  The following morning Mrs. Gay relented from her decision to pack up the family’s things and go home immediately. It was such a perfect day; the river sparkled beautifully in the sunlight, the birds sang sweetly in the trees beside the cottage, and her children seemed happy. Yes, it would be absurd to run away from all this beauty. Mary Louise was overjoyed at her mother’s decision. Immediately she began to make important plans for the day. She would go over to Adams’ farm and find out where Rebecca was. If necessary, she could have the boys trail her during the day, in case the crazy woman might be planning another fire for tonight. Then she would call on the Ditmars and make it a point to talk to the man himself. Maybe she’d run over to Eberhardt’s store at Four Corners, later in the afternoon, just to check up on his business. Oh, it promised to be an interesting day for Mary Louise! “Where will the ‘Wild Guys of the Road’ be today?” she asked her brother at breakfast. “Over at our cabin, I guess,” replied Freckles. “Why?” “I may want to call on you for some sleuthing,” explained Mary Louise. “I am a little suspicious about Rebecca Adams—that queer-looking woman you boys saw the night Flicks’ Inn burned down. Remember her?” “Sure I do! Nobody’d forget a scarecrow like that!” “Well, you stay around here, where I can get hold of you, while I drive over to Adams’ farm right after breakfast. If I can locate her, I’d like you boys to keep your eyes on her all day.” Freckles’ face lighted up with excitement. “You can count on us, Sis!” he assured her. “Thanks a lot. Now, you help Mother with the dishes, and I’ll run along. Want to come with me, Jane?” “Yes, I do,” replied her chum. “I’m really interested in the mystery of the fires. I admit now that they couldn’t all be accidents.” “And you’d kind of like to prove Cliff Hunter is innocent, wouldn’t you, Jane?” teased Freckles. “Naturally! Who wouldn’t?” was the retort. Mary Louise backed the car out of the garage and followed the same road she and David McCall had taken on their first visit to Adams’ farm. She drove very cautiously now, almost as if she expected Rebecca Adams to dart out again from the bushes into the path of her car. But nothing happened, and the girls reached the top of the hill in safety. An old man was sitting out on the porch with one leg propped up on a chair. A young man was standing on the steps talking to him. He was a big fellow in overalls; Mary Louise remembered seeing him at Flicks’ the day after the fire. He must be Hattie’s brother Tom. The girls left the car at the fence and approached timidly, not quite sure how they would be received. “Good-morning,” began Jane briskly, to hide her nervousness. “Is Hattie home today?” The old man looked questioningly at his son. “Have you seen her since breakfast, Tom?” he inquired. “Yeah,” replied the young man. “She’s still in the kitchen, or else upstairs with Rebecca.... Well, I’ll be movin’ on, Dad. I’ll be away all afternoon—the hired man’ll have to look after things.” “Where you goin’?” “Four Corners.” “What for?” Tom shrugged his shoulders: he wasn’t going to tell his business in front of strangers, Mary Louise decided. Then he shuffled off. “See that you get back in time for the milkin’,” was his father’s command. “And stop around at the back now and call to Hattie. Tell her she’s got visitors.” Mary Louise and Jane sat down on the step and waited. “Too bad about that fire night before last,” remarked the old man. “Lucky thing they saved the little girl.” “It was Mary Louise who did that,” announced Jane proudly, nodding towards her chum. “Hm! You don’t say!” returned Mr. Adams. “Well, I reckon girls are braver’n boys nowadays. My Hattie’s a good girl, too. Can’t say anything ag’in’ her.” “Oh yes, everybody likes Hattie,” agreed Mary Louise instantly. She wished that she could ask Mr. Adams about his other daughter—Rebecca—but she didn’t know just how to begin. Jane, however, came bluntly to the point, as usual. “Mr. Adams,” she said, “may I ask a question? You wouldn’t mind—if it was something about your family?” The old man grinned. “I know what it is, miss. It’s about my daughter Rebecca, ain’t it? Yes, go ahead. I ain’t sensitive about her—we ought to be used to her by now!” “That’s right,” agreed Jane. “Do you think she could be starting the fires? Do you know, she warned Mary Louise day before yesterday there would be another fire? And of course there was. And then she came to our tent that night and wakened us up to tell us that Smiths’ house was on fire.” Mr. Adams nodded. “I can believe it. But I don’t think Rebecca would ever set anything on fire. She’s afraid of ’em. She won’t even light the stove or do any cookin’ for that very reason. Many’s the time she’s come in with her pitcher of water and poured it right on the coals in the stove. It’s aggravatin’ if you’re ready to get dinner. Hattie and me have both slapped her for doin’ it, but she keeps right on.... No, I don’t see how we could lay the blame on poor old Rebecca.” “I’m glad to hear you say that,” said Mary Louise. “She seems like such a happy, harmless creature that it would be a shame to shut her up somewhere or accuse her of a crime.” “Didn’t you say she is home now?” inquired Jane. “She’s upstairs in bed with a sore throat,” replied Mr. Adams. “That’s why Hattie’s stayin’ around—and because my rheumatism is bad ag’in. Otherwise I reckon she’d be over to the Royal trying to get work. She was sorry to lose her job at Flicks’.” “Yes, she told us.” The girl herself appeared in the doorway. “Oh, hello, girls!” she exclaimed. “Glad to see you. Come on into the kitchen. I’m fixin’ some broth for Rebecca. She’s upstairs sick.” The two girls entered the old farmhouse and followed Hattie through the hall, back into the old-fashioned kitchen. It was a large room, with several chairs near the windows, and Mary Louise and Jane sat down. “I am going to be frank with you, Hattie,” began Mary Louise, “and tell you why we’ve come. You’ve heard, I suppose, that they arrested Cliff Hunter on the charge of burning three houses, and Jane and I believe he’s innocent. So we want to find out who really is responsible. We thought there might just be a chance that it was Rebecca.” “I don’t blame you for thinking that,” agreed the girl. “But I’m sure she couldn’t be guilty of that particular thing. She’s crazy enough to do it—only she’s scared of fires.” “Yes, so your father said. But she must know something, or how could she predict when they are going to occur?” “She’s always predicting them,” laughed Hattie. “Even when there aren’t any. And sometimes when it’s just a fire to toast marshmallows she gets all excited and swears it’s the wrath of heaven descending on Shady Nook.” “She came and warned us about the Smiths’,” put in Jane. “She probably saw the flames. Sometimes she gets up in the middle of the night and goes out with her pitcher. She was probably wandering around that night. I guess that’s how she caught her sore throat.” Mary Louise nodded. “Could we go upstairs and see her when you take up her broth?” she inquired. “Sure. But I’m afraid you won’t get much sense out of her today. She has a slight fever, and her mind’s wandering a lot.” Nevertheless, the girls followed Hattie up the carpeted staircase to a room on the second floor. The blinds at the windows were pulled down, but they could see Rebecca’s face, surrounded by its tangled gray curls, on the pillow. She was muttering to herself when they entered the door. “Here’s some chicken broth for you, Rebecca,” said Hattie cheerfully. “And a couple of visitors.” The woman stared at the girls blankly, and then shook her head. “Don’t know them,” she remarked. “Of course you do!” insisted Hattie, pulling up the window shade. “These are the girls who saved the little child at the Smith fire the other night.” Rebecca sat up and peered at them. Suddenly a smile broke over her face. “Yes, oh, yes!” she exclaimed. “I do remember. Mr. and Mrs. Smith are wicked people, traveling off and leaving their children alone, and the Lord sent a fire to punish them. But I put the fire out with my well water, and these girls saved the baby. Yes, yes, I remember.” Hattie straightened her sister’s pillow and handed her the tray. “Get me my well water,” commanded the woman, indicating the familiar pitcher which she always carried with her about the countryside. “Can’t you tell us where you were when that fire started?” asked Mary Louise. “Didn’t you go to bed that night?” The woman sipped her broth slowly. “No, I didn’t,” she said finally. “I was sittin’ on the porch till Tom come home. About midnight, I guess you call it. And then it seemed as if I could see smoke over at Shady Nook. We’re high up here on the hill; we can look down on the wickedness of you people in the valley.” Jane repressed a giggle. Without noticing it, Rebecca continued: “So I picked up my pitcher and ran down the hill to Shady Nook to warn the people. I saw Smiths’ house burnin’ then, and I heard folks shoutin’. So I run along and tried all the doors at Shady Nook. All of ’em was locked. Then I looked in that tent and found you girls sleepin’ and give you the warnin’.” Apparently exhausted with the effort of eating and talking, she dropped over on her pillow asleep. Hattie picked up the tray, and the girls followed her out of the room. “I wish we could talk to your brother,” remarked Mary Louise as they reentered the kitchen. “If he was out late that night, maybe he saw the fire start. Maybe he knows something——” “Maybe he wasn’t out at all,” laughed Hattie. “You can’t depend on what Rebecca says. For the most part she’s sensible, but sometimes she gets sadly muddled. Especially about fires. That’s the one subject in particular that she’s hipped about.” “Well, I guess we better be going, Hattie,” concluded Mary Louise, “if we want a swim this morning. Why don’t you come over and go in with the crowd, now that you haven’t any job? We’d like to have you.” “Thanks awfully,” returned the girl, “but I’ve got to stay here. Tom’s gone off in the Ford, and I have to look after things. Dad can’t even cook his lunch, on account of his rheumatism.” “Where did your brother go?” inquired Mary Louise. “Four Corners, I think. He likes to play cards over there. I’m afraid he gambles. Dad doesn’t know about it.” No sooner were the girls out of the gate than Jane asked her chum why she had shown any interest in Tom Adams’ whereabouts. “You don’t suspect him, do you?” she questioned. “I suspect everybody,” returned the other girl laughingly. “No, I really don’t,” she corrected, “because Tom Adams lost a job by Flicks’ burning down. That won’t be so nice for him, especially if he likes to gamble and needs the money to pay his debts. But I just thought he might know something, if he really was out till after midnight the night before last. He might even be protecting somebody!” “So I suppose we have to go to Four Corners this afternoon?” sighed Jane. “Not till after we call on the Ditmars,” replied Mary Louise. “And a swim and a lunch come before that!” |
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