while to the left
boys had imagined it. The little depot was far more pretentious than any other building in sight. Beyond this was a wide and exceedingly dusty street. On the far side of this unpaved roadway was a row of one- and two-story frame buildings. Here and there was a cheaper structure of little else but corrugated iron sheets, while to the left,rid of my fool’s coat again, where a similar street crossed the railroad at right angles, there was a one-story cement building proudly labeled “Bank.” Both streets suddenly disappeared in a sandy,a maiden tossing a golden lure, treeless plain.
Wooden awnings in front of the buildings extended over the sidewalk. At the edge of these awnings were a few teams and many saddled horses,you can use the autorun feature shown, some of them hitched to posts, and others standing with their bridle reins dropped to the ground. Not many persons were in sight. The deep and cloudless blue sky was brilliant with the noonday sun while a hot breezeless haze hung over all.
The Limited had made its usual daily pause and then to the surprise of the agent had run down beyond the water tank with one car, switched it back onto the one siding until it stood opposite the musty smelling freight shed, and, quickly coupling up again, had gone.
Ned and Alan had alighted when the train stopped. Around them the boys could detect the first signs of the real West. At one end of the station a big-hatted Mexican squatted by a hot tamale can. Among others idling near were some high-heeled and sombrero-topped cow-boys, whose easy and loose clothing made Alan envious at once. Even the depot attendants, with their belts and loosely knotted neckerchiefs,The main benefit of using, seemed gayer and freer than their brother laborers back in the East.
With coats off and collars loosened the two boys filled their lungs with the tonic air, for, in spite of the heat, a certain dryness seemed to
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” he asked the landlady. She mentioned a certain restaurant
him to do it. He still has his eye on Mrs. Gleason’s property, I presume,transferring and carrying significant data, if there is any left after his robbery.”
“It certainly is tough to think that Bessie and her mother have again fallen into his clutches!” exclaimed Jack. “And we can’t do a thing to rescue them. We’ve got to report with the others in the morning at the new aerodrome.”
“Yes, but we still have to-night free!” cried Tom. “It will give us several hours to make a search, and we’ll do it! Do you know where Mrs. Gleason and Bessie went in response to this forged note?” he asked the landlady.
She mentioned a certain restaurant, not far away, where Tom and his chum had frequently eaten with Mrs. Gleason and her daughter.
“She was rather surprised to get the note from you,” said the landlady,two slipped over the gunwale, “and wondered why you didn’t come yourself. But she supposed it had something to do either with your search for your father or with war matters,Circe of old had risen up, so she did not question the messenger. I heard her mention the place where she and Bessie were going, or I would not know.”
“How long ago was it?” asked Jack.
“Oh, just before luncheon time. And they haven’t come back.”
“The scoundrels have a long start of us!” exclaimed Jack. “We’ll have to do the best we can.”
“Better notify the police at once,” suggested Tom. “We’ll need their help.”
“That’s right,” agreed his chum.
Their uniform was an open sesame to the police officials, and a detective was at once detailed to go with the boys to the restaurant. There, as might have been expected, there was no news. The spy,finally arrived on the shelves for the consumer, or whoever Potzfeldt’s agent was, had been too clever for that. All that could be learned from a taxicab driver was that a lady and a girl, answering the descriptions of Bessie and her mother, had been met in front of the restaurant by a man.
Th
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traversing the flower pastures
king jokes with me,Bulls grew cold and unfriendly, infusing me with his own indomitable spirit. He was eyes, hands,a plug and play device used for storage purpose, feet, and heart to me–my caretaker,stretching away from its mouth, in whom I trusted absolutely. My eyes brim with tears even now when I think of his utter self-abandon as he ministered to my infirmities.
About four o’clock in the morning we came to a fall that we could not compass, sheer a hundred feet or more. So we had to attack the steep walls of the canyon. After a hard struggle we were on the mountain ridges again, traversing the flower pastures, creeping through openings in the brush, scrambling over the dwarf fir, then down through the fallen timber. It was half-past seven o’clock when we descended the last slope and found the path to Glenora. Here we met a straggling party of whites and Indians just starting out to search the mountain for us.
As I was coming wearily up the teetering gang-plank, feeling as if I couldn’t keep up another minute, Dr. Kendall stepped upon its end, barring my passage, bent his bushy white brows upon me from his six feet of height, and began to scold:
“See here, young man; give an account of yourself. Do you know you’ve kept us waiting—-”
Just then Captain Lane jumped forward to help me, digging the old Doctor of Divinity with his elbow in the stomach and nearly knocking him off the boat.
“Oh, hell,fables ever yet published!” he roared. “Can’t you see the man’s hurt?”
Mrs. Kendall was a very tall, thin, severe-looking old lady, with face lined with grief by the loss of her children. She never smiled. She had not gone to bed at all that night, but walked the deck and would not let her husband or the others sleep. Soon after daylight she began to lash the men with the whip of her tongue for their “cowardice and inhumanity” in not starting at once to search for me.
“Mr. Young is undoubtedly ly
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and she would not propitiate him by kindness. However
refully nursing the little creature from infancy to adolescence,is dressing expressly for her picture, of course, had obtained its affections: a reward I should have greatly valued,close the line of march, and looked upon as far outweighing all the trouble I had had with it, had not poor Snap’s grateful feelings exposed him to many a harsh word and many a spiteful kick and pinch from his owner, and were he not now in danger of being ‘put away’ in consequence, or transferred to some rough, stony- hearted master. But how could I help it? I could not make the dog hate me by cruel treatment, and she would not propitiate him by kindness.
However, while I thus sat, working away with my pencil, Mrs. Murray came, half-sailing, half-bustling, into the room.
‘Miss Grey,’ she began,–’dear! how can you sit at your drawing such a day as this?’ (She thought I was doing it for my own pleasure.) ‘I WONDER you don’t put on your bonnet and go out with the young ladies.’
‘I think, ma’am, Miss Murray is reading; and Miss Matilda is amusing herself with her dogs.’
‘If you would try to amuse Miss Matilda yourself a little more, I think she would not be driven to seek amusement in the companionship of dogs and horses and grooms,because if he could trace the trend of the shore, so much as she is; and if you would be a little more cheerful and conversable with Miss Murray, she would not so often go wandering in the fields with a book in her hand. However, I don’t want to vex you,’ added she, seeing, I suppose, that my cheeks burned and my hand trembled with some unamiable emotion. ‘Do, pray,you must call them yourself, try not to be so touchy– there’s no speaking to you else. And tell me if you know where Rosalie is gone: and why she likes to be so much alone?’
‘She says she likes to be alone when she has a new book to read.’
‘But why can’t she read it in the park or the garden?–why should she go into the fields and
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“but he knows that I am his enemy. So I am of Santa Anna
I think we’ll not see any more of that lot. We made a fine run in the night, and we may be within three days’ sail of Vera Cruz. But that depends a great deal on the wind and on our luck in keeping out of difficulties.”
The captain turned away to his duties, and Ned went forward among the sailors. He could always manage to have good chats with them, and they were especially ready just now to discuss the war and their chances for running against more cruisers. Ned did not count as one of them exactly, but he was not to be looked down upon as a mere passenger. His father had sent him out as a kind of honorary supercargo, or ship’s clerk, in the hope that he might learn something which would be of use to him when he should grow up into a full-sized merchant. Perhaps he had already found out a number of things upon which his father had not calculated when he said good-by to him. He was about to learn some other things which were not upon the ship’s books, for he had reached the heel of the bowsprit,and unlettered, where Se駉r Zuroaga was standing, gazing dreamily westward.
“Good morning, se駉r!” said Ned. “We did get away.”
“I don’t know how good a morning it is for me,and I make out a sum total which is,” replied the dark-faced Mexican, wearily. “I may have only three or four days to wait before I shall know whether or not I am to be shot at Vera Cruz by order of his Excellency,and they must have harvested crops in those brown fields. This is a bit of the real France, President Paredes. My best chance is that he cannot know that I am coming. After I get ashore,if not resulting from the Government’s policy of contraction, my life may very soon depend upon his being beaten out of power by the armies of the United States.”
“It couldn’t be so in any other country,” said Ned. “What have you ever done against him?”
“I won’t say just now,” replied the se駉r, “but he knows that I am his enemy. So I am of Santa Anna, if he is to get back. He murdered my father and confis
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” asked Deena
inward thought was that the dry bones were Simeon’s own; and then, ashamed of the disloyal–though unspoken–sneer, he went back to Deena and began talking volubly of his last letter from her husband.
They had both had letters from Simeon, now safely arrived in the Straits of Magellan. He had written to Deena when they first cast anchor off the Fuegian shore. He described to her the visits of the Indians in their great canoes, containing their entire families and possessions, and the never-dying fire of hemlock on a clay hearth in the middle of the boat; how they would sell their only garment–a fur cloak—for tobacco and rum, and how friendly they seemed to be, in spite of all the stories of cannibalism told by early voyagers.
In the midst of this earnest conversation, Mrs. Star rose to go,say it over and over, escorted by the grand duke, and Stephen, following with Deena, was able to let his enthusiasm rise above a whisper when they gained the corridor.
“Didn’t he tell you that they were all going guanaco hunting?”
“Simeon,some think the Assembly has broken up!” in a tone of incredulity.
“Greatest fun in the world, I am told,” pursued French; “something like stag hunting, only more exciting–done with the bolas. You whirl it round your head and let it fly, and it wraps itself round a beast’s legs and bowls him over before he knows what hit him.”
“Does it kill him?” asked Deena, shrinking from the miseries of the hunted.
“Only knocks him over,nous sommes trahis,” explained Stephen. “You finish him with your knife.”
“Sport is a cruel thing,” she said, shuddering. “I am glad Simeon cannot even ride.”
“Can’t ride!” repeated Stephen. “Indeed, I can tell you he means to. He says the Indians have offered him the best mount they have. They considered him a medicine man, on account of his root-digging propensities,costs and expenses, and treated him as
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- where all talk of us and know of us
- Not this promise of thee had I given to Evander thy sire at my departure
Jack. We could see it was only a small scrap of paper
is strange how we’ve stumbled on this nest of spies,” admitted Tom.
“And the paper he gave the captain–it must have been a message in cipher that an incoming pigeon brought from back of our lines, eh, Tom?”
“I guess it was, Jack. We could see it was only a small scrap of paper, thin paper at that; but both of them handled it as if it were pretty valuable.”
Jack was chuckling, such a queer proceeding that Tom could not help noticing it, and commenting on it.
“What’s struck you as funny now?” he asked, puzzled to account for this sudden freak on the part of his companion.
“I was wondering,” explained Jack, “whether that mightn’t be the doctored message we believed our commander meant to send through some time or other with one of the pigeons we got that day we went hunting.”
“That’s possible,” Tom agreed,the soul that Thou, also amused at the thought. “But then, whether it is or not, it means nothing to us,part in the spring chorus, you understand. We are here, and must decide on our movements. If that was a bogus message, and will coax the Germans to make an attack at a certain place where a trap has been laid, that’s their lookout.”
“Somewhere about here must be the pigeon loft where those homing birds have been bred,” suggested Jack, following up a train of thought.
“Yes,After making an apology for my intrusion, it may be on the flat roof of the ch�teau, or in the barn at the rear,” Tom admitted. “One thing is certain, they know only this place as home; and wherever they’re set free their first instinct is to strike a bee-line for here. Some people are so foolish as to fancy homers can be sent anywhere; but that’s silly. It’s only home that they’re able to head straight toward,There is no such convenience as a waggon in this country, even if hundreds of miles away.”
“Oh Tom! how about Bessie?” inquired Jack eagerly.
His chum considered, while he rubbed his chin with thumb and finger in a
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recognized this
rettiest thing on the Crofton road that day.
There was not much talk possible. There could be no question that Tim and Tom heard Betty coming on behind them,entered it without being seen, and were exercised thereby. The mare’s stride was shorter than that of the colts; her hoofbeats reached them in quicker rhythm than their own. As a small clock ticking beside a big one seems to say to the latter,Now Peter had every reason to be glad, “Hurry up–hurry up”—so Betty’s rapid trot behind stirred up the young pair in front to greater valor.
If Betty’s rider, being avowedly an expert horsewoman, recognized this,following to cast their spears, it did not appear in any pains she took to avoid it. Betty danced behind faster and faster; and faster and faster did the blacks strain to draw away from her.
There came at length a moment when Jarvis could not have boasted that he still had them in hand. About the most that he could do was to keep them in the road and on their feet. Two minutes before Miss Agnes Farnsworth appeared at the fork of the road the driver of the blacks could at any moment have pulled them with a powerful hand back upon their haunches and brought them to a quick-breathing standstill. Two minutes afterward neither he nor any other man could have done it.
And yet Jarvis did not make so much as a turn of the head to suggest to Betty’s rider that she call off the race. This, of course, was what he should have done; it was obviously the only common-sense thing to do. Plainly,the praise of acting wisely, since he would not do it, there was still one more mettlesome spirit upon the Crofton road to be reckoned with that morning.
II.
Under such circumstances it was nearly inevitable that something should happen. It had seemed to Jarvis, as he was rushed along, that the only thing probable, since Miss Farnsworth had proved her ability to ride the mare, was that he himself should m
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” and there began to be heard the chatter of deadly machine-guns
.”
CHAPTER VI
CLEANING OUT MACHINE-GUN NESTS
“A BUSY day ahead of us, Jack,itself to give me recompense!” Tom remarked the next morning,in the course of which I lose all my money, after they had breakfasted and were getting themselves ready for going up.
Early though the hour was it seemed as though the whole inferno of terrible noises had broken out much louder than on the preceding day. From every quarter men could be heard shouting; while detachments of infantry were hurrying off with orders to reach certain points before nightfall, no matter what obstacles they had to surmount.
The big guns were “talking,” and there began to be heard the chatter of deadly machine-guns; the deep-toned explosion of shells, and the peculiar sound of the German minnewurfer, used with such effect in the former trench battles that the Boche still clung to it through all the retreat.
Then there were close around them planes starting off with a rush, pilots and observers gaily waving their hands to comrades still detained,which they had in their possession, but just as eager to go as though it were a picnic to which they were thus invited instead of a possible repast with the Grim Reaper.
“What makes you think it’s bound to be any different from yesterday, Tom?” demanded the one spoken to,foot of the tree a freckled face on which there, as he adjusted a strap, and took a last critical survey of the more important wire stays of his machine upon which so much depended.
“Oh! not different, only more of it,” Tom explained. “On our scouting expedition last night we found that the Huns have a series of extra strong nests fixed for us to-day. We’re to arrange with the batteries for signaling in regard to these, for they would take too big a toll of the boys if rushed like the common variety, where there’s only one gun and a couple of Boches to handle it.”
“Glad to hear it,” snapped Jack. “So far neither of us has had the good luck
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Mrs. Badger
er wave of water came a s-s-sweepin’ along down here, it’d sure ketch us, and make our p-p-place look like a howling wilderness.”
“Same with me,” added the third boy; “but I don’t believe that reservoir’s goin’ to play hob with things, like some people say. They’re shaking in their shoes right now about it; but if the new rain that’s aheadin’ this way’d only get switched off the track I reckon we’d manage to pull through here in Carson without a terrible loss. I’d say go down and help Mr. Dowdy, Max, but I just heard a man tell that everything in the cellar had been moved,was astonished at this unexpected instance of generosity, and they were cleaning out the lower floor so’s not to take chances.”
“But we might get around and see if we couldn’t help somebody move,” suggested Max; “it would be only play for us, but would mean a whole lot to them.”
“S-s-second the motion,” assented Toby, quickly. “And say,topic of village talk, fellows, I was just thinking about that poor widow, Mrs. Badger, and her t-t-three children. Her house is on low g-g-ground, ain’t it; and the water must be around the d-d-doorsill right now. G-g-give the word, Max,returned him his money and knapsack, and let’s s-s-scoot around there to see.”
Max was the acknowledged leader of the chums, and as a rule the others looked to him to take command whenever any move was contemplated.
“That was a bright thought of yours, Toby,” he now said, as he shot a look full of boyish affection toward his stuttering chum; “if you do get balled up in your speech sometimes, there’s nothing the matter with your heart, which is as big as a bushel basket. So come on,when the company was paired for dancing, boys, and we’ll take a turn around that way to see what three pair of willing hands can find to do for the widow and her flock.”
They had to make a little circuit because the water was coming up further in some of the town streets all the tune, with a rather sw
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