Chapter 5

It seemed very strange to come home and find her home in the hands of strangers. It was odd to be a sort of guest in the house that she had ruled and managed from almost the time that she was a baby. It would be very hard to keep from telling Mrs. Apgarth where things belonged and how other things should be done. It would be hard to stand by and see others driving the horses that had never known a hand but hers and Daddy Tom's. Still she had been very glad to come home. It was her place. It held all the memories and all the things that connected her with her own people. She wanted to be able always to come back to it and call it her own. Looking down over it from the crest of the hill, at the little clump of trees under which lay her Daddy Tom and her mother, at the little house that had seen their love and in which she had been born, she could understand the fierceness with which men would fight to hold the farms and homes which were threatened.

Until now she had hardly realised that those men whom people vaguely called "the railroad" would want to take _her_ home and farm away from her. Now it came suddenly home to her and she felt a swelling rage of indignation rising in her throat. She hurried down the hill to the house, as though she saw it already threatened.

She deftly threw her fishpole up on to the roof of the wood shed and went around to the front of the house. There she found Mrs. Apgarth weeding in what had been Ruth's own flower beds.

"Why, what a how-dye-do you did give us, Miss Ruth!" the woman exclaimed at sight of her. "I called you _three_ times, and when you didn't answer I went to your door; and there you were gone! I told Norman Apgarth somebody must have took you off in the night."

"Oh, no," said Ruth. "No danger. I'm used to getting up early, you see. So I just took some cakes--Didn't you miss them?--and some milk and slipped out without waking any one. I wanted to catch this fish. Jeffrey Whiting and I tried to catch him for four years. And I had to do it myself this morning."

"So young Whiting's gone away, eh?"

"Why, no," said Ruth quickly. "He went over to Wilbur's Fork about half an hour ago. Who said he'd gone away?"

"Oh, nobody," said the woman hastily; "it's only what they was sayin' up at French Village yesterday."

"What were they saying?" Ruth demanded.

"Oh, just talk, I suppose," Mrs. Apgarth evaded. "Still, I dunno's I blame him. I guess if I got as much money as they say he's got out of it, I'd skedaddle, too."

Ruth stepped over and caught the woman sharply by the arm.

"What did they say? Tell me, please. Mrs. Apgarth saw that the girl was trembling with excitement and anxiety. She saw that she herself had said too much, or too little. She could not stop at that. She must tell everything now.

"Well," she began, "they say he's just fooled the people up over their eyes."

"How?" said Ruth impatiently. "Tell me."

"He's been agoin' round holdin' the people back and gettin' them to swear that they won't sign a paper or sell a bit of land to the railroad. Now it turns out he was just keepin' the rest of the people back till he could get a good big lot of money from the railroad for his own farm and for this one of yours. Oh, yes, they say he's sold this farm and his own and five other ones that he'd got hold of, for four times what they're worth. And that gives the railroad enough to work on, so the rest of the people'll just have to sell for what they can get. He's gone now; skipped out."

"But he has _not_ gone!" Ruth snapped out indignantly. "I saw him only half an hour ago."

"Oh, well, of course," said the woman knowingly, "you'd know more about it than anybody else. It's all talk, I suppose."

Ruth blushed and dropped the fish forgotten on the grass. She said shortly:

"I'm going to spend the day with Mrs. Whiting."

"Oh, then, don't say a word to her about this. She's an awful good neighbour. I wouldn't for the world have her think that I--"

"Why, it doesn't matter at all," said Ruth, as she turned toward the road. "You only said what people were saying."

"But I wouldn't for anything," the woman called nervously after her, "have her think that-- And what'll I do with this?"

"Eat it," said Ruth over her shoulder. The prize for which she had fought so desperately in the early morning meant nothing to her now.

Jeffrey Whiting did not come home that night. Through the long twilight of one of the longest days of the year, Ruth sat reading in the old place on the hill, where Jeffrey would be sure to find her. Suddenly, when it was full dark, she knew that he would not come.

She did not try to argue with herself. She did not fight back the nervous feeling that something had happened. She was sure that she had been all day expecting it. When the moon came up over the hill and the long purple shadows of the elm trees on the crest came stalking down in the white light, she went miserably into the house and up to the little room they had fitted up for her in the loft of her own home.

She cried herself into a wearied, troubled sleep. But with the elasticity of youth and health she was awake at the first hint of morning, and the cloud of the night had passed.

She dressed and hurried down into the yard where Norman Apgarth was just stirring about with his milk pails. She was glad to face daylight and action. A man had put his trust in her before all others. She was eager to answer to his faith.

"Where is Brom Bones?" she demanded of the still drowsy Apgarth as she caught him crossing the yard from the milk house.

"The colt? He's up in the back pasture, just around the knob of the mountain. What was you calc'latin' to do with him, Miss?"

"I want to use him," said Ruth. "May I?"

"Use him? Certainly, if you want to. But, say, Miss, that colt ain't been driv' since the Spring's work. An' he's so fat an' silky he's liable to act foolish."

"I'm going to _ride_ him," said Ruth briefly, as she stepped to the horse barn door for a bridle.

"Now, say, Miss," the man opposed feebly, "you could take the brown pony just as well; I don't need her a bit. And I tell you that colt is just a lun-_at_-ic, when he's been idle so long."

"Thank you," said Ruth, as she started up the hill. "But I think I'll find work enough to satisfy even Brom Bones to-day."

The big black colt followed her peaceably down the mountain, and stood champing at the door while she went in to get something to eat. When she brought out a shining new side saddle he looked suspiciously at the strange thing, but he made no serious objection as she fastened it on. Ruth herself, when she had buckled it tight, stood looking doubtfully at it. A side saddle was as new to her as it was to the horse. She had bought it on her way home the other day, as a concession to the fact that she was now a young lady who could no longer go stampeding over the hills on a bare-backed horse.

She mounted easily, but Brom Bones, seeming to know in the way of his kind that she was uneasy and uncomfortable, began at once to act badly. His intention seemed to be to walk into the open well on his hind feet. The girl caught a short hold on her lines and cut him sharply across the ear. He wheeled on two feet and bolted for the hill, clearing the woodshed by mere inches.

The path led straight up to the top of the slope. Ruth did not try to hold him. The sooner he ran the conceit out of himself, she thought, the better.

He hurled himself down the other slope, past the pool, and into the trail which Jeffrey had taken yesterday. It was break-neck riding, in a strange saddle. But the girl's anxiety rose with the excitement of the horse's wild rush, so that when they reached the top of the divide where she had last seen Jeffrey it was the horse and not the girl that was ready to settle down to a sober and safer pace.

Her common sense told her that she was probably foolish; that Jeffrey had merely stayed over night somewhere and that she would meet him on the way. But another and a subtler sense kept whispering to her to hurry on, that she was needed, that the good name, if not the life, of the boy she loved was in danger!

She had found out from Mrs. Whiting just who were the men whom Jeffrey had gone to see. But she did not know how she could dash up to their doors and demand to know where he was. It was eleven miles up the stony trail that followed Wilbur's Fork, and the girl's nerves now keyed up to expect she knew not what jangled at every turn of the road. Jeffrey had meant to come straight back this way to her. That he had not done so meant that _something_ had stopped him on the way. What was it?

On one side the trail was flanked by giant hemlocks and the underbrush was grown into an impenetrable wall. On the other it ran sheer along the edge of Wilbur's Fork, a rock-bottomed, rushing stream that tumbled and brawled its way down the long slope of the country.

Time after time the girl shuddered and gripped her saddle as she pushed on past a place where the undergrowth came right down to the trail, and six feet away the path dropped off thirty feet to the rock bed of the stream. She caught herself leaning across the saddle to look down. A man might have stood in the brush as Jeffrey came carelessly along. And that man might have swung a cant-stick once--a single blow at the back of the head--and Jeffrey would have gone stumbling and falling over the edge of the path. There would not be even the sign of a struggle.

Once she stopped and took hold of her nerves.

"Ruth Lansing," she scolded aloud, "you're making a little fool of yourself. You've been down there in that convent living among a lot of girls, and you're forgetting that these hills are your own, that there never was and never is any danger in them for us who belong here. Just keep that in your mind and hustle on about your business."

When she came out into the open country near the head of the Fork she met old Darius Wilbur turning his cattle to pasture. The old man did not know the girl, but he knew the Lansing colt and he looked sharply at the steaming withers of Brom Bones before he would give any attention to her question.

"What's the tarnation hurry, young lady?" he inquired exasperatingly. "Jeff Whiting? Yes, he was here yest'day. Why?"

"Did he start home by this trail?" asked Ruth eagerly. "Or did he go on up country?"

"He went on up country."

Ruth headed Brom Bones up the trail again without a word.

"But stay!" the old man yelled after her, when she had gone twenty yards. "He came back again."

Ruth pulled around so sharply that she nearly threw Brom Bones to his knees.

"Didn't ask me that," the old man chortled, as she came back, "but if I didn't tell you I reckon you'd run that colt to death up the hills."

"Then he _did_ take the Forks trail back."

"Didn't do that, nuther."

"Then where _did_ he go? Please tell me!" cried the girl, the tears of vexation rising into her voice.

"Why, what's the matter, girl? He crossed the Fork just there," said the old man, pointing, "and he took over the hill for French Village. You his wife? You're mighty young."

But Ruth did not hear. She and Brom Bones were already slipping down the rough bank in a shower of dirt and stones.

In the middle of the ford she stopped and loosened the bridle, let the colt drink a little, then drove him across, up the other bank and on up the stiff slope.

She did not know the trail, but she knew the general run of the country that way and had no doubt of finding her road.

Now she told herself that it was certainly a wild goose chase. Jeffrey had merely found that he had to see some one in French Village and had gone there and, of course, had spent the night there.

By the time she had come over the ridge of the hill and was dropping down through the heavily wooded country toward French Village, she had begun to feel just a little bit foolish. But she suddenly remembered that it was Saint John the Baptist's day. It was not a holy day of obligation but she knew it was a feast day in French Village. There would be Mass. She should have gone, anyway. And she would hear with her own ears the things they were saying about Jeffrey Whiting.

Arsene LaComb sat on the steps of his store in French Village in the glory of a stiff white shirt and a festal red vest. The store was closed, of course, in honour of the day. In a few minutes he would put on his black coat, in his official capacity of trustee of the church, and march solemnly over to ring the bell for Mass.

The spectacle of a smartly-dressed young lady whom he seemed to know vaguely, riding down the dusty street on a shiny yellow side saddle on the back of a big, vicious-looking black colt, made the little man reach hastily for his coat of ceremony.

"M'm'selle Lansing!" he said, bowing in friendly pomp as Ruth drove up.

"How do you do, Mr. LaComb? I came down to go to Mass. Can you tell me what time it begins?"

"I shall ring the bell when I have put away your horse, M'm'selle." Now no earthly power could have made Arsene LaComb deviate a minute from the exact time for ringing that bell. But, he was a Frenchman. His manner intimated that the ringing of all bells whatsoever must await her convenience.

He stepped forward jauntily to help her down. Ruth kicked her feet loose and slid down deftly.

"I am glad to see you again, Mr. LaComb," said Ruth as she took his hand. "Did you see Jeffrey Whiting in the Village last night?"

A girl of about Ruth's own age had come quietly up the street and stood beside them, recording in one swift inspection every detail of Ruth from her little riding cap to the tips of her brown boots.

"'Cynthe," said the little man briskly, "you show Miss Lansing on my pew for Mass." He took the bridle from Ruth's hand and led the horse away to the shed in the rear of the store.

The fear and uneasiness of the early morning leaped back to Ruth. The little man had certainly run away from her question. Why should he not answer?

She would have liked to linger a while among the people standing about the church door. She knew some of them. She might have asked questions of them. But her escort led her straight into the church and up to a front pew.

At the end of the Mass the people filed out quietly, but at the church door they broke into volleys of rapid-fire French chatter of which Ruth could only catch a little here and there.

"You will come by the _fête_, M'm'selle. You will not dance _non_, I s'pose. But you will eat, and you will see the fun they make, one _jolie_ time! Till I ring the Vesper bell they will dance." Arsene led Ruth and the other girl, whom she now learned was Hyacinthe Cardinal, across the road to a little wood that stood opposite the church. There were tables, on which the women had already begun to spread the food that they had brought from home, and a dancing platform. On a great stump which had been carved rudely into a chair sat Soriel Brouchard, the fiddler of the hills, twiddling critically at his strings.

It seemed strange to Ruth that these people who had a moment before been so devout and concentrated in church should in an instant switch their whole thought to a day of eating and merrymaking. But she soon found their light-hearted gaiety very infectious. Before she knew it, she was sputtering away in the best French she had and entering into the fun with all her heart.

"Which is Rafe Gadbeau?" she suddenly asked Cynthe Cardinal. "I want to know him."

"Why for you want to know him?" the girl asked sharply in English.

"Oh, nothing," said Ruth carelessly, "only I've heard of him."

The other girl reached out into the crowd and plucked at the sleeve of a tall, beak-nosed man. The man was evidently flattered by Ruth's request, and wanted her to dance with him immediately.

"No," said Ruth, "I do not know how to dance your dances, and we'd only break up the sets if I tried to learn now. We've heard a lot about you, Mr. Gadbeau, so, of course, I wanted to know you. And we've heard some things about Jeffrey Whiting. I'm sure you could tell me if they are true."

"You don' dance? Well, we sit then. I tell you. One rascal, this young Whiting!"

Ruth bit back an angry protest, and schooled herself to listen quietly as he led her to a seat.

As they left the other girl standing in the middle of the platform, Ruth, looking back, caught a swift glance of what she knew was jealous anger in her eyes. Ruth was sorry. She did not want to make an enemy of this girl. But she felt that she must use every effort to get this man to tell her all he would.

"One rascal, I tell you," repeated Gadbeau. "First he stop all the people. He say don' sell nodding. Den he sell his own farm, him. He sell some more; he got big price. Now he skip the country, right out. An' he leave these poor French people in the soup.

"But I"--he sat back tapping himself on the chest--"I got hinfluence with that railroad. They buy now from us. To-morrow morning, nine o'clock, here comes that railroad lawyer on French Village. We sell out everything on the option to him."

"But," objected Ruth, trying to draw him out, "if Jeffrey Whiting should come back before then?"

"He don' come back, that fellow."

"How do you know?"

"I know, I-- He don' come back. I tell you that."

"Jeffrey Whiting will be here before nine o'clock to-morrow," she said, turning suddenly upon him.

"Eh? M'm'selle, what you mean? What you know?" he questioned excitedly.

"Never mind. I see Miss Cardinal looking at us," she smiled as she arose, "and I think you are in for a lecture."

Through all the long day, while she ate and listened to the fun and talked to Father Ponfret about her convent life, she did not let Rafe Gadbeau out of her sight or mind for an instant. She knew that she had alarmed him. She was certain that he knew what had happened to Jeffrey Whiting. And she was waiting for him to betray himself in some way.

When Arsene LaComb rang the bell for Vespers, she waited by the bell ringer to see that Gadbeau came into the church. He took his place among the men, and then Ruth dropped quietly into a pew near the door. When the people rose to sing the _Tantum Ergo_, she saw Gadbeau slip unnoticed out of the church. She waited tensely until the singing was finished, then she almost ran to the door.

Gadbeau, mounted on one of the ponies that had been standing all day in the little woods, was riding away in the direction of the trail which she had come down this morning. She fairly flew down the street to Arsene LaComb's store. There was not a pony in the hills that Brom Bones could not overtake easily, but she must see by what trail the man left the Village.

Brom Bones was very willing to make a race for home, and she let him have his head until she again caught sight of the man. She pulled up sharply and forced the colt down to a walk. The man was still on the main road, and he might turn any moment. Finally she saw him pull into the trail that led over to Wilbur's Fork. Then she knew. Jeffrey was somewhere on the trail between French Village and Wilbur's Fork. And he was alive! The man was going now to make sure that he was still there.

For an hour, the long, high twilight was enough to assure her that the man was still following the trail. Then, just when the real darkness had fallen, she heard a pony whinny in the woods at her left. The man had turned off into the woods! She had almost passed him! She threw herself out upon Brom Bones' neck and caught him by the nose. He threw up his head indignantly and tried to bolt, but she blessed him for making no noise. She drove on quietly a couple of hundred yards, slipped down, and drew Brom Bones into the bushes away from the road and tied him. She talked to him, patting his head and neck, pleading with him to be quiet. Then she left him and stole back to where she had heard the pony.

In the gloom of the woods she could see nothing. But her feet found themselves on what seemed to be a path and she followed it blindly. She almost walked into a square black thing that suddenly confronted her. Within what seemed a foot of her she heard voices. Her heart stopped beating, but the blood rang in her ears so that she could not distinguish a word. One of the voices was certainly Gadbeau's. The other-- It was!-- It was! Though it was only a mumble, she knew it was Jeffrey Whiting who tried to speak!

She took a step forward, ready to dash into the place, whatever it was. But the caution of the hills made her back away noiselessly into the brush. What could she do? Why? Oh, _why_ had she not brought a rifle? Gadbeau was sure to be armed. Jeffrey was a prisoner, probably wounded and bound.

She backed farther into the bushes and started to make a circuit of the place. She understood now that it was a sugar hut, built entirely of logs, even the roof. It was as strong as a blockhouse. She knew that she was helpless. And she knew that Jeffrey would not be a prisoner there unless he were hurt.

She could only wait. Gadbeau had not come to injure Jeffrey further. He had merely come to make himself sure that his prisoner was secure. He would not stay long.

As she stole around away from the path and the pony she saw a little stream of light shoot out through a chink between the logs of the hut. Gadbeau had made a light. Probably he had brought something for Jeffrey to eat. She pulled off the white collar of her jacket, the only white thing that showed about her and settled down for a long wait.

First she had thought that she ought to steal away to her horse and ride for help. But she could not bear the thought of even getting beyond the sound of Jeffrey's voice. She knew where he was now. He might be taken away while she was gone. And, besides, Ruth Lansing had always learned to do things for herself. She had always disliked appealing for help.

Hour after hour she sat in the darkest place she could find, leaning against the bole of a great tree. The light, candles, of course, burned on; and the voices came irregularly through the living silence of the woods. She did not dare to creep nearer to hear what was being said. That did not matter. The important thing was to have Gadbeau go away without any suspicion that he had been followed. Then she would be free to release Jeffrey. She had no fear but that she would be able to get him down to French Village in the morning. She could easily have him there before nine o'clock.

When she saw by the stars that it was long past midnight she began to be worried. Just then the light went out. Ah! The man was going away at last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound. She dared not move, for even when she shifted her position against the tree the oppressive silence seemed to crackle with her motion.

Would he never come out? It seemed not. Was he going to stay there all night?

Noiseless as a cat, she rose and crept to the door of the cabin. Apparently both men were asleep within. She pushed the door ever so quietly. It was firmly barred on the inside.

What could she do? Nothing, absolutely nothing! Oh, why, _why_ had she not brought a rifle? She would shoot. She _would_, if she had it now, and that man opened the door! It was too late now to think of riding for help, too late!

She sank down again beside her tree and raged helplessly at herself, at her conceit in herself that would not let her go for help in the first place, at her foolishness in coming on this business without a gun. The hours dragged out their weary minutes, every minute an age to the taut, ragged nerves of the girl.

The dawn came stealing across the tree-tops, while the ground still lay in utter darkness. Ruth rose and slipped farther back into the bushes.