Holman Day

“He hadn’t a word for no one, not even for me or Mike,
And whenever we spoke or tried to joke, he growled like a
Chessy tyke.”

Dwight Wade found a lively conference in progress in the main camp.

Tommy Eye was doing most of the talking, and it was plain that his opinions carried weight, for no one presumed to gainsay him.

“And I’ll say to you what I’m tellin’ to them here, Mr. Wade,” continued the teamster. “You saw for yourself what happened here last night. A ha’nt done it. And the ha’nt done this last. They’re pickin’ Skeets right and left.”

“Ha’nt must be in the pay of Pulaski D. Britt,” remarked one rude joker. “He’s been the one most interested in gettin’ the tribe out of this section.”

Dwight Wade, love and awful fear raging in his heart, was in no mood to play dilettante with the supernatural, nor to relish jokes.

“We’ll have done with this foolishness, men!” he cried, harshly. “A girl has been lost in these woods.” He was protecting Elva Barrett’s incognito by a mighty effort of self-repression. The agony of his soul prompted him to leap, shouting, down the tote road, calling her name and crying his love and his despair. “I want this crew to beat the woods and find her.”

“She can’t ever be found,” growled a prompt rebel. “I heard the driver tell. She was picked right up and lugged off. There ain’t any of us got wings.”

“Oh, you’ve got to admit that there are ha’nts!” persisted Tommy, with fine relish for his favorite topic. “And they pick up people. I see one, in the shape of a tree, pick up an ox once and break his neck.”

“D—n you for drooling idiots!” raved Wade, beside himself. It was the first outlet for the storm of his feelings.

He ordered them to get lanterns and start on the search—he strode among them with brandished fists and whirling arms, and they dodged from in front of him, staring in amazement.

“My Gawd,” mourned Tommy, “this camp has had the spell put on it for sure! The ha’nt has driv’ the boss out of his head, and will have him next. And if it can drive a college man out of his head, what chance has the rest of us got?”

Panic was writ large in the faces of the simple woodsmen, and fear glittered in their eyes. A single queer circumstance would merely have set them to wondering; but these unexplainable events, following each other so rapidly and taking ominous shade from the glass that lugubrious Tommy Eye held over them, shook them out of self-poise. It needed but one voice to cry, “The place is accursed!” to precipitate a rout, and old Christopher Straight had the woodsman’s keen scent for trouble of this sort.

“A moment! A moment, Mr. Wade!” he called. He patted the young man’s elbow and urged him towards the door. “I want to speak to you. Keep quiet, my men, and go in to your supper.”

As he passed the cook-house door he sharply ordered the cook to sound the delayed call—the cook being then engaged in discussing, with chopping-boss and cookee, a certain “side-hill lounger,” a ha’nt that wrought vast mischief of old along Ripogenus gorge.

“Mr. Wade,” advised the old man, when they were apart from the camp, “I’m sorry to see you get so stirred up over the Skeet girl, for I don’t believe she appreciates your kindness. I have this matter pretty well settled in my own mind. I don’t know just why Miss Nina is up here, nor why she has brought that girl back—or tried to. It is plain, though, that the girl has deceived her.”

“I don’t understand,” quavered Wade, struggling between his own knowledge and old Christopher’s apparent certainty.

“The Skeet girl, having her own reasons for wanting to come this way from Castonia, got as far as Pogey Notch, slipped off the team, and made her way to Britt’s camp on Jerusalem to join Colin MacLeod. It’s all a put-up job, Mr. Wade, and they’ve simply done what they set out to do in the first place, when Britt and his crew followed John Barrett and me to Durfy’s. So I wouldn’t worry any more about the girl, Mr. Wade. Let her stay where she plainly wants to stay.”

Wade blurted the truth without pausing to weigh consequences. He bitterly needed an adviser. Old Christopher’s calm confidence in his own theory pricked him.

“Great God, man, it isn’t the Skeet girl! It is John Barrett’s daughter—his daughter Elva!”

For a moment Christopher gasped his amazement, without words.

“There have been strange things happening outside since we’ve been locked in here away from the news,” the young man went on, excitedly. “It is Elva Barrett, I tell you, Christopher, and she has been stolen.”

“Then it’s a part of the plot—somehow—someway,” insisted the old man. “Colin MacLeod, or some one interested for Colin MacLeod, saw that girl, and took her for the Skeet girl. I’ve never seen Elva Barrett, but you’ve told me that the Skeet girl is her spittin’ image—or words to that effect,” corrected the old guide.

“And she was dressed in Kate Arden’s clothes!” groaned Wade, remembering Nina Ide’s little scheme of deception.

“Then she’s at Britt’s camp—mistaken for the Skeet girl, as I said,” declared Straight, with conviction.

“But hold on!” he cried, grasping Wade’s arm as the young man was about to rush back into the camp, “that’s no way to go after that girl—hammer and tongs, mob and ragtag. In the first place, Mr. Wade, those men in there are in no frame of mind to be led off into the night. I know woodsmen. They’ve been talkin’ ha’nts till they’re ready to jump ten feet high if you shove a finger at ’em. This is no time for an army—an army of that caliber. They know well enough now at Britt’s camp that it isn’t Kate Arden. And I’ll bet they’re pretty frightened, now that they know who they’ve got. It’s a simple matter, Mr. Wade. I’ll go to Britt’s camp and get the young lady. I’ll go now on snow-shoes and take the moose-sled, and I’ll be back some time to-morrow all safe and happy.”

“I’ll go with you,” declared Wade.

“It isn’t best,” protested the old man. “I’ve no quarrel with Colin MacLeod. It means trouble if you show in sight there without your men behind you.”

“But I’m going,” insisted Wade, with such positiveness that old Christopher merely sighed. “I’ll let you go into the camp alone,” allowed Wade, “for I am not fool enough to look for trouble just to find it; but I’ll be waiting for you up the tote road with the moose-sled, and I’ll haul her home here out of that hell.”

“I can’t blame you for wantin’ to play hoss for her,” said the woodsman, with a little malice in his humor. “And if she is like most girls she’ll be willin’ to have you do it.”

Ten minutes later the two were away down the tote road. They said nothing of their purpose except to Nina Ide, whom they left intrenched in the wangan—a woods maiden who felt perfectly certain of the chivalry of the men of the woods about her.

The storm was over, but the heavens were still black. Wade dragged the moose-sled, walking behind old Christopher in the patch of radiance that the lantern flung upon the snow. Treading ever and ever on the same whiteness in that little circle of light, it seemed to Wade that he was making no progress, but that the big trees were silently crowding their way past like spectres, and that he, for all his passion of fear and foreboding, simply lifted his feet to make idle tracks. The winds were still, and the only sounds were the rasping of legs and snow-shoes, and the soft thuddings of snow-chunks dropped from the limbs of overladen trees.

In the first gray of the morning, swinging off the tote road and down into the depths of Jerusalem valley, they at last came upon the scattered spruce-tops and fresh chips that marked the circle of Britt’s winter operation.

The young man’s good sense rebuked his rebelliousness when Christopher took the cord of the sled and bade him wait where he was.

“I don’t blame you for feeling that way,” said the old man, interpreting Wade’s wordless mutterings; “but the easiest way is always the best. If she is there she will want to come with me, where Miss Ide is waiting for her, and the word of the young lady will be respected. I’m afraid your word wouldn’t be—not with Colin MacLeod,” he added, grimly.

And yet Dwight Wade watched the lantern-light flicker down the valley with a secret and shamed feeling that he was a coward not to be the first to hold out a hand of succor to the girl he loved. That he had to wait hidden there in the woods while another represented him chafed his spirits until he strode up and down and snarled at the reddening east.

At last the waiting became agony. The sun came up, its light quivering through the snow-shrouded spruces. Below him in the valley he heard teamsters yelping at floundering horses, the grunting “Hup ho!” of sled-tenders, and the chick-chock of axes. It was evident that the visit of Christopher Straight had not created enough of a sensation to divert Pulaski Britt’s men from their daily toil. Wade’s hurrying thoughts would not allow his common-sense to excuse the old man’s continued absence. To go—to tear Elva Barrett from that hateful place—to rush back—what else was there for Straight to do? In the end the goads of apprehension were driving him down the trail towards the camp, regardless of consequences.

But when, at the first turn of the road, he saw Christopher plodding towards him, he ran back in sudden tremor. He wanted to think a moment. There was so much to say. The old man came into sight again, near at hand, before Wade had control of the tumult of his thoughts.

The sled was empty.

Christopher scuffed along slowly, munching a biscuit.

“They wouldn’t let her go? I—I thought they had made you stay—you were so long!” gasped the young man, trying by words of his own to calm his fear.

“She isn’t there, Mr. Wade,” said the old man, finishing his biscuit, and speaking with an apparent calmness which maddened the young man. This old man, placidly wagging his jaws, seemed a part of the stolid indifference of the woods.

“I brought you something to eat, Mr. Wade,” Christopher went on. He fumbled at his breast-pocket. “We’ve got tough work ahead of us. You can’t do it on an empty stomach.”

“My God! what are you saying, Straight?” demanded the young man. “They’re lying to you. She is there. She must be. There’s no one—”

“And I say she isn’t there,” insisted Christopher, with quiet firmness. “I know what I’m talking about. You’re only guessin’.”

“They lied to you to save themselves.”

“Mr. Wade, I know woodsmen better than you do. There are a good many things about Colin MacLeod that I don’t like. But when it came to a matter of John Barrett’s daughter Colin MacLeod would be as square as you or I.”

“You told them it was John Barrett’s daughter?”

“I did not,” said the old man, stoutly. “There was no need to. If it had been John Barrett’s daughter she would have been queening it in those camps when I got there. She hadn’t been there. There has been no woman there. Colin MacLeod and his men didn’t take Miss Barrett from that tote team. And I’ve made sure of that point because I knew my men well enough to make sure. She isn’t there!”

“There is no one else in all these woods to trouble her,” declared Wade, brokenly.

“No one knows just who and what are movin’ about these woods,” said Christopher, in solemn tones. “In forty years I’ve known things to happen here that no one ever explained. Hold on, Mr. Wade!” he cried, checking a bitter outburst. “I’m not talking like Tommy Eye, either! I’m not talking about ha’nts now. But, I say, strange things have happened in these woods—and a strange thing has happened this time. Barrett’s daughter is gone. She’s been taken. She didn’t go by herself.” He gazed helplessly about him, searching the avenues of the silent woods.

“North or east, west or south!” he muttered, “It’s a big job for us, Mr. Wade! I’m goin’ to be honest with you. I don’t see into it. You’d better eat.”

The young man pushed the proffered food away.

“You eat, I say,” commanded old Christopher, his gray eyes snapping. “An empty gun and an empty man ain’t either of ’em any good on a huntin’-trip.”

He started away, dragging the sled, and Wade struggled along after him, choking down the food.

When they had retraced their steps as far as the Enchanted tote road, Christopher turned to the south and trudged towards Pogey Notch. The trail of the tote team was visible in hollows which the snow had nearly filled. The snow lay as it had fallen. The tops of the great trees on either side of the road sighed and lashed and moaned in the wind that had risen at dawn. But below in the forest aisles it was quiet.

Had not the wind been at their backs, whistling from the north, the passage of Pogey Notch would have proved a savage encounter. The stunted growth offered no wind-break. The great defile roared like a chimney-draught. As the summer winds had howled up the Notch, lashing the leafy branches of the birches and beeches, so now the winter winds howled down, harpers that struck dismal notes from the bare trees. The snow drove horizontally in stinging clouds. The drifting snow even made the sun look wan. The quest for track, trail, or clew in that storm aftermath was waste of time. But the old man kept steadily on, peering to right and left, searching with his eyes nook and cross-defile, until at the southern mouth of the Notch they came to Durfy’s hovel.

Christopher took refuge there, leaning against the log walls, and mused for a time without speaking. Then he bent his shrewd glance on Wade from under puckered lids.

“There’s no telling what a lunatic will do next, is there?” he blurted, abruptly.

Wade, failing to understand, stared at his questioner.

“I was thinkin’ about that as we came past that place where ‘Ladder’ Lane trussed up John Barrett and left him, time of the big fire,” the old man went on. “Comin’ down the Notch sort of brought the thing up in my mind. It’s quite a grudge that Lane has got against John Barrett and all that belongs to him.”

Wade was well enough versed in Christopher Straight’s subtle fashion of expressing his suspicions to understand him now.

“By ——, Straight, I believe you’ve hit it!” he panted.

“I’ve been patchin’ a few things together in my head,” said the old man, modestly, “as a feller has to do when dealin’ with woods matters. I’ve told you that queer things have happened in the woods. When a number of things happen you can fit ’em together, sometimes. Now, there wasn’t anything queer at Britt’s camps to fit into the rest. I came right on ’em sudden, and there wasn’t a ripple anywhere. I didn’t go into the details, Mr. Wade, in tellin’ you why I knew Miss Barrett wasn’t there. It would have been wastin’ time. But now take the queer things! Out goes Abe Skeet into the storm! Who would be mousin’ around outside at that time of night except a lunatic—such as ‘Ladder’ Lane has turned into since the big fire? You saw on Jerusalem how Lane could boss Abe—he jumped when Lane pulled the string.

“And it was Lane that called him out of our camp,” the old man went on. “No one else could do it—except that old Skeet grandmother. Lane has been in these woods ever since he abandoned the Jerusalem fire station. He’s no ordinary lunatic. He’s cunnin’. He’s only livin’ now to nuss the grudge. Now see here!” Christopher held up his fingers, and bent them down one by one to mark his points. “He has ha’nted camps in this section to locate Abe Skeet. Knowed Abe Skeet could probably tell where Kate Arden had gone, Abe havin’ been left to guard her. Called Abe out to go with him to get that girl back—maybe havin’ heard that John Barrett got out of these woods scot-free and had dumped the girl off somewhere else. Lane is lunatic enough to think he needs the girl to carry out his plan of revenge. And he does, if he means to take her outside and show her to the world as John Barrett’s abandoned daughter, as it’s plain his scheme is. Lane and Abe started down towards Castonia. Heard tote team, and hid side of road (would naturally hide). Saw girl that looked like Kate Arden (even dressed in her clothes, I believe you told me?). Followed the team, and when she covered herself in the blanket, as though to make herself into a package ready for ’em, they grabbed her off the team before she had time to squawk. Had her ready muzzled and gagged, as you might say! Mr. Wade, as I told you, I’ve been patchin’ things in my mind. I ain’t a dime-novel detective nor anything of the sort, but I do know something about the woods and who are in ’em and what they’ll be likely to do, and I can’t see anything far-fetched in the way I’ve figgered this.”

While his fears had been so hideously vague Wade had stumbled on behind his guide without hope, and with his thoughts whirling in his head as wildly as the snow-squalls whirled in Pogey. Now, with definite point on which to hang his bitter fears, he was roused into a fury of activity.

“We’ll after them, Christopher!” he shouted. “They’ve got her! It’s just as you’ve figured it. They’ve got her! She will die of fright, man! I don’t dare to think of it!” He was rushing away. Christopher called to him.

“Just which way was you thinkin’ of goin’?” he asked, with mild sarcasm. “I can put queer things together in my mind so’s to make ’em fit pretty well,” went on the old man, “but jest which way to go chasin’ a lunatic and a fool in these big woods ain’t marked down on this snow plain enough so I can see it.”

Wade, the cord of the moose-sled in his trembling hands, turned and stared dismally at Straight. The old man slowly came away from the hovel, his nose in the air, as though he were sniffing for inspiration.

“The nearest place,” he said, thinking his thoughts aloud, “would be to the fire station up there.” He pointed his mittened hand towards the craggy sides of Jerusalem. “They may have started hot-foot for the settlement. Perhaps ‘Ladder’ Lane would have done that if ’twas Kate Arden he’d got. But seein’ as it’s John Barrett’s own daughter—” He paused and rubbed his mitten over his face. “Knowin’ what we do of the general disposition of old Lane, it’s more reasonable to think that he ain’t quite so anxious to deliver that particular package outside, seein’ that he can twist John Barrett’s heart out of him by keepin’ her hid in these woods.”

The young man had no words. His face pictured his fears.

“It’s only guesswork at best, Mr. Wade,” said Christopher. “It’s tough to think of climbin’ to the top of Jerusalem on this day, but it seems to me it’s up to us as men.” They looked at each other a moment, and the look was both agreement and pledge. They began the ascent, quartering the snowy slope. The dogged persistence of the veteran woodsman animated the old man; love and desperation spurred the younger. The climb from bench to bench among the trees was an heroic struggle. The passage across the bare poll of the mountain in the teeth of the bitter blast was torture indescribable. And they staggered to the fire station only to find its open doors drifted with snow, its two rooms empty and echoing.

“I was in hopes—in hopes!” sighed the old man, stroking the frozen sweat from his cheeks. “But I ain’t agoin’ to give up hopes here, sonny.” Even Wade’s despair felt the soothing encouragement in the old man’s tone.

“We’ve got to fetch Barnum Withee’s camp on ‘Lazy Tom’ before we sleep,” said the guide. “There’ll be something to eat there. There may be news. We’ve got to do it!” And they plodded on wearily over the ledges and down the west descent.

They made the last two miles by the light of their lantern, dragging their snow-shoes, one over the other, with the listlessness of exhaustion. The cook of Withee’s camp stared at them when they stumbled in at the door of his little domain, their snow-shoes clattering on the floor. He was a sociable cook, and he remarked, cheerily, “Well, gents, I’m glad to see that you seem to be lookin’ for a hotel instead of a horsepittle.”

Not understanding him, they bent to untie the latchets of their shoes without reply.

“T’other one is in the horsepittle,” said the cook, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of his bunk in the lean-to. “He was brought in. I’ve been lookin’ for something of the sort ever since he skipped from the Jerusalem station. Lunatics ain’t fit to fool ’round in the woods,” he rambled on.

“Who’ve you got in there?” demanded Christopher, snapping up from his fumbling at the rawhide strings.

“Old ‘Ladder’ Lane,” replied the cook, calmly. “Murphy’s down-toter brought him here just before dark. He’s pretty bad. Froze up considerable. Toter heard him hootin’ out in the swirl of snow on the Dickery pond and toled him ashore by hootin’ back at him. No business tryin’ to cross a pond on a day like this! ’Tain’t safe for a young man with all his wits, let alone an old man who has beat himself all out slam-bangin’ round these woods this winter.

“Yes, he’s pretty bad. Done what I could for him, me and cookee, by rubbin’ on snow and ladlin’ ginger-tea into him, but when it come to supper-time them nail-kags of mine had to be ’tended to, and here’s bread to mix for to-morrow mornin’. We don’t advertise a horsepittle, gents, but you wait a minute and I’ll scratch you up somethin’ for supper. The horsepittle will have to run itself for a little while.”

Wade and the old man stared at each other stupidly while the cook bustled about his task. For the moment their thoughts were too busy for words. Even Christopher’s whitening face showed the fear that had come upon him.

“Guess old Lane was comin’ out to get a letter onto the tote team,” gossiped the cook. “I was lookin’ through his coat after I got it off and found that one up there.”

He nodded at a grimy epistle stuck in a crevice of the log, and went down into a barrel after doughnuts which he piled on a tin plate.

Noiselessly Christopher strode to the log and took down the letter and stared at the superscription, and without a word displayed the writing to Wade. It was addressed to John Barrett at his city address.

The cook was busy at the table.

“By Cephas, this is our business!” muttered the old man. And, turning his back on the cook, he ripped open the envelope. On a wrinkled leaf torn from an account-book was pencilled this message:

“You stole my wife. I’ve got your daughter. Now, damn you, crawl and beg!”

“Look here, cook,” called Straight, sharply, “there’s bad business mixed up with Lane. Don’t ask me no questions.” He flapped the open letter into the astonished face of the man to check his words. “We’ve got to speak to Lane, and speak mighty quick.”

“He was in a sog when I put him to bed,” said the cook. “Didn’t know what, who, or where. They say lunatics want to be woke up careful. You let me go.” He took a doughnut from the plate and started for the lean-to, grinning back over his shoulder. “He may be ready to set up, take notice, and brace himself with a doughnut.”

The two men waited, eager, silent, hoping, fearing—each framing such appeal as might touch the heart of this revengeful maniac.

They heard the cook utter a snort of surprise; then they saw the flame of a match shielded by his palm. A moment later he came out and stood looking at them with a singularly sheepish expression.

“Gents,” he blurted, “I’ll be cussed if the joke ain’t on me this time! I went in there to give the horsepittle patient a fresh-laid doughnut to revive his droopin’ heart, and—”

“Is that man gone?” bawled Christopher, reaching for his snow-shoes.

“Yes,” said the cook, grimly; “but you can’t chase him on snow—not where he’s gone. He’s deader’n the door-knob on a hearse-house door.”