CHAPTER XII
“Itwill be easy going down,” said Nelly Sackett, when they were rested and ready. “There are several trails down from the top in different directions. But I told Tante we would return the way we came, because that is the quickest way to Round Robin.”
They started off at a brisk pace. “If anyone gets tired, sing out, and we will stop for a rest,” Nelly shouted over her shoulder. “But all keep together.”
“All right!” chorused the Club. But who wants to be the first to cry “tired”? The foremost girls started to skip and hop down the path, and after that they found it hard to go slowly, though their knees began to feel queer kinks. Again Anne brought up the rear; this time because she was really tired. The otherswere so busy watching their own rollicking steps, laughing and squealing, that no one noticed how Anne was gradually falling further and further behind.
“I don’t need to ask Nelly Sackett’s permission to rest,” Anne said to herself sulkily. She had started out of sorts, and had been growing no less so as the day grew long. “The others can go on a bit,” she thought. “I’m tired of hearing their voices. I’ll catch up when I get ready, for it’s easy walking on this path.”
Anne was not timid about being alone in the woods, as Beverly was. She sat down under a great pine tree and took off her hat, to cool her hot forehead. It was quiet and peaceful in the shade. Around a bend in the path she saw Beverly’s knapsack disappear, as she cantered after the other girls. Anne breathed a sigh of relief. Somewhere in the woods a hermit thrush began to sing his flute-like song; always in three parts. Anne listened eagerly. She had never heard one so near before, though Norma had taught her the song. She rested some time, till the thrush stopped singing, then she felt quite ready tostart on again. She picked herself up with a triumphant feeling that she had done as she pleased, with nobody’s leave.
“It’s easy enough to follow a blazed trial,” mused Anne out loud. It seemed natural to talk out loud in the woods, when one was alone. “I don’t see why they make such a fuss about being ‘careful.’ I remember these trees perfectly. I remember everything!”
The blazes on the trees were fresh and plain along here. But presently Anne came to a place where a great pine had fallen under the storms of the previous hard winter, and lay right across the path. Another had crashed into a grove of spruces and had taken them all down with it to ruin. “I remember we went out of the way around this,” said Anne. She made a wide detour, and looking carefully, came again upon blazes, quite conspicuous ones. She had lost time in rediscovering the path. “I see why it is better to keep together, on a long walk,” she said to herself. “A lot of eyes can spy blazes quicker. I’ll have to hurry to catch up with the rest, unlessthey stop. I think they will stop for me.” She hurried on a little faster.
“I wonder if paths always look so different coming down?” thought Anne a little later. Again she came to a blind part of the trail. A perfect maze of fallen trees had wiped out every sign of a path. And a great moss-covered boulder stood square in the way. “I certainly never saw that rock before! We should have spoken of it,” said Anne dubiously. “I don’t see any blazes—oh yes, there is one. But it looks very old and faint, not like those we followed this morning. There’s another! Can I be on the right path? They did not say there was another branching off.”
This was a very wriggling narrow path indeed, and Anne could not help seeing that it was different from the one she remembered. She began to feel rather nervous, and she remembered with a pang Tante’s last words to the Club—“Above all,keep together. Togetheris a safe motto, especially in the woods.” No one answered her repeated calls.
The path grew vaguer and vaguer. Sometimes the blazes seemed quite obliterated.Sometimes there seemed groups of them marking paths that led in opposite ways. Anne had to choose as best she could what seemed the right general direction.
Finally she came out quite abruptly into a sort of clearing, where the blazes converged in a hopeless muddle. Probably it was the site of an old wood-cutters’ camp, and these were the paths the men had made to get lumber, leading nowhere but to the place where some big tree had stood. Anne had no idea which way to go next. She was indeed lost. She shouted, but no one answered. Her voice did not seem to carry far; only the twittering of frightened birds and the mocking caw of an old black crow answered her.
Anne sat down, breathless, to think; and for the first time she was really frightened. Once she fancied she heard a far-off shout, that might be the Club yell. But it seemed to come from the wrong direction; and not hearing it again, in answer to hers, she concluded she had been mistaken.
Suddenly she heard the sharp crack of a rifle somewhere in the woods beyond her.There was no mistaking that sound. “Somebody is hunting!” she thought. “Suppose he should shoot me by mistake!” She jumped to her feet and hurried forward again, away from the sound of the shot.
Then she discovered all of a sudden that she was on a broad, well-marked trail leading down the mountain. This was encouraging, for she could walk faster now. But she stopped abruptly in a few moments. She had spied something through the trees. It was a hut in the woods beside the trail; a hut away off in this lonely spot on the side of a mountain that was supposed to be uninhabited!
It was a shiftless low shack of rough logs covered with tar-paper. From a tiny chimney a thin coil of smoke was rising. About the hut was a disorderly litter of barrels and boxes and earthen jugs. A wheelbarrow stood by the door. Probably there was someone in the house who could tell her which way to go home. But Anne had no desire to investigate the owner of this lonely, untidy place. Her one thought was to get away as soon as possible.
Down the path she ran wildly, stumbling and sometimes falling, as the roots of the ground-pine and the rolling pebbles seemed trying to trip her. The path made a continuous curve. Soon Anne had lost all account of direction, as well as of time. When she had run some distance and was thoroughly out of breath, she made up her mind that she must stop to rest. Then she saw that she was coming out of the thick woods. Suddenly, the path made a jump out onto a beach, a tiny crescent of pebbly sand, hidden from the open sea by a rocky island close to shore, and by other reefs beyond. Anne stepped on to the pebbles and looked about quite dazed. There was nothing to tell where she was or in which direction was home. There was nothing familiar on land or sea.
Presently Anne spied a small motor-boat anchored in the tiny harbor. And at the same moment she became aware that she was not alone in the cove. A man was stooping over some boxes which he had evidently just brought ashore. They lay at the entrance of what looked like a cave in the cliff. The manglanced up over his shoulder at the sound of Anne’s feet on the pebbles. Then he sprang erect with a jerk, like a jumping-jack.
“Hello!” he cried in gruff surprise that was not pleasure. “Where’dyoucome from?”
He was a tall rough-looking man in fisherman’s clothes and boots and a tarpaulin hat. Around his throat was a knotted red handkerchief, and he looked rather like a pirate. What with the cave and the piles of boxes and barrels at the entrance, Anne thought of Dick’s favorite story of pirate treasure; and for a moment she imagined she was dreaming. But the man recalled her, repeating his question impatiently and taking a step towards her.
“I say, who are you and where’d you come from?” When the man frowned he had a still more dangerous look.
Anne’s heart sank. Beverly would probably have fainted away. “I’m lost, I guess,” she said faintly. “We went up on the mountain from our camp near the Harbor, and I got separated from the others. Will you please tell me how to get home?”
“Home?” echoed the man, eyeing hersharply. “Why, the Harbor’s miles from here!”
“Oh!” exclaimed Anne in despair. “What shall I do?”
“You never kin walk it,” said the man gruffly. “I don’t see how you got here. Down the mount-ing, eh? H’m! Some journey!”
“Yes!” assented Anne. “Miles!”
The man had a sudden idea. “Did ye see anything in the woods as ye come along?” Anne shook her head. “I heard a shot,” she said, “that was what frightened me, so I ran. Perhaps it was you?” she had spied a rifle lying on the beach beside the stranger.
“Mebbe,” said the man shortly. “Shootin’ fish. No luck, though. Didn’t see anything else in the woods, did ye?”
“I saw a house that looked as if somebody was in it,” said Anne truthfully. “Smoke was coming out of the chimney.”
“Fergit it!” said the man sharply. “Smoke? You was dreamin’. Or else it’s ha’nted. Yes, that’s it; that house is ha’nted! Old hermit lived there once. Nobody remembers it; butit’s so. I wouldn’t speak of it to nobody, if I was you. Bad luck!”
Anne thought he talked strangely, and wondered if she had a crazy man to deal with. But his next words reassured her. “I s’pose I could take ye a piece of the way home in my boat,” he said rather dubiously. “Ye got to get away somehow.”
“Oh, thank you!” cried Anne gratefully. “They will be so worried about me at Camp.” He rowed her out to the boat in a light dory that served as his tender. “Jump in,” he said roughly, taking her by the arm to steady her.
“Where shall I sit?” she asked, looking around the boat, for there was no seat of any kind. Evidently this was no passenger-boat. “Set right down in the bottom,” commanded the man. And though it neither looked nor smelled clean, Anne obeyed the look in the man’s eye. From where she crouched she could see nothing but blue sky. The stranger steered standing. His back was towards her and his hat hid his face completely. He spoke no word as the boat chugged along into what seemed to Anne the middle of the ocean, soentirely was all sight of land hidden from her. Once she started to climb to her feet, to see where they were going.
“Set down!” roared the man, who seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. And after that Anne kept still. It seemed to her that the boat threaded a very winding course; but she could not really tell. Indeed, all water-courses had to be more or less crooked in this part of the world, on account of the many reefs and islands.
They went for a long time, perhaps fifteen minutes, before the man spoke to Anne. “Ye’ve made me a lot of trouble,” he said crossly. “Don’t do it again!”
“Indeed I won’t,” said Anne fervently. “I’m sorry.”
“Ye’d better keep yer mouth shut about what ye’ve seen to-day,” he shot out the words with a growl, “or ye’ll be sorry! I’m goin’ to set you ashore pretty soon, not far from yer Camp. Ye’ll have about half a mile to walk; but that ain’t bad for a stocky miss like you.”
“Thank you,” said Anne meekly.
The shadows were slanting low in the westwhen the pilot made a sharp turn and the boat entered the still waters of a cove. The engine stopped and they drifted. “Ye may git yer feet a bit wet,” said the man; “but I hope ye’re no molly-coddle, if ye’re a camper. Here, git up!” Anne climbed to her feet, rather numb and stiff, and looked around. The place seemed strange, yet curiously familiar. She could not tell what was the matter.
“Which way do I go?” she asked bewildered, when she was ashore.
The man laughed but seemed pleased at her question. “Thatway,” he said, pointing. “Pike along now,and fergit it!” He repeated the last words again with emphasis, shaking his head solemnly with a threat in his voice.
Anne looked about her dazedly. “Why, I should have guessed it wasthatway!” she murmured. “I’m all turned around!”
“Must have gone right round the mount-ing,” said the man with a grin. “And it’s pathless wilderness, too,” he spoke slowly. “Ye’re lucky to git off so well, I tell ye!” He was rowing away in the boat. “What’syer name, missy?” he asked with a sudden thought, lying on his oars. “I might want to remember it, in case ye don’t do as I say. In case yetell!”
Anne had a mind not to reply, and to run for home instead. But she was too doubtful about the path, and she spoke her name.
“Anne Poole!” exclaimed the man. “Not Chester Poole’s gal?”
“Why, yes,” said Anne, surprised at his black look.
The man in the boat gave an exclamation. He seemed half inclined to put back after her. “The scalawag!” he muttered. “If I’d ’a known that!” But Anne waited to hear no more, not even to thank him for the kindness he seemed already to repent. She began to run along the path, strangely confused because it seemed to go in the wrong direction. It was like running “through the looking glass!” It was only when she caught sight of the boys’ camp, and Dick Reed coming to meet her with a shout of welcome, that she was sure she was really headed for home.
“Scalawag!” the word echoed in her ears. She had never heard it before. What did the man mean? Was he insulting her or her father with that name? She resolved to hold her tongue as he bade her.