THE GYPSY'S MOTIVE
But, despite the revelation of that letter, the gypsy himself maintained a sullen silence when efforts were made to make him tell all he knew and the reason for his determined effort to kidnap Dolly. He snarled at his captors when they, asked him questions, and so enraged Andrew and the other guides by his refusal to answer that only Eleanor's intervention saved him from rough handling.
"No I won't let you use violence, Andrew," said Eleanor, firmly. "It would do no good. He won't talk; that is his nature. You have him now, and the law will take him from you. There isn't any question of his guilt; there will be evidence enough to convict him anywhere, and he will go to prison, as he deserves to do. All I hope is that he won't be the only one, that we can get the man who bribed him to do this, and see that he gets punished properly, too."
"I'm sure with you there, ma'am," said old Andrew. "He's a worthless critter enough, I know, but he ain't as bad as the man that set him on. If the law lets that other snake go, ma'am, jest you get him to come up here for a little hunting, and we'll make him sorry he ever went into such business, I'd like to get my hands on him. I'm an old man, but I reckon I'm strong enough to thrash any imitation of a man what would play such a cowardly trick as that. Afraid to do his own dirty work, is he? So he hires it done. Well, much good it's done him this time."
"I'll keep this letter," said Eleanor. "I think it was mighty foolish of him to sign his name to it. It's a pretty good piece of evidence against the man, if he is rich and powerful. If there's any justice to be had, I think he'll suffer this time."
"How did you ever get back here, just when you were so badly needed?" Bessie asked Andrew.
He smiled at that.
"Well, we get sort o' used to readin' tracks in our work around here, Miss, and we seen that someone who might be this feller was doublin' around mighty suspicious. So, bein' some worried about leavin' you two here alone anyhow, I decided to come back with three or four of the men here, an' we did it, leavin' the others to go on an' see if they could pick up the other two gypsies.
"To tell the truth, I thought it'd be mighty strange if we found him anywhere near that camp. Seemed like he must know that we'd be lookin' fer him, and that there was the fust place we'd go to. So here we were, and mighty timely, as you say, Miss."
It was no great while before the sounds of the other party, returning, resounded through the woods, and soon Lolla and Peter, the man bound, and the girl carefully guarded by two guides, each of whom held one of her arms, were brought into the clearing about the camp. Lolla, at the sight of John, lying against a tree, his arms and his feet bound, gave a cry of rage, and, snatching her arms from her guardians, ran toward him, wailing.
"Go away, you fool!" muttered John. "This is your doing. If you and Peter had not been afraid of your own shadow, this would not have happened. I am glad they have caught you; you will go to prison now, like me."
"Look here, young feller," said Andrew, angrily, "that ain't no way to talk to a lady, hear me! She may be a bad one, but she's stuck to you. If you get off any more talk like that I'll see if a dip in the lake will make you feel more polite like. See?"
John gave no answer, but relapsed into his sullen silence again.
Eleanor approached Lolla gently.
"We are not angry with you, Lolla," she said, kindly. "No, nor with John. You love him, do you?"
Lolla gave no answer, but looked up into Eleanor's face with eyes that spoke plainly enough.
"I thought so. Then you do not want him to go to prison? Try to make him tell why he did this. If he will do that, perhaps he can go free, and you and Peter, too. You wouldn't like to have to leave your people, and not be able to travel along the road, and do all the things you are used to doing, would you?
"Well, I am afraid that is what will happen to you, unless John will tell all he knows. They will take you away, soon now, and you will go down to the town and there you will be locked up, all three of you, and you and John will not even see one another, for a long time—two or three years, maybe, or even longer—"
Still Lolla could not speak. But she began to cry, quietly, but with a display of suffering that moved Eleanor. After all, she felt Lolla was little more than a girl, and, though she had done wrong, very wrong, she had never had a proper chance to learn how to do what was right.
"I'm sorry for you, Lolla," said Eleanor. "We all are. We think you didn't know what you were doing, and how wicked it was. I will do my best for you, but your best chance is to make John tell all he knows."
"How can I? He blames me. He says if I and Peter hadn't been such cowards all would have been well. He is angry at me; he will not forgive me."
"Oh, yes, he will, Lolla. I am sure he loves you, and that he did this wicked thing because he wanted to have much money to spend buying nice things for you; pretty dresses, and a fine wagon, with good horses. So he will be sorry for speaking angrily to you, soon, and you will be able to make him tell the truth, if you only try. Will you try?"
"Yes," decided Lolla, suddenly. "I think you are good—that you forgive us. Do you?"
"I certainly do. After all, you see, Lolla, you haven't done us any harm."
Lolla pointed to Bessie.
"Will she forgive me?" she inquired. "I tricked her—made a fool of her—but she made a fool of me afterward. I lied to her; will she forgive me, too, like you?"
"Did you hear that, Bessie?" asked Eleanor, by way of answer to the gypsy girl's question.
"Yes," said Bessie. "I'm sorry you did it, Lolla, because I only wanted to help your man, and if you hadn't done what you said you were going to do, and helped me to get Dolly away from him, he wouldn't be in all this trouble now.
"But you didn't understand about that, and you helped your own people instead of a stranger. I don't think that's such a dreadful thing to do. It's something like a soldier in a war. He may think his country is wrong, but if there's a battle he has to fight for it, just the same."
"But remember that the best way to help John now is to make him see that he has been wrong, and to try to make him understand that he can make up for his wickedness by helping us to punish the bad man who got him to do this," said Eleanor. "That man, you see, was too much of a coward to do his work himself, so he got your man to do it, knowing that if anyone was to be punished he would escape, and John would get into trouble.
"John doesn't owe anything to a man like that; he needn't think he's got to keep him out of trouble. The man wouldn't do it for him. He won't help him now. He'll pretend he doesn't know anything about this at all."
"I will try," promised Lolla. "But I think John is angry with me, and will not listen. But I will do my best."
And, after a little while, which the guides used to cook a meal, and to rest after their strenuous tramping in the effort to find the missing girls, Andrew told off half a dozen of them to make their way to the county seat, a dozen miles away, with the three gypsies.
"Just get them there and turn them over to the sheriff, boys," said the old guide. "He'll hold them safe until they've been tried, and we won't have any call to worry about them no more. But be careful while you're on your way down. They're slippery customers, and as like as not to try to run away from you and get to their own people."
"You leave that to me," said the guide who was to be in charge of the party. "If they get away from us, Andrew, they'll be slicker than anyone I ever heard tell of, anywhere. We won't hurt them none, but they'll walk a chalk line, right in front of us, or I'll know the reason why."
"All right," said Andrew. "Better be getting started, then. Don't want to make it too late when you get into town with them. Let the girl rest once in a while; she looks purty tired to me."
Bessie and Dolly and the other girls watched the little procession start off on the trail, and Bessie, for one, felt sorry for Lolla, who looked utterly disconsolate and hopeless.
"We couldn't let them go free, I suppose," said Eleanor, regretfully. "But I do feel sorry for that poor girl. I don't think she liked the idea from the very first, but she couldn't help herself. She had to do what the men told her. Women don't rank very high among the gypsies; they have to do what the men tell them, and they're expected to do all the work and take all the hard knocks beside."
"You're right; there's nothing else to do, ma'am," said old Andrew. "Well, guess the rest of us guides had better be gettin' back to work. Ain't nothin' else we can do fer you, is there, ma'am?"
"I don't think so. I don't suppose we need be afraid of the other gypsies, Andrew? Are they likely to try to get revenge for what has happened to their companions?"
"Pshaw! They'll be as quiet as lambs for a long time now. They was a breakin' up camp over there by Loon Pond when the boys come away last time. Truth is, I reckon they're madder at John and his pals for gettin' the whole camp into trouble than they are at us.
"You see, they know they needn't show their noses around here fer a long time now; not until this here shindy's had a chance to blow over an' be forgotten. And there ain't many places where they've been as welcome as over to the pond."
"I shouldn't think they'd be very popular here in the woods."
"They ain't, ma'am; they ain't, fer a fact. More'n once we've tried to make the hotel folks chase them away, but they sort of tickled the summer boarders over there, and so the hotel folks made out as they weren't as bad as they were painted, and was entitled to a chance to make camp around there as long as they behaved themselves."
"I suppose they never stole any stuff from the hotel?"
"That's jest it. They knew enough to keep on the right side of them people, you see, an' they did their poachin' in our woods. Any time they've been around it's always meant more work for us, and hard work, too."
"Well, I should think that after this experience the people at the hotel would see that the gypsies aren't very good neighbors, after all."
"That's what we're counting on, ma'am. Seems to me, from what I just happened to pick up, that there was some special reason, like, for this varmint to have acted that way today, or last night, maybe it was. Some feller in the city as was back of him."
"There was, Andrew, I'm afraid; a man who ought to know better, and whom you wouldn't suspect of allowing such a dreadful thing to be done."
Andrew shook his head wisely.
"It's hard to know what to wish," she said. "Sometimes a man is much worse when he comes out of prison than he was when he went in. It seems just to harden them, and make it impossible for them to get started on the right road again."
"It's their fault for going wrong in the fust place," said the old guide, sternly. "That's what I say. I don't take any stock in these new fangled notions of makin' the jail pleasant for them as does wrong. Make 'em know they're goin' to have a hard time, an' they'll be lest willin' to take chances of goin' wrong and bein' caught with the goods, like this feller here today. I bet you when he gets out of jail he'll be so scared of gettin' back that he'll be pretty nearly as good as a white man."
"Of course, the main thing is to frighten any of the others from acting the same way," said Eleanor. "I think the hotel will be sorry it let those gypsies stay around there. Because it's very sure that mothers who have children there will be nervous, and they'll go away to some place where they can feel their children are safe.
"Well, good-bye, Andrew. I'm glad you think it's safe now. I really would like to feel that we can get along by ourselves here, but, of course, I wouldn't let any pride stand in the way of safety, and if you thought it was better I'd ask you to leave one of the men here."
"No call for that, ma'am. You've shown you can get along all right. We didn't have nothin' to do with gettin' Miss Dolly away from that scamp today. It was her chum done that. Goodbye."