The Corner House Girls Snowbound

“You needn’t be. He could fight, that fellow!”

“But did you think they were both girls till you got into this fight?” Neale asked, now becoming interested.

“Bet you. We thought we could get some of their lines. They had more’n enough. We went over there to Manny Cox’s shack, and she that was a girl was alone. So we took the lines.”

“Now, Bob!” murmured his mother.

“Guess a constable here wouldn’t be a bad thing after all,” chuckled Neale.

“Go on,” ordered Agnes.

“Why, that girl just cried and scolded. But the other one came back before me and Hank and Buddie got away.”

“The one you think was a boy?” asked Agnes.

“One I know was a boy – since he fought me. He didn’t do no cryin’. He squared right off, skirts an’ all, and jest lambasted me. And when Hank tried to put in an oar, he lambasted him. Buddie run, or he’d ’ve been licked, too, I guess.”

“Well!” exclaimed Bob’s mother. “I never did! And you never said a word about it!”

“What was the use?” asked her son. “We was licked. And the next morning that boy-girl and his sister was gone. We didn’t see ’em no more.”

“That is right,” said the woman thoughtfully. “They got away jest like that. I never did know what become of ’em or what they went for.”

Agnes dragged Neale out of the shack. She was excited.

“Let’s find Mr. Howbridge!” she cried. “He ought to know about this. I just feel sure those twins have been here in this fisher-town.”

CHAPTER X – INTO THE WILDERNESS

But the lawyer and guardian of the runaway Birdsall twins was not so easily convinced that Agnes had found the trail of the lost Ralph and Rowena. It seemed preposterous that the twins should have joined these rough fisherfolk and lived with them in the ice-village.

The party from Milton waited at the village for an hour while the lawyer cross-questioned the inhabitants. It was not that any of these people wished to hobble Mr. Howbridge’s curiosity regarding the “stragglers,” as they called the strangers who sometimes joined the community; but nobody had considered it his or her business to question or examine in any way the two unknown girls (if they were girls) who had occupied Manny Cox’s shack for a week.

After all, the boy, Bob, and his mates, gave the most convincing testimony regarding the strangers. He was positive that one of the stragglers had been a boy – a very sturdy and pugilistic one for a twelve-year-old lad.

“And that might fit young Ralph Birdsall’s reputation, as I got it from Rodgers, the butler,” said Mr. Howbridge. “Ralph has to be stirred by Rowena to fight; but, once stirred, Rodgers says he can fight like a wildcat.”

“Why, what a horrid boy!” murmured Tess, who heard this. “I guess I’m glad those twins didn’t come with us after all.”

“But, Mr. Howbridge,” asked Ruth, “does it seem possible that they could get away up here alone?”

“That is difficult to say. Nobody knows how much money they had when they left Arlington. They might have come as far as this. If they had wished to, I mean.”

It was getting quite dark, now, and the children were tired and hungry. The party could spend no more time at the fishing village. They set out across the ice for Coxford.

Neale took Dot pick-a-pack and Luke shouldered Tess, although the latter felt much embarrassed by this proceeding. Ruth had to urge her to remain upon the collegian’s shoulder.

“Really, I’m quite too big to play this way,” she objected.

But she was tired – she had to admit that. Sammy made no complaint; but his short legs were weary enough before they reached the shore.

Oil lamps on posts lit the few streets of Coxford. Most of the slab houses looked as though the wind, with a good puff, could blow them down. The forest came down to the edge of the village. If there should be a forest fire on this side of the mountain range, the slab-town would surely be destroyed.

Hedden, Mr. Howbridge’s man, had prepared things here for the party, as well as at Culberton. On the main street of the little town was what passed for a hotel. At this time of year it was but little patronized.

Therefore the lawyer’s man had chartered the house, as well as the family that owned it, to make the holiday vacation party comfortable over one night.

Roaring fires, hot supper, feather beds, and plenty of woolen blankets awaited the crowd from Milton at this backwoods hostelry. Mr. Dan Durkin, who was the proprietor of the Coxford Hotel, and his hospitable wife and daughters, could not do too much for the comfort of Mr. Howbridge and his friends.

“We don’t have enough strangers here in winter time to keep us in mind of what city folks are like,” the hotel-keeper declared. “When Miz’ Birdsall was alive, she and her man and the kids used to come through here three-four times ’twixt the first snow flurries an’ the spring break-up. They liked to see their camp up there in the hills durin’ the winter. But after Miz’ Birdsall died, he never came.”

“And the children?” asked Mr. Howbridge, thoughtfully.

“They did come in summer,” said Durkin; “but not in the winter.”

“You haven’t seen them of late, have you?” questioned the lawyer.

“Them twins? No. Nary hide nor hair of ’em. I tell you, ain’t nobody – scurcely – gets up here this time’ o’ year. ’Ceptin’ a few stragglers for the fishin’, perhaps. But we don’t see them here at the hotel. We don’t take in stragglers.”

But he and his family, as has been said, did their very best for the party from Milton. The young folks slept soundly, and warmly, as well, and were really sorry to crawl out of the feather beds at seven o’clock the next morning when they were called to get ready for breakfast.

The cold and the long ride of the day before seemed to have done nobody any harm. The balsam-laden air, when they went to the hotel porch for a breath of it before breakfast, seemed to search right down to the bottom of their lungs and invigorate them all. Surely, as Neale had told Agnes, no tubercular germ could live in such an atmosphere.

“Just the same,” said Ruth, wisely, when Agnes mentioned this scientific statement fathered by the ex-circus boy, “you children keep well wrapped up. What is one man’s medicine is another man’s poison, Mrs. Mac often says. And it is so with germs, I guess. What will kill one germ, another germ thrives on. A bad cold up here will be almost sure to turn into pneumonia. So beware!”

“Don’t keep talking about being sick,” cried Cecile. “You are almost as bad as Neighbor.” “Neighbor” Henry Northrup lived next door to the Shepards and their Aunt Lorena, and was Luke’s very good friend. “Neighbor is forever talking about symptoms and diseases. After a half hour visit with him I always go home feeling as though I needed to call the doctor for some complaint.”

They made a hearty and hilarious breakfast of country fare – fried pork and johnnycakes, with eggs and baked beans for “fillers.” Mrs. MacCall should not have tried to eat the crisply fried “crackling” as the farmers call the pork-rind; but she did. And one of the teeth on her upper plate snapped right off!

“Oh, dear me, Mrs. Mac!” gasped Agnes. “And not a dentist for miles and miles, I suppose!”

“Oh, well, I can get along without that one tooth.”

“My pop’s got a new set of false teeth,” Sammy said soberly. “He’s just got ’em – all new and shiny.”

“What did he do with the old ones he had?” asked Tess, interested.

“Huh! I dunno. Throwed ’em away, I hope. Anyway,” said Sammy, who had had much experience in wearing made over clothing, “mom can’t cut them down and make me wear ’em!”

The jangling of sleighbells hurried the party through breakfast. The little folks were first out upon the porch to look at the two pungs, filled with straw, and each drawn by a pair of heavy horses. The latter did not promise from their appearance a swift trip to Red Deer Lodge; but they were undoubtedly able to draw a heavy load through the deepest drifts in the forest.

They set out very gayly from the little lakeside town. It was not a brilliantly sunshiny day, for a haze wrapped the mountain tops about and was creeping down toward the ice-covered lake.

“There’s a storm gathering,” declared one of the men engaged to drive the Milton party into the woods. “I reckon you folks will git about all the snow you want for Christmas.”

“At any rate, it won’t be a green Christmas up here,” Agnes said to Neale, who sat beside her in the second sled. “I don’t think it is nice at all not to have plenty of snow over Christmas and New Year’s.”

“I’m with you there,” agreed the boy. “But I’m glad I haven’t got to shovel paths through these drifts,” he added, with a quick grin.