The Young Surveyor Part 43

THE MORNING AFTER.

Bright rose the sun the next morning over the leafy tops of Long Woods, and smiled upon the pleasant valley.

It found many a trace of the previous day's devastation,--trees uprooted or twisted off at their trunks, branches and limbs broken and scattered, fences blown down, and more than one man's buildings unroofed or demolished.

It found Peakslow, accompanied by the two older boys, walking about his private and particular pile of ruins, in a gloomy and bewildered state of mind, as if utterly at a loss to know where the repair of such tremendous damages should begin. And (the sun itself must have been somewhat astonished) it found Mrs. Peakslow and the younger children, five in number, comfortably quartered in Lord Betterson's "castle."

It also had glimpses of Rufe, with light and jolly face, driving home by prairie and grove, alone in the one-horse wagon.

Link ran out to meet him, swinging his cap and shouting for the news.

"Good news!" Rufe shouted back, while still far up the road. "Tell the folks!" And he held up the pocket-book.

It was good news indeed which he brought; but the mystery at the bottom of it all was a mystery still.

The family gathered around, with intense interest, while he told his story and displayed Rad's pantaloons.

"The eighty dollars, which you had counted out,--you remember, father,--was loose in the pocket. I left that with Jack; he will send it to Chicago to-day. The rest of the money, I believe, is all here in the pocket-book."

"And you've heard nothing of Radcliff?" said Mr. Betterson.

"Not a word. Jack made me stop with him over night; and I should have come home the way we went, and looked for Rad, if it hadn't been so far; we must have driven twelve or fifteen miles in that roundabout chase."

"Some accident must certainly have happened to Radcliff," said Mr.

Betterson. And much wonder and many conjectures were expressed by the missing youth's not very unhappy relatives.

"I bet I know!" said Link. "He drove so fast he overtook the tornado, and it twisted him out of his breeches, and hung him up in a tree somewhere!"

An ingenious theory, which did not, however, obtain much credence with the family.

"One thing seems to be proved, and I am very glad," said Vinnie. "It was not Zeph who took Jack's compa.s.s."

"Rad must have taken that, to spite Jack, and hid it somewhere near the road in the timber, where it would be handy if he ever wanted to make off with it; that's what Jack thinks," said Rufe. "Then, as he was driving past the spot, he put it into the buggy again."

"Maybe he intended to set up for a surveyor somewhere," Wad remarked.

"He must have taken another pair of trousers with him."

"I am sure he didn't," said Cecie.

"And even if he did," said Rufe, "that wouldn't account for his leaving the money in the pocket."

The family finally settled down upon a theory which had been first suggested by Jack,--that in fording the river Rad had caught his wheels in the tree-tops or timbers of the ruined bridge, and, to keep his lower garments dry, had taken them off and left them in the buggy, while he waded in to remove the rubbish, when the horse had somehow got away from him, and gone home. It also seemed quite probable that Rad himself had become entangled in drift-wood, and been drowned.

"Feed the mare, boys," said Lord Betterson. "As soon as she is well rested, I'll drive up to the broken bridge, and see if any discoveries can be made."

Meanwhile, whatever Radcliff's fate, it did not prevent the family from rejoicing over the recovery of the lost money. And now Rufe's attention was called to another happy circ.u.mstance, one which promised to be to them a source of deeper and more lasting satisfaction.

Cecie could walk!

Yes, the marvellous effects of the previous day's events were still manifest in the case of the little invalid. Either the tremendous excitement, thrilling and rousing her whole system, or the electric shock which accompanied the whirlwind, or the exertions she felt compelled to make when Rad ran off with the money,--or all combined (for the doctors were divided in opinion on the subject),--had overcome the paralysis of her limbs, which a long course of medical treatment had failed to remove.

The family physician, who chanced to come over from the Mills that day, maintained that what he had been doing for the injured spine, the source of Cecie's troubles, had prepared the way for this result; while neighbor Peakslow, when he heard the news, grunted, and said he "guessed the gal could 'a' walked all the time if she had only thought she could, or wanted to very much." All which made Cecie smile. She only knew that she was cured, and was too proud and glad to care much what was said of her.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

FOLLOWING UP THE MYSTERY.

In the course of the day Mr. Betterson and Rufe visited the supposed scene of Rad's disaster, and there met by chance Jack and his friend Forrest Felton, who for a similar object had driven up from North Mills.

The river had gone down almost as rapidly as it had risen, and fording it now by daylight was no such difficult matter. But there still were the timbers and tree-tops amidst which the vehicles had pa.s.sed the night before.

Jack showed marks on one of his wheels where the spokes had been sharply raked, and told how, examining Snowfoot by daylight, he had found muddy splashes on his flank, as if he had been struck there by a bough or branch drenched in turbid water.

"I think," said he, "that as Rad was getting the buggy clear, the limb of a tree turned over and hit the horse. That started him, and away he went. I don't believe Rad is drowned."

Search was made among the rubbish at the bridge, and for some distance down the river; but no traces of Rad were discovered.

"Maybe he has gone home by water," was Rufe's rather too playful way of saying that the drowned body might have floated down stream.

"If he got out alive," said Jack's friend Felton, "he must have found his way to some house near by, in quest of pantaloons." And the party now proceeded to make inquiries at the scattered huts of the Dutch--or rather German--settlers along the edge of the timber.

At the first two doors where they stopped they found only women and children, who could speak no English. But at the next house they saw a girl, who eagerly answered "Yah! yah!" to their questions, and ran and called a man working at the back door.

He was a short, thick-set man, with a big russet beard and serious blue eyes.

"Goot morgin," he said, coming to the road to greet the strangers. "Der been some vind dis vay,--you see some?--vas las' ebening."

The strangers acknowledged that they had experienced some effects of the wind the night before, and repeated their questions regarding Radcliff.

"Young man,--no priches,--yah! yah!" replied Meinheer. "He come 'long here, vas 'pout nine hours, may pe some more."

"A little after nine o'clock last night?" suggested Jack.

"Yah, yah! I vas bed shleepin', somebody knock so loud, I git some candle light, and make de door open, and der vas some young feller, his face sick, his clo'es all so vet but his priches,--his priches vas not vet, for he has no priches, only some shoes."

"Where did he come from?"

"He say he come from up stream; he pa.s.s de pridge over, and der vas no pridge; and he dhrive 'cross de vaser, and he cannot dhrive 'cross; so he git out, only his priches not git out, for de vaser vas vet, and his priches keeps in de vagon, vile he keeps in de vaser; he make some lift on some logs, and someding make de hoss fright, and de hoss jump and jerk de vagon, and de vagon jerk someding vat jerk him; and de priches rides off, and he shtop in de vaser, and dhink some, and git sick, and he say de log in his shtomach and so much vaser was pad, and I mus' give him some dhink viskey and some dry priches, and I gives 'em."

"A pair of _your_ breeches?" cried Rufe, eying the baggy proportions of Meinheer's nether garments.

"I have no oder; I fetch 'em from faderland; and I gives him some. He stick his legs in, and some of his legs come too much under; de priches vas some too vide, and some not long genoof. He dhink more viskey, and feel goot, and say he find his team and bring back my priches to-morrow, and it is to-morrow yet, and he not come."