Of the Stella Olympia Relief Fund it was decided to place $65 in the savings bank. The morning after the Festival the campers took Limpy the remaining ten, the sum of a doctor’s bill, long unpaid. A more astonished lass and a happier was not to be found in the United States, but for fear of giving her too much excitement the girls made their visit a short one, Jean promising to come again on the following afternoon.
The next day Carol and her classmates went with Miss Hamersley on a tally-ho party to Deer Lake, as the guests of Mrs. Clinton of Big Pine Camp. After dinner Mrs. Brook took Cecily and Betty on a marketing expedition to a farm twelve miles away, Douglas driving them in a buckboard. While they were gone some of the girls held a tennis tournament, and Jean watched them, her ears pricked up for the sound of the coaching-horn, in hopes that Carol would return in time to go with her to see Limpy.
“Oh, dear! it’s four o’clock! I can’t wait any longer. I’ll just have to go alone!” she sighed at, last. “Oh, I think Carol might come! Limpy may get a heart attack, and I won’t know what to do. I just hate to go alone, but I’ll have to,—I promised.” Choosing a story-book to read aloud she set forth with a downcast countenance.
“Jean, Jane, whar’s you gwine?” Frances called from the hammock.
“To see Limpy,” replied Jean. “I have to go alone, because Carol hasn’t come back, and Fräulein has such a headache I don’t like to ask her.”
“Why didn’t you ask me? I’ll go with you,” said the friendly Mouse.
“I didn’t ask you because I knew you wouldn’t behave.”
“Well, I’m going to be good now, anyway,” said Frances. “I haven’t anything to do, so I’m going with you.”
“Will you promise solemnly, on your honor, to be good?” Jean demanded. “You know the least thing might give her a heart attack.”
“Yes, I’ll be good. She’ll like me a great deal better than you.” But as they crossed the Harrels’ daisy field, Frances said, “Don’t let’s go to Limpy’s. Let’s go to the flume,—I’m crazy to see it!”
Troublesome Path, the nearest way to the flume, was the wildest and most perplexing trail in the whole region; and it began in the woods that skirted the daisy field. The Hamiltons had taken Carol and Jean over it a few days before, and the girls had brought back a thrilling report of the deep gorge, with the brook roaring through it, and the natural bridge spanning the chasm.
“Oh, yes. I’d like to see ourselves marching off to the flume!” said Jean. “We’d get a nice big scolding!”
“Nobody’d know, and nobody’d care,” said Frances.
“Veritas!” And Jean planted the tip of her forefinger on Frances’s golden shield.
“Oh, shoot Veritas!” returned the Mouse. “Come on!”
“I won’t do it!” declared Jean. “I’m going to Limpy’s and you are too, so come along! This is Silver Sword work, and it’s time you did a little, Miss Battle Maid!”
“Oh, Giraffe, you’re such a crank! I did enough silver-swording making candy for the festival. I’m going to the flume, whether you are or not. Good-bye!”
“No, you sha’n’t!” Jean caught Frances by the arm. “You’d lose the trail in two minutes! Ah, Frisk, I think you’re terribly mean! You promised you’d be good—I knew you were only pretending, though!”
“All rightee, I’ll be good,” said Frances, who was really not at all anxious to take the long, unknown walk, with only herself for company. But when she reached the Harrels’ she balked again, and dropped into a rickety chair under a tree. “I’m going to stay out here,” she announced. “My daddy sent me to camp to be out in the fresh air all I could!”
“Frances Browne, you’re just trying to be hateful! You must come in—I’ll make you!” cried Jean, doing her best to drag the Mouse.
“No,” said Frances, “I won’t. I can’t stand that cabbagey smell. I’ll sit out here and cool off. But I won’t hang around waiting for you all the afternoon. If you stay too long I will go to the flume!”
“Well, stay out then!” snapped Jean. The vision of a pale, unconscious Limpy was rising before her, but she bravely went into the house by the open front door. At the same moment Frances saw Tony Harrel come out by the kitchen door and walk hurriedly away to the woods.
Frances lolled back, fanning herself with her hat; then she took a light luncheon from the Harrels’ sparse currant crop. Finally she strolled off and began to climb the hill near by; and whom should she see coming down but Bob and Ted Talcott, boys of fourteen and twelve, who were spending a month under Dr. Hamilton’s care. They had struck up an acquaintance with her at the festival over berries and cream.
“Hello, Miss Fruit Fairy! Where are you going all by yourself?” asked Bob.
“Oh, nowhere,” said Frances. “I want to go to the flume. Do you know the way?”
“Sure. Went there yesterday with Jack.”
“Take me there now, will you?” asked Frances eagerly. “I’m wild to see it, and I haven’t anybody to go with.”
“Too far for girls,” said Bob, with manly superiority.
“It isn’t at all. Jean went there last week. If you’ll take me I’ll make you some fudge to-morrow.”
“All right, ma’am. Well take you to the flume, and we’ll come and call on you too,” said Bob.
“Won’t she squeal when we get her out on the bridge!” said his brother.
“No, I won’t. I never get dizzy,” Frances declared. “Do you dare me to cross it all alone?”
“Nope.”
“I dare myself, then!” said Frances in high glee. They ran down the hill and turned into the Harrels’ place on their way to the trail.
“You haven’t got a pencil and paper, have you?” asked Frances.
“There you are!” Bob brought out a small red account book and a stubby pencil.
Frances tore out a page and wrote: “I’ve waited about three hours for you, and now I’m going to the flume. Good-bye.” This note she fastened with a hat-pin to the tree under which Jean had left her, and then set off with the boys along Troublesome Path.
Jean looked much bolder than she felt as she walked in at the Harrels’ front door. She peeped into the parlor,—no one was there. She went into the kitchen,—that was deserted too. It was a bad sign, and the horror of perhaps finding Limpy unconscious almost made her play the coward. But she rallied her flagging courage and stole upstairs. The door of Limpy’s bedroom was open and she heard the sound of sobbing. She went in. There was the poor girl in a heap on the floor beside the bed, her face buried in her hands, shuddering with convulsive tremors.
“Limpy, what’s the matter?” cried Jean.
Limpy started, stared at her wildly for an instant; then, half raising herself, she threw her arms around Jean’s waist, dragging her down on the floor beside her and panted out:
“Where’s Tony? Is he gone? Is he gone?”
“Limpy, dear, please stop crying and tell me what’s happened,” said Jean, putting her arms around the sobbing girl.
“Tony come back last night. He lost his place,” answered Limpy. “An’ he—he took my—money,—my ten dollars!”
“He stole it?” Jean asked breathlessly.
“No, he made me give it to him. He said—oh, dear! he’d kill me for tellin’! Shut the door; he might hear us.”
“Whisper; then he can’t hear,” said Jean, closing the door softly; and Limpy went on in an undertone: “He said he was goin’ away again, an’ he made me give him the ten dollars. I ain’t had no chance to give ’em to Doctor. An’ Tony said if I ever told on him he’d ruin Douglas! So I couldn’t do nothin’,—I just had to give him the money. An’ I got to give him all the rest. He said if I didn’t have it ready for him when he come back next time, he’d set the woods afire, an’ burn up your camp an’ the Hamiltons’! An’ he’ll do it! I know he will! He said he’d do it now, if I told on him!”
“No, he won’t!” answered Jean, desperately frightened herself, but knowing that for Limpy’s sake she must hide her terror. “I’ll tell everybody about it, and they’ll watch for him so he won’t get a chance. Wait till I go and get Frances,—she’s waiting outside,—and then we’ll stay with you till it’s time to go home. Don’t be frightened.”
“Please come back quick then,” begged Limpy. “My heart’s beatin’ terrible bad! I can’t hardly breathe.”
“Oh, dear! Now she’s going to be unconscious,” thought Jean. “Come, Limpy, get on the bed,—quick—and then you’ll feel better,” she urged, her own heart beating fast with fear. She helped Limpy to the bed, and sat beside her until the excited girl grew quieter. Then she slipped softly down stairs, hurried out of doors and found that Frances had deserted already. She could see her in the distance climbing the hill, but she was afraid to leave Limpy alone and go after the runaway.
Fighting the terror that gripped her, Jean went indoors again, her hands icy and her ears alert for sounds of danger. She peeped cautiously into each room in turn until she had proof positive that Tony was not in the house. Then she went back to Limpy and forced herself to speak cheerily.
“Frances has gone up the hill and I can’t make her hear,” she said. “But let’s not worry any more about Tony. I’m sure he’s gone. I’ve brought a lovely book and I’ll read to you.”
Jean read for an hour or more, and then, though the clock in the kitchen had stopped, she was sure that it was time to leave. “I’ll have to go now,” said she. “It must be tea-time. But I’ll ask Mrs. Brook to send somebody to stay with you. You won’t be left alone long.”
As she went out Frances’ words came back to her: “If you stay too long I will go to the flume.” Spying the note pinned to the tree she took it down and read it. “Mercy! She has gone!” exclaimed poor Jean. “Oh, dear! She’ll lose her way! I’ll have to go after her. She can’t have gone far. I’ll soon catch up with her.”
Running across the yard and through the fields to the woods, she set out on the trail to the flume, calling, “Frances!” and “Ooh-ooh!” and listening in vain for an answer. On she went, following with difficulty Troublesome Path. She pushed her way through tangled underbrush and scrambled over rocks, trying to find the trees on which blazes had been cut. But the trail was so hard to make out that to keep the right course proved a baffling problem. Pretty soon she was hopelessly perplexed, and which was north, south, east or west, which way led home and which to the flume she had not the least idea. It was growing dimmer and dimmer in the forest; night would fall early in that dense shade, and suddenly Jean realized that she was lost. Lost! It came upon her like a nightmare. She was shut up in a vast dark prison; and it would have been almost as easy to break through the walls of a cell as to find her way out through that bewildering maze of trees. The fears of the afternoon were nothing compared with the terror that rushed over her now. She began to call, “Frances!” again, with all her strength, but deathlike silence was the only answer. Suddenly she checked herself and shrank back into the cleft of a rock with a new dread. Tony himself might be in the woods! His vindictive eyes might even now be peering at her out of the dusk.
But she must not stay cowering there; she must go on before the night should blind her; and so she tried again to pick out the way by which she had come. She wondered whether she and Frances had already been missed, and whether any one had yet been sent out to search for them; and she asked herself how, in that vast forest, either of them could ever be found. Then she was seized with a new alarm. She remembered having heard of people being lost in forests and becoming crazed with the horror of it. What if she should go crazy! Though lost, she must control herself and keep her senses. She gathered up all her will power and tried to fight down the fear that had mastered her.
How dark it was growing! In some places Jean could hardly see. Wandering on despairingly, she at last came out on the bank of a brook. This was next best to seeing a friend. It might lead her out of the woods. It must lead somewhere, and following it she would have a path that she could not lose. She walked along the edge of the stream, but before she had gone far she noticed the smell of smoke. Then the terror that she had been trying to conquer swept over her again. Tony might have overheard Limpy telling her of his threat and have set fire to the woods already! She must escape by way of the brook before he should find her, or the fire spread. She hurried forward, but suddenly stopped, checked by a new thought. There had been but little rain all summer, and Douglas had told her that a fire once kindled in the dry woods might spread for miles and even destroy the camps at Halcyon. He had said that a fire once started even through carelessness would smoulder and spread through the inflammable mat of dead leaves, twigs and moss, the “duff” as it was called, and at last break out in violence to do its work of destruction. Danger was near—not to herself alone, but to the homes over which the fire might sweep. But it was a danger that it might be possible to avert.
Suddenly it seemed almost as if a voice said, “Battle Maid, take your sword and conquer!”
“I will!” said Jean. “This is a real battle! I’ll do the best I can!”
She climbed the bank; pushed through the trees, and scrambled through a windfall. Beyond the heap of boughs she came upon a patch of ground from which little curls of smoke were rising. Here and there sparks gleamed under the smoke. Could she do anything to check the spreading fire? The brook was near, but all she had for a pail was her canvas hat, nearly water-proof to be sure, but holding scarcely a cupful. Yet the experiment seemed worth trying. She hurried back to the brook, filled her hat, returned to the burning patch and poured out the water. There was a fizzle, and the smoke disappeared from about as wide a space as her palm could have covered. Back and forth she went between the brook and the fire, each time a splutter and a few inches conquered, encouraging her to continue. Her fears were lessening now that she had work to do, and she toiled on, her path growing more and more obscured. She had heard of beating out fires, and she struck at the smouldering ground with a branch; but it was a dead one and broke at the second blow. She took up her hat again, and this time, as she carried it to the brook she could find her way only by groping. Returning she caught her foot in the fallen branches and fell, bruising herself painfully.
Then her utter helplessness overpowered poor Jean. The night had come down at last, wrapping her around in a cloak of darkness, and she crouched there among the fallen trees, alone and in pain. The wounded battle maid could not help one sob of despair and a little low moan. The moan ended in a prayer: “Oh, dear Lord, don’t let me die here. Make them find me! Oh, Lord, please help me, and don’t let the woods burn!” And then the agony of fear and the despair passed away. Suddenly Jean was strong again and hopeful, though so helpless and all alone. She rose up and groped her way back to her work again.