The Corner House Girls Snowbound Part 27

"No."

"It snowed the day after I went away from here to Ebettsville. They must have come here and gone before that snow then. That snow covered their tracks. How's that?"

"Not so good," the lawyer promptly told him. "You forget the live embers in the grate. Those embers would not have stayed alive for five days."

"Ain't that a fac'?" muttered the old man.

They pondered in silence for a moment.

Hedden suddenly entered the room. He seemed flurried, and his employer knew that something of moment had occurred.

"What is the matter, Hedden?" the latter asked.

"I have to report, sir, that somebody has been at the goods in the pantry--the canned food and other provisions that we brought up."

"What do you mean?" asked Mr. Howbridge curiously.

"The chef, sir, says that quite a good deal of food has been stolen.

He put the stuff away. There is a lot of it gone, sir--and that since last night at dinner time."

"Humph! Isn't that strange?" murmured the lawyer.

M'Graw grunted and started for the front door.

"Where are you going, M'Graw?" asked Mr. Howbridge.

"I'm going to find out who shot that fox," was the woodsman's enigmatical answer.

CHAPTER XVII

ALL DOWN HILL

The party of young people with the bobsled was very merry indeed just as soon as they got out of hearing of the Lodge. By striking into a path which opened into the wood right behind the barns, they cut off any view the two little girls and Sammy Pinkney might have caught of their departure.

"I feel somewhat condemned for leaving them behind," Ruth said. "Yet I know it is too far for such little people to go along and get back for lunch."

"Oh, they are having a good time," Cecile said. "You make yourself a slave to your young family, Ruthie," and she laughed.

"We will make it up to the kids," Luke joined in. "After we have tried the slide they can have a shot at it."

"That's all right," grinned Neale O'Neil. "But if Tess Kenway thinks she has been snubbed or neglected--well! you will not hear the last of it in a hurry, believe me."

This part of the wood into which the young people had entered was a sapling growth. Not many years before the timber had been cut and there were only brush clumps and small trees here now.

Flocks of several different kinds of birds--sparrows, buntings, jays, swamp robins, and others--flew noisily about. There were berries and seeds to be found in the thickets. The birds had begun to forage far from the swamps--a sign that the snow was heavy and deep in their usual winter feeding places.

"The dear little birdies!" cooed Agnes, waving her gloved hand at a flock that spread out fan-wise in the covert, frightened by the approach of the young people.

Suddenly there arose a vast racket--a whirring and trampling sound, as though it were of runaway hoofs. Agnes shrieked and glanced about her.

The other girls looked startled.

"That horse! It's running away!" cried Agnes. "Oh, Neale!"

"Shucks!" said that youth, scornfully. "'The dear little birdies!' Ho, ho! I thought you liked 'em, Aggie?"

"Liked what?" she demanded, as the noise faded away into the wood.

"The birdies. That was a flock of partridges. They can make some noise, can't they? Food in the swamps must be getting mighty scarce, or they would not be away up here."

"Who ever would have thought it?" murmured Cecile. "Partridges!"

"Wish I had a gun," said Luke.

"Don't be afraid. They won't bite," chuckled Neale O'Neil. "And we won't be likely to meet anything much more dangerous than birds in the day time."

"Yet we saw that big cat yesterday," Ruth said.

"It ran all right. We might have brought Tom Jonah; only he was playing with the kids," said Neale. "Anyway, the best he would do would be to scare up creatures in the thickets that we otherwise would not know were there."

"Now, stop that, Neale O'Neil!" cried Agnes. "Are you trying to frighten us?"

"Shucks, Aggie!" he returned. "You know the kind of wild animal we scared up this morning when we found Ike M'Graw's place."

"Oh! Oh!" cried Agnes, with laughter.

"What's the joke?" asked Luke.

So Neale told the rest of the party how he and Agnes had followed the footprints of the "deer" clear to the old man's cabin.

"And there we could hear them squealing in their pen," was the way Neale finished it.

"Two mighty hunters, you!" chuckled Luke.

The road over which they dragged the sled soon became steep. They were now climbing a long hill through heavier timber. It was a straight path, and the crown of the ascent was more than a mile from Red Deer Lodge.

Half way up they pa.s.sed a fork in the timber road. The roads were not rutted at all, for they were full of firm snow. This second road dipped to the north, running down the steep hill and out of sight.

"That chap who told me about this slide told me to 'ware that road,"

Luke said. "Around that curve he said it was steep and there'd be no stopping the sled for a long way. If we stick to the right track, well slide back almost to the Lodge itself."

"That'll help some," Cecile said. "I am getting tired tramping over this snow. It's a harder pull than I imagined it would be."

"We were very wise not to let the children come," Ruth remarked.

Uphill for all of a mile was, in truth, no easy climb.