The at Long Lake Part 4 (2/2)

”I think it's a good idea to stay awake and keep watch, anyhow, in case he should come back. Then, if he saw someone sitting up by the fire he would be scared off, I should think.”

”All right. Slip in as quietly as you can, Dolly, and get our blankets from the tent, while I put on some more wood. There's lots of it, that's a good thing. There's no reason why we shouldn't use it.”

So, while Dolly crept into their tent to get the; blankets, Bessie piled wood high on the embers of the camp fire, until the sparks began to fly, and the wood began to burn with a high, clear flame. And when Dolly returned she had with her a box of marshmallows; ”Now we'll have a treat,” she said. ”I forgot all about these. I didn't remember I'd brought them with me. Give me a pointed stick and I'll toast you one.”

Bessie looked on curiously. The joys of toasted marshmallows were new to her, but when she tasted her first one she was prepared to agree with Dolly that they were just the things to eat in such a spot.

”I never liked them much before,” said Bessie. ”They're ever so much better when they're toasted this way.”

”They're good for you, too,” said Dolly, her mouth full of the soft confection. ”At least, that's what everyone says, and I know they've never hurt me. Sometimes I eat so much candy that I don't feel well afterwards, but it's never been that way with toasted marshmallows. My, but I'm glad I found that box!”

”So'm I,” admitted Bessie. ”It seems to make the time pa.s.s to have them to eat. Here, let me toast some of them, now. You're doing all the work.”

”I will not, you'd spoil them. It takes a lot of skill to toast marshmallows properly,” Dolly boasted. ”Heavens, Bessie, when there is something I can do well, let me do it. Aunt Mabel says she thinks I'd be a good cook if I would put my mind to it, but that's only because she likes the fudge I make.”

”How do you make fudge?”

”Why, Bessie King! Do you mean to say you don't know? I thought you were such a good cook!”

”I never said so, Dolly. I had to do a lot of cooking at the farm when Maw Hoover wasn't well, but she never let me do anything but cook plain food. That's the only sort we ever had, anyhow. So I never got a chance to learn to make fudge or anything like that.”

”Well, I'll teach you, when we get a good chance, Bessie,” promised Dolly, seriously.

”I'll be glad to take lessons from you, Dolly,” she said. ”I think it would be fine to know how to make all sorts of candy. Then, if you did know, and could do it really well, you could make lots of it, and sell it. People always like candy, and in the city a lot of the shops have signs saying that they sell Home Made Candy and Fudge. So people must like it better than the sort they make in factories.”

”I should say so, Bessie. But most of those stores are just cheating you, because the stuff they sell isn't home made at all. Everyone says mine is much better.”

Bessie grew serious.

”Why, Dolly,” she said, ”I think it would be a fine idea to make candy to sell! I really believe I'd like to do that--”

”I bet you would make just lots and lots of money if you did,” said Dolly, taking hold of a new idea, as she always did, with enthusiasm. ”And we could get one of the stores to sell it for us and keep some of the money for their trouble. Suppose we sold it for fifty cents a pound, the store would get twenty or twenty-five cents and we'd get the rest. And--”

Bessie laughed.

”You're not forgetting that it costs something to make, are you!” she asked. ”You have to allow for what it costs before you begin to think of how you're going to spend your profits. But I really do think it would work, Dolly. When we get back to town we'll figure it all out, and see how much it would cost for b.u.t.ter and sugar and nuts and chocolate and all the things we'd need.”

”Yes, and if we used lots of things we'd get them cheaper, too, Bessie,” said Dolly, surprising Bessie by this exhibition of her business knowledge. ”Oh, I think that would be fine. I'd just love to have money that I'd earned myself. Some of the other girls have been winning honor beads by earning money, but I never could think of any way that I could do it.”

Dolly was beginning to yawn, and Bessie herself felt sleepy. But when she proposed that they should go into the tent now Dolly protested.

”Oh, let's stay outside, Bessie,” she said. ”If we went in now we'd just wake ourselves up. We can sleep out here just as well as not. What's the difference!”

And Bessie was so sleepy that she was glad to agree to that. In a few moments they were sound asleep, with no thought of the exciting episodes of the day and night to disturb them.

The fire was low when Bessie awoke with a start. At first everything seemed all right; she could hear nothing. But then, suddenly, she looked over to where Dolly had been lying. There was no sign of her chum! And, just as Bessie herself was about to cry out, she heard a m.u.f.fled call, in Dolly's tones, and then a loud cras.h.i.+ng through the undergrowth near the camp, as someone or something made off swiftly through the woods! The gypsy had come back!

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PURSUIT.

For a moment Bessie was too paralyzed with fear even to cry but. It was plain that the gypsy had carried poor Dolly away with him, and that, moreover, he had m.u.f.fled her one cry for help. For a moment Bessie stood wondering what to do. To alarm the camp would be almost useless, she felt; the girls, waking up out of a sound sleep, could do nothing until they understood what had happened, and even then the chances were against their being able to help in any practical manner.

And so Bessie fought down that blind instinct to scream out her terror, and, in a moment, throwing off her blanket, she began to creep out into the black woods, dark now as pitch, and as impenetrable, it seemed, as one of the tropical jungles she had read of.

One thing Bessie felt to be, above everything, necessary. She must find out what the gypsy meant to do, and where he was taking Dolly. If, by some lucky chance, she could track him, there would be a far better opportunity to rescue Dolly in the morning, when the guides would be called to help, and, if necessary, men from the hotel at Loon Pond and other places in the woods. To such a call for help, Bessie knew well there would be an instant response.

”He'll never go back to the camp,” Bessie told herself, trying to argue the problem out, so that she might overlook none of the points that were involved, and that might make so much difference to poor Dolly, who was paying so dear a price for her prank. ”If he did, he'd be sure that there would be people there, looking for him, as soon as the word got around that Dolly was missing.”

She stopped for a moment, to listen attentively, but though the woods were full of slight noises, she heard nothing that she could decide positively was the gypsy. Still, burdened as he was with Dolly, it seemed to Bessie that he must make some noise, no matter how skilled a woodsman he might be, and how much training he had had in silent traveling in his activities as a poacher and hunter of game in woods where keepers were on guard.

”He'll find out some place where they're not likely to look for him, and stay there until the people around here have given up the idea of finding him,” said Bessie to herself. ”That's why I've got to follow him now. And I'm sure he's on one of the trails; he couldn't carry Dolly through the thick woods, no one could. Oh, I wish I could hear something!”

That wish, for the time, at least, was to be denied, but it was not long before Bessie, still tramping through thick undergrowth in the direction she was sure her quarry had taken, came to a break in the woods, where it was a little lighter, and she could see her way.

She saw at once that she had come to a trail, and, though she had never seen it before, she guessed that it was the one that led to Deer Mountain, from what Miss Eleanor had told her about the trails about the camp. And, moreover, as she started to follow it, convinced that the gypsy, on finding it, would have abandoned the rougher traveling of the uncut woods, she saw something that almost wrung a cry of startled joy from her.

It was not much that she saw, only a fragment of white cloth, caught in the branches of a bush that had pushed itself out onto the trail. But it was as good as a long letter, for the cloth was from Dolly's dress, and it was plain and unmistakable evidence that her chum had been carried along this trail.

She walked on more quickly now, pausing about once in a hundred yards to listen for sounds of those who were, as she was convinced, ahead of her, and, about half a mile beyond the spot where she had found that white pointer, she saw another piece of mute but convincing evidence, of exactly the same sort, and caught in the same way.

As Bessie kept on, the ground continued to rise, and she realized that she must be on the crest of Deer Mountain, one of the heights that lifted itself above the level of the surrounding woods. Although a high mountain, the climb from Long Lake was not a particularly severe one, for all the ground was so high that even the highest peaks in the range that was covered by these woods did not seem, unless one were looking at them from a distance of many miles, in the plain below, to be as high as they really were.

The trail that Bessie followed, as she knew, was leading her directly away from Loon Pond and the gypsy camp, but that did not disturb her, since she had expected the gypsy to bear away from his companions. Her mind was working quickly now, and she wondered just how far the gypsies were likely to go in support of their reckless companion.

She knew that the bonds among these nomads were very strong, but there was another element in this particular case that might, she thought, complicate matters. The man who had carried Dolly off was engaged to be married to the dark-eyed girl they had talked with, and it was possible that that fact might make trouble for him, and prevent him from receiving the aid of his tribe, as he would surely have done in any ordinary struggle with the laws of the people whom the gypsies seemed to despise and dislike.

Undoubtedly the girl's parents, if she had any, would resent the slight he was casting upon their daughter, and if they were powerful or influential in the tribe, they would probably try to get him cast out, and cause the other gypsies to refuse him the aid he was probably counting upon.

The most important thing, Bessie still felt, was to find out where Dolly was to be hidden. And, as she pressed on, tired, but determined not to give up what seemed to her to be the best chance of rescuing her chum, Bessie looked about constantly for some fresh evidence of Dolly's presence.

But luck was not to favor her again. Sharp as was her watch, there were no more torn pieces of Dolly's dress to guide her, and, even had Bessie been an expert in woodcraft, and so able to follow their tracks, it was too dark to use that means of tracing them.

Bessie did, indeed, think of that, and of waiting until some guide should come, who might be able to read the message of the trail. But she reflected that it was more than possible that none of the men in the neighborhood might be able to do so, and it seemed to her that it was better to take the slim chance she had than abandon it in favor of something that might, after all, turn out to be no chance at all.

The darkness was beginning to yield now to the first forerunners of the day. In the east there was a faint radiance that told of the coming of the sun, and Bessie hurried on, since she felt sure that the gypsy would not venture to travel in daylight, and must mean to hide Dolly before the coming of the sun lightened the task of his pursuers, since he must feel certain that he would be pursued, although he might have no inkling that anyone was already on his trail.

But now Bessie had to face a new problem that did, indeed, force her to rest. For suddenly the well defined, broad trail ended, and broke up into a series of smaller paths. Evidently this was a spot at which those who wished to reach the summit of the mountain took diverging paths, according to the particular spot they wanted to reach, and whether they were bound on a picnic or merely wanted to get to a spot whence they might see the splendid view for which Deer Mountain was famed.

In the darkness there was absolutely no way of telling which of these many diverging trails the gypsy had followed, and Bessie, ready to cry with disappointment and anxiety for Dolly, was forced to sit down on a stump and wait for daylight. Even that might not help her.

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