The Merry Anne

“What do you think, Bill?”

Instead of replying, the special agent turned abruptly and walked away through the brush. He soon disappeared, but his assistant could hear him thrashing along. In a few moments he returned, and without a word set about building a fire. They all lent a hand, and soon were sitting around the blaze, moody and silent.

“Say, boys,” – it was Smiley speaking up, – “I have an idea. Let me take your compass a minute, Beveridge.”

There was no reply. Smiley thought he had not been understood. “Let’s have your compass, Beveridge.”

Then the special agent looked up. “If you can find it, you’re welcome to it,” he said. “Why, you haven’t lost it?”

“If you’ve got to know, I’ve thrown it.”

“The – you have!”

A moment’s silence. Somewhere off in the wilderness a twig crackled, and they all started. Harper’s scalp tingled during the long stillness that followed the sound.

“What did you do that for?” asked Smiley. “Because we’re sitting at this moment within a hundred feet of where we sat at three o’clock this afternoon.”

After this the silence grew unbearable. “I don’t know how you fellows feel,” said Wilson, “but I’m thirsty clear down to my toes. If there’s any water around here, I’m going to find it.” He drew a blazing pine knot from the fire and started off.

“Look out you don’t set the woods afire,” growled Beveridge.

For five minutes – long minutes – the three sat there and waited. Then they heard him approaching, and saw his light flickering between the trees. He came into the firelight, and paused, looking from one to another with a curious expression. It almost seemed that he was veiling a smile.

“Come this way,” he finally said. And they got up and filed after him. He led them a short fifty yards, and paused. They stood on the edge of a clearing. A few rods away they saw a story-and-a-half farm-house, with a light in the kitchen window. Farther off loomed the outline of a large barn. They stumbled on, and found midway between the two buildings a well with a bucket worked by a crank and chain.

They could not speak; they looked at one another and grinned foolishly. Then Beveridge reached for the crank, but Dick caught his arm.

“Hold on there, Bill,” he said fervently, drawing a small flask from his hip pocket, “you wouldn’t spoil a thirst like this with water?”

“You don’t mean to say that you’ve had this in your clothes all along?” said Beveridge.

“Yes. I thought from the way things were going we might need it more to-morrow than to-day.”

There was a general smacking of lips as the flask went around. Then they paused and looked at the house.

“Well,” observed Beveridge, “I’m not sure that I want to be told where we are – but here goes!” And he walked slowly toward the kitchen door, sweeping his eyes about the farmyard and taking in all that could be seen in the darkness. At his knock there was a noise in the kitchen, – the sound of a chair scraping, – and the door was opened a very little way.

“How are you?” began the special agent.

The farmer, for it was he who blocked the doorway, merely looked suspiciously out.

“We’re a camping party, Mr. – Mr. – ”

“Lindquist’s my name.” His voice was thin and peevish, a fit voice for such a thin, small man.

“ – Mr. Lindquist, and we seem to have lost our way. Can you take us in and give us a little something to eat?”

“Why, I don’t know’s I could. How many is there of you?”

“Four.”

“You say you’re campers?”

“That’s what we are.”

“Is your tent near by?”

“Blest if we know. If we did, we shouldn’t be here.”

It was plain to the three of them, standing back in the dark, that Beveridge, for reasons of his own, was moving very cautiously, and equally plain that the little man had some reason for being cautious too. It was hard to think that any honest farmer, living so lonely a life, would be so downright inhospitable.

“And you say you want something to

“Well, now,” – there was no trace of impatience in the special agent’s voice, – “that’s just as you like. We don’t want to impose on you; and of course we’re more than willing to pay for what we get.”

“Well, I dunno. I s’pose you might come in. Maybe we’ve got a little bread and milk.”

The kitchen was not a large room. The floor was bare, as were the walls, saving a few county-fair advertisements in the form of colored lithographs. A thin, colorless, dulleyed little woman was seated beside a pine table, sewing by the light of a kerosene lamp. The third member of the family, a boy of fourteen, did not appear until a moment later. When the sound of the opening door reached his ears, he was lying flat on his bed, chin propped on hands, feverishly boring through a small volume in a flashy paper binding.

Beveridge, as they all found seats, was taking in the farmer, noting his shifting eyes, and his clothes, which were nothing more than a suit of torn overalls.

“Diana,” said Lindquist, “you might give these young men some bread and milk.”

His wife laid aside her sewing without a word, and went to the pantry.

“Now,” began Beveridge, “I suppose we ought to find out where we are.”

“What’s that?”

“Where are we, Mr. Lindquist? What’s the nearest town?”

“The nearest town, you said?”

“Yes.”

“Why, Ramsey, I guess, or – ”

“Or – what?”

“Or – Spencer’s place.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” Beveridge turned to his companions, adding, “You see, we’ve got back near the lake.”

At the sound of strange voices, the boy came down the stairs and stood in a corner, gazing at the strangers, and holding his book behind him.

“How far off is the Lake, Mr. Lindquist?”

“How – what’s that you say?”

“How far off is the Lake?”

“What Lake?”

“Lake Huron, of course.”

“Lake Huron? – Oh, twenty, – twenty-two mile.”

“That’s another story!” exclaimed Wilson. But Beveridge, evidently fearing his assistant’s tongue, gave him a look that quieted him. The faces of the four travellers all showed relief.

The bread and milk were ready now, and they fell to, joking and laughing as heartily as if their only care had been a camp outfit somewhere in the woods; but all the time the three were watching Beveridge, awaiting his next move. It came, finally, when the last crumb of bread had disappeared and the plates had been pushed back.

“Now, Mr. Lindquist,” said Beveridge, “it’s getting on pretty late in the evening, and we’re tired. Can’t you put us up for the night? Not in the house – I’d hardly ask that – but out in the barn, say?” As he spoke he laid a two-dollar bill on the table and pushed it over close to the farmer’s hand.

“Well, I dunno.” For a moment the bill lay there between their two hands, then Lindquist’s nervous fingers slowly closed over it. “I suppose you could sleep out there.”

“That’s first-rate. We ‘ll go right out if you don’t mind. You needn’t bother about coming. Just let your boy there bring a lantern and show us where to go.”

Lindquist did not take to this. “Axel,” he said, “you go up to bed. Mind, now!” Then he lighted the lantern and led the way to the barn. When he had left them, tumbled about on the fragrant hay, Smiley spoke up. “Well, Beveridge, what next?”

“Didn’t he lock the door just then?”

“Yes,” said Harper, “I’m sure I heard it. I ‘ll go and see.”

Slowly he descended, and felt his way across the floor, returning with the report that the door was fast.

“Now, boys, I ‘ll tell you,” said Beveridge. “We ‘ll take a little rest. It’s all right as long as one of us is awake. Before the night’s over we’ve got to get hold of that boy, but we won’t make a disturbance yet.”

“Oh,” cried Dick, a flood of light breaking in on his understanding, “it’s the boy you’re after.”

“Yes, it’s the boy, of course. I’ve had to sit down a good many times in my life and thank the Lord for my luck, but this beats it all.”

“Are you sure, though, that they went through here?”

“Am I sure? Could you look at the old man and ask me that? What I’d like to know is how far off they are just now.”

“Lindquist doesn’t look as if he’d tell.”

“Oh, no; he won’t tell.”

“Would it do any good to make him?”

“Put on a little pressure, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think so. He’d lie to me, and we wouldn’t have any way of knowing the difference. The boy is our game.”

“Why not get him now? We could break out of here easy enough.”

“No, Smiley, you’re a little off the track there. He must tell us on the sly. Don’t you see, he’s a good deal more afraid of his father than he is of us. If we aren’t careful, we ‘ll have him lying too.”

“Have you thought of the old lady?”

“Yes, but I’m doubtful there. She is afraid of him too. It’s more than likely that she was kept pretty much out of the way. Anyhow, her ideas would be confused.”

“But sitting up here in the haymow isn’t going to bring us any nearer to the boy.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I don’t see how.”

“Did you notice the book he was reading?”

“No, what book? I didn’t see any book.”

“I guess maybe you were right, Smiley, about your eyes being trained for sea work. Now, I ‘ll tell you what. This little rest may be the only one we’re entitled to for a day or so, and I wish you fellows would curl right up and go to sleep. I’m going to stay awake for a while. Harper, over there, is the only sensible one in the lot. He’s been asleep for ten minutes.”

“No, he ain’t,” drawled a sleepy voice.

“I can’t get comfortable,” growled Wilson. “How is a man going to sleep with this hay sticking into your ears and tickling you?”

“Next time I take you out, Bert,” said Beveridge, “I ‘ll bring along a pneumatic mattress and a portable bath-tub and a Pullman nigger to carry your things.”

“That’s all right, Bill. Wait till you try it yourself. There are spiders in the hay, millions of ‘em, – and if there’s anything I hate, it’s spiders.”

“Here,” said Harper, “take some o’ my pillow. I ain’t having no difficulty.” He threw over a roll of cloth, which Wilson, after some feeling about, found.

“Hold on, Harper, this isn’t your coat?”

“No, it’s part of a bundle of rags I found here.”

“What’s that!” Beveridge exclaimed. “A bundle of rags?”

“Feels like part of an old dress,” said Wilson.

“Give it here, Bert. I ‘ll take what you’ve got too, Harper.” With the cloth under his arm Beveridge found the ladder and made his way to the floor below. Then he lighted a match.

The others crawled to the edge of the mow and looked down into the cavernous, dimly lighted space.

“Look out you don’t set us afire, Bill.”

“Come down here, Smiley, and see what you make of this.”

It was not necessary to summon Dick twice. He swung off, hung an instant by his hands, dropped to the floor, and bent with the special agent over what seemed to be the waist and skirt of a gingham dress. The examination grew so interesting that Harper and Wilson came down the ladder and peered over Dick’s shoulders.

“You see,” said Beveridge, – “here, wait till I light another match. Take this box, Bert, will you, and keep the light going? You see, it isn’t an old dress at all. It’s rather new, in fact. Mrs. Lindquist would never have thrown it away – never in the world. Now what in the devil – what’s that, Smiley?”

“I didn’t say anything. I was just thinking – ”

“Well – what?”

“I don’t know that I could swear to it, but – you see, you can’t tell the color very well in this light.”

“Oh, it’s blue, plain enough.”

“You’re sure?”

“Perfectly.”

“Looks nearer green to me. But if it’s blue, I’ve seen it before.”

“Where?”

“The day I was at Spencer’s. There was a girl there, the old man’s sister-in-law, and she wore this dress.”

“Are you perfectly sure, Smiley?”

“Well – dresses aren’t in my line, but – yes, I’m sure. I noticed it because her eyes were blue too – and there was this white figure in it. Her name is Estelle. She waited on table, and – ”

“Go on – don’t stop.”

“Wait up,” said Wilson. “If you’ve got it identified, I’m going to quit burning up these matches. There are only about half a dozen left.”

“All right. Put it out.” And they talked on in the dark, seated, Dick and Beveridge on the tongue of a hay-wagon, Wilson on an inverted bucket, Harper on the floor.

“Why, she waited on table; and then McGlory disappeared and I had to go after him, and I found him talking to her – ”

“Hold on!” Beveridge broke in. “You say you found her and McGlory together?”

“Yes. I guess we’re thinking of the same thing. From the way they both acted, I rather guess it’s an understood thing. It wasn’t as if he had met her there by chance, not a bit of it. And I’ve been thinking since, it seems more than likely that she would go wherever he went.”

“That’s right!” Beveridge exclaimed. “I’m sure of it. I know a little something about it myself.”

“You do?”

“Yes. This McGlory has left a wife behind him in Chicago.”

“Madge, you mean?”

“Yes. The main reason he took up the offer to go out with you, Smiley, was so he could get up here and see this – what’s her name? – Estelle.”

“So there is more than a fighting chance that where she is you ‘ll find him.”

“Exactly.”

“And that means that he has been here to-day.”

“Right again.”

“Then who sailed the schooner for Canada?”

Harper, leaning forward in the dark and straining to catch every syllable of the low-pitched conversation, here gave a low gasp of sheer excitement. There had been moments – hours, even – during the day when the object of this desperate chase had seemed a far-off, imaginary thing beside the real discomforts of the tramp through the pines. But now, in this sombre place, they were plunged into the mystery of the flight, and he had been the unwitting means of deepening the mystery.

“That sort of mixes us up, Beveridge,” said Smiley.

“Never mind.” Beveridge’s voice was exultant. “We’re hot on the trail now. This taking to the woods is about the neatest thing I ever did.”

“You’re right there, Bill,” Wilson chimed in.

Until now Dick had supposed that the land chase had been entirely his own notion, but he said nothing.

“Look here, Bill,” – it was Wilson breaking the silence, – “there isn’t any use of our trying to sleep to-night. Let’s break out and run this thing down.”

“How are you going to know your way in the middle of the night?”

“Make ‘em show us.”

“Suppose you can’t make them?”

“I know – you’re still thinking about that boy. But we are no nearer him than we were an hour ago.”

“Listen a minute!”

They sat motionless. There was no sound; nothing but the heavy stillness of the night.

Wilson whispered, “Think you heard something?”

“S-sh!”

A key turned softly in the lock. Then the door opened a little way, and against the sky they could see a head. Wilson drew his revolver. Beveridge heard the hammer click, and said quietly, “Don’t be a fool, Bert. Put that thing back in your pocket.”

“Are you’s in there?” came a voice from the door.

“Yes. Come along.”

The door opened wider to admit the owner of the voice, then closed. A moment later a lantern was lighted and held up before the grinning, excited face of the farmer’s son.

“Come on, Alex. What do you want?”

The boy slowly approached until he stood before them; then he set the lantern on the floor, where it cast long shadows.

“What is it, my boy?”

Axel looked knowingly at them. “Say,” he whispered, “I know what you’s are. You’re detectives.”

“Oh, we are, are we? What makes you think that?”

“You’re detectives. I know.”

“Sit down, and talk it over. Do you smoke?”

“Can I smoke? Well, I should say I can. You just watch me.” He accepted a cigar, his first, and lighted it. “Don’t let on to Pa, will you? He’d give me – ” Unable to call up a strong enough word, the boy concluded with a grin.

“That’s all right. We know how it is ourselves. Your father has enough to worry him just about now, anyhow. Didn’t he have but the one suit of clothes?”

“Well, there was his old everyday suit, but that got tore so bad Ma said she couldn’t mend it, and there wasn’t only his Sunday suit and his work clothes left.”

“You don’t mean that he had to fight with those fellows?”

“Oh, no, – that was a long time ago. Say, this cigar is the real thing.”

“It ought to be good. It’s a fifteen-cent-straight.”

“You don’t say so!”

“I ‘ll tell you one thing, Alex.”

“My name’s Axel.”

“I ‘ll tell you one thing. Your father has made a bad mistake in allowing himself to get mixed up with these people. He is with the wrong crowd. I’m the only one that could help him out.”

The boy began to be frightened. “Oh, he ain’t mixed up in it!”

“He isn’t?”

“No. He never seen ‘em before.”

“What does he want to act this way for, then?”

“Well, you see – ”

“Now look here, my boy. The sooner we understand each other, the better. Your father has got himself into a dangerous situation. He can’t deceive me. I know all about it. Does he think he could keep me in here any longer than I want to stay by locking the door? I’m half minded to arrest him for this. He can’t do that sort o’ thing to me!”

Axel was downright frightened now. He held his cigar so long that it went out. Wilson struck a match, and lighted it for him.

“I suppose you would like me to believe that he was forced to give up his clothes?”

“Oh, he was! The fellow with the black hair – ”

“McGlory?”

“Seems to me they called him Joe.”

“That’s the same man. Go on.”

“Why, he pulled a gun, and marched Pa out here to the barn. Ma ran upstairs crying. And the lady, she was crying, too. And the dark fellow, he made the lady climb up where you was, on the hay – ”

“Yes, I know,” Beveridge interrupted, indicating the dress.

“And then he held the gun while Pa took off his Sunday suit that he’d put on because he thought they was going to be visitors, and he threw it up to the lady, and she put it on. One of the suspenders was busted, and she didn’t know how it worked, and she cried, and then Pa had to holler up how he’d fixed it with a string and you twisted the string around twice and then tied it. And then the dark fellow, he made me run in and get Pa his overhauls.”

“So they changed clothes right here, eh?”

“Yes, and the lady cried, and when she’d got all dressed in Pa’s clothes, why, she just said she wouldn’t come down. And Joe, he said she would, or he’d know the reason why. Then the others laughed some – ”

“The others!”

“Yes, and they – ”

“Hold on! How many were there in this party?”

“Why, three or four, counting in the lady.”

“Three or four! Don’t you know?”

“Well, you see, I didn’t think about counting ‘em then. What was I saying?”

“You said the others laughed.”

“Oh, yes. Not very much, you know, – just a little. Then the boss, he said – ”

“What sort of a looking man was this boss?”

“I dunno.”

“Didn’t you see him?”

“Oh, well, I – ”

“What was it he said this time?”

“Oh, – he said something to Joe about not getting excited. I guess he thought he was kind o’ mean to the lady. Anyhow, she come down after a little and kind o’ stood around behind things. She was frightened some, I guess. And then they all went off.”

“Which way?”

“I dunno. They told us we hadn’t better watch ‘em, and so I thought maybe I wouldn’t.”

“Was that the last you saw of them?”

“Well – not quite.”

“Not quite! What else?”

“Before they’d gone very far, the boss came back.”

“Oh, he did?”

“And he told Pa he guessed Joe was a little excited, and they hadn’t meant to be hard on him. And so he gave Pa a little money for his trouble.”

“I thought you said your father wasn’t mixed up with them.”

“He ain’t. Not a bit.”

“But you say he took their money?”

“What else could he do? They ain’t the sort o’ men you’d want to argue with.”

“There is something in that. But why did he try to lock us in here?”

“I dunno.”

“Oh, you don’t.”

“No, but – I ‘ll tell you. Pa’s rattled.”

“I shouldn’t wonder.”

“He come up to my room just after he’d been out here with you, and says if I ever said a word about it, it would land the whole family in state’s prison. That ain’t so, is it?”

“Well, I’m not prepared to say.”

The cigar was out again. “Oh, say, now, it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t do nothing but what they made him do.”

“Of course, the fact that he helped them under compulsion might be considered in a court of law, but I’m not prepared to say that it mightn’t go hard with you all. I ‘ll do what I can to get you out of it, but it’s a bad scrape. What direction is Hewittson from here?”

“Off that way. There’s a road ‘most all the way.”

“That’s first-rate. I want you to go with us.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Oh, Pa – he wouldn’t let me – ”

“But I tell you to come.”

“Would it help us any in getting off?”

“I might be able to make it easier if you really give me valuable assistance.”

“We ‘ll have to get away pretty quiet.”

“Very well.” Beveridge was rolling up the blue dress into a small bundle. “All ready, Bert – Smiley?”

“All right here.”

“Put out your light, Axel.”

They stepped cautiously outside, and the boy locked the door behind them. “Hold on,” he whispered; “don’t go around that way. Pa ain’t asleep, never in the world!”

“Which way shall we go?”

“Here – after me – through the cow-yard.” They slipped around behind the barn, made a short detour through the edge of the forest, and reached the road beyond the house.

“Does this road run both ways, Axel?” Beveridge asked.

“Yes, from Hewittson to Ramsey.”

“Do you hear that, Smiley? We must have been within a few hundred yards of it most of the way.”

“Never mind, we ‘ll make better time now, anyhow.”

They pushed on, indeed, rapidly for half a mile, guided by the lantern, which Axel had relighted. Then the boy, overcome by the tobacco, had to be left, miserably sick, in a heap by the roadside. Beveridge snatched the lantern from his heedless fingers, thrust a bill into his pocket by way of payment, and the party pushed on.

CHAPTER XI – THURSDAY NIGHT – VAN DEELEN’S BRIDGE

THE stars were shining down on the stream that passed sluggishly under Van Deelen’s bridge, but they found no answering twinkle there. A gloomy stream it was, winding a sort of way through the little farm, coming from – somewhere, off in the pines; going to – somewhere, off in the pines; brown by day, black by night; the only silent thing in the breathing, crackling forest. It seemed to come from the north, gliding out from under the green-black canopy with a little stumble of white foam, as if ashamed in the light of the clearing. Then, sullen as ever, it settled back, slipped under the bridge – where the road from Lindquist’s swung sharply down – with never a swirl, and gave itself up to the pines and hemlocks that bent over. Behind the barn-yard it circled westward, and paralleled the road for a few hundred yards, as if it, too, were bound for Hewittson; but changed its mind, turned sharply south, and was gone. Whither? The muskrats and minks perhaps could tell.

The clearing, in spite of the house and barn, was desolate; the pines were pressing irresistibly in on every side to claim the land Dirck van Deelen had stolen from them. The road, after crossing the bridge, lost itself in the confused tracks between house and barn, only to reappear on the farther side and plunge again into the forest, – a weary, yellow road, telling of miles of stump land as well as of the fresher forest.

It was late, very late, but there was a light in the house. A woman, in man’s clothing, lay on the parlor sofa, too tired to rest. She was white; her breath came hard; her eyes were too bright. McGlory stood over her with a pair of scissors in his hand. He had cut off her long hair, and now it lay curling on the floor.

“Here, you,” – he was speaking to Van Deelen, – “get a broom and take that up. Be quick about it. What are you gawking at?”

Van Deelen, slow of movement and slower of thought, obeyed.

“Now,” said McGlory to the woman, “come along!” And he took her arm.

“Oh, no, Joe! I can’t go! It will kill me!”