A day came and went. Hallie improved slightly. The next day she was so much better that Florence took time for a stroll out of doors. It was then that she received something of a shock. Having wandered down the creek trail until she was near to the stone gateway, she saw a tall, gaunt, young mountaineer step out into the path. With a rifle over his arm, he began to pace back and forth like a sentry on duty.
“I—I wonder—” she whispered to herself, “if he would let me pass?”
She had no desire to leave without taking Hallie, she did not try, but deep in her heart was the conviction that for some strange reason she was virtually a prisoner within those gates.
At once her mind was rife with speculation. Who were these people? What had they to fear from contact with the outside world? Were they moonshiners? She had heard much of mountain moonshine stills before she came to the Cumberlands. If they were moonshiners, where had they sold the product of their stills?
“No, it couldn’t be that,” she shook her head.
Were they a band of robbers? If so, whom did they rob? She thought of the peddler and the one-armed fiddler, and shuddered.
Still, as she thought of it now, she had seen very little in these cabins that could have come from a peddler’s pack. The bare-topped wooden tables were innocent of linen. Towels were made of coarse, hand-woven linen. The women wore no jewelry such as might have come from a peddler’s black box.
“It’s all very strange and mysterious,” she said with a shake of her head.
Only one thing came to her clearly as she returned to the cabin—she must remain beside little Hallie until she was out of danger.
“After that—what?”
This question she could not answer.
As Florence halted in her upward march she felt herself overawed by a terrible sense of desolation. For an hour she had traveled over the most silent, lonely trail her feet had ever trod. Little more than a footpath, possible mayhap to a sure-footed horse, the trail wound up and up and up toward the point where the green of forest ended in massive crags of limestone. She was now among the crags.
Far away on the opposite mountainside the sun was still shining, but on this trail there fell neither sunlight nor form of shadow. The north slope lay bathed in the perpetual chill of a cheerless autumn. No sound came to her from above, not a whisper from below. Beneath her feet was solid rock, above her more rock.
“What’s the use?” she asked herself as she stood there irresolute. “There couldn’t be a pass. There just couldn’t. Yet it seems there must be! And some way, some way, I must escape! To-morrow is my trial. To fail to appear is to face disgrace. Besides, there are my faithful friends, my bondsmen. I must not fail them!”
Once more, with an eagerness born of despair, she pressed forward.
It was, indeed, the day before the trial. Three days has passed since she had entered the forbidden portals of the rock made gateway. Little Hallie was now so far recovered that she at this moment sat wrapped in a blanket, smiling at the flames in the great fireplace. Yes, Hallie was all right now, but she, Florence, was in trouble. It was necessary that she return to the settlement. But how was she to do it? Three times that day she had approached the stone gateway. Each time the silent sentinel had appeared, treading his monotonous watch before the trail. She had not mustered up the courage to ask him to let her pass.
“There must be another trail, a pass over the mountains at the head of the creek,” she had told herself. So, before the day had half gone, she had walked slowly up the creek trail until far beyond sight of the farthest cabin. Then she had quickened her pace almost to a run.
One thing she had seen in passing the cabins had surprised her not a little. As she rounded a corner she had caught a gleam of white and had at once recognized the forms of three persons standing in the shadows of a great pine. Two were men, one a grown boy. That boy, there could be no mistake, was Bud Wax. The white she had seen was the wrappings on his arm, which was still in a sling.
With his back to her he was so engrossed in the conversation which he was carrying on with the other man that he did not so much as see her.
From that distance she caught only fragments of the talk. As the boy’s voice rose shrill and high, almost as if in anger, she heard:
“Hit’s your bounden duty. That’s what hit are! Look what she’s been doin’. Look—”
But here she passed behind a clump of young pines which muffled the sound of his voice.
As she pushed on through the deepening shadows she thought of this and wondered deeply. Bud had disappeared before she was up that first morning. She had always supposed that he had escaped to his home in the darkness of night and storm. But here he was. What was she to make of that? Why had he come in the first place? Why had he stayed? Was he, also, virtually their prisoner? Or had he gone out and returned for a reason? What was his feeling toward her? There had been times during that last week of school that she had surprised on his face a look almost of admiration. The look had vanished so quickly that she had doubted its existence.
And that night? Why had he leaped at the one-armed giant when he put out a hand to seize her? It looked like a desire to protect her. But why? Was he not from the camp of the enemy—Black Blevens’ camp? Had she not destroyed his most priceless possession, hammered it to bits between two rocks? What could she think?
Her thoughts were suddenly cut short. Before a wall of stone that towered a hundred feet in air, she had come to the end of the trail.
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime, all unknown to Marion and Mrs. McAlpin, a clan was gathering at the mouth of Laurel Branch. It was Ransom Turner’s clan. A strangely silent, uncommunicative people, the mountaineers of the Cumberlands seldom confide fully in those who have but late come to live among them. Ransom Turner and the men of his clan had not confided their suspicions, nor even all that they knew about Florence’s strange disappearance, to either Marion nor Mrs. McAlpin.
Having always suspected that the mysterious child, Hallie, had somehow strayed beyond the portals of the gate that led to the head of the creek, and that she belonged to that silent, forbidden land beyond, they had assumed that she had found her way back to her home.
That Florence had followed Hallie beyond the gate, they had suspected at once. As time passed and she did not return, this suspicion, aided by certain rumors that came to their ears, became a conviction.
“Hit’s up there she are!” Ransom Turner had been heard to whisper more than once.
“Hit certain are!” came with a nod of wise heads for answer.
Now it was the day before Florence’s trial, and the school election as well. Ransom’s men did not like the stinging remarks that came from the camp of Black Blevens.
“To-morrow’s the trial,” Ransom had said. “She’s bound to be here. Go tell the boys to git up their rifles an’ pistol guns an’ come here at sunset.”
This was said to a trusty henchman, who was away at once. In a small clearing a little way up the side of Big Black Mountain, a clearing completely surrounded by thickets of laurel and mountain ivy, the men were now straying in to drop silently down upon the grass.
A grim, silent group they were. Here was a lanky, long-bearded patriarch with a squirrel rifle that stood as tall as he, and here a boy of sixteen with a shiny modern rifle. Here were dark-bearded, middle-aged men with leather holsters buckled to their belts.
Conversation was all in whispers. One caught but fragments of it.
“Hit’s whar she are.”
“Hit’s plumb quare about Bud Wax.”
“Will they fight, you reckon?”
“Sure they will.”
“Bud’s been home once, I hearn tell. Hit’s what Bud said that made Ransom so sartin about her bein’ up thar.”
So the whispering went on and more men straggled in as the shadows fell.
The people at the mouth of Laurel Branch had always resented the presence of their mysterious neighbors beyond the stone gateway. To a certain degree, also, they had feared them. Things mysterious inspire terror. Tales of their strange doings had not grown smaller in their telling. The one-armed giant had become a veritable Cyclops. The beady-eyed stranger, who had once or twice been seen beyond the gates, was a man of strangely magic power. Such were the yarns that had been spun.
To-night, however, all these spells must vanish before the demand of cold steel. To-morrow was trial day and election day. Florence was needed. She must be at the mouth of Laurel Branch at sun up. They meant to bring her home. As soon as darkness fell these grim warriors of the hills meant to march past that stone gateway. If a sentry attempted to stop them he would be silenced. They would ask the release of their teacher, the one who had dared to stand and fight for their rights and the rights of their little ones. If they could secure her release by peaceable means they would do it. If it meant a fight, then a fight it would be.
And so, at the very hour when Florence trudged up the dark and shadowy trail, the clan was gathering.
As for Florence, as has been said, she had come to what appeared to be a sudden end of the trail. Before her was a towering wall of rocks.
But a well trodden path, beaten hard by the tread of hundreds who have passed that way, does not end so abruptly. Like the current of a sunken river, it must always go somewhere. By a careful examination of her surroundings, the girl found that certain sandstone boulders that lay in jagged heaps to the right of her were worn smooth. These smooth spots, she reasoned, had been made by human feet.
At once, with a bound, she was away up this natural stairway. Up, up, up she climbed till her heart thumped wildly and her head whirled. Then, to her vast surprise, just as she reached the topmost pinnacle she came upon a black heap of coal and directly before her a coal shaft yawned.
“A coal mine!” she exclaimed in disgust, sinking down breathless upon a rock. “I have come all this way to find only a coal mine!”
In these mountains, this was no discovery. The mountains were full of coal. There was wanted only a railroad to make the country rich. But to think that she had come all this way in the hope of finding a way out, only to find there was nothing left but to retrace her steps and to choose between taking the desperate chance of slipping past that pacing guard in the dark or remaining quietly within the gates until something happened that would set her free.
“And that last,” she groaned, “can never be. Never! I must escape! I must not miss my trial!”
In the frenzy of this resolve she sprang to her feet. But what was this? The moment’s rest and the cooling breeze had quieted her heart. She could think more clearly. This was no coal mine; could not be. A coal mine at the top of the mountain, a mile by trail from the nearest cabin? What folly! There were veins of coal lower down. She had seen them, and open coal mines, too, almost at the cabin’s door. What, then, could this mean? Here was coal, a coal vein, and an open drift, and yet it was not a mine.
Boldly she set a foot inside the dark opening. At once her foot shot from beneath her and she went sprawling. Only by a desperate clutching at the ragged rocks at her side was she prevented from gliding downward into a dark, unknown abyss.
Frightened, with hands lacerated by the sudden gripping of the rocks, and with heart beating wildly, she clung there panting until her head cooled and she realized that she was resting on a rocky step.
Drawing herself up, she found she was able to sit in a comfortable position and gaze about her. Just before her was utter darkness; behind her was the fading light of day.
Groping about in her pocket, she found a box of safety matches. Having lighted one of these she held it far out before her. At once her lips parted in an exclamation of surprise.
Before her, leading down, down, down, was a rude stairway cut in solid rock. On either side of the stairway were mine props, and back of these were black walls of coal.
It was all clear to her in an instant; not all, perhaps, but much. There were many just such veins of coal as this in the rockiest portions of the Cumberlands. She had heard of them. After the ages had passed when coal had been deposited upon the surface of the earth and strata of earth and rocks piled upon them, there had come some tremendous disturbance of the earth’s surface which had tilted rocks and coal deposits as well, and this was just such a vein.
There was nothing so strange about that, but it was strange to find this natural stairway leading downward to some regions unknown.
Just as her match flickered and went out her eyes caught the gleam of something white in a niche of the rock at her side. At once she was fumbling eagerly for another match.
To her consternation, in her excitement she let the box drop from her fingers.
Bump, bump, bump, it went down the steps. For an instant her heart stood still. Had it gone on down? Was she left without a light? She thought it had stopped on the third step, but could not be sure.
Slowly, carefully, she felt her way over the damp and slippery steps. One step, two, three. She felt them over carefully. No matches. Her heart sank. One more step, a hasty groping in the dark, then a cry of joy. She gripped the box.
The next moment the place was alight with a reddish yellow glow, and the next instant, standing up, she was grasping the white object that had caught her eye. It was one of four tallow candles that lay in a rocky niche.
Holding her match to it, she had the joy of seeing its wick sputter, then flame up.
One moment she hesitated. Then, putting one of the candles in her pocket, and holding another well before her, with a firm and steady step she began the descent into the mysterious cavern.
It was mysterious, haunting, spectral. “Like going down into the tomb of some ancient Egyptian king,” Florence told herself as, with candle held well out before her, and every step carefully poised, she made her way down the long stone stairway.
Black walls of coal were on either side. Before these the mine props stood like grim sentinels. The shadows of these, cast by the flickering light of the candle, appeared to take on life as they leaped, swaying and dancing, against the dusky walls.
Suddenly the girl caught her breath. A puff of air had all but extinguished her candle.
“And it came from below, not from above!” she breathed.
Scarcely had she made this astonishing discovery when she rounded a curve in the stairway and came in sight of a square of light. This distant illumination, the natural light of day, coming from the outside, seemed to beckon her on.
Then of a sudden it all came to her. “A tunnel!” she exclaimed. “Not the entrance to a mine, but a tunnel, a tunnel through this narrow peak of the mountain. Oh, joy! I’ve found the way out!”
In her eagerness she plunged down the stone stairway at a rate which threatened to send her pitching headlong. But sure-footed athlete that she was, she kept her balance and in another moment, panting, quite out of breath, she threw herself upon a huge flat rock that, lighted by the last rays of the setting sun, seemed a nugget of pure gold.
The scene her eyes gazed upon was of matchless beauty. The crests of the mountains, still beamed upon by the setting sun, glowed like so many domes of fire, while farther down the lower hillsides and valleys were shrouded in impenetrable shadows broken only by the silver thread of a stream that idled down a valley.
Suddenly the girl sprang to her feet. The whole thing had come to her in a flash. Wishing to be left alone, the mysterious people at the head of Laurel Branch had cut a pass through the solid mountain peak at a narrow place. They alone knew of it. Through this pass they carried the produce from their rough little farms to the coal mines far, far below. There they bartered them for shoes, salt, calico, and whatever their meager existence demanded.
“And this,” she told herself, “is the way the missing peddler and the one-armed fiddler have gone. Being wanderers by profession, they have gone through this pass and never been seen again by the people at the mouth of Laurel Branch.
“And that,” she exclaimed, quite overcome by the thought, “that means that these people at the head of Laurel Branch are honest folks. They are not robbers and murderers. I had hoped it might be so. It did not seem possible that old Job could sit there by the fire, spelling out the words of his Bible, then lay the grand old Book aside to go out robbing and killing.”
Then the girl did a strange thing. Relighting her candle, she picked her way over the rocks back to the entrance to the tunnel, then slowly, with thoughtful mind and careful tread, began ascending the stone stairway. She was going back.
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime, down at the mouth of Laurel Branch, in the heart of the laurel thicket, the low murmur of voices increased in volume. They were coming—the clan was gathering. Gaunt old men with white beards were there, men who had fought in the Civil War; middle-aged men who had packed a gun in the Anson-Rankin feud of twenty years before; and beardless boys who had never fired a shot except at squirrel or possum. One name was on every tongue, that of Florence Ormsby.
As for Florence, while the night shadows darkened she was making her way down the mountain trail, back to the cabin of old Job, the one-armed giant.
Once there, she threw off her hat and coat and drew up a chair to the fire.
“Et?” the giant asked from his corner.
The girl shook her head.
“Want a snack?”
Another shake, then again silence.
For a long while the nickel alarm clock above the mantel raced against time and its constant tick-tick was the only sound that disturbed the Sabbath-like stillness.
At last the aged giant cleared his throat with surprising difficulty, then spoke:
“I reckon it peers plumb quare to you all that we all stay up here in these here mountains this away?”
Florence did not answer. She merely bent forward with an air of great expectancy on her face.
“Hit might be quare. Then again it mightn’t. Listen, Miss, hit’s like this.”
Then for fifteen minutes, in his inimitable mountain dialect and drawl, the old man poured into her eager ears a story of such bitter battling for life, such a tale of feud fighting, as she had never before dreamed of hearing from human lips.
There were tales of stalwart men shot down on their very doorsteps, of battles in the night, of men carried from their homes to be seen no more.
All this had happened somewhere in the mountains, back of Big Black Mountain, beyond Poor Fork, over Pine Mountain, then back and still back.
When there remained but a remnant of what had once been a powerful family, the old giant, having heard of this vacant land at the head of Laurel Branch, had at last persuaded his followers to come here to live. And that there might be no more battles and bloodshed, they had shut themselves completely out from other people of the mountains. Only by a secret passage had they come and gone, to trade and barter in the valley below.
How strange life is! Even as this old man was telling of their long search for peace and how at last they had found it, forty men and boys, grim, determined mountain folks with rifles in hand, were marching upon the stone gateway which had heretofore held them back. It was Ransom Turner’s clan.
“And what’s this I hearn tell about?” the old giant exclaimed in a rumbling tone of anger. “What about them sorry people at the mouth of the crick takin’ you up fer gun totin’?”
Florence started. So intense had been her interest in the story that she had quite forgotten her own troubles.
“They—they’re to try me to-morrow,” she faltered.
“Fer gun totin’?”
“Yes.”
“A woman? Fer gun totin’!” he mused. “Mounting folks have come tew that!
“And this ’lection, this school ’lection,” he rumbled with a sudden change of subject. “How do you reckon about that?”
“That is to-morrow, too, and it’s lost.”
“So I hearn tell,” the old man mused. “So I hearn tell. But you can’t always reckon right about these here things, kin you?”
There was almost jocular freedom in the old man’s tones, something quite different from his Moses-like dignity of other times.
Again his tone changed. It was tender now.
“You’ve been mighty nice and a right smart help to us with little Hallie. I reckon she’s might nigh well now. I reckon as how you might—”
The old man paused as if reluctant to say the words that had forced their way to his lips. Leaving the sentence unfinished, he fumbled about in the corner for a poker. Having found it, he gave the fire such a jabbing as sent the sparks dancing by thousands up the chimney.
There were watchers who saw those sparks soaring skyward and wondered at them—forty watchers, the men of Ransom Turner’s clan.
At that very moment, too, the guard behind the stone gateway, catching the shuffle of feet behind the thicket of paw-paws that grew just outside the gate, caught his breath hard and, shifting his rifle to the other arm, dropped back into the deeper shadows.
“As I was about to remark,” the old man turned to Florence with a look of resolution on his face, “’t’ain’t no mite o’ sense in keepin’ you here, not narry ’nother minute. There’s little Hallie, she’s might nigh well. There’s that sorry trial to-morrow, an’ that ’lection. They’ll be ailing fer you down there at the mouth of the creek, plumb ailin’, so it’s fittin’ that you’d go. You tell Zeb Howard down thar by the gate that I sent you, and I reckon he’ll let you by.”
Florence caught her breath. She had heard the old man’s story. She was free. She might go. For a moment, as a wild bird, made captive for a day and then set free hesitates before his first free flight, she sat there in silence. Then, as if impelled by the sense of impending peril and a great need, she rose and hurried away.
Need enough there was, too. Her fleet feet could not cover that distance too quickly, for at that moment hot words were passing thick and fast before the stone gateway.
As she paused in her sudden flight she caught the sound of these angry voices. At first indistinct, then growing louder as she rounded a curve, she caught fragments of sentences:
“Narry a step.”—“Hit are!”—“Hit are not!”—“Drop down the barrel of that ar gun!”—“Hit’s plumb unnatural!”
Then, having caught a hint of the meaning of it all, she paused to strain her ears to catch the lowest word. At that moment there came the ominous click of a cartridge being thrown into its place in a rifle barrel. This sound came from within the gate.
“The guard,” she whispered.
“I tell you all plain,” there came from the same spot a second later, “we all don’t mean you all narry bit of harm. You all go on back down that crick. The land down thar belongs to you all. Up here it’s ourn. Don’t let’s have any trouble.”
“’An’ I’m tellin’ you, stranger,” came in an equally insistent voice, “we all are goin’ through. You are got someone up that we want and are goin’ to git!”
“Hain’t narry one up yonder that’s not aimin’ to stay.”
“Come on, boys!” Florence caught these words spoken in low tones by a voice that sounded familiar. The voice was terrifying in its seriousness. “We got to go in thar. Hain’t no other way. When I say the word start comin’ on an’ firin’ as you come. He can’t git all of us. Mebby he won’t get airy one. ’T’ain’t no use a talkin’ to him nohow.”
Florence caught her breath. Her heart paused for a second, then went racing. Her knees trembled. She had heard much of mountain feud fights. Now she was about to witness one. Worse than that, she must be directly in the path of the bullets. At realization of this she wanted to flee, but her feet would not obey her. So there she stood as if rooted to the spot.
Though her feet were still, her brain was racing. She had recognized the voice of the last speaker, Ransom Turner. A good man does not start a feud fight over a trifle. Why had they come? Who was this person they had come to demand? Was it a friend, or some outlaw fleeing from justice? She did not have long to wait.
“Just a minute, strangers,” came in calm tones from within the gates. “You kin get me maybe—seem’s how there’s a army of you—but count on it, I’ll get a lot of you first. I’m the shootinest man as I reckon has most ever made a crop on Laurel Branch. But I’m plumb peaceably minded, too. Hain’t rarin’ up fer no killin’. Now what I wants to know is, who might that air person be that you all come after?”
“You know well enough,” drawled Ransom Turner. “But so’s you’ll know agin’, I’ll tell you. Hit’s our teacher, Florence Ormsby.”
Florence Ormsby! The girl’s own name sounded strange to her. So they were risking their lives to save her! And she was an outsider! A great wave of dizziness came over her. She fought it off. She tried to speak. Her tongue clung to the roof of her mouth. Powerless to move, she stood there gasping.
“Come on, boys! ’T’ain’t no use foolin’ further.”
The grim tones of the doughty little leader loosed the girl’s tongue. Then, with tones that were little less than shrieks, she cried:
“Ransom! Ransom Turner! Don’t! Don’t do it! I’m here. It’s all right. I’m coming out.”
After this shouted speech that awoke shrill echoes along the mountain side, there fell a moment of breathless silence, such a silence as is perhaps seldom felt save on a battlefield after the declaration of a truce.
Then, in a tone that told of deeper emotional struggle, there came from Ransom Turner’s lips:
“Are you shore, Miss Florence? Are hit all right?”
“Quite all right,” she said in as steady a tone as she could command. “See! I am coming down.”
Moving quietly, she passed the last tall pine, the last clump of rhododendrons within the gate, then the massive portals, and a moment later found herself among her own people, free.
Free! How good it seemed! And yet, as between two silent mountaineers she walked back to the settlement and the whipsawed house, she felt the burdens of these simple people come back to her shoulders like a crushing weight.
“To-morrow,” she whispered. “The trial and the election, and then what?”
Later that night, after a joyous reunion and a splendid supper in the whipsawed cabin, she lay once more in her own bed, staring up at the ceiling where the flashes of a dying fire played. Then it was that she noted something strange. The board they had once taken from the ceiling that they might get into the attic had been once more removed, then replaced. She knew this, for this time it had been put back with the ends reversed.
Vaguely her mind played with this thought. Who had been up there? What had they found? Georgia gold? Confederate gold?
She wondered about the election; her trial; Bud Wax. Wondered a little about Marion, who had gone down the branch to stay all night with Patience Madden, the oldest girl in their school. Was she sleeping safely in Patience’s cabin? In this strange community no one seemed quite safe.
She wondered a little about the deed for the Powell coal land and the commission they were to receive—sometime. When would that be? She wondered if she would ever see any of the men who had kidnapped her. Her mental picture of them was very vivid.
“If I ever saw them again I would know them,” she told herself.
At that she turned over and fell asleep.
The adventures of the night for Florence were done; for Marion they were now about to begin.
Marion was wide awake. She lay beneath home-woven blankets in Patience Madden’s cabin. The room was dark. It was night; time for sleep. The mountain side was very still. Even the stream, Pounding Mill Creek, tumbling down Little Black Mountain, murmured softly.
“I should sleep,” she told herself. “To-morrow is the big day. Election. Trial. One big day. Twenty-for hours must decide all.”
Do coming events truly cast their shadows before them, and do their shadows disturb us, rob us of our sleep? However that may be, Marion could not sleep.
At last, rising noiselessly, for Patience slept peacefully in the narrow bed next to her own, she threw a blanket over her shoulders and stole out upon the porch. Here she dropped into a rustic chair to sit staring dreamily at the moon.
“Old moon,” she whispered, “what do you see to-night?”
Had the moon answered her question she would have sprung to her feet in alarm. As it was, she sat quite still, sat there until with a sudden start she caught the slow and steady tramp of horses on the trail below.
“Who—who can that be?” she whispered as she shrank far back into the shadows.
She was soon enough to know. Two horses swung around a curve in the trail not five rods from the cabin. At that instant the moon, coming out from behind a filmy cloud, shone full upon them.
“A tall slim man and a short one,” she thought to herself. “Sounds vaguely familiar. Where have I—” She started suddenly. Florence had told her of them. These were the men who had held her prisoner when she had gone to the back of Pine Mountain to get an option on the Powell coal tract.
A second shock following this one came near knocking her from her chair. The tall man carried a bundle—something wrapped in a blanket.
“A child,” she whispered. A chill ran up her spine. She hardly knew why.
A second later she knew. As the horses wheeled sharply to avoid a great boulder that lay against the trail, the face of the child, lighted up by the moon, became plainly visible.
“Little Hallie!” Marion exclaimed under her breath.
In an instant she was out of her chair and in the room shaking the mountain girl and whispering hoarsely:
“Patience! Patience! Wake up! They’ve kidnapped little Hallie!”
“Wha—where? Why?” the mountain girl stammered, still half asleep.
Sinking down upon the bed and burying her face in her hands, Marion tried to think. Little Hallie had been kidnapped. Why? For ransom? Nothing seemed more absurd. Who would pay? The child had been poorly dressed when she was brought to their cabin.
“And yet,” Marion thought, “what do we really know of her?”
She caught herself short up. This was no time for speculation. What was to be done? There were no men in the cabin. She was alone with the sixteen year old mountain girl. The nearest cabin was a half mile down the creek.
“Patience,” she said suddenly, “there are no men here to follow them. They have kidnapped little Hallie. They can’t mean her any good. Shall we go?”
For answer the mountain girl sprang out of the room and went racing down the stairs.
A lamp was lighted. Rough, serviceable garments of khaki were scrambled into, shoes were hurriedly laced. They were ready to go when Marion thought of food. They might be away for hours, perhaps days.
Snatching down a bag she raced to the kitchen, there to fill the bag with corn pone, cold sweet potatoes, crackers, cookies and cheese.
When she returned, to her astonishment she found Patience calmly ramming home a charge in the long-barreled squirrel rifle which had hung over the fireplace.
“Will—will it shoot?” she faltered.
“Awful straight.”
“Can you shoot it?”
The mountain girl gave her a look of scorn. “In the mountains everyone shoots.”
“Good! I’m glad!” There was warmth in the girl’s tone. There was comfort in knowing that though there was no man in their party, there was a rifle carried by a girl who knew well how to handle it.
A moment more and they were feeling the damp night air upon their cheeks. It was a narrow trail they were following. Now and then as they hurried forward the dew drenched branch of dogwood or rhododendron slapped them full in the face. Here and there some wild creature, frightened from the trail, went bounding away into the bush.
It was spooky enough, this climbing higher and higher up the side of Little Black Mountain in the dead of night. Spooky and dangerous, too. What if those men, catching the sound of their footsteps behind them, should draw aside from the trail and waylay them? Marion dared not dwell on this. One thing was uppermost in her mind—the saving of Little Hallie. How was this to be done? She could not tell. The answer would be there when the time came. At all hazards the men must be followed.
So, drenched by dripping dew, torn at by out-reaching brambles, catching the faint tinge of waters in the gulch far below, they ascended higher and higher until at last they had reached the crest.
“See!” whispered Patience as they rested here. “There are Hallie’s footprints!”
It was true. Having dismounted, that they might rest their tired muscles, the men had lifted the child to the ground.
Marion found comfort in this. “They can’t be entirely bad,” she told herself. “They think of the child’s comfort.”
A moment’s rest, and they were away along the trail that followed the ridge for some distance.
They marched along in silence until they came to the spot where the trail left the ridge to plunge down the steep slope on the other side.
“Listen!” Patience whispered, suddenly gripping her companion’s arm.
As they listened, breathless, from somewhere far below there came the deep, drawn-out bay of a hound.
“See!” exclaimed the mountain girl, pointing to the ground. Where the trail left the ridge, a fresh track had joined that of the kidnappers. It was the trail of a man and two huge dogs.
“Hounds!” whispered Patience. “They have hounds. Against these we have no chance. They will smell us a long way off. They will come after us. I can shoot but one. The other—” she paused to shudder.
“And yet we must go on! Think of little Hallie!”
“Yes,” said the brave mountain girl, “we must go on!” Turning, she led the way down the mountain.
Climbing up the mountain side without making a sound had not been easy. Going down it was doubly difficult. Now a rock, slipping from a ledge at the side of the trail, went crashing down through the sloping forest. Now a pebble, rolling beneath Marion’s foot, sent her with a thud to the ground. And now the dead branch of a tree, clung to for a second’s rest, gave way with a screaming snap that must have been heard a mile away.
A half mile down the trail they came upon a cabin. A mere shack built of logs with a low chimney, with one door and no windows, it could hardly be called a human habitation.
Yet there were people sleeping here, Marion did not doubt.
“Sha—shall we?” she whispered as she stood near the door.
“’T’wouldn’t do narry bit o’ good. No ’count folks,” whispered Patience.
They were about to pass on when the rattle of a chain caused Marion to start and shudder.
“Coon, pet coon,” whispered the mountain girl, pointing to a dark corner where a coon, chained to a low shrub, was standing on his haunches and eyeing them curiously.
“That coon,” whispered Patience slowly, “might be some good to us.”
Marion did not see how it possibly could, but she did not answer.
As they passed on down the trail Patience paused often to study the hoof marks in the soft earth. Once, at the juncture of a small stream with the larger creek, she paused for some time, only to shake her head and murmur:
“No, they have gone on down.”
At the next turn she paused again. This time she did not go on, but, pointing up a grass grown trail to the left, said.
“They’re gone up to yonder clearin’. Camp there, I reckon. Wish we had that coon.”
“Why? What would we—”
But Patience was already too far up the new trail to catch Marion’s whispered question.
As they rounded a clump of pawpaws Patience whispered: “They’re camped up yonder. I saw the light of their fire.”
“Good!” whispered Marion. “Perhaps we can turn the tables and steal her back.”
“But the hounds!” said Patience.
“Oh yes, the hounds,” Marion repeated wearily.
“That coon, now,” said Patience thoughtfully, “he might be a heap of help to us.”
“How?” said Marion.
Patience did not reply. When she at last spoke, it was to suggest that they make their way up the far side of the slope that they might be sure the ones they followed were camping there. Wearily they followed the creek and at last began the ascent.
Not a word was spoken as they trudged cautiously forward. Every care was taken not to cause the least sound. Hounds, they knew all too well, have sharp ears. So, darting from bush to bush and from tree to tree, they came at last to a spot directly over a cliff where, by parting branches, they might get a fair view of the deserted cabin and the clearing.
“Someone there,” whispered Marion. “See! There’s a wisp of smoke curling from the chimney.”
For a time they sat silently intent.
Suddenly Marion’s heart stopped beating! Had she caught the low cry of a child? Yes, there it was again.
“Hallie,” she whispered, springing to her feet. “I must go to her.”
“No! No!” Patience whispered tensely. “They are bad men. They would kill you.”