The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Mildred A. Wirt

  Who was this man at the window? Did he at last have a clue to the whereabouts of the gold, and had he come to search for it, only to find the cabin occupied?

  Little Hallie, too, was quite as mysterious as the whipsawed cabin in which she lived. She had been brought to the cabin door on a stormy night—a beautiful eight year old child, unconscious from an ugly blow on her head. While she was being cared for, the man who brought her had vanished. He had not returned. That was three weeks ago. Efforts to discover the identity of the child—other than the name “Hallie,” which had come from her own lips—had been unavailing. Her memory appeared to have gone with the blow on her head.

  Fortunately, Mrs. McAlpin had studied medicine in her younger days. Under her efficient care Hallie had become the cheery joy of the whipsawed house.

  Did this mysterious man know something about little Hallie? Or was he just some wanderer looking for food and shelter? This last seemed the most probable.

  Yet, as Marion came to this conclusion, she suddenly learned that this man knew something about one member of the household, for even as she sat there he passed close enough to touch her, mumbling as he passed:

  “Hit’s her. Hit shorely are!”

  The girl’s heart went into double-quick time as the man came near to her. It slowed down very little as he vanished into the night. Questions were pounding away at her brain. Who was this man? What did he want? To whom had he referred? To Mrs. McAlpin? To Hallie?

  “Must have been Hallie,” she told herself. “And now perhaps he will steal upon us unawares and carry her away.”

  Even as she thought this she felt that it was a foolish fear. Why should he?

  Then of a sudden, as a new thought struck her, she sprang to her feet. A cry was on her lips, but it died unuttered.

  It had suddenly occurred to her that if this man knew something about this mysterious little girl he should be called back and questioned.

  She did not call him back. She was afraid, very much afraid of that man.

  “Anyway,” she reassured herself, “he probably didn’t mean Hallie at all. Probably meant Mrs. McAlpin. She’s been here three summers, and has been up every creek for miles around.”

  With this as a concluding thought, and having caught the delicious odor of spring chicken roasting on the hearth, she hurried down to supper.

  As she entered the cabin, Mrs. McAlpin, who was a famous cook, lifted the lid of the small cast-iron oven that had been buried beneath the hearth coals for an hour. At once the room was filled with such delectable fragrance as only can come from such an oven.

  Since the cabin had been purchased by its present owner, it had not been disfigured by a stove. An immense stone fireplace graced the corner of each of the four rooms. The cooking was done on the hearth of the room used as kitchen and dining room.

  “Isn’t it wonderful!” Marion exclaimed as she hung her sweater on the deer’s antlers which served as a coat rack. “Just to live like this! To be primitive as our ancestors were! I shall never forget it, not as long as I live!”

  Supper was over. Darkness had fallen “from the wings of night” when Marion slipped alone out of the whipsawed cabin.

  As she entered the shadows that lay across the path that led away from the cabin, she caught sound of a movement off to the right.

  Her heart skipped a beat, but she did not pause. The message she had to send could not be longer delayed. And yet, as she hurried on, she could not help wondering who might have been behind the bushes. Was it the prowler, he of the beady black eyes and hooked nose, who had peered in at the cabin window? If it were, what did he want? What did he mean by that strange exclamation: “Hit’s her?” Had he seen Hallie? Did he know her? Would he attempt to carry her away? She hoped not. The little girl had become a spot of sunshine in that brown old cabin.

  Two hours later the proceedings of the previous night were being re-enacted. Marion’s beacon fire appeared on the mountain’s crest. Florence caught it at once and flashed back her answer. There followed a half hour of signaling. At the end of this half hour Florence found herself sitting breathless among the husks in the cabin loft.

  “Oh!” she breathed. “What news! The railroad is to be built. I wonder if the land is still for sale?”

  “And I,” she exclaimed, squaring her shoulders, “I must be afraid no longer. Somehow I must find my way down this slope to Caleb Powell’s home. I must buy that land.”

  She patted the crinkly bills, five hundred dollars, still pinned to the inside of her blouse. Then, slipping quickly down the ladder, she stepped into the cool, damp air of night.

  Yet, even as she turned to go down the mountain, courage failed her.

  Above her, not so far away but that she could reach it in an hour, hung the mountain’s crest. Dim, dark, looming in the misty moonlight, it seemed somehow to beckon. Beyond it, down the trail, lay home, her mountain home, and loving friends.

  She had experienced thus far only distrust, captivity without apparent cause, the great fear of worse things to come.

  “No,” she said, “I can’t go back.” Her feet moved slowly up the trail.

  “And yet I must!” She faced the other way. “I can’t go back and say to them, ‘I have no money for the school. I went on a mission and failed because I was afraid.’ No, No! I can’t do that.”

  Then, lest this last resolve should fail her, she fairly ran down the trail.

  She had hurried on for fully fifteen minutes when again she paused, paused this time to consider. What plan had she? What was she to do? She did not know the way to the home of her friend, nor to the home of Caleb Powell. Indeed, she did not so much as know where she was. How, then, was she to find Caleb Powell?

  “Only one way,” she told herself. “I must risk it. At some cabin I must inquire my way.”

  Fifteen minutes later she found herself near a cabin. A dim light shone in the window. For a moment she hesitated beside the footpath that led to its door.

  “No,” she said at last, starting on, “I won’t try that one.”

  She passed three others before her courage rose to the sticking point. At last, realizing that the evening was well spent and that all would soon be in bed, she forced herself to walk boldly toward a cabin. A great bellowing hound rushed out at her and sent her heart to her mouth. The welcome sound of a man’s voice silenced him.

  “Who’s thar?” the voice rang out.

  “It’s—it’s I, Florence Huyler.” The girl’s voice trembled in spite of her effort to control it.

  “Let’s see.” The man held a candle to her face. “Step inside, Miss.”

  “It—I—I can’t stop,” she stammered, “I—I only wanted to ask where Caleb Powell lives.”

  “Hey, Bill,” the man turned to someone within the cabin. “Here’s that girl we was lookin’ for this evenin’.”

  “Naw ’t’ain’t. Don’t stand to reason.” The man’s feet came to the floor with a crash. The girl’s heart sank. She recognized the voices of the men. They were the men who had visited the deserted cabin. The hollyhock sentinel had done their bit, but all to no purpose. She was once more virtually a prisoner.

  “Guess you come to the wrong cabin, Miss. We are plumb sorry, but hit are our bond an’ duty to sort of ask you to come in and rest with we-all a spell. Reckon you ain’t et none. Hey, Mandy! Set on a cold snack for this here young lady.”

  Florence walked slowly into the cabin and sank wearily into a chair. Her head, which seemed suddenly to grow heavy, sank down upon her breast. She had meant so well, and this was what fate had dealt her.

  Suddenly, as she sat there filled with gloomy thoughts, came one gloomier than the rest—a thought as melancholy as a late autumn storm.

  “Why did we not think of that?” she almost groaned aloud.

  She recalled it well enough now. Mrs. McAlpin had once told her of the queer mixing of titles to land which existed all over the mountains. In the early days, when land was all but worthless, a man
might trade a thousand acres of land for a yoke of oxen and no deed given or recorded. “Why,” Mrs. McAlpin had said, “when I purchased the little tract on which this cabin stands I was obliged to wait an entire year before my lawyer was able to assure me of a deed that would hold.”

  “A year!” Florence repeated to herself. “A year for a small tract! And here we are hoping to purchase a tract containing thousands of acres which was once composed of numerous small tracts. And we hope to get a deed day after tomorrow, and our commission a day later.” She laughed in spite of herself.

  “If we succeed in making the purchase, which doesn’t seem at all likely, Mr. Dobson may be two years getting a clear title to the land. Will he pay our commission before that? No one would expect it. And if we don’t get it before that time what good will it do our school?”

  “No,” she told herself, facing the problem squarely, “there must be some other way; though I’ll still go through with this if opportunity offers.”

  In her mental search for “some other way” her thoughts returned to the ancient whipsawed house on Laurel Branch. She had heard old preacher Gibson’s story of Jeff Middleton’s return from the Civil War with a great sack of strange gold pieces.

  “Hit’s hid som’ers about that ar whipsawed cabin,” the tottering old mountain preacher had declared, “though whar it might be I don’t rightly know. Been a huntin’ of it right smart o’ times and ain’t never lit onto nary one of them coins yet.”

  “If only we could find that gold,” Florence told herself, “all would be well. That is, if we win the election—if we elect our trustee.”

  She smiled a little at this last thought; yet it was no joking matter, this electing a trustee back here in the Cumberlands. Many a grave on the sun kissed hillsides, where the dogwood blooms in springtime and ripe chestnuts come rattling down in the autumn, marks the spot where some lusty mountaineer lies buried. And it might be written on his tombstone, “He tried to elect a trustee and failed because the other man’s pistol gun found its mark.” Elections are hard fought in the Cumberlands. Many a bitter feud fight has been started over a school election.

  Surely, as she sat there once more a prisoner, held by these mysterious mountaineers, there was enough to disturb her.

  CHAPTER IV

  A STRANGE ESCAPE

  Morning came at last. Florence stirred beneath the home woven covers of her bed in the mountain cabin. Then she woke to the full realization of her position.

  “A prisoner in a cabin,” she groaned. “And yet they do not treat me badly. For my supper they set on the table the best they had. It meant a real sacrifice for them to give up this entire room to me, yet they did it. I can’t understand it.”

  “But I must not let them defeat me!” She brought her feet down with a slap upon the clean scrubbed and sanded floor. “Somehow, by some means or another, I must make my way to Caleb Powell’s home today.”

  Her eyes lighted upon an object that hung above the fireplace—a long barreled squirrel rifle with a shiny new cap resting beneath the hammer. “Loaded,” she thought. “Cap wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t. They left it hanging there because I am a girl and they were certain I couldn’t shoot. Hump! I can shoot as straight as any of them.”

  For a moment a wild vision whirled before her—a vision of a girl bursting from a room, yelling like a wild Indian and brandishing the long rifle above her head.

  “No,” she smiled. “’Twouldn’t do. It would be very dramatic, but it would probably end in tragedy, and I have no desire to act a part in such a tragedy.”

  She dressed quickly, then stepped into the other room of the cabin where she found crisp, brown biscuits, wild honey and fried eggs awaiting her.

  She ate a hearty breakfast. “Who knows what strength I may need for this day?” she thought to herself as she spread honey on her third biscuit.

  After that, knowing from past experiences what her limitations would be, she did not attempt to go many steps from the cabin but contented herself with sitting outside the cabin door in the sun.

  “Such a lovely scene,” she sighed as she looked away and away to where the peaks of Pine Mountain blended with the bluer peaks of Big Black Mountain, and all at last were lost in the hazy mists of the morning.

  “So peaceful,” she thought, “you’d think there had never been a bit of trouble since the world began. And yet, right down here in the mountains there is more trouble than anywhere else in the country. Some men say that Nature, God’s open book, will make men good and kind. It takes more than that. It takes—it must take God inside their hearts to accomplish that.” So she mused, and half the morning slipped away.

  From time to time her eyes left the mountain tops to follow the winding stream that, some fifty feet down a gentle slope, went rushing and tumbling over its rocky bed. Above and beyond this creek bed, at the other side of the gorge, ran a trail. Down that trail from time to time people passed. Now a woman, leading a lean pack horse laden with corn, shambled along on her way to mill. Now a pair of active, shouting boys urged on a team of young bullocks hitched to a sled, and now a bearded mountaineer, with rifle slung across his saddle horn, rode at a dog trot down the dusty trail.

  The girl watched all this with dreamy eyes. They meant nothing to her; were, in fact, but a part of the scenery.

  Still she watched the trail, taking little interest in the people passing there until suddenly she came to life with surprising interest. A person of evident importance was passing up the trail. He sat upon a blooded sorrel horse, and across the pommel of his saddle was a rifle.

  “Who is that?” Florence asked, interested in the way this man sat his horse.

  “That? Why, that are Caleb Powell.” Her guard, who sat not far from her, had also spoken without thinking.

  “Caleb Powell!” The girl sprang to her feet. In an instant her two hands were cupped into a trumpet and she had sent out a loud call.

  “Whoo-hoo!”

  Caught by rocky walls, the call came echoing back. The man on the blooded horse turned his gaze toward the cabin.

  “Here, you can’t do that away!” The guard put a rough hand on her shoulder.

  “I can, and I will!” The girl’s tone was low and fierce. “You take your hands away from me, and keep them off!” She jerked away. “I came back here to see him. He’s a man, a real man, and he—he’s got a rifle.”

  Cowering, the man fell back a step.

  Again the girl’s hands were cupped.

  “Mr. Powell! Come over!” she called. “I have something important to tell you.”

  The man reined in his horse, stared across the gorge in apparent surprise, then directed his horse down a narrow path that led down one side of the gorge and up the other.

  Standing there, leaning against the doorpost, the girl watched him with all the fascination that a condemned man must feel as he sees a man approaching with a message commuting his sentence.

  The man who, a few minutes later, came riding up the steep trail to the cabin, was quite as different from the average mountaineer as Florence had, at a distance, judged him to be. His face was smooth shaven and his gray suit, his tie, his leggings, his riding boots, all were in good order. When at last he spoke it was not in the vernacular of the mountains, but of the wide world outside.

  “You—you have some coal land?” she hesitated as he asked what he might do for her.

  “Why, yes, little girl,” he smiled as he spoke. “My brothers and I have several acres up these slopes.”

  Florence stiffened at his “little girl.” She realized that he had used the term in kindness, but he must not think of her as a little girl. She was for a moment a business woman with an important transaction to carry through.

  “You want to sell it?” she said briskly.

  “We have offered to sell.”

  “For twenty-one thousand?”

  “About that.” He was staring at her now. He stared harder when she said: “I am authorized to buy it a
t that price.”

  For a moment he did not speak; just kept his keen grey eyes upon her.

  “I am waiting,” he said at last in a droll drawl, “for the smile.”

  “The—the smile?”

  “Of course, you are joking.”

  “I am not joking.” She was tempted to be angry now. “Here—here’s the proof. It’s the—Mr. Dobson called it the earnest money.” She dragged the five hundred dollars in bank notes from her blouse.

  For ten seconds after that her heart fluttered wildly. What if this whole affair were a game played by these men at her expense? What if this man was not Caleb Powell at all? The thought of the consequences made her head whirl.

  But no, the guard of a half hour before was staring, popeyed, at the sheaf of bills.

  “That looks like business,” said Caleb Powell. “Your Mr. Dobson—I know him well. So he made you his agent? Well, well! That’s singular. But men do strange things. I suppose he sent a contract?”

  “Yes, yes.” She was eager now. “Here it is.”

  “Well,” he said quietly.

  Then turning to the former guard, he said; “You’ll not be wanting anything further of the girl, Jim?”

  “Reckon not,” the man drawled.

  “Then, Miss—er—”

  “Ormsby,” she volunteered.

  “Then, Miss Ormsby, if you’ll be so kind as to mount behind me, I’ll take you down to the house. We’ll fix up the papers. After that we’ll have a bite to eat and I’ll send you over the mountain.”

  The hours that followed were long-to-be-remembered. The signing of the papers, the talk on the cool veranda, a perfect dinner, then the long, long ride home over the mountains on a perfect horse with a guide and guard at her side, and all this crowned by the consciousness of a wonderful success after days of perils and threatened failure; all these seemed a dream indeed.