WEARY CEASES TO SCOFF
Hardly an hour had elapsed since its previous trip when the patient
flivver was again coughing its way up the drive to the Coleson house.
Neither Wat Sanford nor Jim Tapley had been asked to join in the
exploration of the old road, because, as Dave Wilbur expressed it, Wat
and Jim were jumpy enough already.
“Let’s scout around a little before we tackle the road,” suggested Ned.
“Red and Fatty can have another look out there between the end of the
house and the woods while Dick and I go over the ground down toward the
beach. Do you want to come with us, Weary?”
“Nope. ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth,’” drawled Dave. “I’ll stick
around and make sure this humpbacked spook doesn’t carry off the
flivver,” he added with a grin, as he lolled back comfortably and
allowed his long legs to dangle over the side of the car.
Charlie Rogers glared angrily at the scoffer. “Here’s hoping he carries
it off—and you with it!” he growled.
“Don’t let him get your goat, Red,” urged Tommy, as he seized Rogers’
arm and hurried him out of ear-shot of Wilbur’s irritating chuckle.
For half an hour the boys searched every foot of ground in the vicinity
of the house without finding anything new.
“I guess this is about enough,” declared Ned. “There’s nothing to be
learned here. Now let’s start at this end of the old road and trace it
back as far as it goes. Four of us can walk ahead and Dave can follow
with the car.”
For perhaps two miles the boys threaded the grass-grown track, which was
so overgrown in places that the small trees and bushes swept both sides
of the car, as it crept along behind the party on foot. There was ample
evidence of the recent passage of some vehicle in the broken twigs and
stripped leaves along the way, and whenever the grassy surface gave
place to sand, the marks of rubber tires were plainly visible.
“Here’s where Ned and Fatty and I struck into this road the other day,”
exclaimed Dick, pointing to a clump of crooked birches which he
recognized as marking the spot.
“You’re right,” agreed Ned. “From now on, we’ll be traveling over new
ground and we must keep our eyes open. Let’s go slow and cut out the
talking.”
Half a mile farther, Ned, who was in the lead, halted suddenly and
dropped to his knees.
“What is it?” whispered Dick, who was close behind.
“Some kind of a clearing,” was the cautious reply. “There’s a pile of
slabs and I can see a shanty. Lie low, fellows, while I sneak up for a
closer look,” and creeping silently away to one side, Ned disappeared
amid the thick undergrowth.
For ten minutes the boys lay motionless; then a low whistle brought them
peering over the pile of slabs to see Ned standing before the shack.
“What do you make of it?” asked Rogers, as they hurried forward to join
Ned, who was looking in at the partly open door of the hut.
“It’s nothing but a shanty the wood-cutters used when they cut the
timber off this tract about ten years ago,” declared Wilbur, who had
driven up and halted at the door.
“I guess you’re right, Dave,” replied Ned, “but let’s see what’s
inside,” and pushing the door wide open, he stepped in, closely followed
by the others.
The cabin was oblong in shape, being about fifteen feet long by eight or
nine feet wide. At one end were two bunks built against the wall. In the
middle of the room stood a rough table of slabs and in a corner was a
rusty stove propped up with bricks in lieu of missing legs. Dick lifted
a rust-eaten lid and peered into the fire-box.
“Ashes,” he remarked. “Cold ashes.”
“Which proves simply that there’s been no fire here for the last few
hours,” asserted Rogers. “That bunk looks as if it may have been slept
in recently but I’ll admit it’s only guess work.”
Ned had been glancing about the shanty, his keen eyes taking in every
detail. All at once he bent low and peered closely at something on the
floor beside the table.
“What have you found, Ned?” asked Tommy Beals, and at his words the
other boys crowded around.
“Keep back!” warned Ned. “Don’t disturb them.”
“Don’t disturb _what_?” demanded Rogers. “I can’t see anything—unless
you mean those black ants!”
“That’s just what I do mean,” answered Ned. “Ants don’t act that way
without some reason,” and he pointed to a straggling column of the
insects, which were emerging from a crack in the floor, advancing to a
spot beneath the table, and hurrying back again to the crack as though
time were a matter of supreme importance to them.
“They’ve got a nest somewhere under the floor,” remarked Tommy. “Look!
They’re carrying their eggs in their mouths!”
Ned was on hands and knees poking with the blade of his jack-knife among
the hurrying ants at the head of the column. “That was a good guess of
yours, Fatty,” he laughed, “only it happens that in this particular case
what they’re carrying isn’t eggs.”
“What is it then?” demanded Beals.
“Bread crumbs,” was the quick reply, “and there’s more of ’em on the
table.”
It needed but a moment’s investigation to confirm Ned’s statement.
“Somebody ate a meal here awhile ago—that’s quite evident,” declared
Dick, excitedly.
“Yes, and not so very long ago either,” supplemented Rogers. “This
hustling bunch of ants would carry away half a loaf of bread in a few
hours.”
“Well, supposing somebody did eat here—or supposing they slept in that
bunk Red is so keen about. What business is it of ours? Where’s the
proof of any connection between them and our affair at Coleson’s?”
demanded Dave Wilbur. “I’m going to take a snooze in the car till you
ghost-getters find something more exciting than a rusty stove, a
tumbledown bunk and a flock of black ants!” and with these words, he
lounged out of the door.
“I guess maybe Weary’s more than half right,” admitted Beals, ruefully.
“Confound him though; I wish we’d had him out at Coleson’s that night!”
“I’ll say so!” growled Rogers.
Reluctantly the boys left the shack, but as they passed the corner of
the building, Dick halted and began to read aloud: “‘All persons are
hereby warned against starting fires in any and all forest lands under
penalty of—’” Dick paused in his reading. “That’s a fire-warden’s
poster,” he remarked with a jerk of his ever ready thumb toward a
placard tacked upon the side of the shanty. “The ranger has been
here—maybe it was he who left the crumbs.”
“Nothing doing!” declared Rogers. “That paper has been there a month,
easy. Don’t you think so, Ned?”
Ned Blake did not answer. He was looking fixedly at the poster from the
lower corner of which a sizable scrap had been torn, thus interfering
with Dick’s reading, as has been noted. A long moment Ned stared, then
reaching into an inside pocket, he brought forth a fragment of paper
which he carefully unfolded. Three strides brought him to the cabin
where with a quick movement he placed his piece of paper against the
torn corner of the fire warning. The ragged edges fitted together
perfectly. “You wanted some proof awhile ago, Dave,” he said quietly.
“Take a look at this, will you?”
Wilbur descended languidly from the car and joined the group at Ned’s
elbow. “Sure it fits,” he drawled as he glanced at the fragment of paper
under Ned’s thumb. “It fits perfectly—but what of it?”
Without a word Ned turned the scrap in his fingers and displayed the
words scrawled upon its reverse side. Over his shoulder the boys read
them eagerly.
“I don’t want company here.
“E. C.”
“Zowie!” yelped Dick Somers. “That’s the very paper we found tacked on
the front door of the Coleson house!”
“Gosh a’mighty!” wheezed Tommy Beals. “Let’s dig out o’ here! I don’t
like it!”
Charlie Rogers could not restrain a furtive glance over his shoulder at
the half-open door of the shanty and even Dave Wilbur’s scoffing was
silenced for the moment.
“I’ll have to admit that this doesn’t explain much,” began Ned, as he
replaced the fragment of paper in his pocket. “In fact, it raises more
questions than it answers, but at least we can be reasonably sure that
one or more of our nightly visitors has been making some use of this old
shack and also of this old road. Now let’s see if we can find _what_
use.”
With interest roused to a high pitch, the boys resumed their exploration
of the wood-road, scanning every tuft of grass and every broken bush as
they passed. After leaving the shanty, the road surface had become more
sandy and the marks of rubber tires more frequent as well as more
distinct, until at length they formed a clearly defined track in which
the ribbed pattern of the tires showed plainly.
“We’re coming to the end of the road!” exclaimed Rogers, pointing to a
wall of solid green that blocked the way some thirty yards ahead.
The boys had halted to consider this surprising fact, when an
exclamation from Dave Wilbur drew all eyes in his direction. The lanky
youth had dismounted from his car and now stood staring wide-eyed at the
roadway immediately before him.
“What’s the matter, Weary?” gibed Rogers, a bit maliciously. “Do _you_
see a ghost?”
“The tracks!” blurted Wilbur. “Where are the tire tracks? They’ve
disappeared!”
It was true. From the point where the boys stood, to the wall of foliage
that apparently marked the end of the road not a tire mark showed upon
the smooth, firm surface of the ground. As if actuated by a common
impulse, all eyes turned back along the road. Yes, the marks were there
plainly enough, but at a point almost beneath their feet the tracks
ceased as abruptly as if the mysterious car had suddenly left the earth
like an airplane.
Dave Wilbur was the first to speak. “Fellows,” he began in a tone quite
different from his customary lazy drawl, “I’ll _crawfish_. I said I
wanted to see some of this ghost stuff that you’ve been telling about.
I’ll admit I thought it was bunk, but now I’m satisfied that ghost, or
no ghost, there’s some darned funny business going on here!”
“If this is the end of the road, I suppose we’ll have to turn round and
go back the way we came,” observed Tommy Beals with a nervous glance
along the back track.
“Maybe so, but first I’d like to have a closer look at what’s ahead,”
suggested Ned, and moving forward, he approached the barricade of living
green that merged with the foliage of a giant oak. In a moment he was
shouting for the others to join him, and as they hurried to do so, Ned
parted the curtain of thick growing creepers to disclose the smooth
surface of the main highway not twenty feet beyond.
“Here’s the answer to at least a part of the riddle,” cried Dick. “Come
ahead with the car, Dave,” and as the flivver shot forward the boys
pulled the vines aside sufficiently to allow the car to force its way
past and gain the road beyond.
“Whoever uses that old wood-road has certainly hit upon a clever scheme
to hide the entrance!” exclaimed Rogers, as he looked back at the vines
that twined upward about the big oak and hung like a great curtain from
one of its horizontal limbs. “If I hadn’t seen it done, I’d never
believe a car could enter or leave this place.”
“Yes, but the _tracks_!” insisted Dave. “The screen of vines is simple
enough, but how can a car pass in or out and leave no tracks? _My_ car
left tracks,” and Dave pointed to the faint marks left by the wheels of
the flivver upon the twenty-foot width of hard ground between the edge
of the macadam road and the barrier of vines.
“That’s just one more question we can’t answer—yet,” replied Ned. “I
move we go home now and get together tomorrow morning. Perhaps by then
some of us may have doped out an explanation.”