The Camp Fire Girls at Onoway House; Or, The Magic Garden

by Hildegard G. Frey

Then another thought struck her. Could it be the crazy man who lived alone in the little house among the trees? Calvin had stated that he never left the house, but who could account for the inspirations of an unbalanced mind? That nothing had been taken from the house seemed to indicate a want of fixed purpose in the mind of the housebreaker—to go to all that trouble for nothing. This idea also seemed worth considering.

As she lay turning these things over in her mind she thought she heard a stealthy footstep in the grass outside of the tepee. Thinking that the ghost was coming to pay another visit, she drew the pistol from under her pillow and turning over, face downward, lay with it pointed toward the doorway. There would be no outcry when he appeared in the doorway. The first intimation the ghost would have that he was observed would be a shot in the leg that would prevent him from running away and would solve the mystery. In tense silence she waited, one; two; three minutes, but nothing appeared. Then suddenly she smelled smoke, and turning around swiftly saw that the side of the tepee toward which she had had her back was in flames.

“Fire!” she called at the top of her voice. “Sahwah! Hinpoha! Gladys! Migwan! Wake up!” And seizing the pail of water she dashed it against the side of the tepee. The water sizzled as it fell, but the canvas covering was burning like tinder. Thus rudely awakened the girls sprang up in alarm. The place was filling with dense smoke, and through it they groped their way to the opening, dragging out their blankets. Hardly had the last girl got out when the whole thing was one roaring blaze, which lit up the scenery a long way around.

Nyoda, paying no attention to the flames that were mounting skyward from the burning canvas, looked intently for a lurking figure among the trees, for she thought it hardly possible that whoever had set the tepee afire could have gotten outside of the range of light in that short time. It was possible to see as far as the road on the one side and across the river on the other. But nowhere was there a man or the shadow of a man. The folks came running out of Onoway House half dressed and in terror that the girls had not escaped from the burning tent in time, and the farmers all the way down the road, seeing the glare, rushed to offer their assistance, for a fire in the country is a serious thing where there is no water pressure. Farmer Landsdowne came on a dead run, carrying a water bucket. Even Abner Smalley appeared in the midst of the crowd. He gave a scowling look at Calvin, but said nothing, and soon took his departure when the danger was over, as it was directly, for it did not take long to reduce that canvas covering to a black mass, and buckets of water thrown all around on the ground and the trees kept the fire from spreading.

For the second time that night the family gathered in the sitting-room and faced each other over an exciting happening. “I told you if you built a fire in that tepee you would burn it down,” said Mrs. Gardiner. “I never felt easy when you had one.”

“But it didn’t catch fire from our little fire,” declared Nyoda, and told the events of the night, from the going out of the fire to the footsteps outside the tepee when the canvas had suddenly blazed up when she was lying in wait for the ghost with a pistol. The circle of faces paled with fear as she told her tale. Who could this mysterious visitor be, who seemed determined to do them some harm? The girls finished the night in the house, three in a bed, but none of them closed their eyes to sleep.

CHAPTER XI.—THE WELL DIGGER’S GHOST.

The next morning Mrs. Gardiner sent Mr. Landsdowne to interview the police force of the township in which the Centerville Road belonged, and he brought the whole force back with him. He had to bring the whole force if he brought any for it embraced only one man and he was well along in years, but he had a uniform and a helmet and a club and a gun, and presented an imposing appearance as he strutted up and down the yard, before which an evil doer might be moved to pause. The three girls from town had departed and Nakwisi had left her spy glass behind in the excitement, and this was a source of great entertainment to the rural gendarme. He spent a great deal of time sliding the lens back and forth to fit his eye and peering up the road into the distance, or looking up into the air, as if he expected to see the burglar approaching in an airship. He was very talkative and fond of recounting the captures he had made single handed, and declared solemnly that the man in this case was as good as caught already, for no one had ever escaped yet when Dave Beeman had started out to get him.

Nyoda, who was fond of seeing her theories worked out, still held to the idea that the mysterious visitor was someone who wanted the job of caretaker, and inquired closely of Farmer Landsdowne who the men were who had applied for the position. When it came down to fact there was only one who had really wanted the job very badly, although several others had mentioned the fact that they wouldn’t mind doing it, and that man had found a similar situation immediately afterward and left the neighborhood. So her theory did not seem to be inclined to hold water.

She had another idea, however, and wrote to Mr. Mitchell, asking if he had ever heard strange noises in the attic while he lived there. Mr. Mitchell answered and said that not only had he heard strange noises in the attic, but also in the cellar and in the barn, and that pieces of furniture had apparently moved themselves in the middle of the night; and it was on this account that he had left the place, as it made his wife so nervous she became ill. This fact put a new face on the matter. The hostility, then, was not directed against themselves personally, but against the tenants of the house, no matter who they were. But this idea left them more in the dark than ever, and they lost a good deal of sleep over it without reaching any solution.