ALMOST CAUGHT
“My!” exclaimed Tavia, later. “There is a whole lot to making up a
plot; isn’t there? And how wise you are, Doro!”
“But you see, my child, you can’t go ahead with this scheme as you
first mapped it out,” observed Dorothy, drily.
“Oh, I see,” agreed her friend. “Mr. Somes can’t arrest the man who
calls himself ‘John Smith.’”
“Of course not. Nor can anybody else arrest him. He has committed no
crime in trying to get money for his information about Tom Moran.”
“But how will you fix him?”
“You see, if Mr. Somes will allow the clerk at the general delivery
window of the post-office to make some signal when a person comes to
call for this letter I have written, we will have somebody on the watch
to follow John Smith. Then we’ll find out who he is----”
“If it _is_ a ‘he,’” interposed Tavia.
“Of course it is,” returned her friend. “It’s a man’s handwriting. And
a very bad, ignorant man, I am afraid.”
“He doesn’t belong to Dalton, then,” declared Tavia, earnestly. “Since
the liquor crusade, when the saloons were all shut, we haven’t had many
men of bad character in Dalton.”
“That’s right,” agreed Dorothy. “But you see, there is always a
‘floating population.’ Work such as your father’s company is doing
brings in irresponsible men from outside. They have no interest in the
fair name of Dalton, so we mustn’t be surprised if they misbehave,”
said sensible Dorothy.
“But who is going to watch all the time at the post-office?” demanded
Tavia.
“The window for the delivery of letters is open from eight till eight.
We’ll get the boys to help us take turns. There are you and me, Johnny,
Joe and Roger--even Roger isn’t too little to follow the man and find
out where he lives,” said Dorothy, briskly. “Then we can pull my
cousins, and Bob Niles, and Abe Perriton into it. That makes nine of
us. Nine in twelve hours---- What does nine in twelve make, Tavia?”
“One hour and twenty minutes each--_about_. Oh, all right!” exclaimed
Tavia. “Of course we can watch. But the question is: Will that do any
good?”
Dorothy would not listen to any croaking. She wrote the decoy letter,
and the two girls went down town and saw Mr. Somes privately. He knew
both Tavia’s father and Major Dale; and when the girls from Glenwood
disclosed to the postmaster just why they wished to find Tom Moran, and
all about Celia, and the letter Dorothy had received from “John Smith,”
he agreed to help them.
It was arranged, however, that the letter should not be put in the mail
until the following morning, so that the girls might fully arrange the
“watch-and-watch” on the general delivery letter window.
Their boy friends fell into the scheme with alacrity. Dorothy and Tavia
did not explain entirely their interest in Tom Moran, nor why there was
such a hue and cry after that red-haired young man; but----
“It doesn’t matter,” said one of the lads, cheerfully. “If Dot says she
wants to find the chap--and this fellow who wrote the bum letter--we’ll
do just what she says. Dot’s all right, you know, fellows!”
But that very morning there came word over the telephone to Abe
Perriton’s house that started the excitement in a new quarter. A man
named Polk, who ran a sawmill on Upper Creek, asked Mr. Perriton to
hire several men in Dalton if he could, as he had work that must be
rushed and he needed an extra force of hands.
“And I haven’t been able to hire a soul up here, except Tom Moran, who
came along last night. And I’m afraid he won’t stay. He’ll not promise
to.”
“Here, Abe,” said Mr. Perriton. “Didn’t I hear something about your
friends wanting to see Tom Moran? He’s up to Polk’s mill.”
That was enough. The boys started with the _Firebird_ inside of ten
minutes picking up Dorothy and Tavia on the way. But nobody thought to
telephone to the mill man to ask him to hold the red-haired man until
the _Firebird_ party arrived.
It was over another rough road to Polk’s mill on Upper Creek. “Dear,
dear,” complained Tavia, “I am half in doubt whether the geographers
have got it right. Perhaps the world isn’t round. I don’t see how it
can be when it is so awful bumpy!”
“You feel like Nat did, I guess,” chuckled Ned. “That was when my
lovely brother was a whole lot younger than he is now--hey, Nat?”
“What’s the burn?” asked Nathaniel White, Esquire.
“’Member when Miss Baker put the poser to you in intermediate school?
’Member about it, boy?”
“Oh, that’s an old one,” grunted Nat.
“Let’s hear it--do,” cried Dorothy. “Did Nattie miss his lesson?”
“He wasn’t paying much attention, I reckon,” said Ned, just scaling a
corner post as they took a turn, and scaring a squawking flock of hens
almost into “nervous prosperity,” as Tavia called it. “Miss Baker was
giving us fits in the physical geography line. She snaps one at Nat:
“‘What’s the shape of the earth, Nathaniel?’
“‘Oh! Ugh-huh? Round,’ says Nat, just barely waking up.
“‘How do you know it’s round?’ demands Miss Baker.
“‘All right,’ says Nat. ‘It’s square, then. I don’t mean to argue about
it!’”
“Aw, I never!” cried Nat, as the others shouted their appreciation of
the story. “That’s just one of Ned’s yarns.”
With similar “carryings-on” they lightened the rough way to the sawmill
camp. The last mile they had to walk, leaving the _Firebird_ at a
farmer’s place. There was no such thing as taking the automobile to the
camp.
“I hope Tom Moran is here,” said Dorothy, again and again, to her
friend, Tavia. “But I feel as though we were due to have another
disappointment.”
“Oh, I hope not,” groaned Tavia.
The boys would not keep to the wood road, but scrambled over stumps
and brambles, raising the hue and cry after timid rabbits, starting an
old cock partridge now and then, and chasing chipmunks along the fences.
“I’d love to have a woodchuck bake,” Abe Perriton said. “The kids say
they’ve found several woodchuck holes up near the Rouse place.”
“Joe and Roger, you mean?” asked Dorothy, to whom Abe was speaking.
“And Octavia’s brother Jack. Yes. Those kids would find woodchucks if
there were any in the county. M-m-m! did you ever eat woodchuck, Tavia?”
“Sure I did. But I never expect to enjoy a woodchuck bake again. I’m
grown up now,” called Tavia, from her position in the lead with Bob
Niles.
“If the kids really have found the holes--and Mr. Woodchuck is home,”
said Abe, “we might have a picnic, even if it is cold weather--say day
after to-morrow.”
“Nice weather for a picnic,” laughed Dorothy. “See! there’s still some
snow in the fence corners.”
“And the groundhogs will be as poor as Job’s turkey,” said Tavia, who
understood about such things better, even, than a boy.
“Hurrah! there’s the mill,” shouted Nat.
The whine of the saw as it cut through a log floated down to them
through the aisles of the wood. They hurried to reach their destination.
The saw was flying and the few men about the mill were working
speedily. Mr. Polk himself, whom they knew by sight, was dragging a
huge log out of the water by the aid of a chain and a small engine. But
nowhere in sight was “that redhead.”
“Hello, Abe Perriton!” shouted the master of the mill. “Your
father going to send that gang? Or are you huskies--and the little
ladies--goin’ to roll logs for me?”
“I guess father will send along men. But we’ll roll _that_ one for you,
Mr. Polk,” laughed Abe, as the huge log came up the runway to the mill.
The boys grabbed canthooks and helped put the log in place upon the
carriage. The girls looked on with interest, for the working of a
sawmill with a disk-saw of this size is not uninteresting.
“But that log’s got a hollow in it, Mr. Polk,” advised Tavia, the
sharp-eyed.
“I know it, Miss. But the grain of the wood’s so straight, and the
hollow’s so small, that I believe we’re going to get some mighty fine
planks out of it, just the same,” replied the sawyer.
“Ask him about Tom Moran,” begged Dorothy, _sotto-voce_.
“Just wait till he gets this log on the carriage. Now it goes!”
exclaimed the interested Tavia.
The saw struck the hollow place the first clip, the outside slab was
cut off, and out of the hollow flopped something that made the girls
scream.
“A snake!” gasped Dorothy.
“Maybe it’s an eel,” said Tavia.
But quick-eyed Nat jumped for it and held up the flopping creature. It
was a beautiful brook trout more than two feet long.
“Great find, boy!” declared Mr. Polk. “The law ain’t off until April
first; but I reckon that’s your kill.”
“We’ll have the picnic, anyway!” laughed Bob Niles. “I bet trout baked
in the ashes beats woodchuck all to pieces!”
Dorothy had come close to the sawyer now and tapped him on the arm.
“Oh, sir!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t Tom Moran here with you?”
Polk’s face clouded. “The red-haired rascal wouldn’t stay. He don’t
like sawmill work. He worked for me yesterday and started in this
morning; but an hour before you came he lit out.”
“Gone?” gasped Dorothy.
“Yes, ma’am!”
“And you don’t know where he’s gone?” broke in Tavia.
“Couldn’t tell ye,” said Polk. “He lit out--walkin’--toward Pollinary.
But that’s twenty mile from here. Dunno as he’ll go that far.”