“There now, Dan Brent, didn’t I tell you that! Now I guess you believe my girls. And from now on, you’ll help us in every way you can.”
“I’ll say I will. I’ll go right back there now and listen and get all the information I can,” Dan moved toward the trail leading to the clearing.
Sally looked after him. “Gee, I’m proud of Dan,” she said softly. “I want the girls to see him.”
Running at full speed down the hill, Sally determined to help the girls escape.
“It’s tonight or never,” she said. “But how is it to be done?”
CHAPTER VI
The Menacing Stranger
Terry and Prim had been racking their brains, feverishly trying to plan some way of escape from their prison. But late that afternoon their hopes were dashed to the ground. Just as Sally returned to the house and before she could tell them of her discovery, Jim Heron ordered his captives upstairs into a rear room under the roof. In one gnarled fist he held a key, a rusty antique fully eight inches long, which looked as if it had been meant for a dungeon.
Terry pleaded with the old man for she had a horror of being locked up. She frantically promised him money; more money than Bud Hyslop was giving him if he would let them go, but Jim Heron shook his head.
“Nothin’ doin’, young lady! You can’t raise as much money as Bud has promised; that I’m sure of. Anyhow I promised Bud Hyslop that I’d keep you under lock and key, and I’m goin’ to do it. I’m a man of my word. What I promise, I stick to!”
Jim threw out his chest as he boasted of his honesty, then he added sharply, “Look here, if you girls hadn’t wanted trouble, you shouldn’t have come all the way up here huntin’ for it. You should have stayed at home where girls belong.”