An Indiana Girl/Chapter 11

The debate between Weller and his companions, inspired at the time by the inscrutability of the woods, was of even shorter duration than the one held upon his farm at the beginning of the search, and they climbed the fence with weakened determination as Doles again took the lead.

On and on the tracks led them. A straight line—that bespoke familiarity with the environment in the mind of their maker, and each one of the party felt within himself a growing conviction that the missing Snellins would be found at the end of their search. They grew eager as they neared the house, excitement lending volume to their voices; but, as they arrived within the yard and came upon the confusing tracks, they halted and drew together again for another conference.

"He's not gone inside, sure," said Orrig, deductively. "Fer they ain't any tracks up t' th' door!"

"Then Brandt don't know nothin' of it," John Carey said.

"Who thought he did?" Orrig asked contemptuously, though this idea suggested another to him immediately.

"I 'low I'll call Brandt," he added, positiveness lacking in his voice, while he looked about him hoping for some expressed support.

"Yes-s, call him," they all said quickly.

"I would, only I don't want t' scare her," he replied considerately.

"Then make some other kind o' noise that'll wake him," suggested Carey readily.

"What a fool you be!" said Doles. "Don't you suppose thet thet 'd scare her wuss'n th' other?"

"Well, I don't know," Carey responded meekly. "What can we do?"

"Carey, you're wuss an' wuss," Doles began, when the door opened and Brandt stood in the light, with his daughter close behind him, both shading their eyes and peering into the darkness.

"What's wrong here?" he asked sternly.

"Say, Brandt, here's Doles an' me an' some others," said Orrig confusedly.

"Is that so?" he replied, relievedly. "But, why don't you come in and tell me what is up to bring you all away out here to-night?"

"No, we want you to come out," said Doles.

The old man's brow knitted in perplexity as he returned inside for his coat and hat, and Virgie still stood in the doorway endeavoring to distinguish the visitors through the darkness. When her father reappeared she too went after her outer wraps, shortly joining the group.

"Snellins, you say?" she heard her father repeat as she came upon the scene of action.

"Mebbe, an' mebbe not," said Orrig; "but it's mighty mysterious all the same that the tracks should lead into your yard an' then end up here."

"But where do they end?" Brandt asked, much concerned.

"Over there," said several in chorus.

"We kep' offen 'em on purpose," Orrig explained.

"Loan me a lantern?" Brandt said, as he led the way, and, scrutinizing the prints carefully, he followed their circles until they ended at the tree trunk.

"This looks like the end of it," he said seriously, in constant fear, lest his discovery might prove an unpleasant one.

"Now we'll see what we'll see," Doles remarked, with a confident wag of his head, to which they all chuckled expectantly.

The tree was barren of leaves, and the combined light from the lanterns permeated its every crotch, yet no man nor beast was brought to view. Brandt looked reluctantly at first, then more carefully. Seeing nothing he looked across into the faces of those opposite him, and, observing only expressions of bewilderment, began to appreciate the ludicrousness of the situation, and smiled. Doles sidled around to where Carey stood, first looking into his face for a sign of discovery, then turning his own gaze upward for another long search. The dog stood on his hind legs, and, with one foot against the trunk, barked loudly into the tree.

"Blooch says he went up all right, drat him!" said Weller, coming to where he could get his hound's view, though he soon relinquished it, being none the wiser.

"Barkin' up the wrong tree," said Doles, with painful sobriety, unable to miss the opportunity for a joke. His words were followed by a hearty laugh. Weller looked foolish and kicked the dog.

"Must a-cut his suspenders an' went straight up," said Carey, beginning to laugh again.

"If this ain't the beatenest, then I don't know!" Orrig observed to Virgie, to which she inclined her head slightly and asked of her father:

"How do you explain it?"

Brandt made a trip around the farthest limits of the tree in the hope of finding somewhere a path that would evidence a man's departure, but, seeing none, he replied perplexedly:

"Too much for me—too much for me. I cannot understand it!"

They were all completely baffled, and, as the ludicrous outcome of their search dawned upon them, they grew more anxious to solve the mystery, thinking meantime of their own discomfiture when the impossible tale became noised about and its truth questioned. With renewed care they again held their lanterns high above their heads and scanned every nook and corner of the tree only to reach the same results.

Kent could not see them from where he crouched, but he could easily follow their motions and picture their amazement from the fragments of conversation that reached him. From fear he came to silent enjoyment of the situation, laughing inwardly with the greatest satisfaction at having outwitted them.

Virgie had said little through it all, rather giving her thoughts to the unraveling of the burl, and at the end, as the group drew over to the opposite side of the tree for a last discussion, she stood by the hen-house in deepest reasoning.

Kent heard the voices diminishing, and, supposing the men had gone, changed from his strained position, moving closer to the door to catch their last words. Again there was a disturbed cackling as his hands rustled the heavy paper that lined the wall. Then all was still as he settled for another and more trying wait.

The smothered cackling jarred Virgie into a quick and surprised understanding. As Kent's hands slipped over the paper she almost cried out at her discovery. Running to the men hurriedly she found them still excitedly discussing their mystification. Their inattention gave her an instant for recovery, and in that instant her inclination changed inexplicably, and she shut her mouth tightly until she could regain her self-control.

Brandt took the men indoors, and while the talk ran high Virgie nervously served them food and drink. They looked to their host for the best explanation, but he was more mystified than they, since no supernatural powers entered into his calculations. Virgie watched her father's face in doubt and indecision. She wished to end his perplexity and unburden herself of the responsibility she now bore. But, reasoning that Snellins might fare badly if discovered in his doubtful position, she was distressed with her attitude between the two.

Kent dared not move for fear of being overtaken. Therefore he waited, cold and impatient, for his pursuers to take their leave. All the humor was now gone out of the situation for him, as his feet stung painfully and he found himself shaking with increasing chills. The hour seemed interminable, but at last it passed and the townsmen bid Brandt good-night with their final jokes. Kent heard the doors close. The voices died off into nothingness, and he drew himself up, disregarding without fear the murmurs about his head.

Brandt kissed his daughter and, with a last word, shut himself within his study. Virgie waited for an instant to assure herself that he had become absorbed, and with a hurried swing she re-donned her cloak, slipped out of the house and took up a position beside the gate. One minute passed, then another, and her heart beat with frightful energy. With the dying away of the men's voices came the sounds that she had expected, and they startled her even more than they had done before. Slowly the door opened within the inclosure, and the cackling burst out distinctly until the door swung back and muffled it again. Her heart stopped completely as she stood in breathless expectancy. Another pause and the high fence gate moved slowly outward, an inch at a time, and she felt the closeness of the man. She watched him step out onto the walk and move cautiously away. She had been unobserved, and Kent, in consequence, slipped away with an elation born of successfully eluding his followers. Virgie cared not then that he had failed to see her. She at first underwent a pang of disappointment in not seeing Snellins, but this quickly changed to amazement on half recognizing the intruder. Close to the fence he moved in guilty cautiousness, but once he had reached the gate he struck out with a hasty stride that was free of restraint. She observed his every motion with greatest care, at first inclined to doubt her own faculties. Waiting excitedly for him to come into better view, she stood hoping against hope for a proof of mistaken identity, but when he came to a partially natural attitude his familiar walk grew positive, and she caught her breath quickly in keenest shame.

Try as she would she could find no other plausible reason as the cause of his visit than its having been one to herself, and vaguely she associated his proposal with this his first return since that event. Revolving the possible excuses in her troubled mind as she slowly returned indoors, she felt herself participating in the disgrace, and a shadow was over her heart that she should be a cause for all these supposed doings of his that were so mysterious and contemptible. Naturally enough Kent's visit served as a solution of all the strange happenings that had gone before and about which the townspeople were intensely and interestedly mystified. Soon she left off the stumbling over reasons for his appearance to-night and the associating of motives for the other mysteries that had come to puzzle and depress.

"Oh! what can it all mean?" she asked herself. "What have I done to make him act so? He is disgracing himself and the time has gone by for me to help him. He has made that impossible. Poor Royal!" she ended, over and over again, as each exploration into these things brought her back to the humiliating end he must soon reach, and her whole tender regard for his well-being lived anew with unselfish overwhelmingness.

She drifted into her small chamber and lighted the lamp by the guidance of habit, and without the aid of forethought to direct her movements, as she held to her tender reasoning.

Upon the table, where she had purposely left it that her father might see, lay a letter that had come that day from Washington and—Harvey. Picking it up slowly she held it aimlessly in her hands and looked at the postmark. The weight of its secrecy came back to her from the unhappiness its arrival had occasioned.

Gradually a chill of fear crept over her. She fought with even greater persistency against it than she had done against the recognizing of Kent a few moments before; and yet it clung—clung with all the tenacity of evil, and she was brought to confess to herself that another secret had come to make her its guardian, and this last was the knowledge that the secrecy of Kent's exploit lay within her power, either to divulge or retain, to save him from disgrace. She had kept from her father Harvey's promise to write in the thought that he might never do so. Harvey had taught her of things to her experience unknown, filling her world as no one had ever done, and in consequence her thoughts had followed him away into this unknown, returning to him with a frequency that made her blush in the consciousness of it. Hoping and dreading alternately that he might keep his promise through these weeks since he had left, she finally became convinced that he had forgotten. Then the letter came, and in the happiness of its reception she forgot for the moment the possible anger of her father in his never having been consulted. Meeting him as she returned homeward from the postoffice she withheld it from him still. All the day it had been a torment, and she took it up with a cold fear—an added responsibility.

First of all now she was perplexed to know whether or not she could protect Kent from publicity. The weight of her own wrong-doing also surged in upon her and tried her sorely. That she could not make of her father a confidant without a full explanation in the parson's case; and, again, knowing that she had gone outside his confidence by permitting Harvey to write, were either of them enough to depress her. She foresaw that he must inevitably learn the one, and perhaps both, and the sadness he would then experience caused her to bury her face in her hands in anticipated humiliation.

She sat thinking, thinking, thinking. The clock out in the kitchen gonged ten vibrating strokes. Brandt came out of the room shuffling his slippered feet along the floor. Setting the lamp he held up beside the clock, he opened its Gothic door, inserted the key in one hole after the other, turning it over patiently while he watched the changing shadows on the wall. When the springs were taut he laid the key carefully within the case, closed the door and, taking up the lamp again, returned to his room and rest.

Virgie listened intently to his movements with a feeling of security, following him by the familiar sound until he had reclosed his own door, and then she returned to her thoughts with a quick resolve.

"Father—father!" she said, in mute supplication. "Oh! why have I not told him before? Dear old father!" And her face slowly relaxed into a smile of happy relief, as she felt the closeness of the morning, on which she would unburden her mind to him. She held the envelope at arm's length and blinked shyly, trying to see it more clearly through her tears. Then, drawing the letter from its cover with re-assured strength in the right to have it, she read a second time, but with deeper pleasure, his words of friendliness.

As Kent neared home his high spirits fell on the change from contemplating his own escape to the thought of the failure in his errand. With the return to thoughts of Snellins he was sick and careworn, and his feet lagged from over-exertion. He walked dejectedly up the path to his study door, and there he turned and looked back along the street, whence there came no signs of life to disturb his musings. Quickly inserting a key he let himself in and closed the door softly. A stream of light penetrated the hangings from the interior room. Seeing it he stopped suddenly with a quick fear lest the voices that came from the next room in unintelligible whispers boded ill.

His study chairs and table were still in confusion from the disturbance of the early evening, but in anxious dread he forgot their chaotic state, moving across toward the door unobservedly. There was no light in his room to guide his movements, and two steps brought him down with a great clatter in the midst of a group of overturned furniture.

Martin, who had been listening with intense awe to Landy in the adjoining room, screamed nervously under her breath, but Landy took up the lamp, his face set in angry determination, and stepped into the doorway between the portieres.

"It's you, parson?" he said, in astonishment. "I thought it was 'Snell,' though I didn't see how it could be, seein' as how I jest got through lockin' him in again."

"No! you have not brought him back again?" Kent exclaimed delightedly, for the time forgetting to nurse his wounded knee as he smiled doubtfully and scrutinized the speaker's face.

"Yes, I hev," responded Landy, with ill-concealed pride. "But, then, shucks, it wuz easy 'nough. All I had t' do wuz jest t' foller his tracks, an' I had him."

Martin had remained quietly in the outer room riveted to her chair with fright, but, hearing only familiar voices and no signs of a disturbance, she came to the door and cautiously protruded her head within. Landy re-assured her readily, and no sooner had she entered than she began in excited admiration:

"Wan't it grand, parson, an' him doin' it all by his ownself, or did you help him?" she asked, her face falling with sudden doubt.

"Tell me about it?" said Kent eagerly. "Is he in the house? How did you do it? Where did you find him? You cannot imagine how relieved I am."

To the first question Landy nodded assent, but the ensuing volley left him embarrassed, and Martin, seeing her opportunity, began hastily:

"Landy tracked him in the snow. Wasn't that smart, though?" she asked, smiling proudly at her future partner.

"Well, partly yes and partly no. In his case it was clever enough, but in some others it is not always so," Kent replied, smiling as he cast a backward glance over his own experience of the evening. "But, never mind, Martin, let Landy tell me himself."

Martin was about to begin again, but she stopped hesitatingly and turned to Landy, urging him to speak by her expressions of sympathetic expectancy.

"Well, they ain't much t' tell, leastwise about my part o' it, 'cause I jest follered him t' where he went, an' when I asked him t' come back he come," said Landy modestly. With renewed interest, aided by Martin's nervous anticipation, he continued: "I follered him by th' snow over 'cross Hege's, an' down th' river-bend a ways. Then he'd struck off straight fer Nigger Hill, an' when I seen thet I picked up some, not knowin' what t' make o' th' way he wuz goin' an' worryin' t' myself, when all at once I run plumb onto him a-pullin' away at some big rocks. He stopped when he seen me an' frowned, an' then he went t' work again as if I wan't anythin' but a tree er somethin', an' I didn't move a step nearer. Bime-by he stops again an' looks fretful at the hole he's made, an' I goes t' come closer t' him, when he sets t' diggin' again with all-fired strength, workin' faster an' faster. After he gets th' big stones cleared off he throws out dozens o' little fellers that looked round like they'd been tuk from th' creek, an' all one size, an' then I sets in an' he'ps him till I wuz nigh wore out."

"Well, what then?" Kent asked, too impatient to wait over the pause silently, as Landy looked at Martin, who in turn was beaming upon the parson.

Casting one glance toward Landy, who smiled assent, she, with a triumphant flourish, drew from the depths of her capacious skirt pocket a package that was wrapped about with a towel. Undoing this she disclosed a leather receptable about the size and shape of a banker's note wallet. It was covered with mould and dirt; the wire that bound it was not at first discernible, and as Kent took it in his hand he turned it over critically, looking for an opening, while his companions watched his face exultantly.

"This is strange!" he said at last. "Most clumsily made. Probably constructed it himself. Let me have your knife?" he said to Landy, with sudden resolve, and after removing the wire he slipped the point of the blade in at one end and slit the package all the way across its edge.

His companions drew closer with eager curiosity, and, as a portion of the contents fell out upon the table, they gave vent to exclamations of surprise.

Kent reached for the three gold coins, and, holding them in the palm of his hand, leaned forward to the light to better judge of their genuineness. They were spotted with a dull coating of green where they had laid in contact with their receptacle, but for all that their yellow glint proclaimed their virginity. He turned his attention to the wallet again, and, working it open, carefully drew forth the package of bills that it contained. The rubber band that had once held them intact was now in separate, shrunken bits glued to the surface, and on the bottom, as he turned it over, Kent's eye was attracted by a memorandum on a yellow slip, both paper and ink bearing evidence of their long burying. Scrutinizing this closely he could only decipher the one portion of writing that had been beneath the fold of the paper, and from this—a set of figures—he reached the conclusion that the total was one that should correspond with the deposit. Laying the bills over his knee he counted them carefully. Adding the three gold pieces his computation was in exact accord with that of the memorandum.

"One hundred and thirty-five dollars," he said aloud, and, turning to the eager watchers, he asked, "What do you think we had best do with it until he needs it again?"

"Law! I don't know," said Martin confusedly. "You keep it for him. He don't need it now anyway."

"I hardly know myself what would be best to do with it," Kent said. "But, never mind, it is all right for the present. Snellins is too, you say. That's good. I am sure we have much to be thankful for. Perhaps you two have entirely forgotten about to-morrow though. You have been so unselfishly full of poor 'Snell's' troubles. Thanksgiving Day is almost upon us, and I have made no preparation for it, so I am going to ask that you give me a chance now."

Landy was confused by this kindly reminder of their wedding day. Martin looked from him to Kent apologetically, assisting him to an ungraceful exit, after which she "tidied up a bit," humming joyously until she sang herself out of the room to her own domain and happy anticipations.

Kent struggled along with his rebellious thoughts, but all attempts to place them on the morrow were ineffectual. He restrained his impulses stubbornly for a time, but eventually yielded. He took up the wallet and gradually came under the full spell of its mysterious influence. Long into the night he struggled with the problem of Snellins' doings, fitting circumstance into circumstance with infinite care, hoping thus to reach the end over these assembled parts, but there were too many links missing for him to reach a satisfactory solution.