SAFE AT LAST
Indeed, any lingering fear Bessie and Dolly might have had that John had succeeded in escaping from his two anxious friends who were so determined to protect him against his own recklessness, was dissipated before they came in sight of the lake, when, at a crossing of the trail, a glad cry hailed them and a sturdy guide stepped across their path.
"Well, I'll be hornswoggled!" he exclaimed. "Ain't you the two that was lost, or stolen by that gypsy critter?"
"We certainly are," said Dolly and Bessie, in one breath. "Were you looking for us?"
"Lookin' fer you!" he exclaimed. "Every one in these here woods has been a-lookin' fer you two since sun-up, I guess. Godfrey, but we was scared! Didn't know but that there gypsy might have sneaked you clean out of the woods! How did you all ever come to get loose? Or was you just plain lost?"
"No, we weren't lost," said Bessie. "He carried Dolly off all right; this is Dolly Ransom, you know. But he didn't catch me."
"Then how in tarnation did you come to be lost, too? You was, wasn't you? They told us two girls was missin'."
"Well, we were asleep in the open air, outside the tent, and I woke up just as he was carrying Dolly off. I didn't wake up until he'd got out of the firelight, and there wasn't any use calling anyone else. So I just followed myself."
"She says anyone would have done it," Dolly broke in, her eyes shining. "But I don't believe it, do you?"
"No, by Godfrey!" he said, emphatically. "A greenhorn, goin' out in them woods at night, in the dark, and a girl, at that? I guess not!"
He looked at Bessie, as if puzzled to learn that she had actually done such a thing.
"Well, you're all right now," he said. "Here, I'll just give the signal we fixed up. Listen, now!"
He raised his rifle, and, pointing it straight in the air, fired two shots, and then, after a brief interval, two more.
"The sound of that'll carry a long way," he explained, "and that means that you're both found. The other fellows who are searchin' for you will quit lookin', now, and come into Long Lake. If I'd fired just two shots, and hadn't fired the second two, that would have meant that one of you was found, and they'd have kept right on a-lookin' fer the other. I'll walk along with you now, an' I guess that varmint won't bother you no more. If he does—"
He patted his rifle with a gesture that spoke more plainly than words could have done.
"Tell me all about it as we go along," he said. "I guess maybe there'll be some work for us to do after we all get together—runnin' those gypsies out. They're a bad lot, but this is the fust time they ever done anythin' around here that give us a real chance to get even with them. We've suspected them of doin' lots of things, but a deer can't tell you who killed him out o' season, 'specially when all you find of the deer is a little skin and bones."
He listened admiringly as Bessie told her story. At the tale of Lolla's treachery he laughed.
"They're all tarred with the same brush," he said. "One's as bad as another."
And when he heard of the trick by which Dolly had worked on the superstitious fears of Lolla and Peter his merriment knew no bounds, and he absolutely refused to keep on the trail until Dolly had given him a demonstration of just how she had managed it.
"Well, by Godfrey!" he said, when she had thrown her voice far overhead, and once so that it seemed to come from just above his shoulder. "Don't that beat the Dutch! I don't wonder you skeered 'em! You'd have had me goin', I guess, an' I ain't no chicken, nor easy to skeer, neither. You two certainly done a smart job gettin' away from them."
And so, when they reached Long Lake, the girls and the guides, who had scattered all over the woods searching for them, agreed, when they straggled in, one party after another. Eleanor Mercer was one of the first to return, and when she had finished proving her gratitude for their safe return, she turned a laughing face toward the chief guide.
"Do you know the thing that pleases me best about this, Andrew?" she asked him.
"I can guess, ma'am," he said, with a grin. "You told us when you come up here that you was goin' to prove that a party of girls could get along without help from men. And I reckon it looked to you this morning as if you was goin' to need us pretty bad, didn't it?"
"It certainly did, Andrew," she answered, gravely. "And I don't want you to think for a moment that we're not grateful to you for the way you turned out and scoured the woods."
"Don't talk of gratitude, Miss Eleanor. We've known you for years, but even if we'd never seen you before, and didn't know nothin' about the girls that thief had stolen, we'd ha' turned out jest the same way to rescue them. An' I guess any white men anywhere would ha' done the same thing.
"But if it was only us you'd had to depend on, I'm afraid the young lady'd still be out there. It was her friend that saved her. Too bad she trusted that Lolla witch. If she'd gone to Jim Skelly when she was near the gypsy camp that time, an' told him where her chum was, he'd have had her free in two shakes of a lamb's tail."
"I think Dolly and Bessie must be awfully hungry," said Zara, who had listened with shining eyes to the tale of her friends' adventures.
"Oh, they must, indeed!" said Eleanor, remorsefully. "And here we've been listening to them, and letting them talk while they were starving."
She turned toward the fire, but already two of the guides had leaped forward, and in a moment the smell of crisp bacon filled the air, and coffee was being made.
"Oh, how good that smells!" said Dolly. "I am hungry, but it was so exciting, remembering everything that happened, that I forgot all about it! Isn't it funny? I was dreadfully scared when I was alone there, and again afterward, when we thought we were safe, and that horrid man caught us.
"But now that it's all over, it seems like good fun. If one only knew that everything was coming out all right when things like that happen, one could enjoy them while they were going on, couldn't one? But when one is frightened half to death there isn't much chance to think of how nice it's going to be when it's all over, and you're safe at home again."
"That's just the trouble with adventures, Dolly," said Eleanor. "You never can be sure that they will come out all right, and lots of times they don't. It's like the thrilling story that the man told about being chased by the bear."
"What was that, Miss Eleanor?"
"Well, he told about how the bear chased him, and he got into a trap, and the bear was between him and the only way of getting out, and it seemed to him as if he was going to be killed. So they asked him what happened; how he got away?"
"And how did he?"
"He said he didn't; that the bear ate him up!"
"Miss Eleanor," said Andrew, the old chief guide, as the two girls began ravenously to eat the tempting camp meal that the other guides had so quickly prepared, "we've got something more to do here."
Eleanor looked at him questioningly.
"We've got to find that gypsy," he said, "and see that he spends the night in jail, where he belongs. If I'm not mistaken, he'll spend a good many nights and days there, too, after he's been tried."
"I suppose he must be caught and taken to a place where he can be tried," said Eleanor. "I don't like the idea of revenge, but—"
"But this ain't revenge, Miss Eleanor. If you was a-goin' to say that you was quite right. It's self protection, and protection for young girls everywhere."
"Yes, you're right, Andrew. Well, what do you want me to do? I am afraid I wouldn't be touch good in helping you to catch him."
Andrew laughed heartily.
"I ain't sayin' that, ma'am, but there's men enough of us to catch him, all right. Maybe you didn't notice it, but I sent out some of the men 'most as soon as they got here, just so's they'd be able to fix things for him to have to stay where we could catch him. Trouble is, none of us don't know him when we see him. I was wonderin'—"
"Oh, no, not now, Andrew. I know what you mean. You want the girls to go with you, so as to point him out, don't you? But they're so tired, I'm sure they couldn't do any more tramping today."
"I know they're tired, ma'am, and I wasn't aimin' to let them do any more walkin'. I've got more sense than that. But we could rig up a sort of a swing chair, so's two of the boys could carry one of them, easily. Then we could take her over there, and she could tell us which was him, and never be tired at all. She'd be jest as comfortable, ma'am, as if she was a settin' here by the lake, watchin' the water."
"Well, I suppose we can manage it if you do it that way, Andrew, if you think it's really necessary."
When it came to a choice, since it was necessary for only one of the girls to go, Dolly insisted on being the one.
"Bessie is much more tired than I am," she said, stoutly. "I was carried a good part of the way and she tramped all around with that wretched little Lolla, when she thought Lolla wanted to help her get me away. So I'm going, and Bessie shall stay here and rest"
"Don't, make no difference to me," said Andrew "Let the other girls come along with us, if you like, Miss Eleanor. And you can stay hind here with the one that stays to rest. See!"
And so it was arranged. Bessie, lying on a cot that had been brought from Eleanor's tent, watched Dolly being carried off in the litter that had been hastily improvised, and Eleanor sat beside her.
"You've certainly earned a rest, Bessie," said Eleanor, happily. It delighted her to think that Bessie, whom she had befriended, should prove herself so well worthy of her confidence. "I don't know what we'd have done without you. I'm afraid that Dolly would still be there in the woods if you'd just called us, as most girls would have done."
"I don't quite understand one thing, even yet, Bessie," continued Eleanor, frowning, "You know, at first, it seemed as if the idea we had was right; that this man had some crazy idea that he might be able to make a gypsy of Dolly.
"I'm beginning to think that there was some powerful reason back of what he did; that he expected to make a great deal of money out of kidnapping her. It seems, too, as if he knew where we were going to be, and who we all were, more than he had had any chance to find out."
"I thought of that, too," said Bessie. "If it had been Zara he tried to steal—but it was Dolly. And she hasn't been mixed up at all in our affairs."
"I know, and that's what is so puzzling, Bessie. Maybe if they catch him, though, he'll tell why he did it. I think those guides will frighten him. They're all perfectly furious, and they'll make him sorry he ever tried to do anything of the sort, I think—Why, Bessie! What's the matter?"
"Don't turn around, Miss Eleanor. But I saw a pair of eyes, just behind you. I wonder if he could have sneaked back around and come here?"
"Oh, I wish we'd had one of the men stay, I was afraid of something like that, Bessie."
"I'm going to find out, Miss Eleanor. I'll pretend I don't suspect anything, and get up to go into the tent. Then, if it's John, I think he'll show himself."
She rose, and in a moment their fears were confirmed. John, his eyes triumphant, stepped out, abandoning the concealment of the hushes.
"Where is the other?" he said. "The one called Bessie—Bessie King? It's not you I want—"
"Hands up!" cried the voice of Andrew, the chief guide.
And the gypsy, wheeling with a savage cry, faced a half circle of grinning faces. He made one wild dash to escape, but it was useless, and in a moment he was on the ground, and his hands were tied. In the struggle a letter fell from his pocket, and Bessie picked it up. Suddenly, as she was looking at it idly, she saw something that made her cry out in surprise, and the next moment she and Miss Mercer were reading it together.
"Get this girl, Bessie King, and I will pay you a thousand dollars," it read. "She is dark, and goes around with a fair girl called Dolly. It will be easy, and if you once get them to me and out of the woods, I will pay you the money, and see that you are not in danger of being arrested. I will back you up."
"Who wrote that letter? Turn over, quickly!" cried Eleanor.
"I know without looking," said Bessie. "Now we can guess why he was so reckless; why he took such chances! He thought I was Dolly, because of that mistake about our hair! Yes, see; it is Mr. Holmes who sent him this letter!"