The Haunted House
Days passed without word or sign from the missing girl. The marshal haunted the post-office and the railroad station, hoping with all his poor old heart that word would come from her; but the letter was not there, nor was there a telegram at the station when he strolled over to that place. The county officials at Boggs City came down and began a cursory investigation, but Anderson's emphatic though doleful opinions set them quite straight, and they gave up the quest. There was nothing to do but to sit back and wait.
In those three days Anderson Crow turned greyer and older, although he maintained a splendid show of resignation. He had made a perfunctory offer of reward for Rosalie, dead or alive, but he knew all the time that it would be fruitless. Mark Riley, the bill-poster, stuck up the glaring reward notices as far away as the telegraph poles in Clay County. The world was given to understand that $1000 reward would be paid for Rosalie's return or for information leading to the apprehension and capture of her abductors.
There was one very mysterious point in connection with the affair—something so strange that it bordered on the supernatural. No human being in Bramble County except the two boys had seen the double-seated sleigh. It had disappeared as if swallowed by the earth itself.
"Well, it don't do any good to cry over spilt milk," said Anderson bravely. "She's gone, an' I only hope she ain't bein' mistreated. I don't see why they should harm her. She's never done nobody a wrong. Like as not she's been taken to a comfortable place in New York, an' we'll hear from her as soon as she recovers from the shock. There ain't no use huntin' fer her, I know, but I jest can't help nosin' around a little. Mebby I can git some track of her. I'd give all I got in this world to know that she's safe an' sound, no matter if I never see her ag'in."
The hungry look in his eyes deepened, and no one bandied jests with him as was the custom in days gone by.
There were not many tramps practising in that section of the State. Anderson Crow proudly announced that they gave Tinkletown a wide berth because of his prowess; but the vagabond gentry took an entirely different view of the question. They did not infest the upper part of the State for the simple but eloquent reason that it meant starvation to them. The farmers compelled the weary wayfarer to work all day like a borrowed horse for a single meal at the "second table." There was no such thing as a "hand-out," as it is known in the tramp's vocabulary. It is not extraordinary, therefore, that tramps found the community so unattractive that they cheerfully walked miles to avoid it. A peculiarly well-informed vagrant once characterised the up-state farmer as being so "close that he never shaved because it was a waste of hair."
It is hardly necessary to state, in view of the attitude of both farmer and tramp, that the misguided vagrant who wandered that way was the object of distinct, if not distinguished, curiosity. In the country roads he was stared at with a malevolence that chilled his appetite, no matter how long he had been cultivating it on barren soil. In the streets of Tinkletown, and even at the county seat, he was an object of such amazing concern that he slunk away in pure distress. It was indeed an unsophisticated tramp who thought to thrive in Bramble County even for a day and a night. In front of the general store and post-office at Tinkletown there was a sign-post, on which Anderson Crow had painted these words:
"No tramps or Live Stock Allowed on these Streets.
By order of
A. CROW, Marshal."