The Silent Alarm Part 9

What could be the answer? There could be but one; he had been sent to make trouble. If Black Blevens could break up the summer school he could all the more easily convince doubtful voters that these girls from the outside were unqualified to handle the school.

For a moment she wavered. She could refuse to admit him. The control of the summer school was in her hands. Yet there was no real reason to offer. Bud was larger and older than most of the other children, yet there were a few older than he.

"And besides," she told herself as she set her lips tight, "to refuse to admit him is to surrender without a battle. I won't surrender."

All this thinking took but a half dozen seconds. At the end of that time she favored the boy with her very best smile and said:

"All right, Bud, you may have the seat by the back window on the right side."

For a moment the boy stared at her in silence. A seat by a back window is at once a much coveted place and a spot quite advantageous for mischief making. Bud knew this; yet this girl teacher gave him this place. Just what his conclusions were regarding this move Florence could not even guess.

Every hour of that day seemed the hour before a thunder storm. Every child in the room knew why Bud was there; and while as a whole they were friendly to their teachers, they were at the same time normal children.

And where is the child who does not long for excitement.

The day pa.s.sed as others had. The slow drone of bees outside, the murmur of voices reciting lessons, loud shouts of play at noon and recess, then the glad burst of joy as the sixty children went racing home.

"Bud was just like the rest," Florence said to Ransom Turner that evening. "Perhaps there's nothing wrong after all."

"Just you wait!" Ransom said with a shake of his head. "Old Black Blevens ain't sendin' that boy to school fer book larnin'. Hit's time for layin'

by of the corn. Took him right outen' the field, he did. Don't make sense, that ar don't, unless he hopes Bud'll make trouble."

Florence went to bed with a headache. Doubtless Ransom was right. She was tempted to wish that they had never started the fight, that they had left Black Blevens and Al Finley to collect their ill gotten school money.

"And the children without an education!" she whispered fiercely. "No!

Never! Never! We'll fight, and by all that's good, we'll win!"

A whole week pa.s.sed and nothing unusual happened. If Bud Wax and Black Blevens meant any harm they were taking a long time to tamp powder and lay fuse. All Ransom would say was:

"Jest you mind what I say. That Black Blevens is a plumb quare worker, but he's always at hit."

Two little rumors came to Florence. A small child had told her that Bud carried his pistol to school. An older boy had said that Bud was trying to pick a quarrel with Ballard Skidmore. Ballard was larger and older than Bud, a big, slow-going, red-headed fellow who somehow reminded Florence of a St. Bernard dog. She put little faith in either of these rumors, and as for picking a quarrel with this slow-going fellow, she did not believe it could be done.

On Sat.u.r.day something vaguely disturbing occurred. There were many squirrels on the upper slopes of Little Black Mountain. Ralph had taught Florence how to shoot with his long barreled .22 pistol. She decided to try her hand at hunting. Had it not been Marion's day for helping with the work she would have asked her to go along. As it was, she struck away alone over the tortuous cow path that led to the upper reaches of the mountain.

Having donned a pair of canvas knickers, high boots and an old hunting coat, she was prepared for a free, rough time of it. Free and rough it was, too. Brambles tore at her, rocks slid from beneath her feet to send her sprawling, a rotten tree trunk over which she was climbing suddenly caved in and threatened to send her rolling down the mountain. She enjoyed it all. A typical American girl, strong and brave, born for the out-of-doors, she took the buffets of nature and laughed in its face.

As she reached a higher elevation the slope became gentler. Here she found an abundance of beach and chestnut trees, and higher up a grove of walnut.

Hardly had she reached the edge of the walnut grove when she caught a flash of red, then a scolding chatter from a tall tree.

"A squirrel," she breathed as she silently lifted the hammer of her long pistol. "I wonder-I just wonder-"

Her wonderings were cut short by a sudden thud close by, then another.

Two frisking squirrels had come to the ground within a dozen paces of her. Like a flash of light they were away over the moss and up another tree. This tree was not large and the leaves were scanty. On tip-toe she stalked it.

Gazing intently upward, she discovered a pair of small black eyes looking down at her.

"There's one."

She lifted the shiny barrel, but at that instant the eyes vanished.

Off to the right she caught a chatter. Then, just as she went tip-toeing away, a half-grown walnut dropped at her feet. She picked it up. The sh.e.l.l had been half eaten away.

"You saucy things!" she exclaimed, shaking her fist in mock anger at the frolickers.

With eyes wandering everywhere, tip-toeing, listening, pausing for a moment to start quickly away, she at last crossed over into a grove of chestnuts.

All this time the inside of her pistol's barrel remained as shiny as when she started. Always, as she prepared to shoot, she caught a shrill chatter or saw the flash of a bushy tail. It was great fun, so she went on with it until at last, quite tired out, she flung herself down beneath a great chestnut tree to half bury herself in green and gray moss as soft as a velvet cushion. There, flat on her back, breathing the fresh mountain air, listening to the songs of forest birds far and near, catching the distant melodious tink-tank of cow bells, squinting at the flash of sunlight as it played among the leaves, she at last drifted off into a dreamy sleep.

She did not sleep long, but when she awoke she was conscious of some living creature near her. Then she heard a thump-thump among the leaves, followed by a scratching sound. Without the least sound, she moved her head from side to side. Then she saw him, an inquisitive red squirrel. He was sitting on a stump, not ten feet away, staring at her. Instantly her hand was on her pistol, but she did not lift it. Instead, she rolled over and lifted up her head to look again.

The squirrel had retreated a little, but had mounted another stump for a second look.

"How easy!" she thought, silently gripping her pistol.

There came a rustle from the right, then one at the left. The ground was alive with squirrels who had made a party of it and had come for a look at this sleeping nymph of the woods. She caught the gleam of their peering eyes from leaf pile, low bush, stump and fallen trees.

"No!" she whispered at last. "I couldn't kill one of you. Not one. But it's been heaps of fun to hunt you."

At that she sat up and began shaking the dead leaves from her hair.

Instantly her furry visitors vanished.

But what was that? She caught a sound of heavier movements in the leaves.

Instantly she was on her knees, peering through the bushes. What could it have been? Surely not a squirrel. Too heavy for that. There it was again!

Rustle! Rustle! Rustle!

Then again there was silence, a silence that was frightening. The girl felt the hair rising at the back of her neck. She was alone on the mountain. Was it a bear? There were bears on the mountain. Was it a man?

An enemy?

As she glanced about she realized with a little burst of fright that, like sparrows at sight of a hawk, the squirrels had vanished. This indeed was an ominous token.

Springing to her feet, she thrust her long barreled pistol into an inside pocket of her jacket, where it could be s.n.a.t.c.hed out at a moment's notice. Yet, even as she did this, she realized how absurd a weapon is a long barrelled .22 when one faces real danger.

For a moment, standing like a wild deer, poised on tip-toe ready for instant flight, she stood there listening. All she heard was the wild beating of her own heart and the faint tink-tank of cow bells in the valley below.

The sound of these bells increased her fear. Their very faintness told her the distance she had wandered away over the mountain.

The next moment, walking on tip-toe, scarcely breathing, with her pistol snugly hidden in her coat, she was making good her retreat.

It was not until Monday morning that the real truth of this mountain experience came to her. Then it came with a suddenness and force that was strong enough to bowl over even a man of strong heart.

She was on her way to school when Ransom Turner, having called her into the store and closed the door, said in a low husky tone that told her of deep feeling:

"There's a warrant out for your arrest, but don't you care narry bit!"

"For my arrest?" Florence stared. "What have I done?"

"Hit's for carryin' concealed weapons, a pistol gun, I reckon."