Читать книгу The Black Schooner - Roy J. Snell - Страница 7

Table of Contents

Johnny Thompson was far from being one of those unfortunate beings known as a “ladies’ man.” You will know that if you have read the other books of this series. A splendid swimmer, a hiker with a long-distance record, a hard worker, a thorough student and a champion lightweight boxer, he was the type of boy that our country has needed and always will need. Yet he was not the sort of fellow who would ignore a girl.

Truth is, the girl he was now with was not the kind of girl that any real fellow would want to neglect. With face and arms browned by the sun, with every muscle alert as a clock spring, she inspired Johnny at once with the thought, “She’d make a wonderful chum.”

When the boat had been drawn high on the river’s bank, she led him straight away through the forest. The trail was not blazed, yet she hesitated not for a moment.

“Knows it like a book,” he whispered to himself in admiration.

Stooping a bit forward, her shoulders drooped, her arms hanging loose and free, her feet making long rapid pit-pats, she led on like a professional woodsman. As he followed in silence Johnny’s fancy set him dreaming. In the dream he saw himself not a white boy but an Indian, and this brown girl before him was his mate. They were alone in a vast wilderness. The boat on the bank of the stream was a birch-bark canoe, the fish he had caught that morning their only food. When night came they would erect a shelter of pine boughs and sleep on a bed of dry ferns and pine needles. For the moment they were going forward on a reconnoitering expedition to discover if possible the camp of the nearest rival hunters.

“Watch out.” The girl’s words shattered his dream. “You have to cross this stream on this fallen tree-trunk. If you don’t mind your step you’ll fall in. Give me your hand.”

Johnny gripped her solid little palm and together in silence they crossed the stream which, gurgling over rocks and half-decayed tree-trunks, made its way to the river.

“Fish in there, I’ll bet,” he suggested.

“Lots of them. Brook trout. Do you like to fish?”

“You bet.”

“Sometime I’ll show you where the best holes are.”

“Thanks, little squirrel. That will be fine. What’s your name, little squirrel?”

“Nelsie—Nelsie Andrews.”

“That’s a fine name; little bit of Nellie, little of Elsie. Mine’s Johnny.”

“Thanks, Johnny.”

“What’s this you tell me about being worried about your father, Nelsie? Does he drink too much?”

“Of course not,” she turned to face him, a glint of anger in her eye.

“Oh!” he said, “Excuse me. A lot of lumbering people do drink too much, you know.”

“But not bosses of big mills,” she smiled forgivingly.

“I suppose I oughtn’t to tell you,” she went on after a moment, “but I guess you’re all right. You see, my father’s afraid he’ll lose his job. The mill isn’t making any money, and it ought to. The people that own it say there is a leak somewhere. They can’t find out where it is and they blame my father for it. They think he is wasting lumber, letting good timber go over into the scrap pile or something. But he isn’t. He’s awful careful and he knows his business. Indeed he does. He’s been a sawmill boss for twenty years. So you see it would be awful hard if he lost his job now.”

“I see,” said Johnny thoughtfully.

Then a sudden inspiration seized him.

“By hemlock!” he exclaimed, “that must be why we were sent—”

He did not finish. A sense of caution had crept over him. When one goes out solving mysteries, he does not begin by telling everyone he meets about it.

“What must be?” she asked quickly.

He did not answer her question.

“Do you happen to know whether or not a rich man by the name of Remmington holds an interest in your mill?” he asked.

“Yes, I think I have heard my father speak of him.”

“Then perhaps that explains—”

“Explains what?”

“I can’t tell you just now, little brown squirrel. Sometime I will. All I can say now is that I’m going to help your father if I can.”

She turned and flashed him a smile. Then again they tramped on in silence.

The forest was still as a cave. Here a tiny bird flitted noiselessly from twig to twig, there a huge butterfly drifted across their path. Other than these, everything was still. Even their own footsteps over the heavy carpet of nature made no sound. Again Johnny took up his dream of an Indian youth and his mate.

“Did you say you just wanted to see the mill, not go through it?” the girl asked.

“I wouldn’t have time to go through it,” he said.

“You can see it from up there. It—It’s wonderful!” She pointed to the top of a giant fir tree which, towering above its fellows, appeared to reach to the very dome of the sky.

“Yes, I suppose so,” he smiled. “And it would be especially wonderful from the moon.”

“But I’m not joking.”

She led him around the tree, to point out a rustic ladder fastened to the tree-trunk. The ladder reached up to the first limb, some forty feet above.

“It’s my lookout,” she explained.

“Did you put that ladder up there?”

“Sure. A little piece at a time.”

“And do you dare climb it?”

For answer she sprang away up the tree-trunk.

“C’m’on,” she trilled, tossing a look of daring back at him.

Johnny was twice her weight. He knew what a fall might mean, yet he could not refuse the dare of a girl.

Putting out his right hand, he gripped the side of the ladder and began to climb.

It was with a distinct sense of relief that he at last dragged himself to the sitting position on the first limb of the tree.

The girl was seated on the second limb, smiling back at him. As he looked he could not help but think how well knickers suited her. Her muscles were as hard as his own; the tight knit fingers and her solid little cheeks showed that.

“Made for the woods and the tree-tops as the squirrel is,” he told himself.

“All right,” he smiled after he had regained his breath. “I don’t see any mill from here; only the tops of trees. Where do we go from here?”

“Up,” she breathed, twisting herself into a standing position and gripping the limb above her.