DABNEY’S CLUE
It was still raining next morning, which was, as Aunt Anna said, “a
merciful providence, considering how much mending there is to do, and
how little we stay indoors to do it on a bright day.”
They sat around the fire talking and sewing busily, for it was true that
much had been neglected in the enjoyment of other things. Beatrice, the
least enthusiastic seamstress of the three, was the one whose wardrobe
needed the most repair, since her scrambles over the mountains had
wrought more ruin than she had realized. If Aunt Anna had not mended the
rent in her riding skirt and Nancy had not sewed up the rip in her
sheepskin coat, she would never have come to the end.
“I seem to have strewed the whole State of Montana over with buttons,”
she declared with a sigh, “but, oh, how much I have seen while I have
been doing it! If it is still raining to-morrow, I think Buck will kick
out the side of his stall, he is so impatient to be off again, and so am
I.”
There was a promise of clearing at sunset, for the clouds began to lift,
and patches of blue sky showed to the westward, a hopeful sign for the
morrow. The peak of Gray Cloud Mountain, visible from their doorstep,
loomed through the mist that had shrouded it from view and before dark
showed its towering outline, clear-cut against the clouds. And never,
never, so Beatrice and Nancy thought, had they seen a more glorious day
than the morrow turned out to be. With the whole world washed clean,
with the dripping water dried up in an hour by the all-conquering
sunshine, it seemed that nothing could be more perfect.
Before they had finished breakfast, there was a loud trampling of hoofs
outside, announcing a cavalcade—Hester Herrick on her pinto pony, Dr.
Minturn with her, and Olaf riding behind leading a packhorse.
“It is the day of all days for a picnic,” Hester announced. “All the
time you have been here, we have talked of going to Eagle Rock, and you
promised to come with me the first day I could arrange it. Christina
will spend the day with Miss Deems, this horse that Olaf is on will do
for Nancy to ride; and everything we could possibly need is packed on
old Martha here. Dr. Minturn rode by our house this morning, and thought
he would come over with me; though he is in a hurry to get to the
village. He will come back this evening after we have got home to make
your aunt a real, proper visit. Do say you will come.”
Her eagerness and the inviting beauty of the day were not to be denied,
so that in a moment Nancy and Beatrice were running to and fro in hasty
preparation.
“Bring warm coats and your swimming suits and hurry,” Hester directed.
“Olaf will saddle Buck while you are getting ready.”
It was well that Olaf was there to deal with Beatrice’s pony, for with
the gathered energy of two days’ vacation, Buck went through all the
tricks in his repertoire during the cinching of the saddle. He was off
down the trail like an arrow the moment his mistress was in the saddle,
leaving the others trailing far behind. They came together soon,
however, and climbed merrily upward, looking back at the valley mapped
out below them and at the bare, brown slopes of the range opposite. They
looked so near in the clear air that Beatrice shouted, “to see if there
would be an echo.”
“Hardly,” commented Hester, “for they are twenty miles away.”
Beatrice tried many times, as they went along, to think of some question
to put to Hester that might bring forth information about John Herrick,
but no matter how often she led up to it, she was never able to think
what to say. She had told Nancy of that strange scene in the moonlight,
and she was afraid now of her sister’s blunt frankness, should the talk
touch upon that matter of which both their minds were so full. In the
end, therefore, she said nothing.
They reached Eagle Rock well before noon, unsaddled their horses,
removed the generous bundles of lunch from the back of the willing
pack-pony, and turned all four out to graze. Above them rose abruptly a
huge gray mass of granite, set in the midst of a smooth slope of grass
and scrubby trees. A clear stream swept in a curve below the foot of the
rock, spread to a broad pool, and then ran babbling out of sight among
the trees. Hester, who was, in her own sphere, a capable and
self-reliant young person, showed them how to hobble the horses lest
they stray too far, how to build a fireplace of stones with its back to
the wind, and then brought out her fishing tackle and set about teaching
the two girls how to catch rainbow trout.
Beatrice succeeded very badly, displaying a great talent for tangling
her hook in the bushes when she tried to learn to cast. She laid down
her rod after a little, stretched herself upon her back on the warm
grass, and fell to watching the fleet of towering white clouds that went
drifting overhead. One of them, which looked even more than the others
like a tall vessel with curved and shining sails, had come to grief on
the jagged shoulder of Gray Cloud Mountain and hung there, beating
itself to pieces, growing thinner and thinner as it spread out in long
wreaths across the glowing blue sky. Some of Beatrice’s cares and
worries seemed to be fading from her mind in much the same way, blown
afar by the brisk, warm gusts of wind.
“I believe everything will come out right after all,” she thought, “and
I shall know, when the time comes, what I ought to do.”
She got up at last and went to join the others, who greeted her with
reproaches for having made so little effort to catch any fish.
Nancy, more patient and painstaking, had come into better fortune. She
had learned to cast, after a fashion, and had managed to dangle her
gay-colored fly in the water at the edge of a riffle just as Hester had
instructed her. Then came the first tug at her line, a magic quiver
which seemed to send an electric shock of excitement all up her arm. In
that second she became a fisherman.
They landed twelve trout between them, although Hester’s share was by
far the greater, and they ate all twelve for the lunch that they spread
on a flat, sun-warmed shelf of Eagle Rock. Such a feast as it was, with
sizzling fried bacon, toasted cheese sandwiches, hot cocoa, and the
trout cooked to a turn by Hester. Afterward they sat and talked for a
very long time, talked of everything and of nothing, until Hester jumped
up and said there was only just time for a swim before going home.
“I did not know,” said Nancy a little doubtfully, “that swimming was one
of the usual sports in the Rocky Mountains.”
“Most of the water is too cold to be pleasant,” replied Hester, “but
this pool is warm enough. It is the only one I know of. Roddy found it
long ago, and taught me to swim here. He says perhaps it was beavers
that helped to dam it and went away years before we discovered it. The
stream is fed by melted snow, like all the others, but it runs very
shallow for miles above here, out in the open where the sun can warm it.
By mid-afternoon, like this, it is not cold at all.”
She donned her bathing suit and dropped into the water with a splash.
After a moment of doubt and hesitation, her two friends followed.
“Oh!” cried Beatrice and “Oh,” echoed Nancy, “I did not know it would be
like this!”
A person who has never bathed in the clear, rock pools of the high
mountainsides cannot know what real exhilaration is. The two girls
caught their breath with delight and wonder, with a pleasure that was
quite indescribable. To plunge into the crystal-blue water, to know that
it has poured down from the vast glaciers and great, empty snow-fields
where no human foot ever comes, to feel all the tingling freshness of
the water without its deadly cold—there are few things like it in the
world. The girls laughed and splashed and swam and floated until Hester
warned them that it was not wise to stay in too long, and they came out
reluctantly to dry themselves in the sun.
They scrambled almost to the top of Eagle Rock, found a shelf that was
sheltered from the wind, and sat down in a row, swinging their feet over
the void beneath and looking out over the long ranges of hills and
mountains, brown, russet, red, and chrome-yellow, fading to the blue
peaks in the far distance.
“That must be a mountain sheep, that dot moving there opposite us,”
Hester observed. “And you can see Gray Cloud Pass over beyond the
shoulder of this nearest hill. The tuft of green above is that stretch
of woods growing around the lake, but see how bare the slope is where it
goes up beyond—nothing but solid rock and overhanging cliffs to the very
top. There is a little trail that picks its way back and forth over the
face of the mountain; it is called Dead Man’s Mile, there is so much
danger, just there, from unsteady footing and rocks falling from above.”
Beatrice remembered how she had come to grief even on the lower, easier
slope, and shuddered at the thought of the difficulties higher up.
“Yet I should like to climb it,” she thought. The very impossibility of
the idea made it seem all the more inviting.
They sat there even after they were dry, but finally Hester, with a
sigh, declared they must go.
“It has been such a pleasant day,” she said, “I hate to have it end.
We—we aren’t very happy at home, just now, Roddy and I.”
“What!” exclaimed Nancy. “What can be the matter?”
“I don’t know,” Hester answered hopelessly. “I really brought you here
so that we could talk about it, but it has been so hard to speak that I
haven’t said anything, and now it is time to go home. Long ago Roddy
used to be like this sometimes. He would look worried and troubled for
days and at last would go off, camping in the hills, hunting and fishing
and thinking things out, and he would come home quite cheerful again.
That was long, long past; I had almost forgotten it, but now it has all
come back again. He is miserable and restless, and troubled over
something I can’t understand. Just last night he asked me the strangest
thing. He wanted to know if I could be happy in some other place if he
decided not to live here any longer. And I had thought he loved Gray
Cloud Mountain best of any place in the world!”
If John Herrick did not tell her his secret, they had no right to do so.
Such was the unspoken message that passed between the sisters as Nancy
tried to offer comfort, with very little success.
“I suppose there is no use in talking of it,” said little Hester at last
with a sigh. “Things may be better some time. Well, we must be going
home. Climb down, and I will show you how to throw the diamond hitch on
a packhorse.”
The ride home was less hilarious than their setting out had been, and
Beatrice and Nancy went up the path to the cabin with no very light
hearts. In the evening, however, they were made happy again by a visit
from Dr. Minturn and his very good report of Aunt Anna.
“I could not ask for anything better,” he declared, fully as delighted
as were they. The beaming warmth of his smile seemed to light the whole
room.
“I have something to propose,” he went on. “Nancy here has come to be
more of a rider than she was when I visited you before, and I have been
wondering if she would go over the pass with me to-morrow and spend a
few days with Miriam. Mrs. Minturn has asked me over and over again if
she couldn’t learn to know both the girls, and this is a good chance.
Beatrice can ride over to come back with her, since she should not go
over the trail alone.”
It was difficult to persuade Nancy to leave her housekeeping, but
arguments prevailed at last and she set off next morning, with many last
messages and instructions to Beatrice, and with a great deal of pleasure
and excitement shining in her eyes. John Herrick had sent over the same
horse she had ridden yesterday, a gentle creature on which she was more
comfortable than when mounted upon the gay spirited Buck. Beatrice was
to follow in three days to come back with her. The house seemed very
empty without her busy presence, and Olaf, when he came with the milk,
declared that nothing was the same at all with Miss Nancy gone.
“And things aren’t very cheerful where I live, either,” he said. “Miss
Hester has been crying, and that Dabney Mills has been hanging around
the place. He brings no good with him, whatever he comes for.”
Beatrice was not inclined to take the amateur detective very seriously;
but, she was concerned indeed to hear that Hester was still unhappy. She
was desirous of riding over to see her, but her unpractised skill as a
housewife made it difficult for her to find a spare moment. Most of the
next day passed without her having time for visiting, but when evening
came she was ordered by Aunt Anna to go out for a little, since she had
toiled in the house all day. As there was not time enough for a ride,
she strolled down the path under the pines and stood at the bars of the
gate, watching the slow tide of shadows creep up the hillsides opposite.
For so long a time did she stand there that when two figures came down
the hill from the direction of John Herrick’s house it was too dark to
see who they were, and they were only to be recognized by their voices.
The loudness of their speech indicated that neither Olaf nor Dabney
Mills was in a friendly mood.
“We give you warning,” Olaf was saying, “that you are not to come on
John Herrick’s place again. You are to ask no more questions of anybody.
You are to put that note-book in your pocket and shut your mouth and get
out. If you show yourself here again, you will get something that will
make what you took from the bear seem like a love-pat.”
“You warn me? Who are you, giving orders?” Dabney Mills thrust his face
forward sharply and spoke almost into the other’s. “Who _are_ you?
That’s what I’m asking?”
Olaf hesitated, then swung about without replying and strode off up the
hill.
“Imposter!” cried Dabney after him. “Liar!” He caught sight suddenly of
Beatrice beside the gate and changed his manner quickly.
“Good evening,” he said pleasantly, “might I ask——”
He had glanced upward toward Olaf, disappearing in the dusk, so that
Beatrice guessed the question concerned him, and interrupted.
“There is no use in your asking me anything,” she said. “We are all very
tired of your questions, and think you have no right to ask them.”
“Oh, I don’t want to inquire about him,” returned Dabney, indicating
Olaf with a jerk of his thumb. “I know who he is all right—Christina’s
boy that went off to sea, and that has such a warm welcome waiting for
him in Ely. I found out who he was the day the bear knocked me out. I
came to and saw him hanging over that precipice and I knew, all in a
minute, that only a sailor could have the head to do such a thing. I had
my suspicions before, and I only needed that to make me sure.”
“If you tell about him in the village,” said Beatrice, growing rather
indiscreet in the defense of Olaf, “he may have something to tell about
you and my sister and the bear.”
“Oh, I don’t care to talk very much about him for a while,” Dabney
declared hastily. “It’s another person I have my eye on—bigger game than
Olaf Jensen. I’m trying to find out who took that money and broke up the
work down in Ely. And I’ve about found out, too.”
He gave her a long meaning look and turned away.
“Wait!” cried Beatrice. “You don’t mean that you think Olaf——” She could
not go on.
“What’s he hanging around here for, afraid to show himself and afraid to
go away? Oh, he’s in it all right; he may even have done the actual
stealing, but not just for himself. There’s some one else involved—some
one higher up. I’ll soon be able to tell who took the company’s money
and wrecked the whole project.”
“Who?” the question broke from Beatrice in a cry of anger, but she felt
also a sickening dread and foreboding of what his answer would be.
“Oh, I’m not telling—yet,” he replied, quite restored to his usual
impudent calm. “He’s a fellow that it will be hard to prove anything
against. Most people, even the laborers, talk pretty well of him, and
nobody knows anything to his discredit. Nobody knows very much about him
at all, as far as I can make out. But I’ve got my proofs all lined up
and with just a little more——”
“Who?” cried Beatrice desperately again.
Dabney Mills merely jerked his thumb toward where the lights of John
Herrick’s house were shining among the trees. Even as they looked up,
the door opened, showing, silhouetted against the light within, Hester
and John Herrick standing on the threshold. He turned as though to bid
her good-by, then strode down the steps without looking back. She stood,
however, with the door still open and the light streaming out, so that
they could see him mount his horse and ride away up the trail into the
mountains.
“Yes,” said Dabney, “that’s the one.”
But Beatrice did not answer.