Part 40 (1/2)

”Oh-h-h!” Miss Eyester gasped faintly.

”Perhaps he has merely locked the door and he is outside,” Mr. Stott suggested.

”I'll go down and see if I can notice his legs stickin' out of the crick anywhere,” said Mr. Hicks, briskly.

”It is very curious--very strange indeed,” they declared solemnly, though they all continued eating spare-ribs--a favourite dish with The Happy Family.

The cook, returning, said in a tone that had a note of disappointment.

”He ain't drowned.”

”Is his horse in the corral?” asked Wallie.

Mr. Hicks took observations from the doorway and reported that it was, which deepened the mystery.

Since no human being, unless he was drugged or dead, could sleep through the cook's battering with the frying-pan, Wallie himself grew anxious.

He recalled Pinkey's gloom of the evening before he had gone to Prouty.

”I wisht I'd died when I was little,” he remembered his saying.

Also Pinkey's moroseness of the morning and the ferocity of his expression took on special significance in the light of his strange absence. Instinctively Wallie looked at Miss Eyester. That young lady was watching him closely and saw his gravity. Unexpectedly she burst into tears so explosively that Mrs. Budlong moved back the bread plate even as she tried to comfort her.

”I know something has happened! I _feel_ it! When Aunt Sallie choked on a fish-bone at Asbury Park I knew it before we got the wire. I'm sort of clairvoyant! Please excuse me!” Miss Eyester left the table, sobbing. It seemed heartless to go on eating when Pinkey, the suns.h.i.+ne of the ranch, as they suddenly realized, might be lying cold in death in the bunk-house, so they followed solemnly--all except Mrs. Henry Appel, who lingered to pick herself out another spare-rib, which she took with her in her fingers.

They proceeded in a body to the bunk-house, where Wallie applied his eye to the keyhole and found it had been stuffed with something. This confirmed his worst suspicions. n.o.body could doubt now but that something sinister had happened.

Mr. Penrose, who had been straining his eyes at the window, peering through a tiny s.p.a.ce between the towel and the window frame, declared he saw somebody moving. This, of course, was preposterous, for if alive Pinkey would have made a sound in response to their clamour, so n.o.body paid any attention to his a.s.sertion.

”We'll have to burst the door in,” said Mr. Stott in his masterful manner, but Wallie already had run for the axe for that purpose.

Mrs. Appel, alternately gnawing her bone and crying softly, begged them not to let her see him if he did not look natural, while Miss Eyester leaned against the door-jamb in a fainting condition.

”Maybe I can bust it with my shoulder,” said Mr. Hicks, throwing his weight against the door.

Immediately, as the lock showed signs of giving, a commotion, a shuffling, was heard, a sound as if a shoulder braced on the inside was resisting.

There was a second's astonished silence and then a chorus of voices demanded:

”Let us in! Pinkey! What _is_ the matter?”

The answer was an inarticulate, gurgling sound that was blood-curdling.

”He's cut his wind-pipe and all he can do is gaggle!” cried Mr. Hicks, excitedly, and made a frenzied attack on the door that strained the lock to the utmost.

If the noise he made was any criterion it was judged that Pinkey's head must be nearly severed from his body--which made the resistance he displayed all the more remarkable. He was a madman, of course--that was taken for granted--and the ladies were warned to places of safety lest he come out slas.h.i.+ng right and left with a razor.

They ran and locked themselves in the kitchen, where they could look through the window--all except Miss Eyester, who declared dramatically that she had no further interest in life anyhow and wished to die by his hand, knowing herself responsible for what had happened.

Wallie, breathless from running, arrived with the axe, which he handed to Mr. Hicks, who called warningly as he swung it:

”Stand back, Pinkey!--I'm comin'!”