CHRISTMAS, AFTER ALL!
Janice Day possessed more self-control than most girls of her age. She
would not, even when her heart was sick with apprehension because of the
story in the newspaper, give her cousin the opportunity of saying that
she showed the white feather.
She lay close to the beam of the ice boat, clung to the hand-holds, and
made no outcry as the craft flew off upon the other tack. Had the wind
been directly astern, the course of the _Fly-by-Night_ would have been
smoother. It was the terrific bounding, and the groaning of the timbers
while the boom swung over and the canvas slatted, that really frightened
the girl.
It seemed as though the mast must be wrenched out of the boat by the
force of the high wind filling the canvas. And the shrieking of the
runners! Janice realized that the passage of an ice boat made as much
noise as the flight of a fast train.
She could scarcely distinguish what Nelson Haley shouted at her, and he
was so near, too. He pointed ahead. She stooped to look under the boom
and saw a great windrow of snow--a huge drift more than six feet
high--not half a mile away.
This drift stretched, it seemed, from side to side of the lake. They
could not see what lay beyond it. Janice expected the others would drop
the sail and bring the ice boat to a halt. Some roughness in the ice, or
perhaps a narrow opening, had caught the first driven flakes of snow
here the night before. The snow had gathered rapidly when once a streak
of it lay across the lake. Deeper and deeper the drift had grown until
tons of the white crystals had been heaped here in what looked to Janice
to be an impassable barrier.
"Oh! Oh!" she shrieked. "Won't you stop?"
Nelson Haley smiled grimly and shook his head. Marty uttered a shriek of
exultation as the ice boat bore down upon the drift. _He_ was quite
speed-mad.
"Hang on! hang on!" commanded Nelson Haley.
Another moment and the frightened Janice saw the bow of the boat
rise--as it seemed--straight into the air. Amid the groaning of timbers
and the shrieking of the wind, the _Fly-by-Night_ shot up the steep
slant of the drift and over its crest!
The cry Janice tried to utter was frozen in her throat. She saw the ice
ahead and below them. Like a great bird--or a huge batfish leaping from
the sea--the ice boat shot out on a long curve from the summit of the
hard-packed snowdrift.
The shock of its return to the ice was terrific. Janice felt sure the
boat must be racked to bits.
But the _Fly-by-Night_ was strongly built. With the momentum secured by
its leap from the drift, it skated over the ice for a mile or more, with
scarcely a thimbleful of wind in its sail, yet traveling like a fast
express.
Then it answered the helm again, the wind filled the sail, and they bore
down upon the Landing on a direct tack.
"Gee! Ain't it great?" cried Marty, as Nelson Haley signaled him to drop
the sail. "Don't that beat any traveling you ever done, Janice?"
Janice faintly admitted that it did; but neither the boy nor Nelson
Haley realized what a trial the trip had been to the girl. Janice was
too proud to show the fear she felt; but she could scarcely stand when
the _Fly-by-Night_ finally stopped with its nose to the shore, just
beyond the steamboat dock.
Popham Landing was scarcely larger than Poketown; only there were
canning factories here, and the terminus of the narrow-gauge railroad on
which Janice had finished her rail journey from Greensboro the spring
before. So it was a livelier place than the village in which the girl
had been living for eight months.
Colonel Van Dyne, owner of one of the canning factories, had a fine home
on the heights overlooking the lake. It was with the colonel's gardener
and superintendent that Nelson Haley had an acquaintance, and through
that acquaintanceship had obtained the cut flowers from the colonel's
greenhouse.
When the three had hurried up the half-cleared landing to the railroad
station, Janice fairly staggering between her two companions, the office
was closed and nobody was about the railroad premises. It was a holiday,
and no more trains were expected at the Landing until night.
Janice all but broke down at this added bad turn of affairs. To come all
this distance only to be balked!
"It's jest blamed _mean_!" sputtered Marty. "Telegraph shops ain't got
no right to shut up--in the daytime, too."
"It's not a Western Union wire," explained Nelson. "The railroad only
takes ordinary messages as a matter of convenience. But wait! That
door's open and there's a fire in the waiting-room, you see. Just
because this card says the agent and operator won't be here till five
o'clock doesn't mean that he's gone out of town. Besides, I'll see my
friend, Jim Watrous."
This was the gardener and general factotum at Colonel Van Dyne's. The
Poketown school-teacher hurried away, and left Janice and Marty sitting
together in the railroad station.
"He'll find some way--don't you fear, Janice," said the boy, with much
more sympathy than he had ever shown before. Janice squeezed his hand
and hid her own face. She could not forget how Marty had tried the
evening before to hide the knowledge of her father's fate from her.
_This_ was a much different Marty than the boy she had first met at the
old Day house on her arrival at Poketown.
In half an hour Nelson Haley was back with the operator and agent. The
gardener at Colonel Van Dyne's knew the man personally. The story in the
newspaper, and an explanation of who Janice was, did the rest.
"There isn't any better day than Christmas, I reckon," said the
telegraph operator, when he shook hands with the girl and she tried to
thank him in advance for the trouble he was taking on her behalf, "to do
a helpful deed. And I want to help you, Miss Day, if I can. Write your
messages and I will put them through as rapidly as possible. I shall
have plenty of time to go home for dinner between the sending of your
telegrams, and the receiving of the answers. Now, don't worry at all
about it."
"Oh, dear!" half sobbed the girl. "Everybody is _so_ good to me."
"Not a bit more than you deserve, I am sure," laughed the operator.
"Now, Miss, if you are ready, I am."
Janice knew just what she wished to say. If she had not written the
messages she was anxious to send, she had already formulated them in her
mind. It was but a few minutes' work to write both--one to Mr. Buchanan
at Juarez, and the other addressed to the man, John Makepiece, who
claimed to have been a fellow-prisoner with Mr. Broxton Day.
When the messages were sent, all they could do was to wait. Janice had
expected that she and Marty and Mr. Haley would have to camp in the
waiting-room of the station during the long interval, and the girl was
very sorry that, because of her, her friends would have to forego any
holiday dinner.
While Janice was engaged, Nelson Haley had been off on an excursion of
his own. He came tramping back into the station just as the operator
closed his key and told Janice that there was nothing to do now but
wait.
"And I'm afraid it will be an awfully tedious time for you, Marty," said
the girl. "I'm sorry. Aunt 'Mira was going to have _such_ a nice dinner
for you, too!"
"Huh! I guess I won't starve," growled the boy. "Mebbe we can find some
sandwiches somewhere--and a cup of coffee. By jinks! flyin' down the
lake like we did, _did_ make me sharp-set."
"If you're hungry, then, Marty," broke in Nelson Haley, "we'll all go to
dinner. It's just about ready by now, I reckon."
"Aw! don't fool a feller," said Marty, ruefully.
The school-teacher laughed at him. "I'm not fooling," he said. "I was
quite sure Miss Janice would be hungry enough to eat, too; so I found a
kind woman who is willing to share her dinner with us. Come on! She and
her daughter are all alone. The storm has kept their friends from coming
to eat with them, so we're in luck."
The three had quite a delightful dinner at the Widow Maltby's. Nelson
had told her and her daughter something about Janice's trouble, and the
good creatures did everything they could to make it agreeable for the
girl.
As for Marty, the "lay-out," as he expressed it, was all that heart
could desire--a boy's heart, at least! There was turkey, with dressing,
and cranberries, and the usual vegetables, with pie and cake galore, and
a pocketful of nuts to top off with.
Janice was afraid that the dinner would cost Nelson a great deal of
money, until she saw him fairly press upon the good widow a two-dollar
bill for their entertainment!
"And I ain't right sure that I'd ought to take anything at all," the
widow declared. "An' at sech a time, too! We'd never been able to eat
all o' them vittles, Em and I, an' we're thankful to have somebody come
along and help us. An' it sure has perked us up right smart."
Nelson had been very gay at the dinner, and had kept the widow and her
daughter in good humor. But with Janice, as they walked back to the
station (Marty had gone off on some matter of his own), the young man
was very serious.
"I sincerely hope, Janice, that you will hear better news from your
father or his friends on the border than the newspaper gave last night.
The trains are snowbound, and no morning papers have reached the Landing
yet, so nobody here knows more than we do about the matter. Don't set
your heart too strongly upon hearing better news--that's all."
"I do not need that warning," Janice told him, with a sigh. "But I felt
as though I should quite go all to pieces if I had to sit still and just
_wait_. I had to _do something_. I can't tell you how thankful I am to
you for your trouble in bringing me down here."
"Trouble?" cried Nelson Haley. "You know it is a pleasure, Janice," and
just then they reached the railroad station and found the operator at
his telegraph key again.
"I was just going to hunt you up, Miss Day," he cried, beckoning her
into the office. "Do you know, young lady, that you have suddenly become
a person of considerable importance?" and he laughed again.
"_Me?_" cried Janice, in amazement.
"You are the tea party--yes, ma'am! You are an object of public
interest. Two New York papers have sent to me for five-hundred word
interviews with you----"
"My goodness me!" gasped Janice. "How dreadful! What does it mean?"
"Your father's case has been taken up by the big papers all over the
country. It may be made a cause for American intervention. That is the
talk. The newspapers are interested, and the truth about your father is
likely to be known very quickly. All the special correspondents down
there on the border have been set to work----Ah! and here is something
from your man at Juarez."
The telegrapher had caught the relay number of the despatch then coming
over the wire, and knew that it was from Juarez. "Hello!" he chuckled,
when the sounder ceased. "Your man is certainly some brief--and to the
point."
He scratched off a copy of the message and put it into Janice's eager
hand. The girl read it out loud:
"J. M. always a story-teller. Have telegraphed consular
agent at Cida for later particulars. I consider any news of
B. D. good news.
JAMES W. BUCHANAN."
"That Buchanan evidently knows the John Makepiece who is telling this
yarn," observed the telegraph operator, "and he doesn't have much
confidence in him."
"Oh, dear!" murmured the girl. "Maybe it's even worse than Makepiece
reported."
"Hardly," broke in Nelson Haley, quickly. "He intimated that your father
was surely dead. But this friend of yours at Juarez says any news at all
is good news."
"Keep your heart up, Miss," urged the telegraph operator. "And do tell
me a little something about yourself, so that I can satisfy these
insistent newspapers."
"Oh, dear, me! I don't want to get into the newspapers," cried Janice,
really disturbed by this possibility.
"But folks will be awfully interested in reading about you, Miss Day,"
urged the man; "and the newspapers are going to do more than anybody
else for you and your father in this trouble. You may make sure of
_that_."
But it was because of the operator's personal kindness that Janice
submitted to the "interview." Nelson Haley entered into the spirit of
the affair and wrote down Janice's personal history to date, just as
briefly and clearly as the girl gave it under the operator's
questioning. Young Haley added a few notes of his own, which he
explained in the operator's ear before the latter tapped out his message
to New York.
It was only when Janice saw the paper a few days later that she realized
what, between them, the school-teacher and the telegraph operator had
done. There, spread broadcast by the types, was the story of how Janice
had come to Poketown alone, a brief picture of her loneliness without
her father, something of the free reading-room Janice had been the means
of establishing, and a description of the flight down the lake on the
_Fly-by-Night_ on Christmas morning, that she might gain further
particulars of her father's fate.
It was the sort of human-interest story that newspaper readers enjoy;
but Janice was almost ashamed to appear in public for several days
thereafter!
However, this is ahead of our story.
The wait for further messages from the border was not so tedious,
because of these incidents. By and by an answer came from the American
consular agent at Cida, relayed from Juarez by Mr. Buchanan. The agent
stated his doubt of the entire truth of John Makepiece's story. The man
was notoriously a reckless character. It was believed that he himself
had served with the Constitutionalist army in Mexico some months. Since
appearing in Cida and telling his story to the Associated Press man, he
had become intoxicated and was still in that state, so could not be
interviewed for further particulars.
A posse had started for Granadas the day before, to see what was the
condition of affairs around the mining property of which Mr. Day had had
charge. It was a fact that the guerrilla, Raphele, had overrun that
district and had controlled it for some months; but his command was now
scattered, and the more peacefully-inclined inhabitants of Granadas were
stealing back to their homes.
"Have requested consular agent at Cida to wire you direct to Popham
Landing, report of returning posse now overdue," was how Mr. Buchanan
concluded the message.
"And that report may be along any time, now," declared the operator,
encouragingly. "You people haven't got to start back up the lake yet
awhile?"
"We'll stay as long as Miss Day wants to," said Nelson Haley, quickly.
"Sure we'll stay," cried Marty. "Miss Maltby told me to come back by and
by, and finish that mince pie I couldn't manage at dinner time. There
ain't no hurry to get back to Poketown, is there?"
Janice and Nelson were much amused by this frank statement of the boy;
but the girl was only too glad to have the others bear out her own
desire to remain within reach of the telegraph wires for a while longer.
Mr. Buchanan's messages had eased her heart greatly.
Janice cried a little by herself--the first tears she had shed since the
night before. But even Marty respected them and did not make fun of his
cousin.
"Everybody is so good to me!" she cried again, when she had wiped her
eyes and could smile at Marty and Nelson Haley. "And I believe it's all
coming out right. This long day is going to be a _real_ Christmas Day,
after all!"