  “Oh, let’s go back,” grumbled Harry Ritter, petulantly swishing at the brittle stalk of a leafless brier. “There’s no black walnut trees around here, and it’ll be dark in half an hour. We have supper early to-night, too.” “Thinking of his bread-basket as usual,” grinned McBride. “It would do you good, Rit, to go without supper for once. You need thinning down.” “I’m thin enough to suit me,” sniffed the fat chap. He cocked a troubled eye at the cold, gray clouds which hung low above the narrow country road. “Besides, it’s going to rain or snow before long,” he added with a shiver. McBride laughed carelessly. “We should worry and get a wrinkle! A little wet won’t hurt any of us. I move we keep going for a while longer, anyhow. We’ve had rotten luck this afternoon. If we don’t look out Marshall’s bunch will get ahead.” In this final clean-up for locating trees not previously reported for the census of black walnuts requested by the Government, Mr. Wendell had hit upon the expedient of dividing the troop into miscellaneous groups of four and offering a prize to the group reporting the greatest number. The emulation and friendly rivalry aroused had produced fine results. So far Jim Cavanaugh’s group was ahead, but the scouts under Clay Marshall’s leadership had lately been creeping up. At McBride’s remark, Ritter sniffed scornfully. “What can you expect?” he complained in an aggrieved tone. “Walnuts don’t grow in a wild country like this. They’re always around farms or on main roads. It was a dirty trick of Mr. Wendell to make us come way over here. Where’d Marshall’s bunch go?” “Over around Benson’s Hill,” answered Cavanaugh, his gaze wandering keenly over the gaunt, bare tree tops of the surrounding woods. “Right near the cabin!” exclaimed Ritter enviously. “I’ll bet they’ve gone in there and built a fire and are having a dandy time.” “Well, then they can’t be finding walnuts and beating our record,” retorted Micky. “There’s one thing anyhow, fellows. When this last clean-up is over, I’ll bet nobody’ll be able to find a black walnut tree with a fine tooth comb around this country. We’ve located a raft of ’em since we started last summer.” He sighed, and his mind reverted to another subject. “Gee! The cabin certainly looks swell with all that new stuff in it. When are we going to have that house-warming Cavvy?” Cavanaugh turned abruptly and stared blankly at his friend. “Say! I clean forgot to tell you something. Did you hear about Jack Farren?” “No! What?” “He’s down in the camp hospital with scarlet fever. I met Dick Harley in town this morning and he told me.” “Gee! That’s tough luck, isn’t it?” “And it’s not the worst,” continued Cavvy. “Dick says they’re likely to get marching orders any day, and of course if they sail for France before Jack gets well, he’ll be left behind.” McBride gave a long, expressive whistle. “That would be the extreme limit, wouldn’t it? It’s a shame. Jack’s one of the dandiest chaps I ever met. He’d be all broken up to have them go and—What’s the matter? See one?” Cavanaugh shrugged. “I’m not sure,” he returned, his eyes fixed on the naked branches of some tall trees towering up above the smaller growth quite a distance from the road. “They look pretty good to me, though.” “They don’t look bad,” agreed Micky, swinging the stout hickory stick he had cut and trimmed earlier in the afternoon. “Of course you can’t tell for sure at this distance, but they’re worth looking up. Wonder how you get in there?” Cavanaugh was already pushing into the undergrowth that edged the road. “This is the only way, I guess,” he answered. “They can’t be so very far back.” “I’ll bet they’re hickory or butternut,” grumbled Ritter pessimistically. Nevertheless, he followed the others into the tangled wilderness of briers, bushes and young trees which seemed to extend indefinitely over this remote and unfamiliar section of Fairview County. As he plodded along over marshy ground to which belated winter had brought only a thin crusting of frost, the stout chap wished fervently that he had found some excuse for evading the excursion this afternoon. It wouldn’t have been easy, for Cavvy had a way of keeping the fellows up to the mark, but he might have managed if he had only had the sense, and then all this unpleasantness would have been avoided. At length his growing petulance and inward stewing broke forth into audible grumbling. Nothing pleased him, even the discovery of a narrow path winding through the overgrown swamp, which, since it led in the general direction they were going, Cavvy promptly followed. “An old cow path, I’ll bet,” growled Ritter, tenderly caressing a long scratch across one check. “It won’t take us anywhere. Whoever heard of walnut trees growing in this kind of a beastly hole. We’re just wasting—” He broke off, jaw sagging, and stared over the shoulder of Champ Ferris, who walked ahead of him. The woods had ended abruptly in a cluttered, overgrown clearing. Across this the path wavered diagonally through dead, rustling grass and weeds nearly waist high to a house surrounded by eight or ten magnificent black walnut trees. At the sight of them Cavvy’s eyes gleamed triumphantly. “By jingo!” he exclaimed. “What beauties!” McBride and Ferris echoed his enthusiasm, and there was a hurried forward movement. Then, inexplicably, they paused. In that first moment there had been eyes for nothing save the objects of their search. But now, as their glances wandered from the great trees and took in the other details of the clearing, there came suddenly over each one of them an impression of loneliness and desolation and decay which was almost chilling. The house was large and rambling, but bore a hundred signs of neglect and disuse. The paint had scaled from its surface leaving it a dark, streaked gray. In the moss-covered, sagging roof were rotting holes. Shutters covered the windows or hung crazily by a single rusted hinge. A pillar of the porch in front had fallen and lay buried in the tall grass. At one side of the house lay a stagnant pool covered with a thin film of ice, and a quantity of green slime. Beyond it loomed the gaunt outlines of a great barn. The roof had been almost stripped of shingles, and the beams and rafters stood out against the cold gray sky like the bleached ribs of some long-wrecked ship. Farther still they could glimpse stretches of what had once been pasture land, but which now was smothered in a thick tangle of brier and bay and juniper. The view was limited on every side by thick, encompassing woods. “Whew!” breathed Champ Ferris. “What a hole! It gives you a regular chill.” “We’re going to have a job finding the owner,” said McBride disconsolately. “Don’t look as if anybody’d lived here in a thousand years.” Cavvy’s face was puzzled. “But the path,” he reminded them. “Why hasn’t that grown up like the rest if it isn’t used?” “That is queer,” agreed McBride. “Of course it might be some short cut, but— What the deuce is the matter with you, Rit?” A sharp, half smothered exclamation from the stout chap made them all turn quickly, but for a moment Ritter did not answer. With jaw sagging and eyes wide and startled, he was staring at one of the grimy windows on the upper floor of the gray house from which, a second before, he had glimpsed a face peering down at them. A heavy, pendulous face it was, of a curious and pronounced pallor. It hovered there for an instant and disappeared so swiftly that Cavanaugh, following the direction of Ritter’s frightened gaze, was in time to catch only the white flash of its vanishing. |
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