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Title: Tom Slade in the north woods
Author: Percy Keese Fitzhugh
Illustrator: Howard L. Hastings
Release date: November 22, 2023 [eBook #72204]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1927
Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM SLADE IN THE NORTH WOODS ***
TOM SLADE IN THE NORTH WOODS
[Illustration: CARRYING PART OF OUR PROVISIONS WE PROCEEDED SINGLE
FILE.]
TOM SLADE
IN THE NORTH WOODS
BY
PERCY KEESE FITZHUGH
Author of
THE TOM SLADE BOOKS
THE ROY BLAKELEY BOOKS
THE PEE-WEE HARRIS BOOKS
THE WESTY MARTIN BOOKS
ILLUSTRATED BY
HOWARD L. HASTINGS
Published with the approval of
THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS : : NEW YORK
Made in the United States of America
Copyright, 1925, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP
CONTENTS
I. Perhaps You Have Met Before
II. Who Is That Man?
III. A Tragic Episode
IV. The New Venture
V. A Neighbor’s Story
VI. The End of One Trail
VII. Into the Depths
VIII. Shadows
IX. The Sign of the Four
X. The Work Progresses
XI. Alone
XII. Signs on the Mountain
XIII. The Steady Gaze
XIV. The Apparition
XV. Out of the Past
XVI. Somebody’s Son
XVII. Baffled
XVIII. Seeing Is Believing
XIX. Guesswork or Action
XX. Suspense
XXI. Despair
XXII. Tom
XXIII. Strange Partners
XXIV. And “Peters” Drops in
XXV. A Ghost on the Wire
XXVI. Whose Letter?
XXVII. Mystery upon Mystery
XXVIII. This Is Brent’s Suggestion
XXIX. Rivers Is Delighted
XXX. The Threads Unravel
XXXI. An Evening of Deductions
XXXII. The Letter Comes Back
XXXIII. Face to Face
XXXIV. It Can’t Rain Forever
TOM SLADE IN THE NORTH WOODS
CHAPTER I—PERHAPS YOU HAVE MET BEFORE
One of the surest signs of approaching autumn in this suburban town of
ours, is the reappearance in the main thoroughfares of my adventurous
young friend Tom Slade after his summer sojourn in the mountains. When I
see that familiar form in brown negligee attire careering down Main
Street in the outlandish flivver which seems to be a very part of him, I
know that Temple Camp has closed for the season, that the schools are
again open, and that soon I shall be raking up dried leaves on the front
lawn. The return of Tom Slade is just as much a harbinger of autumn as
the coming of the first robin is a harbinger of spring.
My first glimpse of that dilapidated Ford always arouses a cheery
feeling in my heart and I am not offended at the rather perfunctory wave
of the hand with which Tom recognizes and greets me as he hurries by. I
know that when he gets around to it he will run up to see me and beguile
me with an account of the summer up at the big scout camp of which he is
the very spirit.
Sometimes I think that there is no single character in this whole
thriving town who would be as much regretted as Tom Slade, if he should
go away. There is a breezy kind of picturesqueness about him that sets
him apart and makes him a sort of local celebrity. I think I have never
in my life seen him wearing a regular suit of clothes. He goes hurrying
about town in the winter months quite hatless; he seems always on the
go. I have seen a good many boys in this town, who were scouts not so
long ago, grow up and become absorbed in the seething business of the
growing community. Some of them are grown into ingratiating young
fellows in banks, some are in the real estate “game” as they call it;
they are all driving around in good cars and exhaling a distressing
atmosphere of sophistication.
When I go into the Trust Company and am welcomed patronizingly by young
Ellis Berrian I could almost choke him for his self-sufficiency. He used
to caddie for me over at the Warrentown course. These white-collared
young gentry are cutting a great swath and producing nothing. They buy
cars on the installment plan and talk glibly about the rise in values
when the new bridge shall span the Hudson.
The first I ever knew of Tom Slade was when he was a hoodlum down in
Barrel Alley (since obliterated, praise be) and he got his name in our
local newspaper for knocking down a heroic official who was placing the
few Slade belongings in the street by way of executing a court order of
eviction. Tom, then fourteen, knocked the official in the gutter--I
think it was the gutter.
Then the local scout troop got hold of him and found (as the official
had found) that he had an uncanny way of doing what he set his heart on
doing. He made a record in scouting. His mother and father both died,
and the scouts took him up to camp with them. His heroism up there
brought him to the attention of Mr. John Temple, of whom this town may
well be proud, and the outcome of the whole business was that Mr. Temple
founded Temple Camp up in the Catskills which has grown into one of the
biggest scout communities in this country.
When the war cloud broke Tom enlisted, and came back when it was over
with a record that made him a celebrity in this young city. He was right
then at the parting of the ways. He might have got a job in one of the
banks or studied law (so I understand) on Mr. Temple’s bounty, and
become another hapless member of that group of young ghouls who haunt
the court-house and are sometimes driven back on real estate and title
searching. It must be confessed Tom would have made a wretched lawyer.
But the spirit of adventure was in him, the wind blew in his face, the
woods called to him. He went up to Temple Camp and became a sort of
assistant there.
I do not know exactly what are his duties, but when I visited Temple
Camp a couple of years ago, he seemed to form a kind of link between the
management and the scouts. He invited me up there and I hardly laid eyes
on him during my whole week’s stay. All I can say is that he was always
in a hurry, always hatless, and always had a group of scouts following
him about. He had what none of the councilors or scoutmasters had, and
that was picturesqueness. I think he is the only official up there who
has anything bizarre about him. I suppose a big camp like that must have
its hero, and he is that.
Temple Camp has a small office in this town, where there is a manager, a
bookkeeper, and two or three girls who send out circulars and
prospectuses. During the winter months, Tom identifies himself with this
prosy department of the romantic scout community in the Catskills, and
in the spring he is off again to get the boats in the water and repair
the springboard or the observation tower, and fell trees for new cabins,
and heaven knows what all. During his season in Bridgeboro I am likely
to see him to talk with a dozen times more or less. He stays down at the
old County Seat Hotel and comes up here for dinner occasionally. He is
always welcome. Sometimes we play chess and I can always beat him at
that. We talk into the wee hours.
In our fireside chats this winter we shall have more serious matters to
recall than heretofore. The adventures we will discuss will seem like
things seen in a dream. And when February gales whistle around the bay
window in this cozy library, my little sanctum will seem the more secure
and cheery because of our harrowing recollections of a wind-swept
mountain in the north woods, where a wild voice that haunts me even now
was drowned in the fury of the gale as it echoed in the ghostly
fastnesses of that eery wilderness. We will live over again the chilling
terrors of a night when wild eyes stared into mine, and clawing fingers
groped toward my throat, and the wind moaned and was never still.
Perhaps we may even fancy that we see the poor departed spirit that is
said to haunt the neighborhood of Weir Lake over which the towering
Hogback casts its brooding shadow; the wandering shade that is ever
searching and never finding a living soul in whom to confide the
appalling truth about the tragedy of Leatherstocking Camp.
If you would know this story as Tom and I know it, you may come here in
imagination to my little sanctum, and welcome you will be. You may fancy
that you have tumbled the books and papers from that littered couch
before the open fire plunk on to the floor as Tom himself is wont to do.
Then you may fancy that you are reclining comfortably among my numerous
cushions listening to a winter’s tale about the lonely spaces of the
North.
CHAPTER II—WHO IS THAT MAN?
It is now midwinter and more than a year has passed since Tom ran up
here early in September to see me after his return from Temple Camp. For
reasons you are to know about he did not pay me his usual call of
greeting this last fall. As I think it over now it seems to me his camp
must have closed early that year, for the weather was quite summery and
I was sitting on the porch when I saw that dilapidated Ford of his come
up the quiet street making a noise like a brass band run amuck. On the
side of this gorgeous chariot is printed TEMPLE CAMP, BLACK LAKE, NEW
YORK. But Temple Camp has long since repudiated this ramshackle car
which completed an honorable career in mountainous and rocky by-roads.
It is now Tom’s official equipage and will be, I think, till the end of
time.
“Tomasso,” said I, “I wish you would park that thing around the corner;
I’m afraid people will think it belongs to me.”
“What’s the matter with it?” he called from the curb. “I’m going to turn
it upside down and empty the motor out of it this winter and get it
ready for the Adirondack trails next spring. All she needs is a new
block--and a new body. She’s going to do some stepping next summer.”
“Yes, yes, explain all that,” I said, as he breezed up onto the porch
and grabbed my hand. “It’s good to see you, Tommy, old boy.”
He wore, as usual, a khaki-colored flannel shirt with trousers to match.
He never bothers about a scarf and, as he scorns a hat, the breeze
(especially when he is driving) plays havoc with his hair. I would say
that the most bizarre detail of his attire is a belt which he says is of
snakeskin. He got it from old Uncle Jeb Rushmore, the one time scout and
guide on the western plains, who is now ending his days as chief scout
at the big camp.
“Well, Tom,” I said; “What’s the good word?”
He sat on the railing unrolling his sleeves, as a trifling concession to
social propriety, I suppose. “I’ve been trying to get up here ever since
Saturday,” he said, “but we’re making a big map of the camp down at the
office--it’s going to be a peach, ’bout five feet square. They’re going
to photograph it down and send out copies with the spiel--you know that
booklet. By the way, do you want to buy a thousand dollars’ worth of
stock in a new camp? Up in the Adirondacks? _Leatherstocking_, how’s
that for a name?”
“It’s taken from a character in Cooper’s novels, in case you don’t
happen to know,” I commented dryly. And I added, “If I had a thousand
dollars to throw away I’d buy you a new car.”
“Well, the name fits pretty pat,” Tom said. “Did you ever hear of
Harrison McClintick, the leather king? I suppose maybe that’s why he
named his camp Leatherstocking. He’s a war millionaire; he made a
fortune in leather during the war.”
“Did he make leather stockings?” I asked.
“Listen to what I’m going to tell you,” said Tom, ignoring my
playfulness. “I’ve just come from Mr. Temple’s----”
“He’s the man to see if you want a thousand dollars,” I said. “Do you
wear your present regalia when you go up to Temple’s?”
“Sure, he doesn’t care,” Tom rattled on. “Listen, I want your advice and
I may want some help----”
“Not a thousand dollars,” I said. “They’re starting a new Golf Club down
at Cedarville and I’m interested in that, thank you.”
Tom extended his arms on either side of him, bracing his hands against
the railing on which he sat. “Listen,” he said, “I want to tell you
about something that happened this summer--I mean something I heard
about. If I can get Mr. Temple interested I’m going to do something
big.”
“Somehow I can’t picture you as a stock and bond salesman, Tom,” I said.
“That’s just the trouble,” he complained. “I wish I was ten years older,
then maybe Mr. Temple would listen to me. But you’ll listen to me, and
he’ll listen to you.”
“I’d do more for you than listen to you, Tommy, old boy,” I said. He was
so breezy and enthusiastic, so fresh and wholesome in his unconventional
attire, that I could not help letting a little ring of affection sound
in my words. “But it would be a terrible blow to me, Tom, if you should
get interested in business. To me you have always seemed the very spirit
of scouting.”
“No, but listen,” he continued eagerly. “Up at camp this summer a crew
of government surveyors blew in one day; they’re connected with the
Geologic Survey--nice chaps, all of them. All the scouts fell for them.”
“And then?”
“Well, they were there to make a survey of Beaver Chasm up in back of
the camp--you know the place.”
“You were going to take me there, but you never did,” I said. “You were
building cabins instead.”
“Forget it,” said Tom. “They spent a couple of nights with us at
campfire; they’ve been in the Florida Everglades and up in Alaska and
down the Mississippi on levee work and gosh knows where all. Well last
summer, before they hit Temple Camp neighborhood, they were surveying up
in the Adirondacks around Lake Placid. After that they hit it for
Ausable Chasm. About ten miles east of the boundary of the Adirondack
Park--I know just about where it is--they got into a pretty punk road
that led around north of a mountain. Hogback--ever hear of it? Well,
they drove along and all of a sudden the road ended--plunk. Right in the
middle of the woods. That’s the way it is with a lot of roads up there
in the Adirondacks. Well, there was a trail, a sort of continuation of
the road. Of course they couldn’t drive, but they hiked in about a mile
or so and ran right into a camp--_now wait_!”
“I’m all ears,” I said.
“They were in one of those rich men’s camps--those places are all
through the Adirondacks, you know. There was a lake about half a mile
across, a fine hunting lodge--big chimney-place and everything. Yes,
I’ve seen it myself! I took a run up there before I came home. The
hunting lodge is, oh, maybe, fifty by a hundred, all rough stone.
Outbuildings and everything! Regular millionaire’s camp!”
“Go on,” I said, laughing at his enthusiasm. “Did you meet the
millionaire?”
“Nah, he wasn’t there; the place is for sale. There were just a couple
of game wardens bunking there when the surveyors saw the place. When I
was there week before last there wasn’t a soul. But I saw a deer--saw
two of ’em. So you see it’s not much like Times Square. _Oh man alive_,
that’s some wilderness up there. Why, when I went back to Temple Camp I
thought I was on Broadway.
“So I didn’t learn anything when I was there, only I saw the place. Oh
boy, what a place for trout fishing--regular mountain streams, you know,
rocks and everything. Well, now here’s what the surveyors told me--I’ll
give you an idea of the place afterwards.”
“Any golf up there?” I coyly ventured.
“There you go with your golf!” he hurried on. “No, there’s no golf. But
if you want to get your shoes shined or your suit dry cleaned--you old
front porch shark--you can go to Plattsburg about twenty miles away,
over the mountains.”
“Do the buses run often?” I asked.
He ignored my query and hurried on. “Well, now that camp is owned by
Harrison McClintick who made _millions_ in leather during the war. He
made holsters for pistols, and leather belts, and with the odds and ends
he made leather buttons, and the strips that couldn’t be used for
leather buttons or puttee laces, he made into shoelaces. By the time he
got through with a leather hide there wasn’t enough left to clog up a
fountain pen.”
“Fancy that,” I commented.
“Yes sir; well, to make a long story short, that place, _Leatherstocking
Camp_, is for sale, and it can be bought _cheap_. Now wait a minute, I’m
going to tell you something--keep still.”
“Proceed,” I said with quiet dignity.
“Now what do you say to that place for a scout camp? You’ve heard a lot
of talk--Mr. Temple himself started it--about a training camp for
scoutmasters. There’s the spot, made to order! What I want you to do is
talk to Mr. Temple about it, so as he’ll talk with the local
council--maybe the national council.”
I am afraid that I must have looked very practical and sober to poor
Tom. I remember laying my open hands finger to finger with the first
fingers against my pursed lips as I contemplated him rather dubiously.
“Want _me_ to speak to Mr. Temple?” I queried ruefully.
“Sure, why not?”
“Hmph,” I mused. “But tell me, Tommy boy, why does Mr. Harrison
McClintick, the leather king millionaire, want to sell his romantic camp
in the wilderness?”
“Now you’re talking,” said Tom. “Listen----”
“Let’s go indoors and listen,” I said, rising.
“There was a tragedy up there,” Tom said.
“Well!” I commented. And then, happening to glance out toward the
street, I said, “Do you know that man standing near your car, Tom?”
“He looks like a hobo,” Tom said.
He did indeed; I think he was the most dubious looking person that I
ever beheld. His clothing was in the last stages of wear, and he had a
scraggly beard which somehow suggested neglect of shaving rather than a
preference for that style of adornment. At the distance from which I saw
him, he might have been either young or old. I suppose no man with a
beard looks very young. More than once he had glanced furtively toward
the porch. However, I had not thought it worth while to interrupt Tom’s
eager narrative. But now that we were going indoors I called attention
to him.
“He can hardly have designs on your car,” I observed ironically, as we
sauntered into the house.
Little did I dream of the part that this loitering stranger was to play
in our two lives. I soon forgot him in the appalling story which my
young friend proceeded to tell me. Yet already that prowling figure was
cast in the drama in which Tom and I were to play our parts. Already the
springs of action were moving which were later to produce a thrilling
drama at lonely Leatherstocking Camp.
CHAPTER III—A TRAGIC EPISODE
Seated comfortably in my library, Tom at once plunged into what I
suppose might be called the human interest side of his story. I must
confess I am not greatly interested in leather, nor even in
millionaires’ camps. Nor was I altogether carried off my feet by Tom’s
vision of a new camp. But I listened with rapt attention to his account
of the tragic incident which had made Leatherstocking Camp a place of
bitter memory to its owner.
“The reason why he wants to get rid of it,” Tom said, “is because he
can’t bear the sight of it; he wants to put it out of his life; doesn’t
ever want to hear of it again. Those game wardens up there told the
surveyors all about it. Last year Mr. McClintick and his son and a man
who was an old friend--Weston, I think his name was--were up there duck
shooting. Well, one morning young McClintick got up early and went out
to take a swim in the lake. It happened that Mr. Weston was out early,
too, looking for ducks. I guess it was pretty early, and misty. Anyway,
Mr. Weston saw a dark object moving through the water out in the middle
of the lake. He thought it was a duck and he _aimed his gun and shot at
it_.”
I drew a quick breath. “It wasn’t young McClintick?”
“It was young McClintick.”
“Heavens!” I said. “That was terrible.”
Tom paused before continuing. I could only shake my head, drawing a long
breath and repeating, “Terrible--_terrible_!”
“It was just another of those fatal accidents that happen in the gaming
season,” Tom said. “Most every year you read of some such thing.”
I shook my head; his recital had almost unnerved me. “No, it was
_horrible_,” I mused aloud. “I never read of another accident just like
that--no. I’ve heard of a man aiming at a deer and shooting a comrade
somewhere beyond. But never anything like this. I think the poor man
must have gone crazy afterward.”
“Well,” said Tom, “the story as I heard it from the surveyors was that
he did go to pieces. When he shot at the object, suddenly there was a
kind of splash and something reached up; he thought it was an arm. Well
sir, he wouldn’t let himself believe that he had----”
“Awful, _frightful_,” I said, shudderingly. “Tom,” I added, “I don’t
know whether I feel sorrier for the man or for the father. How would
_you_ feel in the man’s place?”
Tom shook his head. “The game wardens up there told my friends, the
surveyors, that Mr. Weston couldn’t bring himself to go into the lodge
and see if young McClintick was there asleep. He knew the old man never
went in the lake and that there wasn’t anybody else for miles around.
You see there were just three of them there. I understood Mr. Weston was
an old friend of Mr. McClintick. He did think that maybe a game warden
or a fire-ranger had happened into the neighborhood and gone in the
water. All he had to do was to go into the lodge and see if young
McClintick was there in his bed. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
He just waited around, all gone to pieces, for an hour or so.”
“I would say that must have been the most terrible half hour that ever
passed in any human life,” I reflected. “Well, what then?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Tom said. “Of course, both he and Mr. McClintick
knew the worst before long. It sort of broke up the friendship.
Naturally would, don’t you think so? Yet I guess the old man
wasn’t--that is, didn’t exactly hold it against him.”
“Just an accident,” I mused. And Tom and I sat silent for a few moments,
both musing.
“Just an accident,” he said. “They didn’t succeed in getting the body
for several weeks; it was caught in an old seine at the bottom of the
lake. I understand the poor old fellow thought the world of his son. He
just went down to his place in Long Branch and got through with it
somehow. He’s got a big place down there, I understand, and another in
Newport. Lives in New York winters; has a mansion there too, I suppose.
Poor old gent, they said he cared more about his Leatherstocking Camp
than all his other places put together. But he won’t go there now; won’t
look at the place; won’t hear about it. Just wants to sell it and he
won’t haggle about the price. I suppose fifteen or twenty thousand bucks
would buy the whole outfit. Oh, _boy_, that’s some wonderful place! I
was telling Mr. Temple all about it. He just patted me on the shoulder
and said he’d have to talk with the Scout people about it. I think he
was just letting me down easy. _But there’s a chance! There’s the place
for a training camp for scoutmasters!_ Take it or leave it--_but there’s
the spot!_ There won’t be another bargain counter chance like that, not
till Gabriel blows his horn--_no sir!_”
“Did you talk to Mr. Temple like that?” I queried.
“Yes, and he said, ‘It’s always good to see you, Tommy.’”
“Tom,” I said, “do you know, if I were that man--Weston, was it?--do you
know, I think I’d feel worse than if I had murdered. You see a murderer
is defective, he doesn’t see straight, his mind isn’t right, he has no
imagination, he doesn’t suffer remorse. A man who has deliberately
killed doesn’t suffer because he’s abnormal.”
“Highbrow stuff?” Tom commented.
“But a perfectly normal man who takes careful aim and shoots another to
death, in a ghastly accident----”
“I know,” Tom said.
“What must be his feelings?” I mused. “I think I would be a complete
wreck after that. I think I would be forever haunted by the thought of
my ghastly blunder. After all, the most horrible thing may be just a
mistake. I wonder how Mr. Weston was affected.” For a few moments I sat
musing; I could not think of the possibilities of that deserted camp. I
could only think of the tragic occurrence which cast its shadow over it.
To go there after poor Mr. McClintick had turned his grief-wrung face
from it forever would seem almost like wearing a dead man’s shoes.
Tom aroused me out of my reverie by saying, “Sure, I suppose he was
broken--naturally. But what I’m thinking about now is getting hold of
that property--just wait till you see it--and starting it as a scout
camp. Why Mr. Temple made a speech up at Temple Camp only this summer
and said what a wonderful thing it would be to have a sort of training
camp for scoutmasters. Goodness knows, a lot of them need it. And now
here’s a millionaire’s camp in the wilds of the Adirondacks that can be
had almost for the asking----”
“Oh, hardly that, Tommy,” I said. “Besides, it would cost money to put
it in shape. You can’t turn a rich man’s hunting lodge into a scout camp
overnight, you know. You’d have to build shacks and a dormitory; you’d
have either to build or transport boats and canoes there; you’d have to
spend a lot of money, in short. According to your account this place is
in the wilderness. Mr. Temple is a very rich man, my boy; but he’s also
a very shrewd and practical man.”
“Well, talk is cheap,” Tom complained. “But here’s a _chance_.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t talk like that about Mr. Temple,” I said. “Mr. Temple
is as good as his word every time, and you know it. For my part--maybe
I’m more sentimental than you--I’d have a kind of a queer feeling about
the place. Sort of spooky--no?”
“Sure not,” Tom laughed. “Why, two boys have lost their lives at Temple
Camp since the place opened up.”
“Well, I guess you’re right at that,” I confessed. “Now I’ll tell you
what I’ll do,” I added rather more briskly, for to tell you the truth
the story Tom had told affected me so keenly that I found it hard to
think of any other phase of the matter. Perhaps that is because I am a
writer and am apt to see the dramatic element of a thing to the
exclusion of everything else. “I’ll go up and see Mr. Temple; he can’t
do more than throw me out. He and I have one thing in common anyway,
that’s golf----”
“And scouting.”
“Yes, and scouting. I’ll tell him I think the more scout camps there
are, the better. I’ll tell him I think that _his own idea_ about a
training camp for scoutmasters is a bully idea. And I’ll tell him I
believe in you; that I think you know more about the real outdoor stuff
than anybody this side of Mars. Of course, I can’t put myself in the
position of asking him to start and endow a new camp. But I’ll sound him
out, and I think I’m old enough so that he won’t just pat me on the
back.”
“You’re young enough,” Tom said with spirit. “All you need is to sleep
outdoors in the summer.”
“Thank you, I have a home to sleep in,” I said.
“And if we get this thing started, you’re going to come up there,” he
declared.
“And while you’re careering around doing a hundred things at once, I’ll
have to wander around the lake and think about the tragedy that made the
new camp possible.”
“Oh, try to forget it,” said Tom.
“And there’s another thing,” I said. “What would Temple Camp ever do
without you?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t cut out Temple Camp,” he exclaimed. “I’d just take a
summer off to get this new camp started.”
I just shook my head. I’d give a good deal to have his fine spirit and
energy.
CHAPTER IV—THE NEW VENTURE
I wish not to intrude into this narrative. Of the extraordinary
adventures which I am now to record, Tom was unquestionably the hero.
But since I am a trustee of the new camp and was present there in the
exciting season of its formation, I suppose I am the logical one to
group these remarkable incidents into a story. As for Tom, he cannot
remain seated long enough to write a letter.
You must bear with me a little time while I tell briefly the somewhat
humdrum details incident to the launching of this enterprise. Yet even
here was a spice of mystery. I went up that very evening to see our
town’s most benevolent and distinguished citizen, Mr. John Temple. I
know him, as every one in town knows him; perhaps a little better than
some, for I have met him on the golf course. He is none of your
open-handed story book philanthropists, tossing princely sums here and
there, one of those scout angels who rewards the juvenile hero with a
thousand dollars for a brave deed. But he is a very rich man, and a
vastly generous one. I have always believed that the conspicuous success
of Temple Camp is to be ascribed, not only to his liberal endowment of
it, but to his wise and painstaking oversight. It is his pet and his
pride.
Well, I went up to see him and on my way there a rather singular thing
happened. Scarcely had I reached the first corner when I was accosted by
a man whom I thought to be the same one that I had noticed loitering (or
at least pausing) in front of my house during Tom’s call. To this day, I
do not know for a certainty whether or not he was the same man. If he
was, he must have put on an overcoat in the interval. Notwithstanding
his scraggly beard he appeared rather more presentable than the man I
had noticed near Tom’s car. Yet I thought he was the same man.
Be that as it might, he addressed me by name and asked me if I knew
whether the Adirondack camp property, as he called it, had been sold.
“May I ask who you are?” I said with intentional curtness.
As I did not pause he fell in step with me. “No offense,” he said. “I
heard young Mr. Slade was interested in buying it. I’d like to get a job
up that way; my health ain’t so good.”
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t be much of a recommendation,” I said rather
coldly. “And what makes you think that I should know anything about it?”
“I heard it was for sale,” he stammered confusedly.
At the corner I paused just long enough to say, “You had better consult
those who are interested. The matter is none of my business, and none of
yours. Do you belong here in town?”
The man was obviously embarrassed; he had evidently counted on a better
success in chance acquaintanceship. He fell behind me and soon I hit on
an explanation of his presumption. I came to the conclusion that he was
an aggressive real estate man who was after information about a
transaction from which he might squeeze a profit. I thought he might
represent interests which would be keen to make a quick purchase of the
camp property if a prompt resale were assured.
I did not mention this incident in my talk with Mr. Temple, for I wished
not to give him the impression that I was trying to urge him to a quick
decision. But I was very glad indeed that he seemed really interested in
the property and disposed to act promptly. I had thought of my call as
in the nature of a favor to Tom, but had feared it would be unavailing.
But I was quite reassured. Tom thinks it was I who did the trick, but
frankly, I believe that Mr. Temple had the matter in mind when I called
on him.
Well, to make an end of this business phase of the story, Mr. Temple
told me he intended to get in touch with his broker at once, and also
with the national scout people. Mr. Gerry and Mr. Donaldson, of our
local council, went up with Tom and had a look at the property. And
later, Mr. Temple himself went with old Uncle Jeb Rushmore, the good old
scout of Temple Camp. I kept out of the business until the new camp was
actually opened and then I became a trustee.
As soon as the deal had gone through (that was in January) Tom went up
to the property with a couple of young men from this town to stay there
through the spring and try to get the place in some sort of shape for
the summer. One of these young men was the fellow they call Skipper Tim
who is steward down at the boat club during the boating season. He was
well chosen. The other was Totterson Burke--Tot Burke, they call him.
He’s freight agent here in town and used to be in the life saving
service along the coast. I may say here that I think Tom Slade’s circle
of available friends represents every out-of-the-ordinary and
adventurous calling on the face of the earth. They went up in Tom’s
flivver, of course, stopping at Temple Camp to get some tools needed in
felling trees and building cabins. Here they picked up Piker Pete, who
is fire-lookout up on Cloudburst Mountain in back of Temple Camp, and
took him along. I understand he is called Piker because he scans the
country and not because he is in any sense stingy.
As for myself, I did not go till later, when I went up with Brent
Gaylong. That was in the summer. And before that something very
startling happened.
CHAPTER V—A NEIGHBOR’S STORY
Once the proposition of the new camp was settled, and Tom and his hardy
adventurers had gone to brave the winter in those howling wilds, I
forgot all about the enterprise which now seems likely to mean so much
to scouting. Tom wrote me twice, mailing his letters at Harkness on the
Ausable River, about eight miles east of the camp. He told me that they
had a storehouse and two cabins up. His letters breathed a warmth of
enthusiasm which I suppose helped to palliate the rigors of the biting
winter. I inferred that they were working hard and withal having a good
time of it. He wrote that the game wardens made free with his
hospitality and were always welcome with their fireside yarns.
I must confess that when I thought of the spot at all it was as the
deserted camp of the bereaved leather king; not all the pother about the
new enterprise could drive from my memory the vivid picture of the
tragic accident which had occurred there. To me, that would always cast
a shadow over the place. That fine youth (fond of sport and the great
outdoors, as I pictured him, and with a vast fortune to make the path of
life easy) shot through the head as he took an early morning swim in the
lake! And the bereaved father, to whom the spot was now become a place
of sorrowful memory! It seemed almost like taking advantage of his grief
to buy the property at a sacrifice figure. But Mr. Temple only laughed
at me when I spoke to this effect.
Now toward the end of the winter I did something which I suppose was a
trifle presumptuous. This was, I think, a couple of months before I went
up to the camp. I have a little place in Cedarville, a slight distance
inland from Long Branch which, as you know, is on our New Jersey coast.
Here I while away the summer months playing golf. At that time the
Cedarville Golf Club was having a campaign for membership, for its
exceptionally fine course had begun to attract the attention of golf
enthusiasts in other communities.
Well, not to make a long story of it, I was struck by an inspiration.
Tom had mentioned that Mr. Harrison McClintick had a place at Long
Branch. Here would be a fine name to juggle with in our campaign. Surely
he played golf; all millionaires play golf. He must join the Cedarville
Club, and lend his name to our intensive drive.
So when I was down at my little place on a week-end I ran over to Long
Branch. I only suspected that Mr. McClintick would be there; finding
millionaires in their homes is a kind of hunting sport in itself. I was
somewhat crestfallen to learn that Seven Towers, his magnificent place,
had been sold. I have seen few houses so palatial. It was a young man on
the adjoining estate, a gardener or perhaps superintendent, who told me
of the sale of the place. And he told me of other matters which somewhat
changed the color of my thoughts.
Leaning against my car with one foot on the running board he chatted
quite freely about the McClintick fortune. “Why, as I understand it, he
sold out because he couldn’t keep it up,” said he. “He used to have a
place in Newport too, but I heard that’s been sold. Easy come and easy
go, you know. He made it all in the war.”
“So I heard,” I said. “I happen to know the interests that bought his
camp in the Adirondacks. He had a sadder reason for selling that.”
To my astonishment the young man only pursed his lips and looked rather
quizzical. “Guess the old gent was glad enough to get the money,” he
said.
“He’s had reverses then?”
“That’s what they say,” my informant replied.
“Hard luck,” I mused aloud in a kind of half interest. “To lose his son
that way was bad enough----”
“Sure was,” the young fellow agreed. “Rolly, he didn’t amount to much
though. It was a terrible thing just the same.”
At this casual observation I experienced almost a shock. Perhaps I have
a too ready fancy, but I had pictured young McClintick as a splendid and
beloved son cut down by a horrible accident in the bloom of youth.
“So?” I queried. “Why,--what was the matter with him? He certainly had a
sad enough end.”
“Come through the fighting on the other side all right, and then got
shot,” my chance acquaintance commented. “That’s the way it is,” he
added. Then, as if to modify his criticism of the victim, he said, “Oh,
I don’t know; Rolly wasn’t so bad, I suppose. They had their place here
when we got into the war, only it wasn’t anything like the way you see
it now; that whole left wing and both towers were added. Yes, the old
man made quite a place of it. He sure knew how to spend it.”
By way of prolonging our casual chat I offered him a cigarette and
lighted one myself. And so we both lingered for still a few minutes, he
with a foot on the running board, I resting my arms on the steering
wheel.
“You connected with this other estate?” I queried.
“Oh yes.”
“What was the matter with young Mr. McClintick?” I ventured.
“Well, I don’t know as there was anything much. I remember once he was
in some kind of a raid--gambling place down in Atlantic City, I think it
was--and he gave the name of the family’s butler. They came up here
after the butler, I remember.” He recalled the incident with a chuckle.
“Worked out all right,” he added. “The McClinticks paid the fine and I
heard they gave the butler a good fat tip for his wounded feelings. I
guess Pete was satisfied. Oh, Rolly wasn’t so bad, I suppose; guess he
was like a good many millionaires’ sons.”
“Just a little skittish,” I commented.
“Hm, ’bout the size of it. Then there was some trouble when he was
drafted for service; I don’t know just what it was. Old man tried to get
him off on the grounds of his being in war work already--leather. But
they didn’t put it over. I guess Rolly made out all right enough on the
other side. I was over there myself when he was drafted. Let’s see,
Rolly would have been--he must have been--maybe a little over thirty
when he was killed. Funny, huh, how a fellow goes through a war and then
comes back and gets bumped off by some fool of a hunter.”
“It’s a funny world,” said I.
CHAPTER VI—THE END OF ONE TRAIL
Well, I reflected as I drove away, I hadn’t learned anything so very
shocking after all. What surprised me most was that the leather king had
lost his fortune. I thought that Tom, when I saw him, would be
interested to hear about these things. But long before I saw Tom my
tidbits of information were thrown in the shadow by an occurrence which
shocked this whole section of the country. Tom and his comrades did not
learn of it in their lonely retreat until I found time to write, and
even then my letter waited four days in the little post office at
Harkness. So out of touch with the outside world were those workers in
the new camp!
The letter which I sent to Tom was brief for it enclosed a lengthy
clipping from a New York paper that spoke for itself. That same
clipping, returned to me by Tom, is before me on my table now, and the
sight of that glaring headline recalls the sensation which followed the
shocking news contained in the article. I will paste it to my manuscript
so that you may read it just as I did, and as Tom and his friends did a
little later.
MANUFACTURER FOUND KILLED
MYSTERY SURROUNDS DEATH OF HARRISON
MCCLINTICK IN HIS NEW YORK APARTMENT
ROBBERY THOUGHT TO BE MOTIVE
FINGERPRINTS ONLY CLEW
Harrison McClintick, one of the most picturesque figures in
the financial world, was found killed in his apartment in
the Raleigh Arms on Central Park West early this morning. A
maid, entering the living room to turn on the heat at a
radiator, discovered the body on the floor. Greatly
affrighted, she summoned Mrs. Estelle Trevor, the victim’s
widowed sister, who has been the mistress of his home since
the death of Mrs. McClintick in 1921. It was found that Mr.
McClintick had not occupied his room during the night.
Physicians later declared that he had been dead some hours.
No weapon had been used; he had evidently been strangled. An
overturned chair and disordered rugs gave evidence of a
struggle.
Mr. McClintick’s pockets had been rifled and the contents of
a wallet were strewn about the floor. Two twenty dollar
bills and several bills of smaller denomination were found
among the papers which had been thrown about the floor.
Several of these papers contained finger marks and these
markings are the only clew the police have to go upon.
Robbery seems the only plausible motive, yet the discovery
of the money left on the scene seems to discount this
theory. If robbery was the motive, the police say, why did
the robber leave this considerable sum? If robbery was not
the motive, why did the murderer go through his victim’s
pockets, leaving a gold watch and chain as well as the bills
strewn on the floor?
The Raleigh Arms is a modern, but by no means palatial
apartment house. Mr. McClintick’s apartment is on the ground
floor, and is entered by a door in the foyer to the left of
the main entrance. Three windows in the apartment overlook
the street, but they are protected by heavy and elaborate
grille work. Careful inspection of the premises gave no
indication of violent entry and it is thought that the
assailant must have rung the apartment bell and been
admitted by Mr. McClintick himself sometime during the
evening. Neither Mrs. Trevor nor the maid heard or saw any
one in the apartment during the evening. Both retired at
about ten o’clock. The telephone operator, who sat in the
public foyer, does not remember seeing any one approach the
apartment entrance during the evening. This young woman was
reading a novel and though she heard people passing in and
out, paid no attention to them. She went home at about
nine-thirty and from that time on, no one was near the
public entrance of the building.
HIS SPECTACULAR CAREER
The McClintick millions were a product of the world war. The
rise of Harrison McClintick in that period was Napoleonic.
He began life at a bench in a shoe factory in New England.
Later he went west and worked in a tannery, subsequently
becoming foreman, and in time owner. He was a prosperous,
moderately wealthy man when the war broke out. Almost as if
by magic the McClintick tannery became the center of a group
of factories in which were turned out every variety of
leather article used by the war department. During their
period of intensive production, the McClintick plants fell
under the frowning scrutiny of the government and charges of
gross profiteering resulted in an investigation which put
the leather king on the front page of the public prints.
McClintick’s profits were beyond the dreams of avarice and
he spent and gave lavishly. His magnificent Wave Crest Villa
at Newport was only one of his bizarre extravagances. His
palatial yacht was seized by the government for use in the
navy. His estate at Long Branch, New Jersey, was the scene
of hospitality out of keeping with the tragic drama from
which his princely fortune was drawn. His camp in the
Adirondacks with its rubble-stone hunting lodge was a model
of a wilderness retreat. It was here that a year or two ago,
his only son lost his life in one of those tragic accidents
that occur in the hunting season. On a misty morning he was
shot while swimming in the lake, the shooter mistaking his
bobbing head for a wild duck.
Misfortune fell heavily on the head of McClintick after the
war. His wife died in 1921. Already the spectacular fortune
was ebbing away. The place at Newport, and later, the place
at Long Branch, was given up. His town residence on
Riverside Drive was sold and the culminating tragedy of his
death occurred in a comparatively unpretentious apartment
where he was living in reduced circumstances with his
widowed sister and one servant.
So that was the story of Millionaire McClintick. And such was his tragic
end. I was shocked by his death, as the heedless public could not have
been, for I felt almost as if I had known him. At least I could have
added one item to the newspaper report; I could have told the curious
that Leatherstocking Camp, the last of his properties, had been sold
also, and was at that very time being made over to meet the requirements
of a scout camp.
So, you see, two of my mind pictures were smashed. The noble son had
been, to say the least, not without his faults. And the quiet camp,
harboring only sorrowful memories for a bereaved father, had been sold
not so much because of grief as because of pressing need. Well, well,
that was quite a little dose for a story-book dreamer like myself.
But, after all, was the whole business any the less sad? Here was this
crude, strong man forging his way ahead and making a vast fortune. The
“tumult and the shouting died” and his house of cards began to fall
about his head. His wife gone. One estate, then another, sold. Perhaps
it was to get away from all his trouble just for a little season that he
and his party, his son and their friend, went up to their wilderness
retreat. Perhaps, after all, the quiet woods beckoned to this shrewd old
hustler.
And there, in this remote lakeside camp, his only son was taken from
him. What matter why he sold his camp? Poor man, the story was sad
enough in any case, thought I. The newspaper had printed a picture of
him which showed him a stolid looking man; a man with indomitable will
printed on his hard rugged features. He had an uncompromising jaw. But,
I thought, it is just these wilful and triumphant men who suffer keenest
when fate shows itself more powerful and relentless than they.
It was about a month after the tragedy, and the newspapers were still
full of false alarms about an arrest, when Brent Gaylong and I went up
to the camp where Tom and his crew were working with might and main in
the heroic hope of getting the place in some sort of shape during the
late spring.
CHAPTER VII—INTO THE DEPTHS
At Tom’s request I asked Brent Gaylong to go with me and I’m glad I did,
for I think he supplied just what was needed in our camp family. Perhaps
you know him. He lives with his people here in town and is a very
intimate friend of Tom’s. People, speaking likingly of Brent, say there
is something funny about him. I think I know what it is. He is long and
lanky, and wears old-fashioned spectacles and is physically lazy. Hence
he always seems funny against the background of strenuous outdoor life;
in camp he seems particularly amusing. He is sometimes excruciatingly
funny by contrast with Tom’s untiring energy and enterprise. He will do
anything you want him to do with a whimsical air of resignation. He will
climb mountains, hunt for treasure, or trail an animal with an absurdly
serious air. The funny thing about Brent is that, owing to Tom, his lot
is cast in the theatre of adventure, while he looks for all the world
like an old-fashioned schoolmaster. He must be twenty-two or three by
now. He’s good company.
“You’ll go, won’t you?” I asked, alluding to Tom’s message. “Come and
bring your knitting; that’s what he told me to tell you. I’m going to
drive up as far as Harkness and Tom will meet us there with his
flivver.”
“Do we have to walk much?” Brent asked.
“Why, as I understand it, Tom can push his flivver up a kind of trail to
within a mile or so of the camp. That isn’t so bad is it?”
“The flivver?” Brent drawled.
“No, the walk,” I said. “You don’t have to have a wheel-chair just for a
mile or so. Come ahead, Brent; Tom always says when you’re along
something’s sure to happen. You can take some books along, you don’t
have to work.”
“Is that a promise?” he asked.
“Absolutely.”
“How long do we linger near to nature’s heart?”
“Maybe two or three weeks, maybe all summer,” I said.
“I’m not supposed to take an axe or a gun or anything?”
“You can sit indoors all day long and read.”
“I’ll take my slippers and a bath robe,” he said.
We had a delightful motor trip, stopping over at old Ticonderoga and
reaching the little mountain village of Harkness late on the second day.
Keeseville, in the vicinity of the wonderful Ausable Chasm, is the last
place of any size to be passed before entering that wild region to the
west where only foot trails wind in and out among the dense mountains.
Along the road from Keeseville to Harkness the glare of the declining
sun dazzled my eyes so that I could hardly see to drive. It spread a
crimson coverlet over the distant peaks and shimmered a tiny area in a
lonely valley; I suppose it was the glinting water of some sequestered
lake that we saw. It looked like a patch of gold in the deepening gloom.
Then suddenly it was gone.
At Harkness Tom was awaiting us with his flivver. It gladdened my heart
to see that outlandish little car piled full of provisions from the
village store. I wondered how he would make shift to seat us for the
last stage of our journey. The difficulty seemed not greatly to worry
him, for he and a companion hurled a big meal bag into the rear seat
even as Brent and I stood in rueful contemplation of the miscellaneous
freight.
“You can sit right on the bag, Brent,” Tom said, as he hustled about,
busy with a hundred matters. “We don’t get over here to the metropolis
very often. Charlie, this is old Doctor Gaylong; meet Charlie Rivers,
you chaps. I suppose we’ve got to find a place to store your car-- Did
you get the bacon, Charlie? And the macaroni? How about cocoa? This city
trash will probably want cocoa. This is the darndest store,” he
explained, turning to me. “You can get anything here. Climb right in,
you ducks. I guess we won’t be able to take the grindstone this
trip--never mind. We’re going to sharpen our own axes after this, bought
a grindstone; unit production, is that what they call it? Here, hang on
to this bag of flour, you. I thought you fellows wouldn’t show up till
after dark. We were just going to start a game of pinocle with the
sheriff. Are you all comfortable?”
“It’s like a bed of roses,” said Brent, as we drove off.
“Tom,” I said----
“You comfortable?” he interrupted.
“Tom,” I said, “I’m glad to see you’re going to keep the old name
Leatherstocking Camp. I think it’s a fine romantic name.” I was
referring to some rather gay lettering which had replaced the name of
Temple Camp on the side of the Ford.
“Yep, that’s Paul’s work,” Tom rattled on.
“Are you Paul?” I asked the youngish man who sat beside him on the front
seat.
“Didn’t I tell you this is Charlie?” Tom snapped. “Paul’s our artist,
born and brought up in the Black Forest in Germany. Used to camouflage
lunch wagons for the Kaiser in the war. We’ve got all kinds up here;
happy family circle. We’re all living happily forever after, hey
Charlie?”
“And working,” Charlie said.
“Working?” asked Brent.
“Yes, do you want to get out and walk home?” Tom asked.
“Is Tot Burke still with you?” I queried.
“Yep. So is Skipper Tim; you remember him. He’s building boats for the
lake just now. Unit production, hey Charlie? You remember Piker Pete,
the fire-lookout up near Temple Camp? He’s here too; going to stick all
summer. Says he could never go back to the Catskills now, he’d be kept
awake by the noise.”
“Speaking of noises,” Brent said, “hasn’t your Ford changed from a
baritone to a soprano?”
“You’ll be glad enough to hear any kind of a friendly noise up here,”
Tom said.
“How far is it to the drug store?” Brent queried.
“Heaven help me if I should run out of good cigars,” I said.
“You got right, as Paul says,” Tom laughed. “You won’t be bothered by
the neighbors’ victrola, I’ll tell you that.”
He was certainly right. As we drove westward along the old, narrow, dirt
road the wildness of the region was almost oppressive. I had an odd
feeling that instead of our penetrating the winding passes among those
clustering mountains, the mountains were slowly, relentlessly closing in
about us. At one point, as the little Ford rattled along, it seemed as
if the towering heights, now wrapped in the solemn gloom of approaching
night, were creeping in on the narrow road from either side and would
presently close upon our little tin toy like a pair of vast jaws. Then
the heights would slope away as we seemed to dance merrily out of such
peril. There was a chill in the air, the gloom and remoteness insinuated
themselves into my very being and gave me a feeling which I can only
liken to homesickness. Perhaps the early mariners felt so when they
sailed out upon unknown seas.
I asked Tom how far the camp was from Harkness and he and Charlie Rivers
immediately fell into an argument about whether it was five or seven
miles. I later found that no two persons at the camp agreed about the
distance. Brent and I walked it once, and he said it was fifty-seven
miles. All I know is, it takes about an hour to drive in, and the way is
through the wildest region I have ever seen. We passed no human abode,
no sign of cultivation. Nothing but mountains, mountains, mountains.
“Pretty tough about old man McClintick, hey?” Tom said as we rattled
along. “Talk about the wild places! Why they’ve got more bandits to the
square inch down there in New York than they have all through the wild
and woolly west. Am I right, Charlie? Seen anything of Mr. Temple
lately?” he asked suddenly.
“No, I suppose you hear from him,” I said.
“He sent a check up last month to pay off with. I’ve got an account in
Keeseville. Old McClintick didn’t leave much, I read. Well here’s where
we turn in. Do you know if J. T. is coming up this summer?”
“I think he’s going to Europe,” I said. “How about Temple Camp, Tommy?”
“Guess they’ll have to get along without me _this_ summer,” he said.
“Is this supposed to be a cross street?” Brent asked.
We had turned into a sort of wagon trail that led into dense woods. The
branches of the bordering trees intertwined overhead and it needed only
the thick foliage which would come later to make the place a tunnel.
“This is Main Street,” said Tom.
For fully a mile, I would say, we drove along this sequestered trail,
deeper and deeper into the forest. Twilight shadows played among the
trees. The night was coming on apace. At last the indomitable little,
Ford stopped short; it could not go another yard. Beyond was only a foot
trail.
We gathered into our arms such part of the provisions as we could carry
and proceeded single file like a procession of homeward bound Christmas
shoppers.
“What do we do next, when this trail stops?” Brent asked. It was
laughable to see him walking soberly along, holding a flour bag as a
woman holds a baby.
“We’re almost there,” said Tom.
CHAPTER VIII—SHADOWS
Tom had been right when first he told me of the spot. Surely there is
not in the wide world a better site for a camp. Harrison McClintick had
chosen well. Embosomed in the dense forest, on the shore of a small
lake, was Leatherstocking Camp. There was no clearing; the beautiful
rubble-stone lodge with its heavy, low, overhanging roof, was closely
hemmed in by trees.
This main building was of a fine solid structure. Tom said the wagon
trail had been open all the way in when the lodge was built. It must
have cost much money to cart the materials to the spot. The lodge was
oblong in shape and at one end was a massive chimney, a rugged marvel of
masonry. The whole interior was one spacious living room. But a rustic
stair led up to a balcony just under the heavy polished rafters and
three small apartments opened onto this.
The furnishings of the former owner seemed all intact. Over the railing
of the balcony hung a large bearskin. The walls were of exquisite
masonry, the same as outside, and were decorated with the skins of
smaller animals. Over the mammoth fireplace, which filled one end of the
lodge, was a magnificent moose head with spreading antlers, on one of
which (as if it had been tossed there) was a rather gay looking cap,
albeit faded and dusty. I could not help wondering if it had belonged to
Roland McClintick.
On either side of the fireplace hung guns and pistols and spring traps,
and on the high, heavy mantel shelf several wooden decoy ducks sat
comfortably in retirement. One of these was painted brown and it was
easy to fancy its general resemblance to a human head when seen at a
distance in the haze of early morning. I thought it bespoke a fine
sentiment in the tough old warrior of commerce that he had taken nothing
from his camp, but just the one thing--a sorrowful memory.
The lodge was much the worse for the irreverent usage of Tom and his
strenuous crew. They cooked and ate and slept there, and in the
evenings, and on rainy days, they played cards there.
They had felled trees enough to build seven cabins, and five of them
were completed; they had a real woodland atmosphere about them, a
pioneer look, which was lacking in the sumptuous lodge. A landing place
of logs had been built at the lake and several rowboats floated ready
for use. Tom told me they had carted the planking for these all the way
from Keeseville in, or on, his Ford.
“And that’s old Hogback,” he told us, as he and Brent and I strolled out
after supper while the others lingered in the lodge. “Wait till you see
it in the daylight. You can climb up it if you want to. Some mountain,
huh?”
“I don’t want to,” Brent said.
“See the hermit,” laughed Tom.
“I thought you’d have something like that,” Brent said. “It’s getting so
there are no mountains left without hermits; they’re pushing in
everywhere. They’re going to cause a lot of congestion if it keeps up.”
“Well, I don’t know about the hermit,” Tom laughed, “but I can promise
you there are bears and wildcats up there.”
“Well then we won’t need to go up to find out,” Brent said. “As long as
you’re sure.”
“Yes, and rattlesnakes too,” Tom said. “I found the tracks of a pretty
big lynx one day. Well, you can see we’ve been working. Guess we better
go in and talk to the bunch, hey?”
We went into the lodge where four of the young men were already playing
cards at the carved library table which I suppose must always have been
used as a dining table. The other fellow, the one they called Rivers,
was starting a fire in the big chimney-place. It was a cozy, pleasant
scene.
I knew Tim Daggett, of course, and he greeted me cordially. Tot Burke,
also of my home town, I knew slightly. Piker Pete, the fire-lookout near
Temple Camp, was hardly more than a boy. He returned to his aerial perch
in the Catskills after I had been at camp a day or two. Paul Scheffler
was a smiling, tow-headed young German who had worked as a farmhand near
Ausable Forks; I never knew how Tom got hold of him. There is always a
kind of drift toward Tom; odd characters find him somehow. Heinie, as we
called Paul, had been in the German army and I believe he had also
followed the sea. His home was in his hat.
Charlie Rivers had lately drifted into camp seeking work. He was a
bronzed, taciturn man with an inscrutable look. He worked hard and said
little. He was well versed in woods lore. His eyes had a quiet keenness
about them and seemed always fixed on the distance. When accosted he
would pause, listening patiently, with his gaze afar. I never got the
impression that he could not look at me, but rather that what I said was
not of enough importance to warrant such acknowledgment of my presence.
I liked and respected him.
The tired workers did not remain late at their card game and Tom and
Brent and I were left alone in the lodge where we sat late before the
cheerful blaze. The men slept in another building, only less pretentious
than this main structure; there were half a dozen rooms in it, and a
large room for provisions. Besides these completely furnished apartments
there were, I think, as many as twenty army cots piled in the storage
part; they looked to me as if they had never been used.
I understood that the leather king had planned to carry electricity into
his wilderness retreat, but Brent and I were glad that he had not done
so. When the men adjourned to their own quarters that first night, they
carried three railroad lanterns which had lighted their game. Somehow
that silent little procession emphasized the solemnity and remoteness of
our camp, as it made its way among the trees to the other building. The
new cabins loomed momentarily in the dim passing lights. Then we could
see only a faint gleam in a distant window to tell that the men had
reached their lodging. We paused in the doorway a few moments listening
to a dismal wailing somewhere in the lower reaches of the mountain which
cast its gloomy shadow over our camp.
“That’s a cat,” said Brent. “There must be a back fence somewhere around
here.”
“It’s a lynx,” Tom said. “We hear it most every night; seems to come
from over on that second slope. Charlie Rivers says it’s a jaguar, but I
don’t think so. He’s thinking of the Canadian lynx; he used to hang out
up there in the Canadian Rockies.”
“I say it’s a Canadian lynx,” I said.
Tom laughed at me. “What do you know about it?”
“Maybe it’s the hermit having his singing lesson,” Brent suggested.
“I kind of have a feeling that if Charlie Rivers says a thing it must be
so,” I observed. “I sort of feel that he always knows what he’s talking
about. I say a jaguar.”
“Well,” laughed Tom, “we’ll have to find out if he stays up there till
the hunting season opens.”
“Whatever he is, he’ll have to come to Bridgeboro if he wants to meet
me,” Brent said. “I shall withdraw before the hunting season. I think
too much of my head.”
We put a log on the fire and sat before it, talking late into the night.
We discussed the violent end of Mr. McClintick, the progress of the work
at camp, the probable time of opening which seemed likely not to be
before the following spring. The tragic accident which had occurred on
Weir Lake near by seemed not to weigh heavily on Tom’s mind; he was too
full of plans. Brent sprawled in a big chair, one lanky leg over an arm,
the other resting on a box. He always reminded me of an octopus when he
sat at ease for he seemed to project in every direction.
“Do you suppose that’s young McGinty’s cap up there on the moose horns?”
he queried idly. “McClintick,” I corrected him.
“When was it--last summer?” Brent asked.
“It was a year ago last fall--in the hunting season,” Tom said. “The
place here was closed up after that till Mr. Temple took it over last
fall.”
“I thought you told me some game wardens were here when your friends,
the surveyors, passed through,” I said.
“Sure they were,” Tom said. “But of course, the buildings were locked
up. Mr. McClintick’s broker gave the keys to Mr. Temple. Why, what’s the
idea?”
“You mean me?” Brent queried in his funny, lazy way. “I haven’t any
ideas. It’s mighty nice and quiet here, that’s sure. Must be kind of
slow in the winter--especially on rainy Sundays.” His idle gaze wandered
about the room which lay in shadow save where the fire blazed. Wriggling
silhouettes of the flames played upon the wall in the dim background,
giving it a changing uncanny light. Brent gazed about in a kind of half
interested, leisurely inspection. “Pretty heavy rafters, huh?” he
queried. “What are they--ash?”
“Oak,” said Tom.
“Used to be a picture over there, didn’t there?” Brent drawled. “You can
see a kind of square where the smoke didn’t get.”
“You don’t miss much, do you, Brent?” I laughed.
“I have an inquiring mind,” said he in his funny way.
“Well, so you won’t lose any sleep over it,” Tom laughed, “a painting of
Mr. McClintick hung there.” I am always amused at the contrast between
Tom’s briskness and Brent’s drawling half interest in everything. “When
we got word that he had been murdered we took it down and laid it away
in one of the rooms up there,” he added, indicating the balcony.
“I didn’t think you and your little circle were that sentimental,” Brent
drawled. “Maybe I should say susceptible. What was it--a picture of the
old geezer?”
“The old gentleman, yes,” said Tom. “We eat right here, you know, and
there he was staring down at us all the time. We didn’t just like a
murdered man to be staring down at us. Heinie said, ‘It remembers me of
a ghost aready.’”
Brent lost interest and fell to gazing about again. Our talk drifted
into other channels. Even in the lodge we could hear the distant moaning
that we had heard before. The fire blazed away and crackled
companionably. Even Brent had to drag himself together and withdraw a
little from its increasing warmth. As he did so, he stooped to inspect
what seemed to me to be but an imperfection in the cement hearth. His
scrutiny seemed quite casual; there was always a kind of ludicrous
snoopiness about him which I think he sometimes practised to amuse and
sometimes to annoy Tom. To this day I remember saying to him, “Well,
what is it--a lynx or a jaguar?”
“It’s a human footprint,” he said.
“I doubt it,” said Tom.
“Somebody must have stepped in the cement before it was dry,” Brent
observed. “His foot went over the edge.”
“What’s that in the middle?” I asked him, rather amused. For I was only
half convinced, and the matter was of no consequence anyway. “Looks like
a scar,” Brent said, feeling of it.
“And departing leave behind us,
Footprints in the dry cement
as Longfellow says.”
“The sands of time,” I said.
“Dry cement is better,” Brent countered.
“_Listen!_” said Tom, not in the least interested. “Listen to that, now.
That’s a lynx all right. Hear it?”
In an interval between the boisterous cracklings of our blazing log a
long wail, spent by the distance, could be heard far off. The wind was
rising, making a strong draught in the chimney and rustling the trees
outside. A flickering shadow on the dim masonry behind me danced up and
disappeared with such suddenness that I was startled as if by some
ghostly presence. As I returned my gaze to the merry fire a shadow
crossed one of the windows. Startled, I fixed my gaze there, for the
moving thing, whatever it was, had not the erratic, jumping quality of
the shadows cast by the fire.
“Did you see that?” I asked, my voice instinctively falling to a
whisper.
Tom had evidently seen it. Without saying a word he arose, went to the
cupboard beside the chimney, took down a lantern and lighted it.
“Maybe it was only a reflection of the blaze at that,” I said.
“Do I have to get up?” Brent asked.
[Illustration: This outline is a crude reproduction of the markings that
Brent noticed in the cement of the hearth. Of course it does not show
the depressions. If you will imagine the large area as a depression, and
the five smaller enclosures as depressions, with all of the outlines
less distinct, you will have an idea of the imprint as we saw it.]
Lantern in hand, Tom went to the door, and as he opened it a gust of
wind rushed in, blowing a lot of papers from the open cupboard, and
banging the cupboard door furiously back and forth. Through the window
we could see the light of the lantern moving about outside. Suddenly I
was moved to join Tom and together we went over to the other building
and quietly opened the door. The men were all in their beds asleep. Only
Rivers stirred and spoke to us; I would have picked him for one of those
men who are not to be surprised even in sleep.
“I thought some one was around,” Tom said.
“Hear that animal?” Rivers asked.
“Yep; well, good-night, Charlie,” said Tom.
CHAPTER IX—THE SIGN OF THE FOUR
We looked all about before returning to the lodge and entered all the
completed cabins, but no sign was there of anything amiss. We thought
that one tree sheltered a lurking presence, and I saw Tom’s hand reach
around to his hip pocket as we approached it. But it was only the shadow
of a wind-blown branch that we had seen, and it dissolved as we drew
nearer. We even went down to the lake, but there was nothing unusual
there.
“I think that Weir Lake is a good name for it,” I said as we went back.
“It’s so black and still.”
“Oh, that isn’t the reason for the name,” Tom said. “The old gent named
it; it’s named after his wife; her maiden name was Weir. It didn’t have
any name when he blew in here. Right about where we were standing is
where Mr. Weston stood when he aimed and shot. Then he came up to the
lodge and looked in the room you’re going to have, to see if young
McClintick was there. Must have been an awful suspense to him, just that
little while before he could muster up courage to take a peek and be
sure of the truth.”
I just shook my head.
“Guess it was only a reflection of the fire you saw,” he said. “But it
looked kind of funny, didn’t it? Moved sideways instead of jumping up
and down. I don’t suppose any bandits would push in here. It’s just as
well to be careful.”
We found Brent sitting in the middle of one of the long sides of the
table; he looked ridiculously like a business man attending to his
correspondence. He had lighted another lantern and with his spectacles
half-way down his nose was studiously scrutinizing one of the many
sheets of paper he had gathered from the floor.
“Did you find him?” he asked casually, never looking up.
“Guess it wasn’t anything,” I said. “What have you got there?”
“Targets,” he answered. “They’re very interesting.”
I saw then that the sheets of paper were of uniform size, about a foot
square. Printed on each was a series of graduated circles with the
bull’s-eye, so called, in the center. They were the regular practise
targets familiar to all. I later found in the cupboard a board like a
drawing board containing a screw eye by which to hang it on a tree.
These targets had evidently been fastened to the board by thumb tacks.
“You say it was a year ago last fall they were here?” Brent asked,
somewhat preoccupied. “And that was the finale, huh? One of these is
dated November two, three of them are dated November three. They all
seem to be dated, and when there were several used in a day, they’re
numbered one, two, three. Here’s five of them that were used in one day.
When was what’s-his-name killed, anyway? The young fellow, I mean.”
“Oh, how should I know that?” laughed Tom.
“In November, huh?” Brent said, soberly sorting over the old targets. He
seemed to put Tom and me in the position of waiting clerks. He amused
me, as he always did, he was so slow and businesslike.
“The hunting season, that’s all _I_ know,” said Tom.
“That would be November. Let’s see, here’s one--here’s two--wait a
second, here’s another for November thirteen. Those are the last. Maybe
November thirteen was the unlucky day, huh?”
“Very likely,” I said. “And what of it?”
“He’s found something to beat crossword puzzles,” Tom laughed. “Come on,
what do you say we turn in?”
“What I’d like to know,” Brent said calmly preoccupied, “is who the
other chap was. I’ve only heard of three. There were four here in camp
at the end. There was the old geezer,” (Brent always spoke of people
with nonchalant disrespect), “and the young one, and Mr.--what d’you say
his name was--Weston? Well, there were four here practising rifle
shooting. You can see for yourselves.” He held up one of the targets as
Tom and I leaned over the table, our interest suddenly caught. “Four
shots,” said Brent, pointing a lanky finger at one after another of the
bullet holes. “Here’s another--_four holes_. Here’s another--_four
holes_. Every blooming one of them has _four holes_. Seems as if they
might have been keeping a kind of score. Hmph,” he drawled. “What do you
make of it? Each one took a crack, then they’d take another target.
There’s not a single one with three holes, or a single one with five
holes. Is there anything about a gun, or is there anything about a man,
that would make him shoot just four times? Do they have such things as
four-shooters? Were there any guns left around here?”
“Sure, there are a dozen or more,” Tom said. “They left everything.
Brent, old boy, you’ve got me guessing. No, I never heard of a
four-shooter, as you call it.”
“Well then, there were four people here,” Brent said. “I don’t know if
that’s the usual way to practise or not----”
“_It is_,” interrupted Tom. “Boy, _oh boy_, you’ve got me guessing! How
the dickens did you ever stumble on _that_ discovery?”
“When I was a boy scout,” said Brent, “I learned that I must never allow
papers to be littered about. So I picked these up while you were chasing
shadows. Well, I suppose there was no harm in four people being
here----”
“Oh no, I heard there were only three,” snapped Tom. “That doesn’t go at
all; I heard there were only three. Of course, this doesn’t really,
definitely _prove_ anything--these targets--but it’s gol blamed funny!
It _looks_ as if there were four people here that November, doesn’t
it?... What do _you_ say?” he added, addressing me. He seemed to be
quite aroused.
“Does it make any difference how many were here?” I asked.
“No, but a mystery is rather nice,” drawled Brent.
“I don’t understand it at all--I don’t,” Tom said. “You ask anybody in
Harkness, or up at Keeseville, how many were here and they’ll tell you
three. That’s what the surveyors told me. That’s what Hick Collison, the
game warden, told me. That’s what Mr. Temple understood from Mr.
McClintick and his broker--that there were only just the three men here,
for a little hunt. Why I’ve heard it a hundred times!”
“Well, I don’t suppose these targets really prove anything,” I said. “We
might have known that Brent would find something to engage his attention
up here. Now he can play Young Sleuth, the boy detective, while the rest
of us are working.”
But Tom would not accept this view, and he refused to take a humorous
squint at what seemed to me a matter of no importance.
“I can’t understand it at all,” he said, as he fell to looking at the
targets again. “It’s got me.”
“I have a suggestion,” said Brent.
“Yes, what is it?” Tom snapped.
“Let’s retire for the night.”
“Second the motion,” I laughed.
CHAPTER X—THE WORK PROGRESSES
Brent’s discovery (if it was a discovery) did not trouble my slumber. I
could understand Tom’s reaction to what Brent had shown us. He was
familiar with the story of the camp, the reason and circumstances of the
sale. Certain things were fixed in his mind. To have any of these
details rudely upset jarred and puzzled him. I think he took Brent’s
casual discovery more seriously than Brent himself did. As for me, I
thought it of no importance at all.
You will recall that I mentioned three apartments as opening on a
balcony. I slept in one of these; Tom and Brent occupied the other two.
I was awakened in the morning by the clatter of dishes and descended to
find the oblong table which served so many purposes laid for breakfast
while the welcome aroma of coffee permeated the lodge. It was on that
day (or perhaps the next) that the young fellow they called Piker Pete
left us, but on that first morning after my arrival the whole eight of
us breakfasted together. It was fine to see how Tom hobnobbed with the
crew, laughing and joking and chatting about the work, without seeming
to lose any of his authority. He was, I thought, the ideal boss for just
such a job as was being done.
“What do you think of old Doc Gaylong here?” he said. “Looks over some
old targets and finds that there were four instead of three people here
when young McClintick lost his life. Tell ’em about it, Doc. Four shot
holes on each target. He and our fountain pen adventurer here,” (that
was myself), “are going to hunt for more evidence to-day while the rest
of us are out in the woods. They’re going to have supper ready for us
when we come back. I bet by to-night Doc Gaylong will know who the other
fellow was who was here.”
“He didn’t get no proof by dot,” said Heinie. “Dot’s no sign yet. Maybe
he would each shot four times--why not?”
“It would be more likely to be _three_ if they did it that way,” I
suggested. “It’s always three guesses, or three chances, or three shots.
Why four?”
“He’s right,” exclaimed Tom.
“I don’t see how a fourth person here two years ago is going to help out
with the work now,” Charlie Rivers said, never looking up from his
plate.
“And that’s true too,” Tom said cheerily.
Somehow (I may have been doing Rivers an injustice) I felt that what he
said was intended as a slur on Brent and me, because we were not of the
working force.
“How’d yer know them targets wasn’t put on the top shelf only a couple
of days ago?” Rivers drawled. “How’d yer know but what mebbe four of us
was target shootin’ afore you come?”
“That’s a good one on you, Doc,” Tom laughed.
“How did you know they were on the top shelf?” Brent drawled, addressing
Rivers. “You’re a kind of a detective, too,--huh?”
For just a second I fancied that Rivers was disconcerted. Perhaps he was
annoyed at being heckled by this lanky, bespectacled young fellow. It
seemed to me as if he had the woodman’s contempt for city drones.
“There you go, Charlie; how about that?” laughed Tom.
“They happen to be dated,” Brent said.
“Well,” Tom laughed, “you two make yourselves at home around here to-day
and get a good rest. We’re going to fell trees. To-morrow, if you want
to, you can give us a hand. Pretty soon we’re going to take a couple of
days off and go down the Ausable and see the Chasm. We’re going to get
some fish in a place where they hang out. Charlie will show you birds
how to play a trout, won’t you, Charlie?”
“I sure will,” Charlie said. So I knew there was no bad feeling
following the little duel of wits.
Left to ourselves that day, Brent and I enjoyed the freedom of the camp.
In the daylight I saw how the camp was situated on an area of flat
woodland between the somber lake and the great Hogback Mountain. This
frowning giant was steep and densely wooded. I longed to ascend it, yet
knew full well that I would not attempt the climb.
After luncheon (we had been given the absolute freedom of the larder) we
fell to making a casual sort of inspection of the cupboard and its
contents in search of evidence which might confirm the rather doubtful
evidence of the targets. But we could not find one thing which even
remotely suggested the number of persons at the camp in that last fatal
autumn. We found many mementoes of the former occupants; indeed, it
seemed as if they had taken nothing away. But not all of Brent’s
whimsical snooping around revealed a single sign which suggested
anything.
We examined the markings in the hearth, which had certainly been made by
the front part of a naked human foot before the cement had hardened. But
of course this imprint told us nothing. It might have been anybody’s
footprint. The fact that it was the print of a _naked foot_ was not a
matter for remark. A bather about to go to the lake, or returning from
it, could have inadvertently made that impress.
“It seems to me that we’re going a long way out of our course hunting
for a mystery,” I said. “What difference does it make whether there were
three or four persons here just before the place was finally deserted?”
“Not the slightest,” Brent said.
So there was an end of his little deductive triumph in connection with
the targets. It seemed bright and observant of him, but it signified
nothing. He and I fell into the busy life at camp, helping in our
unskilled way, to make the place ready for opening. We painted the new
rowboats, and after the men had widened the footpath in to camp, we
cleared away the roots and brush so that wagons and Tom’s precious Ford
could enter. I think I never worked so hard in my life, but I dare say
it did me good. It was amusing to see lanky Brent at these strenuous
labors.
In this wholesome, arduous work Leatherstocking Camp ceased to have any
pathetic associations. We were all too busy to think of the tragedy and
it was seldom mentioned. On an early stroll one morning, I paused on the
shore of the lake and my thoughts did wander back to the ghastly mistake
that to me had cast a shadow over the place. A gauzy cloud hung over the
lake and as I gazed out on the misty waters a bobbing object, probably
some drifting log, moved in the partial concealment of that hazy
curtain. I could not help torturing myself with the appalling thought of
how _I_ would feel if after an ill-considered shot I saw a human arm
raised up out of the water. How long would _I_ linger in torturing
suspense before going to the room of my young friend to learn the truth?
But, as I said, we were too busy to talk or even think of these things.
Even Harrison McClintick was seldom mentioned. We wondered how the
authorities in New York were progressing with the case. But we seldom
saw a New York paper, and that dreadful crime, like the mishap at camp,
was a thing of the past. On the other hand, Leatherstocking Camp was a
reality. Soon there were seven cabins up and enough logs hauled for two
more. We were waiting for planking from the sawmill in Rogers Gap, so
that we could begin work on the “grub” pavilion and the commissary shack
which were to be of a less primitive construction. I can say now that I
hope never to see another axe as long as I live. I still dream of
chinking spruce logs with sphagnum moss and laugh as I recall Brent
bringing in this growth in an improvised hod, with which he went
wandering about the neighboring forest. He was our hod-carrier,
humorous, leisurely, lanky. Sometimes he chipped the logs for binding
and he says now that he cannot play cards with any pleasure, because the
chips remind him of his “pioneer days” as he calls them.
CHAPTER XI—ALONE
As the days passed I thought less and less about Brent’s rather
ingenious deduction. For, to be sure, it made no difference how many
persons had been at Leatherstocking Camp at the time of the fatal
accident. As for Brent, he was always snooping around, adopting the pose
of an amateur sleuth, but I think he did not take himself or his
discovery too seriously. He seemed amused at the confusion he had caused
in poor Tom’s mind. “Maybe they used to have the hermit down for week
ends,” he suggested. But that did not satisfy Tom.
“I think the hermit is like the mock-turtle,” I said. “There ain’t no
such animal.”
“Well, it’s blamed funny,” Tom commented. He and I were strolling around
the lake after a strenuous day of log hauling; he seemed never weary. “I
always understood that there were only three here--the old gent and his
son and the man Weston. Now it looks as if there were four. Did you ever
know anybody like Brent for mixing things up? He’s uncanny, that’s what
he is.”
“It doesn’t seem to be worrying him,” I said.
“Well, I’d like to know who the other one was,” said Tom. “I asked about
it down in Harkness, but nobody seems to know any more about it than we
do. It’s got me. I don’t like anything I can’t understand,” he went on
in his vehement way. “When I get a thing settled in my mind I don’t like
to have somebody come along like an old spook and set everything
endways. There were four people here all right and I’d gol blamed like
to know who the other one was and why we never heard anything about him.
It was darned funny, that shadow we saw outside the window the night you
and Brent came. I can’t get it out of my noodle. Hang it all, wherever
Brent goes there are mysteries and shadows; they seem to follow him
around. And he’s so plaguy calm about it all.”
“The hod-carrier sleuth,” I commented.
“That’s him,” Tom said. “Well, we’ve got some realities anyway. My arm
is sore from chopping logs. There’s no mystery about how we’re getting
ahead anyway. I’d like to have that mysterious fourth person here now to
help. I could use him drilling for end pegs. These cabins are going to
stand when the pyramids of Egypt are in the ash heap. Eats pavilion is
going to look nice, huh? Heinie says we ought to have more eats-boards,
but that’s the way it is with Germans, they don’t think of anything but
eats.”
“Heinie’s a good worker,” I said.
“I’ll say,” enthused Tom. “They’re all good--nice bunch. I can’t make
Charlie Rivers out, but he sure gets through with the work.”
“I think he doesn’t like Brent and me,” I said.
“Nonsense!” Tom exploded. “He’s just quiet, that’s all--kind of--what
d’yer call it--taciturn?”
“Inscrutable is the word,” I said.
“Well,” he rattled on, “we’re going to have our holiday pretty soon. I
hear the fish are so thick in the Ausable River that they have to have
traffic regulations over there. I thought we might all close up shop
this Friday and drive over through the Ausable Chasm--that’s worth
seeing, you know--and then stay over till Monday, fishing. I think we
all need a little outing. Brent says this city life is killing him. The
way I figure, we’ll be held up here for a few days till the boards come
from the sawmill so it’ll be a good time for a little recess. You know
Tot Burke is crazy about fishing. Brent says he’d rather we’d bring the
Ausable Chasm here and let him look at it, but of course he’ll go. He’ll
always do anything anybody wants him to do.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
“Sure,” Tom enthused, “the boys want to see the Chasm before they go
home and now’s our chance.”
I had not the heart then to tell Tom that the absence of this hustling
group would afford me just the opportunity I wanted to be alone at my
writing for a day or two. To tell you the truth, I abhor fishing. The
fish never bite on my hook. I not only do not catch any fish, but I
invariably drive my companions to distraction with my restlessness. I
therefore indulged a secret hope that I might excuse myself from this
excursion and in the quiet of our lonely retreat finish two magazine
articles on which I had been working.
I broke the news gently while we were at supper the night before they
started. “If you don’t mind,” I said, “I think I’ll spend a quiet few
days here and try to get my writing up to date. I’m not much of a
sightseer and I haven’t the patience to fish.”
“Fishing is my ideal sport,” said Brent. “You don’t have to do anything
all day; the fish does all the work. You’d better come along and see
America first. All work and no play----”
“Sure, come ahead,” said Tom.
“Vot diffrence if ve don’t got no fish?” Heinie said. “Och, anyvays ve
do see-sighting mitt Tommy. Ve don’t got nuttings here till it comes der
planks yet.”
“I think I’ll stay here and work,” I persisted. “It’s really just what I
want, to be alone for a few days. I’ll watch the camp.”
Tom threw up his hands in despair and shook his head ruefully at Tot
Burke and Skipper Tim. But I had my way. The next morning they all
started off in Tom’s flivver. It was a chill, bleak, rainy day. Yet I
came very near to envying them as they rode away, they were so full of
the spirit of their long promised excursion. Brent carried a brief-case
and looked funny enough in a little worsted skull-cap which one of the
others had offered him. Tom laughed at him and protested against the
umbrella which Brent also carried.
“Here!” he laughed, snatching it from him. “Are you afraid of getting
wet?”
“It isn’t myself I’m thinking of, it’s the fish,” said Brent.
“I guess I don’t want this either,” said Charlie Rivers, handing me the
old coat which lay across his knees.
So there I stood in the drizzling rain holding Brent’s umbrella and
Charlie’s coat as the merry little caravan went rattling off along the
woods trail. For a few moments the sequestered camp did seem gloomy
enough. The great, rugged mountain which towered above the spot looked
wild and somber enough in pleasant weather, but in that chill haze it
seemed to me almost unearthly in its forbidding aspect. Surely no human
being had ever penetrated its black and trailless wilderness. What
prowling beasts, I wondered, paced the unknown fastnesses high in its
precipitous reaches? Even as I gazed at it and noted how the drenched
trees near its rock-ribbed base were all merged in the heavy gloom, I
heard that dismal wailing afar off, somewhere on those jungle-covered
slopes. Tom said it always came from the depression beyond the second
ridge. I don’t know why he thought so; it seemed to me to be the very
voice of the whole wild mountain. The lodge seemed cozy indeed as I
entered it and threw the coat and umbrella on the table. I went out
again and dragged in a couple of good-sized logs so that they might dry
in time to keep me company with their crackling blaze throughout the
lonely evening.
CHAPTER XII—SIGNS ON THE MOUNTAIN
I must now tell you of an incident which shook me as nothing else in my
whole life has ever shaken me, and the meaning of it was not clear to me
till long afterward. I suppose that the gloom of that cheerless day
affected me. I can hardly describe my feeling more than to say that
throughout the long, bleak afternoon, as I sat at work in the lodge, I
was harassed by a strange presentiment as of something impending.
I had looked forward to a few days of solitude, but the loneliness of
the place was intolerable in the half darkness and that continuous,
blowing rain. By mid-afternoon I was in such a state that I blew out the
smelly little lamp which had lighted my work in the dim apartment and
resigned myself to idleness. I stood at one of the windows gazing out
upon the dismal scene. Through the thin, driven rain, the lake looked
hazy and there was the odd effect of the water moving toward me. It was
not like the surf on a seashore, ever lapping and receding, but a sort
of straining of the whole body of water under the impetus of the wind.
There occurred to me the whimsical fancy that if the water should
succeed in its effort the bed of the lake would be laid bare and I would
see, perchance, the object which had enmeshed and held for so many days
the body of poor Roland McClintick. I think I never saw a more gloomy
sight than Weir Lake on that dreary, haunting afternoon.
The lodge, you will understand, was between the base of the mountain and
the lake. I stepped across the room and stood looking out upon the
deserted scene of our recent labors. And there I beheld a strange sight
which for the moment startled me. It was a trail passing between two of
the new cabins. It ran behind the stone bungalow of the old camp (where
the boys slept) but beyond this, in the direction of the mountain, I saw
no certain trace of it. At one spot where the rugged ascent began I
could just make out a faint line perhaps fifty feet in extent. It
hovered between visibility and invisibility; I thought it was the trail.
The sight of this hardly tangible and broken line leading, as I thought,
up the mountain, astonished me. I had always understood that there was
no regular trail up Hogback. Tom is a perfect fiend on such matters; he
will find a trail if there is one, but he knew of none up those dense
slopes. Many times I had looked from that window, and heaven knows I had
never seen the faintest sign of a trail. Nor had any of our group ever
mentioned one. In talking of our projected ascent after the prowling
creature whose moaning we had heard, Tom had said that he thought the
best way was to hike around the base of the mountain and ascend the
easier slopes of the farther side.
I was so curious about what I had seen that despite the weather I went
to the cupboard beside the fireplace and took from its hook the great
oilskin coat with hat to match, which belonged to Skipper Tim. How many
times I had seen him in this storm attire helping canoeists at the
boating club home in Bridgeboro! It was then that I noticed (I don’t
know how I happened to think about them) that the used targets were not
in their place upon the shelf. I don’t know that the disappearance of
these telltale squares of paper aroused any suspicions in my mind. But
as I told you before, the gloom and loneliness somehow gave the whole
place a certain ghostly unreality, the McClintick tragedy seemed to
haunt the bleak scene, and I was strangely unnerved by every sound and
by this discovery. I was curious enough to go up into Brent’s little
room to see if the targets were there. But they were neither in his room
nor Tom’s and I was puzzled. As I descended the bare stairs my own
echoing footsteps startled me and brought home to me a vivid sense of my
isolation.
I sallied forth into the storm to examine the trail and follow it a
little distance. But I could not find it. Try as I would, I could not
find it. I returned indoors and looked again from the window, but could
not see it. Then in a sudden gust of wind I saw it even more clearly
than before. And I saw, too, that the elusive line upon the mountainside
was indeed a visible section of it.
Here was a strange phenomenon. I was reminded of a certain novel toy I
had in childhood, a bit of glass which one had only to breathe upon to
see a picture which immediately faded out with the dissolving breath.
And so it is with trails, the trails of bygone days. Uncle Jeb Rushmore,
up at Temple Camp has told me that the route man has trodden in the
wilds is never wholly obliterated. The freakish wind, a lucky vantage
point, a certain slant of light and the obscure path is revealed in
hovering uncertainty, if only for a moment. I have not the scout’s eye.
I think now that the rushing wind, swaying the long grass, showed me
stretches of that faint hidden trail. Perhaps the soaked and glossy
condition of the vegetation had something to do with it. All I know is
that I saw it, the ghost of a departed trail, and that when my friends
returned we could not find it again.
I went out again into the driven rain and the heavy, bending grass clung
to my limbs, impeding my progress. It was like trying to walk through
seaweed. The rain smote my right cheek leaving my left cheek almost dry;
it seemed horizontal. I plodded through this drenching artillery of the
elements to the space between two cabins where I had seen the trail from
the window. I had thought to surprise it, as it were, in this narrow
pass. But there was no sign of a trail there. Why could not my exploring
limbs and hands lay bare this elusive marking, so apparent from the
lodge? I parted the drenched grass, searching in vain. In heaven’s name,
I said aloud, is this desolate wilderness haunted by a spectral trail? I
had seen it; where was it?
But there upon the rugged lower reaches of the mountain, between two
mighty rocks, I could see, not the trail, but a certain narrow length of
gray earth where surely, if there were indeed a trail, it must pass. It
would pass between those sentinel rocks for that would be the path of
least resistance in the arduous ascent. And it seemed to me that the
farthest section of the broken line I had seen from the window was in
that direction.
Well, I was in for it now; I was thoroughly soaked, a fine, adventurous
resolve was aroused within me, and I would not be baffled and confounded
by storm and taunting shadows. I vowed that I would scramble over
obstacles and through soaking foliage to those two mammoth rocks which I
thought were Nature’s rough portals, to the unknown upper reaches of the
towering Hogback Mountain.
I don’t know what I expected to find there. But if the passage between
those rocks were clear surely that would prove that the trail passed
through there in its circuitous windings up the mountain. Perhaps at
that point I could get a clear sight of it, up or down. And if I could I
would have something to say to Tom Slade and Brent Gaylong. I would be a
scout and a detective rolled into one. They could no longer call me a
fountain pen adventurer.
I shall never as long as I live forget that laborious scramble. What I
had called the _lower reaches_ of the mountain proved to be a whole
range of mountains before I had attained my goal. One looks at a
mountain and says, “I would like to climb it.” Looking and doing are two
such different matters where mountains are concerned. There are cliffs
and crevices that one never sees from the land below. And yet in plain
fact those two huge rocks were not a fifth part of the way up that
mighty jumble of rock and forest. I stumbled and groped and climbed and
in places became enmeshed in dripping, tangled undergrowth. No sign of
any trail could I find in my difficult progress.
Excepting one sign. At the head of a certain short, precipitous place I
saw a long withe tied like a rope around a tree trunk with a long end
hanging loose. It was perfectly evident to me that this had been
fastened there to assist a climber in scrambling up or down, probably
down, this declivity. By holding the loose end one might be saved from
falling while groping for a sure foothold below it. It could have been
fastened there only by a human being and my discovery of it in that
desolate jungle quite startled me. I thought the wood seemed fresh; I
pulled with all my strength, but could not break it. I was not a good
enough scout to know what kind of wood it was, but I thought it was
willow. Yet there were no willow trees thereabouts. I suppose that
willow retains its moisture and pliancy a long time, though surely not
for years or even months. Whence, then, came this crude device to brace
one on that perilous climb?
To search for any sign of a trail in that topsy-turvy thicket was out of
the question and I made my way by easier progress now to the great rocks
which I have called the portals to the upper reaches of Hogback. Here I
could look down upon our camp. How strange it appeared in bird’s-eye
view! I wondered how it would look from the summit of the mountain. The
lake seemed small and the fine, rustic effect of the lodge was even more
attractive from my vantage point than it was at closer range. The new
buildings stood out clear and detached from the surrounding disorder of
our labors. The whole scene was wrapped in mist so that I saw the camp
as through a gauze curtain.
Now these rocks were of an odd formation; quite different from their
appearance as seen from below. That front view of them, as I might call
it, had shown them as two great rocks with a passageway between them.
But on closer view, I saw that one rock leaned against the other (save
at the entrance) so that the narrow passage was not only between
precipitous walls, but was roofed also by the meeting of these walls
above. The falling of one rock against the other had made a sort of
triangular passage with the converging walls touching the head as one
passed through.
Into this narrow pass the storm had not penetrated, and I later found
that the crevice between the two rocks was completely overgrown outside.
But the narrow pass was dank and mossy and frequented by little lizards
that paused, heads upraised, then scooted this way and that. If
human-kind had ever used this passage in following a trail, there
certainly was no sign of a trail at the time of my inspection. The
ground was rocky so that one might pass through the entire length of a
dozen yards or so without stepping on earth. But there was one little
area of earth, hard but with a thin mossy surface, or rather hardened
scum. It was as if moss had started to grow there, but had not
developed; a thin, damp crust of vegetation, compact but sensitive to
pressure.
Upon this natural film some living being had laid a naked foot, and all
the beating fury of the drenching storm, and of other storms for aught I
knew, had not obliterated it. What I noticed particularly about it was
that running diagonally across the ball of the foot was an irregular
mark which identified the footprint with the one I had seen permanently
embedded in the concrete of the McClintick lodge on the first night of
our arrival at Leatherstocking Camp.
Then suddenly, before my consternation had subsided, I noticed some
crude lettering on the rocky wall of the passage. If the letters were
intended to form a word their irregular size and positions suggested an
erratic, not to say irrational, procedure in the work. Yet large and
small and tilted crazily as they were, they were still in proper order
to form the appalling word STRANGLE.
I recalled with a shudder that Harrison McClintick had met his tragic
end at the hands of an unknown strangler.
CHAPTER XIII—THE STEADY GAZE
I retraced my difficult way down the mountain, scratched, soaking, and
utterly weary. The lodge, which had seemed gloomy enough before, was a
cheery refuge now. I was all but unnerved by a sense of mystery and of
things dark and inexplicable. Some strange, brooding shadow hovered over
this camp; the place was uncanny. I aroused myself and ascribed it to
the storm, to the rain-swept wilderness. After all, where was there any
mystery?
Some one at camp had once inadvertently stepped on the hearth before the
concrete was dry. That it was the imprint of a bare foot had no
significance. One about to go in the lake, or returning from it, might
have carelessly stepped on the new hearth. And might not that same
habitue of camp have gone exploring up the mountain. But barefoot? That
seemed unlikely. And how about the rustic brace upon the tree? Could
that have been there two or three years and retained its freshness and
pliancy? And the targets with their telltale bullet holes; four on each
target? And their disappearance? Had all these things a relation to each
other?
I roused myself to the wholesome conviction that the haunting specter of
the tragedy and the demon of the storm were playing pranks with my
fancy, and to confirm this sensible thought I stood in the window as the
twilight deepened the gloom of the already cheerless scene. The new
cabins, the piles of timber, the circular stone enclosure for campfire,
were very real and diverted my thoughts from the past to the cheerful
future and the new life which would soon throng Leatherstocking Camp. If
I attached some tragic meaning to every idle scratching on fence or wall
or sidewalk, I should soon be as absurd as my adventurous young friend,
Pee-wee Harris, of whom you may have heard. That is what I told myself.
By way of dealing with worth-while realities, I prepared my supper. Tom
says I am utterly useless except in wielding a fountain pen. But I think
I make very good applesauce and my poached eggs have a beauty of form
which I dare not aspire to in the field of literary art. I need not
detain you with my reveries before the blazing logs after my lonely
supper. I thought of my work and studiously avoided any speculations
about the past at Leatherstocking Camp. Nothing really strange or
suspicious had occurred there. It was the scene of a tragic accident,
that was all. If there had indeed been four persons there instead of
three, what of it?
After my last log had burned out the place began to grow cool and I
gathered up my papers and the smelly lamp, and went to my little room on
the balcony to write until I should become sleepy. The warmth ascending
lingered still in that small apartment. Some strange feeling (I cannot
otherwise describe it) caused me to ascend on tiptoe, for I could not
bear the echoing sound of my own footfalls on the uncovered stair. I
looked into Tom’s room and into Brent’s, and closed the doors of both. A
few dying embers, safely enclosed by a screen, still dimly lighted the
hearth and standing on the balcony I could just make out that footprint
stamped for all time in the imperishable concrete. There was something
weird, I thought, in such perpetuation of a casual footprint, something
akin to the preservation of a mummy. He who had carelessly stepped there
(young McClintick perhaps) might be dead. But here was this ghostly
likeness of a part of him remaining--stamped forever. I would not wish
to have in my home such a reminder of a dear, departed one. The cold
print of a foot that was no more! And that other duplicate footprint
(less clear but still identical) in that haunted pass on the gale-swept
mountain! I say _haunted_ for what rational human being would scratch in
crazy fashion such a word as _strangle_ in that wild, lonesome passage.
And the trail which had taunted and challenged me with its elusive and
changing course. Was it real? Here I was again letting my fancy
wander....
It was warm and cheerful in my little room, the streaming rain upon the
window only increased the sense of coziness and safety, and I sat me
down to finish my article about Stevenson. You will remember that on the
first evening of our sojourn in camp, Brent had noticed a space on the
wall where a picture had hung. This was a painting of Harrison
McClintick, for the leather king had not neglected to have his portrait
painted by a well known artist who had certainly succeeded in
perpetuating his hard features and dominant look. The eyes in that
portrait looked straight at the beholder. And it was for this reason (so
I understood) that the boys had taken the picture down after reading the
shocking news of Mr. McClintick’s death in the newspaper article I had
forwarded to Tom. I would not have supposed that any of them (certainly
not Tom) would be so susceptible as to be affected by the pictured gaze
of a murdered man. Yet perhaps Tom did not greatly care about the
portrait anyway.
At all events it had been taken down before my arrival and stood on the
floor against the wall of the room I was to occupy. I cannot say that
the sight of it distressed me. It meant so little to me that on the top
edge of the heavy frame my suitcase rested, and it served also as a
shelf for my writing case and used cigarette boxes. I did not like the
hard, drawn features of the leather king. The skin seemed to be
stretched tight over his face; the forceful mouth seemed almost cruel.
The head was massive at the top and narrow at the chin. The gray hair
was rather long and disheveled, which just saved the face from utter
coarseness. Seeing only the wide forehead and disordered gray locks one
might have fancied the man to have been distinguished and cultured. I
suppose the cunning artist had hit upon this picturesque disorder of the
whitening hair as the only means of saving his picture from
commonplaceness.
If I am to tell you just what happened on that frightful night, I must
tell you just how I felt. I have mentioned the strange feeling I had, as
of something impending. My adventure of the afternoon had not stilled
this vague feeling of something mysterious and dark. The feeling was not
clear and had no rational basis, but it was strong enough now to cause
me to be troubled by that face in the portrait with eyes gazing directly
at me. There was something creepy about it, the steady gaze of this
murdered man, and it affected me strangely. The eyes seemed to be
accusing me. Even while intent on my work I was disturbed by the feeling
that the steady gaze of that painted victim was fixed upon me.
Behind me I could _feel_ the door slowly open, its hinges creaking
slightly. I arose, stepped out on the balcony and looked down into the
large apartment where a few embers still burned. I told myself that
these should be extinguished and went down ostensibly for that purpose.
The footprint in the hearth showed clear in the adjacent glow; all else
was darkness. I told myself that I had made too much of that trifling
memorial of some one’s carelessness. Then I stepped over to the door of
the lodge and made sure that it was locked. This door, too, had an
uncanny habit of rattling, and to prevent this I took a paper from a
pile on the table, folded it into a sort of little wedge, and stuffed it
between the door and the jamb. From the shape and feeling of this paper
I knew it was the article about Harrison McClintick’s dreadful end,
which I had mailed to Tom and which had always lain with other papers
under a rusty old axe blade that we used for a paper weight.
I went upstairs again and into the room where my little lamp was
burning. Small as it was, it seemed cheerful. Since the door would not
stay closed I threw it wide open and resumed my work. Now and again I
glanced sideways at the portrait and by way of showing my disdain of the
effect it had on me, I lighted a cigarette and tossed the empty box upon
the wide frame. But still I turned, now and again, and glanced at that
intent face with its disordered gray hair, its resolute mouth, its cold,
searching eyes. Was it so that Harrison McClintick had looked at his
assailant? At last I could stand it no more; you may call it weakness or
silly fancy or what not. I arose and tumbling the odds and ends of my
belongings from the frame, I turned that haunting picture to the wall.
To give my action a cheerful aspect of comedy, I said, “I don’t like
people watching me so closely at my work.”
Just as I was trimming the lamp to resume my work, I heard a sudden
noise outside. It was not very loud and occurred in a gust of wind. I
tried to look from the window, but the streaming rain obscured the
glass. However, I was satisfied that a piece of planking leaning against
the unfinished cook shelf had blown down. Several of these boards which
had been selected for “eats boards” had been left there.
CHAPTER XIV—THE APPARITION
In the glow and satisfaction of at last finishing my article I was
stimulated by wholesome, even humorous thoughts. It was nearly two
o’clock in the morning and I had completed my work amid a solemn
quietude. Laughing at my own expense, I gayly turned the picture about,
saying, “now you can stare at me all you want to.” I was not to have my
mental poise disturbed by an oil-painting. I would not have my friends
return to find that picture turned to the wall. I extinguished my light
and retired with the agreeable consciousness of having completed one of
my tasks and with a drowsiness which assured me peaceful slumber.
I hardly know how to tell you about the events of that night, or indeed
whether I should call them events. When I awoke in the morning, I
thought I had been dreaming. But I cannot even now, and in the light of
subsequent events, fully explain my own harrowing experience. I suppose
it is possible for one to dream that he is awake. Whether it is possible
for one to be awake and fancy he is dreaming, I do not know. All I know
is that in the still, dark hours of that tempestuous night, I saw
vividly the face of Harrison McClintick looking down upon me. It was
different, yet it was his face and bore his expression.
What I did not understand afterward was that the gray, disordered hair
seemed streaming wet. The narrow chin conveyed somewhat a look of
emaciation, the long, stern, resolute mouth to be set as if in death.
This was McClintick’s face, but it was ghastly. The wide forehead and
narrowing cheeks gave the head a triangular look, suggesting a skull.
The features were drawn, the eyes wild. I thought (if one may be said to
think in a dream) that this was the face of Harrison McClintick after he
had been killed.
[Illustration: HE STOOD OVER ME AND DID NOT SPEAK--ONLY STARED.]
He stood over me and did not speak--only stared. I think I did not stir;
I was certainly conscious of a resolve not to stir. I heard wind and
rain. Yet goodness knows there had been enough wind and rain that night
to penetrate into a sleeping vision. Soon the face disappeared. I cannot
say that I was conscious of the figure withdrawing, but the face
withdrew. Still I heard the wind; it seemed to come in steady, surging
gusts--regular, like the surf. I heard the driving rain, the same
driving rain I had heard all through the long, gloomy day. Then it
seemed to be driving around in a circle. Then I knew no more.
When I awoke in the morning, I was certain that I had been dreaming. I
felt quite assured that the gloom and loneliness of the place, and my
idle thoughts and speculations, had naturally enough insinuated
themselves in distorted form into my sleep. There was the portrait
without any suggestion of ghostly associations, the eyes gazing at me.
They did not disturb me in the broad light of day.
Scarcely had I arisen, however, when I noticed something which utterly
staggered me, a rude and clear reality, that struck me like a rifle ball
and left me trembling. Beside my cot was a muddy footprint, less nice in
form and clearness than the one embedded in the hearth below, _but
identical with it_. I blinked my eyes to make sure I was awake. I sat on
the side of the couch quite unnerved, scrutinizing that little muddy
patch showing an irregular diagonal mark across the ball of the foot.
Like the print on the mountain it was the impression of a whole foot.
The print on the hearth showed only the front part of a foot. But there
was not the slightest doubt that these three prints were impressions of
one and the same foot.
When I had regained some degree of composure I looked for other prints,
in the room, on the balcony, on the stair. There were none. Particles of
dried mud there were, to be sure, but I might have tracked those in
myself. I returned and studied the mark, utterly bewildered and greatly
distraught. What was the meaning of this? Had I in truth been dreaming?
Had I seen that ghostly apparition in half sleep? The apparition I had
seen had been that of Harrison McClintick. But Harrison McClintick was
dead and could leave no footprint. Unless one accepts the theory of a
spectral footprint.
I could not now adopt the comfortable theory that I had been dreaming.
Footprints are not left after dreams. I looked at the portrait to make
sure that the face I had seen had been that of Harrison McClintick.
Weird and distorted and troubled as that face had looked, it had been
the face of McClintick. Well, I had no theory. I had always laughed at
the supernatural. If I had seen the face and there had been no
footprint, I would have assumed that I had seen it in a dream. If there
had been a footprint, but no apparition, I would have said that some one
had entered my room. There was still the explanation (and it seemed to
be the only one) that the vision and the footprint were quite two
different things; that while I slept after that harrowing dream some
creature of flesh and blood had indeed entered and stood beside my
couch.
With this thought I felt that I was on firm ground. I emptied my
suitcase and laid it open over the footprint intending to preserve it
intact for Tom to see. I even smiled at the recollection that I had once
confined a boisterous June-bug in the same way. Then I went downstairs
to find out how my nocturnal visitor had entered. The discovery of this
fact would put the whole spooky business in the category of reality. All
of the windows below were locked by the long iron pins that went through
both sashes. The door of the lodge was likewise locked--just as I had
left it. I opened the door and the clear, morning breeze saluted me,
wafting an exhilarating freshness into my very face. How fragrant is the
woods breeze, bearing the pungent odor of the drenched earth and foliage
after an interval of storm. I can smell the wetness now, and see the
grass and trees as they looked that morning bedecked with a myriad of
lingering crystal drops.
I strolled around the lodge where the wounded, rain-laden grass was
already beginning to straighten up in the welcome sunshine. I was right
about the board blowing down; it lay over a sawhorse where it had
fallen, so nicely balanced that it teetered in the morning breeze like a
seesaw with invisible, ghostly children upon it. I could laugh at that
spooky fancy in the cheery light of morning. “When I know how he got in,
whoever he was, I’ll be satisfied,” said I.
But I did not find out how he got in. He did not get in, as far as I
could find out. The door and windows had all been locked, and none had
been tampered with. There was no ladder about and no sign of any attempt
to reach the upper windows by any other means. I even went over to the
smaller lodge where the boys slept. It was locked and our two ladders
were on the floor inside. Tom said that the rungs of a ladder will turn
around with annoying effects if allowed to get wet and then dry out. So
we kept them under cover.
I returned to the lodge utterly bewildered. Considering the footprint as
wholly apart from my harrowing vision, still here was a profound
mystery. If some one had entered, then _how_ had he entered. There was
just not one way he could have done so without breaking either window or
door latch and so leaving the evidence of his way of entry. _The
mysterious footprint had been left by some one already in the lodge and
still concealed in it._ What other explanation was there?
As I entered the lodge resolved to throw open the cupboard, and then to
look into the rooms of my friends, I recalled how I had folded that old
newspaper article into a sort of plug to stop the rattling of the door.
It must have fallen to the ground when I threw the door open. But search
as I would, I could find it nowhere on the adjacent floor of the lodge
nor on the ground outside. I threw open the cupboard, and not without
some trepidation looked for Tom’s pistol before ascending the stair to
the balcony. I could not find it, so in a spirit of fine abandon I
strode up the stairs and threw both doors open.
No one was in either room. The little closed up quarters smelled damp
and stuffy from the penetrating moisture of the recent storm.
I went downstairs again and began a still more thorough search for the
folded bit of newspaper. It was not to be found. It seemed to have been
taken away by some one capable of entering and departing through solid
walls. The supposition that Mr. McClintick’s shade had indeed stood over
me and left a ghostly footprint was the only alternative theory that I
could devise.
CHAPTER XV—OUT OF THE PAST
I had made no progress in solving these mysteries when, on the second
evening after my startling discovery, Tom and the others returned. The
weather was cold for that time of year and I had been writing all day in
the lodge with a fire blazing in the chimney-place. I had begun to think
of another long evening in that uncanny place when I heard the honking
of that familiar horn and presently the voices of the returning party as
the rattling little flivver emerged from the forest trail into the
clearing. I had often ridiculed that rickety and clanking flivver, but
on that evening its every squeak was like music to my ears.
They had a fine catch of fish and a big piece of ice which they had
brought from Harkness to keep the welcome delicacy fresh if it should
last more than a day or two.
“Do you wish ice to-day?” Brent asked, as he approached the door where I
stood waiting like some fond mother ready to welcome a long lost son.
“I almost think it will be cold enough without ice,” I commented, as
they entered, stretching themselves and setting down their burdens.
“Home again,” I said gladly. “And how is the Ausable Chasm?”
“Ask Brent,” said Tom; “most of his hunting was done there. I don’t
think he missed a post card stand.”
“When I go hunting in the wilds, I never come back empty-handed,” said
Brent. “I have post cards, booklets, rustic canes, pennants, ash trays,
paper weights, Indian moccasins, buckskin pocket-books, pine cushions,
and I have been in Smugglers’ Pass in the Chasm where I found a spark
plug, left there by one of the hardy old buccaneers, I suppose.”
“He didn’t catch one fish,” said Tom.
“That was because they didn’t bite on my hook,” said Brent.
“Well, I want to hear all about it,” I said. “It’s been pretty lonesome
here. I’m half sorry I didn’t go.”
“Your place is in the home,” said Brent.
We made a hearty supper of fresh bass and the most delicious perch I
ever tasted. The cheery, bantering voices of the company enlivened me
beyond measure. One look at Totterson Burke, in his worn old corduroy
suit and all one’s illusions about ghosts were dispelled; he was so very
_real_. The very sight of Skipper Tim in flannel shirt with sleeves
rolled up was a hearty refutation of every superstitious conjecture. The
merest glimpse of Heinie Sheffler eating his supper was enough to
resolve all the perplexities resulting from my weird experience. I felt
at last that I was on firm ground, and that phantom apparitions and
ghostly footprints could not long withstand this wholesome atmosphere.
Still, I said nothing about my experience until Brent and Tom and I were
left alone. And before this (which happened in half an hour or so, for
the boys were sleepy and tired) something occurred which rather startled
me. I did not give it any connection with my experiences while alone
except that every strange occurrence had begun to seem part of a single
mystery.
As the four were about to withdraw to their own sleeping quarters, I
chanced to notice the shabby old black overcoat, belonging to Charlie
Rivers, where it still lay as I had thrown it across an end of the long
table. In a way of mock servility, I proffered Brent his umbrella and
then said, “Don’t forget your coat, Charlie.” I never felt altogether at
ease with Rivers, he did not encourage familiarity, but in a sort of
playfully cordial spirit, I held the coat up, saying, “The easiest way
to carry it is to wear it.”
Now I must tell you that during the several days of his absence, Rivers
had remained unshaved and this fact, I dare say, helped to complete the
picture which he presented when he slipped on his coat. I had never
before seen him thus clad and unshaved, and instantly there sprang into
my mind a very vivid picture of the man who had accosted me in the
street on that same day of Tom’s visit to me when he first told me of
Leatherstocking Camp. You will recall that on that day a man lingered in
the street before my home and that later, while on my way to see Mr.
Temple, this same man accosted me, asking if Leatherstocking Camp had
been sold, and saying that he would like to get a job there.
Well, seeing Charlie Rivers unshaved and in an overcoat which, like
magic, seemed to transfer him from the woods to city streets, I
recognized with a shock the same man who had tried to get into
conversation with me in Bridgeboro so long ago. The revelation struck me
between the eyes. So striking and memorable is the appearance of one
when clad in unwonted raiment. Charlie Rivers was a man of the woods; in
an overcoat he stood apart. “Good night, Charlie,” I said.
As soon as they had gone, I exclaimed, “Tom, Charlie Rivers is the same
man whom we saw while we were sitting on the porch in Bridgeboro; he is
the same man who spoke to me later in the street and asked about a job
up here.”
“What makes you think that?” he asked.
“I know it,” I said. “All that was needed was to see him unshaved and in
an overcoat. Don’t ask me, _I know he’s the same man._”
“I can’t imagine what he was doing down there,” Tom said.
“All I know is what he said,” I answered. “He wanted to know if the
property here had changed hands and spoke of a job--that’s all I know.”
Tom just sat on the edge of the table whistling. “That’s blamed funny,”
he commented.
“Are we going to do the dishes to-night?” Brent asked.
“Do you think it would be all right to speak to him about it?” I asked.
“Why not?” Tom said.
“He was glancing at your flivver--remember?”
“Well, there wasn’t anything so extraordinary about that,” Brent said,
as he gathered up the supper dishes. “Many people have paused to inspect
it. I will presently announce a new surprise myself. Meanwhile, shall we
do the dishes, or leave them till we’ve returned from the movies?”
“Well,” I said, “that’s that. Maybe there’s nothing so mysterious about
it. But I have other matters to tell you about.”
“I’ll tell you how it is about Rivers,” Tom said. “He’s always been a
kind of a wandering adventurer, as I gather. He might have drifted to
Bridgeboro and heard about this camp business and asked you about it.”
“Very likely,” I acknowledged.
Still, Tom seemed thoughtful as he sat on the uncovered end of the
table, whistling and swinging his legs. “When Charlie drifted in here I
never asked him much about himself; I was glad enough to get anybody. I
understood he came from Canada. You can see yourself how he works.”
“And that’s that,” I said.
“That’s that,” said Tom. “I don’t know anything about Heinie either, if
it comes to that.”
“I think he is remotely descended from Germans,” Brent said. And we all
laughed.
“Then there’s another thing,” I said. “Have you got those targets,
Brent?”
“They’re on the shelf in the closet,” said he.
“They are not,” I shot back at him; “they have disappeared.”
We all looked at each other, but there was no opportunity for comment.
“And now,” I said, “I am going to tell you what happened while you were
away; you may explain it as you will. I had an experience which almost
unnerved me. And I will show you the visual proof of at least part of
what I tell you.”
“It sounds good,” said Brent. “Shall we sit down before the cheerful
blaze? That’s a good word--_visual_.”
Seated before the fire, I told them of my experience as you know it; of
my difficult ascent of the mountain, of the footprint, and the word I
had seen crazily scratched on the rock. I told them of my supposed dream
and of the footprint. Then of my assurance that no one had entered the
Lodge. And of the disappearance of the newspaper account of Harrison
McClintick’s end. “I saw the face of McClintick, yet it couldn’t have
been actually the face of McClintick for he is dead,” I said. “Yet there
was an actual footprint left by some one who must have entered the
Lodge. Yet no one entered the Lodge. The targets are gone. The folded
newspaper clipping is gone. Now, unless you believe I am crazy, what do
you say?... Wait a minute, before you say anything. Let’s go upstairs
and look at the footprint. And first look at this one in the hearth.” We
returned downstairs silently. Even Brent’s air of levity was noticeably
absent as he and I resumed our seats while Tom on his own account went
about, inspecting the windows and the door. He returned, shaking his
head in utter bewilderment, and flung himself into one of the big easy
chairs, while Brent thoughtfully poked the fire.
“This blamed place is haunted,” said Tom. “It’s a spook camp, that’s
what it is.”
“Well, let’s talk things over,” Brent drawled, lazily throwing one leg
over an arm of his chair and poking the other in the direction of the
fire. He removed his old-fashioned spectacles and held them toward the
blaze, then cleaned them with his handkerchief and replaced them on his
nose. “Let’s start on the assumption that you are not crazy.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Now before we go any further,” he drawled, “let me throw in my little
contribution to the mystery. It isn’t much, but it’s the best I can do.
Then we’ll see if we can’t get a working hypothesis. This camp is better
than I thought it would be. I’m really getting interested.”
“Yes and you’ll get burned if you don’t pull your foot away from the
fire,” said Tom.
“My error,” said Brent, leisurely withdrawing his charring shoe, and at
the same time taking an envelope from his pocket. “I didn’t mention this
before the boys, not even to you, Tommy. You remember about the targets;
how each one had four bullet holes? And I said there must have been four
at camp--at the finish? Clever, I thought. Well, here’s a letter in an
old battered envelope, postmarked--let’s see--last November--yop,
November three--and that would be about a year or so after the place
here was closed up. Well, the postmaster in Harkness gave this to me
when we came through this evening and asked me if we had anybody of this
name up here. Peter Northrop. It’s addressed to _Peter Northrop, care
McClintick’s hunting camp, Leatherstocking, New York_. You’ve got to
hand it to Uncle Sam for finding people. This letter has been all over
creation--came here from Leatherville, New Jersey. Well, the envelope
was all falling to pieces--see? So I dumped the letter out and took a
squint at it. I think it shows there were four people here. Funny, huh?
Want to read it?”
CHAPTER XVI—SOMEBODY’S SON
I arose and took from him the envelope which he held in his extended
hand; he was too lazy to get up and hand it to me. It was very much the
worse for its travels, almost in shreds. It was addressed by an
illiterate hand and bore several official stampings of _Wrong address_
and _Not Found_. But Uncle Sam, that invincible errand boy, had left it
at the right place at last, though all too late. It contained a letter
written with pencil on a cheap tablet page of lined stationery. To me
there is something fine about an old travel-worn letter, bearing the
honorable scars of its battles with the world, and bereft of its
timeliness, finally reaching its intended destination. Be that as it
might, I lifted the folded contents from the envelope without any
feeling that I was violating the privacy of personal mail. And holding
it down in the light of the fire, I read:
Coover’s falls, N. Dakota.
My dear Son
Now it is so menny months I did not here I must say it looks
like you hav forgot yure own mother. I look for the
telegraph paper that Mister McClintik sent but can’t find so
try to think of the address were you are. You no you said
you would be back soon this time now it is months and I
don’t even here. You said it would do you good in the woods
just a month but I know you would not stay in the Woods in
all this cold. I am spry only for my rumatiz that is so bad
in the damp wether. I look for the ducks but Missus Boardman
said you decided its silly to send them so far. Now if I
knew where Mr. McClintik have his house I would mail this
there. You are a bad boy and like your father must be always
gadding over the earth but a good boy to so I tell Missus
Boardman. I pray God you get this and it finds my boy well.
Every day I say you will be here.
love from your Mother
If an old travel-worn envelope has a certain appeal, how much is that
appeal heightened by the human touch, the pathos, of such an enclosure!
Some poor old woman reaching a trembling hand out into the great world,
groping for a lost son! Perhaps the very heart which prompted that all
but hopeless inquiry was still. The stout heart that protested its
loyalty in the very face of Mrs. Boardman. Perhaps the “rumatiz” had
done its work. And still, where was this wandering son who was so much
like his father?
“Looks as if there were four people here instead of three all right,
doesn’t it?” drawled Brent. “In looking over the targets I hit the
bull’s-eye--as you might say. The old gent, little Rollie, Weston, was
it?--and Peter Northrop. It really doesn’t make any difference; I don’t
have to cook for them. One, more or less, is no matter--as long as
they’re all gone.” He considered the fire musingly. “But it’s kind of
interesting when things fit together like that, huh.... Might drop a
line to the old lady, huh?”
“Leave that to me, I certainly will,” I said. “There are two things I
have to do; speak to Rivers and write to Mrs. Northrop.”
“But how about this mystery?” Tom asked. “So far as the vision, or
whatever you call it, is concerned, it was just a dream. Old man
McClintick didn’t walk out of his picture, that’s sure.”
“He might have at that,” Brent drawled. “He was always pretty hard to
hold back, I guess. Maybe he was dodging the income tax people.... Turn
that log over, will you Tommy?”
Ignoring his levity, Tom fixed the fire.
“Pull that nail keg over here, will you, Tommy?” said Brent. “Put it
under my feet--fine.” He resettled himself comfortably.
“That part was a dream and we’ll forget it,” said Tom.
“If you had seen it you wouldn’t forget it,” said I.
“But the footprint under the suitcase is real,” said Brent. “Anyway, the
suitcase is real; it’s a cheap one, but it’s real.”
“Well, what do you think about it?” I asked, a trifle annoyed. “You sit
there talking as if we were discussing the weather. What are we going to
do about it? A stranger was in this lodge, that’s absolutely certain.”
“You want me to deduce conclusions?” Brent drawled. “Well then, if
nobody entered by the windows, and if the door wasn’t tampered with,
there are two theories left. Either your midnight visitor was in the
lodge before you retired, or else he had a key to the door. Personally,
I prefer the key theory.”
The thought of there being some one in the lodge with me all through
that tempestuous evening, somewhat startled me. “I don’t think so,” I
said thoughtfully. “There was no one in either of the other rooms when I
went to mine.”
“All right then,” said Tom, jumping into the discussion in his impulsive
way; “here’s what we’re face to face with. Here’s a footprint in this
hearth. There’s another like it up the mountain. There’s some vestige of
a trail--if our dreamer didn’t dream that too. Some one entered this
lodge with a key, left a footprint upstairs, and went away again taking
the folded up newspaper article about Mr. McClintick’s death with him.
Now what about it?”
“You forgot the word scratched on the rock up the mountain,” Brent
drawled.
“And that too,” said Tom.
“And Peter Northrop,” I added. “Do you suppose it’s possible that these
footprints are his? Whoever he was, he was evidently here. He was here
in the hunting season; he promised to send ducks to his mother. All
right; he knew the bunch here; he would be interested in reading about
the old man’s death; he took the article. Might that fellow, whoever he
was, be loitering around here for some reason or other? He might be back
here for some purpose. Isn’t that so?”
“Why sure,” said Tom; “that’s what I was coming to.”
“How did he know that a little folded up bit of paper sticking in the
door jamb, was of any interest?” Brent asked.
“It was taken away, wasn’t it?” snapped Tom.
“If he took it, it was because he was looking for it,” said Brent.
“All right,” snapped Tom, rising and pacing back and forth in his
mounting enthusiasm, “that’s as may be. But here’s the point; we’re
pretty sure now there were four people here instead of three--Brent has
established that.”
“You flatter me,” said Brent.
“The old man, his son, Weston, and a fellow named Peter Northrop.”
“We’re not sure of that, but it’s a pretty good surmise,” said Brent.
“Now then,” said Tom, “the old man and his son are eliminated. There
were two others. Somebody who has a peculiar interest in this place, and
doesn’t want it known, has been about here. We don’t know anything about
Weston, but he’s the one who accidentally shot young McClintick, and I
shouldn’t think _he’d_ ever want to see this place again. Northrop
hasn’t been home since. Do you suppose he could be around here now for
some reason or other?”
“It’s not impossible,” said Brent in his leisurely way. “Why don’t you
two go up the mountain, exploring?”
“Of course,” snapped Tom.
“I’ll do something before we do that,” I said. And spurred to action by
our talk, I stepped over to the table, lighted the lamp, and pulling a
sheet of paper out of my portfolio wrote:
Leatherstocking Training Camp,
P. O. address Harkness, Clinton Co.,
New York.
My dear Mrs. Northrop:
A letter sent by you to your son, and misdirected, has
lately been received at this address. The envelope was much
damaged and its contents falling out, so the letter was read
by those in charge here. It is hoped that by this time your
boy has returned to you, or that you know of his
whereabouts.
Mr. McClintick and his son, the former owners here, are both
dead and camp has changed hands. If you have not yet heard
from your boy it might be worth while to write and tell us
something of the circumstances of his coming here as it is
barely possible that some trace of him may be obtained in
that way.
A stranger, unseen by those in charge here, has lately
visited the camp secretly. It has occurred to us that this
might possibly be your son. We are curious to know if he had
a scar on his foot, and if you could inform us as to this,
it might possibly identify this as yet unknown visitor.
The management here hopes that you will not count on any
further information from this source, but if it is possible
for us to assist you in your search we shall be only too
glad to do so.
In answering, please address your envelope the same as the
heading of this letter.
I read this intentionally simple missive aloud to Tom and Brent for
their approval and Tom signed it as Camp Manager. Brent suggested that
we send two copies, one to the mother, the other to the Mrs. Boardman
mentioned in her letter. We assumed that Coover’s Falls was a small
place. But if it chanced to be a town of considerable population perhaps
one letter would be received if the other was not. We had no initials to
prefix to the name on either letter. Brent suggested that if Peter
Northrop’s mother had married a second time, her name would not be
Northrop.
There is something positively uncanny in the way that Brent thinks of
things. He never forgets or neglects anything.
CHAPTER XVII—BAFFLED
We had chopped down a number of trees to open a better wagon trail to
camp and the stumps of these stood at intervals along this improved
approach. Tom had hit on the idea of using some off-length strips of
board for rustic seats along this connecting trail between the camp and
the public road. Wherever two wayside stumps were near enough together a
board was nailed across them with another board as a rough back. Charlie
Rivers was doing this work.
Never at a loss for ideas where camping is concerned, Tom had conceived
the notion of naming these seats after scout notables and heroes, and
Heinie Sheffler, our artist, was decorating the backs of the seats with
such designations as TEMPLE REST, DAN BEARD REST, GOOD TURN REST, and so
on.
On the morning after our talk in the lodge, Tom drove into Harkness to
mail the letters and I strolled along the wagon trail where Heinie and
Charlie were working. I thought the opportunity was good to speak with
Rivers. I came upon Heinie first squatted on a box before one of the
benches, brush in hand, and presenting a ludicrous spectacle of an
artist.
“That’s pretty nice lettering you do, Heinie,” I said, pausing to watch
him.
“Och, I don’t got no good light,” he complained, intent on his work.
“I don’t see how you can hold your brush steady, reaching so far,” I
observed.
“Dot I got no troubles mitt. On life-boats I could paint names when der
oashun iss big mitt wafes all rough. But diss, no. I don’t got no good
light.”
“_Tenderfoot Rest_” I read aloud. “Tom’s full of ideas, isn’t he?”
“Ideas, yess,” said Heinie as he worked: “but efficiency, _not_.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said, rather resentfully.
“I know about it; diss he didn’t got. Nice boy, good scout--sure.
But----”
And Heinie shook his head.
“Why, look what he’s done here,” I said. “He’s inspired us all to
hustle--even me. Look at the camp--all these cabins. I don’t think you
ought to speak like that, Heinie. Tom likes you; he says you’re a
wonder.”
“Nice boy, yess,” said Heinie, smiling. “But he don’t got no efficiency.
Look down the trail--Charlie, making benches--_toys_. He can chop down
four trees aready, while me unt you chops down one. Look at shingles,
how he nail them on. Look at Burke, quartering logs for chinking. In an
hour aready Charlie would make such a pile big enuff for all day. Och,
dot feller could work, I would say dot. Sure--but down the trail you
find him--see? Making bench toys! He ask Tom for diss job--easy!”
“No, no, Charlie isn’t lazy,” I said.
“Sure not. I wouldn’t deny he got us all beat for work--sure. Dot’s it!
Why don’t he got work wot counts mitt getting cabins up? Sure, nice boy,
Tom. Laugh, play pinocle, work like ten devils! But for boss--och, he
got no efficiency.... Neider I got no good light mitt diss,” he added,
intent on his work. Tom’s deficiencies seemed neither to trouble nor
prejudice him.
I strolled up the trail toward where Rivers was working. It did seem
odd, I reflected, that Tom had set our best worker to this odd job just
after the planking had come and the more important labor had been
resumed. As for Heinie, his lettering occupied but an hour or so every
now and then. But I wondered not only that Tom had set Rivers to this
task, but that Rivers (a competent and rapid worker if ever there was
one) should have asked for the job.
You will understand that this wagon trail through the woods led to the
public road. It was up that way, where the trail reached this public
road, that Rivers was working. I did not go straight along the trail,
but cut into the woods, for I thought that Brent was gathering sphagnum
moss for chinking the storehouse cabin and I wanted to speak with him.
He was nowhere to be seen and I went on through the woods, reaching the
public road at a point perhaps a hundred yards from the wagon trail.
Thus, approaching along the road, I could see Rivers working a few yards
from it on the trail. He heard me approaching, and arose suddenly as if
startled. I was astonished at this, for I was still some distance from
him. He seemed relieved as soon as he had identified me.
“H’lo Charlie,” I greeted. “How’s the work coming on? May I sit down on
this bench? Did I startle you?”
“Not many folks come along the road,” he said.
“You’re all by your lonesome up here, huh? I was looking for Brent in
the woods.”
He did not pause to entertain me, proceeding with his task as if I were
not there. He was the hardest man to talk to I ever knew. It takes two
to make a conversation and I could not seduce him into responsiveness.
So I made a bold plunge. “Charlie,” I said, “I wonder if I didn’t meet
you before I ever came here?”
He paused in his work, looking not at me, but straight ahead of him. “I
don’t reckon I did,” he said; “not unless you’re more a man of the woods
than I take yer ter be.”
“In Bridgeboro? You don’t remember? How you spoke to me in the street?
Last fall--no?”
“Reckon I was in Canada then,” he said. “That’s where Slade lives, huh?
No, I ain’t never been there.”
I paused, baffled. And meanwhile, he resumed his work, ignoring me. I
felt, as I always felt when speaking with Rivers, that I had been put at
a disadvantage. I had tried to verify a conviction, and had only been
reminded that I was not a man of the woods. It was a sneer, ever so
skilfully conveyed.
CHAPTER XVIII—SEEING IS BELIEVING
So that was that. I told Tom of my encounter with Rivers and he said,
“Well, I suppose that settles it.” Brent was even more brief. “Hmph,
funny,” he said.
“Tom,” said I, “did Rivers ask you for that job; I mean working out near
the end of the trail?”
“Sure, why?”
“Why--I don’t know,” I answered hesitatingly. “I suppose you’ll say I’m
always getting impressions, but it seemed to me as if--well, when I
happened along the road it seemed to me as if he was startled. And it
occurred--it just occurred to me--that maybe he wanted to be right
there.”
“Why?”
“Well,” I hesitated; “maybe so he could sort of be on the lookout. You
think not?”
“Nah!”
“All right, then that ends it,” I said.
“What I’m thinking about,” said Tom, “is the trail you saw--or didn’t
see. I’d like to get a line on _that_. Either there is one or there
isn’t.”
I was rather annoyed at being twice discredited; once by Rivers and once
by Tom. “If there was an east wind and rain, I could show it to you
readily enough,” I said, rather sharply.
“Sure it wasn’t part of your dream? Remember the face.”
“I am not likely to forget it,” I retorted. “But I’m perfectly willing
to leave it out of our reckoning. Let’s say it was a vision. All right,
you saw the footprint. Now do you want to go up the mountain and see the
other one? And also what’s scratched on the rock? Trail or no trail we
can get up that far--I did it. Maybe I’m not a man of the woods, but I
did it. As for the spook trail, as you call it, it’s there whether it
can be seen now or not.”
“Maybe it caught cold in the rain and can’t come out,” Brent said.
“I’ll find it if it’s there,” Tom said conclusively.
“Atta boy,” said Brent.
“Wait till twilight,” Tom added.
“When the slow declining sun sinks beyond yonder hills,” said Brent.
“Sounds like a play, doesn’t it?”
But just the same the twilight did play its part in Tom’s plan. Daggett,
Burke and Heinie were out on the lake after their day’s labor. Rivers
was down the wagon trail still working; he seldom observed the regular
hours. Thus, unseen by any save Brent and myself, Tom climbed the huge
elm which overspread our lodge. It was fifteen minutes or more before he
descended.
“You’re right,” he said conclusively, “there’s a trail all right. This
is getting interesting.”
“Is it up there in the tree?” Brent asked.
“Come ahead,” said Tom as he explained volubly. “You know how it is at
twilight, the light’s the same all over--while it lasts. Get up high
somewhere and look down and if there’s a trail you’ll see it. Why in the
war the aviators used to discover trails that had never been seen down
below, just little trails made by soldiers going single file--new
trails. Twilight’s the best time. Or very early morning if there’s no
mist. This trail runs from--well, between those two cabins, up past
those rocks, and on up.”
“Do you believe now that I saw that face?” I asked.
“What’s this got to do with faces?” he snapped. “Come ahead, follow me.”
“To-morrow evening, at twilight, I’ll climb up the tree and take a nap
up there,” said Brent. “Then I’ll be able to tell you if your dream was
true.”
“Well, don’t take a nap down here,” said Tom. “Come on, let’s get away
from here before the boys come in.”
On he went, pausing now and again to examine the ground or scrutinize
some brush or tree that we passed. I could not see any sign of trail.
Brent accompanied us with a kind of whimsical submissiveness. Tom was so
detached and preoccupied that he did not question him. Here indeed he
was at his best, the true scout, and seeing no guiding line beneath our
feet, I marveled as he verged to right or left acting, apparently, on
the hint of some stone or drooping bough. Once, when we were well upon
the mountainside he paused, whistling in preoccupation, as he studied a
tree trunk from which he said an obstructing branch had been broken off
within a month or two, he thought. “Didn’t you notice that the other
day?” he asked me. He looked about and found the severed branch in a
grassy gully near by. “See?” he concluded triumphantly.
“There is only one Houdini--or was,” said Brent.
I am certain that our route was not the same as that I had followed in
my haphazard ascent. Yet once or twice I did recognize trifles that I
had seen before. Probably in places I had been on the trail. Tom’s
progress was more purposeful, and he moved from one significant thing to
another as one proceeds by means of stepping stones across a stream. I
was astonished by his discovery of little signs that seemed sufficient
to guide him. At one place he paused in a perfect tangle of underbrush,
Brent and I dutifully pausing also while he stooped to inspect a stone
which he had discovered by stepping on it. He said it was a trail stone,
meaning that it had been much stepped on.
“The only thing this thoroughfare lacks is a name,” said Brent, as he
started again, lifting his lanky legs high out of the dense growth. “Be
on your watch for a traffic cop, Tommy.”
Soon we came to _my_ discovery, the long wisp of pliant wood tied around
the tree at the head of the declivity. “Here it is,” I said
triumphantly.
“You can see I didn’t dream it. Now that’s there to grab hold of. Am I
right?”
Tom was too preoccupied with his inspection of it even to answer me.
“Why, it hasn’t been here long, either,” he said; “it’s fresh, look
here.” And he pulled a long strip of bark from it. “Look at the color of
that_--feel_ of it.”
“Well,” said I with a slight touch of disdain. “What did I tell you?”
“That’s a kind of a--let’s see--that’s a--no it isn’t--yes it is,” Tom
said. “That’s a colly knot. I haven’t seen one tied like that since I
was overseas. Come ahead, let’s go up and look at these rocks.”
“You will find them as represented,” I said with an air of quiet
triumph.
“If not, we get our money back,” said Brent.
CHAPTER XIX—GUESSWORK OR ACTION
My star exhibit, the footprint, was as clear as when I had first seen
it, and I permitted myself to gloat a little as Tom, and even Brent,
gazed at it with riveted astonishment. “And there is the word,” I said,
as I indicated each crazy letter of the topsy-turvy printing.
“S-T-R-A-N-G-L-E.”
Tom only shook his head, amazed, bewildered. “Three of them,” he said.
“Yep, they’re all prints of the same foot. Gosh, I don’t know _what_ to
think. But one thing is certain. Somebody who was at camp a long while
ago has been here lately. That’s _dead sure_.”
“And doesn’t want it known,” said Brent.
“Righto,” Tom agreed.... “Well,” he added, arousing himself to action,
“how about this trail? I wonder where it goes from here, anyway? All the
way up, do you suppose? What do you say, shall we follow it along?”
“I don’t see how we can do that, it’s getting dark,” I said. “We
certainly couldn’t reach the summit to-night even if it can be done at
all.”
“Trouble is, I’d rather the boys wouldn’t know anything about this
business,” Tom said. “It’s pretty hard to get away without them knowing
something about it.” He paused, seeming to consider. “This is a blamed
mysterious kind of business if you’re asking _me_,” he mused aloud. “And
the only theory _I_ have--well somehow that chap Northrop sticks in my
mind.” In his obvious bewilderment he turned upon Brent. It was
interesting to see how this indomitable scout and pathfinder turned
instinctively to his friend about a question not involving scout skill
and physical prowess. “What do _you_ think about it, Brent? Will you
please for once give us a serious answer? What do you think about this
business? This spook-ridden camp we’re in. Blame it all, I wish I knew
something about that Northrop.”
Brent glanced about in the little rocky shelter as if looking for
something to sit on, and it was amusing to note how Tom always reacted
to this leisurely habit of his friend. “What do you want, a steamer
chair?” he asked.
Brent slowly seated himself on a rock. “Are you sure you’ve told us all
you know--all you heard--about this place, Tommy?” he asked.
“Why, sure,” said Tom.
“Well, it’s a puzzle,” said Brent. “Here’s what we actually do know. We
know somebody lately passed down through here and left a footprint. We
_don’t_ know that the same person scratched that word--now wait a
minute, Tommy, don’t interrupt. I’m talking about what we _know_. Let’s
stand on the ground----”
“Or sit down,” I playfully suggested.
“All right,” said Brent. “We _know_ that a footprint just like this was
left in a room in the lodge the other night. And we _know_ that these
two footprints match another one that was left in the hearth a long time
ago. So we _know_ that some one who was here a long time ago, has been
around here lately. Now that’s what we actually do know, because
footprints can mean only one thing. If we want to find out who’s hanging
around here, the best thing to do is to hunt for him, or at least watch
for him. When we find him, if we do, we’ll find out who he is and why
he’s here.”
“There’s one thing more that we know,” I said.
“We don’t know for an absolute certainty that there were four people
here,” Brent said. “We have what they call presumptive evidence, that’s
all.”
“That isn’t what I mean,” I said. “But we do know----”
“Cut out the dream,” said Tom.
“We do know,” I continued, “that the person who entered the lodge the
other night had a key.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Brent said thoughtfully.
I paused before expressing a thought--something less than a
thought--that was lurking in the back of my mind. “Do you suppose that
this Northrop, whoever he is or was, might have been mixed up in some
way with the murder of Mr. McClintick? Whoever returned here the other
night had a key. It was some one familiar with the place. He was
interested in that article about McClintick’s death--took it away with
him. This man Northrop has been missing from his home. McClintick was
strangled, and there’s the word scratched up on the rock.”
“Why should he scratch it there?” Brent asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s rather interesting to find that
particular word scratched there--right where one of the footprints is.”
“It seems to me,” Brent said, “that whoever scratched that word there
wasn’t exactly in his right mind. Nice, intelligent, normal murderers
don’t do things like that. Why pick on our missing friend, Peter? How
about absent-minded Wes, the young duck-shooter?”
“If you mean Mr. Weston why don’t you say so?” Tom snapped.
“He might have gone crazy at that,” Brent said. “Maybe he--didn’t you
say he went to pieces after popping little Rollie?”
“Roland,” said Tom.
“Well, as long as we’re giving guesses,” Brent continued, “Weston was
the one who had the best reason to go to pieces. Maybe in that state he
fancied the old gent would kill him, so he beat him to it. One guess is
as good as another. All we know about Northrop is that he didn’t go
home.”
“And that he wasn’t mentioned as being here at all at the time of the
accident,” I said.
“That’s one thing I can’t understand,” Tom exclaimed.
“Well,” said Brent, rising, “here we are part way up a mountain playing
_guess, guess_ and night coming on. The thing to do is find out who’s
been around here if we can. Come on, let’s go down home.”
Before descending, Tom examined the land above the rocks and found that
the trail, such as it was, continued on up the mountain. As I glanced up
there it seemed to me quite incredible that any one could ascend to the
summit. Surely, I thought, the trail could not be continuous and must
encounter many obstacles. But Tom argued that the footprint at the rocks
proved that our mysterious visitor had descended the mountain, since
there was no evidence of any one having camped in the little rocky
shelter. He was all for action and resolved to follow the trail to the
very summit, if that were possible, the next day.
How to do this without the others of our party knowing about it was a
question. Tom thought it would seem less significant if he went alone,
and his determination to do this was the more easily reached because of
the rather poor opinion he held of Brent and me as scouts.
“That’s the only thing to do,” he said, as we made our way back to camp.
“There’s no use wasting time in guesswork, and I can’t sit around, or
even work, knowing that there’s maybe somebody lurking around the place.
Somebody came down that trail or the footprint wouldn’t be there on the
mountain, that’s sure. I’m going to find out where the blamed thing
leads to.” He seemed full of resolve, restive for action, and rattled on
in his hearty, vigorous way as we picked our path down the mountainside.
“I don’t want either of you to go along,” he exclaimed. “It isn’t
necessary and the boys will only wonder what we’re up to. I’m going to
start out to-morrow at daylight; I always wanted to get to the top of
the mountain anyway. Now if anybody asks any questions about me just let
them think I went to Harkness on foot; you can sidestep questions all
right. Probably that’s what they’ll think anyway, because they know the
flivver doesn’t work half the time. When I come down to-morrow
afternoon, I may have something to tell you. If somebody came down the
mountain I ought to be able to go up. I’ll punch a hole in this blamed
mystery and be done with it. The plaguy thing’s getting on my nerves.”
CHAPTER XX—SUSPENSE
Tom had gone when we arose in the morning and there were no questions
asked. He often went to Harkness and sometimes to the sawmill at Rogers
Gap and was gone all day, so there was nothing remarkable about his
absence. I dare say no one even knew that he had not gone in the
flivver.
In the light of subsequent happenings how vividly I recall that day! The
early morning was cold and the roofs of the cabins covered with frost.
But soon the sun dispelled this chilliness and the air was filled with
the balmy fragrance of spring. We had a pretty good illustration of the
effects of long and heavy rains on the mountain lakes of that region,
and I was impressed with Tom’s wisdom in not building any cabins too
near the shore. Every little gully on our camp land was a running
stream, and every depression a miniature pond. There was one place where
it was clear that every storm would transform a certain irregular hollow
(which we had not even noticed) into a broad and rushing torrent. So
Brent and Tim and I spent the day in throwing up a couple of rustic
bridges at convenient spots across the course of this occasional outlet.
At suppertime Tom had not returned and Brent and I thought he must have
made a discovery. Nothing in particular was said about his absence. We
played cards with the boys for a while and then they went to their
cabin. Brent and I sat up till midnight, puzzled and a trifle concerned.
Still I cannot say that we were greatly worried, Tom was so thoroughly
at home in the woods. I did think it possible that he might have got
lost in the darkness on that wild mountain. Acting on this thought we
hung a lantern in the window and I fixed a sheet of shiny tin (such as
is used to lay beneath shingles in certain parts of a roof) behind it so
as to throw the glare toward the mountain. “He ought to be able to see
that from any part of the slope,” I said. Then, comforting ourselves
with the thought that this belated beacon would guide him, we went to
bed for we were very sleepy.
I must have been dozing when I thought I heard him tiptoeing on the
balcony and I slept the better for that assurance that he had returned.
But in the morning we found him still absent and we were greatly
perplexed. Here was something added to the mystery of that uncanny
place. The lantern, still burning in the window, seemed to emphasize the
strange non-appearance of our comrade. It was still very early, for
Brent had aroused me at dawn, and as he lifted down the lantern with its
makeshift reflector, it cast a glow upon the footprint in the cement
hearth. For just a moment this stood out in bold relief in the
surrounding gray of early morning.
“What had we better do?” I asked. “For my part, I can’t go to work with
Tom absent like this. Should we arouse the boys and tell them? Surely
something is wrong; he wouldn’t have stayed up there all night unless
something had happened.”
“I don’t like the idea of talking about these matters with the crew,”
Brent said. “If Tommy is just lost of course it would be all right,
though I suppose they’d wonder why he went up the mountain. Blame it
all, it’s hard to know _what_ to do. Trouble is, I have a feeling--I
just can’t help it--that something is going to come out about this
place, that something is going to happen. What kept Tommy away all night
with that lantern burning in the window? It would be pretty tough, after
all the work that’s been done here, if anything happened to give the
place a black eye. People are queer, when you come right down to it.
There’s many a good house standing empty because it has the reputation
of being haunted.”
His thoughtfulness made me thoughtful also. “Sure enough,” I agreed. “If
anything happened to hurt the prospects of this camp it would be a
harder blow for poor Tom than any personal mishap that could befall
him.... I tell you what let’s do, Brent. Let’s go right now, before any
one is about, and drive the flivver out into the road and down a little
distance. Then they’ll think that you and Tom and I went to Harkness
early; they won’t think twice about it. We can cut up through the woods
and get into the mountain trail that way. We’ll be out of sight before
they’re out of bed. We can follow the trail up, and if the worst comes
to the worst, and we find that something _has_ happened, it will be time
enough then to tell them. What do you say?”
This seemed to be the best plan and we were soon cutting up through the
woods approaching the sheltering rocks from a new point. It was hard to
reach them by this route, but they stood out in plain view so we had
them to guide us through the dense, trailless thicket. No one was
stirring about the camp when we looked down from this romantic spot. A
mist lay over the lake and my thoughts recurred, as they so often did
(especially in early morning), to the shocking accident which had
occurred there.
There was but one little sign of Tom at this spot. On the edge of a
certain flat stone was a sort of stained or scraped area which Brent
said was where a knife had been sharpened. This supposition was soon
confirmed by the blazings on trees above the rocks. Evidently Tom had
found no trail beyond this point and had plunged into the thicket,
blazing his way as he ascended, so that he might be guided on his
return. This made our own progress easy, or at least enabled us to
follow his own path on up the mountain.
After about half an hour’s climbing through bramble and thicket and up
minor precipices and rocky ledges, Brent suddenly reached forward laying
his hand on my shoulder.
“Shh! _Listen!_” said he.
CHAPTER XXI—DESPAIR
Somewhere not far off was the sound of falling water and ten or fifteen
minutes more of difficult progress brought us to a long, narrow cleft
crossing our line of travel. Into this tumbled a rushing brook which
wriggled down in its boisterous course from high up the mountain. I
thought that Tom might have heard this falling water from a long
distance and come thither intending to follow the course of the brook.
We wondered how he had crossed the cleft, for as far as we could see, it
did not seem to narrow in either direction. Brent walked on ahead a
little way.
“We might as well see how far this cleft goes,” he called.
“You’re right,” I said. “There might be a turn we can’t see from here.”
“We can only try. If there’s a place one can cross, Tom has found _that
place_.”
“I dare say,” I said, greatly admiring Brent’s implicit faith in Tom’s
judgment.
We walked along then in silence, the stillness being broken only by the
occasional crackle of dried twigs underfoot and the now distant sound of
the turbulent little brook swishing down the mountain side.
“Bad turn ahead,” Brent called to me, “Keep in line!” As usual I had
been lagging in the rear, but on hearing this, increased my speed and
caught up to him at the turn.
Some distance beyond, the cleft stopped abruptly. Even our own trackless
path ahead, narrowed out before our eyes and ended against another
towering wall of frowning stone rising out of a deep gully.
“Well this is once we’ll stand with our backs to the wall,” Brent said,
with a mixture of humor and despair.
“It looks that way, certainly,” I replied, feeling only the despair and
none of the humor.
We were glancing around rather hopelessly for some sign that Tom might
have made in his search. So far, there had been no telltale signs of any
human being, but here and there we noticed broken down wild growths
where some heavy footed night prowler had recently passed.
It must have been well on toward seven o’clock and the sun had not shown
any more than a faint line of sickly pinkish hue in the East. The skies
too, looked threatening and overcast. Clouds of ashen gray roofed the
summit of old Hogback and the ragged outer edges, like some
weatherbeaten circus top, seemed to lap over all the rest of the world.
The silence was rather depressing. The misty chill of that dark morning
had gotten into my system. Brent too, I noticed, had become unusually
quiet.
“Hadn’t we better find our way back again before this deluge traps us?”
I asked.
“I guess so,” Brent replied. He sauntered over toward the indomitable
looking wall of stone that shut off our progress in that direction.
“At least we _can_ go back,” I called to him and wishing he would give
up the idea of trying to cross over the cleft.
I stood there thinking how helpless mere Man really is in the face of
Nature. Why even that noisy brook whistling over the stones in the gully
was not daunted by that high mountain wall. It was tirelessly finding
its way until it finally rushed out and over the jagged rocks and thence
down into the foothills, white-foamed and free. My reverie was
interrupted by the sound of Brent’s voice.
“See what we have here! Looks like an old Roman bridge, doesn’t it?”
Not being able to see from where I stood, I moved towards Brent and saw
that the high wall had one really fine advantage. It had undoubtedly
taken ages to form, but there it surely was, a natural narrow bridge of
fallen rock. Hardly more than a ledge and too narrow to walk it; one
would have to crawl on hands and knees.
Besides, there was a jump of about eight or nine feet on the opposite
side before one could skirt the ravine and land safely. Beyond that, we
could see the thick woodland declining in the direction of camp. I
mentioned this to Brent.
“I know,” he said, “but all this doesn’t give us the slightest idea as
to where Tommy’s spent the night and where he is now.”
“I realize that, Brent,” I said. “Still I feel quite confident that Tom
is safe and knows what he’s doing. We’ll probably find him at camp when
we get there.” Perhaps I felt suddenly buoyed up at the sight of the
firm rocks ready to give us safe passage over the gully. I only know
that I wanted to get out of the deepening gloom of the mountains as
quickly as possible.
“If he’s not there, maybe Rivers will be able to suggest something,”
Brent ventured to say.
“He’s probably there,” I said, and feeling that my words had sounded
rather half-hearted.
Brent started for the narrow ledge and I followed slowly, so as to keep
a safe distance between us. Neither spoke until we were safe on firm
ground again.
I laughed nervously as I scooped and brushed the oozy green scum from my
clothes. The stuff was thick all along the ledge. Brent did the same.
And we both realized it had been a risky jump across that yawning chasm.
In a self-congratulatory mood for our good fortune, we moved
simultaneously toward the edge of the precipice and looked over. Almost
instantly Brent gave my arm a painful jerk and drew back.
“Heavens!” he cried, hoarsely. “Look what’s down there!” His head was
turned toward mine but his hand was outstretched and I followed the line
of his pointed finger.
Down in the gully, lying face downward and partly immersed in the swift
mountain brook was the form of a man.
CHAPTER XXII—TOM
“It can’t be--I began.
“It must be!” Brent exclaimed, his voice quivering.
“Tom?” I asked, in a voice that sounded not like my own. Brent nodded.
“But how?” I couldn’t seem to grasp the meaning of it all. It seemed
inconceivable for Tom to come to such an end. “Why, he’s too cautious to
have made such a ghastly error!” I cried.
I couldn’t and I wouldn’t believe that _that_ was Tom!
“Who else would it be?” Brent’s broken tones sounded hopelessly
positive, somehow. “He’s tried to find his way through here in the early
dawn probably. He couldn’t have seen what a gap it was!”
“No, of course not!” I agreed, mechanically. “We must hurry back to
camp. Get some help. The storm’s almost upon us.”
“Oh, yes! The storm. I had almost forgotten it,” Brent murmured, as
though the storm and all else now meant nothing. “We’ll get some rope.
He can’t lie there for long. He’s _dead_, of course!”
“_Of course!_”
* * * * *
We ran when we could and walked as fast as the thick brambles permitted.
Where it was less thickly wooded, I could get a slight view of the camp
through the trees. It looked like a speck of black on the horizon. We
still had some distance to go.
The heavens were rumbling angrily and yet we had not sighted a place
where we could find foothold enough to make a descent to the slope below
us. Fully a half hour had passed and the rain was pelting us in huge
drops before we found some jagged indentations running down to the first
slope.
With hands and faces scratched and bleeding, our clothing torn and wet
we finally reached the lower edge. Whether to follow along the base
toward camp or strike out for the table-land was the question uppermost
in our minds.
Which way would enable us to get there quickly? Brent took my arm in his
and made a flourish with his free hand to the southeast.
“Isn’t that a sort of trail there?”
So it was, indeed! Though not much more of a trail than any we had just
travelled. It was noticeable, however, that here and there the heavy
grass lay tumbled on the earth as though some heavy object had flattened
it.
“We can try it,” I said, “although it seems a long way ’round.”
“I know,” Brent said, “but it’s better to keep in the open. There’s a
slight chance one of the boys might see us, there, where they wouldn’t
be looking toward the mountain.
“I can signal every once in a while as we go along that we need help.
Some one of them, especially Rivers, ought to be able to understand the
code. It will save time if they spy us and we can turn right back.”
I shuddered to think of that ghastly sight in the dark ravine. And I
shivered in my wet clothes when I thought of the fury of the storm. Even
at that moment, it was converting the busy little brook into a frothing
whirlpool, dashing unmercifully against that stark, helpless form.
I wouldn’t let my thoughts quell my hopes.
“We won’t give up hope, Brent! Perhaps, he’s there--at the Lodge.”
“Perhaps not,” Brent answered, gloomily.
The wet clinging grass of the foothills, though disagreeable and cold,
was a welcome relief from our mountain experiences.
Dejected and despairing we hurried on, Brent stopping now and then to
signal some hoped for, unseen observer. There was nothing in our hearts
that we could find to say to one another that would better the situation
or make it worse--if that could have been possible.
The howling of the wind through the mountains and down across the open
country with its tall waving grass seemed to emphasize the dismal
solitude. No living thing had crossed our path. Nothing but rain. It
seemed eternal.
“There’s a clearing over to the right,” Brent called to me. I glanced
casually.
From where we were walking I judged it to be a clearing about one
hundred feet in circumference. When the wind blew the grass aside we
noticed a slight eminence in the center of the bare looking ground that
could not be mistaken for other than what it was. A small rough wooden
cross was its marker.
We deliberately walked on. The sight brought to mind more forcibly the
tragic puzzle in which our own lives had become involved.
“Now I know,” I said to Brent, “how Weston felt when he went to the
Lodge to see if young McClintick was there. And here we’re doing the
same thing.”
“We’re almost there,” Brent said, quietly. His voice betrayed a sort of
fear that when we did get there, we’d find out the worst.
There wasn’t a sign of anyone about as we neared camp. The men were
keeping indoors and out of the storm.
We were standing before the Lodge door!
It seemed as though we had been away from it for years. And no one to
welcome us! Not a sound came from within.
Brent and I stared at the door. I felt panicky. The one waiting for the
other to open the door and neither one moving.
For a second, I thought it was just an hallucination. But the door did
really swing open slowly and a figure in khaki reached out and pulled us
in as though we were two powerless puppets.
“For heaven’s sake!” the figure in khaki was exclaiming. “Where have you
been? You both look as though you’ve stepped out of Poe! Say something!”
The moment must come to everyone, sometime, when extreme grief or
gladness renders the human tongue speechless. That moment had come to
Brent and I.
Some seconds passed before I heard a voice sounding very much like my
own saying, “Tom!”
CHAPTER XXIII—STRANGE PARTNERS
All that Brent could find to say was, “This is too much for me!” And he
went to the fireplace to thaw out.
After we’d slipped into dry clothes and had something hot to drink we
demanded an explanation from Tom.
“Why, I got back here right after you left,” he explained. “In fact, I
could hear the echo of the flivver from the woods as I got to the Lodge.
I thought you fellows had taken a notion to go to Harkness. In fact, I
didn’t think about it again until I saw Brent passing the window. I was
reading here alone. That’s why I didn’t bother getting up to open the
door. Thought you were old enough to do it yourselves.” He laughed
heartily.
“Come on, Tomasso!” Brent pleaded. “Give an account of your wanderings.
We deserve to hear it after ours.”
“To begin with,” Tom said, “I set straight out, intending to follow up,
if I could, the scarred footprint.”
“He sounds like Sherlock Holmes,” said Brent, poking a log into the
flames. Tom took no notice of the interruption.
“At first I didn’t fare very well in that direction. Too much
undergrowth. But, around noontime, up on the second slope, I discovered
some soft moss under a huge tree. And I saw some footprints. Of an
animal.
“I got curious and looked on further. No sign of any more. So after a
while I went on back to the tree and tore up some weeds just beyond it.
Found more footprints of the same animal and followed them on down the
slope.
“And along with the animal’s tracks, sometimes a little ahead or just
beside them; sometimes a trifle back--was the _scarred footprint!_”
“This is interesting,” I murmured. “Go on.”
“I followed it carefully. Every little way I stopped and examined the
ground where it seemed to be soft. I’d find them together most every
time--the human, bare footprints that had sunken in the soft ground
under the frail weeds and those of the animal.
“Oh, I was pretty much convinced. But I wanted to make sure and when I
got through fussing around, it was six o’clock.
“I took enough grub with me so I sat down and finished what I had left
from noon. About that time the sun was setting. Somehow, it gave me a
hunch to stick around.
“Well, I looked around and found myself a nice perch up in a tree
overlooking the rocks and the camp. It wasn’t long after dark that the
moon made a feeble effort to come through the clouds. It had quite a
ring around it last night, if you remember; still there was enough light
for me to see the rocks and a little beyond.
“I waited patiently and was soon rewarded for my pains, with a nervous
chill. Our friend, the lynx, was howling gaily on the slope above me.
With each howl the echo came nearer and nearer until it almost deafened
me. Finally it ceased, and I could hear quite plainly in the stark
silence that followed, a crackle of dry twigs and soft footfalls coming
toward me.”
“Whew!” Brent exclaimed.
“I was cramped,” Tom went on. “My rigid position was beginning to get on
my nerves. I was about to shift a little when I heard the soft whisper
of a man’s voice right near me. Gosh what a scare!
“I felt I had been sitting there for days, when I heard the voice again,
and looking down saw something pass under the tree and on down through
the rocks in the direction of the camp.”
“What was it?” Brent asked.
“A terribly emaciated looking man. Just like a hermit you read about and
have never seen. Long beard and hair; rags for clothes and barefoot. And
with him--walking alongside like a pet dog--was _the lynx_! Absolutely!”
[Illustration: WALKING ALONG LIKE A PET DOG--WAS THE LYNX!]
“Almost incredible!” I exclaimed.
“I knew you’d hardly believe it,” Tom protested. “But I saw it with my
own eyes! And besides, I got down out of the tree after they were well
out of sight and examined the ground with my flashlight. The footprints
were there all right. Both man’s and beast’s.”
“What next?” Brent queried.
“I decided that as long as I had seen that much, I might as well wait
for the finish. Not that alone, but I was afraid if I started for camp I
might meet the queer looking couple on the way. And I didn’t relish the
thought of that unarmed.
“I stretched myself, took a little stroll around the tree; then resumed
my former position and waited for their return. It was difficult to keep
my eyes open, but I managed to watch pretty steadily. It was some long
night, I can tell you, and I was mighty cold besides. The first sight of
dawn was pretty welcome.”
“And your friends?” I asked, eagerly.
“You have me there,” Tom answered. “They didn’t come back.”
CHAPTER XXIV—AND “PETERS” DROPS IN
“How do you account for that?” I asked.
“I don’t account for it at all,” Tom answered.
“In other words they just vanished into thin air!” Brent remarked,
lightly.
“That must be it,” said Tom, and shook his head wonderingly. “I know
positively they didn’t come back.”
“That’s stupid of us, Brent!” I exclaimed, and suddenly remembering. “He
must be the man in the gully. They went around the other way, you see.
That explains it!”
“Sure,” said Tom, “but I wonder where the lynx went?”
“We saw his tracks on both sides of the cleft,” Brent said.
“Well it’s too stormy to go up there again to-day,” Tom said.
“Furthermore, the poor fellow can’t come to any further harm where he is
now.”
“Do any of the boys know of our morning excursion?” I asked Tom. No, he
hadn’t told them. Neither had they any idea but that Tom had returned
safely the previous night from Harkness.
“Would you suggest our telling the boys about what you saw in the
gully?” Tom asked Brent.
“No, I wouldn’t,” he said. “As long as they don’t know where we were
this morning, I don’t think it would be wise to say anything now. This
mystery has to be cleared up first. We don’t know positively whether the
body in the gully is that of the hermit or not. It’s bad enough to have
to tell when we are sure without circulating any false reports now.”
“But the hermit _didn’t_ come back,” Tom repeated, persistently. “And
it’s perfectly logical for me to suppose he went back the same way you
fellows came this morning. You thought when you saw the body, I had
tried to cross before daylight and missed my step. Couldn’t he have done
the same thing?”
“I’ll tell you better to-morrow, Tommy,” Brent said in drawling tones.
“Meanwhile you better think up a good excuse to give the boys for our
absence from camp in the morning. You could say (if you can’t think of
anything else) that our fountain pen adventurer here wants to get some
material and we have to go help him carry it back.”
“That’s not so bad either,” I said, refusing to take Brent seriously.
At this juncture, our friend Heinie came in and asked Tom if he could
use his flivver to go to Harkness. He wanted to buy a few personal
necessities and as long as the rain prevented any work that day, he
might as well go and “do some-tings yet,” as he said to Tom.
We gave Tom a significant look remembering that we had hidden the Ford
down the road quite a little way. However, Brent rose to the occasion
and offered to go down and get the flivver started. “It stalled on
Sladey in the middle of the woods,” he explained to Heinie. “I’ll find
it and bring it back.” Heinie was satisfied to sit down with us and
wait.
“Maybe dere iss noddings you vant in Harkness, yes?” he inquired of Tom
and me solicitously.
“Nothing I know of,” Tom answered, for both. “Except that you can take
that bunch of mail to the post office and get it off.”
We kept a small mail bag hanging near the door so as to make it
convenient to carry to and from Harkness. We devised the bag as a means
of keeping it intact and incidentally were preparing for the future when
Leatherstocking Training Camp would mean quite something to the postal
authorities in Harkness.
“I guess they’re all stamped,” Tom said, handing it to Heinie as he was
leaving, “but if there’s been any overlooked, keep track of what you
spend.”
An hour or so later, a hearty knock sounded at the door. We all answered
in response and a tall, husky looking woodsman stepped in. He introduced
himself as “Peters” a state game warden. Tom asked him to sit down.
“Jes’ thought I’d make a little visit fer an hour or so,” he said,
genially; then, lighting a foul smelling pipe, he spread his bulky frame
in the willow easy chair.
“Going to stay for the night?” Tom asked kindly.
“Lord, no!” he exclaimed. “Hev ter keep on the move this time o’ the
year. Been nigh onto a year since I wuz here in these parts. Camp was
locked up then--tighter than a game garden’s heart.”
“Well, well,” Tom said, “must have been lonely.”
“Nah, not at all,” he said, seemingly glad of the chance to talk to us.
“Plenty excitement a’ right though. ’Nother feller ’n I wuz bunking
together here fer two nights. Nary a human soul disturbed us but we hed
’nough frum other directions.”
“How’s that?” I asked, impulsively thinking he might divulge something
extraordinary.
“Why,” he went on, “the first night a little imp of a lynx cub kept us
awake all through ’till dawn, running around the Lodge and a-makin’ all
sorts of divlish noises. We didn’t bother him, but the second night he
got ter hollerin’ agin and when I went fer him he made a leap. But I
fixed him!”
“Did you kill him?” Tom asked.
“Nah, he wuz too quick fer thet--ter kill him right off. But I shot his
front paw near off ’n enough ter make him bleed ter death. He run up the
mountain a-howlin’ like fury.
“The next day my buddy ’n I trailed his bloody tracks up the slope a
little ways thinking he cudn’t hev gone far bleedin’ like thet. We
thought too, we’d get his pelt. But nary a dead lynx did we find nor a
live one neither.”
CHAPTER XXV—A GHOST ON THE WIRE
“What do you think became of him?” Tom queried, rather anxiously I
thought.
“I cudn’t imagine,” Peters replied, “unless he fell into one of them
gully places. Anyway we hed ter be on the move ’n didn’t hev time ter
look.”
“I don’t suppose you ever met the former owner of this camp, did you?”
Brent asked Peters.
“Naw, I never seen nothin’ o’ the McClinticks’,” he replied, as though
it was something he sincerely regretted. “I’ve always been sorry the old
man had the Lodge locked up so tight too, fer I mighta been able ter do
him a favor--I don’t know!” he sighed mournfully.
“Yes?” I queried, “Explain all that!”
“Aw, it mightn’t hev amounted ter anything,” he said. “But, yet it
might. They wuz away frum here ’bout five months at thet time. That wuz
after the son wuz killed.
“Now everybuddy in these parts knew thet the old man put the place up
fer sale ’roun’ February. ’N everybuddy in New York must ’a’ known it
too fer I heerd as how he had it advertised in all the big papers. So
thet means all his best friends knew it anyways.
“Ter make a long story short,” he went on, relighting his pipe, “the
fust night we wuz here and hed got rid o’ the lynx cub fer a spell, my
buddy shakes me ’n wakes me up, ’n he sez, ‘Sh-shush, listen, c’n yer
hear thet telephone ringin’ ’r are ye deaf?’
“I gits up ’n sure ’nuff, there wuz a telephone bell a-ringin’ like
Squaw Harry and it’s in the Lodge. It rang fer nigh onto half an hour I
guess. But we cudn’t git in ter do a thing about it.
“Ez I told yer afore, all Mr. McClintick’s friends knew he wuzn’t comin’
here no more. ’N I told my buddy thet it must ’a been the ghost of the
dead son ’n nobody else! Sure as I live!” He said it with finality.
“And what makes you think it was a ghost?” I asked, a trifle impatient
with the man’s stubborn superstition about small things.
“Wa’al, becuz after we left here ’n got ter Harkness we run inter Minnie
Schultz ’n she told us a thing or two about it.”
“And pray, who is Miss Minnie Schultz?” Brent asked, with mock gravity.
Peters seemed delighted to impart to us his knowledge of the lady.
“She worked fer the ’phone company--night operator, until they let her
out fer listenin’ in. Nice girl Minnie is, but my goodness how she does
love ter chat with a body.”
“I think I understand it now,” Brent said, straightening up in his
chair. “She knew about the call to the Lodge that night and told you. Is
that it?”
“Right you are, young man!” Peters said, admiringly. He seemed to puff
his pipe extra hard over this morsel of gossip.
“Between us four gentleman,” the fellow continued, “’n I know it won’t
go no further, Minnie told me as how she wuz the very operator thet
handled the call. It wuz from Montreal Central Office ’n she sez thet
she told them she wuz positive Mr. McClintick wudn’t be at the Lodge.
“She rung and rung ’n no answer came, o’ course, ’n she sez she told
Montreal so. Then Montreal comes back at her ’n sez that their party wud
like to speak ter Minnie herself.
“She sez she heard the man’s voice, very excited like, ’n thet he told
her she must get McClintick at the Lodge and thet there must be someone
there. When she sez there isn’t, he sez McClintick alwuz cum ter the
Lodge fer thet night on account of it’s being his wife’s anniversary or
something.
“’N Minnie, being the clever girl she is, smells a rat, ’n sez to the
man, ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ ’n he screams back at her, ‘Well,
I ought to know somethin’ about it, fer I’m his son!’
“Minnie sez, ‘Who?’ She’s frozen, she gits such a shock, but the feller
rings right off and Montreal tells her she should excuse the call.”
“What does Miss Minnie think of it?” Tom asked, plainly excited.
“Minnie sez she doesn’t want ter think about it at all. She feels sorry
fer the McClinticks’ troubles, but she sez it cost her her job. It wuz
too good fer her to keep, you see, ’n within a week the story wuz all
over and so she got the gate.”
“How did the folks around here take to the story?” Brent asked,
evidently interested.
“Well, ter tell the truth, folks hereabouts don’t take much stock in
Minnie and they laughed about it. Called it one of her yarns, but I
don’t. No, siree! Didn’t we hear the ’phone ringin’ thet night
ourselves? It was a ghost, sure as ye live!”
“Or a real live person,” I put in.
“It cudn’t o’ been a live person if he sez he wuz the son!” Peters
exclaimed vociferously. “’N another thing, ain’t he dead and buried
’bout a mile ’n a half frum here. Thet proves it wuzn’t a live person.”
The man was so insistent that we had to agree with him out of sheer
courtesy, but as for the ghost story, of course we wouldn’t give
credence to it.
“But wait a minute, Peters,” said Brent, with an alertness that quite
startled Tom and me. “How is it there’s no sign of any ’phone or wires
around here now?” Peters grinned as though to say he would win anyhow.
“Oh, they said in Harkness, thet Mr. McClintick hedn’t paid his bill, so
they took it out right after we wuz here. ’N shortly after thet, a
terrible storm brought down the wires as neat as you ever see so the
’phone people never bothered puttin’ ’em up agin, thinkin’ the Lodge
wudn’t be sold fer a spell.” He arose and knocked his pipe against the
bricks over the fireplace. Then he leaned forward as if he was about to
tell us a secret.
“Minnie told me confidentially thet McClintick owed the ’phone people
one hundred dollars and thet the ’phone number at the Lodge here wuz
number one hundred too! Now, thet’s what you gentlemen wud call a
coincidence, eh?”
CHAPTER XXVI—WHO’S LETTER?
“I wonder what he meant when he said he could have done McClintick a
favor by answering the ’phone?” Tom asked Brent, after Peters had left
us.
“I guess he felt he had the power to act as medium and relay the ghost’s
message to Mr. McClintick, had he been able to answer the phone!” Brent
teased.
“Seriously though,” I said, “leaving the ghost entirely out of this,
someone did want to speak to McClintick badly. The telephone company’s
action regarding their employee authenticates that much.”
“Yes,” Brent said, “and I believe that Minnie wasn’t talking entirely
through her hat, either.”
“What do you mean, Brent?” Tom asked. “You think it really was the son
still _alive?_”
“I do! The very same.”
“I’d hardly say that, Brent,” I remarked.
“Not only did we see the young fellow’s grave, but Peters confirms it to
be his also.” Brent smiled disdainfully and flicked some ashes across
the hearth.
“Granted, my revered friend,” he said, in solemn tones. “But the fact
that we saw a grave doesn’t prove it’s the grave of young Rolly. Nor
does Peters’ confirmation mean a thing. After all he doesn’t know any
more than we do, and we don’t know anything, _yet_.”
“In other words,” Tom said, with a tinge of sarcasm, “you don’t believe
anything! Perhaps you could give us a little hint as to the reason for
your skepticism, eh?”
“Just what I intended to do, Tommy!” Brent said, cheerily and taking no
notice of Tom’s impatience. “There’s this much about it, the whole thing
is beginning to rankle, with so much mystery and no way of solving it.
We know there aren’t any ghosts and apparitions floating around. But
there has been a live ghost walking around here!”
“It’s beginning to get on my nerves too!” Tom said, “but what can we do
about it? We can’t go to the authorities and order them to exhume the
body in that grave, can we?”
“Another thing,” I interposed, “no one seems to know or has even heard
what became of that Weston fellow. There wasn’t any mention of him in
the papers in connection with Mr. McClintick’s death. I wonder if the
police know of him?”
“We could find that out easily enough,” Brent answered, “but it would
make a mess of this Camp. Put a stigma on it before it’s had a chance to
breathe. Don’t you see?”
“You’re right, Brent, you’re right!” Tom exclaimed, nervously. “We’ve
got to keep this thing from everyone if we possibly can. We can follow
each clue carefully and quietly. First, why we heard there were only
three people here at the Lodge, when we have evidence there were really
four. Where the targets disappeared to and who took them. How the hermit
came to get the key of the Lodge (and I’m sure it was he that visited
here). The scarred footprint is evidence enough for that.”
“Take your time, Tommy,” Brent interrupted, “we have the whole evening
before us.”
“Then,” Tom went on, “we must start at dawn and get the poor fellow’s
body. I’m sure it’s the hermit. We can tell the boys that we just
discovered it. Then we’ll take a look at the grave coming back and
satisfy our minds on that score.”
“In other words we can look forward to a cheerful day to-morrow,” Brent
murmured.
“Now that it’s all settled, I suggest we all go to bed right after
supper. Getting up with the birdies two mornings in succession will have
me worn to a shadow, unless I make it up to-night.”
I guess we were all pretty willing to follow Brent’s suggestion after
our day’s adventures. We were wearied physically as well as mentally and
sleep would be a welcome refuge. I, for one, was wishing the supper hour
over.
Heinie had not gotten back from Harkness when we sat down to eat and his
empty place directly opposite the hearth, with the footprint showing so
clear in the light, seemed ominously significant. Even I was becoming
affected by the sinister shadow of mystery pervading the Lodge.
I shook myself out of it and tried to make some small talk with Rivers.
But of no avail. He seemed more taciturn than ever and answered even Tom
in sharp monosyllables. It was probably the weather with him though, I
told myself.
We were ready to go to bed. The clock lacked just five minutes of eight
when we heard Tom’s flivver rattling up the wagon road. Then it stopped.
“That’s Heinie now!” Tom said, as Brent went up the stairs. But he
stopped just before he reached the top, for Heinie had opened the door
of the Lodge and walked in.
“I’m sorry to keep you up,” he said to us in an apologetic manner and
nodding up to Brent, “but I thought I must tell you so I don’t forget
it, yess?”
“Sure, Heinie,” said Tom. “What is it?”
“You know you told me to vatch out vat I spent on der letters. Veil,
dere vass only vun letter vat didn’t have postage mit. A beeg fat letter
sent to North Dakota. Und der man in der post office told me dere was
money in der inside and it needed a register yet. So I got it mit
twenty-five cents.”
Tom turned to me questioningly. “Did you write again?”
“No,” I answered, “I did not!”
“How big was the letter, Heinie?” Tom inquired.
“Och! Like diss,” he said, indicating with his large hands a letter of
about eight inches in diameter. “Und it pulged out like dere vass vun
hundred pages mitt der inside.”
“Are you sure that letter was addressed to North Dakota?” Tom asked.
Heinie was positive. He even remembered it was Coover’s Falls.
“What was the handwriting like?” Brent asked Heinie, coming down the
stairs as he spoke.
“Och!” the fellow answered. “Der writing vass der craziest, like
somebody mitt shivers. See?”
“I know I’m trying hard to see, Heinie,” Tom said, in tones of despair.
“But here’s your quarter back anyway and many thanks for all your
trouble.”
“Who else,” I said, after Heinie had left, “could have written her, do
you think?”
“I feel as though I’ll never be able to think again,” Tom said, and
flung himself wearily into the easy chair. “What do you think, Brent?”
Brent adjusted his spectacles and started to rummage among the papers on
the table, saying: “I think I’ll look for a time-table and find me a
nice cozy train for Bridgeboro. I need the rest!”
CHAPTER XXVII—MYSTERY UPON MYSTERY
We decided to think no more that night about the letter. It was far too
deep a problem for us to solve and I suggested letting the matter drop.
That is, until we heard from Mrs. Northrop or Mrs. Boardman.
Tom roused Brent and me next day at dawn. A faint gleam of pink had
broken through the dull gray horizon and we took heart immediately. At
least it would be a clear day.
We started out well supplied in the event of meeting with any further
contingencies. In fact, we were beginning to feel like thoroughly
seasoned mountain climbers.
The first slope was reached in no time, it seemed, but of course we were
giving one another help. Tom then went ahead showing us the footprints
he had discovered two days before.
“Are there any new ones, Tommy?” Brent asked.
“Not that I’ve seen yet. That proves then it’s the hermit, in the gully
all right. Doesn’t it?”
“Not necessarily,” Brent replied, as adamant as ever.
We fell into a continued silence the rest of the way. Our purpose was
gruesome enough and the less we talked, the less we would be reminded of
it before-time.
I shall never forget the beauty of that morning. The sun had risen as we
reached the cleft and was playing its bright golden shadows in and out
among the trees. The glistening dew had transformed the entire mountain
into one huge, lacy coverlet, with millions of tiny iridescent bubbles
like sparkling jewels dancing upon it. A good omen, I thought, or rather
hoped.
The brook was gushing after the heavy rains and as we looked down the
water seemed to have risen about eight or more inches. Brent thought it
was considerably more than that, and as I have a poor eye for measuring
anything I accepted his decision.
On account of jutting rocks and overhanging trees, we were unable to see
the brook at the point where the cleft ended. I think we were all
equally thankful for that and deliberately wished we could postpone the
awful errand.
Taking no chances this time, we crossed the gully in true mountaineer
style, protected by the rope which Tom had lassoed to a stump on the
farther side.
“I wonder how much rope we’ll need to reach down there,” Tom said
uncoiling it deftly. I knew he hated looking over. So did I.
“Brent could tell you,” I suggested. “He has the mathematical eye.”
“Someone has to do it,” Brent said, with an air of resignation, “so it
might as well be I!” He went toward the edge quickly and just as
suddenly turned about, facing us again. The color of his face had turned
an ashen gray.
“_It’s not there!_” he cried.
“_Not there?_” Tom echoed. We all looked over together.
True, it was gone!
Only an occasional twitter of young birds sounded from the dim woods.
The wild cry of a large bird of prey greeted our ears as it flew over
the gully and disappeared through the trees. All was silent then, except
for the brook tripping gaily over its rocky bed. As it turned to leave
the gully and leap over the rocks and down the mountainside, I fancied
it made a moaning sound as if to mock our tragic stricken faces above.
“You can let me down,” Brent said quietly. “I’ll look about.”
I held the rope firmly and Tom helped Brent over the edge and let him
down slowly. Pretty soon he shouted up that he was all right. We watched
him go back and forth over the rocks and then disappear under a huge
boulder.
[Illustration: WE LET HIM DOWN SLOWLY.]
He probably hadn’t been out of sight more than sixty seconds, but it
seemed like sixty minutes to us waiting for his reappearance. Tom
shouted. He answered for us to wait; and then emerged, waving his
readiness to come up.
“We’ll never see him again,” Brent said as he clambered over the top.
“Where do you think it’s gone?” Tom asked.
“I guess the water rose just high enough since we were here to carry him
away. And there’s a space under that boulder where the water leaves the
gully. It’s just wide enough to permit any ordinary-sized man’s body to
pass through. It’s safe to say that by now the hermit, or whoever it
was, is divided into some hundred pieces. The rocks and the water below
the gully wouldn’t even leave a button whole.”
“We’ve been spared that much distress at any rate,” I said, as we
proceeded to leave the cleft and gully behind us.
“Yes,” Tom agreed. “I suppose it’s a selfish way to feel, but I think we
have enough to do, without taking upon our shoulders the full
responsibility of a hermit’s dead body. Fate is kind after all.”
Gloomy people we were that morning. Walking back in the midst of
glorious green earth and sunshine, we should have been full of the joy
of living. But we were not.
Mystery upon mystery. Tainted death! All had succeeded in wearing down
fragile human nerves. We were even getting irritable with one another.
Brent had lost his quiet composure and drawling humor. Tom was morose.
And I was completely unnerved.
“As long as this funereal spirit is so rampant among us,” Tom said,
“we’ll visit the grave. It can’t put us in a much worse humor than we
are now.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Brent said, in dull tones.
“I’m beginning to feel that I can stand most anything now.”
There being no wind that morning to blow the tall grass aside, we did
not see the clearing until we were almost upon it.
Tom flung the coil of rope to the ground when we reached there. One by
one we sat down upon it, crowding close together. We were tired and it
was preferable to the damp ground.
I know that Tom and Brent saw it as quickly as I! The place was in an
extraordinary condition! The little mound seemed to have sunken and
chunks of fresh earth were lying about the clearing. The wooden cross
had fallen.
The circumstance that had made that grave necessary was tragic enough.
The unfortunate boy, buried in the midst of that vast solitude of sky
and mountain, his last resting place in such a deplorable state--it was
pathetic indeed.
Tom got up and kicked around the edges of the grave with the toe of his
stout shoe. Then he dug his heel in the brown earth; and whistled with
surprise.
“Someone has been digging here,” he said. “Within the last few days,
too!”
“Digging?” I repeated.
“Yes, digging.” Then, “Brent, had me that shovel!”
We went over to Tom and watched him as he took a few shovelsfull of
loose dirt from the left side of the grave. It came away like sand.
“You see?” he said, shoving the sharp spade into the earth. Lifting his
foot up on the top edge he rested it heavily there. With the movement,
we heard plainly the hollow sound that falling stones and dirt will make
when hitting some solid object.
“And did you hear _that?_” Brent almost whispered it.
“Certainly I did,” Tom said, tersely. He moved his foot and tried to
pull the shovel out.
He couldn’t get it out. It seemed stuck fast into something, and we each
took a turn at it without any success. It wouldn’t budge an inch.
“Wait a minute,” Tom said. He got down on his knees and started scooping
up the dirt around the spade by the handful and flung it aside.
In a few moments we saw to our bewilderment that the shovel was wedged
tightly in a slight fissure of some wooden obstruction, directly
underlying the few layers of earth.
“We might as well uncover this,” said Tom, grimly, and gradually
loosened the spade from the wood.
It was hardly five minutes’ work. Brent and I scooping up the dirt with
our hands and Tom with the shovel, uncovered what proved to be a rough
board.
It was the kind of wood that is generally used for packing boxes.
Printed in large letters and written in indelible ink across the board
was
TO—MR. HARRISON McCLINTICK,
P. O. ADDRESS—HARKNESS,
CLINTON COUNTY, NEW YORK.
CARE OF
LEATHERSTOCKING CAMP.
Brent stooped and lifted the board gingerly. A stifled cry escaped his
lips as he flung it awkwardly from him. For in that act, he had
unwittingly laid bare the opening of the grave.
Speech was impossible! We stood transfixed, humbled, on that ground that
death had hallowed.
There seemed to be something unholy in letting our curious, mortal eyes
peer down into that dark tomb. But on the other hand, ours was a
curiosity born of mercy, whereas our unknown predecessor had come to
despoil and desecrate what should have been a chamber of eternal peace.
Our eyes were dazzled and blurred from the bright sun. Gradually though,
we became accustomed to the darkness and beheld the coffin lying opened,
the lid standing against the side of the grave.
It was empty!
CHAPTER XXVIII—THIS IS BRENT’S SUGGESTION
Tom laid the board reverently over it. My head was aching and Brent make
a queer gurgling noise in his throat.
We picked up our things and started back to Camp.
“That board,” Tom said, listlessly, “is the one that Heinie tried his
paints out on. He told me he laid it up against the eats shack, night
before last. It was gone in the morning, so I had to hunt him up another
board.”
“It’s all too ghastly to talk of,” I said. “I feel I can’t stand many
more horrifying disclosures.”
“We all feel that way,” Brent said, “and that’s all the more reason why
we ought to get at the bottom of this before anything else happens.”
“How?” I asked.
“And why not?” Tom put in. “Sometimes it’s these deep mysteries that are
the simplest ones to solve. We can only try.”
“Carry on, my boy,” I said, encouragingly. “I’m afraid I can’t.”
“If you ask me,” said Brent, “I think it’s the work of that hermit.
Also, I think he’s a trifle cuckoo.”
“I agree with you, Brent,” Tom said, “but then, how do you account for
the body in the gully?” He was still persistent in his belief that it
couldn’t possibly be anyone else.
“Tomasso,” Brent said, “I account for nothing! Hereafter, I shall
believe only that which I see. And I mean to see that soon.”
“Explain all that, Brent!” I said.
“The sooner we get into action, the better it will be. We’ve got to see
whether this hermit is dead or alive. He must have had some kind of a
bunk up there and we’re going to find it, if it’s possible.”
“What about his pet lynx?” Tom asked.
“Don’t worry about that, old man,” Brent answered, reassuringly. “We’ll
take Rivers along and tell him we’re going for the express purpose of
getting the animal. That job will be for him and I rather think he’ll
enjoy it immensely. But as for the long-haired one--I’ve an idea if he
is still alive we won’t have to hunt him out.”
“Why so?” I queried.
“Because, if we get Rivers to watch for the lynx and we see him, I’m
sure the hermit will pop along too.”
“What of the other fellows?” I asked. “Shall we ask them along?”
“No,” answered Brent, “I don’t think they’d care about it anyhow. Rivers
is the only gunman we have.”
“A pretty quiet sort of gunman, though,” I mentioned.
“When do we go?” Tom asked. “I’ve got to go to Harkness and then up the
line to-morrow morning. Heinie told me of a good repair man that keeps a
garage up that way. His place is about fifteen miles up the state road.”
“Lizzie troubled with her appendix again?” Brent asked.
“No,” said Tom, refusing to let Brent ruffle him. “It’s the engine.
Knocks.”
“As usual?” Brent queried.
“As usual,” Tom answered.
“Well then, we better set it for day after to-morrow. Start out around
five or so, huh? We can’t hunt that lynx in the daylight you know. He’s
trained too well.”
“I know. Six o’clock’s time enough, Brent.”
“Perhaps. Still, I’d like to see the sunset in the mountains and if I
remember rightly, I think I’ve picked a beautiful spring moonlight night
for our adventure.”
“How do you know it will be moonlight?” Tom queried.
“My almanac tells me so. It’s worth its weight in gold to me. Never
fails. Got it when I bought some grippe tablets the beginning of the
winter, with a sample box of cough drops thrown in.
It was good to hear Brent talking in this humorous vein once again. We
were cheered. Perhaps it was the expectation of bringing the Mystery of
our Camp out into the light of day and thus settling it for all time. In
fact, I felt quite elated over our proposed moonlight sleuthing.
“After all’s said and done,” Brent remarked, “there’s nothing so
exhilarating as Mystery!”
CHAPTER XXIX—RIVERS IS DELIGHTED
The next day, after Tom had gone, Brent and I went out and helped the
boys.
It was peacefully devoid of all mystery to hear the chop, chop of the
axe ringing in the air and the hum of men’s voices about their work.
Even the lake seemed rippling with joy under a cloudless, blue sky.
Surely, that morning long ago had never been. Or it was only a hideous
dream when that young man’s life was so suddenly brought to a close
while the thick gray mist hung over the water!
Toward late afternoon, just before we finished, Rivers passed by. I
hailed him. He bore the same inscrutable look as always; said nothing
and waited for me to speak. His manner seemed to be that of one who was
doing us a favor because he had condescended to stop and listen.
“Charlie,” I said, as cheerfully as I could, “do you know anything about
mountains?”
“Sure do,” he answered, resting his arm on the low limb of the tree
under which we were standing.
“Know anything about Hogback?” I inquired.
“No. Think I told yer afore, I wuz a stranger here.” I felt squelched.
“So you did, Charlie. My mistake. I suppose mountains are a good deal
alike though, aren’t they?”
“Suppose so.”
“The reason I asked is because we’d like you to go up with us. To-morrow
night. Tom, Brent and myself. Will you?”
“Guess so.” It was hard to tell if he were pleased or not.
“We’re going to try and find that pesky lynx, Rivers,” Brent said,
taking up the threads where I left off.
“Yes!” he said, with quite a faint purr of pleasure at hearing that. I
thought he even smiled slightly.
“Like to hunt, eh Charlie?” I felt that at last I had struck the right
note.
“Betcha!” He really stirred one foot.
“That’s fine. We’re going around six. Brent wants to see the sunset in
the mountains.” I laughed.
“And the moonlight!” Brent added. Rivers grinned again and moved off.
“That chap would make an excellent teacher in a deaf and dumb school.”
Brent called out to me, some time later. We were washing up for supper.
“You mean Rivers?”
“Yes, he’s almost too patient to be human.”
Just as supper was ready, Tom came in. His face was flushed and his
voice sounded eager as he greeted us.
“Knocks all taken out, Tommy?” Brent asked.
“Yeh,” he answered, breathlessly. Then, “Wait’ll you hear what I have to
tell you!”
“Fallen heir to a fortune or something?” I queried.
“Naw. Sh-sh! Listen! The boys are coming in. I’ll tell you later.”
We had a cheerful meal that evening. Everyone was pleasantly talkative
and the Lodge was so warm we had to open the doors and windows. The odor
of pine and approaching summer was in the air that floated about us.
“Charlie’s going to help us kill that lynx,” Brent said to Tom, across
the table.
“That’s fine, Charlie,” Tom said. “I guess he means _you’ll_ do the
killing, if it comes to that.”
“Won’t make _me_ mad!” Rivers said. He certainly was pleased.
“What a pleasant supper we had,” I remarked, after the boys had bidden
us good-night.
“Yes, didn’t we!” Tom assented.
“In fact,” Brent said, “there was something almost brutally pleasant
about the way Rivers spoke of killing that animal. You know, I don’t
really mean that he should kill it at all. It’s just a hoax to try and
find the hermit.”
“Why did you suggest asking him then?” Tom asked.
“Because,” Brent answered, “if he should get vicious, then it will be
all right. But if he doesn’t, why I thought we could stop Rivers at the
last minute.”
“Well, I’m afraid you won’t be able to stop him at the last moment at
all,” Tom told him.
“Rather him than me,” I said.
“Oh,” said Tom, “a woodsman thinks nothing of that. It’s great sport for
him. Why, Brent couldn’t feel as comfortable sitting at the movies.”
“Horrors! Tom! I pray then, hereafter, that I shall be delivered from
ever thinking of Rivers when I’m at the movies. The thought would make
me decidedly uncomfortable.” Somehow, I liked Brent for saying that!
CHAPTER XXX—THE THREADS UNRAVEL
“What was the dark secret?” I asked Tom, a few moments later.
“It _is_ dark too!” Tom answered. “Sit down here, Brent,” (he indicated
the willow rocker in front of the hearth) “while I tell you something
mighty interesting.”
“Ah,” said Brent, “a bedtime story.”
“Nothing of the kind,” Tom said. “But I went up to that garage. Mighty
nice country fellow has it. Just keeps a helper during the day so the
job was handed over to him. There wasn’t much the matter with it and the
owner said the kid could do it as well as he.”
“Didn’t I tell you a child could fix your car?” Brent teased.
“Aw, hold on, Brent. This fellow that owns the garage--his name is Joe
something or other. It doesn’t matter. Well, he took me into his little
office while I was waiting. We got talking together.
“He has one of those old-fashioned roll-topped desks. I was sitting in
the chair that goes with it and he in another one close by.
“I happened to glance at the desk casually. Saw a newspaper on it.
Picked it up like anyone will. Was a New York paper. Opened it up and
for a minute or so looked through it while we talked.
“As I went to put it back again, I noticed Mr. McClintick’s picture and
a small headline beneath. Just a review of the case. No new clues.
Police as much in the dark as ever, it said.
“This fellow Joe, saw me looking at it and told me he never saw a
picture of McClintick in the paper that he didn’t think of one night
when he got the fright of his life.”
“Another ghost story, Tommy?” Brent asked. “I won’t sleep again to-night
if it is.”
“Wrong again, Brent,” Tom replied. “No ghost at all. A real live
person!”
“Go on, Tom!” I said.
“Joe is single. He has a little room back of the office we were sitting
in, where he sleeps and eats.
“He explained to me that he is a very heavy sleeper. Consequently, he
leaves a dim light in the office all night and doesn’t lock the doors.
He said he never keeps much money around and what he has is always in a
safe place.”
“That reminds me,” Brent interrupted, “of the Scotchman who tied strings
around his pennies. And----”
“Joe’s not Scotch,” laughed Tom. “One evening about a year ago in
November, he said he was taken with a severe attack of neuralgia. First
time he ever had it, so he took some kind of a sedative and he said he
felt so drowsy in a little while that he went to bed.
“He said he imagined he had been sleeping for a few hours. Must have
been around midnight when he was aroused by the sound of a male voice
outside in his office. He listened and heard the ’phone receiver
clicking. Then the voice again saying: ‘Yes, that’s right. One hundred!
O-n-e-h-u-n-d-r-e-d. Hurry, please!’
“Joe listened and then he sat up in bed and grabbed for his gun. He said
he was scared all right. Then the voice fairly yelled, ‘Thank you!
Hello! Father? It’s I. I’m safe.’
“Then, ‘O, Father? Can’t you think of some other way?’ Joe said the
fellow talked as though he was crying, ‘Don’t communicate with me in
Montreal unless you have to.’ Then there was a pause and, ‘Don’t go
through with it! Don’t let him urge you! Please! Good-bye Father!’
“That was all. There came sounds of a chair being shoved across the
floor and Joe got up and pushed the door open slowly.
“He saw a young man sitting in the desk chair, well dressed; and leaning
over looking at his right foot which he was holding out at length.
“Joe went back to the bed and slipped the gun under a pillow and feeling
a good deal easier in mind. Then he opened the door quite noisily this
time. The young man looked up, startled.
“‘Oh, I beg your pardon!’ he said to Joe. ‘I tried to waken you, but you
were sleeping too hard. Had to telephone someone, so took the liberty as
long as you leave your doors open. Much obliged and sorry I disturbed
you!’ he said, handing Joe a five dollar bill and telling him to keep
the change.
“Joe thanked him and as the fellow got up to go he limped. Joe asked him
if he had hurt his foot and the chap said yes. Probably sprained it.
Seeming to be such a nice fellow Joe made him sit down and told him he’d
bandage it. So he got some iodine and gauze and took the shoe and sock
off, proceeding to fix it up the best he knew how.
“The chap was awfully pleased and thanked Joe many times over as he
helped him out and into his car. Said he hoped they would meet again
sometime and drove off.”
“I suppose your friend, Joe, did get quite a scare,” I said to Tom.
“Waking up and hearing that strange voice shouting in his office. But
why, when he sees McClintick’s picture in the paper--_why_, should it
remind him of that particular night?”
“That’s where our turn comes in,” said Tom, with an air of having
something up his sleeve.
“Ah, ha!” Brent said, quite tragically. “Where’s the dustpan? We need it
for the dirt!”
“You know how much these country people make of small things,” Tom
started to explain. “I mean, such as connecting perfectly irrelevant
things with the relevant. For instance, one would say that they always
remembered the day Johnny Jones fell through the ice and drowned,
because it was only the night before that the cat walked over the piano
keys and gave the whole household a terrible scare.”
“Country people aren’t alone in those matters,” I said.
“I know it,” said Tom. “But can you see the reason why this Joe is
always reminded of that night by McClintick’s picture in the paper?”
“No, Tommy, I can’t!” Brent answered, in an indulgent manner. “I’ve been
neglecting my crossword puzzles in the interest of the Scouts and I’m
out of practice.”
“Well,” said Tom, “it’s just this: everyone within a radius of fifty
miles up here knew of the McClinticks. Even though they never saw them
and would probably never see them (and Joe was one of them), they were
always interested to hear any gossip concerning them. More so because
the McClinticks were so extravagant with their wealth.
“If they arrived at the Lodge on the first day of April at nine o’clock
in the morning, it would be passed along from one to the other, until it
finally reached Joe about twelve o’clock noon.
“The same with all their public comings and goings. From what Joe said,
he always heard things before they were twenty-four hours old.
“Of course, when visitors came or went away from the Lodge, the country
people took little notice of them. It was the ‘rich McClinticks’ they
were concerned about. I suppose it was because they felt a certain pride
in having people of such fabulous wealth for neighbors.
“At any rate, the day when the son was reported killed, the news spread
like wild-fire. Joe said as soon as it reached him he felt right off
that they wouldn’t hear much more of the McClinticks. He said everyone
felt the same way and they regretted it.”
“I’m beginning to see light,” I said.
“You see,” Tom said and moved his chair nearer the fireplace, “what they
regretted (Joe included) was the fact that the tragedy brought to a
close the ever pleasant round of gossip which wealthy city people
furnish with their extravagances.”
“You preach a fine sermon, Tom!” Brent put in.
“Aw, wait a second, Brent,” Tom said breathlessly. “I could tell by
Joe’s manner that neither the young man’s midnight visit or Roland
McClintick’s death had visibly affected his intelligence enough to
connect the two really relevant incidents. And the murder of the elder
McClintick, he discussed without feeling. They meant nothing to him;
none of them. Except to make small talk and while away a pleasant hour
or so with an amiable customer.
“But his love of small talk has proven a blessing. It’s given us a real
clue!”
“How?” I asked, still in the dark.
“Well, you watch me unravel it,” Tom said proudly. “Joe remembers that
night a year ago in November because he wasn’t feeling well. The fact
that the young man gave him a shock on that same night freshens his
memory as to the terrible attack of neuralgia he had. And being human he
enjoyed telling about his sufferings.
“In other words he couldn’t tell me about his sufferings that night
without telling me about the young man. They fit together because of the
fact that he was sleeping so soundly with the sedative he had taken, he
didn’t hear the young man calling him. And then the next day he heard
about Roland McClintick which of course would serve to give him three
things to talk of all happening in a few hours’ time. Consequently,
every time he sees Mr. McClintick’s picture it makes him think of the
day Roland was killed and his own scare and sufferings the night
before.”
“That’s reducing it to its common denominator,” I admitted, “but still I
fail to see the clue.”
“You see, if it wasn’t that he loved small talk he wouldn’t have ever
thought of remembering in such detail that the night of his sufferings
and the other incident was just the night before Roland McClintick was
supposed to have lost his life. And that is where our clue comes in.
“His simple country habit of connecting incidents with his own private
life enabled him to tell me word for word the ’phone conversation of
that young fellow, who mentioned Montreal and asked for the number one
hundred. His talk to his father was lucid enough for us to know that the
young chap was going away because of something dire about to happen. And
he was pleading with his father not to do it. Who else could it be but
Roland McClintick that ’phoned from Joe’s garage that night? And yet,
the next morning when he was really in Montreal, his father reported him
dead.”
“And six months later,” I said, “so Peters told us, he calls from
Montreal. Minnie Schultz wasn’t having any idle dream, I guess!”
“Minnie’s my find!” said Brent, mockingly indignant.
“Last, but not least,” Tom concluded, “Joe mentioned to me quite
casually that, when he raised the young fellow’s foot up to bandage it,
he noticed something unusual about it.”
“What?” I asked, although sensing the answer.
“A long thick scar!” Tom said quietly.
CHAPTER XXXI—AN EVENING OF DEDUCTIONS
Brent and I sat aghast!
“I think,” Brent said, soberly, “that Tom has given us conclusive
evidence as to Roland McClintick being alive. That is up until a few
nights ago, if we don’t find the hermit.”
“You think then, the hermit and Roland McClintick are one person?” I
queried.
“Of course,” Brent said. “The scar proves it in every instance.”
“Still, lots of people have scars on their feet though,” Tom said.
“I suppose they have,” Brent agreed. “But what we want to find out is
why Mr. McClintick identified the body that was taken from the lake as
his son, when he knew his son to be in Montreal. Someone else was killed
in his place and we want to find out why?”
“Could it have been Northrop?” Tom asked wonderingly. “Or Weston?”
“I don’t know,” Brent answered. “But I do know or rather hope, when we
hear from Coover’s Falls that it will be something interesting and worth
hearing.”
“Then the murdered and the murderer lies between Northrop and Weston?”
“I’m sure of it,” said Brent, “from what Tom has told us of that ’phone
conversation. It was deliberate murder and whoever killed that unknown
person out on the lake also murdered the elder McClintick. Both murders
were committed for some cause, certainly.”
“What of the empty grave?” Tom asked. “Perhaps the murderer has been in
fear of discovery and came back to completely destroy the body. In that
way one could never find out who the culprit or victim was.” Brent was
certainly uncanny in his new role of sleuth, yet his theories did fit
together.
“That brings us back to the motive,” he went on. “They say murders are
committed almost always for three reasons; money, hate or insanity.” I
happened to think when Brent mentioned the three reasons, of my
informant at Long Branch, the day I went to hunt up Mr. McClintick.
Hadn’t he told me how Seven Towers and the other estate at Newport had
been sold? His palatial New York home also? And if I remembered rightly
he said he had heard that Mr. McClintick needed the money. I told all
this to Tom and Brent.
“Well then,” said Brent, “the motive is clear. He needed the money. And
he could get it by reporting that the body they found in the lake to be
that of his son.”
We were startled out of our perplexing problems by a wild, moaning cry.
“The lynx!” Tom said. “I bet he misses the hermit.”
“How do you suppose he ever made a pet of that animal?” Brent asked me.
“As this seems to be a night of deductions, I would say that he must
have gotten hold of him when he was a cub. I’ll also venture to mention
that our friend Peters might not have killed his lynx cub after all. You
never can tell.”
Two sharp knocks sounded on the door! Tom went forward quickly and flung
it open. Rivers stood there.
“Whew!” Tom said. “You did give us a scare, Charlie. Why didn’t you come
in? The door was unlocked.”
“It’s so late, I didn’t think you’d be up. Thought you forgot to put out
your light!” Rivers came inside and Tom closed the door.
“Sit down, Rivers,” I said. “We’ve been so interested in our talk, we
didn’t realize the hour.”
“Just as soon stand,” he murmured. “Going back to bed right away.” He
turned to Tom.
“That pesky lynx woke me. Got up. Looked ’round ’n as I went ter go back
ter bed, I could a’ sworn somethin’ passed the winder. Didn’t see
nothin’ when I walked over here though. Guess it’s a’right.”
“Sure,” said Tom. “We’ll get that wild bird to-morrow night, eh
Charlie?”
“Sure as I live,” he grinned. “Too much of a nuisance ter live,” he said
walking toward the door; and said good-night.
“What a charming outlook that fellow has on life?” Brent said, after Tom
had locked the door. “Charity to animals hasn’t a place in his scheme of
things.”
“Aw,” Tom said, in a defensive tone. “You just don’t understand him,
Brent, he’s a woodsman. They’re all that way.”
“Well you’re not,” Brent said, “and I’d say _you_ were thoroughly
woodsy.”
“No, I’m not! Not the way he is. He’s truly native and I’m just an
artificial product. Too chicken-hearted to be a real born scout like
Rivers.”
“Well, then, give me your chicken-hearted scouts, Tommy. Artificial
products are ofttimes nicer than the real article and in this case I
like the real human touch in a mere scout better than the real born
scout in a mere human.”
“Very well said, Brent!” I applauded.
Tom turned the lamp down and Brent and I started up the stairs and
disappeared within the darkness of our respective rooms.
“Oh, Brent!” Tom called, as he came running up the stairs. “Do you think
Charlie really saw anyone just now?”
“It might have been the hermit!” Brent answered tauntingly, “or his
ghost!”
“Gosh,” I heard Tom say, as he passed my door, “if your theories aren’t
enough to make a fellow’s head whirl!”
“Good-night, Tommy!” Brent said, in his most soothing manner.
“Good-night!”
CHAPTER XXXII—THE LETTER COMES BACK
Tom left for Harkness shortly after breakfast next morning. He didn’t
expect to be gone long, so Brent and I set about straightening up the
Lodge. With our activities and worries of the past few days a good deal
of necessary housekeeping had been neglected.
I had just swept the dust out of the front door and turning around
noticed Brent dusting up after me. It was hard to conceal my amusement
when I beheld his long, lanky form bending down and his hands awkwardly
flipping a dust cloth here and there.
“I’ll straighten up those papers on the table presently,” he said, and
adjusted his spectacles after having dusted the bottom rung of the
willow rocker. “We might as well leave things as we found them, in the
event that we don’t get back after to-night!”
“You’re certainly consoling, Brent,” I said.
“One can never tell,” he said, laughing.
“Let’s hope,” I said, “that everything will be adjusted for the
happiness of all those concerned. The Scouts, the Camp and Tom. It’s the
dream of his life.”
“You bet it is,” Brent agreed, vehemently. “I know he won’t be happy
until he sees the clouds lifted off this place and the sun shining
through for all time.”
Before noon, Tom came bursting in, enthusiastic over something. He was
always suggestive of clear, cool piney winds in that mood.
“Here we are fellows!” he called to Brent and me, holding an envelope in
mid-air between two weather-brown fingers.
“Who is it from?” Brent asked.
“Coover’s Falls, North Dakota,” he answered.
“No!” I exclaimed.
“Sure as anything,” he said, taking the bulky looking letter out of its
envelope and handing it to me.
“You’re elected to read it.” I unfolded it carefully. There were two
letters, one enclosed in the other. The enclosed one I laid aside and
started to read aloud the other, which was signed by Mrs. Boardman.
Coovers Falls, S. D.
Leatherstocking Training Camp,
P. O. Address, Harkness, Clinton County,
N. Y.
Dear Sirs:--
Received your letter. Also Mrs. Northrop brought me over two
letters she had got from your camp. She can’t see to read
anymore so I do all that for her.
I couldn’t understand the one letter she got at all (that’s
the one I’ve enclosed), so I called in Sam Tibbets, our
postmaster and he read it for us.
The reason I’m sending it back to you is because I
understood from what you said in your letter that it wasn’t
likely you knew anything about anyone else in your camp
writing to Mrs. Northrop and that they must be doing it
behind your back. It came about three days after yours, Mrs.
Northrop says, and as I was over at Redlands helping my
married daughter who ain’t feeling so well, why Mrs.
Northrop had to wait till I got back.
Anyhow I guess you must know by now who wrote that last
letter and also that young Peter Northrop is dead so we
won’t have to give you any information that way.
Sam Tibbets said he felt right terrible when he had to read
that out to Mrs. Northrop, but we was surprised to see how
calm like she heard the whole thing. All she said was she
was so old it didn’t make much difference and it wouldn’t be
long anyhow before she’d be with young Peter.
But what I wanted to say was that Mrs. Northrop wants me to
tell you to thank whoever sent that last letter about her
son (there was no name signed as you’ll see) also the reason
I sent it back is because you’ll probably know the
handwriting.
As I said before, she wants you to thank the party and also
for the money that came in it. Sam says it was a dangerous
thing to do to send a pile of money like that through the
mail and only register it for twenty-five cents. I say so
too. But it will help Mrs. Northrop right comfortable for
the few years she has to live and she’s thankful to have it.
She was very poor and it is a fortune to her. I wouldn’t
mind having it myself, but of course not to lose my children
to have it.
I guess that’s all except Mrs. Northrop said to say young
Peter never had a scar on either of his feet that she knew.
Thanking you for your trouble and all,
Yours truly,
(Signed) Mrs. Katie Boardman.
When I had finished, Brent was still standing with the dust cloth in his
hand and Tom was sitting on the edge of the table swinging his legs.
“What else?” said Tom, the first to break the silence.
I had taken up the enclosed letter and was trying to decipher that
outlandish writing. One could see at a glance it had been written under
great stress. It looked like the Chinese alphabet to me so I handed it
over to Tom. He scrutinized it carefully.
“Why hand it to me?” said Tom. “This crossword puzzle stuff is right in
Brent’s line. He’ll make it out somehow.” Tom took the dust cloth out of
Brent’s limp hand, shoved him down in the rocker and pulled both over to
the window.
“While you’re about it, Tom,” Brent said, leisurely, “you might get me a
clean handkerchief out of the top pocket in my coat, hanging on the
rack. I’ll have to wipe the dust off my glasses.” After Brent had
attended to all these preliminaries, he studied the letter through
twice. We kept a respectful silence meanwhile, but I’ll own I was
impatient for him to say something. Finally his sober features broke
into a puzzled look, that was half frown and half smile.
“To begin with,” Brent said, “the paper this is written on is the same
stuff we had stuck up in the cupboard. Remember the stuff we bought in
Harkness that one time and couldn’t use because the weave was so coarse
the pen point would catch in it and blur?”
So we had. We’d used it all with the exception of a few sheets and had
thrust those carelessly in the cupboard after we had gotten more of a
better grade.
“Tom,” Brent said, “take a look in that cupboard and see if the paper’s
there.” Tom looked thoroughly and shook his head in a negative manner.
“So much for that, then,” Brent murmured, as though it were serious
business. Nevertheless, he looked to be enjoying his present role.
“Scotland Yard would appreciate you, Brent,” I said. “You’ve missed your
vocation.”
“I know it,” he said, and went on, “Also, my fountain pen was used in
writing this letter. I know its defects so well that I recognized them
at once. I know it because it always blots in making punctuation marks.
Especially periods.”
“How could he have gotten hold of your pen, for goodness’ sake?” Tom
asked.
“I’ve been keeping it on the table standing upright in that little bud
vase. It leaks if I don’t.”
“Well, Brent,” I said, “if that’s the case I’ll give you a new one for
Christmas next year. Please go on and read that letter!”
“I don’t know that I’d care to part with it now,” Brent answered
good-humoredly. “It’s thrown some light on this mystery already.”
“And ink,” Tom remarked.
“Ink then,” Brent came back, “and be thankful for its blessings. Well,
here goes----”
“Just a minute, Brent,” I said, “Do you think it possible he could have
written the letter here?”
“I think it’s quite possible. He had the key to get in before, didn’t
he? Made away with the newspaper clipping; the targets? Furthermore
we’ve been mighty careless leaving letters on that table. He’s found
Mrs. Northrop’s letter there too, I’d bet my life. How else could he
have known her address. And, if he had known it before, he surely would
have written her.”
True, I hadn’t seen that letter of Mrs. Northrop’s that she had sent to
her son, after the day it came.
Brent had started to read the letter in his hand, so I sat back to
listen intently.
Leatherstocking Lodge,
Harkness, N. Y.
Dear Mrs. Northrop:--
In a most unusual manner your address has fallen into my
hands.
Otherwise, I would have written you before to tell you that
your son is dead. It grieves me to write this so bluntly,
but I know of no other way.
He has, in fact, been dead now, over a year and a half and
the enclosed money really belongs to him. In short, he had
every right to claim it, had he lived, and you being the
mother deprived of her only son, it goes to you.
At least it will give you the material comforts which your
son’s death and long absence has probably deprived you of
already.
Allow me to say that knowing your son Peter as I did, I can
sympathize with you in your grief at this revelation of his
death. I know it has blighted my life completely!
Perhaps it will console you a little to know that he lost
his life for another, who was absolutely unworthy to breath
the air that Peter Northrop did.
And his body, too clean to rest in a tainted grave, has
reached the clear waters of which he seemed a very part.
By the time you receive this, let me assure you that he will
have found his Paradise and God.
In telling you this and by your leave, dear lady, my own
tortured soul will find some peace and be ready to face its
maker.
Good-bye!
In the short silence following Brent’s reading, I felt that through it
all I had seen revealed the naked soul of Roland McClintick.
CHAPTER XXXIII—FACE TO FACE
Veiled though the wording of that letter was, we had understood, where
the good, but ignorant, people in Coovers Falls had not. And what a
blessing their ignorance was!
“How he must have suffered!” Tom murmured.
Brent sighed. “With all McClintick’s ability to make money,” he said,
“and his supposed strength of will, the son, with his apparent weakness
for gambling and draft-dodging, proved the stronger.”
“Yes,” I said, “he went through the acid test. Do you think he’s quite
sane, though?”
“You mean, his reference to Northrop no longer being in a tainted
grave?”
“Yes.”
“I think so. I think it’s his conscience working all through the whole
thing, even the money. That’s probably why he came back to live in the
mountains so he could save the money and send it to Mrs. Northrop
sometime. I don’t think he’s crazy though. His lonely existence and
deprivations may have affected his mind. But I don’t think he’s a maniac
by far.”
“Well, it would be a wonder if he isn’t,” Tom said. “I wonder where he
lives up there?”
“He must have a shack, I guess,” Brent answered. “All the hermits in the
movies do.”
“Well, this isn’t a movie,” I said, “it’s too real, by far.”
“At any rate,” Brent said, “I guess that Weston chap is the murderer.”
“Yes,” said Tom, “but try and find him!”
“They say a murderer always comes back, Tom,” I reminded.
The rest of the day was spent in apprehension and odd jobs. Just trying
to kill time and thought until half past five.
About four o’clock, I was raking up some shavings around one of the
newly completed shacks. Brent was gathering them up and burning them.
The sun had gone partly under a mischievous gray cloud which at once
gave the earth a sickly appearance.
“Brent,” I said, looking skyward with squinting eyes, “you might
possibly see the sunset in the mountains, but you’ll never see the
moonlight to-night!”
“Why, what makes you think so?” he asked. I pointed to the sun.
“Just a passing cloud,” he said. “Be clear in another minute.”
* * * * *
Tom and Rivers ahead, and Brent and myself following, were walking along
the first slope at just six o’clock that evening.
The sun was beginning to set and looked like a huge balloon poised on
the crest of old Hogback. Violet-colored shadows traced in weird shaped
patterns spread across the sky. And from the valley below a purplish
mist was rising, completely obliterating our view of the camp. Then the
sun sank out of sight.
“Goin’ to rain!” Rivers said, as he adjusted his rifle over his
shoulder. Tom also had his pistol (which I knew he didn’t intend using
if he could help it), but Brent and I were unarmed except for a hatchet.
“What makes you think it will rain, Rivers?” Brent asked.
“Sun set too quick!”
“Then we’ll have a nice wet night!” Brent said, optimistically. Rivers
looked back and grinned. He was going to enjoy the evening’s adventure,
no matter what the weather.
Up on the second slope, the going was difficult. Tom, of course, was
keeping ahead and watching the ground with a keen eye. A few drops of
rain touched my cheek lightly, then a zigzag flash of lightning raced
across the heavens.
“Let ’er rain,” Brent said, defiantly. “See if I care!”
We were pretty well clothed, so it didn’t make much difference except
that the premature darkness would impede our progress.
“Better gather a little wood, fellows,” Tom said. “We may need it if we
get stuck up here until morning.”
“That’s the stuff, Tommy,” Brent said. “Always looking out for a rainy
day.”
It was raining in earnest at about eight o’clock, but we were deep in
the forest and the thickly grown trees protected us from the storm. Tom
and Rivers were lighting the way with two powerful searchlights. The
tracks were still to be seen.
“I wonder if Tom sees the _other_ tracks?” I asked Brent, in an
undertone.
“I think so,” Brent replied.
“The tracks are turning again, boys!” Tom said softly. “I think out of
these woods and around the cleft.”
“It’s jes’ prob’ly what the critter’d do,” Rivers murmured, “a night
like this.”
We did emerge from the woods and out by the cleft. The brook below in
the light of day seemed to strike a silver chord of happiness within me.
Now, in the storm-ridden darkness, it echoed plaintively along the
gully.
The swish of the water flowing so rapidly over the rocks gave me the
ghostly thought that perhaps it was the phantom feet of Peter Northrop
retracing his steps down there and not the swish of the water at all.
Tom’s voice jolted me out of my eerie musing.
“Where shall we go from here, Charlie?” he asked.
“No place. We’ll stay. He’ll come sometime to-night, a’right.”
“My feet are cold,” Brent said, soberly. “Couldn’t we make a little fire
in through the trees there somewhere?”
“Sure!” Rivers said. “We haint heard him howl yet. That’s time enough to
watch.”
The campfire was a welcome sight and put to flight all my morbid
thoughts. We were sheltered by the trees some twenty-five feet from the
cleft.
For about an hour we sat and chatted pleasantly. Except Rivers. He
seemed to have sunken back into his usual silence again, and as I
glanced at his face, I thought I detected a look of cunning. One felt,
glancing at his face, that he had an air of expectancy about him. As if
he had been listening and waiting all through his life for just that
moment.
A terrific clap of thunder broke and the mountains seemed to be crashing
around us. As it rolled away, we heard that great mournful wail, now
becoming so familiar to our ears.
Again it came and again. I suddenly felt terribly chilled. Rivers got up
stealthily and in a whispered voice told us that he’d go out and keep
under cover of darkness and for us to sit quiet and wait.
Above the whistling of the howling gales, the cry of the animal sounded
nearer and nearer. We were rigid. Not a sound came from the darkness
outside by the cleft, but we knew Charlie Rivers was watching--and
waiting.
It must have been near midnight, I thought.
I was sorry I had come. I wondered if Brent was? And Tom? Why should
that animal be killed? He wasn’t hurting anyone by howling at night. I
would have gotten up and spoken my mind, if I had thought Rivers
wouldn’t have laughed at me.
Then the cries ceased. But the fire hissed and seemed to make a terrific
noise, just when I wanted to concentrate my whole mind on listening.
Brent made a funny gurgling sound in his throat. What made him do that,
I wondered. Tom glared at him.
A hush had fallen over the whole place. For at least five minutes I
hadn’t heard a sound or a move anywhere. But I felt a presence of
something. Without twitching a muscle, Tom, Brent and I looked first at
each other then out into the darkness.
Two eyes like glittering bits of steel, peered intently at us. The rest
of the body was enveloped in the night, like a shroud.
It moved slightly, pawing the ground and then settling back on its hind
paws. Although the silence was deadly, the animal suddenly swung around.
I knew it must be Rivers!
It was too late when I saw it! Rivers’ gun was on the ground near the
tree where he had been sitting. How he had forgotten it, I don’t know.
But it was too late for him to get it.
The animal stood halfway between Rivers and ourselves. Tom’s hand made a
move toward his back pocket, but Charlie had rushed for the lynx!
Before I realized what had happened, the woodsman had his brawny fingers
tightly clasped about the animal’s throat. In the struggle, he had
forced it back nearer the fire and into the light, and it stood erect on
its hind paws.
Standing full in the firelight, I was horrified to see the maniacal
expression on Rivers’ face. His small eyes seemed riveted upon his
victim and he held the powerful jaws taut with a sort of fiendish
delight.
It wasn’t the face of the defenceless man, killing a dangerous animal.
It was the face of a dangerous man, killing a defenceless animal. The
beast uttered a few stifled gasps and started to sink to the ground.
A screech and then a sort of hysterical laugh sounded shrilly through
the trees. We stared with frightened eyes and pounding hearts.
Rivers released the dead animal and stood as if rooted to the spot.
Standing just between the darkness and the firelight, was the hermit!
His long, unkempt hair and beard were dripping wet and the few rags that
served to cover his poor, thin body were clinging to him.
The wild haunting eyes looked long at the prone beast, then at Rivers
and ourselves. He seemed to see all and yet nothing. Then his long white
bony fingers reached out toward Rivers. And he laughed--that horrible,
terrible laugh. Charlie stepped back.
“So!” the hermit shrieked and moved nearer Rivers, “you don’t recognize
me, eh, _Weston_?” Rivers flinched and drew himself up.
“It’s I, Weston!” he cried, “_I, Roland McClintick!_ I see you don’t
kill with the gun any more! You like strangling best, is that it?”
Rivers had moved back toward us. And the hermit laughed, his voice
breaking into a sob.
“You won’t get away from _me_, Weston! You killed Northrop and my
father, and now my pet!” Tears were streaming down his cheeks. His voice
was quiet when he spoke again.
“I intend to kill _you_!”
CHAPTER XXXIV—IT CAN’T RAIN FOREVER
The pent-up grief, remorse and a desire to avenge his father’s death,
must have given Roland McClintick superhuman strength that night. I
don’t know!
With surprising agility for one so frail he really had the advantage
over Rivers from the start, for Charlie had been too stunned to resist
after the hermit had identified himself.
We were too horrified at Rivers’ cruelty to the lynx to feel moved to
help him. Furthermore, McClintick’s accusations filled us with loathing
for the man who had lived, walked and talked with us.
There were no more cries. Just the heavy breathing of two men fighting
desperately for their lives. I heard a deep moan and then all was quiet.
The hermit stood in our firelight again, exhausted, his body shaking
with deep emotion. But on his face was a look of peace. The wild,
haunted expression had disappeared!
“He’s gone, fellows!” he said to us quietly. “Too good a death for him!”
Then he knelt down at the dead beast’s side and stroked the coat
affectionately.
“He was great company to me,” he explained, “strange as it may seem to
you. I found him almost dying the first night I came up here. Some beast
had shot his paw almost off. I’m glad he’s dead, though, he’d miss me if
he lived after me.”
“We’ll bury him for you,” Brent said, and it seemed to please him.
“We’re terribly sorry, McClintick!” Tom said, huskily. “How can we help
you?” McClintick looked up, his great eyes emphasized by the sunken
cheeks.
“Fellows,” he said, as though it was an effort, “you’re real men, all of
you. I’ve seen you at the Lodge. I’ve been stealing in there all this
time. I had to live somehow until I found Weston. Now I can go too!” He
straightened up for a second, then fell in a faint.
We worked over him and gradually he came to. Then he looked up, a sad,
sweet smile. It was pitiful!
“You can help me,” he gasped faintly, “back to _my Lodge_. I’ll show you
the way, if you’ll give me a lift.” He stood up between Tom and me, his
long, thin arms encircling our shoulders. Then he glanced at the dead
lynx as though he knew it was the last look he would take at the one
thing left in life to him.
Tom and I had to carry him almost, he was getting so weak, and finally
he told us that we had arrived. It wasn’t far from the cleft--just in a
little way.
Brent had the searchlight and McClintick nodded toward a huge boulder.
He said we’d have to crawl inside and then we could only sit up.
It proved to be a good-sized cave. The inside had been furnished with a
few things from the Lodge, such as pillows and blankets, and odds and
ends of things to make a fellow barely comfortable. We laid him down.
“I suffered terribly this winter,” he said, seeing us looking around.
“Didn’t think I’d survive it, but I did. Prayed for strength till Weston
came and I could give my money over to poor Mrs. Northrop. Insurance
money, it was! Blood money, I called it!
“That’s why I took Peter out of _my_ grave. The world thinks it’s mine
and it will be. He was too fine to be buried under a McClintick name.
_WE’ve_ been tainted!”
The fellow’s eyes seemed to be gazing afar and his thin hands twitched
at the blankets we had wrapped around him. Tom, Brent and I exchanged
significant glances. Roland McClintick’s life was nearly ended!
“Don’t let anyone tell you my father thought up that ghastly thing. He
was in Weston’s power!” he was talking very faintly. “It was on account
of some government fraud that Weston got my father, and he wanted
blackmail. Father didn’t have it.
“Weston knew how Pete had once taken the blame for me in a gambling
mess. That’s how he conceived the idea. And he threatened to expose
father unless he would consent to that means and get my insurance money.
It was all the money father could lay his hands on just then.
“I pleaded with father. It wasn’t any use. Weston had him and father was
weak enough to be afraid. And the morning after I left for Montreal they
lured Peter out there. He died for me. I’ve been almost crazy!”
We tried to soothe him but soon he closed his world-weary eyes!
We stood outside the cave in the dim, wet dawn. The sad affair was
ended!
“The debts are all paid,” Brent said. “Now Leatherstocking Training Camp
can start its career with a clean slate, eh Tommy?”
“Sure thing!” Tom replied.
The rain had stopped, and away in the east a glint of pink light
streaked the far horizon. The odor of wet pine filled the air.
Like two vast curtains, the dark heavens parted slowly and the sun, like
the true scout smile, came shining through!
FINIS
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