The Corner House Girls' Odd Find

Agnes halted in her tracks. She was suddenly smitten with fear. She could not shake the feeling off. Surely there was something dogging her footsteps.

She puckered her lips to whistle; but no sound came. She tried to call; but her tongue seemed dry and her throat contracted. She knew it was a dog; yet the possibility of its being some savage beast instead, terrified her.

Even a bad dog would be dangerous to meet in this lonely place. And he followed her so stealthily!

Agnes was panic-stricken at midday. It was almost noon now, and how strange that she had not reached the Buckham house! Why! she had been walking for an hour.

It came over the girl suddenly that she was lost.

“Yet I don’t see how that can be,” she murmured. “I’m in the road and it’s plain enough. Surely it should lead somewhere.”

Nevertheless she would have turned about and gone back to the car tracks had it not been for the apparition that seemed dogging her steps.

She dared not turn back and face that Unknown!

Slily she looked over her shoulder again. There it was – dim, shaggy, slinking close to the snow. Agnes was sure now that she knew what it was. Naught but a wolf would act like that – would trail her so silently and with such determination.

Agnes was truly terror-stricken. She began to run – and running was not easy in this rutty road. She fell once; but she did not mind the bruises and scratches she received, for all she could think of was that the wolf might leap upon her while she was down.

Up the poor girl scrambled and ran on, crying now – all her brave temper quenched. She dared look behind no more. How close her awful pursuer was she dared not know.

On and on she hastened; now running, now walking fast, her limbs shaking with dread and weariness. It seemed as though she must come to some habitation soon. She had had no idea that there was any such wilderness as this anywhere back of Milton!

There were no signs here of man’s nearness save the road through the forest, nor had she seen such since leaving the main highway. As she said, surely this road must lead somewhere.

Suddenly Agnes smelled smoke. She saw it rising between the trees ahead. Escape from the prowling beast was at hand. The girl hurried on. The place where the smoke was rising was down a little slope, at the foot of which she suddenly discovered the railroad. She knew something about the locality then. It was some distance from Mr. Bob Buckham’s house.

This was a lonely place, too. There was no station anywhere near. Heaps of ties lay about – cords and cords of them. It suddenly smote upon the girl’s mind that tramps might be here. Tramps followed the railroad line. And tramps might be more to be feared than a wolf!

She halted in her tracks and waited to get her breath. Of course she glanced fearfully behind again. But the prowling beast was no longer in sight. The vicinity of the fire had doubtless made him hesitate and draw off.

So Agnes could take her time about approaching the campfire. She was sure that was what it must be. The smoke arose from beyond a great heap of railroad ties, and now, when her pulses stopped beating so in her ears, she distinguished voices.

Well! human beings were at hand. She could not help feeling suspicious of them; yet their nearness had driven off the strange and terrible beast that had so frightened her.

After a minute or two the Corner House girl crept forward. Some of her usual courage returned to her. Her heart beat high and her color rose. She bit her lower lip with her pretty, even teeth, as she always did when she labored under suppressed excitement, and tiptoed to the end of the piled up ties.

The voices were louder here – more easily distinguished. There were two of them – a young voice and an old voice. And in a moment she discovered something that pleased and relieved her. The young voice was a girl’s voice – Agnes was quite positive of that.

She thought at once: “No harm can come to me if there is a girl here. But who can she be, camping out in the snowy woods?”

In another moment she would have stepped around the corner of the pile of ties and revealed herself to the strangers had not something that was said reached her ears – and that something was bound to arrest Agnes Kenway’s attention.

“A book full of money.”

The young voice said this, and then the other spoke, it seemed, doubtingly.

Again came the girl’s voice with passionate earnestness:

“I tell you I saw it! I know ’twas money.”

“It don’t sound reasonable,” and the man’s husky voice was plainer now.

“I tell you I saw it. I had the book in my hand.”

“Why didn’t you bring it away and let me see it?” demanded the other.

“I’d ha’ done it, Pop, if I’d been let. He had it in his bag in his room. I got in and had the book in my hand. It’s heavy and big, I tell you! He came in and caught me messin’ with his things, and I thought he’d lam me! You know, Neale always was high tempered,” added the strange young voice.

Agnes was powerless to move. Mention of money in a book was sufficient to hold her in her tracks. But now they were speaking of Neale O’Neil!

“Where’d he ever get so much money?” demanded the husky voice.

“Stole it, mebbe.”

“None of the Sorbers was ever light-fingered – you’ve got to say that much for them.”

“What’s that boy doing with all that money, and we so poor?” snarled the young voice, “Wasn’t you hurt when that gasoline tank exploded in the big top, just the same as Bill Sorber? And nobody made any fuss over you.”

“Well, well, well,” muttered the man.

“They’re not carin’ what becomes of us – neither Twomley nor Sorber. Here you’ve been laid up, and it’s mid-winter and too late for us to get any job till the tent shows open in the spring. An’ we must beat it South like hoboes. I say ’tisn’t fair!” and the young voice was desperate.

“There ain’t many things fair in this world, Barnabetta,” said the husky voice, despondently.

“I – I’d steal that money from Neale Sorber if I got the chance. And he’ll be coming back to this very next town with it. That’s where he’s living now – at Milton. I hate all the Sorbers.” “There, there, Barnabetta! Don’t take on so. We’d have got into some good act in vaudeville ’fore now if I hadn’t had to favor my ankle.”

“You’d better’ve let me go into that show alone, Pop.”

“No, no, my girl. You’re too young for that. No, that warn’t the right kind of a show.”

The girl’s voice sounded wistful now: “Wish we could get an act like that we had in the tent show when Neale was with us. He was a good kid then.”

“Yes; but there ain’t many like Neale Sorber was. And like enough he’s gone stale ‘fore now.”

“I’d just like to know where he got all that money,” said the girl-voice. “And in a book, too. I thought ’twas a photograph album.”

“Hist!” said the man-voice, “’Tisn’t so much where he got it as it is, is he comin’ back here with it.”

“He’ll come back to Milton, sure. Bill Sorber isn’t so sick now.”

The voices died to a whisper. Agnes, both troubled and frightened, tried to steal away. But she had been resting her weight upon the corner of the heap of ties. As she moved, the icy timbers shook, slid, and suddenly overturned.

Agnes, her face white, and with a terrified air, found herself facing a man and, not a girl but, a boy, who had sprung up from a log by the fire. And they knew she had overheard their conversation.

CHAPTER XIV – BARNABETTA

“Why, there isn’t any girl here at all!” Agnes Kenway exclaimed, as she faced the two people who had been sitting by the bonfire.