The Riddle Club through the holidays

The way those boys shot into their clothes would have been a revelation to their mothers, who sometimes had to call them three times before they came down to breakfast on a school morning. In less than five minutes they were down at the bridge and across it.

“Morning!” said Mr. Meade, heartily. “Thought you’d be up. I’m going up in the woods to cut logs, and I says to my wife, ‘If those children haven’t been up in the woods in a deep snow, they might like the trip.’”

“They haven’t had breakfast yet,” said Mr. Williamson, smiling.

“I’ll wait,” returned Mr. Meade. “Winter time we can wait and be neighborly, but, I declare, in the summer I don’t have a moment to spare to go to a wedding!”

He tied his horses and went back to the camp where Mrs. Williamson and the girls had breakfast ready. They insisted he must eat with them, and as he had had the first meal by lamp-light, he was able to eat a second breakfast comfortably.

“Mother packed us a lunch, so you don’t have to bother,” he told Mrs. Williamson, and, sure enough, there was a large basket under the seat of the sleigh.

What a trip that was—along snow-covered roads, the sleighbells ringing and the children singing in tune to the bells. They met few teams and they each took turns driving the steady pair of farm horses whose flying feet seemed to skim the white roadway.

“How awfully still it is!” said Margy, when they turned into the narrow trail that led through the woods.

It was still and it was beautiful—a mantle of spotless snow over the ground and every little twig and bush draped in white. There were the tracks of little wood creatures between some of the trees, and a squirrel dived into a stump as Fred came suddenly upon it.

“Are you going to chop Christmas trees?” asked Artie, who couldn’t get away from the idea of Christmas.

“No, I’m going to haul down wood to be chopped up. That’s my main winter work,” Mr. Meade explained.

The logs had been cut earlier in the year, and the sled had to be driven slowly through the woods, stopping at each pile of timber which Mr. Meade loaded on. Fred was allowed to drive and very proud he felt. He had intended to have a boat on the river when he grew up, but now he felt that he might like to be a farmer and “get the wood out” in the depth of winter.

When the sled was fairly well loaded, Mr. Meade built a fire and they sat around it to eat their lunch. The horses had feed-bags and ate placidly, apparently not affected by the cold.

Lunch over, the fire was carefully put out, every trace of it buried deep under the snow, and they drove on. They stopped to get two more piles of logs, and then drove out without turning.

“It’s a longer way around, but the road’s pretty,” said Mr. Meade, who seemed to be having as good a time as any of the children.

The six sat perched up on the logs—having solemnly promised not to fall off—and pretended they were explorers going through a new country.

“I wonder if it snowed in River Bend,” said Ward.

“Probably not,” Mr. Meade answered. “Your town is kind of protected, and you don’t get near the sweep of weather we do. It’s always from three to five degrees colder up here at the lake than it is down with you.”

Polly looked around suddenly at Ward.

“I thought Artie was sitting next to you,” she said.

“He—why, he was!” cried Ward. “He must have fallen off! Mr. Meade! Oh, Mr. Meade!”

The farmer looked up calmly. He was sitting down under the logs, which projected beyond his head.

“Well?” he inquired pleasantly.

“Artie Marley!” gasped Ward. “He’s fallen off.”

Mr. Meade reined in his team and stood up, his eyes searching the road which they had just come over. The children stood up, too, and tried to see, but there was nothing but an unbroken expanse of whiteness.

“I don’t see how he could fall off without saying a word,” observed Mr. Meade. “But if he isn’t here, he must be somewhere else. Hang on now, because I’m going to make the turn—if I can,” he added.

He tried, but the long, loaded sled wouldn’t swing easily, and it couldn’t be backed as a wagon could. Then, too, the farmer was afraid the load might shift, and he couldn’t risk overturning five children and having a pile of heavy logs fall on top of them.

“Can’t make it,” he said, when he had pulled the front runners around so that the road was blocked. “Some one will have to go back and hunt for him. I don’t dare leave you alone with the team, or I’d go. I think you two boys will be the ones. Don’t go off the road, and if you need help, shout and I’ll hear you.”

“We’ll all go,” said the anxious Polly. “Perhaps he’s buried in a drift and can’t get out.”

“There are no bad drifts,” Mr. Meade assured her. “It snowed nearly all night, but there wasn’t any wind. I wouldn’t say there was enough snow to even cover a boy, let alone bury him.”

The five children set off over the road they had just traveled, to search for the missing Artie. It seemed a very lonely road, now that they were walking on it, instead of being mounted high on a pile of wood.

“I don’t know what Mother will say if we come back without Artie,” worried Margy. “I must say, Ward, I think you ought to have been watching him.”

“Oh, Margy, Ward isn’t to blame,” protested Polly. “Artie always takes care of himself. I think a branch of a tree has swept him off. He’s so thin, and if he happened to be thinking about something else, he’d forget to hold fast, as Mr. Meade told us to do.”

Fred looked back. A turn in the road had already hidden the sleigh from sight.

“I don’t believe he is hurt a bit,” said Jess stoutly. “Artie doesn’t get hurt easily. Remember the time he fell off the bluff?”

“He’s always falling off some place,” declared Fred, gloomily. “I never saw such a boy for mooning around when he ought to be paying attention.”

Artie was rather given to meditation at the wrong time, none of them could deny that. In school he often chose a recitation period in which to think, and as he seldom thought about the lesson which was being recited, he had often been marked “zero” for questions to which he really knew the answers.

“Well, we just have to find him,” said Polly. “That’s all there is to that. A boy can’t disappear off the face of the earth.”

But by the time they had tramped along for the length of another turn, they began to think that almost anything could happen to a boy. There was no sign of Artie anywhere, and no trace that might suggest what had become of him.

“Listen!” said Fred suddenly, holding up his hand.

A twig cracked under Ward’s foot and Fred frowned.

“Do be still, can’t you?” he asked quickly.

Jess sneezed at this point. Perhaps you’ve noticed that when one is trying to have perfect silence, a flood of little noises seems to be let free.

“Excuse me,” said Jess, politely. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake!” cried the exasperated Fred. “Can’t you listen a minute? I thought I heard something.”

They listened intently.

“Hallo! Hal-lo!” came a call. “Come—back. Come—back!”

“That’s Mr. Meade,” said Fred. “Come on, we have to go back.”

“But we haven’t found Artie,” protested Polly, ready to cry.

“Got to go back and see what he says,” said Fred, firmly. “Come on. Perhaps he has found Artie.”

Polly didn’t see how this could possibly be, but she followed the rest as they turned. Fred tried to run a little, but they had walked fast, and Ward, especially, had no extra breath to expend, even in a dog-trot.

“How could he find Artie, when he fell off back here somewhere?” asked Jess of Polly, slipping along the glassy depressions left by sleigh runners.

“He couldn’t,” Margy answered before Polly could. “I never heard of such a silly idea in my life!” she added.

“All right—silly idea, is it?” said Fred. “Then who’s that?”

He pointed up the road, and Polly gasped while Ward’s mouth opened and stayed that way from sheer surprise.

Coming toward them, waving his hands and evidently most pleased to see them, was the missing Artie!

“Artie Marley! where were you?” cried Polly, while he was still two yards away.

“Did you think I was lost?” beamed Artie, in reply.

“We didn’t think anything about it,” said Fred, grimly. “You weren’t on that load, so we knew you’d fallen off. But where did you tumble?”

“I didn’t,” said Artie, walking back with them—they had rounded the second turn by now and could see Mr. Meade waiting with the team. “I didn’t fall off,” declared Artie, earnestly.

“Next, I suppose, you’ll say you were sitting next to me all the time,” said Ward, suspiciously.

“No, I was down in that hole where the lunch basket is,” explained Artie. “My feet got cold and I climbed down there and—and I went to sleep, I guess.”

And that was all the mystery of his disappearance. He had crawled into the hole left in the center of the wood pile, made comfortable by heavy horse blankets, and had promptly gone to sleep. When the sleigh stopped he had wakened and had amazed the waiting Mr. Meade by crawling out behind him and asking where the “other children” were.

The rest of the way home Mr. Meade insisted on turning every few miles and solemnly counting the boys and girls to make sure there were six of them. And when he set them down at the island bridge, before he would let them thank him for the happy day, he carefully counted them and “added them to make six,” as he said. He didn’t intend to spill any more of them out or have another one go to sleep and be counted missing.

The next day the Riddle Club campers went home, to be ready for school on Monday morning. Ready for something else that was important, too.

“Our first meeting in the new clubroom,” said Polly, happily. “Monday afternoon, as soon as school is out! Won’t it be fun!”