IN THE TREE
In a moment Tavia too heard it—a boyish cry in that vast, silent
woodland.
“Roger!” she panted, almost sobbing. “Oh, Nat, is it Roger?”
“Guess so,” said Nat grimly. “But I declare I don’t know where the boy
can be. Sounds as if he were hanging in the air somewhere over our
heads.”
“Listen a moment,” suggested Tavia.
They paused, and again they heard the faint cry. It was strangely like
and yet unlike Roger’s voice. It seemed, as Nat had said, to come from
the air above them. An eerie sensation at that hour in the
fast-darkening woods.
Tavia felt the hair beginning to creep on her scalp, yet it was she
urged Nat on again.
They knew they were coming nearer that voice, for it sounded continually
louder in their ears. Yet they still could not locate it.
At last, when they were about ready to give up in despair, Tavia was
startled to hear the voice again, and, this time, right over her head.
“I’m up here,” it said quaveringly. “And I can’t hold on much longer. If
you don’t give me a hand I’ll fall and break my neck!”
Tavia felt an hysterical desire to laugh. Roger was up in a tree. Of
course! How foolish of them not to have thought of that sooner.
Nat, after one eager glance up into the shadowy branches of the tree,
had already begun to scale its rough bark.
“Hold on for a minute, old man,” he shouted to the disembodied voice
aloft. “I’ll bring you down in a jiffy.”
“But my hand’s slipping,” wailed the voice again. “You’d better hurry,
Nat. Oo-oo—I’m gonna fall!”
Alarmed at this prohecy in spite of Nat’s rapid progress toward the
rescue, Tavia went close to the tree, straining her eyes to catch a
glimpse of the small form hidden among the branches.
“I’m here, Roger darling! It’s Tavia,” she called. “If you have to let
go I’ll catch you! I will if it kills us both!”
“He isn’t going to let go—he isn’t that kind of bad sport,” said Nat’s
voice above her head. “I’ll grab you in a minute, kid. Can you slide
along that branch a bit. That’s the idea. Take it easy, now.”
“I—I’ll try,” said Roger’s voice faintly, and Tavia heard a rustle among
the leaves that told her the boy was doing his best to aid his rescuer.
“Ow, I’m slipping!” he yelled suddenly. “Catch me, Nat!”
Tavia felt a cold chill run up and down her spine at that frantic cry,
but the next moment she was reassured.
“All right, old timer, I’ve got you,” said Nat’s voice. “Just grab hold
of me now and we’ll be down on _terra firma_ in a jiffy. That’s the kid!
Ready now?”
“Y-yes,” came Roger’s unsteady response, and Tavia knew he was fighting
off the tears of weariness and fright. “We ain’t very far from the
ground, though, are we, Nat?”
“Not very far, old boy,” responded Nat jocularly. “Not half as far as if
we were twice as far.”
Tavia heard Roger chuckle and blessed Nat for his quick tact. He had
saved the small boy the humiliation of tears.
There was the sound of scrambling and sliding and Tavia saw Nat, one arm
about Roger, hang from a sturdy lower branch, then drop to the ground.
He set his small cousin gently on the ground and carefully brushed the
leaves and twigs from his clothing.
“Now you’ll do, old man,” he announced, adding suddenly: “Pretty near
starved, aren’t you?”
“I—I—guess so,” returned Roger quaveringly, and Tavia longed to put her
arms about him and comfort him. She knew better, however, and merely
took his hand firmly in her own and led the way back to the old wagon
road and the waiting _Fire Bird_.
“We’ve got the car and we will have you home in a jiffy, Roger,” she
said cheerfully. “I reckon the folks there will be glad to see you.”
“Dorothy will be awful scared, I guess,” he remarked hesitantly. “It
must be awful late.”
“It is and she will,” Tavia retorted promptly, and at the hint of
reproach in her voice the small boy seemed once more on the verge of
tears.
“I couldn’t help it,” he cried, with a catch in his voice that he could
not control no matter how hard he tried. “I—I just had to find Joe an’
tell him—something,” he finished weakly.
“Well, did you?” asked Nat, with good-natured sarcasm.
“No,” admitted Roger dispiritedly. “I thought I might maybe take the
train because that must ’a’ been the way Joe went, but I just happened
to think that I didn’t have any money.”
“That is apt to be a slight drawback,” admitted Nat gravely, and
thereupon launched into a short lecture on the wickedness of small boys
who went anywhere without first gaining the consent of those at home.
“But Joe did it,” Roger interrupted once, wonderingly. “And Joe is not a
bad boy.”
“He is at least unwise,” murmured Tavia, and Nat was forced to explain
that Joe, though not in any sense wicked, had been foolish and
thoughtless to do the thing he had done.
“But I just had to go and find him,” Roger persisted. “And how could I
do it if I didn’t take the train?”
At the prospect of having to begin his lecture all over again, Nat gave
up in despair and changed the subject.
“Do you mind telling me, old lad,” he asked gravely, “how you happened
to be using that tree for a parking place——”
“And a rather insecure one at that,” murmured Tavia, with a chuckle.
“At an hour when, by all rights, you should have been at home and in
bed?” finished Nat.
Tavia felt the small boy’s hand tighten in hers and knew that he was
about to recall what had been, to him, a rather dreadful experience.
“I was walking around in the woods, thinking I might find Joe,” he
explained, “when I saw something funny and black coming through the
woods.”
“Oh,” shivered Tavia, in mock terror. “How terrible! What was it?”
“It was only a dog, but I thought it was a bear.” By the disgust in his
voice it was evident his mistake had chagrined the boy deeply.
“And you climbed a tree to get away from the bear?” suggested Nat. “Am I
right?”
“It was as easy as pie getting up,” Roger agreed.
“But when you tried to get down you found you had bitten off more than
you could chew, eh?” asked Tavia.
Roger was offended.
“Ah, you fellers won’t let a kid tell his own story!” he complained, and
Tavia had all she could do to keep from going off into fresh spasms of
laughter and thus offending the boy still more deeply.
Tavia could hear Nat chuckle in the darkness, though his voice was
tremendously grave as he apologized.
“Awfully sorry, old chap,” he said. “We will try to do better from now
on. What happened next?”
“Nothing—nothing much, anyway,” responded Roger, partially mollified.
“When I saw it was only a dog and he just sniffed and went away I tried
to get down again and I couldn’t. I had got away out near the end of the
branch, because bears can climb trees, you know——”
“But this wasn’t a bear,” Tavia reminded him gravely.
“Well, I didn’t know that when I was climbing out there, did I?”
demanded Roger peevishly, and Nat’s hand closed over Tavia’s with a
warning pressure.
“And when I tried to get back again,” Roger continued, “I couldn’t. I
tried and I tried and then I tried yelling. But nobody must uv heard me,
because nobody came,” he concluded dolefully.
“Except us! Don’t forget your old Uncle Nat, my boy,” Nat reminded him.
“Oh, you’re not my uncle; you’re just my cousin,” Roger retorted, and
Tavia giggled.
“How’s that for gratitude?” she crowed, and Nat chuckled.
“Anyway, you have to admit—uncle or cousin—that I turned the trick and
got you down,” he said to Roger.
“Yes,” the small boy admitted, adding reminiscently: “But you did pinch
my arm something awful!”
While this was happening, Dorothy, all unconscious of it, was having an
exciting adventure of her own.
Ned White had come to her soon after Tavia and Nat had left The Cedars
on their quest for the missing Roger and revealed excitedly that he
thought he had “raked up” a clue that might throw light on the
mysterious circumstances surrounding Joe’s disappearance.
“I met a fellow who lives at Scranting,” he said, mentioning a township
some miles further out than North Birchlands. “He says that he remembers
seeing a chap around the railroad station there who might answer Joe’s
description. It’s only a chance, Dorothy—the boy probably was not Joe at
all—but it seems to me the clue is worth following up.”
“Any clue is worth following up,” cried Dorothy, instantly aquiver with
hope. “Are you going to Scranting now? Because if you are, I am going
with you.”
Ned hesitated.
“It is almost dinner time,” he reminded her, but Dorothy broke in
impatiently.
“Oh, what difference does that make? We can snatch a bite in Scranting
if we have to. Ned, you mustn’t put me off.”
“But there’s another thing, Dot,” Ned demurred, troubled. “I went to get
out the _Fire Bird_ just now and she isn’t in the garage. Nat must have
beaten me to it. He and Tavia are among the missing. Joy riding,
probably.”
Dorothy’s brow clouded. If, as Ned suggested, her chum and Nat were joy
riding, such a procedure seemed heartless to her, in view of all the
trouble at The Cedars. Then, too, Tavia might have guessed that they
would need the car.
In the excitement of her father’s illness and this new announcement of
Ned’s, she had not yet remarked the absence of Roger.
Now she turned to Ned decisively.
“We will go by train then. There is one that leaves North Birchlands in
half an hour. Can we make it?”