THE DISCOVERY--CONCLUSION
Wild with rage the three men with one accord made a leap for Denny
Shane. But the old fisherman was not to be easily taken. Holding the
precious papers close to him, he made a jump for a corner of the room,
where hung an old musket.
"Oh, he's going to shoot!" screamed Bess.
"And small blame to him if he did," declared Cora. "Oh, those men must
not destroy those papers, if I have to take them in charge myself!"
Denny Shane had reached the corner where hung his musket. It was not
loaded. Cora knew this, for the old fisherman had said he was always
afraid of some accident happening, and he never kept a charge in the
gun. It was for the effect of it, he said, that he had it hanging on
his wall. Now it would be useful as a club, at least--more useful than
the easily shattered red oar had been.
But before Denny could reach the gun Kelly was upon him. With a fierce
motion the desperate plotter grasped the fisherman around the neck.
Holding him thus with one arm, he snatched the papers from him with
his other hand.
"Here you go!" Kelly cried to Bruce. "Take the papers while I hold
him. Burn 'em if you want to, but be sure you do the job well! Then
we'd better get out of here. I think I hear a boat coming. This place
will soon be too hot for us!"
Bruce took the papers from his crony. Hastily scanning them, to make
sure he had the right ones, he struck a match that Moran handed him.
Kelly and Denny were struggling in the corner of the room. But poor
old Denny had not much strength left. The events of the night had been
too much for him, and he was giving way under the cruel pressure of
Kelly's arms.
"These are the very papers we want--or don't want, rather!" exulted
Bruce. "With them out of the way the property is ours."
The match flickered in his fingers.
"Don't you dare burn them!" cried Cora.
One corner of the papers had caught fire.
Then from without the cabin sounded a chorus of cries.
"Come on, fellows!"
"We're just in time!"
"The girls are here ahead of us!"
"What a night!"
They were the voices of Jack and his chums.
"Oh, the boys have come! The boys have come!" cried Lottie.
"Jack! Jack! In here! Quick!" screamed Cora. "He's burning the papers!
Get them from him!"
Into the cabin, already crowded, the boys flung themselves.
"Just in time!" cried Cora, motioning to Jack. "Get those papers from
him before they burn!"
Over in the corner poor Denny had fallen unconscious under the attack
of Kelly.
"Cut it and run!" advised Moran, making for the door.
"No, you don't!" shouted Walter, blocking it. "Guard the windows,
Dray--Ed!" he called.
"The papers! The papers!" voiced Cora. "Get them before they burn, or
Mrs. Lewis will lose the land!"
"I'll get them!" shouted Jack.
He flung himself upon Bruce as he had often flung himself upon a
player in tackling him on the football field.
"Look out for yourself!" threatened Bruce.
But Jack was not afraid. He twisted himself about Bruce, and sought to
reach the papers.
Bruce, to get them out of Jack's reach, held them high in the air,
over his head. The two were struggling. Moran and Kelly were wrestling
with Ed and Walter, while the other girls cowered behind Dray, who had
caught up a chair as a weapon.
Cora saw her chance. She slipped around behind Bruce, and with a leap
that had often enabled her to outwit an opponent in playing basket
ball, the plucky motor girl snatched the papers from the man's hand.
Full and clean was her jump, and the smouldering papers came away in
her grasp.
"I have them, Jack!" she cried. "Look out for the men!"
And with that, to make sure that she would not lose the precious
documents, Cora held them tightly under her arm and ran out of the
cabin door, after putting out the little blaze.
"All over!" cried Jack, putting out his foot, and tripping up Bruce,
who aimed a savage blow at him. "All over!"
Bruce went down heavily. At the same time, from without the cabin
there flashed several lights, and the voices of men were heard asking:
"What's going on here?"
"Who's been screaming?"
The plotters gathered together. Bruce leaped from the floor.
"Come on!" he cried desperately. "It's all up. Get away!"
He leaped out of the window, followed by the other two.
"Get them!" yelled Ed.
"No, let them go--it's the easiest way," advised Jack. "Cora has the
papers."
"But maybe they've hurt Denny!" said Walter.
"I'm all right," asserted the fisherman, as he slowly arose. "He just
cut off my wind for a minute. I'm all right. But where are the
papers?" and he looked about the floor, on which were scattered pieces
of the broken red oar.
"They're safe," answered Jack. "Cora, my sister, has them. Guess we'd
better look for her though."
There was no need, as Cora, holding the papers in her hand, re-entered
the cabin at that moment. Only one edge of the legal documents was
burned, and no real harm had been done.
While the motor girls, and the boys and the neighboring men, who had
come to the rescue all but too late, were looking at one another there
was heard, at the dock, the puffing of a motor boat.
"There they go!" exclaimed Walter.
"Well, that's the best way," said Jack. "We're glad to get rid of
them."
"How did you girls get here?" asked Ed.
"How was it you boys _didn't_ get here?" demanded Cora, still panting
from her exertions.
Explanations were then in order. I will be as brief with them as I
can. How the girls came to go to the cabin is already known. And how
the boys, foolishly perhaps, went out on the bay while waiting for
Denny to come back, and how they became stalled, is likewise known to
my readers.
In the meanwhile Denny came to his cabin.
Then came the unexpected help in the shape of a tow from the plotters
themselves.
"They left us at Buler's," said Jack, "and then we had our own
troubles. We tried to get a boat to come on, for the _Dixie_ still
refused to move. But we couldn't get one for love or money, and it was
too rough to row."
"What did you do?" asked Cora, looking at Denny, who was examining the
broken red oar.
"We hired a horse and carriage, and came around the land way," replied
Walter. "It took us a long time, too, for we missed the road."
"But we finally got here," spoke Ed.
"And just in time," added Cora. "We were wild about you--couldn't
imagine what happened."
"Didn't you get the note we left pinned to the door?" asked Dray of
Denny.
"Nary a note," he said.
Later it was found where it had blown into a clump of bushes. So that
accounted for Denny's not being warned in time.
"But everything seems to be coming out right," said Cora, with a
rather wintry smile. All the girls were pale, and a trifle weak. The
boys, too, were tired.
"And what are those papers?" asked Jack, taking them from Cora.
"Those prove Mrs. Lewis's title to the land the plotters tried to
get," she said. "Oh, I'm so glad we found them."
"Who found them?" asked Walter, giving Cora's hand a surreptitious
squeeze.
"They were in the red oar," said Denny. "And to think I never knew it!
They were there all these years, and all of us worrying about them and
wondering where they were. But I understand now. Grandfather Lewis
must have hollowed out a hole in the handle, hid the papers in it, and
then plugged it up. Then he gave the oar to me to keep. I remember
well at the time he said it would prove valuable some day. I often
wondered what made the oar lighter than it had been. It was because it
was hollowed out.
"I asked him what he meant by sayin' the oar was valuable, but he kept
puttin' me off. He said he'd tell me some time, but he never did. Then
the day he died he sent for me, and was trying to tell me, I guess,
but he couldn't. I remember I wondered what was on his mind, but he
was too weak to explain. So he died with his secret, and the red oar
had it and kept it all these years.
"But the oar broke, or those men and myself broke it between us, and
the papers fell out. Now the widder will get her rights."
And the Widow Lewis did. Leaving the valuable documents with Denny,
the motor girls and the boys went back to their stopping places--the
girls to the bungalow, the boys to the tent.
And such a time as Cora and her chums had in telling the good news to
Mrs. Lewis and Freda! The latter could hardly believe it at first.
"Oh, how can we ever thank you!" cried Freda, as, with tears in her
eyes, she embraced Cora.
"Don't try," was the whispered answer.
And so everything came out right after all. The papers so oddly hidden
in the red oar proved the widow's title to the valuable land beyond
the shadow of a doubt. As for the plotters, they were not seen again
in that part of the country. They realized that the sharp trick they
had tried to play had failed, thanks to the activities of Cora and her
friends.
Mrs. Lewis easily established her claim to the land, moved back to her
cottage, and the project of spoiling the public park was abandoned.
The factory company was beaten in court and the members of the
corporation were forced to pay heavy costs.
Old Denny came in for his share of credit, and he was very happy. His
one lament was that the red oar was broken, but he managed to patch it
together, after a fashion. And the motor girls got him another dog.
The opening by which the papers had been put in the hollow handle had
been cleverly concealed, and, only for the accidental breaking of the
oar, might never have been discovered.
It had probably been the intention of Grandfather Lewis to disclose
the secret hiding place of the land papers, but he had died before he
could do this.
"But 'all's well that ends well,'" quoted Cora the next day, at a late
breakfast. "We have done a little good here by our vacation at Crystal
Bay."
"A _little_ good!" exclaimed Freda. "I never can thank you enough,
Cora."
"And we'll soon have to go back home--that's the worst of it!" sighed
Lottie. "It is so lovely here!"
"Oh, well, we can come back next year," spoke Bess.
"And then, too, Winter's coming on--something is sure to happen then,"
added Belle. "Something always does."
And what did happen that Winter will be told of in the volume to
follow this, which will be called "The Motor Girls on Waters Blue; Or,
The Strange Cruise of the _Tartar_."
It was the next day. The girls disposed themselves about the bungalow
in picturesque attitudes, and the boys sat on the broad porch, telling
over again the adventures of the night.
"There's only one point we're shy on," said Jack, when everything had
been told and retold.
"And that's what?" asked Ed.
"We haven't found out yet who the strange woman was who tried to get
information out of Freda, and who sent her the 'phone message."
"Oh, we're just as well off without knowing that," said Cora. "I'm
sure she was in with the plotters. You know that man Bruce called her
'Confidence Kate,' as if he knew her well."
"You must have been terribly frightened, when you found out there was
no way of getting home from the Junction," said Marita. "I think I
should have gone out of my mind."
"Don't believe her, Freda," laughed Cora, putting her arm around the
timid girl. "Marita is braver than she thinks. She offered to go into
the cabin with me when those horrid men were there, and none of the
others would."
"Come on over to Buler's and see 'em dance," proposed Jack. "The
_Dixie_ is running again."
"We'll go in the _Chelton_," spoke Cora firmly, and in that boat they
went. And now for a time, we will take leave of the motor girls.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay, by Margaret Penrose