CHAPTER XV.A WARNING.
The next day Billie had much difficulty in persuading Phoebe to put on the beautiful pink linen.
“It is not right,” Phoebe kept saying, although her eyes shone with a new luster when she gazed at the pretty frock. “I am very grateful for what you have done but you must not do too much. I am sure my father would not approve of my accepting so many favors.”
“Nonsense,” exclaimed Billie. “Can’t one girl lend another a few clothes without its being called ‘favors’? I shouldn’t hesitate to borrow from you, Phoebe, if I were—well—in your situation. And it seems to me that this dress would be very becoming to you. It suits your complexion better than mine because it matchesyour cheeks. I usually wear blue but I was over-persuaded by Nancy-Bell to get pink.”
In the end, Phoebe was induced to put on the pink dress. It had been wonderful enough to wear a neatly fitted duck skirt and a lace-trimmed blouse, but in this embroidered linen frock the color of wild roses Phoebe was in a dream.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, glancing at her flushed image in the mirror, “I never understood that clothes would make so much difference. I feel like someone else.” She looked down at her white canvas pumps, which were, as a matter of fact, a shade too long for her, although she had run barefoot over the mountains. “And my feet look really small.”
When Billy placed on her head a white Panama hat trimmed with a broad band of black velvet, Phoebe’s eyes filled with tears.
“Am I Phoebe?” she ejaculated. “Phoebe without a name, who lives in a log house? Oh, Miss Campbell——”
“Not Miss Campbell,” interrupted Billie. “You must call me Billie. Aren’t you my guest and almost the same age? Besides, I never recognize myself with ‘Miss’ tucked on before my name.”
“Billie, then,” went on Phoebe, blushing because she had never known a girl before to call by the first name. “Do you think it is right that I should dress up so beautifully when—when my father is hidden away somewhere?”
“But I feel perfectly sure he is safe,” said Billie. “Perhaps someone has told him it would be safer to keep away for a while.”
“But why? He has never injured anyone in his life.”
“It is all Lupo’s doings and that is one reason why we want you to go with us down to the village and show yourself, so that they can see you have a number of very good friends to look after your interests.”
The girls all left off their khaki campingclothes and attired themselves in light summer frocks that morning. There was a reason for this unusual “hike” as Percy called it, and it pleased Nancy extremely, who took that opportunity to wear her best blue batiste and her prettiest hat. Billie wore no hat. It annoyed her when she drove the car, she said; but as a matter of fact she had lent her only hat to Phoebe.
From time to time, as the car went down the mountain road, Miss Campbell glanced admiringly at the mountain girl beside Billie in front.
“Dear, dear,” she exclaimed in a low voice, “what clothes will do for one. And how well the child wears them. She might have been accustomed to pretty things all her life.”
“She puts us all in the shade,” whispered Nancy.
If Billie had intended to create a sensation in the village, she succeeded beyond her wildest hopes. At first Phoebe was not recognized, butat the village store where everything was sold from groceries to Indian moccasins, a man loafing at the door exclaimed:
“By golly, that there’s Phoebe from up on the mountains!”
Phoebe blushed scarlet and then smiled.
“I suppose it will be a surprise to them,” she said.
They waited some time at the general store for purchases and letters, and by the time the “Comet” had borne them slowly onward to the small hotel, the news had spread down the street. At the water trough, they came to a full stop. They had no errands at the hotel, but Billie pretended to examine the “Comet’s” interior mechanism with careful interest. Pretty soon, nearly two dozen people had gathered at the trough. The innkeeper himself appeared, pale-eyed and sly; and Lupo made bold to show his face.
“Look at Crazy Frenchy’s gal diked out in all them duds,” one of the company exclaimed.
“She do look good, crazy or no crazy,” remarked a swarthy-faced guide eying Phoebe with admiration.
The young girl seemed entirely unconscious of all the attention she was attracting. She looked straight ahead down the village street and never even glanced at the group of rough men gathered near the car.
“How do we know but she didn’t aid and abet Frenchy?” burst out the innkeeper. “How do we know but she didn’t help him start them fires on Razor Back? The two is always together, ’ceptin’ now when he’s a-hidin’ and she’s put on fine clothes to drive around with her rich friends.”
Phoebe turned her startled gaze on the man. Her lips parted.
“Don’t answer them,” whispered Billie, and with a grand flourish she swept the “Comet” around in a circle and turned his nose up the street.
“Do they accuse my father of setting Razor Back on fire?” asked Phoebe, tremulously.
“They tried to, but they couldn’t prove it,” answered Billie.
“My father loves the mountains,” protested poor Phoebe. “He loves the forests. He wouldn’t harm even one tree. How cruel these people are! Always they have hated us and we have never injured any of them. Oh, Billie, I feel that I must go to my father. I know he needs me.”
“You remember the doctor’s message,” answered Billie; “that it would be dangerous for you to leave camp. I am certain he knew what he was saying. Besides, didn’t you say the old herb woman was a friend? She would not have deceived you, would she?”
“No,” answered Phoebe, half smiling. “Once I pulled a thorn out of old Granny’s foot and washed and bound it, and she has been good to me ever since. The time she nursed me, she never left me day or night until I was well.”
“So you see,” said Billie, “it would be foolish for you to start out to hunt your father when you know old Granny can be depended upon and Dr. Hume, too.”
Phoebe was not the only one who felt restless in camp that afternoon. All of them had the sensation of waiting for something. Only Alberdina seemed placidly content. Having been forgiven the pink clothes and having had her stolen money refunded, she went about her work, singing and yodelling in a melodious voice, and for lunch surprised them with a German cinnamon cake she had made during their absence in the village.
“Why, you can cook, Alberdina?” exclaimed Billie, on whom cooking was beginning to pall.
“I can a leedle coog.”
“Then you shall cook the dinner,” announced Billie firmly, and Alberdina, who had not mentioned cooking in the bond, quailed before her stern gray eye and consented.
The afternoon dragged slowly along. It was very hot and the women members of the camp lay on their cots in kimonos reading and napping. Percy, underneath, snored lustily, and Ben chopped wood and piled up the logs scientifically for a fire that evening.
Alberdina’s supper was distinctly German in flavor, but it was good and Billie and Nancy enjoyed freedom from the bondage of cooking the evening meal. After supper the wind freshened and it grew much cooler.
“It’s going to be a dark night. There’s no moon,” remarked Ben, wistfully. “Shall I light the camp fire? And then we can sit around and tell stories and sing songs,” and because no one either assented or objected, owing to the peculiar restlessness that possessed them, he put a match to the pile of logs and presently the clearing was illuminated. The camp house stood out in bold relief against the background of the mountains. Little clouds were scurrying across the sky likeschools of fish, and an occasional flash of heat lightning lit up the mountains and valley with strange distinctness. Elinor had brought out her guitar and they had just begun one of the old familiar songs, when a ragged boy appeared in their midst so suddenly that he might have sprung up full grown from the earth.
He faced Ben without looking at the others.
“The doctor wants both gem’man to come. I show the way. Quick.”
Phoebe sat up very straight and looked at the boy.
“I don’t know you,” she said. “Who are you?”
“I come from that away,” answered the boy, pointing with his thumb toward Indian Head. “The doctor said you would know it was all right by this here,” he added, unbuttoning his coat and taking out the doctor’s well remembered cane. “An’ he don’t want none of the ladies to come. Jes’ the men.”
“But I will go,” exclaimed Phoebe. “My father——”
“Is your father Frenchy?”
“Yes,” answered the girl, lowering her eyes.
“The doctor says Frenchy’s gal was not to be skeered. Frenchy is safe and well.”
“Are you sure?” demanded Phoebe.
“So help me,” answered the boy, raising his hand to heaven.
“But what does it mean?” broke in Miss Campbell. “I don’t like the sound of it at all. Why has the doctor sent for both of you boys? Why should we be left alone? It’s not like the doctor at all.”
“They ain’t got to go no distance much, lady,” the boy assured her. “They’ll be back inside of fifteen minutes,” and being the prince of liars and an actor of precocious ability, he succeeded in persuading them that Ben and Percy must follow him without delay.
The girls were still gathering up the rugs andcushions preparatory to going into the house, when there came another interruption that frightened Miss Campbell so much that she gave a little cry and seized Billie’s arm.
“It’s only old Granny, the herb-woman,” Billie assured her. “What is it, Granny?”
“Phoebe! They gona’ tar and feather Phoebe an’ her father if they can find him. Go, quick. Lupo an’ his men comin’ up mountain. Hurry and shut house.”
“But I don’t want to bring this danger on my friends,” exclaimed Phoebe. “I will go with you, Granny.”
“No, no, too dangerous,” answered the old woman. “Lupo, he see in dark.”
“Indeed, you shall not go,” broke in Miss Campbell indignantly. “You’ll stay right here and they shall not tar and feather you or anybody else. The low wretches!”
“Shut up house, quick,” was Granny’s last piece of advice as she melted away in the darkness.
Nobody paused to beat down the camp fire or gather up the rugs and cushions. Into the house they scurried and lost no time in drawing the great iron-bound winter doors across the openings into the living room, and bolting them. The doors to the sleeping porches were all carefully closed and locked from the inside. Then they sat down in the immense vaulted room and waited.
Phoebe, sitting apart from the others, seemed very quiet and calm in the face of the danger which threatened her, and Billie knew she was calling on the faith which had never failed her.
CHAPTER XVI.THE ATTACK.
They were filled with hot indignation over the situation. They felt sure now that Ben and Percy had been lured away, but they were not uneasy for their safety. Billie had told them what Dr. Hume had said: that the mountaineers would not dare injure any of the campers. But all of them realized that Phoebe might be treated with cruel indignities. Only a few weeks before, Billie had read an account in a newspaper of how a pretty young school teacher had been tarred and feathered by a mob of people who were jealous of her beauty and refinement. If Lupo could persuade the villagers that Phoebe and her father were responsible for the forest fires, Billie felt certain they would have a very unreasonable lot of visitors to deal with thatnight. She wished with all her heart that someone with an eloquent tongue would appear and address these narrow, stupid men, someone who understood their natures and knew how to deal with them. She believed that violence would only aggravate their rage. Someone would have to talk to them.
The other Motor Maids sat on a divan whispering together, and Miss Campbell, calm as was her wont in the presence of danger, paced up and down the room, examining the bolts of the heavy shutters. Alberdina, with her little iron bound trunk beside her, sat grumbling in a corner.
“Is it for thees I haf gome?” she murmured. “I to New Yorg return to-morrow. They will keel me already yet.”
“You are perfectly safe, Alberdina,” said Miss Campbell, “and you are not to go back to New York to-morrow. You are to stay with us and see this thing through. I shall telegraph Mr.Campbell in the morning and have the law on these people. I am sick and tired of their savagery and injustice. The cruel wretches! I——”
A long shrill whistle interrupted her outburst. It penetrated the stout walls of their fortress so unexpectedly that it brought them all to their feet with low exclamations.
“There they are,” whispered Mary.
Alberdina groaned, “Mein lieber Gott,” and sank upon a couch with the expression of a condemned man about to be executed.
It was some moments after the whistle before the enemy made its next advance. That also was unexpected and terrifying,—loud knocks on the wooden shutters of the large entrance.
Nobody moved or spoke. Again the knocks came and a voice called:
“We want that gal and her father. You ain’t got no right to shelter criminals. Open in the name of the law. I reckon a sheriff will make you listen to reason.”
“Break the door down, Lupo,” said another voice. “The law’s in its right to git what it wants. They ain’t nobody that kin refuse the law without payin’ for it.”
Although they were so confident of the law, the girls felt sure the mention of a sheriff was a blind, and that the mountaineers were not going to do anything so incriminating as to break in the doors. Then there followed a period of consultation outside. Footsteps could be heard along the galleries; the stout shutters on all the openings were shaken and pounded upon; but Sunrise Camp was indeed as strong as a fortress when it was closed. Storms had beaten against it in vain, and unless the mob outside resorted to hatchets and saws, it would not be easy to break in.
At last the voice of Lupo spoke from the front gallery.
“Ladies, I’m only askin’ justice. You got two dangerous people in this here house. The lawwants ’em. We don’t mean no harm to you an’ we’ll leave peaceable if you’ll hand over the prisoners. I’m goin’ to give you five minutes to decide in an’ if you don’t open the door, we’re goin’ to break it open with this here axe.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort, Lupo,” cried Miss Campbell, her voice ringing with indignation. “And I warn you that unless you wish to serve a long term in the penitentiary, you’d better leave this place at once with your friends. Mr. Campbell would never stop until he saw all of you well punished for this night’s work. You’ve already broken into the house and robbed our maid——”
“Who said I did?” shouted Lupo. “It was Frenchy done that, too. He’s a dangerous man to live in a peaceable place. We’ve been puttin’ up with him and his daughter for too long, and we citizens ain’t goin’ to put up with ’em no longer. They gona’ be punished first, and then they gona’ give up that there home that ain’ttheirs by rights and leave this here part of the country forever.”
Miss Campbell decided not to reply to Lupo’s outburst. It only excited him and it was evident her arguments had no effect.
And now, after what seemed an interminable time, the door resounded with the blows of a woodman’s axe.
“Go up into the gallery, Phoebe,” ordered Miss Campbell, trembling in spite of her determination not to be frightened.
Phoebe rose and walked to the middle of the room. Her face was transfigured and she looked almost unearthly.
“I am not afraid,” she said. “I believe that I will be saved from my enemies. God is sending someone to save me.”
But the Motor Maids and Miss Campbell had no such faith to bolster up their faltering courage. During the long, lonely evenings on the mountainside when Phoebe had read aloud to herfather from the New Testament, which he seemed to like best, there had grown in her mind a belief as strong as it was simple. There had never been any people to shake her convictions with arguments, nor books to suggest doubts. And now in her soul she had called for help and she believed it would come even at the eleventh hour.
Billie, whose faith in prayer was not unmixed with a desire for action of a very vigorous and immediate variety, seized an old rifle hung from a nail on the wall. She had no idea whether there were any loads in it, but she had made up her mind to use the butt-end on the first man who entered the room. In the meantime, the axe had crashed through one of the thick, hardwood panels, making a slit broad enough to see through.
“I’ll shoot any man who comes into this room,” called Billie. “Keep out.”
An eye was placed at the hole in the door. Billie felt instinctively it was Lupo’s.
“That there old rusty gun ain’t got no loads in it, Miss. You kin shoot all you like.”
There was another pause, and the blows began again. Alberdina gave evidence of wishing to speak, but Miss Campbell interrupted her.
“Never mind, Alberdina,” she said impatiently. “You may go up into the gallery if you like. You are quite safe. They only want Miss Phoebe.”
But Alberdina would not be silenced. Perhaps somewhere in the remote history of her ancestors there had been a warrior who had ranged the German forests dressed in the skins of wild beasts, his helmet decorated with a pair of fierce upstanding horns. Who knows but a drop of his fighting blood had come down through the generations to stir this sluggish descendant into action just at this particular moment when something had to be done?
“Come,” she called, with unexpected energy. “I asg you, come. We will a high wall mag already. You will see. Hein?”
Again the axe crashed through the door and without a word they followed her into the gallery, Billie carrying the rifle and Elinor the breakfast horn. Alberdina hurried into the locker room and presently returned with a trunk hoisted on her shoulders. This she placed at the top of the stairs.
“Good,” exclaimed Billie. “Why didn’t we think of that before? It will keep them off for a little longer, at any rate.”
Alberdina did not listen to these honeyed words of praise, however. She never paused until she had piled three trunks, one on top of the other in a very effective barricade. At the far end of the gallery, Elinor and Mary appeared to be very much occupied at a little window placed in the roof for ventilation, but now closed. Finding the bolt rusty, Elinor took off her slipper and broke a pane of glass. Mary, her lieutenant, then handed her the breakfast horn. It was like Elinor to wipe off the mouth piece carefully with herhandkerchief before she placed it to her lips. But the blast she blew must have startled the mountaineers outside, for the blows on the door ceased for a moment. Again and again she signaled, always the same long agitated note.
“I think anybody would recognize that as a call for help,” she said, pausing for breath; and while the axe crashed through the door, she continued to blow the bugle with all her strength.
Billie, however, felt fairly certain that a trunk barricade and a bugle blast for help would not keep off the savages long.
“We need some kind of ammunition, Nancy,” she said. “If only this rifle was loaded.”
“Did you look through the barrel?” asked Nancy, slightly more experienced with firearms than Billie. She seized the rifle and held it up before a lamp that Alberdina had set in a corner of the gallery, cocked it and looked through with one eye professionally squinted.
“Why, it is loaded,” she announced. “It onlyhas two empty what do you call them—chambers?”
“Must I shoot at somebody?” asked Billie.
“You could try and I could try,” answered Nancy, “but I don’t think either one of us would hit an elephant.”
Just then Miss Campbell put out the light. At the same moment the axe made a breach in the door and a man crawled through. Billie lifted the rifle and, taking a long breath, aimed at his foot. The man was looking about him in a bewildered way. It was the innkeeper, second leader of the gang. Billie pulled and pulled, but nothing happened, and in another moment a dozen mountaineers had crawled through the opening. The one lamp cast a small circle of light near the fire-place. The rest of the room was in darkness. In the gallery the anxious watchers were invisible to the band of men, but the watchers themselves could see the outlaws plainly now gathered in a group in the center of the room, rather uneasyafter breaking down the door of Sunrise Camp.
“Ladies, I’d advise you to give up the prisoners,” called Lupo, addressing the darkness. “We ain’t goner touch none of you, but we wants them two furriners right away.”
“Git some torches,” ordered the innkeeper, who seemed really to be the boldest man in the lot.
Several men disappeared and in a moment returned with pitch torches which cast a lurid, flickering light through the room. It was a weird scene, looking down from the gallery. All of the men wore masks except Lupo and the innkeeper, who were boldly undisguised. They peered about the room. Suddenly Lupo’s eye caught a corner of the staircase at the far end.
“They’re upstairs. Come on, men,” he called.
Billie raised the shotgun to her shoulder.
“I’ll shoot the old thing off this time if it flies to pieces,” she said, and pulled the trigger with all her might.
“Bang!” went the gun, and down she sat very hard, not knowing where she had aimed. There was a great confusion of voices below and she thought she heard someone cry out with pain.
“Could I have shot anyone?” she asked herself tremulously as she picked herself up from the floor. Her shoulder ached and her finger was bruised, but she put the gun into position again.
“I’ll shoot any man who comes up those steps,” she called.
The outlaws had gathered under the gallery now, holding their torches high and gazing with some curiosity at the women grouped above them. Miss Campbell stood with her arm around Phoebe’s waist. Elinor and Mary were still at the window. Nancy was with Billie, and Alberdina crouched behind the barricade.
Lupo fell back angrily.
“I guess you ain’t got but one load in your old shotgun,” he called. “Come on, men. We’ll make a run for it.”
Billie turned the gun straight on him. She felt almost more afraid of the unwieldy thing than she did of the man himself.
“If it jumps again,” she thought, “it’ll break my shoulder. And it’s so undignified to have to sit down every time I shoot it off.”
The innkeeper made a leap for the steps and Lupo followed him. Billie ran to the other end of the gallery so as to get a better aim, and pulled at the trigger. The trunks were swaying and Alberdina had rushed from behind them.
“Oh, Nancy, I can’t make it go off,” Billie sobbed under her breath.
“Give it to me,” whispered Nancy, seizing the gun and leveling it with trembling hands at Lupo.
“Look out, Lupo,” called a man below, as the barricade went down with a crash.
But Lupo was in no mood to listen to warnings. Bounding over a fallen trunk, he wrenched the gun from Nancy’s hand.
At this moment, a man walked into the room and marched straight up to the group of mountaineers.
“I beg your pardon, gentlemen,” he said in a voice loud enough to be heard by everybody, “is this Sunrise Camp?”
CHAPTER XVII.THE FORCE OF ELOQUENCE.
Phoebe gazed at the newcomer as if she were seeing a visitor from heaven. All the women in the gallery experienced enormous sensations of relief and Alberdina smiled down at him broadly.
“Mein lieber Gott, helb has gome already yet,” she exclaimed.
They hardly seemed to comprehend in their relief that one man had to deal with a dozen or more.
“Who are you?” demanded Lupo, roughly, coming to the top of the stairs.
“My name is Hook, at your service. May I ask if you are giving a performance of private theatricals? The scene is a good deal like a band of highwaymen attacking a number of helpless women.”
“We’re in the rights of the law,” put in the innkeeper.
“Why wear masks then?” asked Richard Hook.
There was no answer to this pointed question and three of the maskers slunk toward the door.
“We’ve come here to git two criminals hiding illegally in this here camp,” burst out Lupo.
“Have you a warrant for their arrest?”
“We don’t need no warrants in these here mountains.”
“Oh, yes you do,” insisted Richard politely. “Law and order must be respected just as much on the mountains as in the valleys. People who don’t respect them soon find out what happens.”
Two more men slunk toward the door.
“I think,” went on Richard, “that you had better follow your friends out quietly and go to your homes. I am certain most of you have wives who would be glad to see you again after this dangerous little adventure. Jail isn’t a pleasantplace, you know, especially to people who are in the habit of breathing mountain air.”
Only six men remained now of the original number. Even Lupo had been silenced, but at the mention of wives he flared up again.
“They have taken my wife away from me,” he cried, shaking his fist at the women in the gallery. “They have given her money to leave me. I ain’t so forgivin’.”
“Do you want to know the real reason why your wife left you?” said Richard in a tone of such conviction that Lupo was deceived into thinking this perfect stranger knew all about him. “She was afraid of you and your lawless ways. When you have been drinking, as you have to-night, you’re a dangerous man. You begin by breaking into private houses. You’re disorderly and violent. Men like you end in the penitentiary. You hide yourselves perhaps for a while, but these mountains are difficult to hide in nowadays. You would be caught sooner or later, anddo you think you’ll get much sympathy with the court after one of these ladies, perhaps, has told the history of to-night’s work? Fifteen years would be a short sentence. Your wife is right, I think. You’re not a very safe companion.”
Lupo looked about him bewildered. Only one of the band remained: the watery-eyed innkeeper.
“I was in the rights of the law,” exclaimed Lupo, half-crying as he crept down the gallery steps.
“I am afraid not,” said Richard gently. “But you take a little trip to another county and get some good honest work, and you will soon find out how much happier and safer it is to be within the limits of the law. Decidedly more agreeable than being hunted through the mountains by a sheriff with his bloodhounds, sleeping out in the cold, going hungry, slinking around the edges of villages when everybody is asleep for a chance piece of bread. Earning honest money with your wife happy beside you is heaven in comparison, I assure you.”
Lupo hung his head until his eyes were hidden by the brim of his felt hat.
“I’m goin’,” he said sullenly. “I guess your argyments is too good for the likes of me to try an’ answer. I wants my wife back more’n I wants to git even with Frenchy and his gal. They done me a injury once, but I’m willin’ to call it square if you are.”
“Call it square,” said Richard, and the two mountaineers slunk out of the room and disappeared in the night.
And now the ladies of Sunrise Camp and Richard Hook found themselves quite alone in the vast living room. The danger was over and the last and most impious of the outlaws departed. Miss Campbell and her girls standing in a row in the gallery looked down into the whimsical face of their deliverer. Billie recalled that only a little while before she had wished for someone with a persuasive tongue to appear and address the outlaws. Phoebe, too, had believedthat God would send a deliverer. Whose prayer had brought the young man to Sunrise Camp in the nick of time? Hers or Phoebe’s, Billie wondered. Perhaps it was their combined wishes. She understood little about the psychology of wishes. At any rate, here they all stood, safe and sound, and presently they found themselves laughing at the ludicrous thing that might have turned into a tragedy but for Richard Hook’s persuasive tongue.
Already Alberdina was removing the barriers.
“Whose idea was that? Yours, Miss Billie?” asked Richard.
“No, no. We really owe our temporary safety to Alberdina, there. She thought of it herself.”
The German girl was well pleased over the fame the one intelligent act of her life had brought her. She smiled broadly at Richard as she cleared the way for the ladies to descend.
“Before we settle down to talk,” remarked the young man, “suppose we open the doors and windowsand light the lights. This room is fairly close and it would be a good idea to illuminate for the sake of your friends who might happen to be returning. By the way, where are the criminals?”
“Here is one of them,” answered Miss Campbell, smiling. “This is our friend, Miss Phoebe—” she hesitated, “Miss Phoebe French. Does she look like a criminal?”
Phoebe, who all this time had been watching Richard with a sort of rapt expression, was startled out of her dream. She blushed and looked down at the floor. The girls had never seen her so shy.
“This is Mr. Hook, Phoebe,” continued Miss Campbell. “I think we ought all to offer him our united thanks for his courage.”
“I do thank you, sir, with all my heart,” said Phoebe fervently, timidly offering her hand.
Richard stretched out his left hand.
“I—I ask your pardon for giving you my left hand,” he said, and for the first time they noticedthat his right arm was hanging limply at his side.
“Oh, Rich—Oh, Mr. Hook,” cried Billie, as red as a beet. “What have I done—I shot you—Oh, dear, I am so sorry!”
“Don’t you worry, Miss Billie. It’s just a coat sleeve wound. The bullet cut through the cloth and scratched my arm. It’s lodged there in the wall now, I suppose, as a memento of your nerve.”
“Why, boy, your sleeve is soaked in blood,” exclaimed Miss Campbell. “And you’re as white as a ghost. Sit down here quick. Alberdina, a basin of water. Billie, some bandages. Hurry, all of you. Why are you standing around like a lot of wooden images?”
Phoebe was too inexperienced to join in the general rush for bandages, peroxide of hydrogen, absorbent cotton and witch hazel: all the first-aid-to-the-injured the camp afforded. She stood at the foot of the couch and watched Richard Hook with large innocent eyes. His own eyes, very dark gray, wide apart and extremely intelligent,returned her gaze with a kind of amused admiration.
In the meanwhile, Miss Helen Campbell snipped up his shirt sleeve with a pair of small scissors and Billie, overwhelmed with contrition, stood ready to bathe the wound, which was more bloody than serious.
“I call this pretty nice,” remarked Richard, glancing at the circle of anxious faces leaning over him. “It’s worth being shot to have so many ministering angels about one; and a Seraph with a flaming sword at the foot of my couch to guard me,” he added, glancing again at Phoebe, now holding a lamp high with a perfectly steady arm, so that the others could see to work.
Having washed and bound the wound, they propped his head on two pillows and drew their chairs about the couch. Never was a young man so coddled before.
“You haven’t explained to us yet, Mr. Hook,how you happened to drop down from the skies,” said Miss Campbell.
“I dropped up and not down, on the contrary, Miss Campbell. The van isn’t so very far away. The girls wanted to put up for the night at the foot of the mountain, but I was stubborn for once and we worked old Dobbin until his limbs refused to go any farther. After they had got settled for the night, I thought I’d take a stroll. I supposed you would all have gone to bed but I had a feeling I’d like to see Sunrise Camp by starlight. I wouldn’t have found it, however, if I had not heard the calls for help on the bugle. There wasn’t a light to be seen from the road.”
Elinor felt a secret pride at this statement. It was she, then, who had brought the rescuer! Billie felt sure it was her own strong wish that had drawn Richard to them in their great need, while Phoebe, filled with the conviction of her faith, believed he had been sent in answer to her fervent prayers.
If Richard had been consulted about this andhad spoken the truth from his heart, could he have explained the irresistible impulse that had urged him to climb the steep road up the mountain on that dark night?
At this juncture, Ben and Percy, more dead than alive from running, almost fell into the room.
“Great Caesar’s ghost,” Percy ejaculated in a weak voice, “but we have had a fright about you, and here you are giving an evening reception!”
“Nothing has happened, then?” Ben managed to gasp.
“That little arch fiend led us into a jungle and lost us,” went on Percy. “We heard the bugle calls for help. Gee! But we have had a run.”
“And you’re all right? You’re safe?” cried Ben, counting them over. “And Mr. Hook has been protecting you? Thank heavens for that.”
“My dear young man,” observed Miss Campbell with some irritation, “will you please to turn around and look at that front door or slide or whatever you call the thing? I wish you to knowthat we have had one of the most exciting evenings of our lives. This house was attacked and broken into by a dozen ruffians and if it hadn’t been for Alberdina, there, who has the mind of a general and knew exactly how to build a barricade with trunks, Phoebe would certainly have been tarred and feathered, even before Mr. Hook came to our rescue——”
“He heard my bugle,” announced Elinor.
“I wished for him,” thought Billie.
“I prayed for him,” said Phoebe in a low voice.
“If Richard Hook had not appeared and permitted himself to be shot by Billie without uttering a sound——”
“Oh, I let out a yell,” broke in Richard.
“We would have all been murdered, like enough.”
“But where are your sister and Miss Swinnerton?” asked Ben.
“I suppose I had better be getting back to them,” said Richard, who had quite forgotten that he had left two unprotected maidens asleepin a traveling van on a ledge half a mile below.
Percy and Ben offered to go back for him, but he would not consent, and Billie, solicitous and full of contrition for her reckless shooting, had the “Comet” out in a jiffy although Richard had asked to be allowed to walk. They found the van dark and quiet. Evidently the girls had heard nothing of the rumpus on the mountain and had felt no uneasiness about Richard, who was accustomed to taking strolls at untimely hours.
It did not take long to bring the motor car back to camp and before midnight a peaceful calm had settled over the log hut.
Phoebe, stretched on her cot in the living room, lay staring up into the darkness of the unceiled roof. She tried to think of her father somewhere out on the mountain, but always her thoughts reverted to the new young man with the kind, smiling eyes. Once she chanted in a low voice:
“‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings!’”
CHAPTER XVIII.THE MORNING AFTER.
Miss Campbell felt no ill effects from the visit of the mountaineers. She had not even thought of ill effects, in fact. Somehow, the presence of Phoebe, unruffled and calm through all the danger, had had its influence on all of them. Even Alberdina’s emotions had been hushed by contact with that peaceful nature.
It was well past six o’clock before the exhausted household awakened next morning at Percy’s trumpet call. Hurrying down before the others, Billie was amazed to see the traveling van drawn up in a clearing at the edge of the grove. Old Dobbin, tethered to a rope, stood nearby peaceably munching his breakfast from a wooden pail. Amy Swinnerton was seated in front of an easel sketching the log cabin and from inside of thevan came the crisp voice of Maggie Hook, singing:
“‘I loved a lass, a fair one,As fair as e’er was seen;She was indeed a rare one,Another Sheba Queen:But, fool as then I was,I thought she loved me, too:But, now alas! she’s left me,Falero, lero, loo!’”
“Good morning!” cried Billie, running over to the van. “You must have muffled old Dobbin’s feet to have crept in so quietly. How is Ri—Mr. Hook?” she added, all in one breath.
Maggie popped her head out of the front of the van. She reminded Billie of a little bird peeping from a bird house.
“Not ‘Mister,’” she called, smiling brightly. “Remember, Billie, that we brothers and sisters of the road never use titles.”
“Oh, yes, I mustn’t forget that I’m one of the fraternity,” answered Billie, smiling.
“‘—Gypsy blood to the Gypsy bloodEver the wide world over,’”
called Maggie, with much animation, from the top step of the van.
“You’ll have to know her better to understand her dual nature, Billie,” observed Amy Swinnerton, glancing up from her easel. “After she’s been a good housewife and got things shipshape and free from the dust of the road she loves so much, she’s ready to turn Gypsy and muss them all up again.”
“I never mussed anything up in my life,” broke in Maggie. “I only clean up other people’s musses.”
“But how is your brother Richard?” persisted Billie. “You see I feel some natural anxiety because I was the one who shot him last night. Has the wound been dressed?”
“Shot him?” repeated the other girls.
“That was why he made me drive old Dobbin this morning,” said Amy.
“And to think he never told,” broke in Maggie, “and he’s gone off now, goodness only knows where.”
“And he didn’t tell you about the attack and how he saved us?” demanded Billie.
“Not a word.”
Billie gave them an account of what had happened the evening before. It was exciting enough to tell about and the girls listened breathlessly. Richard’s courage and tact with the outlaws when all the time his sleeve was soaked with blood from the wound in his arm, fired her with unusual eloquence.
“I don’t think they intended to harm any of us,” she finished. “It was Phoebe they wanted, and her father, who is hiding somewhere on the mountain. But we shall be thankful to him all our lives for what he did. Why didn’t he tell you?”
“It’s too like him,” said Maggie. “I don’t know whether it’s modesty or indifference, but he never, never tells stories where he figures as a hero.”
“Do you wish us to stop here now after so much excitement?” Amy asked. “I don’t think it’s any time for outsiders to intrude in spite of Maggie’s rhymes about Gypsy blood and brothers of the road.”
“Indeed, we wouldn’t think of letting you go,” cried Billie hospitably. “You are not strangers to us, I assure you, after all your kindness. But I do wish I could find your brother. The place on his arm bled a lot last night. I am certain a wound like that should be washed and dressed every few hours. Do you think he could have gone very far away?”
“Oh, dear,” exclaimed Maggie. “Richard is incorrigible. He does make me so uneasy sometimes.”
“There is nothing to do but wait patiently untilthe spirit moves him to come back,” put in Amy calmly. “He is so strong and well that perhaps his wounds don’t have to be dressed as often as other people’s. There seems to be a special Providence that looks after him anyhow. It would be foolish to worry.”
Nevertheless, Billie did worry considerably in her heart, and even Phoebe, who presently joined them and was introduced to the girls, looked startled and uneasy when she heard that Richard Hook, her deliverer, had gone away without having his wound dressed.
The caravanners were greatly interested in seeing Phoebe, whose history they had heard.
“She is very beautiful,” Amy observed, “but she doesn’t look human, somehow. She has the expression of a person who sees visions, air pictures invisible to other people.”
“She is very religious,” Billie replied. “Not like the religious people we know, but—well like people in the time of Christ might have been.You see she got it all herself without any outside teaching. She just learned it out of the New Testament mostly, and she practices it all the time. It’s part of her life. Sometimes, I think it would be a pity to interfere with it.”
“How can you interfere with it, Billie?” asked Nancy.
“By taking her back to wicked West Haven with all its temptations,” laughed Billie.
“But shall you?” they asked in a chorus.
“We can’t leave her in this wild place.”
“And her father?” put in Mary.
“You’ll have to ask Dr. Hume about that,” answered Billie, and not another word would she say on the subject.
That morning the “Comet” conveyed a load of young people down to the village. Miss Campbell ordered a telegram to be sent to her cousin, demanding his immediate presence at the camp. Also a carpenter was secured to build a new door for the living room. This time the village streetwas singularly empty. No faces peeped from the half opened doors and no crowd gathered at the town pump. The rickety old wooden hotel was closed and the blinds drawn at every window. Evidently Richard Hook had frightened Lupo and the innkeeper very effectually.
“I don’t think they will ever trouble us again, Phoebe,” Billie remarked as they circled the pump and started home.
“They are sorry,” said Phoebe compassionately. “They are like children, and Mr. Hook understood that when he spoke to them as children. He is very wonderful and very good.”
“He is indeed,” agreed Billie. “He is a very remarkable young man.”
Phoebe seemed about to speak again, but kept silent. It was difficult for her to carry on a conversation.
“I love him,” she said at last, so simply and innocently that Billie smiled in spite of the earnestness of Phoebe’s expression.
“You love everyone, do you not, Phoebe? It is what you have learned by yourself up here in the mountain.”
“I cannot do that,” answered Phoebe. “I have tried but I cannot. But I love Mr. Hook. May God protect him always and reward him for his kindness.”
Billie looked away abashed. She had never heard anyone speak like that before outside of a church. She, too, hoped that God would protect Richard, but she would not have said it for worlds. She hoped also that Richard would be waiting for them at Sunrise Camp when they returned. He was not there, however. Miss Campbell, with Nancy and Percy, had looked for him in vain.
“No, he has not come back,” said the little lady. “And neither has Dr. Hume. Where is that foolish man? He shouldn’t have left us without news all this time.”
“Richard should remember that he is a guestand not an independent traveler,” exclaimed Maggie Hook. “I don’t think he has any right to go off and stay like this.”
“Now, Maggie, you are worrying and it’s very foolish,” put in practical Amy Swinnerton. “You know perfectly well he’ll be back by nightfall.”
Nobody felt quite in the humor to do anything. The day was exceedingly hot and the sun on its downward course in the heavens was like a red ball. Most of the party scattered for naps and letter writing and did not meet again until sunset.
That afternoon as they gathered around the supper table, Alberdina brought a note to Miss Campbell, written in a strange, old-fashioned handwriting on a scrap of paper. It read: