Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  “Yes, in fact.”

  “Good heavens!” said Eagleton again.

  “Do you remember the sharp-nosed man who was speaking with Mr. Benning?”

  “Yes!” said the three men as one.

  “I want you to stay close to him, but not to let on.”

  The three men looked ready for the task, even eager, if confused. Sundry hurried to buy tickets for them, while Mister Walton explained that he needed to know where the sharp-nosed fellow and his compatriots were going. “I would almost go myself, but Mr. Benning expects me at the boardinghouse. Now, don’t put yourselves in any danger.”

  The three charter members of the Moosepath League looked startled.

  “But find, if you can,” continued Mister Walton, “where they are going. Wire me here in Millinocket when you have the chance.”

  “Quick!” said Sundry. “The conductor is making the last call.”

  The three men snatched up as much of their baggage as they could carry and hurried out, Thump making a more circuitous route to the door as he searched for his lost button. A porter was called and the conductor watched as the baggage was put aboard; then the three men clambered into the nearest passenger car, where the hawk-nosed Ben Hasson’s face could be seen resting by a window.

  Suddenly Thump appeared at the door of the station. He put his head in, out of breath, his eyes alight with excitement.

  “What is it?” asked a startled Mister Walton.

  “I found my button!” announced Thump. He waved the object in the air, then hurried back to the train.

  “Dear me!” said Mister Walton. “What have I done! Sundry, perhaps you had better go with them.”

  “Yes, Mister Walton,” said Sundry, almost with a salute. The train took its first lurch forward.

  “Quick, quick!” said the portly fellow, eyes wide with sudden panic. “You need a ticket!”

  Sundry raised a ticket, already purchased for himself, with a wink. “Just waiting for the order, sir,” he declared, grabbed his bag, and was gone.

  “I’ll wire ahead when I learn something!” shouted Mister Walton.

  Sundry caught the third passenger car as it rolled slowly past, and he waved as he was trundled out of sight.

  By the time that Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump had gotten their bearings, the swift and efficient Sundry Moss had found them.

  “Sit right next to the man,” said Sundry.

  “Really?” said Eagleton,

  “Yes, just be very straightforward about traveling with him. Tender your excuse when he asks you, and he will suspect nothing. Act mysterious and he will think you are mysterious.”

  “I think he’s right!” said Ephram to Thump. “We must be very straightforward.”

  “Straightforward it is!” announced Eagleton.

  “Yes,” said Sundry. “Straight—” he pointed down the aisle in the direction of the man they were to watch “—forward.”

  Ben Hasson was perplexed to see the three men (who had just arrived in Millinocket) on the train, and not a little troubled to see them sit near him. “Aren’t you making a short visit of it?” he asked.

  “We are supposed to stay close to you,” said Thump. This seemed as straightforward as he could get.

  Sundry very nearly buried his head in his hands.

  “What?” said Ben, sitting up.

  “Oh, and Eagleton’s mother is ill,” added Thump.

  “I don’t like that part,” admitted Eagleton.

  Ephram had the look of a man who knows something is wrong, but can’t quite put his finger on it. “Oh, and we’re not to let on,” he said. This made him feel better.

  “What is this?” demanded Ben.

  “Mr. Benning sent us,” said Sundry, hoping to save the situation.

  “The boss?” said Hasson, without thinking.

  “The boss,” agreed Sundry. I’ve got you, he thought, but added aloud, “I’ve always known him as Mr. Benning, of course.”

  The hawk-nosed man had seen the other three fellows talking like great chums with the boss, but he had never laid eyes on this younger one. “I haven’t met you,” he said to Sundry. “Perhaps you had better explain yourself.”

  “These gentlemen are eager to learn how to play cards,” said the narrow young man. His wink was slow and crafty.

  “Are they?”

  “Are we?” wondered Eagleton.

  “Our friend Mister Walton is very fond of card playing,” continued Sundry.

  “My goodness,” said Thump. “We should learn posthaste!”

  “The boss, you see,” said Sundry, “thought you might enjoy teaching them.”

  “Did he?” said Ben Hasson, with a chortle and the barely concealed look of a shark smelling blood. “He does think of everything, doesn’t he.” A deck of cards was produced from some pocket on the man’s person, and Sundry knew he had successfully marked his man. The deck slipped from its case and was shuffled with remarkable acuity. “We just need a proper surface to deal on,” said Ben.

  Sundry was looking for a piece of luggage. “Yes,” he said. “The boss is a very intelligent fellow.”

  66 The Man with the Silver Lining

  MERCIA WAS ON THE PORCH OF MRS. CUTHBERT’S BOARDINGHOUSE WHEN Mister Walton came up Millinocket’s dusty main thoroughfare; her hands were folded calmly on the porch railing, and she was looking away from him, gazing up the street. He stopped for a moment, bag in hand, and took his hat from his head. She did not see him, turned away as she was, but she looked very striking and very sad, and Mister Walton suddenly feared that he was imposing.

  “Mrs. Underwood,” he said from the street.

  Mercia looked around slowly and recognized him immediately. “Mister Walton,” she said, with great regard. One would not have guessed that she had met him only twice before.

  The portly fellow walked up the steps to the porch. “Please forgive me, if I am intruding, Mrs. Underwood. I heard about your daughter, and she had been so kind to me that I could not stay put.”

  “Mister Walton,” said Mercia. She took his hand warmly. “Cordelia is so fond of you. She has spoken of you often since our day together.”

  “I really don’t know what help I can be, but if another search party is sent out, I am a fairly agile horseman, despite my girth.”

  “I am so glad you came,” she insisted. “Cordelia’s cousins are as worried as I, and my reserves of tranquility are near an end. A new face, and such a welcome one, will help immeasurably.”

  And she was ushering him into Mrs. Cuthbert’s front hall when the staccato beat of hooves—the sound of a rider in a great hurry, the sound that she had been waiting for—brought her up short.

  The rider reined in before the boardinghouse, a cloud of dust catching him as he dropped from his mount. “Mrs. Underwood?” he inquired of Mercia, who met him at the foot of the porch steps. “I’m sorry it took me so long, but my horse went lame and I had to borrow—” He stopped himself and took a breath. “Your daughter’s fine, ma’am.”

  Mercia began to tremble, and Mister Walton hurried down the stairs to her side. She could not look at anyone, and Mister Walton found his eyes welling up in sympathy as she cried and shook.

  “She’s fine, you say?” he said to the messenger.

  “She’s with her father. Mr. Scott found her. He trapped one of the kidnappers in a privy!”

  “Good heavens!” said Mister Walton.

  “He’s a clever one, our Mr. Scott. And Miss Underwood stretched one of them out with a ladle.”

  “Thank you,” said Mercia. “Please, I’m sorry . . . I’m exhausted, is all.”

  “Nothing to it, ma’am,” said the young fellow, taking off his hat.

  Mister Walton led Mercia back up to the front door. Ethan and Priscilla hurried onto the porch to hear the news, and John Benning came up and listened to the messenger repeat his tale. Benning tried to give him something for his troubles, pressing several generous bills in his hand, but the young man re
fused.

  Mercia took Mister Walton’s hand again, and as this did not seem to to serve the purpose, she embraced him. “Oh, Mister Walton! You are a good luck charm!”

  Mister Walton turned red to the ears.

  Mercia talked to John Benning about riding to meet her husband and daughter, but decided to help Mrs. Cuthbert prepare a meal for their return. The notion of Mrs. Underwood riding out with Benning worried Mister Walton, and he considered getting a pistol, as well as a horse and saddle, to accompany them; though he did not voice his suspicions. Benning had been willing to go if Mercia wanted, but did not press her either way, and she decided in the end to be patient.

  Late in the afternoon a young boy came on a mule, waving his hat and calling out that they were coming. The northern end of Mrs. Cuthbert’s porch filled with people, and Main Street of Millinocket was suddenly so populated that one would have thought a parade was on its way.

  Tired but happy would describe the small group that appeared north of town. Tired and relieved and mostly happy would describe Cordelia as her horse pulled up to a halt. John Benning helped her down, and the boy with the mule took her reins.

  Mercia met her daughter at the bottom of the porch steps and embraced her with all her might. Applause broke out along the street.

  Cordelia looked up, past her mother’s shoulder, at her cousins. Priscilla looked thoroughly miserable, she was so happy; she shook with sobs. “I heard you conked one of them with a ladle!” shouted Ethan, proud as he could be.

  “Mister Walton!” exclaimed Cordelia, when she caught sight of the man. She was pleased and mystified to see him.

  “But where is Mr. Scott?” asked Mercia.

  “He left us a mile or so outside of town,” said James. He swung down from his horse and wearily handed his reins over to the first person who would take them.

  “He sent his best regards to you, Mama.”

  “I wish he had brought his regards himself. It’s a terrible thing if I can’t thank him.”

  “If I know Dresden Scott,” said Mr. Butler, who had first met them at Millinocket two days before, “he’ll wander into town when he thinks the fuss is over. He gets embarrassed easily.”

  “Well, I am very put out with him,” said Mercia. She appraised her daughter at arm’s length. There was an expression of great failure or disappointment in Cordelia’s eyes. Mercia took a long, measured breath that filled in nicely for a direct question.

  “I’m just tired,” said Cordelia.

  “Let’s get you inside.”

  While the men congregated in the parlor, Mercia and Priscilla escorted Cordelia to a room upstairs. “Oh, my dear,” said Mercia when she was sitting on the side of the bed beside her daughter. “I am so sorry. And your father, of course, blames himself.”

  “It wasn’t anybody’s fault except for . . . those men. And I don’t know what I would have done if Mr. Scott hadn’t come when he did. I was so frightened.”

  “And he wouldn’t come into town with you?” Mercia asked.

  “Oh, come sit,” said Cordelia to her cousin. She took Priscilla’s hand and pulled her to the edge of the bed. The gesture was genuine—a way in which to surround herself between loving ramparts, and also to let Priscilla know how much she was needed—but it doubled nicely by drawing attention from her own distress.

  Mercia was not to be fooled; that same sense of personal failure in her daughter’s eyes was again too obvious. “Cordelia, what happened?”

  “I was just terrible. I shouted at him.” Her freckled complexion was red with suppressed tears.

  “You did what? Cordelia, you’d hardly known the man for a single day!” Mercia almost laughed.

  “Oh, I know! But it isn’t so easy to be rescued like that. If it had been Daddy, I would have just hugged him till he yelled.”

  “Well, Mr. Scott is a very hardy young man,” said Mercia, “and he might not have yelled so quickly.”

  Cordelia did not hear her, or chose not to. “He was good-humored about it all, at first, but then he acted a little piqued—as if we had kept something from him.”

  “We did, rather,” said Mercia. “Dear, they knocked him over the head with the butt of a pistol, and they were armed men he was trailing. It’s a remarkable thing that he didn’t wait for the search party with your father to catch up.

  “I know, I know, I know . . . I just feel terrible, because he was so nice to me. And I think I hurt his feelings . . .”

  “My word, you’re tired,” said the mother, cradling her daughter and suddenly feeling like she hadn’t since her children were young. “One just doesn’t know.” She thought of Mr. Scott. What would he do? What does such a man do when his feelings are hurt, or when a pretty young woman such as her daughter pricks at his heart? Mercia imagined him making camp in the forest, lying awake at night, looking up through the branches at the stars; it was very melancholy. “One just doesn’t know,” she said again.

  Priscilla hadn’t said a word, but only held her cousin’s hand.

  “No, one doesn’t,” said Cordelia, and then she was asleep like a child, and they eased her onto a pillow and pulled a quilt up beneath her arms.

  Downstairs, Ethan sounded authoritative as he said that with one of the kidnappers knocked cold, one tied up, and one caught in a privy (and since Mr. Scott had taken their horses), they were as good as caught. “And won’t they talk!” said the boy. “Since they’re caught and they won’t get a penny of anything their friends dug up, won’t they just talk!”

  “No honor among thieves, do you think?” said John Benning easily.

  “Maybe their friends will plan an escape for them,” suggested the boy, himself awed by this construction.

  They sat in the parlor—James Underwood, young Ethan Morningside, and John Benning; Mister Walton stood by a window, worrying about the men he had sent back on the train. What had he been thinking? He had picked up on a pack of scoundrels in a minute, and sent his friends after them. Sundry he didn’t worry so about; Sundry radiated a certain native ability to take care of himself, though he also radiated a hastiness-to-action that bothered the portly fellow the more he thought of it.

  But what had he been thinking, sending the Moosepath League after treasure hunters and kidnappers?

  Mercia and Priscilla came into the parlor and everybody rose. Mister Walton turned, but stayed by the window, unwilling to take his scrutiny—his carefully hidden scrutiny—from John Benning.

  “She’s asleep,” announced the mother. “She’s exhausted, poor thing and so, my dear, are you,” she added to James.

  “I must leave, I’m afraid,” said John Benning. “I am sorry not to say goodbye to Cordelia,” he explained. “But while waiting for telegrams at the office I received one of my own. Family business.”

  “I know Cordelia will be sorry to have missed you,” said James. He put out his hand when it was clear that Benning meant to leave even as they spoke.

  “I am sure we will meet again,” said the young man, with one of his winning smiles. “Mister Walton, I trust I will see you again. We do manage to meet in surprising places.”

  “Yes. The wharf, the fairgrounds, the telegraph office . . .” Another person might have detected something cautious in Mister Walton’s handshake.

  Mercia gave John Benning a motherly embrace and a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, John, for everything. I hope your family is well.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, as he was followed to the front hall. “Nothing to trouble yourselves about.” He did not linger at the door, but raised his hat and hurried down the porch.

  “That’s very disappointing for Cordelia,” said a concerned father.

  “Mr. Benning leaving?” said Mercia. “It would be very awkward if he didn’t. I wonder if he knows it.”

  “Why would you say that?” James wondered, a little perplexed, and even a little shocked.

  “Because, my dear, he is very much out of the running.”

  “With Cordelia?”<
br />
  “Oh, yes.”

  “Do you mean Mr. Scott? Just because he rescued her? I mean, he’s a fine fellow and I couldn’t think better of him, but just because he rescued her John’s out of the running? That doesn’t sound like Cordelia at all.”

  “It happened before that—didn’t it, Priscilla?”

  Priscilla, who had appeared not to hear this conversation, was briefly startled. “Well, I thought so . . .” she stated quietly.

  “It was when he told us about the woods in the winter, I think,” said Mercia, leading them airily back to the parlor. Enjoying her husband’s confusion, she added, “I suspected something was in the wind before that.”

  “Good heavens,” said James. “You mean to tell me that the color of my grandchildren’s hair might be dictated by a passage of well-worded description?”

  “The color of your children’s hair was decided by a glance, my dear,” said Mercia. And looking remarkably saucy (and sure that he had an overwhelming desire to at least touch her hand), she smiled and slipped out of reach. “Mister Walton,” she was saying. “I can’t tell you what it meant to me to see you this afternoon.”

  “Mrs. Underwood, I am just happy that your daughter is safe. I must say, I hope I have the opportunity to meet this Mr. Scott.”

  “You may yet,” said Mercia.

  Mister Walton wondered whether to tell them of his suspicions concerning John Benning. He decided to wait. “Please forgive me if I am overly inquisitive,” he said. “But did all this really have to do with . . . a buried treasure?”

  67 Further Wit in Evidence

  “HOW ABOUT FIVE-CARD DRAW?” PROPOSED BENJAMIN HASSON.

  “Excuse me?” said Ephram. Eagleton and Thump too were curious.

  “Poker,” said the card shuffler simply.

  “Oh, dear,” said Eagleton.

  “Poker?” Thump looked like a minister to whom drunken revelry has been suggested.

  Ben Hasson attempted to mitigate the suggestion, and while this task commanded his attention, Sundry studied him from across the aisle. Had this fellow indeed helped to kidnap a young woman? What a desperate act that seemed, and yet how calm the man.