The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle Part 16

Grace laughed indulgently.

"Just how do you expect to solve this mystery?" she asked, with a giggle. "You certainly can't do it by looking at him."

"Oh well, if that's the way you feel," retorted Mollie, feeling very much abused, "I'm sorry I spoke about it. Only I thought we had already decided to pay him a visit."

"And so we had," said Betty, closing the dresser drawer with a bang and coming unexpectedly to her aid. "And I, for one, am with you in that, Mollie. I have felt from the first," she went on earnestly, while Mollie regarded her with growing hope, "that I had not only heard the selection that that man played but that I had seen him somewhere before--quite a long time ago."

Impressed by Betty's earnestness, Grace had laid down her magazine and Amy was becoming interested.

"I know it's ridiculous," Betty continued, as though to justify herself, "but I can't help feeling that way, just the same."

"That thing he played sounded familiar to me, too," Grace admitted, now entirely abandoning her magazine and sitting up. "It has been haunting me ever since we heard him playing that day, and yet I can't think of the name of it."

Softly Amy began to hum a popular song, but Mollie interrupted her impatiently.

"Well then, since you all feel that way about it," she said eagerly, "I don't see why it wouldn't be fun to scout around his cabin a little bit and see if we can't pick up some information. I'm really curious about him."

"All right, let's," said Betty, with the decision for which she was famed. "Get your riding togs on, girls, and we'll play detective."

This time it was Mollie who held back.

"How about the weather?" she demurred. "Looks as if we were likely to get wet."

"Who cares?" said Betty airily, adding, as she stopped at the door to make them a little bow: "It would give us an excuse to see His Highness again."

Half an hour later they had saddled their ponies and were cantering off briskly to visit the Hermit of Gold Run.

"Aren't you a little bit afraid to go in there?" asked Amy, reining in as they reached the narrow trail through the woods that led near the musician's cabin. "We might run into some wolves, as we did that other time."

"We were much further in the woods than the Hermit's cabin," said Mollie impatiently. "And it was in an entirely different direction, too. Go ahead, silly, or I'll ride right over you," and as she was urging Old Nick forward until he crowded uncomfortably against the little white filly, Amy had no other course but to do as she was bid.

Nevertheless, she was not the only one who was uneasy, and it might have been observed that the girls glanced often into the shadows of the underbrush on either side of the narrow trail.

There were wild animals in that forest, as they had good reason to know, and though they seldom ventured this close to civilization, still there was no use in tempting fate!

"I didn't know it was as far in as this," said Grace, after they had ridden some distance in silence. "Are you sure we haven't pa.s.sed the cabin, Betty?"

"Why, we aren't nearly there yet," was Betty's discomforting reply.

"It's quite a way beyond that next turn in the trail."

Grace said nothing, but she gripped the reins harder in her hands. She had made up her mind that at the first sign of danger she would turn Nabob and make a dash back down the trail for safety.

After that the silence became so p.r.o.nounced that Mollie noticed it and laughed nervously.

"Why all the noise?" she asked jocosely. "It nearly breaks my ear drums."

"Hush," cried Amy warningly. "I thought I heard something."

"That was your own heart hammering against the tree trunks," retorted Mollie dryly, at which the girls giggled and the tension relaxed.

"Let's talk about something nice," Betty suggested. "Gold, for instance."

"Or Allen," teased Grace. "I reckon you won't be glad or anything when he gets here."

"I guess mother will be gladder than any of us," replied Betty promptly, trying to s.h.i.+ft the spotlight from herself. "She was so excited when I told her what Dan Higgins said about the possibility of there being gold on the ranch that she hardly closed her eyes all night. I told her she was getting to be a regular adventuress."

"Like her daughter," said Mollie, with a chuckle.

"Just think of the story we can tell the boys when we get home," said Amy rapturously, adding apologetically as the girls glanced at her: "If we find the gold, I mean."

"Listen to the child!" cried Betty gayly, while the other girls laughed.

"And we haven't begun to dig yet. Hold your horses, Amy dear, hold your horses."

They did this very thing literally the next moment, for they came in sight of the queer little cabin of the man whom the natives called the Hermit of Gold Run.

Quickly they jumped down, tethered the horses as they had done before on the day when they had first made the acquaintance of this remarkable man, and started rather hesitantly down the path toward the house.

As they came nearer the haunting strains of the music that had puzzled them before once more floated out through the open windows and they paused, lost once again in the spell of it.

The music stopped, and they went on, hardly knowing what their next move was to be, yet drawn irresistibly by their curiosity. Then once more they heard the violin, but evidently the mood of the player had changed.

The melody fraught with pathos, wailing, pleading, no longer reached them. The theme had changed--light, airy, sparkling, it reminded the girls of fairies dancing on the gra.s.s in the moonlight.

Mollie grasped Betty's arm.

"I know that!" she cried excitedly. "It's something of Chopin's, a nocturne, I think. Girls, I know where I heard that selection played just that way before."

They gazed at her, their eyes asking the question before their lips could form it.

"At the Hostess House!" cried Mollie. "Don't you remember that concert we gave with some of the great artists?"

"That big benefit!" cried Betty excitedly. "You've got it, Mollie!

That's what I was trying to think of!"

"Sh-h," said Grace, a finger to her lips. "He has stopped playing. He may hear us."

"All right," said Betty. "Let's get back to the trail where we can talk this thing over."

They did not stop at the trail, however, for some memory of the danger lurking in the woods drove them out on to the main road where they might talk in peace.

"Now then," said Betty eagerly, as they reached the road, crowding their horses close together and reining them in to a walk. "What do you make of this, girls? If this man is really one of those artists that played at that big concert, then he is famous and there is something more than strange in his hiding up here in the woods."

"Goodness, we don't need anybody to tell us that," said Grace. "He certainly must be in hiding for something he's done--unless he has been disappointed in love," she added sentimentally.

"I don't believe he was ever in love with anything but his violin," said Mollie.

"Can't somebody think of the name of the violinist that played at the benefit?" asked Betty, who had been trying for some minutes past to accomplish that very thing.

"It was something like Croup, I think," said Mollie, wrinkling her forehead.