A COLD SCENT
The barking of the dogs was in answer to the booming note that Tom
Jonah sent echoing across the ice. Agnes and Neale found that the two
big ice-boats were near at hand.
As one of the crew of Mr. Howbridge's boat owned the scooter that
Neale and Agnes had come up the lake on, that owner wished to recover
his abandoned ice-boat. Besides, it was not more than two miles over
the ice to Coxford, and the wind was going down with the sun. The big
boats would have made slow work of it beating in to the slab-town on
the western shore of the lake.
Neale and Agnes ran out across the ice to meet their friends. Most of
the party were glad indeed to get on their feet, for the ride up the
lake had been a cold one.
In fact, Tess could scarcely walk when she got out of her seat, and
Dot tumbled right down on the ice, almost weeping.
"I--I guess I haven't got any feet," the smallest Corner House girl
half sobbed. "I can't feel 'em."
"Course you've got feet, Dot," said Sammy, staggering a good deal
himself when he walked toward her. "Just you jump up and down like
this," and he proceeded to follow his own advice.
"But won't we break through the ice?" murmured the smallest Corner
House girl.
"Why, Dot! do you s'pose," demanded Tess, "that you can jump hard
enough to break through two feet of ice?"
"Well, I never tried it before, did I?" demanded Dot. "How should _I_
know what might happen to the old ice?"
Agnes hurried the little ones over to the shanty of the friendly
fisher-woman, where they could get warm and be sheltered from the raw
wind that still puffed down in gusts from the hills.
Tom Jonah had jumped out of the cockpit of the ice-boat and found
himself immediately in the middle of what Luke Shepard called "a fine
ruction."
"Canines to right of him, canines to left of him, volleyed and
thundered!" laughed the college youth. "Hey! call off your
fish-hounds, or Tom Jonah will eat them up."
One cur was already running away yelping and limping; the others took
notice that the old dog had powerful jaws. But Ruth insisted that Tom
Jonah be put on a leash, and Luke meekly obeyed. Indeed, he was likely
to do almost anything that the oldest Corner House girl told him to
do, "right up to jumping through the ring of a doughnut!" his sister
whispered to Mrs. MacCall in great glee.
"Well, my lassie," was the housekeeper's comment, "he might be mindin'
a much worse mistress than our Ruthie."
Nothing that Ruth could or did do in most matters was wrong in Mrs.
MacCall's opinion, even if she did criticize the Kenways' charity. If
Luke Shepard some day expected to get Ruth for his wife, the
housekeeper considered that it was only right he should first learn to
obey Ruth's behests in all things.
Ruth had a word to say to Neale and Agnes at this time. She pointed
out to those two restless and reckless younger ones that there must be
no such venturesome escapades during the remainder of this winter
vacation as that connected with the ice-scooter.
"If you have no respect for your own bones, think of our feelings,"
she concluded. "Why! I almost had heart disease when I saw that horrid
scooter fly past with Agnes up in the air as though she were on a
flying trapeze."
"Shucks, Ruth!" said Neale, "you know I wouldn't let any harm come to
Aggie."
"Now, Neale," returned the older girl, "how would you keep her from
getting hurt if that ice-boat broke in two, for instance?"
"Oh, well--"
"That's what I thought!" snapped Ruth. "You had not thought of that."
"Don't scold him! Don't scold Neale!" begged Agnes. "He's all right."
"Oh, no, he isn't," said Ruth grimly. "One side of him is left! And
you will promise to be good or I'll make Mr. Howbridge send Neale
home, right from here."
"Oh!" cried her sister. "You would not be so mean, Ruthie Kenway."
"I don't know but I would," Ruth rejoined. "I don't think so much of
boys, anyway--"
"Not until they get to be collegians," whispered Neale shrilly from
behind his hand.
Ruth's eyes snapped at that, and she marched away without another
word. Mr. Howbridge refrained from commenting upon the incident, for
he saw that Ruth had said quite all that was necessary.
Neale and Agnes were much abashed. They followed the others slowly
toward the village on the ice. Neale said:
"Well, if she says I can't go any farther I'll stay right here and
fish until you come back, Aggie."
"Oh, Neale! You wouldn't!"
"Why not? Maybe I'd make a little money. If two twelve year old girls
could stand it for a week here, I don't see why I couldn't stand it
for three weeks."
"I've been thinking about those two girls that woman told us about,"
said Agnes with sudden eagerness.
"What about 'em?"
"Do you s'pose they were girls, Neale O'Neil?"
"Why! what do you mean? How do I know? The woman said they were."
"But two _girls_--and only twelve! It doesn't seem probable. I should
think the police--"
"Didn't you hear that woman say there were no constables out here on
the ice?" said Neale.
"I don't care! I'm suspicious," declared Agnes.
"Not of that fisher-woman?" asked the boy, puzzled indeed.
"No, no! But no two girls in this world would ever have considered
coming out here on the ice to fish. How ridiculous!"
"Say! what are you trying to get at, Agnes Kenway?" demanded her
friend. "You do have the craziest ideas!"
"Do I, Mr. Smartie?" she returned. "At least they are ideas. You never
seem to suspect a living thing, Neale O'Neil."
"Oh! I give it up," he groaned. "You are too much for me. I'm lashed
to the post and you have left me behind."
"Oh, do come on!" exclaimed Agnes, hastily dragging at his jacket
sleeve. "If you don't know what I'm about, just keep still and
listen."
"Oh, I'll do that little thing for you," returned Neale. "I can be as
dumb as a mute quahog with the lockjaw--just watch me!"
He tagged on behind Agnes with much interest. The girl hurried to the
shack into which the little folks had been taken for warmth. Mrs.
MacCall was there with them, talking with the genial fisher-woman.
"Hech!" exclaimed the housekeeper, warming her blue hands, "but this
is a strange way to live. 'Tis worse than sheep herding in the
Highlands. 'Tis so!"
"'Tain't so bad," said the woman. "And there's good money in the fish.
We are mostly all Coxford people here--or folks from back in the
hills. Few stragglers come here to bother us."
"But you said two strangers had been here this winter," Agnes
interposed, eagerly.
"I said so," the woman agreed. "Two stragglers. Two girls," and she
laughed. "But they didn't stay long. They kept to themselves like, and
never did us any harm."
"Say, Maw!" The voice came out of a shadowy corner. It was gloomy in
the shack, for the sun had now dipped below the hills and twilight had
come.
"That's my Bob," said the woman. "He's about the age of them two
gals."
"They wasn't two gals, Maw," said Bob from the darkness.
"What d'you mean?"
"One was a boy. Yes, she was--a boy! We kids found it out, and that's
why them two lit out over night."
"Good gracious, Bob! What are you sayin'?"
"That's right," said the voice from the dark corner, stubbornly. "They
was brother and sister. They owned up. Run away from somewhere, I
guess. And then they run away from here."
Agnes pinched Neale's arm. "What did I tell you?" she whispered.
"Ouch! I don't know. You've told me so many things, Aggie," he
complained.
"Don't you remember what Mr. Howbridge told us about the Birdsall
twins and the picture he sent out to the police? He showed us that,
too."
"Jumping Jupiter!" gasped the amazed Neale. "Why--why, _she_,"
pointing to the fisher-woman, "didn't say anything about the twins."
"Listen!" exclaimed Agnes again; and as Mrs. MacCall had taken the
three younger children out of the shack, Agnes began to interrogate
the woman as to the appearance of the strange girls who had remained
for a week at the village on the ice.
Yes, they were both slim, and dark, and looked boyish enough--both of
them. They seemed well behaved. She didn't believe Bob--
"I tell you I know," put in Bob from his corner. "One was a boy. He
called the other by a girl name all right. Rowly--or Rowny--or
sumpin'--"
"Rowena!" cried Agnes.
"Mebbe," admitted Bob.
"For the land of liberty's sake!" exclaimed his mother suddenly, "I'd
like to know how you are so sure 'bout one bein' a boy?"
"Well, I'll tell you," grumbled Bob. "'Cause he licked me! Yes, he
did. Licked me good and proper. No girl could ha' done that, you bet!"
said the disgruntled Bob.
"Now, Bob! I am ashamed of you!" said his mother.
"You needn't be. He could fight, that fellow!"
"But did you think they were both girls till you got into this fight?"
Neale asked, now becoming interested.
"Bet you. We thought we could get some of their lines. They had more'n
enough. We went over there to Manny Cox's shack, and she that was a
girl was alone. So we took the lines."
"Now, Bob!" murmured his mother.
"Guess a constable here wouldn't be a bad thing after all," chuckled
Neale.
"Go on," ordered Agnes.
"Why, that girl just cried and scolded. But the other one came back
before me and Hank and Buddie got away."
"The one you think was a boy?" asked Agnes.
"One I know was a boy--since he fought me. He didn't do no cryin'. He
squared right off, skirts an' all, and jest lambasted me. And when
Hank tried to put in an oar, he lambasted him. Buddie run, or he'd 've
been licked, too, I guess."
"Well!" exclaimed Bob's mother. "I never did! And you never said a
word about it!"
"What was the use?" asked her son. "We was licked. And the next
morning that boy-girl and his sister was gone. We didn't see 'em no
more."
"That is right," said the woman thoughtfully. "They got away jest like
that. I never did know what become of 'em or what they went for."
Agnes dragged Neale out of the shack. She was excited.
"Let's find Mr. Howbridge!" she cried. "He ought to know about this. I
just feel sure those twins have been here in this fisher-town."