A STRANGE ESCAPE
Morning came at last. Florence stirred beneath the home woven covers of
her bed in the mountain cabin. Then she woke to the full realization of
her position.
“A prisoner in a cabin,” she groaned. “And yet they do not treat me
badly. For my supper they set on the table the best they had. It meant a
real sacrifice for them to give up this entire room to me, yet they did
it. I can’t understand it.”
“But I must not let them defeat me!” She brought her feet down with a
slap upon the clean scrubbed and sanded floor. “Somehow, by some means or
another, I must make my way to Caleb Powell’s home to-day.”
Her eyes lighted upon an object that hung above the fireplace—a long
barreled squirrel rifle with a shiny new cap resting beneath the hammer.
“Loaded,” she thought. “Cap wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t. They left it
hanging there because I am a girl and they were certain I couldn’t shoot.
Hump! I can shoot as straight as any of them.”
For a moment a wild vision whirled before her—a vision of a girl bursting
from a room, yelling like a wild Indian and brandishing the long rifle
above her head.
“No,” she smiled. “’Twouldn’t do. It would be very dramatic, but it would
probably end in tragedy, and I have no desire to act a part in such a
tragedy.”
She dressed quickly, then stepped into the other room of the cabin where
she found crisp, brown biscuits, wild honey and fried eggs awaiting her.
She ate a hearty breakfast. “Who knows what strength I may need for this
day?” she thought to herself as she spread honey on her third biscuit.
After that, knowing from past experiences what her limitations would be,
she did not attempt to go many steps from the cabin but contented herself
with sitting outside the cabin door in the sun.
“Such a lovely scene,” she sighed as she looked away and away to where
the peaks of Pine Mountain blended with the bluer peaks of Big Black
Mountain, and all at last were lost in the hazy mists of the morning.
“So peaceful,” she thought, “you’d think there had never been a bit of
trouble since the world began. And yet, right down here in the mountains
there is more trouble than anywhere else in the country. Some men say
that Nature, God’s open book, will make men good and kind. It takes more
than that. It takes—it must take God inside their hearts to accomplish
that.” So she mused, and half the morning slipped away.
From time to time her eyes left the mountain tops to follow the winding
stream that, some fifty feet down a gentle slope, went rushing and
tumbling over its rocky bed. Above and beyond this creek bed, at the
other side of the gorge, ran a trail. Down that trail from time to time
people passed. Now a woman, leading a lean pack horse laden with corn,
shambled along on her way to mill. Now a pair of active, shouting boys
urged on a team of young bullocks hitched to a sled, and now a bearded
mountaineer, with rifle slung across his saddle horn, rode at a dog trot
down the dusty trail.
The girl watched all this with dreamy eyes. They meant nothing to her;
were, in fact, but a part of the scenery.
Still she watched the trail, taking little interest in the people passing
there until suddenly she came to life with surprising interest. A person
of evident importance was passing up the trail. He sat upon a blooded
sorrel horse, and across the pommel of his saddle was a rifle.
“Who is that?” Florence asked, interested in the way this man sat his
horse.
“That? Why, that are Caleb Powell.” Her guard, who sat not far from her,
had also spoken without thinking.
“Caleb Powell!” The girl sprang to her feet. In an instant her two hands
were cupped into a trumpet and she had sent out a loud call.
“Whoo-hoo!”
Caught by rocky walls, the call came echoing back. The man on the blooded
horse turned his gaze toward the cabin.
“Here, you can’t do that away!” The guard put a rough hand on her
shoulder.
“I can, and I will!” The girl’s tone was low and fierce. “You take your
hands away from me, and keep them off!” She jerked away. “I came back
here to see him. He’s a man, a real man, and he—he’s got a rifle.”
Cowering, the man fell back a step.
Again the girl’s hands were cupped.
“Mr. Powell! Come over!” she called. “I have something important to tell
you.”
The man reined in his horse, stared across the gorge in apparent
surprise, then directed his horse down a narrow path that led down one
side of the gorge and up the other.
Standing there, leaning against the doorpost, the girl watched him with
all the fascination that a condemned man must feel as he sees a man
approaching with a message commuting his sentence.
The man who, a few minutes later, came riding up the steep trail to the
cabin, was quite as different from the average mountaineer as Florence
had, at a distance, judged him to be. His face was smooth shaven and his
gray suit, his tie, his leggings, his riding boots, all were in good
order. When at last he spoke it was not in the vernacular of the
mountains, but of the wide world outside.
“You—you have some coal land?” she hesitated as he asked what he might do
for her.
“Why, yes, little girl,” he smiled as he spoke. “My brothers and I have
several acres up these slopes.”
Florence stiffened at his “little girl.” She realized that he had used
the term in kindness, but he must not think of her as a little girl. She
was for a moment a business woman with an important transaction to carry
through.
“You want to sell it?” she said briskly.
“We have offered to sell.”
“For twenty-one thousand?”
“About that.” He was staring at her now. He stared harder when she said:
“I am authorized to buy it at that price.”
For a moment he did not speak; just kept his keen grey eyes upon her.
“I am waiting,” he said at last in a droll drawl, “for the smile.”
“The—the smile?”
“Of course, you are joking.”
“I am not joking.” She was tempted to be angry now. “Here—here’s the
proof. It’s the—Mr. Dobson called it the earnest money.” She dragged the
five hundred dollars in bank notes from her blouse.
For ten seconds after that her heart fluttered wildly. What if this whole
affair were a game played by these men at her expense? What if this man
was not Caleb Powell at all? The thought of the consequences made her
head whirl.
But no, the guard of a half hour before was staring, popeyed, at the
sheaf of bills.
“That looks like business,” said Caleb Powell. “Your Mr. Dobson—I know
him well. So he made you his agent? Well, well! That’s singular. But men
do strange things. I suppose he sent a contract?”
“Yes, yes.” She was eager now. “Here it is.”
“Well,” he said quietly.
Then turning to the former guard, he said; “You’ll not be wanting
anything further of the girl, Jim?”
“Reckon not,” the man drawled.
“Then, Miss—er—”
“Ormsby,” she volunteered.
“Then, Miss Ormsby, if you’ll be so kind as to mount behind me, I’ll take
you down to the house. We’ll fix up the papers. After that we’ll have a
bite to eat and I’ll send you over the mountain.”
The hours that followed were long-to-be-remembered. The signing of the
papers, the talk on the cool veranda, a perfect dinner, then the long,
long ride home over the mountains on a perfect horse with a guide and
guard at her side, and all this crowned by the consciousness of a
wonderful success after days of perils and threatened failure; all these
seemed a dream indeed.
One thing Florence remembered distinctly. She had said to Caleb Powell:
“Mr. Powell, why did those men wish to hold me prisoner?”
“Miss Ormsby,” he said, and there was no smile upon his lips, “some of
our people are what you might call ‘plumb quare’.”
That was all he had said, and for some time to come that was all she was
destined to know about the reason for her mysterious captivity.
Only one thought troubled her as she neared the whipsawed cabin, and
that, she told herself, was only a bad dream.
That it was more than a dream she was soon to learn. Two days later Mr.
Dobson, having dismounted at their cabin, smiled with pleasure when he
was told of the successful purchase of Caleb Powell’s coal land. Then for
a moment a frown darkened his face.
“I—I hate to tell you,” he hesitated.
“You don’t have to,” said Florence quickly. “Please allow me to guess.
You were about to tell us that it is necessary to spend a great deal of
time looking up records and getting papers signed before you have a clear
title to this mountain land, and that we can’t have our money until you
have your title.”
“That puts it a little strongly,” said Mr. Dobson, smiling a little
strangely. “As fast as we can clear up the titles to certain tracts my
company has authorized me to pay that portion of the commission. I should
say you ought to have your first installment within four months. It may
be six, however. Matters move slowly here in the mountains.”
“Four months!” exclaimed Marion.
“Not sooner, I fear.”
“Four—” Marion began, but Florence squeezed her arm as she whispered;
“It’s no use. We can’t help it and neither can they? There must be some
other way. Besides, we haven’t yet elected our trustee.”