CHAPTER XV
A SHADOWY BULK
Regardless of Grace’s detaining hand, Mollie sprang to her feet. She crept to the flap opening, then, flinging it wide, sprang into the open. Grace, more afraid of being left alone in the tent than anything else, followed.
The night was intensely black. The rain had chased away the moon and stars and the sky was covered with lowering clouds. The chill of the descending rain made Mollie shiver convulsively.
There it came, that stealthy dragging sound. It was at the corner of the tent and Mollie crouched back against the canvas, hoping that the intruder, whatever it was, might take her for part of the shadows.
But as she stepped back a twig cracked betrayingly beneath her foot and at the corner of the tent a black shape detached itself from the blacker shadows, stood upright for a moment, staring in her direction. Mollie was quite sure her heart stood still. She gasped and felt as though she were strangling while her eyes remained irresistibly fixed on the thing at the corner of the tent.
She heard a gasp behind her and knew that Grace also had seen.
Suddenly the shape turned and moved off into the deeper shadows of the woods. It made no pretense of hiding its movements, but crashed noisily through the underbrush.
As though rooted to the spot Mollie and Grace remained motionless until the last sound of their enemy’s retreat died in the distance.
Then Mollie half stumbled, half fell into the tent, nearly upsetting Grace as she did so. Her hands were shaking and her throat felt dry.
“Where are the searchlights?” she asked in a strained husky whisper. “Do you know where Betty put them, Grace?”
“Here,” answered Grace, and, after a moment of groping in the dark, a hand torch suddenly flooded the gloom with its light. In the glow the girls regarded one another fearfully, the fright they had had showing plainly on their faces.
“Let’s sit down and t-talk this thing over,” suggested Mollie, trying bravely to get herself in hand. “I g-guess neither of us will want to sleep for a while.”
“Sleep!” exclaimed Grace, shakily. “I feel as though I never wanted to sleep again. M-Mollie, did you see what I saw?”
“Perfectly,” said Mollie. Her voice was steady once more but it might be noted that she sat with her face toward the tent flap. “Nothing’s going to take me by surprise if I can help it,” she had told herself defiantly.
“Then what was it?” persisted Grace. She also was watching the tent flap. “Do you think it was an—an animal?”
“Nonsense,” retorted Mollie brusquely. “Didn’t you see it stand upright? And what animal ever does that?”
Grace giggled hysterically.
“Well, if it’s a m-man,” she said, “so much the worse. What did he want, anyway, prowling around our tent in the m-middle of the night?”
“It’s nearer morning,” said Mollie, regarding her wrist watch and seeing that the hands pointed to four-thirty. “It’s the rain makes it seem so early.”
“Well, anyway, it’s pitch black,” returned Grace, hugging herself hard to keep from shivering. “What difference does the time make?”
“None, except that it isn’t so long to wait till morning,” admitted Mollie, adding briskly: “Now, we’ve just got to buckle on our common sense and make up our minds not to be scared.”
“Tell me that at nine o’clock to-morrow morning with the sun shining,” returned Grace, shivering in spite of herself. “Just now I’m scared black and blue.”
“Well, if that’s the way you feel——”
“It’s the way you feel too,” returned Grace, quickly. “You know you’re just frightened to death, Mollie. Look at your teeth chattering.”
Mollie promptly clamped her lips down on this circumstantial evidence and commanded her teeth to stop chattering.
“I’m cold,” she defended weakly. “That rain——”
“Yes and you were foolish to go out there in it,” Grace scolded. “Suppose it had been a wild animal prowling around out there, what chance would you have had against it, unarmed?”
“What chance would we have had against it in the tent?” countered Mollie.
“We couldn’t have had less,” came from Grace. “Then, often an animal will hesitate to go in any place it isn’t familiar with. Anyway, the tent was all the protection we had.”
“I suppose so,” said Mollie, wearily. She was beginning to feel dreadfully drowsy again and, if it had not been for the fact that Grace had seen exactly what she had seen, she might almost have been able to persuade herself that once more her imagination had been playing her tricks.
At the thought her eyes sprang wide open again and she stared at Grace.
“Then,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, “I bet I did hear some one moving in the woods this morning.”
“I bet you did, too,” said Grace, moving a little further away from the flap of the tent. “Mollie, do you suppose there are tramps around here after all?”
“Looks like it,” answered Mollie, grimly, adding, with an attempt of lightness: “Just now, I wish Betty’s fake pistol were a real one.”
“Sh-h,” warned Grace. “Somebody might be listening. I thought I heard——” She drew back the tent flap ever so cautiously, but there was nothing visible. Only the mournful drip, drip of the rain from the trees came to them.
“What do you suppose they want?” whispered Grace, drawing nearer to Mollie as though for protection. “What do they mean by hanging around?”
“Oh, how do I know any better than you do?” snapped Mollie, for her nerves were beginning to show the strain they had been under. “And I don’t see why you speak in the plural, anyway. We saw only one man, didn’t we?”
“Where there’s one, there’s probably more,” remarked Grace, gloomily, at which Mollie gave a little impatient toss of her head.
“We’re probably making altogether too much fuss about a little thing,” she said. “If we don’t happen to be alone on this end of the lake, that doesn’t say that our neighbors are all villains. This—this—prowler may have come simply out of curiosity.”
“Humph!” sniffed Grace. “Then why did he choose night time to satisfy his curiosity and why did he seem scared when he found we had heard him? Curiosity—huh!”
“Well, believe the worst if you want to,” returned Mollie, wearily. “Goodness, but I’m getting s-sleepy——”
“See here,” warned Grace, in a voice that once more startled Mollie’s eyes wide open. “If you think you have a chance of going to sleep and leaving me here to keep watch alone, you were never more mistaken in your life, Mollie Billette. You’ll stay awake if I have to stick pins in you.”
“Oh, all right,” returned Mollie, with a sigh, trying to settle herself in a more comfortable position, “if that’s the way you feel about it—But listen here, Grace, if I keep awake just to suit you, you’ve got to make yourself entertaining.”
“Well, of all the——” Grace began, breaking off to add with real curiosity: “Do you mean to tell me that you aren’t scared any longer?”
“I’m scared to death, but I’m sleepier yet,” returned Mollie, stifling a tremendous yawn. “Better hurry up, Grace. If you don’t start something interesting pretty quick I’m apt to drop off despite all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. Going—going—gone——”
“Hold on there,” broke in Grace desperately. “I have an idea. Why not play checkers?”
“Why not, indeed?” returned Mollie, opening her eyes with what almost seemed interest.
And so it came to pass that two Outdoor Girls spent the short time that still remained to dawn in a very peculiar manner. Luckily the girls seldom went anywhere without carrying some games with them and this habit stood them in good stead now.
From somewhere among the jumble of things within the tent Grace produced a much battered and worn board and men and so they settled down to play until daylight should put in its friendly appearance.
And when at last the first rays of the sun broke through the clearing sky, the two girls were so utterly exhausted from lack of sleep and the nerve strain they had been under that they simply sprawled out upon the blankets and fell into a sound slumber.
The sun had crept high in the heavens when at last they awoke, staring at one another stupidly.
“Was it a bad dream, Mollie, or did it really happen?” queried Grace, as she rubbed a hand across her forehead. “I declare I can’t remember——”
“Well, I can, only too well,” cut in Mollie shortly. Mollie’s temper was almost always short before breakfast. “Stop staring in that befuddled fashion, Grace Ford, and help me get breakfast. I feel badly in need of sustenance.”
They went about the getting of breakfast in a curiously silent manner, too busy with their thoughts to say much. And they both looked rather grave and hollow-eyed.
It was true the situation did not seem nearly so terrifying in the broad daylight, but just the same, they knew their adventure had been rather serious.
“I’m glad Betty will be back pretty soon,” said Grace at last, breaking the long silence. “She always knows what to do.”
“I don’t know that she’ll be able to do much more about this than we have done,” retorted Mollie. It is to be noted that she had not yet had her breakfast. “Anybody would think Betty had some sort of supernatural power of making things come out right.”
“I don’t know about the supernatural,” returned Grace. “But I do know that she pretty nearly always makes things come out all right.”
“Humph,” snorted Mollie, and tossed her head.
Luckily the girls had thought to put some firewood within the shelter of the tent before they had turned in the night before, so that they had enough dry wood to make a good fire. If they had been forced to try burning wet wood nobody knows what might have happened to Mollie’s temper!
And when, just before noon, they heard the familiar putt-putting of the Gem out on the lake, Mollie, as well as Grace, felt a great relief as though a heavy burden had suddenly slipped from her shoulders.
For the Little Captain had come back!