The Corner House Girls Snowbound Part 24

They were near the shortest day of the year and the sun rose very late indeed; so n.o.body at Red Deer Lodge got up early, unless it was the kitchen man who had to light the fires and bring in much wood. He tramped paths through the new-fallen snow to the outbuildings before sunrise. By the time Neale O'Neil, his head filled with the puzzling thoughts of the night before, reached the rear premises, the yard of the Lodge was marked and re-marked with footsteps.

He sought Hedden, however, having seen that the snow in front of the Lodge showed no footprint. The fox lay just where it had been shot.

"Does any of our party sleep in the garret, Hedden?" Neale asked the butler.

"No, young man. We all have rooms at the back of the house."

The boy told the man about the shooting of the fox. "Of course, one of the men was not out with a small rifle, and plugged old Reynard when he was howling at the moon, was he?"

"No," replied the butler. "Neither John nor Lawrence knows how to use a gun, I'm sure. Perhaps it was that tall man, Ike M'Graw."

"Well, seems to me he ought to have come and got the pelt," said Neale, ruminatingly. "It's worth something all right, when furs are so high. Say, Hedden, how do you get upstairs into the garret?"

Hedden told him, presuming that it was merely a boy's curiosity that caused him to ask. But Neale had a deeper reason than that for wishing to find the way upstairs.

He could not understand from what angle the fox had been shot while he and Agnes were looking out of the window, if the hunter had been in the wood. There had been no flash or sign of smoke from the edge of the forest, and Neale's vision swept the line of black shadow for hundreds of yards at the moment of the report.

"Smokeless powder is all right," muttered the boy. "But they can't overcome the flash of the exploding sh.e.l.l in the dark. No, sir! That marksman was not in the wood. And the report sounded right over our heads!"

He said nothing more to Hedden, but found the upper stairs at the rear of the house. At the top was a heavy door, but it was not locked. He thrust it open rather gingerly, and looked into the great, raftered loft.

The sun was above the treetops now and shone redly into the front windows. There was light enough for him to see that as far as human occupants went, the garret of the Lodge was empty.

There was not much up here, anyway. Several boxes, some lumber, and a heap of rubbish in one corner.

Neale O'Neil stepped into the place and walked to the front of the building. The windows were square and swung inward on hinges. He knew that this row of front windows was directly over that at which he and Agnes stood looking out upon the moon-lit lawn at bedtime.

The windows were all fastened with b.u.t.tons. As far as he could see none gave evidence--at least on the inside--of having been recently opened. Neale shivered in the chill, dead air of the loft.

If the marksman that had shot the fox was up here, from which window did he shoot? Neale could not find any mark along the window sill or on the floor.

Suddenly the boy began opening the windows, one after the other. Some of them stuck, but he persisted until each one swung open. Outside the snow that had fallen the evening before lay in a fluffy layer on the window sill.

At the third window he halted. In this layer of light snow was a mark.

Neale uttered a satisfied exclamation.

It was the matrix of a round tube--the barrel of the gun that had fired the shot which had finished Reynard, the fox!

"Can't be anything else," thought the boy. "He knelt right here and rested his gun across the sill. Yes! it points downward--pressed heavier at the outer end than near the window. Yes!"

The boy got down and squinted along the mark in the snow. His keen eye easily brought the huddled, sandy object on the snow down below into range.

"Now, what do you know about that?" Neale O'Neil asked aloud. "Who was up here with a gun last night and popped over that fox? I wonder if I ought to tell Mr. Howbridge."

Had he done so the lawyer would quickly have pieced together what Hedden had told him about the live embers in the grate and Neale's discovery. Whether he would have arrived at a correct conclusion in the matter, was another thing.

However that might be, Neale O'Neil was sure that somebody had access to the garret and had shot the fox therefrom. After the rear premises of the Lodge had been tracked up so before daylight, half a dozen people might have left the house by the rear door without their footprints being seen. If the marksman had no business in the Lodge he could easily have got away.

Puzzling over these thoughts, Neale descended to find most of the party before the fire in the living-room, waiting for breakfast. Agnes was eagerly telling of the fox she had seen shot at bedtime.

Neale added no details to her story, save that the fox still lay on the snow outside.

"Whoever hit him didn't care for the pelt," said the boy. "Now that it is frozen, it will be hard to skin. A fox hide is worth something. I'm going to thaw out the body and try to save the skin--for Aggie, of course."

"Oh, my!" cried the beauty, "won't it be fine to have a collar or a m.u.f.f made out of a fox that I saw shot with my own eyes?"

"Odd about that," said Mr. Howbridge thoughtfully. "I wonder who could have been so near the Lodge last evening. And then, to have left the fox there!"

The breakfast call interrupted him. Neale said nothing further about it. After the meal, however, the young people all got into their warm wraps and overshoes and went out of doors.

Tom Jonah was turned loose, and he almost at once dashed around the house to the spot where the body of the fox lay. The children gathered around the fuzzy animal in great excitement.

"Oh, it looks like Mrs. Allen's spitz dog--only this is reddish and Sambo, the spitz, is white," Tess said. "The poor--little--thing!"

"This is no 'expectorates' dog," chuckled Neale, grabbing the creature by the tail. "'Expectorates' is a much better word than 'spits,' Tess.

Now, I am going to take this fellow and hang him up in the back kitchen where he will thaw out. No, Tom Jonah! you are not going to worry him."

"What lovely long fur!" murmured Agnes. "Do you suppose you can really cure the skin for me, Neale?" she demanded.

"What's the matter with the skin?" demanded Sammy, in wonder. "Is it sick?"

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Agnes. "These children have to be explained to every minute. I hope that fox skin has no disease, Sammy."

Luke and Ruth and Cecile had gone for a tramp through the wood. The little folks set to work building a snow man which was to be of wondrous proportions when completed. Naturally Neale and Agnes kept together.

Agnes had been wandering along the edge of the wood in front of the house while Neale carried the fox indoors. Tom Jonah came back with Neale and began snuffing about the spot where the fox had laid.

"See here, Neale O'Neil," cried Agnes, "I can't find anybody's footprints over here. Where do you suppose that man shot the fox from?"

"Humph!" grunted Neale noncommittally.

"But here's just the cunningest hoofprints! See them!" cried Agnes.

The boy joined her. Two rows of marks made by split-hoofed animals ran along the edge of the wood.

"Crackey!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the boy. "Those are deer."

"You don't mean it?"

"Must be. Red deer, I bet. And right close to the Lodge! How tame these creatures are."

"Well, deer won't hurt us," said Agnes, decidedly. "Let's see where they went to."

Neale was nothing loath. One direction was as good as another. He wanted much to talk to somebody about the discovery he had made in the loft of the Lodge; but he did not wish to frighten Agnes, so he did not broach the subject.

The two rows of hoof marks went on, side by side, along the edge of the clearing. They followed them to the very end of the opening which had been cleared about Red Deer Lodge--the northern end.