Читать книгу The Twisted Shadow - Edith Dorian - Страница 5

JUDY CARRINGTON DROVE THE STATION WAGON THROUGH the entrance into Gun Point National Park and patted the steering wheel triumphantly. Not even a leaf of the lilac hedge had brushed her fender.

“Just the same,” she told the station wagon, “if you weren’t so new and snooty-looking, I wouldn’t be afraid I’d get gray hair worrying about you.”

Thinking back, she only hoped she had looked a lot less surprised than she felt when she first saw the Sinnett Harbor Library after her train had pulled in from New York yesterday afternoon. Because her mental picture of a library in a small Maine town had definitely not included either a Colonial-style brick building with a handsome new wing almost ready for use or a bookmobile like this one.

A big, sprawling log cabin marked “Ranger Station” stood to the left of the road, and Judy glanced at it curiously. She had three books illustrated with pictures of unappetizing reptiles for somebody in that building. Besides, unless she wanted to find the cabins on her route by the eeny-meeny-miney-mo system, she needed a Park map. She might have been brought up on stories of Sinnett Harbor, but she had been there exactly twenty-four hours, and Gun Point National Park was new since her mother’s day anyway. In fact, as far as Judy could see, her mother would never recognize her home town.

Thirty years ago, before Grandfather Mariner died and Grandmother moved her family to Massachusetts, Sinnett Harbor had been a quiet fishing port, not a summer resort for writers and publishers. Now there was not much along Ship Street any of the Mariners would remember except the First Parish Church on the ancient Mall, and even that was flanked by new buildings like the post office, the town hall, and the library.

Shadows were capering over the shiny new paint of the station wagon, and Judy watched their antics with amusement as she hunted out the books for the Ranger Station. One of those shadows was fantastically appropriate. No matter how often it dissolved and reformed, it managed to resemble a gallows. Conditioned imagination, she decided, chuckling. That’s what came of driving on Gallows Road. By the time she’d done it regularly, twice a week for two months, she’d be likely to think she saw some luckless pirate, sitting on his coffin, jolting in a cart to execution on Gibbet Ridge!

Sliding the doors over the bookshelves again, she looked idly over her shoulder to see what was causing her macabre shadow. Then she nearly dropped the ranger’s reptiles in astonishment. Either termites did not eat gibbets or the town fathers had set up a replica of the original model to give tourists their money’s worth. Fascinated, Judy examined the plaque attached to its upright. It was the Sinnett Harbor gallows all right; at least, it was the last one ever used, thriftily moved to serve as a signpost to Gibbet Ridge. At least that eliminated one of the three forks in the road for her bookmobile route. She already knew who lived on the Ridge nowadays—Sinnett Harbor’s most famous native son, the Pulitzer Prize winner, Sandys Winter. She ought to know; she had written a term paper on his novels for her Contemporary American Literature course this spring.

Judy shook her head as she hurried across the road to the log cabin. She was beginning to feel sorry for the rangers. A life-sized gallows was not exactly a soul-satisfying summer view. She preferred her own of Pound o’ Tea Lighthouse and the open bay beyond the harbor breakwaters. But her sympathy for rangers was short-lived. Nobody answered her repeated bangs with the knocker, and she finally tramped back to the bookmobile minus the Park map she wanted.

“What’s the good of a ranger station without a ranger?” she muttered. “If those men think I’m leaving library books on a front porch that practically sits on a public road, they’re in for a shock.”

Disgustedly she dumped the books on the seat beside her and started off again. She supposed she could stop at the Station on the way back. Meanwhile, she might as well try the right-hand fork. It was closer.

That fork, however, seemed to be a total loss for a cabin hunter. It was not much more than a trail at best, and Judy began to wonder what road etiquette demanded if another car appeared from the opposite direction. Probably one of them backed all the way to its starting point to let the other through. But after she had stopped for the fourth time to give a white-tailed deer the right of way, she would have been less surprised to meet a war party of Penobscots padding along in moccasins than anything as blatantly civilized as another car. If there were people and cabins in the woods on either side of this narrow dirt track, those deer were mighty unconcerned about them. It was a pair of skunks, though, waddling placidly out of the bushes almost into the path of the bookmobile, that made Judy try another direction. Slamming on her brakes, she spotted a winding side road and hastily turned into that. She was not arguing with one skunk, let alone two. That fork had been getting her nowhere fast. If they wanted it, they could have it.

Nevertheless, before she had gone more than a quarter of a mile, she was thinking of those skunks with positive affection. From the sounds ahead of her, she must be nearly on top of a dozen families with five small boys apiece I But a boy chasing a ball was no more predictable than a skunk, and she crawled around the last curve at a safety-first ten miles an hour. This time she had no need to worry, however. There were plenty of boys—a whole pack of cub scouts on a camporee apparently—but they were much too busy building a fireplace on the beach to get under her wheels. She even had to honk a couple of times before they noticed the bookmobile and came swarming back over the meadow.

“We’re the first contingent,” the cubmaster explained. “There’ll be cubs and scouts alternating in these cabins every two weeks till Labor Day.” He grinned at Judy cheerfully. “I thought maybe you’d like a warning since we’ll want books for badge work, everything from crafts to outdoor cooking. One thing’s sure; we’ll all scrape the bottom of your barrel for wildlife material. This summer one of the rangers is taking the boys on regularly.”

Judy smiled at him. “Thanks for the warning,” she said. “We’ll manage all right at the library unless you descend like a plague of locusts. I’ve got some of the things you want aboard the bookmobile now, and next time I’ll come loaded.”

The next half hour was lively enough to leave Judy breathless, and even after she had drafted two high-school-age den chiefs to list what was going off the shelves, she still felt as if she were managing a three-ring circus.

“On Friday I’ll be here earlier,” she promised, “and stay a whole hour. Then each den can come up in turn with its own den chief and have fifteen minutes to find books. The den that wins cabin inspection oftenest gets to come first. Okay?”

Their shout of approval made her laugh. Cubs might be strenuous, but they were fun. This was one stop in the Park she was going to enjoy. Most of them had never seen a bookmobile before, and they crowded close to watch her shut up shop.

“Where are you going next?” they demanded. “Over to Breakfast Cove?” Judy pricked up her ears. These kids sounded as if they knew their way around.

“I wouldn’t know,” she told them sadly, “not unless you help me. This bookmobile hasn’t got a compass, and I’ve been lost for hours.”

After that, instructions came so fast she had to beg for mercy. The boys had been exploring the Park since early morning, and if there was a single cabin they had not located, it was invisible.

“Draw me a map. You can put X’s in for cabins instead of treasure,” she suggested, and one of the boys dropped down to set to work in the dirt with a stick.

He was the young imp with the angelic smile and mischief in his eyes who had been disappointed because she did not have any snake books on the shelves, and Judy wrestled with temptation while she copied his map. In her opinion, it would be no more than poetic justice if she handed him one of those reptile books on the front seat as a reward for doing some ranger’s job for him. Only she knew perfectly well they were too technical, and she climbed into the station wagon with her conscience still free.

“I’ll bring you two snake books for sure next time,” she called as she drove off, and his face lighted up happily.

She thought of the youngster again when she finally finished her cabin rounds and headed back to the Ranger Station for her last stop. If one of the rangers was boning up on snakes, that kid would get a terrific bang out of talking to him, and she ought to do something about it. She did not have much idea of what rangers were like; probably they were pretty rough and rugged. Just the same, it couldn’t hurt to tackle him.

Judy had got herself all steamed up over her idea long before she reached the Station, but her enthusiasm did not do her much good. Nobody answered her knock this time either. She hated to cart their books back to the library until Friday. On the other hand, she had no more intention of leaving them on that front porch than she had had earlier. For a minute she hesitated, undecided. Then she made up her mind and walked briskly around to the back of the building, looking for a less conspicuous spot.

Luck was with her. There was another door in an ell made by a rear shed, and she stacked the books on its doorstep with a sigh of relief. She was through. She would find the ranger for her cub, though, when she came back at the end of the week. He could not elude her forever.

From a pine branch almost over her head a squirrel started to scold angrily, and Judy looked up to laugh at him.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked. “I don’t want your nuts.”

The squirrel jerked his tail convulsively and danced with rage.

“All right, I’m really Daniel Boone,” she admitted, “but you’re safe anyway. I’m in too much of a hurry to shoot you for a stew.”

Still watching his antics, she hopped off the step only to stop and listen again. Now something was hissing like a basketball with a bad leak. Puzzled, she glanced down at the path and recoiled in horror. Stretched out in front of her was the largest snake she had ever seen. Then while she stood there, frozen, persistently and unmistakably his tail began to rattle.

With a curious objective detachment, Judy could hear her own voice rising in a scream. But screaming wouldn’t help, she thought wildly. That was what the squirrel was doing and he was safe in a tree. Desperately she jumped back on the doorstep and grabbed for a book. If she could make that thing strike at something, she might get past him.

Her hands icy, she scaled the book at the snake’s head and got ready to run. Only suddenly there was no need. A human rocket in a green uniform was already diving across the path.

“Hey, quit it!” he shouted indignantly. “You’ll hurt that snake!”