She went to sleep at once, but I lay there thinking of snakes for some time. Also I remembered that we'd forgotten to leave our weapons within reach, although, as far as that goes, I should not have slept a wink had Aggie had her Fourth-of-July celebration near at hand. Then I went to sleep. The last thing I remember was wishing we had brought a dog. Even a box of cigars would have been some protection--we could have lighted one and stuck it in the crotch of a tree, as if a man was mounting guard over the camp. This idea, of course, was not original. It was done first by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the detective.
It must have been toward dawn that I roused, with a feeling that some one was looking down at me. The fire was very low and Aggie was sleeping with her mouth open. I got up on my elbow and stared round. There was nothing in sight, but through the trees I heard a rustling of leaves and the crackling of brushwood. Whatever it was it had gone. I turned over and before long went to sleep again.
At daylight I was roused by raindrops splashing on my face. I sat up hastily. Aggie was sleeping with the flap of her bag over her head, and Tish, under an umbrella, was sitting fully dressed on a log, poring over her road map. When I sat up she glanced over at me.
"I think I know where we are now, Lizzie," she said. "Thunder Cloud Mountain is on our left, and that hill there to the right is the Camel's Back. The road goes right up Thunder Cloud Glen."
I looked at the fire, which was out; at Modestine, standing meekly by the tree to which he was tied; at the raindrops bounding off Aggie's round and prostrate figure--and I rebelled. Every muscle was sore; it hurt me even to yawn.
"Letitia Carberry!" I said indignantly. "You don't mean to tell me that, rain or no rain, you are going on?"
"Certainly I am going on," said Tish, shutting her jaw. "You and Aggie needn't come. I'm sure you asked yourselves; I didn't."
Well, that was true, of course. I crawled out and, going over, prodded at Aggie with my foot.
"Aggie," I said, "it is raining and Tish is going on anyhow. Will you go on with her or start back home with me?"
But Aggie refused to do either. She was terribly stiff and she had slept near a bed of May-apple blossoms. In the twilight she had not noticed them, and they always bring her hay-fever.
"I'b goi'g to stay right here," she said firmly between sneezes. "You cad go back or forward or whatever you please; I shad't bove."
Tish was marking out a route on the road map by making holes with a hairpin, and now she got up and faced us.
"Very well," she said. "Then get your things out of the suitcase, which happens to be mine. Lizzie, the canned beans and the sardines are yours. Aggie, your potato salad is in those six screw-top jars. Come, Modestine."
She untied the beast and, leading him over, loaded her sleeping-bag and her share of the provisions on his back. She did not glance at us. At the last, when she was ready, she picked up her rifle and turned to us.
"I may not be back for a week or ten days," she said icily. "If I'm longer than two weeks you can start Charlie Sands out with a posse."
Charlie Sands is her nephew.
"Come, Modestine," said Tish again, and started along. It was raining briskly by that time, and thundering as if a storm was coming. Aggie broke down suddenly.
"Tish! Tish!" she wailed. "Oh, Lizzie, she'll never get back alive. Never! We've killed her."
"She's about killed us!" I snarled.
"She's coming back!"
Sure enough, Tish had turned and was stalking back in our direction.
"I ought to leave you where you are," she said disagreeably, "but it's going to storm. If you decide to be sensible, somewhere up the valley is the cave Charlie Sands hid in when he ran away. I think I can find it."
It was thundering louder now, and Aggie was giving a squeal with every peal. We were too far gone for pride. I helped her out of her sleeping-bag and we started after Tish and the donkey. The rain poured down on us. At every step torrents from Thunder Cloud and the Camel's Back soaked us. The wind howled up the ravine and the lightning played round the treetops.
We traveled for three hours in that downpour.
III
Only once did Tish speak, and then we could hardly hear her above the rush of water and the roar of the wind.
"There's one comfort," she said, wading along knee-deep in a torrent. "These spring rains give nobody cold."
An hour later she spoke again, but that was at the end of that journey.
"I don't believe this is the right valley after all," she said. "I don't see any cave." We stopped to take our bearings, as you may say, and as we stood there, looking up, I could have sworn that I saw a man with a gun peering down at us from a ledge far above. But the next moment he was gone, and neither Tish nor Aggie had seen him at all.
We found the cave soon after and climbed to it on our hands and knees, pulling Modestine up by his bridle. A more outrageous quartet it would have been impossible to find, or a more outraged one. Aggie let down her dress, which she had pinned round her waist, releasing about a quart of water from its folds, and stood looking about her with a sneer. "I don't think much of your cave," she said. "It's little and it's dirty."
"It's dry!" said Tish tartly.
"Why stop at all?" Aggie asked sarcastically. "Why not just have kept on? We couldn't get any wetter."
"Yes," I added, "between flowering hedgerows! And of course these spring rains give nobody cold!"
Tish did not say a word. She took off her shoes and her skirt, got her sleeping-bag off Modestine's back, and--went to bed with the worst attack of neuralgia she had ever had.
That was on Wednesday, late in the afternoon.
It rained for two days!
We built a fire out of the wood that was in the cave, and dried out our clothes, and heated stones to put against Tish's right eye, and brought in wet branches to dry against the time when we should need them. Aggie sneezed incessantly in the smoke, and Tish groaned in her corner. I was about crazy. On Thursday, when the edge of the neuralgia was gone, Tish promised to go home the moment the rain stopped and the roads dried. Aggie and I went to her together and implored her.
But, as it turned out, we did not go home for some days, and when we did----
By Thursday evening Tish was much better. She ate a little potato salad and we sat round the fire, listening to her telling how they had found the runaways in this very cave.
"They had taken all the hatchets and kitchen knives they could find and started to hunt Indians," she was saying. "They got as far as this cave, and one evening about this time they were sitting round the fire like this when a black bear----"
We all heard it at the same moment. Something was scrambling and climbing up the mountainside to the cave. Tish had her rifle to her shoulder in a second, and Aggie shut her eyes. But it was not a bear that appeared at the mouth of the cave and stood blinking in the light. It was a young man!
"I beg your pardon," he said, peering into the firelight, "but--you don't happen to have a spare box of matches, do you?"
Tish lowered the rifle.
"Matches!" she said. "Why--er--certainly. Aggie, give the gentleman some matches."
The young man had edged into the cave by that time and we saw that he was limping and leaning on a stick. He looked round the cave approvingly at our three sleeping-bags in an orderly row, with our toilet things set out on a clean towel on a flat stone and a mirror hung above, and at our lantern on another stone, with magazines and books grouped round it. Aggie, finding some trailing arbutus just outside the cave that day, had got two or three empty salmon cans about filled with it, and the fur rug from Tish's sleeping-bag lay in front of the fire. The effect was really civilized.
"It looks like a drawing room," said the young man, with a long breath. "It's the first dry spot I've seen for two days, and it looks like Heaven to a lost soul."
"Where are you stopping?"
"I am not stopping. I am on a walking tour, or was until I hurt my leg."
"Do
n't you think you'd better wait until things dry up?"
"And starve?" he asked.
"The woods are full of nuts and berries," said Tish.
"Not in May."
"And there is plenty of game."
"Yes, if one has a weapon," he replied. "I lost my gun when I fell into Thunder Creek; in fact, I lost everything except my good name. What's that thing of Shakespeare's: 'Who steals my purse steals trash, ... but he----'"
Aggie found the matches just then and gave him a box. He was almost pathetically grateful. Tish was still staring at him. To find on Thunder Cloud Mountain a young man who quoted Shakespeare and had lost everything but his good name--even Stevenson could hardly have had a more unusual adventure.
"What are you going to do with the matches?" she demanded as he limped to the cave mouth.
"Light a fire if I can find any wood dry enough to light. If I can't---- Well, you remember the little match-seller in Hans Christian Andersen's story, who warmed her fingers with her own matches until they were all gone and she froze to death!"
Hans Christian Andersen and Shakespeare!
"Can't you find a cave?" asked Tish.
"I had a cave," he said, "but----"
"But what?"
"Three charming women found it while I was out on the mountainside. They needed the shelter more than I, and so----"
"What!" Tish exclaimed. "This is your cave?"
"Not at all; it is yours. The fact that I had been stopping in it gave me no right that I was not happy to waive."
"There was nothing of yours in it," Tish said suspiciously.
"As I have told you, I have lost everything but my good name and my sprained ankle. I had them both out with me when you----"
"We will leave immediately," said Tish. "Aggie, bring Modestine."
"Ladies, ladies!" cried the young man. "Would you make me more wretched than I already am? I assure you, if you leave I shall not come back. I should be too unhappy."
Well, nothing could have been fairer than his attitude. He wished us to stay on. But as he limped a step or two into the night Aggie turned on us both in a fury.
"That's it," she said. "Let him go, of course. So long as you are dry and comfortable it doesn't matter about him."
"Well, you are dry and comfortable too," snapped Tish. "What do you expect us to do?"
"Call him back. Let him sleep here by the fire. Give him something to eat; he looks starved. If you're afraid it isn't proper we can hang our kimonos up for curtains and make him a separate room."
But we did not need to call him. He had limped back and stood in the firelight again.
"You--you haven't seen anything of the bandits, have you?" he asked.
"Bandits!"
"Train robbers. I thought you had probably run across them."
All at once we remembered the green automobile and the four men with guns. We told him about it and he nodded.
"That would be they," he said. As Tish remarked later, we knew from that instant that he was a gentleman. Even Charlie Sands would probably have said "them." "They got away very rapidly, and I dare say an automobile would be---- Did one of them have a red beard?"
"Yes," we told him. "The one who called to us."
Well, he said that on Monday night an express car on the C. & L. Railroad had been held up. The pursuit had gone in another direction, but he was convinced from what we said that they were there in Thunder Cloud Glen!
As Tish said, the situation was changed if there were outlaws about. We were three defenseless women, and here was a man brought providentially to us! She asked him at once to join our party and look after us until we got to civilization again, or at least until the roads were dry enough to travel on.
"To look after you!" he said with a smile. "I, with a bad leg and no weapon!"
At that Aggie brought out her new revolver and gave it to him. He whistled when he looked at it. "Great Scott!" he said. "What a weapon for a woman! Why, you don't need any help. You could kill all the outlaws in the county at one loading!"
But finally he consented to take the revolver and even to accept the shelter of the cave for that night anyhow, although we had to beg him to do that. "How do you know I'll not get up in the night and take all your valuables and gallop away on your trusty steed before morning?" he asked.
"We'll take a chance," Tish said dryly. "In the first place, we have nothing more valuable than the portable stove; and in the second place, if you can make Modestine gallop you may have him."
It is curious, when I look back, to think how completely he won us all. He was young--not more than twenty-six, I think--and dressed for a walking tour, in knickerbockers, with a blue flannel shirt, heavy low shoes and a soft hat. His hands were quite white. He kept running them over his chin, which was bluish, as if a day or two's beard was bothering him.
We asked him if he was hungry, and he admitted that he could hardly remember when he had eaten. So we made him some tea and buttered toast, and opened and heated a can of baked beans. He ate them all.
"Good gracious," he said, with the last spoonful, "what a world it would be without women!"
At that he fell into a sort of study, looking at the fire, and we all saw that he looked sad again and rather forlorn.
"Yes," Tish said, "you're all ready enough to shout 'Beware of woman' until you are hungry or uncomfortable or hurt, and then you are all just little boys again, crying for somebody to kiss the bump."
"But when it is a woman who has given the--er--bump?" he asked.
Aggie is romantic. Years ago she was engaged to a Mr. Wiggins, a roofer, who met with an accident due to an icy roof. She leaned forward and looked at him with sympathy.
"That's it, is it?" she asked gently.
He tried to smile, but we could all see that he was suffering.
"Yes, that's it--partly at least," he said.
"That is, if it were not for a woman----" He stopped abruptly. "But why should I bother you with my troubles?"
We were curious, of course; but it is hardly good taste to ask a man to confide his heartaches. As Tish said, the best cure for a masculine heartache is to make the man comfortable. We did all we could. I dried his coat by the fire, and Tish made hot arnica compresses for his ankle, which was blue and swollen. I believe Aggie would gladly have sat by and held his hand, but he had crawled into his shell of reserve again and would not be coaxed out.
"I have a nephew about your age," Tish said when he objected to her bathing his ankle. "I'm doing for you what I should do for Charlie Sands under the same circumstances."
"Charlie Sands!" he said, and I was positive he started. But he said nothing, and we only remembered that later. We were glad to have a man about. Heaven only knows why women persist in regarding men as absolute protection against fire, burglars and lightning. But they do. A sharp storm came up at that time, and ordinarily Aggie would have been in her sleeping-bag, with Modestine's saddle on top by way of extra protection. But now, from sheer bravado, she went to the mouth of the cave and stood looking out at the lightning.
"Come and look at it, Tish!" she said.
"It's---- Good gracious! There's a man across the valley with a gun!"
We all ran to the mouth of the cave except the walking-tour gentleman, who had his foot in a collapsible basin of arnica and hot water. But none of us saw Aggie's man.
When we went back: "Wouldn't it be better to darken things up a bit?" he suggested. "If there are bandits round it isn't necessary to send out a welcome to them, you know."
This seemed only sensible. We put the fire out and sat in the warm darkness. And that was when our gentleman told us his story.
"Ladies," he began, "in saying that I am on a walking tour I am telling the truth, but only part of the truth. I am on a walking tour, but not for pleasure. To be frank, I--I am after the outlaws who robbed the express car on the C. & L. Railroad Monday night."
I heard Aggie gasp in the dark.
"Did you expect to captu
re them with a walking-stick?" Tish demanded. She might treat his ankle as she would treat Charlie Sands' ankle, but--Tish has not Aggie's confidence in people, or mine.
"Perfectly well taken," he said good-humoredly. "I left home with an entire arsenal in my knapsack, but, as I say, I lost everything when I fell into the flooded creek. Everything, that is, but my----"
"Good name?" Aggie suggested timidly.
"Determination. That I still have. Ladies, I'm not going back empty-handed."
"Then you are in the Government service?" Tish asked with more respect.
"Have you ever heard of George Muldoon, generally known as Felt-hat Muldoon?"
Had we? Weren't the papers full of him week after week? Wasn't it Muldoon who had brought back the communion service to my church, with nothing missing and only a dent in one of the silver pitchers? Hadn't he just sent up Tish's own Italian fruit dealer for writing blackhand letters? Wasn't he the best sheriff the county had ever had?
"Muldoon!" gasped Tish. "You Muldoon!"
"Not tonight or for the next two or three days. After that---- Tonight, ladies, and for a day or two, why not adopt me to be your nephew--what was his name--Sands?--accompanying you on a walking tour?"
Adopt him! The great Muldoon! We'd have married him if he had said the word, name and all. We sat back and stared at him, open-mouthed. To think that he had come to us for help, and that in aiding him we were furthering the cause of justice!
He talked for quite a long time in the darkness, telling us of his adventures. He remembered perfectly about getting back the silver for the church, and about Tish's Italian, and then at last, finding us good listeners, he told about the girl.
"Is it--er--money?" Aggie breathlessly asked.
"Well--partly," he admitted. "I don't make much, of course."
"But with the rewards and all that?" asked Aggie, who'd been sitting forward with her mouth open.
"Rewards? Oh, well, of course I get something that way. But it isn't steady money. A chap can't very well go to a girl's father and tell him that, if somebody murders somebody else and escapes and he captures him, he can pay the rent and the grocery bill."
The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart Page 385
