Hit’s plumb quare about Bud Wax.”
“Will they fight, you reckon?”
“Sure they will.”
“Bud’s been home once, I hearn tell. Hit’s what Bud said that made Ransom so sartin about her bein’ up thar.”
So the whispering went on and more men straggled in as the shadows fell.
The people at the mouth of Laurel Branch had always resented the presence of their mysterious neighbors beyond the stone gateway. To a certain degree, also, they had feared them. Things mysterious inspire terror. Tales of their strange doings had not grown smaller in their telling. The one-armed giant had become a veritable Cyclops. The beady-eyed stranger, who had once or twice been seen beyond the gates, was a man of strangely magic power. Such were the yarns that had been spun.
Tonight, however, all these spells must vanish before the demand of cold steel. Tomorrow was trial day and election day. Florence was needed. She must be at the mouth of Laurel Branch at sun up. They meant to bring her home. As soon as darkness fell these grim warriors of the hills meant to march past that stone gateway. If a sentry attempted to stop them he would be silenced. They would ask the release of their teacher, the one who had dared to stand and fight for their rights and the rights of their little ones. If they could secure her release by peaceable means they would do it. If it meant a fight, then a fight it would be.
And so, at the very hour when Florence trudged up the dark and shadowy trail, the clan was gathering.
As for Florence, as has been said, she had come to what appeared to be a sudden end of the trail. Before her was a towering wall of rocks.
But a well trodden path, beaten hard by the tread of hundreds who have passed that way, does not end so abruptly. Like the current of a sunken river, it must always go somewhere. By a careful examination of her surroundings, the girl found that certain sandstone boulders that lay in jagged heaps to the right of her were worn smooth. These smooth spots, she reasoned, had been made by human feet.
At once, with a bound, she was away up this natural stairway. Up, up, up she climbed till her heart thumped wildly and her
head whirled. Then, to her vast surprise, just as she reached the topmost pinnacle she came upon a black heap of coal and directly before her a coal shaft yawned.
“A coal mine!” she exclaimed in disgust, sinking down breathless upon a rock. “I have come all this way to find only a coal mine!”
In these mountains, this was no discovery. The mountains were full of coal. There was wanted only a railroad to make the country rich. But to think that she had come all this way in the hope of finding a way out, only to find there was nothing left but to retrace her steps and to choose between taking the desperate chance of slipping past that pacing guard in the dark or remaining quietly within the gates until something happened that would set her free.
“And that last,” she groaned, “can never be. Never! I must escape! I must not miss my trial!”
In the frenzy of this resolve she sprang to her feet. But what was this? The moment’s rest and the cooling breeze had quieted her heart. She could think more clearly. This was no coal mine; could not be. A coal mine at the top of the mountain, a mile by trail from the nearest cabin? What folly! There were veins of coal lower down. She had seen them, and open coal mines, too, almost at the cabin’s door. What, then, could this mean? Here was coal, a coal vein, and an open drift, and yet it was not a mine.
Boldly she set a foot inside the dark opening. At once her foot shot from beneath her and she went sprawling. Only by a desperate clutching at the ragged rocks at her side was she prevented from gliding downward into a dark, unknown abyss.
Frightened, with hands lacerated by the sudden gripping of the rocks, and with heart beating wildly, she clung there panting until her head cooled and she realized that she was resting on a rocky step.
Drawing herself up, she found she was able to sit in a comfortable position and gaze about her. Just before her was utter darkness; behind her was the fading light of day.
The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 115