Читать книгу The Hidden Trail - Roy J. Snell - Страница 5

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A wild-eyed girl with flying hair came running down the hill after the apples. Barely avoiding bumping into the astonished Johnny, she threw herself flat upon the ground and stared at the pile of apples.

Johnny looked at her in silence. Scarcely twelve years old, bare-footed and hatless, clad in a single piece dress of blue calico, she was unmistakably a mountaineer’s child. That she was a sturdy out-of-doors girl with abounding health was shown by the smooth, brown roundness of her bare arms and the freckled dimples in her cheeks.

“Are those your apples?” Johnny asked. His voice carried a note of regret, for he was very hungry.

The girl nodded her head in bewilderment.

Then a new light of joy came into the boy’s face. “I’ll buy them from you,” he said quickly. “How much?”

“Over at the mines I git five cents apiece. Hit’s a long way over to the mines.”

“Of course it is,” encouraged Johnny. “Here’s seventy-five cents for the lot. Got anything else to sell?”

Again the girl nodded. “Yaller termaters,” she said.

“All right. How much?”

Without answering she turned and began climbing the hill. Johnny followed. She paused at the edge of a path that led around the mountain. Here was a partly overturned basket half full of small yellow tomatoes. It was evident that the girl, tripping over a root, had dropped her basket; and the apples, having been piled on top, had rolled out of the basket to go bouncing down the hill.

“How much for the tomatoes?” Johnny asked.

“Twenty-five cents about right, I reckon.”

“All right, here it is.”

The girl thanked him and was turning to go when he stopped her with a question.

“What are you going to do now?”

The girl smiled. “Goin’ sangin’. Grandmother won’t expect me back fer nigh on to four hours. Hit’s a long way to pack things over to the mines.”

“What’s sangin’?” asked Johnny.

“Don’t you know sang?” The girl’s tone was incredulous. “Oh, I know!” she cried suddenly, “you’re one of them thar Furriners!” A look of fear flashed across her eyes.

“But I’m not afraid,” she laughed a second later, “I see lots of ’em over at the mines. Once one of ’em give me a nickel.”

“Well, you know,” she said thoughtfully, seating herself on a log and allowing her brown feet to dangle, “sang grows in the mountings. You know hit by hit’s leaf. You pull hit up and hit’s roots is worth a lot. Once I got a whole half dollar for a two-pronger.”

“Say!” exclaimed Johnny, “can you keep a secret?”

“Try me!” The girl’s dark eyes flashed a challenge.

“Well,” said Johnny thoughtfully, “you go sangin’ to-day, and to-morrow you get your grandmother to send you to the mines again. Only tell her the folks you’re selling to want some sweet potatoes and a pound of butter. I’ll buy them from you and you can go sangin’ again. Won’t that be grand!”

The girl nodded her head.

“Only,” said Johnny, allowing his voice to drop to a whisper, “you mustn’t tell your grandmother that we’re up here in the mountain; nor tell anything about us. Do you understand?”

In answer the girl put a finger impressively to her lips. “I know some other secrets,” she whispered, “an’ I hain’t never told none of them.”

“What’s your name, little girl?” Johnny asked as she turned to go.

“Gene,” she flashed back, and was gone.

Yellow tomatoes and apples are strange rations, but with black berries added to them they did fairly well. After the simple meal the boys stretched out beneath the leafy branches of a clump of laurels, listening to the indignant chatter of a red squirrel.

“Far as I can make out,” said Johnny, “we’ve got to do the rest of our surveying by night. Old Squirrel Head, whoever he is, will have his men watching round here in the mountain during the day. I don’t know what they’d do if they caught up with us, but I’d hate to give them a chance to do it. I—”

His whisper suddenly ceased as Pant caught his arm. Together they listened to the distant clump-clump of hobnailed shoes.

“That’s one of them now,” Pant whispered.

Ten minutes later the report of a rifle came roaring down the mountain.

“Pretending he’s squirrel hunting,” Johnny smiled, “and it’s my opinion that there’ll be a lot of squirrel hunting on this mountain from now on.”

“Johnny, I believe they want my rough land.” Pant’s voice was low and earnest.

“I know they do.”

“But why? What good is it?”

“That’s what I don’t know,” Johnny whispered back.

The footsteps, sounding less and less distinct, died away in the distance. Hours passed. The boys slept a little; talked a little in subdued whispers; ate the rest of the apples and tomatoes; stole cautiously down to a bubbling spring for a drink of water cold as ice; then crept back to sleep some more.

As Johnny lay with his ear to the ground he caught a low rumble. Like distant thunder it was, only more steady and less distinct. “That’s strange,” he told himself, “wonder what it could be?” At last he fell asleep. He was destined to hear that rumble again, many times. It was directly connected with one of the problems they had not yet solved.

Twilight was hovering over the mountains when Johnny was disturbed by a different sound. This time it was a steady thump—thump—thump. “Like someone driving a post in the side of the mountain,” he told himself, “but of course it couldn’t be. No one would be driving posts away up here.”

Nevertheless, he became more curious as the steady thump—thump continued. The shadows were heavy now. One might work his way from shadow to shadow without being seen. Placing a hand on Pant’s shoulder, he shook him gently. When Pant awoke Johnny whispered for him to follow, though he gave him no reason for this sudden move.

By turning about until the strange sound was directly to the left, he was able to get the direction perfectly.

“Right around this side,” he said.

Skirting broad-spreading pine trees, dodging through berry thickets, sneaking along in the shadow of a fallen chestnut tree, with the sound growing louder and louder, they came at last to the edge of a bramble grown clearing which at one time had been planted to corn.

“He’s right over there to the left, on the other side of the clearing,” Pant whispered. “I think I saw something moving over there.”

“Sure you did,” Johnny answered in a subdued voice. “There it is now. See it! It’s the top of a young sapling.”

“That’s queer,” said Pant, scratching his head.

“Come on,” Johnny murmured, “I’ve got an idea.”

They had covered half of the remaining distance when the thumping suddenly ceased. A moment later, as Pant peered cautiously over the top of a fallen beech tree, he saw that the young hickory tree that had been bobbing so violently up and down now stood quite still.

“That’s queer,” he repeated.

“Come on,” Johnny urged.

When within ten yards of the young hickory they crept round a wild gooseberry bush for a look. A large round block stood beneath the hickory. That was all they saw for a time.

“There’s something hanging in the sapling,” said Pant, pointing out the young hickory tree.

Johnny looked and shivered. “Sort of spooky,” he said, “looks like a hanging or something.”

“Couldn’t be anything bigger than a cat. Nobody there. Let’s have a look.”

“Wait!” Johnny’s hand was on his arm. “Might be a plant; just a trick to get us in a trap.”

Over to the right a chipmunk chattered. To the left a robin chirped his goodnight song. Above them a blue jay screamed shrilly.

Distant sounds came to them; the far away gong of a supper bell, the lowing of a cow, the tank-tong of bells on the necks of cattle. Fifteen minutes they waited in silence. Then Johnny, standing up to ease his cramped muscles, spoke in a low voice:

“C’mon. We’ll risk it.”

Darkness had come. The object in the hickory loomed out of the dark. With quickened heartbeats they approached the spot whence an hour ago had come those mysterious sounds. As they came near to the large, round, up-ended block of wood beneath the hickory, Pant threw back his shoulders and gave vent to a low chuckle.

“A pounding-mill,” he laughed.

“A what?”

For answer Pant thrust out a hand and first moving his fingers about a circular cavity in the top of the block, held them to Johnny’s lips.

“Taste,” he said.

“M-m, corn-meal,” was Johnny’s astonished answer.

“Sure thing,” Pant chuckled. “Natives used pounding-mills for beating their corn into meal long before they had water or steam mills.”

“But how—how do they work?”

“Simple enough. That block hanging by a rope to the flexible sapling is square on the end and has two short handles to it. You put your corn in the opening here, then bring down that chunk of wood and beat the corn into meal. The tree lifts the chunk for you. All you have to do is to bring it down. See!”

Reaching up a hand he brought the chunk down with such force that the jarring thud set both boys at nerves’ end.

“C’mon!” urged Johnny, “we’ll be caught.”

As they reached a distant shelter Pant said, “I don’t think there was really any danger. The fellow who is using that old pounding-mill is hiding out himself.”

“I wonder why?”

“Reason enough, probably. There are always men hiding out in these mountains. A few days ago Crider told me of two men who were hiding in these hills. One a bond-jumper and the other a moonshiner who shot two customs officers. Pretty hard to get them in this rough country.”

A strange thrill ran up Johnny’s spine at the thought that somewhere in these very woods, perhaps watching them at this moment, might be some desperate criminal who was in hiding. It might mean death to cross his path.

“I wonder,” he suddenly questioned, “why that boy was hiding up here? Do you suppose he had jumped a bond or committed a crime?”

“He didn’t look like a criminal,” Pant answered. “Anyway, if he is still living and I had a chance to help him I’d do it and ask questions afterwards.”

“So would I.”

“Pant,” said Johnny, “did you ever see any airplane silk?”

“Of course.”

“Snap on your flashlight for a moment.”

Pant obeyed.

Johnny spread out a ragged square of pink silk cloth. “Anything like that?” he asked.

Pant stared for a few seconds, then he felt of the cloth, rumpled it, tried to tear it, then handed it back to Johnny.

“Tough stuff,” he mumbled, “can’t hardly tear it. It’s like airplane silk, only that isn’t ever pink. Where’d you find the piece?”

“At the foot of the cliff where we thought that boy crashed.”

“Huh!” grunted Pant after a moment’s silence, “there might be something in that, too.”

“Only,” he said after another period of silence, “that boy didn’t have an airplane up there on the ledge. We’d have seen it and heard it. So maybe there isn’t so much to it after all.”

“Maybe there is, and maybe there isn’t,” said Johnny thoughtfully, “but I’ve been thinking it might have been—” He paused as if for further reflection, and left the sentence unfinished.

“Pant,” he said after a time, “that burst of light over us just as we reached the entrance to the Hidden Trail last night was queer.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” said Pant dryly.

“Brightest thing I ever saw. Fairly blinded a fellow.”

“Good thing it blinded Squirrel Head and his gang. They’re uncommon fine shots,” Pant added, grimly.

“It’s queer about that light,” Johnny reflected.

Pant said no more, so again they lapsed into silence. Johnny was wondering if Pant had anything to do with that mysterious light. In the past this strange fellow had proved a very wizard at causing all manner of red lights and white fires to do his bidding.

“It wouldn’t be strange,” he told himself, “if Pant had a hand in it. Then again, maybe he didn’t. I’ve heard of lightning out of a clear sky. It was certainly like that.”

“Look!” Breaking in upon his meditations, Pant gripped his arm.

“Where?”

“Over there. A light.”

“That’s right,” Johnny breathed, “and it doesn’t move. Must be a camp or cabin up there somewhere. Question is, is it our outlaw of the pounding-mill?”

“Or,” questioned Pant, “is it our wild boy come to life?”

For a time, not knowing what else to do, they lay there watching the light. At the same time, like a panorama, the events of the past few days flashed through Johnny’s mind. They came to the mountains to look at Pant’s land. It seems valueless; yet as they linger on the mountain it seems to find new value. They chase a mysterious boy and he appears to leap over the cliff, yet they do not find him at the bottom. They are mysteriously kidnapped, but thanks to the Hidden Trail, they escape. Providence takes a hand in furnishing them food. Someone on the mountain uses a pounding-mill and has a light. Who is he?

“And what’s next?” Johnny wondered.