HALLIE KIDNAPPED
Marion was wide awake. She lay beneath home-woven blankets in Patience
Madden’s cabin. The room was dark. It was night; time for sleep. The
mountain side was very still. Even the stream, Pounding Mill Creek,
tumbling down Little Black Mountain, murmured softly.
“I should sleep,” she told herself. “To-morrow is the big day. Election.
Trial. One big day. Twenty-for hours must decide all.”
Do coming events truly cast their shadows before them, and do their
shadows disturb us, rob us of our sleep? However that may be, Marion
could not sleep.
At last, rising noiselessly, for Patience slept peacefully in the narrow
bed next to her own, she threw a blanket over her shoulders and stole out
upon the porch. Here she dropped into a rustic chair to sit staring
dreamily at the moon.
“Old moon,” she whispered, “what do you see to-night?”
Had the moon answered her question she would have sprung to her feet in
alarm. As it was, she sat quite still, sat there until with a sudden
start she caught the slow and steady tramp of horses on the trail below.
“Who—who can that be?” she whispered as she shrank far back into the
shadows.
She was soon enough to know. Two horses swung around a curve in the trail
not five rods from the cabin. At that instant the moon, coming out from
behind a filmy cloud, shone full upon them.
“A tall slim man and a short one,” she thought to herself. “Sounds
vaguely familiar. Where have I—” She started suddenly. Florence had told
her of them. These were the men who had held her prisoner when she had
gone to the back of Pine Mountain to get an option on the Powell coal
tract.
A second shock following this one came near knocking her from her chair.
The tall man carried a bundle—something wrapped in a blanket.
“A child,” she whispered. A chill ran up her spine. She hardly knew why.
A second later she knew. As the horses wheeled sharply to avoid a great
boulder that lay against the trail, the face of the child, lighted up by
the moon, became plainly visible.
“Little Hallie!” Marion exclaimed under her breath.
In an instant she was out of her chair and in the room shaking the
mountain girl and whispering hoarsely:
“Patience! Patience! Wake up! They’ve kidnapped little Hallie!”
“Wha—where? Why?” the mountain girl stammered, still half asleep.
Sinking down upon the bed and burying her face in her hands, Marion tried
to think. Little Hallie had been kidnapped. Why? For ransom? Nothing
seemed more absurd. Who would pay? The child had been poorly dressed when
she was brought to their cabin.
“And yet,” Marion thought, “what do we really know of her?”
She caught herself short up. This was no time for speculation. What was
to be done? There were no men in the cabin. She was alone with the
sixteen year old mountain girl. The nearest cabin was a half mile down
the creek.
“Patience,” she said suddenly, “there are no men here to follow them.
They have kidnapped little Hallie. They can’t mean her any good. Shall we
go?”
For answer the mountain girl sprang out of the room and went racing down
the stairs.
A lamp was lighted. Rough, serviceable garments of khaki were scrambled
into, shoes were hurriedly laced. They were ready to go when Marion
thought of food. They might be away for hours, perhaps days.
Snatching down a bag she raced to the kitchen, there to fill the bag with
corn pone, cold sweet potatoes, crackers, cookies and cheese.
When she returned, to her astonishment she found Patience calmly ramming
home a charge in the long-barreled squirrel rifle which had hung over the
fireplace.
“Will—will it shoot?” she faltered.
“Awful straight.”
“Can you shoot it?”
The mountain girl gave her a look of scorn. “In the mountains everyone
shoots.”
“Good! I’m glad!” There was warmth in the girl’s tone. There was comfort
in knowing that though there was no man in their party, there was a rifle
carried by a girl who knew well how to handle it.
A moment more and they were feeling the damp night air upon their cheeks.
It was a narrow trail they were following. Now and then as they hurried
forward the dew drenched branch of dogwood or rhododendron slapped them
full in the face. Here and there some wild creature, frightened from the
trail, went bounding away into the bush.
It was spooky enough, this climbing higher and higher up the side of
Little Black Mountain in the dead of night. Spooky and dangerous, too.
What if those men, catching the sound of their footsteps behind them,
should draw aside from the trail and waylay them? Marion dared not dwell
on this. One thing was uppermost in her mind—the saving of Little Hallie.
How was this to be done? She could not tell. The answer would be there
when the time came. At all hazards the men must be followed.
So, drenched by dripping dew, torn at by out-reaching brambles, catching
the faint tinge of waters in the gulch far below, they ascended higher
and higher until at last they had reached the crest.
“See!” whispered Patience as they rested here. “There are Hallie’s
footprints!”
It was true. Having dismounted, that they might rest their tired muscles,
the men had lifted the child to the ground.
Marion found comfort in this. “They can’t be entirely bad,” she told
herself. “They think of the child’s comfort.”
A moment’s rest, and they were away along the trail that followed the
ridge for some distance.
They marched along in silence until they came to the spot where the trail
left the ridge to plunge down the steep slope on the other side.
“Listen!” Patience whispered, suddenly gripping her companion’s arm.
As they listened, breathless, from somewhere far below there came the
deep, drawn-out bay of a hound.
“See!” exclaimed the mountain girl, pointing to the ground. Where the
trail left the ridge, a fresh track had joined that of the kidnappers. It
was the trail of a man and two huge dogs.
“Hounds!” whispered Patience. “They have hounds. Against these we have no
chance. They will smell us a long way off. They will come after us. I can
shoot but one. The other—” she paused to shudder.
“And yet we must go on! Think of little Hallie!”
“Yes,” said the brave mountain girl, “we must go on!” Turning, she led
the way down the mountain.