The Camp Fire Girls at Onoway House Part 19

The old man smiled vacantly and held out the bit of machinery he was working on. "It's a machine for saving time," he said. "As the minutes are ticked off--" There was nothing to be gotten out of him, and they withdrew again. Calvin looked around him fearfully as they returned through the fields, to see if his uncle had watched him take the girls to the cottage, but there was no sign of him anywhere, at which he breathed an unconscious sigh of relief. Tired out with their ceaseless searching and sick with anxiety, they returned to Onoway House.

If we were writing an ingeniously intricate detective story the thing to do would be to wait until Sahwah was discovered by some brilliant piece of detective work and then have her tell her story, leaving the explanation of the mystery until the last chapter, and keeping the reader on the verge of nervous prostration to the end of the piece. But, as this is only a faithful narrative of actual events, and as Sahwah is our heroine as much as any of the girls, we know that the reader would much prefer to follow her adventures with their own eyes, rather than hear about them later when she tells the story to the wondering household. And we also think it only fair to say that if Sahwah's return had depended on any brilliant detective work on the part of the others we have very grave doubts as to its ever being accomplished. We will, then, leave the dwellers at Onoway House to their searching and theorizing and bewailing, and follow Sahwah from the time they started to play hide-and-seek and Hinpoha blinded her eyes and began to count "five, ten, fifteen, twenty."

Sahwah ran across the garden toward the house, intending to swing herself into one of the open cellar windows. Near this window was a flower bed which Migwan had filled with especially rich black soil. That morning she had watered the bed and had done it so thoroughly that the ground was turned into a very soft mud. Sahwah, not looking where she was going, stepped into this mud and sank in over her shoe top with one foot. When she had entered the window she stood on the cellar floor and regarded the muddy shoe disgustedly. Feeling that it was wet through, she ripped it off and flung it out of the window. It landed back in the muddy bed and was hidden by the growing plants. Sahwah then proceeded to hide herself in the fruit cellar. This was a part.i.tioned off place in a dark corner. She sat among the cupboards and baskets and watched Hinpoha pa.s.s the window several times as she hunted for the players. Once Hinpoha peered searchingly into the window and Sahwah thought she was on the verge of being discovered and pressed back in her corner. There was a basket of potatoes in the way of her getting quite into the corner and she moved this out. There was also a barrel of vinegar and she slipped in behind this. As she moved the barrel it dropped back upon her shoeless foot and it was all she could do to repress a cry of pain as she stood and held the battered member in her hand. But the pain became so bad she decided to give up the game and get something to relieve it.

She pushed hard against the barrel to move it out, but this time it would not move. She pushed harder, bracing her back against the wooden wall behind her, when, without warning, the wall caved in as if by magic, and she fell backwards head over heels into inky darkness. The wall through which she had fallen closed with a bang.

Sahwah sat up and reached mechanically for the hurt foot. The pain had increased alarmingly and for a time shut out all other sensations. Then it abated a little and Sahwah had time to wonder what she had fallen into. She was sitting on a stone floor, she could make that out. It must be a room of some kind, she decided, but the darkness was so intense that she could make nothing out. "There must have been another part to the cellar behind the fruit cellar, although we never knew it," thought Sahwah, "and the back of the fruit cellar was the door." As soon as she could stand upon her foot again she moved forward in the direction from which she thought she had come and searched with her hands for a doork.n.o.b. But her fingers encountered only a smooth wall surface and after about five minutes of careful feeling she came to the startled conclusion that there was no such thing. "I must have got turned around when I tumbled," she thought, "and am feeling of the wrong wall." She accordingly moved forward until her outstretched hands encountered another hard surface and she repeated the process of looking for a doork.n.o.b. No more success here. "Well, there are four walls to every room," thought Sahwah, "and I've still got two more trys." Again she moved out cautiously and with ever increasing nervousness admitted that there was no door in that direction. "Now for the fourth side, the right one at last," she said to herself. "One, two, three, out goes me!" She moved quickly in the fourth and last direction. Without warning she ran hard into something which tripped her up. She felt her head striking violently against something hard and then she knew no more.

She woke to a dream consciousness first. She dreamed she was lying in the soft sand on the lake sh.o.r.e near one of the great stone piers, where a number of men were at work. They were pounding the stones with great hammers and the vibrations from the blows shook the beach and went through her as she lay on the sand. Gradually the sparkling water faded from her sight; the sky grew dark and night fell, but still the blows continued to sound on the stone. Just where the dream ended and reality began she never knew, but, with a rush of consciousness she knew that she was awake and alive; that everything was dark and that she was lying on her face in something soft that was like sand and yet not like it.

And the pounding she had heard in her dream was still going on. Thud, thud, it shook the earth and jarred her so her teeth were on edge. For a long time she lay and listened without wondering much what it was. Her head ached with such intensity that it might have been the throbbing of her temples that was shaking the earth so. After a while that dulled, but the jarring blows still kept up. With a cessation of the pain came the power to think and Sahwah remembered the strange noises they had heard issuing from the ground. It must be the same noise; only it was a hundred times louder now. It was a sort of clanging thump; like the sound of steel on stone. Even with all that noise going on Sahwah slipped off into half consciousness at times. Although there did not seem to be any doors or windows, she was not suffering for lack of air, but at the time she was too dazed to notice this and wonder at it.

She woke with a start from one of these dozes to the realization that there was a broad streak of light on the floor. Fully conscious now, she raised her head and looked around. She was lying in a bin filled with sawdust. When she held up her head her eyes came just to the top of it.

By the light she could see that she was indeed in a sort of sub-cellar.

It must have been older than the other cellar for the floor was made of great slabs of mouldy stone. Her eyes followed the beam of light and she saw that a door had been opened into still another cellar beyond. In this chamber a lantern stood on the floor, whence came the light, and its ray produced weird and fantastic moving shadows. These shadows came from a man who was wielding a pickaxe against a spot in the stone wall.

It was this that was causing the jarring blows. Startled almost out of her senses at seeing a man thus apparently caged up in the sub-cellar of Onoway House, Sahwah could only lay back with a gasp. She could not raise her voice to cry out had she been so inclined.

But fast on the heels of that shock came another. The worker paused in his exertions to wipe the perspiration from his brow, and stood where the light of the lantern shone full in his face. Sahwah's heart gave a great leap when she recognized Abner Smalley. Abner Smalley in the hidden sub-cellar of Onoway House, digging a hole in the wall! Sahwah forgot her own plight in curiosity as to what he was doing. She lay and watched him fascinated while he resumed his pounding. So he was the mysterious intruder who had wrought such terror among them! This, then, was the well digger's ghost! What could he be searching for in the cellar of his neighbor's house? Sahwah dug her feet into the soft sawdust as she watched the pick rise and fall. She had no idea of the flight of time. She thought it was only a few minutes since she had fallen into the sub-cellar. She lay thinking of the expressions on the faces of the girls when she would tell them her discovery. To think that she had been the one to solve the mystery! She felt a little disappointed that the mysterious intruder should have turned out to be someone they knew. It would have been more in keeping with her idea of romance to have found a prince shut up in the cellar.

While she was thinking these thoughts the light suddenly vanished and she heard the bang of a door shutting. She was in darkness once more. In a moment she heard footsteps retreating and dying away in the distance.

All was silent again. It took her some moments to collect her thoughts sufficiently to realize a new and significant fact. _Abner Smalley had not gone out by the door into the fruit cellar. There must be, then, another way of egress from the sub-cellar._ Instantly Sahwah made up her mind to follow him and see how he had gotten out at the other end. Her feet were imbedded deeply in the sawdust and she became aware of the fact that her shoeless foot was resting against something with a sharp edge. She drew it away and then carefully felt with her hands for the object. She could not see it when she had it but it felt like a metal box of some kind, possibly tin. She carried it with her and moved toward the place where she now knew there was a door. She found the handle easily and opened it. This was the side of the wall toward which she had moved when she had run into the bin before, and so she did not discover it. A strong breath of air struck her as she advanced into this chamber.

It was scarcely more than a pa.s.sage, for by reaching out her arms she could touch the wall on both sides. She moved cautiously, fearing to fall again in the dark. She felt the place in the wall where Abner Smalley had made an indentation with his pick. She was wondering where this pa.s.sage led and wishing it would come to an end soon, when she struck the already sore foot against what must have been the pickaxe set against the wall and fell on her nose once more. The tin box she carried was rammed into the pit of her stomach and knocked the breath out of her, but this time she had not hit her head.

She lay still for a moment trying to get her breath back. Her eyes were becoming accustomed to the inky darkness by this time. She looked down and saw a stone floor beneath her. She turned her head to one side and saw a stone wall beside her. She turned over altogether and looked up-and saw the constellation Ca.s.siopea flashing down at her from the sky. For a moment she could not believe her senses. Of all the strange sights she had seen nothing had affected her so powerfully as the sight of that familiar group of stars. What she had expected to see she could not tell, stone perhaps, but anything except the open sky. She sat up in a hurry and began to investigate where she was. The wall around her seemed to be circular and all of a sudden Sahwah had the answer. She was in the cistern-the old unused cistern which was not a great distance from the house. This, then, was the opening of the sub-cellar, the way in which Mr. Smalley had made his escape. There was usually a covering over the cistern, but he had evidently been in a hurry and left it off.

The fact that there were stars out took Sahwah's breath away. It was night then; had she been in that cellar all day? It was inconceivable, yet it was undoubtedly true. By the faint glimmer of the stars she could make out that there were hollows in the stone side of the cistern by which a person could easily climb out. She lost no time in climbing when she made this discovery. What a joy it was to be coming up into G.o.d's outdoors again! As she emerged from the cistern she saw Migwan standing in the garden beside the back porch. The moon shone full on her as she stepped out of the hole in the ground and just then Migwan caught sight of her. The apparition was too much for Migwan and she screamed one terrified scream after another until the girls came running from all over to see what fresh calamity had happened. Only seeing Sahwah standing in their midst and not having seen her appear magically out of the depths of the ground, they could not understand Migwan's terror.

"Stop screaming, Migwan," said Sahwah, and when Migwan heard her voice and saw that it was really she, she quieted down and listened while Sahwah told her tale of adventure since going down into the cellar to hide. The day had pa.s.sed so quickly for Sahwah, she having lain unconscious until late in the afternoon, that she, of course, knew nothing of their frantic search for her and so could not comprehend why they made such a fuss over her return. They laughed and cried all at once and hugged her until she finally protested.

"What have you brought along as a souvenir of your trip?" asked Nyoda, who had regained her light-hearted manner now that Sahwah was safely back.

Sahwah looked down at the box she held in her hand. "I found it in the bin of sawdust," she said. "It was just like playing 'Fish-pond' at the children's parties. You put your hand in a box of sawdust and draw out a handsome prize." And Sahwah laughed, her familiar long drawn-out giggle, that they had despaired of ever hearing again. She laid the box on the table. It was of tin, about nine inches long by three inches wide by three high, with a closely fitting cover. "Shall I open it, Nyoda?" she asked.

"I don't see any harm in doing so," said Nyoda. Sahwah took off the cover. There was nothing in the box but a folded piece of paper. She took it and spread it before them on the table.

"What is it?" they all cried, crowding around. The first thing that caught their eye was a slanting line drawn across the paper in heavy ink. There was some writing beside it, but this was so faded that it took some studying to make it out. Finally they got it. It read:

"_Supposed extension of gas vein._" The upper end of the line was marked "_36 feet west of cistern._" There was a cross at that point also, and this was marked, "_Place where gas was struck at 300 feet._"

"The Deacon's gas well!" they all exclaimed in chorus. It was true, then.

"And there was a well digger's ghost, even if it didn't turn out to be the one we expected!" said Migwan.

That day was never to be forgotten, although the next cleared up the mystery and brought still another surprise. Dave Beeman, the constable, was once more brought out and this time furnished with information that nearly caused his eyes to start from his head. Abner Smalley, the (as everyone supposed) respectable citizen of Centerville Road, breaking into his neighbor's house and deliberately trying to dig a hole in the stone wall. It was the sensation of his career. "Well, I'll be jiggered!" he gasped.

But his surprise was nothing compared to Abner Smalley's when he was confronted with the accusation without warning. He turned so pale and trembled so much that it was useless to deny his guilt.

"You are guilty, Abney Smalley," said the constable, in such a solemn tone that the girls could hardly keep straight faces. "You'd better make a clean breast of it and tell what you were doing in that house or it might go hard with you."

Abner Smalley, although he was a bully by nature, was a coward when the odds were against him, and he had always had a wholesome fear of the law, so at Dave Beeman's suggestion he decided to "make a clean breast of it." We will not weary the reader with all the conversation that took place, but will simply tell the facts of the story.

Some time ago, while the old caretaker lived on the place yet, the story of the Deacon's gas well had come to Abner Smalley's ears. He heard a fact connected with it, however, that was not generally known, namely, that the Deacon had made a record of the place where the gas was found.

Believing that the Deacon had left it hidden somewhere in the house, he had devised a means of breaking in and searching for it. His first plan had been to frighten the dwellers in the house and make them believe there was a ghost in the attic so they would give the place a wide berth at night and leave him free to ransack the Deacon's old furniture. He frightened the Mitch.e.l.ls so that they moved. But no sooner had the Mitch.e.l.ls departed than the new caretakers had come; and they were a much bigger houseful than the others.

He had tried the same plan with them as he had with the others, namely, mysterious noises around the place at night. But what had frightened Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l into moving had no effect on these new farmers. They shot off a gun when he was doing his best ghost stunt, namely, blowing into a bottle, which had produced that weird moaning sound. He it was who had dressed up as a ghost and appeared to Nyoda in the tepee; throwing the red pepper into her face when she made as if to attack him with a pole.

It was he whom they had seen coming out of the barn that night, and later it was he again whom Migwan had seen during the hail storm. He had disappeared so utterly by jumping down the cistern. That was the first time he had been down, and on this occasion he had discovered the pa.s.sage leading to the sub-cellar. It was he the girls had heard in the attic on numerous occasions. He had entered and gone out after dark by means of the Balm of Gilead tree. One time he broke the window. He had been down cellar that night when Sahwah nearly caught him. He was looking for the other entrance to the sub-cellar, which he never found.

He knocked over the basket of potatoes which had mystified them so. He had been on the point of entering the house that day when Sahwah suddenly returned from town after he thought the whole family was gone for the day. When he saw her go off along the river he went in anyway and was nearly caught in the attic by the girls. He had escaped detection by hiding in a large chest.

The day they had gone for the picnic he saw them go and spent all day looking through the desks in the house. Finally the dog barked so he gave him the poisoned meat he had brought along to use if necessary.

Then the family had returned and he had had a narrow escape into the cistern. He had stayed there until night, when he had set fire to the tepee, not knowing that anyone was sleeping in it. After starting the blaze he had again sought refuge in the cistern and when the crowd had gathered, came out in their midst so that his absence from such an exciting event in the neighborhood would cause no comment among the farmers. The cistern was in the shadow and everyone was watching the fire so intently that he was able to emerge unseen.

He had sprayed the tomatoes with lime and written the note which they found on the door. He had left the chisel in the automobile on one occasion when he had been hunting through the things in the barn; forgetting to take it with him when he went out.

He wanted to get hold of that record secretly and be sure whether the great vein of gas which the Deacon knew existed was on the property now owned by the Bartletts or that of the Landsdownes, and then he was going to buy that property before the owners knew about the gas, as the land would be worth a fortune if that fact ever became known. He was pretty sure, after discovering that sub-cellar, that the Deacon had left his papers down there when he went to California. By pounding on the walls he had discovered one place which he was sure was hollow. If the stone that covered the place could be removed by any trick he failed to discover it and had to resort to digging it out with a pick. This, as we already know, produced the dull thudding sound underground which had frightened the household almost out of their wits. The reason he could prowl around in the yard at night after they had set the dog to watch was that Pointer knew him and made no disturbance upon seeing him.

Abner Smalley was marched off triumphantly by Dave Beeman, and was held on such a complicated charge of house-breaking, arson, a.s.sault and battery, and intimidating peaceful citizens, that it took the combined efforts of the village to draw it up. Thus ended the great mystery which had kept Onoway House in more or less of an uproar all summer.

"I never saw anything like the way we Winnebagos have of falling into things," said Sahwah. "Here Mr. Smalley made such elaborate efforts to find that record, using up more energy and ingenuity than it would take to dig up the whole farm and hunt for the gas well; and he didn't find it in the end; and all I did was drop in on top of it without even suspecting its existence."

"There must be a special destiny that guides us," said Migwan. "Perhaps we possess an enchanted goblet, like the 'Luck of Edenhall,' only it's 'The Luck of the Winnebagos.'"

"Cheer for the 'Luck of the Winnebagos,'" said Sahwah, who never lost an occasion to raise a cheer on any pretext. And at that Sahwah never dreamed of the extent of the good fortune she had brought the Bartletts by her lucky tumble. The vein of gas which was struck when they subsequently drilled proved a sensation even in that notable gas region and made millionaires of its owners. And the reward which Sahwah received for finding the record, and that which the others received "just for living," as Migwan expressed it-for though they had not found the sub-cellar themselves it was due to their game that Sahwah had found it-drove the memory of their fright from their heads. But we are getting a little ahead of our story. There is one more chapter yet to the Luck of the Winnebagos before that remarkable summer came to an end.

After the departure of Abner Smalley things grew so quiet at Onoway House that Migwan, who had declared before that she would be a wreck if the excitement did not cease soon, was now complaining that things seemed flat and she wished the mystery hadn't been cleared up because it robbed them of their chief topic of conversation.

"Well, I'm going to take advantage of the quiet atmosphere and straighten out my bureau drawers," said Nyoda. "I haven't been able to put my mind to it with all this excitement going on. And they're a sight since you girls went rummaging for things for the Thieves' Market." In doing this she came upon that strange creation of Uncle Peter's brain, the plan for the "Wasted Minute Saving Machine." She showed it to the girls and they examined it wonderingly.

"What is this on the other side?" asked Migwan. "It's a will!" she cried, reading it through. "It says, 'I, Adam Smalley, give and bequeathe my farm on the Centerville Road to my son Jim, as Abner has already had his share in cash.'"

"Let me see!" cried Calvin. "It's the latest one!" he shouted, reading the date. "It's dated 1902 and the one Uncle Abner found was 1900. The farm is mine after all! Uncle Peter had this will in his possession and didn't know it! How can I thank you girls for what you've done for me?"

"It was all Migwan's fault," said Hinpoha. "She insisted upon going to see whether the old man was all right after the storm."

Migwan declared that she had had nothing to do with it; it was the Luck of the Winnebagos that had given her the inspiration. But Calvin knew well that in this case the Luck of the Winnebagos was only Migwan's own thoughtfulness.

CHAPTER XIV.-GOOD-BYE TO ONOWAY HOUSE.

By the first of September Migwan had made enough money from the sale of canned tomatoes to more than pay her way through college the first year.

"It's Mother Nature who has been my fairy G.o.dmother," she said to the girls. "I asked her for the money to go to college and she put her hand deep into her earth pocket and brought it out for me. It's like the magic gardens in the fairy tales where the money grew on the bushes."

"What a summer this has been, to be sure," said Hinpoha, who was in a reflective mood. They were all sitting in the orchard, busy with various sorts of handwork. The day was hot and drowsy and the shade of the trees most inviting. "Migwan and I thought we would have such a quiet time together, just we two. She was going to write a book and I was going to ill.u.s.trate it, when we weren't working in the garden. And how differently it all turned out! One by one you other girls came-I'll never forget how funny Gladys and Nyoda looked when they came out that night, and how surprised Sahwah was to find you here when she arrived.

Then Gladys brought Ophelia, I mean Beatrice, and after that we never had a quiet moment. Then the mystery began and kept up all summer.

Instead of these three months being a quiet rest they've been the most thrilling time of my life."

"It seems to have agreed with you, though," said Sahwah, mischievously, whereupon there was a general laugh, for Hinpoha, instead of growing thin with all the worry and excitement, had actually gained five pounds.