Ransom

by Grace Livingston Hill

  She drew her furs about her shoulders closer and rose.

  “Well, Christobel,” she said severely, “I must hurry away. Of course if there is any little thing you find I can do for you, I hope you will let me know.”

  She put out a limp hand coldly, and Christobel said “Thank you” sweetly, her heart suddenly singing a hymn. Was the woman going, was she really going to leave them in peace? Hallelujah! And was it the mansion she had called upon? Was that all she wanted of them? The mansion and her father’s money and station? This, then, was the kind of friendship she had professed so earnestly, this friendship that belonged only to certain localities and big bank accounts. Well, the Lord had been good to Christobel. Blessed be poverty if it meant that she was thus rid of Mrs. Romayne. No more would the idle gossip of those thieving servants trouble Christobel now, for she could see in the very set of the lady’s shoulders as she picked her way disdainfully out of the house, that she would not soon return to disturb the peace on Seneca Street.

  Mrs. Romayne’s car had no more than turned around out of Seneca Street than Maggie hurried around, opening all the doors and windows.

  “We’ll just air out after her,” she explained to the wondering Christobel. “It’s not nice, that strong scent she uses. We’ll get it out of here afore your poppie gets home.”

  And Christobel smiled assent. She thought the smell of that heavy perfume would always be unpleasant to her.

  Chapter 18

  Rannie was sitting in the shelter of a thick growth of hemlock, filing away at the last link of his fetters, when he heard the humming of a plane again. His heart beat wildly, and he began to pray, “Oh, God, help me! Show me what to do!”

  He stole into the shadow of a great pine tree and climbed up a little way, staying close to the trunk where he would be hidden by the piney plumes, and watched.

  He had come down the mountain quite a distance when he first left the cabin, before he had stopped to use his file, and now as he looked to the sky, he saw the airplane circling low over the tops of the trees at a distance above him, about where the cabin must be. But he was not near enough to see any numbers on the wings of the great bird. He could not tell if it might be a passenger or mail plane, or privately owned. He could not even hazard a guess as to whether it might be friend or enemy. There was just one thing certain, and that was that someone was suddenly interested in that cabin and was watching it.

  He began to speculate as to what he should do. If it was true that the police were on the trail, ought he not perhaps to go back to the cabin and wait until they had a chance to come and find him? On the other hand, if he went back, his captors, knowing far more than he did of the movements of the enemy, might find it safe to return, and he would be a captive again.

  Of course, now he was unshackled and had a gun, but he wasn’t much of a shot, and the people who had blackjacked or sandbagged him before might find it easily possible to do it again, and might have more shackles in place of these lost ones. There was also the question of food. If he returned, he had only the can of tomatoes and the crust on which he was munching now. He could not hold out indefinitely with hunger in the house. There was no time to be lost. He must get somewhere. A casual survey from his present location gave no sign of human habitation in any direction, and it stood to reason that the kidnappers would hardly hold him in a very accessible place; nevertheless the quicker he got on the sooner he would come to something—a house or a town or at least a highway and the possibility of meeting a car and catching a ride.

  He must get started before another plane came snooping round. A plane couldn’t land here anyway; there were too many trees. They were only spying, and until he knew whether they were friends or enemies, he preferred to get out of the neighborhood. He had no doubt that he could get home, given time and a free course.

  So he slid hurriedly down his tree and went to work violently on the last link between himself and freedom. He made short work of it, and with one wistful look toward the tomato can, for he was very thirsty, he picked it up and went on his way. The file he put away with the gun in his one pocket.

  It was wonderful to get away from those nasty chains. His ankles and wrists were sore with their continual chafing, and there were almost tears in his eyes, tears of gladness that the shackles were gone. So, carrying his tomato can for baggage, he plunged down the mountain, worming his way beneath the undergrowth, through the gloom of the deep, deep woods, till the sun went lower and lower and he knew that night was coming on.

  His limbs ached cruelly, and trembled. He wondered at his shaken feeling. Would just a couple of weeks in confinement do that to one who had been as fit athletically as he had been? But he plunged on, down and down and down.

  There were no landmarks to tell him which way to go. He might be going straight into Spike’s territory. “Oh God, help, help, help! Show me!” he kept repeating softly.

  Then he came to a place where there were cliffs, and one quite sheer. It was so dusky now, that he slipped on the pine needles with which it was strewn and fell, rolling off into space. He came to a stop eventually, shaken and bruised, on a level bit of ground quite surrounded by trees and almost pitch dark. He caught his breath in horror, for his tomato can had been knocked out of his nerveless grasp. For a moment he lay where he was, too spent to realize what had befallen him, till the echo of its metal, hitting against rocks and stones as it still rolled on down the mountain, brought him to his feet again. He must not let that can of tomatoes go. It was his only hope of survival. He was starved and thirsty. He must find it.

  So he sprang after it with great bounds, fairly flying over the descending ground, not pausing long enough on either foot to fall, just carried on down by his own momentum, even as the food he chased was being carried. And so finally he began to catch up with it. It seemed a miracle, for it had been so dark he had fallen. But out here now, there was more light, and he could see the wicked gleam of the racing can as it caught the fading light.

  And now suddenly the ground rose up before them both and the can came to a bump, hesitated, and rolled back again down the slope to his very feet, and he was so excited about it that he fell to his knees for all the world as if he were tackling his man in football, and grappling the can in his arms, he rolled over and over triumphantly.

  When he had recovered his breath, he sat up with the can, got out his file, reached for a stone, and cut a sizable hole in the top of that can. Then he lifted the jagged edge of the tin to his lips and drank.

  Such sweet nectar he had never tasted. He drank and drank again until the juice seemed all exhausted.

  By this time the sun had disappeared and a great darkness had descended upon the whole land. It was black night suddenly and wholly. There seemed no twilight. He decided that the time had come to rest. There was little likelihood that anything but a bear or some wild thing of the woods would find him here, and he must have rest before he could hope to go on.

  So he felt around till he located a bed of pine needles and flung himself down. It was cold now that darkness had fallen, and his shabby clothes were thin, but he was too weary to care. He gave one look upward as he settled his head on a soft place among the pines, and there he saw a great star looking down upon him like a friend. He gave it one long, grateful look.

  “Oh God,” he murmured, “I thank You!”

  The first sunlight wakened him, laying lacey fingers on his eyes and forehead as it sifted through the pines, and there before him as he sat up, glimpsed through an opening in the trees, lay a picture, the splendor of which filled his whole soul.

  Strange. He had never thought a thing about God before till he read that little red book, but now this panorama spoke of God, with a thrill of joy to his starved lonely soul.

  He thought of that little book, was lonely for it, wondered if he would ever be able to locate another copy. Oh, surely a thing like that would not go out of print! He had left of it only scattered remembered phrases and those three verses that
he had memorized: John three sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen. He said them over to himself then bowed his head and said, “Oh God, I guess You know what’s best for me to do next. Please show me.”

  After that he knocked a larger hole in the tomato can and finished its contents.

  “You can’t get away from me anymore, that’s sure,” he said to the can as he finished the last bite of tomato and wished he had some good bread and butter to eat with it.

  Then he picked up the empty can, thinking it might come in handy as a drinking cup if he came to a stream, and went on his way.

  He came to a valley at last, wooded closely, but with a winding stream, and here in a sheltered place he had a refreshing drink and took a dip into the water himself, his first bath since he had been stolen away. It was wonderful! But he dared not linger. The sun was getting higher, and he must get to a highway somehow. How he hated to put on those dirty, tattered clothes again. It seemed worse than anything else he had to endure just then. The thought of them was revolting to him, but there was nothing else to be done, of course.

  His feet were sore with the journey, and the old shoes with which he had been supplied were worn through the sole. If he only had a piece of paper or a smooth piece of cloth, it would have saved his feet, but he had nothing but a file and a gun, and after an hour more of walking over rough ground, he found that the file had worn its way through the ragged pocket and left him, its work done. After all, what more need had he of a file? And the gun was only a burden. He had only three cartridges left. Why should he carry that extra weight?

  But something told him to keep the little that he had, and he plodded on as nearly south and east as he could judge by the sun. If he was still in America, he thought that he would eventually arrive in a region that he knew.

  He followed the stream down the valley, keeping as much on the edge of the woods and under cover as possible, skirting the mountain on which he had been a prisoner and at last sighting in the distance a little weather-beaten farmhouse on a stony little farm.

  He trudged on, hope giving wings to his feet, and finally arrived, only to discover that the house must have been long uninhabited, that every pane of glass was gone and the doors taken off the hinges. Even the doorsteps had rotted away. No hope from that house.

  The sun gave a grateful warmth to his chilled body, and he hurried on, rounding the foot of another mountain, and yet another, walking on with eyes heavy with sleep and wondering if he were not just going around and around the foot of the same mountain. But just as the last rays of the sun were streaking across the valley, touching with bright colors the little winding steam that he had been following so long, he saw a group of buildings in the distance, down near the stream, and two cows standing by a barn.

  He was almost afraid to reach those buildings, for fear that they should turn out when he reached them to be empty, like the last house he had seen, but he argued that no cows would stand around empty buildings in a lonely wilderness. So he walked on, more slowly now, for his legs ached unbearably, and the distance seemed to stretch out interminably. But at last he reached the place and saw smoke coming out of the chimney. Surely smoke could not come out of a chimney of an unoccupied house by itself.

  When he drew near to the house, he saw a man milking a cow; a gaunt stern man in overalls, over by the barn. But as Rannie tried to hasten his weary footsteps toward him, a great fierce dog rushed bristling out of the barn and made for him, and for the first time in his life Rannie felt afraid of a dog. For the dog made it all too apparent that Rannie was ill dressed and ill smelling, in spite of his bath in the stream that morning, and that he was where he had no right to be.

  “I’m all right,” said Rannie, halting with the dog baying in his very face. “I’m not coming any farther. I just want ta ask a question.”

  He tried to give his impish grin to the farmer, but he felt so weak and tired that it failed in its usual winning charm. The farmer turned around and eyed Rannie suspiciously.

  “You better not stand there,” said the man. “That dog’s trained ta drive folks away from here. We don’t want no tramps around these premises.”

  “Oh, sure!” said Rannie obligingly. “I don’t blame ya. I do look sorta like a tramp, don’t I? But I’m not one, really. I’m just a kid that’s somehow got turned around and lost. Would ya mind telling me where I am and how far it is ta the next town?”

  “Seven miles ta Salters, an’ ya better make tracks, fer when I git done wi’ this yere milkin’ I sets the dog free, an’ if you hang round these here premises, he’ll make hash outta ya.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Rannie with a touch of his old braggadocio. “Looks as if he might. Wouldn’t mind sa much ef you’d save some o’ the hash fer me. They don’t seem ta have many hotdog stands around these mountains. You haven’t got any work around you would want done in exchange for supper, have ya?”

  “No, I ain’t,” said the man, rising with a menacing look and a full pail of foaming milk. “We don’t keep no roadhouse. I calculate ta do my own work, an’ I ain’t got any more chores tanight ’cept ta feed the pigs. Ef you ain’t outta my lane by that time, I’m comin’ out with my shotgun an’ turn my dogs loose. I got another in the house.”

  “Say, now,” said Rannie cheerfully, turning his weary but game young grin on the man, “don’t get sore. I got a gun myself when it comes ta that, but I wasn’t planning to use it just now. Don’t worry yerself. I couldn’t be persuaded ta stay ef ya paid me for it. I gotta beat it. Sorry I couldn’t stick around and help ya out in some way, but I guess it wouldn’t be healthy fer either of us. Thank ya jes’ the same. I’ll be going on. G’night!” And Rannie lifted an imaginary hat and tried to walk away with dignity on his sore feet, with the furious dog snapping and snarling at his heels.

  Slowly down the road he passed once more, and out into deepening shadows of the dark. Seven miles! It seemed to Rannie like seven hundred. It seemed to him that he could not walk another step. He was sure that as soon as he was out of sight of that crabbed old farmer, he would drop in his tracks, no matter where it was.

  So he moved slowly down the rough, half-broken road till the road turned around the foot of another mountain, and then he crept aside into the dusk and stumbling up a steep bank, wandered, half drunk with sleep and weak with hunger, toward a great stark barn standing in sight as far as one could see in the deepening darkness. Stealthily, he slipped inside the open door and peering about, swung himself up a rude ladder that was only cleats of wood nailed to the wall, and crept into the corner, where a few handfuls of hay still remained in the dusty loft. He dropped down upon it and almost at once was asleep. There were no stars to watch his sleep and remind him of a heavenly Father, but as he closed his eyes, he began to repeat in his mind those wonderful words, “For God so loved the world—”

  Quite early on the morning, just at daybreak, Rannie came sharply awake. Something soft and furry was sniffing about his face. A lean gray cat stood beside him, regarding him with suspicion. Perhaps she did not like his garments either. Quite close beside him in the hay, he found there was a nest of kittens. They were tiny tots just getting their eyes open, and when they saw their mother, they began to swarm over him to get to her.

  Rannie got up hastily and descended the ladder. Cats and kittens spoke of men not far distant. There was likely a house nearby that he had not seen. He had better be moving on. He was dizzy with hunger and must be looking for a job before he could hope for breakfast. Somehow he could not bring himself to beg. And there were yet nearly seven miles between him and the nearest town.

  So he hurried down the road.

  Chapter 19

  In the first house of the little straggling village, a woman was in the kitchen cooking ham and eggs. The smell of coffee floating out the kitchen door made him faint and dizzy. He swayed and almost fell but caught at the door. Perhaps the woman pitied his white young face, for she told him if he would pile up a lot of wood neatly that had been dumped in
her backyard she would give him breakfast for it, and Rannie went to work with all the will he had in him. He was slow and awkward at it, for he had never done such work before, but it was not anything that needed a skilled hand, and he presently had about half the wood in order when she called him in and gave him a delicious breakfast on a kitchen table covered with a neat white oilcloth, and then she gave him a pair of half-worn shoes.

  “They are better than those you have on, if you can wear them,” she said, looking at his own.

  Rannie thanked her and went grimly out to finish piling up the wood, reflecting on the strange turns of fate. Rannie Kershaw, cheerleader of his school, stacking wood for his breakfast and a pair of half-worn shoes! And then he grinned and wondered what his old friends would think.

  Rannie felt better with the new shoes on his feet and a whole breakfast inside. He walked down the quaint little village street to the railroad station where the woman had directed him when he asked for a telegraph office.

  The station was just opening as he got there, and he asked for a telegraph blank. He borrowed a pencil and began to write.

  Dear Dad, don’t pay a cent of ransom to anybody. Jesus Christ has ransomed me and I’m out and free. Don’t worry. I’ll hitchhike home as soon as I can earn a new suit. Rannie.

  “Send that C.O.D.,” said Rannie, handing the telegram to the agent.

  The young man took the yellow paper and read it through then turned to look at Rannie from head to foot, taking in every detail of his disreputable appearance.

  “Say,” he said, eyeing Rannie eagerly, “you ain’t a relative of that Kershaw guy, are you? You ain’t that Randall Kershaw kid that got kidnapped a coupla weeks ago, are ya?”

  “Sure thing,” said Rannie nonchalantly. “Just got away. Couldn’t make it any sooner. Get that message off quick as ya can, buddy, will ya? The folks might be worrying.”