CHAPTER XII
UNKNOWN TO HISTORY
When Lucy, that morning at Badheim hospital, had remarked Bob’s altered face, she blamed it all on his exposure to the snow-storm the afternoon before. She never guessed how he had spent the middle hours of the night following the visit to Herr Johann’s lodge, and Bob, still undecided on his own course of action, had let her think that he was tired and moody because his leg hurt him.
It did hurt, as a fact, after his midnight adventure, for he had been on his feet longer than he realized, oblivious to pain in the absorption of his discovery. He did not know just what it was that started him up out of bed on his tour of exploration, except that in a troubled dream he had seen Franz driving through the snow-storm, and Herr Johann looking on with his face of calm audacity. For some reason, or by a kind of warning instinct, Bob had got up and dressed as eleven o’clock showed on the radium dial of his watch. He crept out of his room on to the hospital veranda, where all was darkness and silence.
In a moment he was crossing the open, the snow faintly lighted by a moon across which wind-clouds drifted. The air was very cold. He buttoned his overcoat as he entered the forest, and, walking fast, came in a quarter of an hour to the edge of Franz’ clearing and heard the spring bubbling up in its basin somewhere on his left.
The little cottage showed dark against the snow, its shadow lying in front of it in the moonlight. Bob leaned against a tree and watched a moment, shivering as the wind stirred the branches, and wondering if he were losing his sleep and freezing himself for nothing. He had not stood there five minutes when something moved in the shadow in front of the cottage. Someone had come out of the door, closing it silently. The woodcutter paused at the edge of the moonlight and cast a quick glance about the clearing. Then, putting his fingers to his mouth, he gave a shrill whistle.
At once another man appeared from the forest opposite to where Bob stood watching. He crossed the snow at a hurried walk, with an awkward, stoop-shouldered gait. At his approach Franz turned the corner of the cottage and the two disappeared behind it.
Curiosity would not let Bob stay where he was, yet to cross the clearing in the moonlight was to invite discovery. Though the men were too busy to notice him he imagined Trudchen’s unhappy, anxious eyes on guard at the darkened cottage window, ready to give warning of any intruder. But he determined to risk it, rather than wait in hiding and learn nothing. He fought against his impatience for ten or fifteen minutes, until the moon vanished behind a cloud and for a moment left the clearing in comparative darkness. Then he made a run for it, and, when the cloud had glided past, he was in the shelter of the cottage walls.
He crouched down against the rough pine logs, stealing cautiously toward the rear. Now he could hear sounds of the animals being led out and harnessed, and of a load of wood piled on the wagon. He heard no voices. The two men seemed not to exchange a word as they worked, as though eager haste left no time for a moment’s conversation.
Bob reached the back corner of the cottage, and, peeping around it, saw the wagon standing, with the animals harnessed, in front of the shed. It was already half loaded with fagot-bundles, which Franz and his companion were still carrying out on their backs from within the shed. In five minutes more the wagon was well loaded. Franz muttered something to the other, upon which both of them left the shed and, going over to one of the fagot-piles in the clearing, brought bundles of wood from there to form the top layers of the load.
Bob’s heart gave a thump of sudden comprehension. “It was from the top layer that Larry and I took our bundle,” he thought, catching hold of the cottage wall to keep himself from bursting out and facing Franz then and there.