The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Mildred A. Wirt

  So weary were her limbs, so spent her strength, that Marion felt she would rather lie down and die than to go on, but the thought of the innocent child she protected gave her new strength. So down the other side of the ridge they dashed.

  “Here’s hoping for better luck this time,” sighed Patience as she parted the bushes that lined the next ravine. Hardly had she thrust her right foot forward than she slipped, then started gliding downward. Only a fortunate grab at an overhanging bough saved her from a fall.

  “What is it?” asked Marion.

  “It’s a skidway for logs,” whispered Patience, struggling to regain her footing. “It’s our chance. We’ll have to be careful, awful careful, but it will take us to the river. Mebbe down there in the bottoms there’s some one who’ll help us.”

  With a few well chosen words she explained to her companion that when the white wood timber had been cut down from the mountains some years previous the woodsmen had felled trees into the ravine and having trimmed the branches from them had formed of them a steep chute down which thousands of logs had been sent gliding and booming to the river.

  “It’s slippery,” the mountain girl warned, “but if we are careful we can make it. Hold Hallie with one hand, hug the bank and cling to branches with the other. I’ll go before you. If you slip I’ll try to stop you.”

  Then in silence, foot by foot, yard by yard, rod by rod, they made their way down the treacherous pathway. Now they came upon a moss-grown portion that was safe as a sidewalk, and now there lay before them the shining whiteness of logs over which water had run until they were smooth as polished mahogany. Gliding, climbing, faltering, they made their way downward.

  “Listen!” whispered Patience at last. “The hounds! They’re on our trail again.”

  Then sudden disaster from a new field threatened. At a slight bend in the ravine they came upon a log chute. A great quantity of debris—twigs, rotten limbs, leaves and dead grass had collected in the chute and the whole lay directly in the path. As they climbed confidently upon it the whole mass broke away and the next moment, like children on a pillow in a play chute, they were gliding downward.

  Faster, faster, with fear tugging at their hearts, they flew downward. With no power to help themselves, dumb with apprehension they sat there, sensing brush and trees rushing past them, feeling the sharp cut of leaves on their cheeks until Marion found her tongue to scream:

  “Patience, are we going into the river?”

  “If—if nothing happens first,” stammered the mountain girl, for the first time truly frightened.

  “Can you swim?”

  “Yes, can you?”

  “Yes. Listen, Patience. We are older, we can stand much. Hallie is a small child. The cold of the river will kill her. Take off your cape and make it into a ball. Try to keep it dry. I’ll do the best I can to protect her. Somehow we’ll make shore. We—”

  At that instant her lips were sealed by the sight that burst upon her startled eyes. Apparently directly beneath them, its silently sweeping waters yellow and swollen by recent rains, lay the river and upon it, having just emerged from behind a cloud, shone the moon.

  The perils that lay before the two girls and their small charge, though great enough, were not so imminent as they had appeared. A sudden turn in the chute brought them to a more gradual slope. When at last their cushion of debris floated out upon the river, so slight was the splash it made that it seemed hard to believe that they had reached the end of their perilous glide to safety. But there was still danger, for all too soon their frail raft was water-logged and sinking.

  “Remember the cape,” cautioned Marion as, with her left hand holding little Hallie tightly upon what was left of the raft, she struck out into the dark, chilling waters.

  “Let—let’s keep together,” she called through chattering teeth. “It—it’s going to be hard, but we can make it. Let—let’s try for the other shore.”

  Patience struck boldly out before her.

  In spite of Marion’s best efforts to protect the child, she was getting wet. She began to cry. The cry wrenched the older girl’s heart. “If the water makes my teeth chatter, what must it mean to her!” she thought.

  “Look!” she called to Patience. “What’s that off to the right?”

  “Looks like a log, a saw log. Ought we try for it?”

  “Yes.”

  Instantly the course was changed. A moment later they were clambering aboard a great log of white wood that buoyed them up as easily as a boat.

  Sitting astride the log, Marion wrapped Patience’s warm dry cape about the child. Hardly a moment had elapsed before her crying ceased.

  Of all the strange experiences that had come to Marion, this was the most weird. To have escaped from hounds and kidnappers with a child, to have come gliding down here in such a strange manner, to find herself sitting astride a huge log surrounded by black, rushing waters, and gliding steadily forward to an unknown destination, this was adventure of the most stirring kind. But Marion found little enough time for such reflections. Now that she had come to a time of inaction she began to realize how cold the water and night air were. She was seized with such a fit of shivering that she feared she would be shaken off the log.

  “The wat—the water’s better than this,” she chattered, yet for the sake of the peacefully sleeping child she decided to endure the torture as long as possible.

  Trees and bushes along the river’s bank swept by. A dog at some cabin barked. Off in the far distance a light flickered, then went out. The cold was becoming easier to bear. She was growing drowsy. She wanted to sleep. Sleep—yes, that was what she needed. Sleep, one wink of sleep. Her head fell upon her breast. The cold was overcoming her, but she did not realize it.

  She dreamed she had left the log, to find a roaring fire right by the river’s bank, by which she was warming herself. Suddenly a jolt which almost threw her from the log rudely brought her back to life.

  “Wha—what is it!” she exclaimed, gripping Patience with one hand and clinging frantically to the sleeping child with the other.

  “We’ve gone aground,” said Patience. “If we’re careful we can get ashore.”

  Three minutes later, beside a clump of paw-paw bushes, they were wringing the water from their garments.

  “I saw a light just over yonder,” said Patience. “We’d better try to find it.”

  A very few steps and they were out of the brush and on a well beaten road. A quarter mile down this road they came suddenly upon a broad clearing, in the midst of which were three large white buildings.

  “A school!” exclaimed Marion. “The mission school! Oh, we are safe!”

  For a moment, worn out as she was by over-exertion, excitement and cold, she was obliged to battle with an almost overwhelming desire to drop in her tracks. Her splendid will, however, stood her in good stead and with a firm “Let’s go on,” she led the way.

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE LAST OF HER CLAN

  There was a light in the lower right room of the nearest building. Straight to the door of this room they went and the next second found them blinking at the light and at the same time looking into one of the most saintly faces they had ever seen, the motherly face of Miss Bordell, who had for many years devoted her life to the education of mountain children.

  The girls quickly told their story. Almost before they knew it, having been assured that here they would be quite safe from any intruders, they found themselves tucked in between a pair of white sheets with Hallie sleeping peacefully between them.

  “We’re safe,” Marion whispered to herself, “but the mystery is not solved. Tomorrow—to-mor—” Her thoughts were never finished. Her weary brain had closed shop for the night.

  “It’s the most unusual thing I have ever heard of,” said the school principal after she had heard the girls’ story the next morning. “You say they were regular mountain folks?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Patience nodded.

  “Tha
t’s what makes it so unusual,” said the elderly lady, wrinkling her brow. “Mountain folks aren’t given to stealing and kidnapping. That sort of crime seems almost foreign to their nature. I’ll tell you what we will do. The Circuit Judge, John Bascomb, happens to be down at the village. We’ll go down and talk it over with him. It’s only a mile.”

  So down the road to the village they marched, Marion, Patience, little Hallie, and their benefactress.

  They had reached the first cabin that stood by the creek road when of a sudden Patience, pulling excitedly at the principal’s sleeve, whispered hoarsely:

  “That’s them there! They’re the three men that carried Hallie away!”

  A single glance told Marion she was right. So great was her fear of them that her first impulse was to snatch up Hallie and flee. But her better judgment prevailed. Surely here they were safe.

  The men, apparently without having seen them, turned up a side path to enter a cabin.

  “Are you sure those are the men?” asked the principal.

  “Yes, yes!” the girls answered in unison.

  “Let’s hurry, then.”

  A short time later they were telling their story to Judge Bascomb, a kindly old man.

  “First thing,” he said after they had finished, “is to find out who the men are. Come on out and show me the cabin they entered.”

  “H’m,” he mused as he sighted the cabin. “Can’t be Long Jim. That’s his cabin. He’s laid up with rheumatism. Must be some of his friends. Here, John Henry,” he called to a barefoot boy. “Who’s visiting at Long Jim’s?”

  “Reckon hit’s Black John Berkhart and his brother, Blinkie Bill, and mebbe Hog Farley.”

  “H’m,” said the judge. “I know ’em. We’ll just step over there.”

  “No, no,” said Marion, hanging back. “I—I couldn’t.”

  “That’s all right, little girl,” the judge reassured her. “They’re just plain mountain folks. I can’t understand their actions of yesterday, but that’s what we’re going over there to find out.”

  The men in the cabin appeared a little startled at sight of the judge and the girls, but having motioned them to seats around the crude fireplace, they sat there in stoical silence.

  “Black John,” said the judge in a friendly tone, “I’m told you took this little girl from her home yesterday and carried her away over the mountains.”

  “I ’low you’re right informed, Jedge.”

  “Don’t you know that’s kidnapping?”

  “You kin name it, Jedge. I ain’t much on larnin’ no-how.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Jedge, it’s this way,” the black-eyed mountaineer settled himself to explain. “That little gal there is the last of her clan, the Cawoods, the fightenest clan that I reckon ever lived in these here mountains. They fit us and we fit them, and I reckon, Jedge, if ther’d been more Cawoods and less Berkharts there wouldn’t been any Berkharts left, same’s there’s only one Cawood left, an’ that’s little Hallie.

  “Jedge,” the mountain man paused to stare moodily at the fire, “us folks is plum tired fightin’. ’T’ain’t no satisfaction to go out a hoein’ corn an’ makin’ crops on these here rocky hillsides when you know like as not some feller’s lying up there in the bresh above you waitin’ for to put daylight through you. And Jedge, long’s there’s a Cawood a-livin’ in these here mountains, even a little one like Hallie, there’s some one goin’ to rise up to shoot and kill us. So, Jedge, we took her an’—

  “No, Jedge,” he protested as he saw the look of horror on the faces about him, “we didn’t aim to kill her. Reckon there ain’t no mountain folk anywhar mean as that. But, Jedge, out of the mountains thar’s places I’ve heard tell of, big places whar they keep orphans. Hallie bein’ a true orphan, we ’lowed we’d jest take her out thar and give her another name. She’d grow up and never know she was a Cawood, and not nobody else’d know, either, and then thar’d be peace in these here mountains.”

  For a moment there was silence, then the judge spoke.

  “Black John,” he said, “you can’t make right by doing a wrong. Hallie was not kin to you. You had no right to lay one finger upon her. You believe in God, don’t you?” The mountaineer dropped his head. “God never told you that men would be raised up to kill your people for Hallie’s sake. It was the powers of evil and darkness that told you that. It’s not true.

  “As for this crime you have committed,” he said in a stern voice, “you are accountable to the law. You should perhaps be bound over to the grand jury, but you did the thing in ignorance—your motives were not criminal motives. If those who were wronged are disposed to forgive you, and if you give me your word of honor that you will never molest the child again, I’ll do my best to see that you go free.”

  He turned to Patience and Marion.

  “One thing else I want to know,” said Marion, her voice husky with emotion as she turned to face Black John. “Why did you seize my friend at the back of Pine Mountain and hold her against her will?”

  “That, Jedge,” said the mountain man, talking to the judge instead of Marion, “was part and parcel of the same plan. Little Hallie were a stayin’ at their cabin then and we thought quite natural we might trade the older girl fer the leetle one that wasn’t only just a mountain girl noways.”

  The judge looked at Marion as much as to say: “That is explained. Shall we hold them?”

  Marion frowned. She knew mountain ways and mountain courts, knew how seldom justice was done. She recalled a word Ransom Turner had let fall. “Reckon a word of honor given by a mountain man’s a heap site surer than a jury trial.”

  “I’ll take his word, if he gives it freely,” Marion said.

  “Black John, do we have your word of honor?”

  “Jedge, hit’s mighty hard to see through; plumb hard, but I reckon hit’s right. I give my word, Jedge.”

  The judge bowed. Then, followed by the judge, they all filed out of the cabin.

  At ten o’clock, in her room at the whipsawed cabin, with great events hanging in the air all about her, Marion closed her weary eyes for a few winks of sleep. Little Hallie slept peacefully beside her.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE STRANGE PROCESSION

  When Florence awoke next morning at dawn she stared wildly about her for an instant, then settled back luxuriously among the covers.

  “Home,” she breathed. “Back at the whipsawed cabin!”

  She lay there gazing dreamily at the time browned ceiling. Suddenly her gaze fell upon the misplaced board that covered the opening leading to the attic.

  At once her mind was filled with all manner of wild speculations. Had Marion, in her absence, thought of some new hiding place in that attic? Had she found the Confederate gold? Or had Uncle Billie talked too much about the vanished gold? Had some one, with no legal right to the gold, come to the house while everyone was away? Had he climbed to the attic and plundered it?

  She found herself all but overcome by a desire to climb up there and look for herself.

  “But this day,” she said, sitting up wide awake, “this day I have no time for treasure hunting. My business today is that of being tried by a jury. And after that,” —her thoughts were bitter,—“after that it is to be my duty to show these mountain folks how gamely a girl from the outside can lose an election.”

  Strangely enough, at this moment there passed through her mind moving pictures of her experience at the back of Pine Mountain.

  “The deed for Caleb Powell’s land,” she whispered. “I wonder when they will have it? Will they have it at all? Will we get our commission?”

  “Oh well,” she exclaimed, leaping out of bed, “there’s no time for such speculation now.”

  The trial was on. The house was packed. Lacking a town hall, the Justice had selected the schoolhouse for court room.

  To Florence the thing was tragic. To be tried by a jury, a jury of men who two months before were utterly unknown t
o her; to be tried by a people whose children she had been helping to educate, this was tragic indeed. There were faces in the audience which seemed to reflect the tragedy; seamed faces, old before their time; faces of women who had toiled beyond their just lot that their children might have just a little more than they had enjoyed.

  There was humor in the situation, too. To be sitting there in the very chair which she had been accustomed to use in her school-work; to be looking into the faces of scores of children, yet instead of directing their work to be listening to the Justice stumbling over the words of the warrant, all this struck her as decidedly odd, a thing to smile about.

  Ransom, too, must have seen the humor of it, for as Florence looked his way she surprised a smile lurking around the corners of his mouth.

  The jury was called. Florence, studying their faces as they came shambling forward, was surprised and relieved to find there not a single man who was hostile to her; not one of Black Blevens’ men was on that jury. She caught her breath as the true meaning of it came to her. George Sergeant, the deputy, was her friend. He had seen to it that she had the proper sort of a jury. A lump came into her throat. It is good, at such a time as this, to know that one has friends. The very fact that she had demanded a jury trial had perhaps saved the day for her.

  The details of the case arranged, a lawyer arose to open the case. It was Florence’s lawyer, provided not by herself, but by Ransom Turner and his men.

  It was a beautiful and wonderful speech that the young lawyer made. A product of the mountain, born and raised far up in the hills, he had been helped to his earlier education by just such a school as the girls had been teaching.

  “An outrage! A shame and a blight to Laurel Creek’s good name!” he exclaimed eloquently. “You all know what these summer schools have meant to us and to our children. Good hearted, generous people of education and refinement come to our mountains to help our children, and how do we repay them? Arrest them for carrying concealed weapons! Arrest a woman for that! And what was it that this lady did? She put a twenty-two pistol in her pocket after she failed to shoot a squirrel. A pistol, did I say? Really a little rifle. A long barrel and a handle. Attach a stock to it and it’s a rifle.