THE HOLD-UP
To say that the Outdoor Girls were thoroughly shaken by this
experience would be to treat the matter lightly. They were filled with
consternation.
It was certain now that there were tramps in the neighborhood, tramps
who chose stormy dark nights to prowl and spy upon them.
“What can they want?” Amy demanded, half tearfully. “We haven’t a thing
with us that would be worth their while to steal----”
“They don’t know that, I suppose,” broke in the Little Captain.
“But if their purpose is to steal,” argued Mollie, “why in the world do
they always run away when they find they are discovered?”
“Maybe they think we’re armed,” suggested Grace, and in spite of her
alarm, Betty’s eyes twinkled.
“We are,” she said, patting the pocket where the toy pistol reposed.
“Maybe,” said Amy, thoughtfully, “these tramps belong to the same gang
as those we had the row with on Triangle Island.”
“Perhaps,” Mollie took her up eagerly, “they’re the _very_ same ones.
We’re not so very far from Triangle Island, you know.”
“If that is true,” said the Little Captain whimsically, “maybe the toy
pistol is serving as our protection after all. If they think we’re
armed, they’ll be mighty careful how they get too close to us.”
“I only hope,” said Grace, and again her tone was prayerful, “that they
don’t think to call our bluff.”
There followed a long silence during which the girls tried to take up
their reading again and did not make much of a success of it.
Outside the storm raged with undiminished fury, the wind threatening
any moment to tear the tent from over their heads. The rain continued
to fall in torrents.
“I wish that rain would stop,” sighed Grace, uneasily. “The sound of it
in the woods outside makes me think I hear footsteps all the time.”
“I don’t believe we’ll be bothered any more to-night,” said the Little
Captain.
“And to-morrow,” added Amy thankfully, “the boys will be here.”
After a while, since the storm seemed destined to continue through
the night and since they could not very well sit up till morning, the
Outdoor Girls finally turned out their lights and went to bed.
They passed an uneasy, comfortless night with one or the other of them
forever getting up to steal over to the tent flap and peer fearfully
into the darkness beyond. It is safe to say that not one of them slept
two solid hours of the time.
And when morning came, revealing a dreary dark day, they felt, as they
looked, hollow-eyed and spiritless.
“The weather looks just the way I feel,” remarked Grace, as she went
mechanically about the preparing of breakfast. “I’m so sleepy I can
hardly keep my eyes open.”
However, later in the morning, it seemed as though nature relented of
her harsh treatment and decided to give the girls a bit of sunshine.
And it is remarkable what a difference a little sun will make.
The girls perked up miraculously and began clearing up the camp in
anticipation of the boys’ arrival.
“I wonder when they’ll be here,” mused Mollie, as she gathered all
paper and bits of refuse from in front of the tent and made them into
a neat pile ready to be burned.
“About noon, I suppose,” said the Little Captain. All morning she had
been wondering if Allen would be with the boys, and now as the time
drew near for their arrival she was nervous and jumpy, not at all like
her usual calm young self.
The girls noticed the change, and once Mollie said, teasingly:
“Cheer up, honey. You know Will promised to bring Allen along, if he
had to do it at the end of a rope. And you know, too, that Will is a
man of his word!”
“I wonder,” Amy had added, casually, “if Allen has fixed up the matter
of that old man’s will yet. He has been so very mysterious about it----”
“That he’s made us all curious,” finished Grace.
“I don’t see why,” said Mollie, pushing some burning scraps back into
the heap of blazing paper, “he doesn’t tell us what he knows and let us
share in the fun.”
“He will, when he gets ready,” said Betty, adding with a little caper
she could not repress: “Oh, girls, it’s almost eleven o’clock. Aren’t
you getting a bit excited?”
“Getting!” drawled Grace. “We have been, all along. Look at Amy,” she
added with a chuckle, “hanging up a piece of rag and throwing her
jacket on the floor!”
“She has it bad, poor child,” laughed Mollie, as, caught in the act,
Amy laughed sheepishly.
“If you were attending to your own affairs, you wouldn’t have time to
see so much,” she retorted, proceeding to restore her jacket to its
proper place.
“There’s one thing we must remember,” said Betty soberly. “And that is,
not to neglect our Old Maid of the Mountains just because the boys are
here. I think she has come to depend on us more than we think.”
The girls agreed to this, saying that nothing should make them forget
the lonely little old lady in the cabin up on the hill.
And then, a little before they expected them, came the boys.
The girls heard their voices before they saw them, and Betty’s heart
jumped when she recognized Allen’s voice. Not till that moment had she
realized how great had been her fear that his “mysterious” case would
make it necessary for him to remain in town.
The girls gave one hasty moment to the smoothing of their hair, made
untidy by a rather stiff breeze, and the next moment were rushing into
the woods to meet the boys half way.
They had agreed not to show too much enthusiasm over the arrival of the
latter for the reason, as Mollie had stated, that the boys were getting
spoiled with so much attention showered upon them.
But in the joy of the moment the girls forgot all about their
resolution, with the result that the boys were treated to a most
riotous welcome.
“Seems as if we were getting pretty popular around here, fellows,” said
Roy, with a grin, and Mollie promptly attempted to put him in his place.
“_Any_ man would be welcome under the circumstances,” she said
haughtily, and not till afterward did the boys think to ask her what
she meant by that statement.
As for Allen, he made straight for Betty where she had lingered a
little behind the others.
“Say, it’s been a long time,” he cried boyishly, taking both her hands
in his, his brown, handsome face alight with eagerness. “Did you miss
me, Betty?”
“Never mind us, Allen,” drawled Grace, with a wink at the assembled
company. “Would it be doing you a favor to remove ourselves from the
surrounding landscape?”
“Don’t bother,” laughed Allen, while the wild rose in Betty’s face
turned a deeper pink. “We don’t mind you in the least, do we, Betty?”
“Not at all,” said Betty, demurely, and Mollie threw up her hands in
despair.
“They’re just plain crazy, both of them,” she said. A moment later she
turned to Frank, adding in a different tone: “What’s the matter with
you and Will, anyway? You both look as mad as hops.”
“That’s nothing to the way we feel,” Frank assured her, and immediately
he and Will poured forth a tale that made the girls stare in surprise
and excitement.
It seemed that when Frank and Will had started back to Deepdale the
morning after they had spent the night in camp with the girls, helping
them get up their tent, they had not gone very far along the road when
they had been stopped by a couple of rough-looking men. The latter had
flourished pistols at them and commanded them to “Loosen up!”
“Oh! And did you?” queried Amy, horrified.
Will shrugged.
“What else could we do?” he said. “We were unarmed.”
“Did--did they steal much?” asked Grace, going around to Will as though
to protect him from the danger which had threatened him.
“They took my watch and some odd change I happened to have on me, and
forty dollars of Frank’s,” said Will, at which Frank pulled a long face.
“It was just after pay day,” he admitted ruefully.
“And we’ve been spending all our spare time since trying to find the
scoundrels,” finished Will, grimly. “And we’ll get ’em yet!”
“Let us help,” begged Amy. She was always very brave when Will was
around. “If you were robbed near here maybe the same tramps did it that
have been annoying us.”
“What?” cried Allen, his anxious glance traveling toward Betty. He
had heard of the set-to the girls had had with the tramps on Triangle
Island from Will and Frank, and it is safe to say the young lawyer had
not spent a really comfortable minute since. “Are those fellows still
bothering you?”
“I think they came again last night,” admitted the Little Captain.
“They gave us a good deal of a scare, but as soon as they knew we had
seen them, they ran off into the woods again.”
“Cowards!” muttered Allen, clenching his fist. “I’d just like to get my
hands on them!”
“You have nothing on me, old man,” Will assured him. “As soon as we
get some lunch”--here he sent a pleading glance in the direction of
the girls--“it will be our job to comb the surrounding country pretty
thoroughly. If we don’t find the thieves, at least we can make a good
try at it.”
So agitated were the girls and boys over this latest act of the
ruffianly tramps that they did not eat lunch with as much zest as
usual. All they could think of was their eagerness to start off on a
search for the thieves who had so boldly robbed the two boys.
It was decided that they separate into pairs--Allen and Betty, Frank
and Mollie, Roy and Grace, and Amy and Will, advancing in different
directions through the woods. They were to return to the camp in an
hour or two and report what they had found--if anything.
“And we want to make it a point to cover as much distance as possible,”
said Will, just before they started. “No stopping on the way, you know.”
“Speak for yourself, Will Ford,” Mollie retorted. “You needn’t worry
about the rest of us.”
Then they parted, setting off briskly on their tour of inspection.
For quite a distance Betty and Allen were silent, occupied with their
rather sober thoughts. Then Betty, realizing that they had not spoken
for a long while, looked up at Allen teasingly.
“Don’t look so dreadfully black and cross,” she said. “Have I offended
you, m’lord?”
“Heavens, no,” said Allen, adding with a deepening of the scowl on his
forehead: “I want to find those tramps, Betty, and put them where they
can’t cause you any more trouble. I can’t tell you how worried I am
about leaving you here, alone and unprotected.”
“I’m not alone, the girls are with me,” Betty protested, with a
maddening smile.
“Bosh!” retorted Allen impolitely, at which the Little Captain only
chuckled.
There followed another long silence in which they conscientiously
searched the surrounding woodland in an attempt to discover something
that might give them a clew to the whereabouts of the tramps. Again it
was Betty who broke the silence.
“Allen,” she said, “you’re worried about something else besides me,
aren’t you?”
Allen started as though she had read his thoughts.
“You are a little witch, aren’t you?” he asked, lightly. “You can even
tell what a fellow’s thinking.”
“But what is wrong?” persisted Betty. “Won’t you tell me, please?”
Betty was irresistible when she spoke that way--at least she was to
Allen.
“I didn’t mean to trouble you with it,” he said, reluctantly.
“Especially as I’m still not at liberty to go into details. But I _am_
worried, Betty. You see, it’s my duty, as a lawyer, to see that justice
is done whenever it is possible. And now I have reason to believe--to
know--that a great injustice has been committed and I can’t see my way
clear to righting the wrong.”
“Is it,” asked Betty, after a sympathetic silence, “anything to do with
that old man’s will--the client who died?”
Allen nodded. Then he said suddenly, turning to her with his old
cheerful smile: “But we’re not going to let shop talk spoil our fun,
are we, little Betty? I’ll have to be going back on Monday.”
“Oh,” cried Betty, disappointed, “can’t you stay?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Allen, gravely. “Business is business, you know.”
“Y-yes,” said Betty doubtfully. “I suppose so.”