The Second Girl Detective Megapack: 23 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Julia K. Duncan

  Tillie did not reply. She was making her way forward.

  CHAPTER XXII

  KIDNAPPED

  “They are carrying us away!” Florence cried. Her tone was that of despair.

  “We must cut the tiller,” was Tillie’s answer.

  “Then they’ll run us down, as they did Jeanne and me.”

  “No matter! We must cut the tiller!”

  “But how? We have no knife.”

  Tillie thought a moment. Then once more she crept forward toward the bobbing prow. Once there, she gripped the boat’s gunwale, reached far forward, then set her teeth in the strong rope.

  The tiller was an extra thick one, and quite new. Nature had provided Tillie with a most excellent set of teeth. She used them now with a skill born of despair. Both she and Florence were strong swimmers. Though their boat were wrecked, they might still reach land.

  “If only we do not get out of the channel,” she thought as she renewed her attack on the stubborn strands of rope.

  As they left Hoyt’s Bay behind, the water grew rougher. Shooting forward, the slight rowboat plowed through waves instead of riding over them. Tillie was drenched to the skin. There were times when her very form was lost in spray. Yet she stuck to her post.

  Night had come. There was no moon. The sky was black. The sea was black. The night was cold. Florence shuddered. Then, feeling the water creeping over her feet, she began to bail.

  Tillie’s task was half done. How stout the rope was. The pull on it was tremendous, yet with half the strands cut, the boat rode on.

  “How—how many more strands?” she asked herself as she spat out a mouthful of bristly fibre.

  “Soon it will be too late,” she told herself. No longer could she distinguish land from water, but years of experience told her that they were fast leaving land behind, that they would, in a very brief space of time, be in the open waters of Lake Huron.

  “And then—” she breathed. She dare not think.

  The rope was at last three-fourths eaten away. The strain on the remaining strands was telling. They were beginning to stretch when suddenly a final cowardly and brutal act capped the atrocities of the heartless invisible ones. Had they been watching? Did they know the girl’s purpose? Had they judged their position? Who knows? Enough that of a sudden their boat gave a swerve to the right. It executed a curve that no light rowboat could endure. Next instant the girls found themselves pitched head foremost into the icy waters, while their empty boat sped on.

  Florence struck out with hands and feet. She gave herself half a minute to regain composure. Then she looked for Tillie. Tillie was swimming with one hand while she shook a belligerent fist at the fast disappearing speed boat.

  “Well!” she exclaimed when she had completed this ceremony to her satisfaction. “We are free!”

  “Free as a gull. Where’s land?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How long can you swim?”

  “A long time. How long can you?”

  “A long time. But in this water?”

  “I don’t know. Boo! It’s cold. Let’s swim.”

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  At that moment, as if in answer to an unuttered prayer, a strange thing happened. A golden light shone across the water. A golden disk appeared on the horizon.

  “The moon! Thank—thank God!” Tillie’s tone was reverent.

  “The moon, yes,” said Florence. “It usually rises.”

  “But can’t you see? It’s not rising behind water, but trees. That’s Goose Island over there. It’s three miles from the mainland.”

  “What’s Goose Island?”

  “It’s where we go fishing through the ice in winter.”

  “Anybody live there?”

  “No.”

  “Any cabins?”

  “No.”

  “Then—”

  Florence stopped herself. She was about to say that outside a cabin, with no fire, drenched to the skin, they would be chilled to death, when a voice seemed to whisper, “One thing at a time. Only one.”

  “We’ll swim for it,” she said quietly. “How far do you think it is?”

  “Two miles, perhaps.”

  Two miles! Her heart sank.

  “But the wind and waves are with us. We’ll make it.”

  “The winds and the waves obey Thy will,” rang through Florence’s ears. “Yes,” she replied, “we will make it.”

  For a long time there was no sound save the dip-dip of their strong arms and the occasional swirl of a whitecap as it broke near them.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  STRANGE DELIVERANCE

  An hour passed and still two dark spots, like markers for a gill net, rose above the waves. The moon, rising higher and higher, brought out more distinctly the ragged tree line of Goose Island.

  At times the weary girls turned on their backs to float like so much lifeless driftwood. When their weary muscles had gained renewed strength, they began their task again.

  There were times when Florence, stout-hearted though she was, was tempted to give up hope. At such times she envisioned the rocky beach, the cabinless forest of scrub trees that must grace the surface of the island. She felt, too, the chill of the wind that must await them there.

  “What’s the use?” she asked herself many times. And always the answer came, “One step at a time is enough for me.” She must trust the future.

  As for Tillie, she never faltered. Such is the soul of one bred to the rigor, the suffering and perils of the north country. It accepts the condition that each moment offers and awaits the rest. Who will say that this, as a rule of life, is not best?

  “Cheerio, old thing!” Tillie exclaimed at last. “Another quarter of an hour, and we will be there.”

  There was courage in her voice, but a look of utter weariness in her eye.

  “Will she last?” Florence drew one more portion from her reserve strength, prepared, if need be, to see her gallant friend through.

  Her aid was not needed. The sturdy muscles and vigorous heart of this backwoods girl carried her through. Certainly no city cousin of hers who starves her body and poisons her blood to obtain a slim and graceful figure could have done as much. Who wants to be a wisp that contains a soul? Who would not rather be a Greek goddess?

  They landed at last upon a broad and pebbly beach.

  As they crept up away from the waves, the sharp pebbles brought no pain to hands and knees. They were benumbed by cold, too exhausted to feel pain.

  Yet, after Tillie had laid there for a moment, she drew herself to a sitting position to say an astonishing thing.

  “Florence,” she exclaimed, “we’ll get that old black bass yet!”

  In spite of the cold and exhaustion, Florence laughed. The laugh did them both good.

  “If we are going to do that,” she said, rising stiffly, “we will have to keep moving. If we don’t, we’ll be no better than the wreck of the Hesperus. Let’s go somewhere. It’s a little late, but some place on the island may still be open. A ham and egg place. Haven’t any money, but they’ll trust us. We look so honest, and our clothes are so spick and span.” She looked at Tillie, in her blouse that clung like a rag and knickers that turned her slim legs into pipe stems, and laughed again.

  “Come on,” said Tillie, struggling to keep up the illusion. “I know a place to go.”

  She made her way up the gravel beach to a spot where the surface was soft, sandy and half overgrown with grass. Then they started to skirt the shore.

  They had not gone a hundred yards before Florence began to feel that Tillie was leading a lost hope. The wind was rising. The cold seemed more bitter.

  “Never will stand it,” she told herself with grim conviction. “Never in the world!”

  Still she trudged on. Her limbs were growing stiff, her eyes blurred. As they rounded a clump of scrub birch trees, she thought her eyes deceived her. There appeared to be something over there that was n
ot a tree; a small square thing like an overgrown chimney.

  “Look!” She pulled Tillie by the arm. “Look, Tillie! Is there something over there?”

  Tillie looked, then cried out for very joy.

  “It’s a fish shanty! Daddy Red Johnson’s fish shanty! He left it here winter before last. Then he died. Nobody touched it. Oh, thank God!”

  She dropped to her knees, but was up in an instant.

  “It doesn’t look like a shanty,” said Florence as they approached it. “Looks like a tall box.”

  “That’s about all it is. Four sides and a roof. Three feet square. Just a protection from wind and snow while you fish.

  “But oh, good old Daddy Johnson, if you see us now,” she murmured, talking to the sky, “you know we need your fish shanty a heap worse than you ever did!

  “Here’s the door,” she said a moment later. “Walk right in and make yourself at home.”

  Inside this curious box-like affair, which is moved so easily over the ice during the winter fishing, there was only standing room for two.

  But how warm it seemed! “As if there were a fire.” Florence hugged Tillie for very joy. Then she thanked the Creator of all for this miraculous deliverance.

  “It’s going to be hard,” she told herself, as she thought of standing there all night, “but we’ll make it. And to-morrow we will improve our condition.

  “Do boats pass this island?” she asked.

  “Only very far away.”

  “Could they see a signal flag of distress?”

  “I doubt it. Besides, they wouldn’t be looking for it. No one is ever stranded here.

  “Speaking of fire,” mused Tillie, returning to the old subject, “Daddy Red Johnson used to keep a few sticks in the upper corner.

  “Here they are!” she cried as her hand searched the corner.

  “Everybody liked Daddy Red Johnson.” There were tears in her voice. “He was a good man. Nobody would touch his things, not even after he was dead.

  “He always kept a box of matches right down here.” Her hand groped for a moment. Then such a shout of joy!

  “Here they are! Saved, Florence!”

  With trembling fingers she drew out a safety match and struck it on the box. It flared out cheerily, dispelling the dark.

  “Come on!” she cried. “We’ll carry this shanty to the beach. We’ll build a roaring fire before it and be all warm and dry before you know it.”

  As they tumbled out of the shanty, then tipped it over, something fell to the ground with a thud. It was a short handled axe.

  “I forgot the axe,” said Tillie, tucking it under her arm. “He used that for cutting his hole through the ice, Daddy Red Johnson did. Shouldn’t wonder if his fish line was here, too.”

  CHAPTER XXIV

  OUTBOUND IN THE NIGHT

  Petite Jeanne was disturbed. Nine o’clock had come and passed. Reluctantly she made tea and drank it alone. Florence was not back. It was strange.

  “They went fishing, she and Sun-Tan Tillie,” she said to Tico, the bear. “One does not fish at night, unless it is for bull-heads. And who wishes for bull-heads? Bah! They are like snakes. You cut off their heads, and still they bite your finger.”

  Ten o’clock found her pacing the floor. Having at last arrived at a decision, she dressed hurriedly in knickers and a heavy jacket, drew a pair of men’s rubber boots on over her shoes, called to Tico, and went out.

  There was, she knew, a trail through the forest to the village. She had never followed it. She dared try it now. So, armed only with a flashlight, with the bear at her heels, she set out.

  She was disturbed more than she cared to admit, even to herself. She feared, not for herself, but for Florence. All these strange, half told tales that had reached her ears, tales of gamblers and lady detectives, of strange water gypsies and half savage bears, had worked upon her imagination. One who knows no fear for his own safety is often the first to fear for others. Such was the nature of the little French girl. So she started out over an unknown trail at night in search of aid.

  The trail was long and winding. More than once she lost herself. It was boggy in places. There was need for boots. At times she was obliged to take one step at a time, then lift the other foot out of the mud by the boot straps.

  When at last she reached the silent, sleeping village, she was near exhaustion. The silence of the village frightened her more than the lonely forest.

  “It is as if everyone in the world were dead,” she told herself through teeth that chattered.

  “I must find that boy, Turkey Trot,” she said to Tico. “He may know something.”

  A faint light at the rear of Tillie’s house was reassuring. Someone was there.

  She knocked loudly at the door. A boy appeared with a lamp held high over his head.

  The lamp descended with a crash. Fortunately it went out. The boy, who was Turkey Trot, had seen the bear, and had not seen Jeanne standing in the shadows. He vanished.

  Driven to desperation, Jeanne sprang after him, seized him by the collar, and flashed her light in his eyes.

  “Why do you run?” she demanded fiercely. “Where is my friend? Where is Florence?”

  “It was the bear!” Turkey Trot still trembled. “Where is Tillie?”

  “You do not know?”

  “Not me.”

  “And you are alone?”

  “Folks went to the Soo this morning. Be back to-morrow.

  “But I got a motor, an outboard motor,” he added cheerfully. “Man gave it to me this morning. It’s a hummer. Plenty of boats. We’ll go find them. Broke an oar, like as not.”

  “Oh! Do you think so? Could we?”

  This tow-headed boy had suddenly become a savior in Jeanne’s eyes.

  “What’ll we do with the bear?” the boy asked doubtfully.

  “Do you think we could take him?”

  “Don’t he bite?”

  “Tico? Never! He is tame. Oh, very!”

  “We might try.”

  Ten minutes later an outboard motor began its put-put-put. A sixteen foot boat with Jeanne in the prow, Turkey Trot in the stern, and the ponderous bear in the middle, was headed out toward Gull Rock Point.

  “Know where they fish, I do,” Turkey Trot shouted above the noise of the motor. “Find’em out there somewhere.”

  “Perhaps,” Jeanne whispered to herself. There was doubt in her mind and misgiving in her heart. Florence had not stayed out like that before, without announcing her purpose. And there were strange doings about, very strange doings indeed.

  The water was black with the peculiar blackness that is night. The path of pale light cast across it by the moon only served to intensify that blackness. From time to time Jeanne sent a narrow pencil of light from her electric torch. In a wavering circle this light searched the sea. Its efforts were in vain. No craft was on the water at all at that late hour. Florence and Tillie, as you know, were far away.

  They reached Gull Rock Point. Still they discovered nothing. They began circling the deep bays between points of land. One wide circle passed within their view, a second and a third.

  Then, all of a sudden, Turkey Trot, whose eyes were familiar with every detail of those shores, uttered a low exclamation. Turning sharply, he headed straight for a log-strewn, sandy beach.

  Petite Jeanne had seen only logs. Turkey Trot had seen that which set his blood racing.

  * * * * * * * *

  In the meantime, on their bleak and barren island, Tillie and Florence were not idle. The fish shanty which they had found was composed of a light frame of wood and an outer covering of fibre board. Tillie seized the edge of the roof, Florence the bottom. Thus, in the half darkness, stumbling over stumps and stones, but cheered by the thought that here at last was shelter and a degree of warmth, they made their way to the beach.

  There, with the aid of the axe, they split a dry cedar stick into small splints. They next lay down side by side in order to break the force of the wind, an
d Tillie struck a match. It flickered and flashed, then blazed up. Another moment, and the dry cedar was crackling like corn in a popper.

  “A fire!” Florence breathed. “A fire! Oh, Tillie, a fire!”

  For the moment she was as emotional as her companion.

  Soon they had a roaring fire of driftwood. The lake level had risen three feet that spring. Great quantities of dead timber, to say nothing of logs and planks from docks, had been carried away. There was no scarcity of fuel.

  The dance they did that night beneath the moon while their clothes were drying was a thing of wild witchery. But what of that? There was none to witness save the stars. The island was all their own.

  When at last their clothes were dry, with a fire of hot coals before them, they packed themselves like two very large sardines into the fish shanty, which lay side down on the beach with its door open to the fire. In ten minutes they were both sound asleep.

  CHAPTER XXV

  A SCREAM IN THE NIGHT

  The object that had caught Turkey Trot’s eye as he skirted the log-strewn beach was a rowboat that, bumping on the beach now and then as if in a futile attempt to drive itself ashore, lifted its prow in the air.

  “It’s Tillie’s!” he breathed as they came close.

  “It is.” Jeanne’s tone was low.

  “The anchor’s gone. Painter cut.” The boy’s trained eye took in every detail. The oars, too, were gone. But within the boat, on a stout cord, mute testimony to Florence’s afternoon of perch fishing, lay a dozen or more dead perch.

  “They fished,” said Turkey Trot.

  “How long?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “Is fishing good in this bay?”

  “We never come here. Tillie never does. Sand and small rocks. No weeds in the bay. They didn’t fish here.”

  “Then why did they come?”

  For a time Turkey Trot did not answer. Then suddenly his face brightened. “Lots of raspberries back there.” He nodded toward the fringe of forest that skirted the shore. “Clearing, back a little way. Lots of trails. Might have gone back there and got lost.”

  “But the anchor? The cut painter? The dead fish?”

  Once more the boy shrugged. “All I know is, we might find something back there. We can’t find anything more here.”