Dorothy Dale to the rescue

Tavia overtook Dorothy, grasped her fiercely by the arm and clapped a frantic hand upon her mouth.

“Hush, Doro! Are you mad?” she whispered fiercely. “There is something queer going on here. You must not let any one hear you.”

“But it was Joe!” cried Dorothy, struggling frantically to be free. “Didn’t you hear? It was Joe’s voice! Let me go, Tavia! Let me go!”

“Not until you can listen to reason,” cried Tavia, and Dorothy suddenly became quiet, staring at her tensely.

“Oh, you are right—of course you are right,” she said, making a terrible effort to calm herself. “I was a little mad, I guess. Joe calling for help. Tavia, we must go to him quickly!”

“Of course we must,” agreed Tavia soothingly. “But it won’t do us any good to rush in when we don’t know what we may be rushing into. Besides, how can you be sure that was Joe’s voice?”

“Oh, Tavia, I know! Don’t you suppose I would know his voice anywhere?”

Tavia nodded and scanned the mountain side with puzzled eyes.

“Where do you suppose it came from?” asked Dorothy, her voice lowered to a whisper. She was beginning to tremble and her teeth chattered uncontrollably. “It sounded as if——”

“It came from the side of the mountain,” Tavia replied. “I can’t understand it, but if we go cautiously we probably can solve the mystery.”

But to “go cautiously” was the last thing Dorothy wanted to do just then. Usually the cautious one, accustomed to restraining the impetuous Tavia, now the tables were reversed. Dorothy was the one who could brook no delay, Tavia the one who counseled caution.

But though Dorothy’s heart urged her to fly to Joe, knowing that he was in peril, her head whispered that Tavia’s advice was sound—that they must proceed with infinite caution if they meant to help her brother.

When Tavia said that the sound seemed to come from the side of the mountain she had meant to be taken literally.

Through the woods and directly in front of them they could see the mountain where it rose abruptly upward. There was no trail at this point, for here the mountain was practically unclimbable.

The trail, the one they had lost, zigzagged tortuously this way and that seeking those sections of the mountain where it was possible for men to force a pathway.

“We had better tether our ponies here,” Dorothy suggested softly. “If we take them much farther they are apt to whinny.”

“Excellent idea!” said Tavia, suiting the action to the word. “Now, we’ll see what is funny about that mountain.”

Silently they crept through the woods, careful to avoid twigs that might crack under their feet.

Once when Tavia caught her toe in the gnarled root of a tree and fell full length upon the ground, she lay there for several seconds, afraid to move while Dorothy stood motionless, her hand touching the trunk of a tree to steady herself.

Nothing happened, no sound broke the murmurous silence of the woods, and finally they gained courage to start again.

They had gained some distance when Dorothy stopped, bewildered, and reached out a hand to Tavia.

“It’s queer we don’t hear any further sound from him,” she said, her lips close to Tavia’s ear. “I can’t tell which way to go, can you?”

Tavia shook her head and was about to speak when Dorothy raised her hand imploringly.

She had heard another sound, and they were startlingly close to it.

A man was speaking and although they could not hear the words they could tell by his tone that they were angry and threatening. And again the voice seemed to come from the heart of the mountain itself.

“Where in the world does that voice come from?” whispered Tavia. “I don’t mind telling you, Doro, that it has me scared.”

Dorothy held up her hand again, gesturing for silence. Then, before Tavia knew what she was up to, Dorothy flung herself face down upon the ground and with infinite caution made her way, eel-like, toward a huge rock that jutted out from the mountainside.

Wondering, Tavia followed her example.

Dorothy did not increase her speed even when a sharp cry rang out, shattering the silence with breath-taking abruptness.

“I won’t do it—you—you—” came a boy’s voice, broken and furious. “You wouldn’t try to make me do a thing like that if you weren’t a lot of cowards! You wait till I tell Garry! You just wait!”

“Oh, we’ll wait all right, kid.”

The girls were near enough now to hear the sneering words, although the tone was still carefully lowered.

The boy tried to answer, but a heavy hand across his mouth strangled the defiance.

Dorothy had reached the jutting, out-flung rock and had solved the mystery of the mountain.

For the rock served as a gigantic door, almost blocking up the entrance of a cave that seemed to extend far into the mountain. From where she and Tavia had stood when Joe’s desperate cry first reached their ears, the rock entirely concealed the entrance to the cave.

A most excellent retreat and one admirably adapted to the needs of Larrimer and his gang!

Tavia crowded close to her side and Dorothy saw that she also had discovered the answer to the riddle.

With infinite caution Dorothy crept still closer to the entrance of the cave, peering around the edge of the rock.

The cave was so dark that at first she could see nothing.

Then, as her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, she made out the figure of a man squatting upon something that looked like an overturned keg or small barrel. His back was turned squarely to her so that she could not catch even a profile glimpse of his face.

Then, her eyes searching feverishly, they fell upon an object that very nearly caused her to forget the need of caution.

Lying huddled upon the floor of the cave, pushed a little further into the darkness than the man’s figure, was something that appeared to be a bunch of old clothes. It moved, cried out in misery, and Dorothy knew that it was Joe.

Every instinct in her prompted her to fly to him, to take him in her arms and loose the cruel bonds that bound him.

She half rose to her feet. A sound that seemed loud to Tavia, crouching at her side, but was, in reality, only the shadow of a sound, escaped her lips.

Tavia immediately drew her down, pressed a warning hand against her lips.

“Don’t spoil it all now!” she hissed. “Lie still and wait.”

Dorothy nodded mutely and peered round the rock again.

Suddenly she pressed back, pushing Tavia with her behind the shelter of its huge bulk.

For the man had risen and was moving toward the entrance of the cave.

“So you think you won’t, my hearty,” they heard him say in his heavy, jeering tone. “Well, I am goin’ to give you just one more chance before we really begin to put the screws on. This here little letter we want you to write, my lad, ain’t goin’ to hurt Garry Knapp none.” The scoundrel condescended to an argumentative tone and Dorothy clinched her hands fiercely.

“All you have to do is to write him a letter,” the heavy voice went on, “tellin’ him you will be as free as air as soon as he agrees to sell us his land—at a fair figure, mind, a very fair figure. You would be doin’ him a favor, really. Think of all that cash right in his hand to-morrow, say, or the next day at the outside. You would be doin’ him a favor and savin’ your own skin at the same time. Come now, how about it? Let’s be sensible.”

Dorothy listened breathlessly for her brother’s answer. She did not realize how much that answer meant to her till later when she found the imprint of her fingernails in the palms of her two hands.

“Say, I can’t tell you what I think of you—I don’t know words that are bad enough!” cried Joe furiously. “But I know you’re a—a—bum—and I’ll get even with you for this some day.”

“Some day—mebbe,” the man sneered. “But in the meantime this place ain’t goin’ to be any bed of roses for you, my lad. You gotta think of that, you know.”

“I don’t care, as long as I play fair with Garry,” muttered the boy. “I—I—don’t care what—what you do with me.”

But Dorothy knew that, despite all his bravado, Joe was only a boy and he did care. And even while her heart ached with pity, it thrilled with pride at the thought that he had stood the test, had proved himself a thoroughbred. He would “play fair” with Garry, no matter what happened.

She shrank back suddenly as Joe’s tormentor brushed the rock that guarded the entrance of the cave and disappeared into the woods.

“Now, Tavia!” she whispered tensely. “Now!”