CHAPTER IX

Inside the Haunted Lodge

Barry lifted the ax and with a single swing of his arm imbedded it in the side of the tree limb. Then he stepped to the door of the cabin and glanced inside. Mac was stacking the dishes up, and the other two boys were just coming out of the lean-to kitchen.

“Come here a minute,” Barry called to them. Mac lingered to finish his work.

When they had joined him at the door, he pointed toward the lodge. “See anything strange about the place?” he asked.

Mac joined them in the doorway, and they gazed at the hunting lodge. “Looks the same as ever to me,” Tim said.

“No, there is a window half open,” Kent cried, pointing.

“That is just what I wanted you to see,” Barry told them. “Did any of you notice that it was open before this?”

“I’m sure that it wasn’t,” Mac said.

“We ought to have seen it before this, if it was,” Tim chimed in.

“That is exactly what I thought,” Barry replied. “I was cutting wood, and while I was resting, I turned and looked at the place. It came to me at once that all the windows were down the last time we looked that way.”

“Then somebody has been in the place while we were off hunting for the sled,” Tim observed.

“It looks that way. For some reason he opened that upstairs window and forgot to close it. Fellows, we had better go explore that lodge right now. We can look for the sled later on.”

The boys needed no further urging. They were anxious to go through the old place, and now that the window had been opened they were more than eager to enter the lodge. Sweaters and caps were hastily put on, and Barry got the keys to the big building.

“If it hadn’t been for looking around for the sled, we would have been in that place this morning,” he said.

They crossed the snow to the front porch of Bluff Lodge. This porch extended clear across the log building and gave a magnificent view up and down the lake. Twenty-five yards from the porch the bluff dropped fourteen feet straight down to the waters of Arrowtip.

“Dandy place to sit and look out over the lake on a warm summer day,” Kent commented, as Barry fitted his key to the lock.

“It certainly is,” his chum agreed. “This lodge ought to be worth quite a bit of money. It would be, too, if it weren’t getting a bad name.”

By this time Barry had turned the key, and with a grinding sound the bolt shot back. The boys crowded closer to him, anxious for their first glimpse inside the haunted lodge building. Barry swung the door open wide, and they walked in, glancing around with interest.

They found themselves in a wide hall that was square and roomy. A big fireplace took up a wide space on one side of the wall, and over it hung the head of an elk. Pictures adorned the walls, and over a door leading into the other part of the lodge hung an old flintlock gun. A flight of stairs led to the loft.

“This is a dandy place,” remarked Mac, as they stood and looked around.

“I wonder if this is the main room, where they sit around the fire?” Kent asked.

Barry moved to the door and pushed it open. “No, this seems to be the living room,” he announced, stepping through the doorway. The others followed and found themselves in a big living room, furnished with several chairs and a long couch that was placed in front of the fireplace. Shelves of books and some animal skins were to be seen in this room, and it was unmistakably the guest gathering place.

“This is more like it,” Tim remarked, as they explored the room. “That other place is just the front hall. Gosh, but it is cold in here!”

Beside the fireplace there were window seats, and Barry sat down and pulled the curtains aside. “You can see our place from here,” he said. “This certainly is a nice lodge, and I’d like to own it.”

Kent opened a door from the living room, and they continued to explore. A long hall led to the kitchen at the back of the lodge, and from this hall three bedrooms and a dining room could be reached. It was indeed an unusually large log structure.

“Wouldn’t this be a great place to have a party?” Barry exclaimed, with enthusiasm.

“Boy, it surely would!” Kent agreed. He opened a door and looked into one of the bedrooms. “Look at those nice beds, and we are sleeping on the floor over at our cabin!”

Tim called their attention to a pump on the back porch. “Here we are, melting down snow, and a good pump close to us.”

“Bet it is frozen stiff,” Barry objected.

“Even so, if some hot water were poured down it to prime it, I believe that we could use it,” Tim said.

“Well, let’s get on upstairs,” proposed Barry. “We came over here to see about that window.”

They went down the hall and through the living room to the big hall. Barry led the way up the stairs until they came to a door. This was not hard to open, and they found themselves in the attic or loft space of the hunting lodge.

It was a large open space and seemed to be almost empty. A broken bobsled was over against one slope of the roof, and two dusty saddles hung from nails. There were only two windows in the upper section of Bluff Lodge, and one of them was slightly open. Barry crossed the floor of the attic and shut the window, peering out.

“Look at those prints in the snow,” he said. “It seems as though someone may have crossed the roof and come in this window. There is enough roof for anyone to walk on.”

“Then those tracks were made some time back,” reminded Kent. “We haven’t had any snow lately. You can see how the snow melted down into the tracks.”

“Yes, no doubt of it, the tracks are old,” Barry agreed.

Two chimneys rose straight through the attic, and Mac wandered around restlessly. The chimney from the lower hall took up little space, but the living-room chimney rose several feet to push its way through the roof. Mac walked around this brick column while the others looked out of the window toward their cabin.

Then they heard him utter an exclamation. They turned to see him motioning from around the corner of the chimney.

“Come here, you fellows! Look what I’ve found!”

Filled with curiosity, they joined him behind the tall chimney and found him pointing to a small pile of half-melted snow that showed on the floor. Barry knelt and touched it with his finger.

“It is snow, all right,” he announced.

“And that means that somebody has been in the lodge within the last few minutes, possibly while we were walking around downstairs!” Mac reminded them.