Fred Hatfield, the runaway, was approaching the old, rambling country store at Emoryville Crossroads. It was so cold an evening that there were no loungers upon the high, railless porch which extended clear across the front of the building. Indeed, there was but one wagon standing before the store and probably there were very few customers, or loungers either, inside. The stopping of the train had brought nobody to the door.
As Fred gained the sidewalk in front of the store he glanced back.There was Ruth crossing the tracks behind him.
"You come back! Come back immediately, Fred Hatfield!" she called."Come back or I shall call Mr. Cameron."
The girl had been his Nemesis all day. Fred knew he could have given the party the slip at some station, had Ruth not kept such a sharp watch upon him. And here she was on his very heels, when he might have gotten well away.
The next stop would be Scarboro. Fred did not want to appear in Scarboro again. And he had a suspicion that Ruth knew his reasons for desiring to keep away from his home and friends.
He looked wildly about the lonely crossroads. The panting of the locomotive exhaust was not the only sound he heard. The two mules hitched to the timber wagon—the only wagon standing by the store— jingled their harness as they shook their heads. One bit at the other, and his mate squealed and stamped. They were young mules and full of "ginger"; yet their driver had carelessly left them standing unhitched in the road.
Fred gave another glance at Ruth and kept on running. The engineer suddenly whistled for the return of the flagman. But none of the train-hands—nor did the party in the private car—notice the boy and girl who had so incautiously left the train.
"Come back!" commanded Ruth, so much interested in following Fred that she did not notice the lantern of the rear brakeman bobbing along beside the ties. In a moment he swung himself aboard the private car and his lantern described half an arc in the dusk. The engine answered with a loud cough and the heavy train began to move.
But at that moment Fred Hatfield, grown desperate because of Ruth's pursuit, leaped aboard the timber wagon. He was a backwoods boy himself; he knew how to handle mules. He gave a shout to which the team responded instantly. They leaped ahead just as Ruth came to the side of the long reach that connected the small pair of front wheels with the huge wheels in the rear.
"Get off of that wagon, Fred!" she had just cried, when the mules started. She was directly in front of the large rear wheel. If it struck her—knocked her down—ran over her! Fred knew that she would be killed and he seized her hands and dragged her up beside him on the jouncing timber-reach.
"Now see what you've done!" he bawled, as the mules broke into a gallop.
But Ruth was too frightened for the moment to speak. Her uncle had a pair of mules, and she knew just how hard they were to manage. And this pair were evidently looking toward supper. They flew up the road, directly away from the railroad, and the wagon jounced about so that she could only hold on with both hands.
"Stop them! Stop them!" she cried.
But that was much easier said than done. The animals had been willing enough to start when given the word by a stranger; but now they did not recognize their master's voice when the boy yelled:
"Yea-a! Yea-a!"
Instead of stopping, the mules went faster and faster. They had their bits 'twixt their teeth and were running away in good earnest.
Almost immediately, when the bumping and jouncing wagon got away from the store and the two or three neighboring houses, they were in the deep woods. There were no farms—no clearings—not even an open patch in the timber. The snow lay deep under the pines and firs. The road had been used considerably since the last snow, and the ruts were deep. Therefore the mules kept to the beaten track.
"Oh, stop them! stop them!" moaned Ruth, clinging to the swaying, jouncing cart.
"I can't! I can't!" repeated the terrified boy.
"Oh, you wicked, wicked boy! you'll kill us both!" cried Ruth.
"It's your own fault you're here," returned Fred, sharply. "And I wouldn't never have got onto the wagon if you hadn't chased me."
"I believe you are the very worst boy who ever lived!" declared the girl from the Red Mill, in both anger and despair. "And I wish I had let you go your own wicked way."
"I wish you had," growled Hatfield, and then tried to soothe the running mules again.
He was successful in the end. He had driven mules before and understood them. The beasts, after traveling at least two miles, began to slow down. The wagon was now passing through a wild piece of the forest, and it was growing dark very fast. Only the snow on the ground made it possible for the boy and girl to see objects at a distance.
Ruth was wondering what her friends would think when they missed her, and likewise how she would ever get back to the railroad. Would Mr. Cameron send back for her? What would happen to her, here in the deep woods, even when the mules stopped so that she dared leap down from the cart?
And just then—before these questions became very pertinent in her mind—she was startled by a wild scream from the bush patch beside the road. Fred cried out in new alarm, and the mules stopped dead— for a moment. They were trembling and tossing their heads wildly. The awful, blood-chilling scream was repeated, and there was the soft thudding of cushioned paws in the bushes. Some beast had leaped down from a tree-branch to the hard snow.
"A cat-o'-mountain!" yelled Fred Hatfield, and as he shouted, the lithe cat sprang over the brush heap and landed in the road, right beside the timber cart.
Once Ruth had been into the menagerie of a traveling circus that had come to Darrowtown while her father was still alive. She had seen there a panther, and the wicked, graceful, writhing body of the beast had frightened her more than the bulk of the elephant or the roaring of the lion. This great cat, crouching close to the snow, its tail sweeping from side to side, all its muscles knotted for another spring, struck Ruth dumb and helpless.
Fortunately her gloved hands were locked about the timber on which she lay, for the next instant a third savage scream parted the bewhiskered lips of the catamount and on the heels of the cry the mules started at full gallop. The panther sprang into the air like a rubber ball. Had the mules not started the beast must have landed fairly upon the boy and the girl clinging to the reach of the timber wagon.
But providentially Ruth Fielding and her companion escaped this immediate catastrophe. The savage beast landed upon the wagon, however—far out upon the end of the timber, beyond the rear wheels. Mad with fright, the mules tore on along the wood road. There were many turns in it, and the deep ruts shook them about terrifically. Ruth and Fred barely retained their positions on the cart—nor was the catamount in better situation. It hung on with all its claws, yowling like the great Tom-cat it was.
On and on plunged the poor mules, sweating and fearful. Ruth and Fred Hatfield clung like mussels to a rock, while the panther bounded into the air, screeching and spitting, always catching the tail of the cart as it came down—afraid to leap off and likewise afraid to hang on.
The mules came to a hill. They were badly winded by now and their pace grew slower. The panther scratched along the reach nearer to the two human passengers, and Ruth saw its eyes blazing like huge carbuncles in the dusk. There was a fork of the roads at the foot of the hill. Fred Hatfield uttered a shriek of despair as the mules took the right hand road and struck into the bush itself—a narrow and treacherous track where the limbs of the trees threatened to brush all three passengers from the cart at any instant.
"Oh! oh! we're done for now!" yelled Fred. "They've taken the road to Rattlesnake Hill. We'll be killed as sure as fate!"
Fred Hatfield's fears might have been well-founded had the mules not been so winded. They had run at least four miles from the railroad and even with the fear of the snarling panther behind them they could not continue much farther at this pace.
But over this rougher and narrower road the timber cart jounced more than ever. In all its life the panther had probably never received such a shaking-up. The mules had not gone far on what Fred called the Rattlesnake Hill Road when, with an ear-splitting cry, the huge cat leaped out from the flying wagon and landed in the bush.
"We're saved!" gasped Ruth. "That dreadful beast is gone."
Fred immediately tried to soothe the mules into a more leisurely pace; but nothing but fatigue would bring them down. Thoroughly frightened, they kept starting and running without cause, and there was no chance in this narrow road to turn them.
The fact that it ascended the side of the hill steeply did more toward abating the pace of the runaways than aught else. The track crept along the edge of several abrupt precipices, too—not more than thirty or forty feet high, but enough to wreck the wagon and kill mules and passengers had they gone over the brink.
These dangerous places in the winding road were what had so frightened young Hatfield at first. He knew this locality well. But to Ruth the place was doubly terrifying, for she was lost—completely lost.
"Oh, where are we going? What will become of us?" she murmured, still obliged to cling with both hands to the jumping, rocking reach.
The mules could gallop no longer. Fred yelled at them "Yea-a! Yea-a!" at the top of his voice. They began to pay some attention—or else were so winded that they would have halted of their own volition. And as the cart ceased its thumping and rumbling a light suddenly blazed up before them, shining through the dusk, and higher up the hill.
"What is that? A house?" cried Ruth, seizing Fred by the shoulder.
Not more than half an hour ago the girl from the Red Mill had slipped out of the private car at the Emoryville Crossing, in pursuit of the runaway youth; now they were deep in the wilderness and surrounded by such dangers as Ruth had never dreamed of before.
The baying of a hound and the angry barking of another dog was Ruth's only answer. She turned to see Fred Hatfield sliding down off the cart.
"You sha'n't leave me!" cried Ruth, jumping down after him and seizing the runaway desperately. "You sha'n't abandon me in this forest, away from everybody. You're a cruel, bad boy, Fred Hatfield; but you've justgotto be decent to me."
"What did you interfere for, anyway?" he demanded, snarling like a cross dog. "Lemme go!"
But if Ruth was afraid of what terrors the forest might hold, and of her general situation, she had seen enough of this boy to know that he was just a poor, miserable coward—he aroused no fear in her heart.
"I'm going to just stick to you, Freddie," she assured him. She was quite as strong as he, she knew. "You are going home. At least, you shall go back to Mr. Cameron—"
Just then the flare of light ahead broadened and a gruff voice shouted:
"Hullo! what's wanted? Down, Tiger! Behave, Rose!"
The dogs instantly stopped their clamor. The light came through the open door and the glazed window of a little hut perched on a rock overlooking the road. The mules had halted just below this eminence, and Ruth saw that there was a winding path leading up to the door of the hovel. Down this path came the huge figure of a man, with the two dogs gamboling about him in the snow. The occupant of this cabin in the wilderness carried a rifle in one hand.
"Hullo!" he said again. "That's Sim Rogers's team—I know those mules. Are you there, Sim? What's happened ye?"
"Who is it?" whispered Ruth, again, still clinging to Fred's jacket.
"It's—it's the Rattlesnake Man," returned the boy, in a shaking voice.
"Who is he?" asked Ruth, in surprise.
"He lives here alone on the hill. He's a hermit. They say he's crazy. And I guess he is," added Fred, with a shudder.
"Why do you think he's crazy?"
But before Fred could reply—if he intended to—the hermit reached the road. He was an old but very vigorous-looking man, burly and stout, with a great mat of riotous gray hair under his fur cap, and a beard of the same color that reached his breast. He seemed to have very good eyes indeed, for he immediately muttered:
"Ha! Sim's mules—been running like the very kildee! All of a sweat,I vow. Two young folks—ha! Scared. Runaway—ah! What's that?"
The dogs began to bay again. Far behind the boy and girl—down the hill road—rose the eyrie scream of the disappointed panther.
"That cat-o'-mountain chase ye, boy?" the hermit asked, sharply.
But Fred had no answer. He stood, in Ruth's sharp clutch, and hung his head without a word. The girl had to reply:
"I never was so scared. The beast jumped right on the cart and we just shook him off down the hill yonder."
"A girl," said the hermit, talking to himself, but talking aloud, in the same fashion as before. Without doubt, being so much alone in these wilds he had contracted the habit of talking to himself—or to his dogs—or to whatever creature chanced to be his company.
"A girl. Not Sim's gal. Sim ain't got nothing but louts of boys. Let me see. What boy is this?"
"He is Fred Hatfield," said Ruth, simply. Fred jumped and tried to pull away from her; but Ruth's hold was not to be so easily broken. The hermit, however, seemed to have never heard the name before. He only said, idly:
"Fred Hatfield, eh? You his sister?"
"No, sir. I am Ruth Fielding," she replied.
"Ruth Fielding? Don't know her. She's not belongin' around here. No.Well, how'd you get here? And with Sim's mules?"
Ruth told him briefly, but without bringing Fred Hatfield's trouble into the story. They had got aboard the timber cart at the crossing, the mules had run away, the panther had taken a ride with them and— here they were!
The hermit merely nodded in acknowledgment of the tale. His questions dealt with her alone:
"Where do you belong?"
"The party I was with are bound for Snow Camp. Do you know where that is, sir?" Ruth asked.
"Not ten miles away. Yes."
"They will be worried—"
"I will get you over there before bedtime. Go up to my house and wait. This boy and I will stable the mules in my barn; it's just along the road here. Sim will follow the beasts and find them; but he'll be some time in getting along. He lives along this road himself —not far, not far. Ah!"
The old man talked mostly as though he spoke to himself. He seldom more than glanced at her, his eye roving everywhere but at the person to whom he spoke. Ruth started toward the house from which the fire and lamplight shone so cordially. The dogs stood before her—Tiger, the big hound, and Rose, a beautiful Gordon setter.
"Let her alone," said the hermit to his canine companions. "She's all right."
The dogs seemed to agree with him immediately. The hound sniffed once at the hem of Ruth's frock; Rose gambolled about her and licked her hand. Ruth now realized how cold she was, and she ran quickly up to the open door of the cabin.
On the threshold she hesitated a moment. A great lamp with a tin shade, hanging from the rafters, illuminated all the center of the room. At one end burned a hot log fire on the hearth; but the two further corners were in gloom. Ruth had said she had never seen a log cabin, and it was true. This one seemed to her to be a very cozy place indeed, even if it was the habitation of a hermit.
As she entered, however, she found that there was a rather suffocating, unpleasant odor in the place. It was light, yet penetrating enough to be distinguished clearly. In one of the darker corners was what appeared to be a big green chest, and it had a glazed window frame for a cover. Something rustled there.
The dogs followed her in and she sat down in an old-fashioned, bent hickory chair on the hearth—perhaps the hermit himself had just risen from it, for there was a sheepskin lying before it for a mat and a pair of huge carpet slippers on either side of the sheepskin. The dogs came in and sat down by the slippers, just where Ruth could rest a hand on either head, and so blinked at the flames while they waited for the return of the hermit and the runaway boy.
So she sat when they came into the cabin, stamping the snow from their shoes. The hermit led Fred by the arm. He had not overlooked the care with which Ruth had retained him by her side.
"So you want to go over to Mr. Parrish's Snow Camp?" asked the old man.
"It belongs to Mr. Cameron, now." said Ruth. "I know that there is a telephone there, and I can get word to Mr. Cameron and Helen and Tom at Scarboro that we are safe."
"I'm not going," said Fred "I'll stay here."
"You'll go along with Young Miss," said the hermit, firmly. "I'll git ye a pannikin of tea and a bite. Then we'll start. We'll go 'cross the woods on snowshoes—'twill be easier."
"Oh, can I do it, do you suppose?" cried Ruth. "I never wore such things in my life."
"You'll learn," said the hermit.
He bustled about, making the tea and warming a big pancake of cornbread which he put into an iron dripping-pan down before the glowing coals at one side. While they waited for the water to bubble for the tea the old man went to the big chest, and began to talk and fondle something. Ruth heard the rustling again and turned around to look.
"Want to see my children, Young Miss?" asked the old man, whose eyes seemed as sharp as needles.
Ruth arose in curiosity and approached. Within a yard of the old man and his chest she stopped suddenly with a gasp. The hermit stood up with two snakes twining about his hands and wrists. The serpents ran their tongues out like lightning, and their beady eyes glowed as though living fire dwelt in their heads. Ruth was frightened, but she would not scream. The hermit handled the snakes as though they were as harmless as kittens—as probably they were, the poison sacks having been removed.
"They won't hurt you—harmless, harmless," said the old man, caressingly. "There, there, my pretties! Go to bed again."
He lifted the glass cover of the chest and dropped them into its interior. There was a great hissing and rustling. The hermit stepped to the hanging lamp and turned the shade so as to send the radiance of it into that corner. Through the pane Ruth saw a squirming mass of scaly bodies, mixed up with an old quilt. More than one tail, with rows of "buttons" and rattles on it, was elevated, and one angry serpent "sprung his rattle" sharply.
"Hush, hush, my dears!" said the hermit, soothingly. "Go to sleep again now. My children," he said, nodding at Ruth. "Pretty dears!"
To tell the truth, the girl from the Red Mill wanted to scream; but she held herself down, clenching her hands, and saying nothing. The kettle began to sing and she was glad to go back to the chair by the fire and afterward to sip the tin cup of hot tea that their host gave her, and eat with good appetite a square of the crisp cornbread.
Meanwhile, the hermit took from the walls three pairs of great, awkward-looking snowshoes and tightened the lacings and fitted thongs to them. The pair he selected for Ruth looked to the girl to be so big that she never could take a step in them; but he seemed to expect her to try.
They went out of the cabin as the moon was rising. It came up as red and fiery as the sun had gone down. Long shadows of the tall trees were flung across the snow. The hermit commanded Rose, the setter, to guard the hut, while he allowed the hound to follow at heel. He carried his rifle, and Ruth was glad of this.
"Haven't heard a cat-o'-mountain around here this winter," he said, as they started up the hill. "Didn't hear nor see one at all last winter. Neighbors will have to get up a hunt for this one that troubled you, Young Miss, 'fore it does more damage."
At the top of the ascent they stopped and the old man put on Ruth's snowshoes for her. Fred, always without a word and looking mighty sullen (but evidently afraid of the rattlesnake man) tied his own in place and the hermit slipped into his and they each gave Ruth a hand.
She stood up and found that her weight made little or no impression upon the well-packed snow. There was no wind and, although the air was very keen (the thermometer probably being almost to the zero mark) it was easy for her to move over the drifts. With some little instruction from the rattlesnake man, and after several tumbles— which were of little moment because he and Fred held her up—Ruth was able to put one foot before the other and shuffle over the snow at a fairly good pace.
The moonlight made the unbroken track as plain as noonday. To Ruth it seemed almost impossible that the hermit could find his way through a forest which showed no mark of any former traveler; but he went on as though it was a turnpike.
Two hours and a half were they on the way, and Ruth had begun to be both tired and cold when they crossed a road on which there were telegraph, or telephone poles and then—a little farther into the Big Woods—they struck a well-defined private track over which sleds had recently traveled.
"You say some of your party and the baggage were coming over to-night," said the hermit to Ruth. "They have been along. This is the road to Snow Camp—and there is the light from the windows!"
Ruth saw several points of light directly ahead. They quickly reached a good-sized clearing, in the middle of which stood a two-story log cabin, with a balcony built all around it at the height of the second floor. Sleigh bells jingled as the horses stamped in the yard. The heavy sledges with the luggage and the serving people had just arrived. Ruth Fielding was the first of the pleasure party to arrive at Snow Camp.
Some dogs began barking, and the hermit's hound replied by baying with his nose in the air—a sound to make anybody shiver! The Rattlesnake Man gave a lusty shout, and a door opened, flooding the porch of the big log cabin with lamplight.
"Hello!" came the answering shout across the clearing, and a very tall man—as thin as a lath—strode down from the porch and approached them, after sending back the dogs—all but one. This big creature could not be stayed in his impetuous rush over the snow and the next instant he sprang up and put both his forepaws on Ruth's shoulders.
"Oh, Reno!" she cried, fondling Tom Cameron's big mastiff, that had come all the way from Cheslow with them in the baggage car. "Youknow me; don't you?"
"Guess that proves her right to be here," said the hermit, more to himself than to the surprised tall man, who was the guide and keeper in charge of Snow Camp. "Your boss lose one of his party off the train, Long Jerry Todd?"
"So I hear. Is this here the gal?" cried the other, in immense surprise. "I swanny!"
"Yep. She's all right. I'll go back," said the rattlesnake man, without further ado, turning in his tracks.
"Oh, sir!" cried Ruth. "I'm so much obliged to you."
But the hermit slipped away on his snowshoes and in less than a minute was out of sight. Then Ruth looked around suddenly for Fred Hatfield. The runaway had disappeared.
"Where's that boy?" she cried.
"What boy?" returned Long Jerry, curiously. "Didn't see no boy here."
"Why, the boy that came here with us. He left the train atEmoryville when I did—you must have seen him."
"I never did," declared the guide. "He must have slipped away. Maybe he's gone into the house. You'd better come in yourself. The women folks will 'tend to you. Why, Miss, you're dead beat!"
Indeed Ruth was. She could scarcely stumble with the guide's help to the porch. She had kicked off the snowshoes and the hermit had taken them with him. Had it not been for the hermit and Fred Hatfield, Ruth Fielding would never have been able to travel the distance from the hermit's cabin to Snow Camp. And the terrible shaking up she had received on the timber cart made her feel like singing old Aunt Alvirah's tune of "Oh, my back and oh, my bones!"
There were two maids whom Mr. Cameron had brought along and they, with two men, had come over from Scarboro (a ride of eight miles, or so) with the luggage. They welcomed Ruth and set her down before a great fire in the dining room, and one of them removed the girl's shoes so that her feet might be dried and warmed, while the other hurried to make some supper for the wanderer.
But as soon as Ruth got her slippers on, and recovered a little from the exhaustion of her trip, two things troubled her vastly. She inquired for the boy again, and learned that he had not been seen about the camp. When she and the hermit had entered the clearing, Fred had undoubtedly taken the opportunity to slip away.
"And in the night—and it so cold, too," thought Ruth. "What willMr. Cameron say?"
That question brought her to the second of her troubles. Her friends would worry about her all night if she did not find some way of allaying their anxiety.
"Oh, Mary!" she said to the maid. "Where's the telephone? Tom said there was telephone connection here."
"So there is, Miss," returned the maid. "And somebody had better tell Mrs. Murchiston that you're safe. They're all as worried as they can be about you, for the folks at that store by the railroad—where the train stopped—whentheywas called up as soon as the train reached Scarboro, declared that you had got run away with by a team of mules."
"Which was most certainly true," admitted Ruth. "I never had such a dreadful time in all my life. Run away with by mules, and frightened to death by a great big catamount——"
Mary squealed and covered her ears. "Don't tell me!" she gasped. "Sure, Miss, there do bes bears, an' panthers, an' wild-cats, an'— an' I dunno what-all in these woods. Sure, me and Janey will never go out of this house whilst we stay. 'Tain't civilized hereabout."
Ruth laughed rather ruefully. "I guess you're right, Mary," she said. "It doesn't seem to be very civilized here in the backwoods— and such queer people live here, too. But now! let me telephone."
The maid showed her where it was and Ruth called up Scarboro and got the hotel where the Cameron party was stopping. Almost immediately she heard Mr. Cameron's voice.
"Hullo! Snow Camp? What's wanted?" he asked, in a nervous, jerky way.
"This is me, Mr. Cameron—Ruth, you know. I am all right at SnowCamp."
"Well! That's fine! Thank goodness you're safe!" ejaculated the merchant, in an entirely different tone. "Why, Ruth, I was just about sending a party out from the store at Emoryville to beat up the woods for you. They say there is a big panther in that district."
"Oh, I know it. The beast frightened us most to death—"
"Who was with you?" interrupted Mr. Cameron.
"Why, that boy! He jumped off the train and I followed to stop him.Now he's run away again, sir."
"Oh, the boy calling himself Fred Hatfield?" ejaculated Mr. Cameron."He's left you?"
"He came here to Snow Camp and then disappeared. I am sorry—"
"You're a good little girl, Ruth. I wanted to bring him up here—and there are people who would be glad to know who he really is."
"But don't you know? Isn't his name Fred Hatfield?" questioned Ruth, in surprise.
"That can't be. Fred Hatfield was shot here in the woods more than a month ago. It was soon after the deer season opened, they tell me, and it is supposed to have been an accident. Young 'Lias Hatfield, half-brother of the real Fred, is in jail here, held for shooting his brother. Who the boy was whom we found and brought from the Red Mill, seems to be a mystery."
"Oh!" cried Ruth, but before she could say more, Mr. Cameron went on:
"We'll all be over in the morning. I hope you have not taken cold, or overtaxed your strength, I must go and tell Helen. She has been frightened half to death about you. Goodnight."
He hung up the receiver, leaving Ruth in rather a disturbed state of mind. The newspaper clipping that had dropped out of the old wallet the strange boy had carried, was the account of the shooting affair. Mention was made in it about the very frequent mistakes made in the hunting season—mistakes which often end in the death of one hunter by the hand of another.
It said that 'Lias Hatfield and his younger brother, Fred, had had a quarrel and then gone hunting, each taking a different direction. The younger boy had ensconced himself just under the brink of a steep bank at the bottom of which was Rolling River, a swift and deep stream. His brother's story was that he had come up facing this place, having started a young buck not half a mile away. He thought he heard the buck stamping, and blowing, and then saw what he thought was the animal behind a fringe of bushes at the top of this steep river bank.
The hunter blazed away, and heard a dreadful scream, a rolling and thrashing in the brush, and a splash in the river. He ran forward and found his brother's old gun and tippet. There was blood on the bushes. The supposition was that Fred Hatfield had been shot and had rolled into the swift-flowing river. 'Lias had given himself up to the authorities and there seemed some doubt in the minds of the people of Scarboro as to whether the shooting had been an accident.
"If there was no body found," thought Ruth, all the time she was eating the supper that Mary brought her, "how do they know Fred Hatfield is really dead? And if heisdead, who is the boy who is traveling about the country using Fred Hatfield's name and carrying Mr. Hatfield's old wallet? I guess Fred has run away, instead of being killed, and is staying away because he hates his brother 'Lias, and wishes him to get into trouble about the shooting. If that's so, isn't he just the meanest boy that ever was?"
Long Jerry Todd came in with a huge armful of wood for the fire, and Ruth determined to pump him about the accident. The tall man knew all about it, and was willing enough to talk.
He sat down beside the fire and answered Ruth's questions most cheerfully.
"Ya-as, I knowed old man Hatfield," he said. "He's been dead goin' on ten year. That Fred wasn't good to his mother. His half-brothers— children of Old Man Hatfield's fust wife—is nicer to their marm than Fred was. Oh, ya-as! he was shot by 'Lias, all right. I dunno as 'Lias meant to do it. Hope not. But they found Fred's body in the river t'other day, and so they arrested 'Lias."
But Long Jerry hadn't seen any sign of the boy that had been with Ruth and the hermit when they arrived at Snow Camp. Ruth did not like to discuss the mystery with him any more; for itwasa mystery now, that was sure. Fred Hatfield's body had been found in the river, yet a boy was traveling about the country bearing Fred Hatfield's name.
The guide finally unfolded himself and rose slowly to his full height, preparatory to going back to the kitchen regions. He was nearly seven feet tall, and painfully thin. He grinned down upon Ruth Fielding as she gazed in wonder at his proportions.
"I'm some long; ain't I, Miss?" he chuckled. "But I warn't no taller than av'rage folks when I was a boy. You hear of some folks gettin' stunted by sickness, or fright, or the like. Wal, I reckonIgot stretched out longer'n common by fright. Want to hear about it?"
He was so jolly and funny that Ruth was glad to hear him talk and she encouraged him to go on. So Jerry sat down again and began his story.
"Ye see," drawled Jerry, "my marm was alive in them days—bless her heart! Dad was killed on the boom down Rolling River when I was a little shaver; but marm hung on till I got growed. Ya-as! I mean till I got clean through growin' and that was long after I voted fust time," and he chuckled and wagged his head.
"Wal, mebbe I was sixteen; mebbe seventeen. Boys up here in the woods have to cut their own vittles pretty airly. I was doin' a man's labor when I was 'leven. Ya-as, Miss! Had to work for me an' marm.
"And marm worked, too. One day I started for Drownville with a big bundle of aperns marm had sewed for Mis' Juneberry that kep' store at Drownville. She got two bits a dozen for makin' them aperns, I remember. Wal, it was a wilder country then than it is now, and I never see a soul, nor heard the sound of an axe in walking four miles. Just at the end o' them four miles," continued Long Jerry, his eyes twinkling, "there was a turn in the road. I swung around it—I was travelin' at a good clip—and come facin' up an old she b'ar which riz up on her hind laigs an' said: 'How-d'-do, Jerry Todd!' jest as plain as ever a bear spoke in its e-tar-nal life!
"Why," said Long Jerry, almost choking with his own laughter, "by the smile on thet thar b'ar's face and the way she spread her arms wide to receive me, it was plain enough how glad she was ter see me."
"I should think you'd have been scared to death!" gasped Ruth, looking down at him.
"Wal, I calculate I was some narvous. I was more narvous in them days than I be now. Hadn't seen so much of the world. And sure hadn't seen so much o' b'ars," cackled Jerry. "Not bein' used to b'ar sassiety I natcherly balked when that ol' she b'ar appeared so lovin'. I had pretty nigh walked right into her arms and there wasn't much chance to make any particular preparations. Fact was, I didn't have nothin' with me more dangerous than a broken jack-knife, and I don't know how it might strike you, Miss, but to me that didn't seem to be no implement with which to make a b'ar's acquaintance."
"I should think not!" giggled Ruth. "Whatdidyou do?"
"Wal, first of all I give her marm's bundle—ya-as I did! I pitched that there bundle of aperns right at her, and the way she growled an' tore at 'em was a caution, now I tell ye! I seen at once what she'd do to me if she got me, so I left them parts, an' left 'em quick! I started off through the woods, hittin' only the high spots, and fancied I could beat the old gal runnin'. But not on your tin-type! No, sir-ree! The old gal jest give a roar, come down on all four feet, and started after me at a pace that set me a-thinkin' of my sins.
"Jest as sure as you live, if I'd kept on running she'd had me within thirty yards. An' I knew if I climbed a big tree she'd race me to the top of it and get me, too. Ye see, a small-round tree was my only chance. A b'ar climbs by huggin' their paws around the trunk, and it takes one of right smart size to suit them for climbin'.
"I see my tree all right, and I went for it. Missus B'ar, she come cavortin' an' growlin' along, and it did seem to me as though she'd have a chunk out o' me afore I could climb out o' reach. It was jest about then, I reckon," pursued Long Jerry, chuckling again, "when I believe I began to grow tall!
"I stretched my arms up as fur as I could, an' the way I shinnied up that sapling was a caution to cats, now I tell ye! She riz up the minute she got to the tree and tried to scrape me off with both paws. She missed me by half a fraction of an infinitessimal part of an inch —that's a good word, that 'infinitessimal'; ain't it, Miss? I got it off of a college perfesser what come up here, and he said he got it straight-away out of the dictionary."
"It's a good word, Mr. Todd," laughed Ruth, highly delighted at the man and his story.
"Wal!" chuckled Jerry, "we'll say she missed me. I was so scar't that I didn't know then whether she had missed me or was chawin' of me. I felt I was pretty numb like below my waist. And how I did stretch up that tree! No wonder I growed tall after that day," said Jerry, shaking his head. "I stretched ev'ry muscle in my carcass, Miss—I surely did!
"There was that ol she b'ar, on her hind legs and a-roarin' at me like the Mr. Bashan's Bull that they tell about, and scratchin' the bark off'n that tree in great strips. She cleaned the pole, as far up as she could reach, as clean as a bald man's head. She jumped as far as she could, gnashed her teeth, and tried her best to climb that sapling. Every time she made a jump, or howled, I tried to climb higher. An', Miss, that was the time I got stretched out so tall, for sure.
"The bear, with wide-open mouth, kept on a-jumpin' an' ev'ry time she jumped I clumb a little higher, I was so busy lookin' down at her that I never looked up to see how fur I was gettin' toward the top, so, all of a suddent-like, the tree top begun to bend over with me an' sumpin' snapped. 'Twarn't my galluses, neither!" crowed Long Jerry, very much delighted by his own tale. "I knowed that, all right. Sna-a-ap! she went again, and I begun to go down.
"I swanny! but that was a warm time for me, Miss—it sure was. There was that ol' she b'ar with her mouth as wide open as a church door— or, so it looked to Jerry Todd. They say a feller that's drowndin' thinks over all his hull endurin' life when he's goin' down. I believe it. Sure I do. 'Twarn't twenty feet from the top o' that tree to the ground, but I even remembered how I stole my sister Jane's rag baby when I couldn't more'n toddle around marm's shanty—that's right!—an' berried of it in the hog-pen. Every sin that was registered to my account come up before me as plain as the wart on Jim Biggle's nose!"
"Oh, Mr. Todd!" cried Ruth. "Falling right on that awful bear?"
"That's what I was doin', Miss—and it didn't take me long to do it, neither, I reckon. Mebbe the b'ar warn't no more ready to receive me than I was to drap down on her. I heard her give a startledwhuff, and she come on all four paws. The next thing I done was to land square on her back—I swanny! that was a crack. Purty nigh drove my spine up through the top of my head, it did. And the ol' b'ar must ha' been mighty sorry arterwards that she was right there to receive me. She give a most awful grunt, shook me off onto the ground and kited out o' that as though she'd been sent for in a hurry! I swanny! I never did see a b'ar run so fast," and Long Jerry burst into an uproarious laugh.
"But that, I reckon, is the time I got so stretched out an' begun to grow so tall, Miss," he added. "Stretchin' an' strainin' to git away from that ol' she b'ar was what done it."
Ruth was delighted with the guide; but she was very tired, too, and when the maids came in she was only too glad to fall in with the suggestion of bed. She was put to sleep in a great, plainly furnished room, where there were three other beds—a regular dormitory. It was like one of the Prime sleeping rooms at Briarwood Hall.
And how Ruth did sleep that night after her adventurous day! The sun shone broadly on the clearing about the camp when she first opened her eyes. Mary put her head in at the door and said:
"Your breakfast will be spoilt, Miss Ruth, or I wouldn't disturb you. All the men's ate long ago and Janey's fussin' in the kitchen. Besides, the folks will be over from Scarboro in an hour. Mr. Cameron just telephoned and asked how you were."
"Oh, I feel fine!" cried the girl from the Red Mill, joyfully.
But when she hopped out of bed she found herself dreadfully stiff and lame; the jouncing she had received while riding with the boy calling himself Fred Hatfield, and the catamount, on the timber cart, and later her first long walk on snow-shoes, had together strained her muscles and lamed her limbs to a degree. Old Aunt Alvirah's oft-repeated phrase fitted her condition, and she grimly repeated it:
"Oh, my back and oh, my bones!"
But the prospect of the other girls, coming—and Tom and his friends, too—and the fun in store for them all at Snow Camp, soon made Ruth Fielding forget small troubles. Besides, the muscles of youth are elastic and the weariness soon went out of her bones. Before the party arrived from Scarboro she had opportunity of going all about the great log lodge, and getting acquainted with all it held and all that surrounded it.
The great hall on the lower floor was arranged so as to have a broad open fireplace at either end. These fires were kept burning day and night and the great heaps of glowing logs made the hall, and most of the upper rooms, very comfortable indeed. The walls of this hall were hung with snowshoes, Canadian toboggans—so light, apparently, that they would not hold one man, let alone four, but very, very strongly built—guns, Indian bows and sheaf of arrows, fish-spears, and a conglomeration of hunting gear for much of which Ruth Fielding did not even know the names, let alone their uses.
Outside the snow had been cleared away immediately around the great log house and a wide path was cut through the drifts down to a small lake, or pond. In coming from Rattlesnake Hill the night before with the old hermit, and the boy who called himself Fred Hatfield, they had come down a long incline in sight of the camp. Now, Ruth saw that a course had been made level upon that hillside, banked up on either side with dykes of snow, and water poured over the whole to make a perfect slide. There was a starting platform at the top and the course was more than half a mile in length, Long Jerry told her.
But when she had seen all these things sleigh bells were heard andRuth ran out to welcome her friends.
The big sleigh in which were Helen and the other girls swept into the clearing in advance and Ruth's chum led the chorus addressed vociferously to the girl from Red Mill.
"Oh, Ruthie!"
"The lost is found!"
"And she got here first—wasn't that cute of her?"
"Oh,dotell us all about it, Ruth," cried Lluella Fairfax.
"However could you scare us so, Ruthie?" cried Jennie Stone, the heavyweight. "I was so worried I was actually sick."
"And that is positively 'no error,'" laughed Belle Tingley. "For once Heavy was so troubled that she couldn't eat."
Helen was out of the sleigh at once and hugged Ruth hard. "You blessed girl!" she cried. "I wassoafraid something dreadful had happened to you."
"And what became of that horrid boy Mr. Cameron tried to take toScarboro?" demanded Madge Steele.
The boys piled out of their sledge before Ruth could answer these questions, and she was unable to give a very vivid explanation of all that had happened to her since leaving the train, until the whole party was gathered before one of the open fires in the hall, waiting for dinner. Before this hour came, however, and while the rest of the young folks were getting acquainted with the possibilities of Snow Camp, Ruth had a serious talk with Mr. Cameron regarding the mysterious boy who had disappeared on the verge of the Snow Camp reservation.
"I don't know how he escaped us. He sped away through the woods with the old hermit's snowshoes—I am sure of that. And that old Rattlesnake Man didn't seem to be bothered at all by his loss," Ruth said.
"Perhaps that hermit knows something about the fellow. We'll look into that," said the merchant, gravely. "However, Ruth, you did what you thought was right. It was reckless. I cannot commend you for leaving the train, child. Something dreadful might have happened to you."
"I thought something dreadfuldidhappen to me," said Ruth, with a shudder, "when those mules ran away and that catamount leaped up on the timber cart."
"I believe you! And your going to the cabin of that rattlesnake catcher. They say he is mad, and he handles the serpents just as though they were white mice. The people hereabout are afraid of him," said Mr. Cameron, earnestly.
"He was as kind as he could be to me," said Ruth, shaking her head. "I don't think I should ever be afraid of him. His eyes are kind. But the snakes—oh! they did frighten me dreadfully."
"From what I hear of this young man, 'Lias Hatfield, who is in jail at Scarboro, he is a decent lad and has worked hard for his stepmother. The half-brother he shot was about the age of this boy we found down home. Buthisbody was recovered from the river only the other day when they arrested 'Lias. I shall make it my business to see the Hatfields personally and learn, if possible, how a stranger like that boy who came here with you, Ruth, could have obtained Mr. Hatfield's old wallet."
"He had some deep interest in the mystery of this shooting," declared Ruth, and she told the merchant of the newspaper clipping that had dropped out of the old wallet when she had undertaken to dry the boy's clothing at the Red Mill.
Meanwhile, the other young folks were highly delighted over the possibilities for fun at Snow Camp. Tom and his friends did not pay much attention to what was inside the great log house; but before noon they knew all that was to be done outside and were unhappy only because they did not know which to do first. In addition, Busy Izzy had exhausted himself and every man about the place, asking questions; and finally Tom and Bob gagged him with his own handkerchief and threatened to tie him up and not give him any dinner if he did not stop it.
"Butdolet him ask for a second helping to pudding, boys," urged the kind-hearted Heavy. "It's going to be fine—I had a taste of the dough. Mary says it's 'Whangdoodle Pudding, with Lallygag Sauce'; but you needn't be afraid of the fancy name she gives it," added the plump girl, rolling her eyes. "It's just scrumptious!"
They laughed at Heavy's ecstasies, yet all did full justice to the pudding. Such a hearty appetite as everybody had! The snapping cold and the odor of balsam and pine gave a tang to the taste that none of them had ever known before. The girls were full of plans for quiet hours around the great open fires, as well as for the out-of-door fun; but Tom was leader on this first day of the vacation at Snow Camp, and he declared for skating in the afternoon.
Even Mrs. Murchiston went down to the pond.
The boys took turns in pushing her about in an ice-chair. But Mr. Cameron put on skates and proved himself master of them, too. Long Jerry came down to watch them and grinned broadly at the boys' antics on the ice. Jerry was no skater; but he was stringing snowshoes and by the morning would have enough ready for the whole party and promised to teach the young folk the art of walking on them in half a day.
That afternoon on the ice only put an edge on the appetite of the whole party for the frost games. "Plenty of time to make those pine-needle pillows for the girls at Briarwood, if we have a stormy day," quoth Helen Cameron. "We mustn't mope before the fire this evening. The moon is coming up—big as a bushel and red as fire! Oh, we'll have some fun this night."
"What now?" demanded Madge Steele. "I see the boys have stolen out after supper. A sleigh ride?"
"No; although that would be fun," said Helen.
"Oh, dear! Can't we take it easy this evening?" whined Heavy, after a mighty yawn. "Iwasso hungry—"
"You shouldn't give way to that dreadful appetite of yours, Jennie Stone!" cried Belle Tingley. "If there's any fun afoot I want to be in it."
"Come on! All ready!" shouted the boys outside the house, and the sextette of girls ran to get on their wraps.
They bundled out of the house to find Tom, Bob and Isadore each drawing a long, flat, narrow toboggan. Helen clapped her hands and shouted:
"Fine! fine! See these sleds, girls."
"We're going to shoot the chutes, Heavy," sang out Madge. "Do you think you can stand it?"
"Now, don't any of you back out," Tom said. "Each of us will take two girls on his sled. There's plenty of room."
"You'd better draw matches for us," said the irrepressible Heavy. "That is, if you intend drawingus—two to each toboggan—to the top of that slide. I never did care much for boys—they are greedy; but which one of you could drag Madge and me, for instance, up that hill?"
"We draw the line at that," cried Tom. "Those who can't toddle along to the top of the chute needn't expect to ride to the bottom."
They all hurried off, laughing and shouting. It was a most beautiful moonlight night. Save their own voices, only the distant barking of a fox broke the great silence that wrapped the snow-clad country about. None of the grown folk followed them. The party had the hill to themselves.
It being a race to the hill-top, with the first two girls to take their places on the toboggan of the first boy, naturally Heavy was out of the running, and bound to be last. She came panting to the starting platform, and found Ruth waiting to share Isadore's sled with her.
Tom, with Madge and Belle, had already shot down the icy chute. BobSteele, with Lluella and Helen before him, dropped over the verge ofthe platform and their toboggan began to whiz down the pathway, asJennie plumped down upon the remaining toboggan.
"Come on, Ruthie! You're a good little thing to wait for me—and I guess Tom Cameron didn't like it much, either? He wanted you."
"Nonsense, Jennie," returned Ruth, with a laugh. "What does it matter? As long as we all get a slide—"
"Hurry up, now," cried Busy Izzy, troubled because he was behind his comrades, if the girls were not. "Sit tight."
He pushed the toboggan over the edge of the drop almost before Ruth was settled behind Jennie. He flung himself upon the sled, sitting sideways, and "kicked" them over the drop. The toboggan struck the icy course and began to descend it like an arrow shot from a bow. Jennie Stone shrieked a single, gasping:
"Oh!"
The toboggan whizzed down the path, with the low, icy dykes on either hand, and so rapidly that their eyes watered and they could not see. It seemed only a breath when the third toboggan shot onto the level at the bottom, and they passed the crew of the first sled already coming back. It was exhilarating sport—it was delightful. Yet every time they started Ruth felt as though the breath left her lungs and that she couldn't catch it again until they slowed down at the bottom of the hill.
She would have felt safer with one of the other boys, too. Isadore Phelps was none too careful, and once the toboggan ran up one of the side dykes and almost spilled them on the course.
"Do look out what you are about, Isadore," Ruth begged, when they reached the bottom of the slide that time. "If we should have a spill——"
"Great would be the fall thereof!" grinned Isadore, looking atHeavy, puffing up the hill beside them.
"You take care now, and don't spatter me all over the slide," said the cheerful stout girl, whose doll-like face was almost always wreathed in smiles.
But Isadore was really becoming reckless. To tell the truth, Bob and Tom were laughing at him. He had been the last to get away each time from the starting platform, and he could not catch up with the others. Perhaps that was the stout girl's fault; but Ruth would climb the hill no faster than Jennie, and so the third toboggan continued far behind the others. As they panted up the hill Tom and his two companions shot past and waved their hands at them; then followed Bob Steele's crew and Helen shouted some laughing gibe at them. Isadore's face grew black.
"I declare! I wish you girls would stir yourselves. Hurry up!" he growled quite ungallantly.
"What's the hurry?" panted Heavy.
"There's nobody paying us for this; is there? Let 'em catch up with us and then we will be—all—to—geth—er—Woof! My goodness me, I'm winded," and she had to stop on the hill and breathe.
"Go on and leave us. Take one trip by yourself, Isadore," said Ruth.
"No, I won't," returned Phelps, ungratefully. "Then they'll all gab about it. Come along; will you?"
"Don't you mind him, Jennie," whispered Ruth. "I don't think he's very nice."
They got aboard the toboggan once more and Isadore recklessly flung himself on it, too, and pushed off. At the moment there came a shrill hail from below. Tom was sending up some word of warning—at the very top of his voice.
But the three just starting down the slide could not distinguish his words.
Jennie shut her eyes tight the moment the toboggan lurched forward, so she could not possibly see anything that lay before them. Ruth peered over the stout girl's shoulder, the wind half blinding her eyes with tears. But the moonlight lay so brilliantly upon the track that it was revealed like midday. Something lay prone and black upon the icy surface of the slide.
It seemed to Ruth Fielding, as the toboggan dashed down the chute toward that strange object in their course, as though her lips were glued together. She could not speak—she could not utter a sound.
And yet this inaction—this dumbness—lasted but a very few seconds. The thing upon the slide lay more than half way down the hill—a quarter of a mile ahead when her stinging eyes first saw it.
Toward it the sled rushed, gathering speed every moment, and the object on the track grew in her eyes apace. When her lips parted she screamed so that Isadore heard her words distinctly:
"Stop, Izzy! There's something ahead! Look!"
Of course it was foolish to beg of the boy to stop. Nothing could halt them once they had started upon the icy incline. But her cry warned Isadore of the peril ahead.
He echoed her cry, and was as panic-stricken as the girl herself. At first, the thing looked like somebody lying across the slide. Had one of their friends fallen off either of the other toboggans, and been too hurt to rise? Then, the next instant, both Isadore and Ruth knew that the thing was too small for that.
It was really a jacket that Bob Steele had tied about his neck by the arms. On the way down the sleeves had become untied and the jacket had spread itself out upon the slide to its full breadth.
It didn't seem as though such a thing could do the coming toboggan any harm; but Ruth and Isadore Phelps knew well that if it went upon the outspread coat there would be a spill. It would act like a brake to the sled, and that frail vehicle on which the three young folk rode would stop so abruptly that they would be flung off upon the icy course.
Ruth at least understood this peril only too well; but she made no further outcry. Jennie Stone's eyes were still tight shut.
One moment the outspread jacket lay far before them, across the path. The next instant—or so it seemed—they were right upon it.
"Hang on!" yelled Isadore, and shot his boot-heel into the icy surface of the slide.
The toboggan swerved. Jennie uttered a cry. The sled went up the left hand dyke like a bolting horse climbing a roadside wall or a side hill.
In Ruth's ears rang the shouts of their friends, who were coming hastily up the hillside. They could do nothing to help the endangered crew, nor could the latter help themselves.
Up the toboggan shot into the air. It leaped the shoulder of the dyke and—crew and all—darted out into space.
That was certainly an awful moment for Ruth Fielding and her two companions. Jennie's intermittent squeal turned into a sudden shriek— as keen and nerve-racking as the whistle of a locomotive. Isadore Phelps "blew up" with a muffled roar as he turned half a somersault in the air and landed headfirst in a huge snowdrift.
That is how the girls landed, too. At least, if they didn't dive headfirst into the drift, they were pretty well swallowed up in it. And it was providential that they all did find such a soft cushion when they landed.
Their individual shrieks were broken off suddenly by the smothering snow. Their friends, on the other side of the slide, came plunging across the course, and Bob Steele, slipping on the smooth surface, kicked up both feet high in the air, landed with a crash on the small of his back, and finished the slide to the very bottom of the chute in that most undignified position.
Bob's accident turned the whole affair into a most ludicrous scene. Tom Cameron laughed so hard that he scarcely had the strength to help the girls out of the snowdrift. As for Isadore, he had to scramble out by himself—and the soft snow had got down his neck, and he had lost his hat, his ears were full of snow, and altogether he was in what Madge Steele called "a state of mind."
"Huh!" Izzy growled, "you all can laugh. Wait! I'll get square with you girls, now, you better believe that."
And he actually started off for the camp in a most abused state. The others could not help their laughter—the more so that what seemed for a few seconds to promise disaster had turned out to be nothing but a most amusing catastrophe.
This ended the coasting for this particular evening, however. Jennie Stone was pried out of the snowdrift last of all, and they all went to the bottom of the hill where Bob Steele sat with his back against a tree trunk, waiting, as he said, for the "world to stop turning around so fast." His swift descent had made him dizzy.
They all ran back to Snow Camp, catching up with Isadore before he got there with his grouch, and Tom and Bob fell upon the grouch and dumped it into another snowbank—boy and all—and managed in the scuffle to bring Busy Izzy into a better state of mind.
"Just the same," he declared, "I'll get square with those girls for laughing at me—you see if I don't!"
"A lot of good that'll do you," returned Tom Cameron. "And why shouldn't they laugh? Do you suppose that the sight of you on your head in a snowbank with your legs waving in the wind was something to make themweep? Huh!"
But when they got inside the big hall, where the two fires burned, Izzy forgot his grouch. There was a basket of popcorn and several "poppers" and the crowd of young folk were soon shelling corn and popping it, turning the fluffy, snow-white kernels into big bowls, over which thick cream was poured, and, as Jennie declared, "they ate till they couldn't eat another crumb!"
"Isn't it just grand?" cried Belle Tingley, when the girls had retired to the big room in which Ruth Fielding had slept alone the night before. "I never did know you could have so much fun in the woods in the dead of winter. Helen! your father is just the dearest man to bring us up here! We'll none of us forget this vacation."
But in the morning there were new things to go and learn. The resources of Snow Camp seemed unending. As soon as breakfast was over there was Long Jerry ready with snowshoes for all. Tom and Helen, as well as Bob Steele, were somewhat familiar with these implements. And Ruth had had one unforgettable experience with them.
But at first there were a good many tumbles, and none of the party went far from the big lodge on this occasion. They came into the mid-day dinner pretty well tired, but oh, how hungry!
"I declare, eating never seemed so good before," Bob Steele murmured. "I really wish I could eat more; but room I have not!"
Heavy went to sleep before the fire directly after the meal, but was awakened when the girls all trooped out to the kitchen to make molasses taffy. The boys had gone with Long Jerry to try to shoot squirrels; but they came back without having any luck before the girls were fairly in possession of Janey's kitchen.
"Let us help—aw, do!" cried Tom, smelling the molasses boiling on the range and leading the way into the kitchen.
"You can't cook anything good to eat when there are boys within a mile, and they not know it," sighed Jennie Stone.
"Or be able to keep them out of it," declared Madge Steele. "I suppose we shall have to let them hang around, Helen."
"I tell you!" cried Helen, who never would go back upon her twin, and who liked to have him around, "we'll make some nut candy. There's nuts—half a bushel of them. The boys must crack and pick the nuts and we'll make some walnut taffy—it will be lots nicer than plain taffy."
"Oh, well, thatdoesput another face upon the matter," laughed Lluella Fairfax.
"But they must all three whistle while they're picking out the nuts," cried Heavy. "I know them! The nut meats will never go into the taffy pan if they don't whistle."
Tom and his chums agreed to this and in a few minutes they were all three sitting gravely on the big settee by the fire, a flatiron in each boy's lap, each with a hammer and the basket of nuts in reach, and all dolefully whistling—with as much discord as possible. The whistling did certainly try the girls' nerves; but the boys were not to be trusted under any other conditions.
Busy Izzy, however—that arch schemer—had not forgiven the girls for laughing at his overset on the toboggan slide the night before. And as he sat whistling "Good Night, Ladies" in a dreadful minor, he evolved such a plan for reprisal in his fertile mind that his eyes began to snap and he could hardly whistle for the grin that wreathed his lips.
"Keep at it, Mr. Isadore Phelps!" cried Ruth, first to detect Izzy's defection. "We're watching you."
"Come! aren't we going to have a chance to eat a single kernel?"Izzy growled.
"Not one," said Helen, stoutly. "After you have the nuts cracked and picked out, we'll spread the kernels in the dripping pans, the taffy will then be ready, we'll pour it over, and then set the candy out to cool in the snow. After that we'll give you some—if you're good."
"Huh!" grunted Isadore. "I guess I know a trick worth two of that.We'll get our share, fellows," and he winked at Tom and Bob.