CHAPTER X

A Council of War

Somewhat startled at Mac’s words, the others looked around the loft and then at each other. The thought that some unknown person had been in the building, perhaps at the same time that they were downstairs, was not a comforting one, and they felt the grip of excitement and uncertainty. Barry glanced up at the roof above them.

“No hole there for this snow to drop through, and we haven’t any snow on our shoes,” he murmured. “It surely looks like Mac is right.”

“If somebody was here, how did he get out?” Tim asked, peering into the dark corners of the loft. “Think he slipped down the roof?”

“It would be easy for anyone to go out the front door while we were in the kitchen,” Barry reminded them. “If anybody was hiding in the lodge, he could probably hear us talking and then sneak down into the hall and outdoors while we were in the rear.”

“That’s just what has happened,” Kent exclaimed with conviction.

Barry crushed the snow under his fingers. “It hasn’t been here very long,” he gave his opinion. “You didn’t have any of it on your shoes, did you, Mac?”

The Ford twin shook his head. “No, and I discovered it before I had walked that far. I wasn’t sure at first what it was, and I had to touch it to make sure. If that fell off of somebody’s clothes, then somebody was here just a few minutes ago.”

“Right you are,” Kent nodded. “We ought to go down and look through the house again.”

“And the sooner the better,” seconded Barry, rising from the floor. “I must let Dad know about this.”

Led by Kent, the boys went downstairs and made a hasty search through the lodge, but found nothing. It was with considerable excitement that they looked into each room, not at all certain as to what they would find, but no one was in the place. At last they gathered on the front porch and looked up and down the lake, but no one was in sight.

“Let’s take a look around the grounds,” Tim suggested, and they made a tour of the place. In the rear, back of the kitchen and in a separate building, they found a variety of garden tools and odds and ends, but the shed itself was empty of all life.

The timber came close to the back of the lodge, and if anyone had been bent on vanishing from sight in that direction, it would not have taken him long to do so. Going around on the far side of the lodge, the boys saw that it was more rugged land than that on their side. A series of ravines and gullies ran beside the lodge, and less than an eighth of mile away rose the scarred side of the old abandoned quarry.

“Pretty wild country on this side,” said Barry, as they halted under one of the bedroom windows to look around.

Tim approached the gully closest to the house and gazed down into it. “People who camp in this lodge don’t want to go walking at night,” he said. “Not in this direction, anyway. They had better——Well, I’ll be jiggered!”

“What’s the matter?” they asked him.

“Looks like our sled down there! It is!”

The others joined him at the edge of the gully. Down below them a few feet they could see the sled, partly turned over, the front runners buried under some snow-laden bushes. Tim slipped down into the depression and located the rope.

“So there is where he hid the sled!” Kent exclaimed.

“And we tramped for miles looking for it!” Barry shook his head.

Tim toiled up the slope, dragging the sled after him. “He did more than hide it there,” he informed them, handing the rope to Mac to pull. “Whoever put it there just threw it in. One front runner is broken.”

Barry helped Mac pull the sled up. It was a low flat wooden affair with steel runners. Part of the wood over the front runner had been smashed.

“Some nerve on the part of whoever did it,” growled Barry, as they examined it. “I’d like to knock the stuffing out of the man!”

“Provided a man did it,” Kent said.

“Well, somebody did it, and I suppose it is the same one who has been prowling around this lodge. I mean to find this ghost or whatever it is that is making the trouble at this place.”

“It looks as though we ought to do some watching at night,” Mac suggested, as they made their way around to the front of the lodge.

“We’ll talk it over a little later,” Barry promised, locking the front door of the lodge. “We’ve got to get our firewood in and prepare for the night. These days are short.”

Cutting wood and preparing for the night took them the rest of the brief winter afternoon, and then supper followed. The sun had gone down a dull and misty red, and the wind was moaning through the trees. There was every indication of a storm, and the boys were hoping that they would not be snowed in.

“I’ll put a splice on that broken sled runner,” Kent offered, as they sat at the supper table. He was the best carpenter of them all, and they were willing to let him do the mending.

“All right,” Barry agreed. “That will fix it so that we can use it on the way home. Whoever took our sled didn’t steal the canvas or the frying pan and the long coffee-pot handle, so he must have taken it just to scare us off.”

“He just gave the sled a polite boot into the gully,” grumbled Mac.

“Yes, and that gets under my skin,” cried Barry. “He came and stole our sled before he knew why we had come here to camp. I wouldn’t think so much of it if he had done that after we had been through the lodge, but he didn’t even give us that long. Something has got to be done, and we might just as well decide what it will be right here at this council of war.”

“Maybe we ought to take turns sitting up and looking out of the window,” Mac gave as his idea.

“A pretty cold, thankless job,” Kent shook his head. “Hang it all, we didn’t do a thing today about making better beds, and so far I haven’t enjoyed my sleep.”

“I’ll tell you what I have been thinking,” Barry said slowly. “I believe that we ought to move into the lodge.”

There was a moment of silence as the others considered his words, slightly startled at the proposition. “But your Dad told you that he wanted us to stay in this cabin,” Tim reminded.

“Yes, he did at that time,” Barry agreed. “But the whole situation has changed since then. If we are to get on the track of the mysterious spook of the lodge, we won’t do it from here. We ought to be right inside of that hunting lodge.”

Again the boys were silent, considering it. “I know that we will be a whole lot more comfortable on those beds over there than we are here,” Kent said.

“We’ll be a lot better off in several ways,” Barry pointed out. “It is a bigger place, and we’ll have more elbow room. Then we’ll be closer to the actual scene of His Majesty the Spook’s activity.”

“That spook gets snow on him, same as any human,” grinned Mac.

“Of course,” nodded Barry. “Because he is human. It’s just some mean person up to a slippery game, but who it is or why he is at it, nobody knows. And if we are going to find out, we’ll have to hustle, because our time here is going by fast.”

“Let’s move over there tonight!” Tim suggested.

For a moment they were swayed by the thought, and then Kent and Barry shook their heads together. “Too much of a job at this time of night,” Kent said.

“We haven’t much to move,” Tim protested.

“That’s true,” Barry agreed. “But the lodge is too cold. We’ll have to spend a full day warming up the place. We have only two lanterns, and while I noticed some lamps over there, I don’t know whether they have any oil in them or not. We’ll do better to wait until morning.”

“Taking it by and large, I believe it is the best thing to do,” commented Mac. “This little cabin does very well as a shelter from the storm, but it isn’t very comfortable.”

“It hasn’t been well taken care of,” answered Kent, looking around. “Some of the chinking is out between the logs, and that lets the air in. This table is thick with grease and looks like it never was cleaned.”

“Mr. Bronson has been renting it out for a long time,” explained Barry. He got up from the table. “After we have washed the dishes I’ll write a letter to my father and tell him that we have decided to move into the lodge—in fact, I’ll tell him everything. He might even run up here himself.”

“I hope we know something more definite by the time he does,” observed Mac.

Later in the evening Barry wrote a letter to his father relating events in detail and informing him of their contemplated move. While he was busily engaged at this, the other three boys were working on the broken runner board. Kent had decided to cut out a new one from a piece of board which he had found in the kitchen, and with the aid of ax and knife he managed to carve out a fair section of runner board. With the help of the twins he fitted it into place, and before long the job had been successfully completed.

Before they retired for the night Barry opened the door of the cabin and was surprised to see the soft white flakes falling. “It’s snowing,” he told his chums.

“Looks as though we are going to move into the lodge just in time,” Kent predicted.

“I hope that this doesn’t turn into a blizzard,” Barry thought.