The Corner House Girls Snowbound

  CHAPTER XIV

  BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON

  Ike M'Graw, the timber cruiser, was an excellent weather prophet; andthis was proved to be a fact before all of those at Red Deer Lodge hadgone to bed on this first night.

  Neale O'Neil chanced to raise the shade of one of the windows in theboys' room before undressing, and exclaimed to Luke:

  "Hey! who said it snowed? Look at that moon up there!"

  Luke Shepard joined him and looked out, too, at the rather misty orbof night that peered through the breaking clouds. But little snow hadfallen during the evening.

  "Going to be a good day, just as that old codger said it would,"agreed Luke. "My, how white everything is--really, silver! And alonely place, isn't it?"

  "You said it," agreed Neale. He was feeling in his pockets, andsuddenly added: "Crackey! I've lost my knife."

  "You had it down there peeling apples for the girls," said Luke, whowas beginning to undress.

  Sammy was already in bed and sound asleep. Neale started for the door.

  "I don't want to lose that knife," he said. "I am going to run downand get it."

  The serving people had gone to bed, but there were dim lights on thegallery and one below in the big hall. Neale ran lightly down thecarpeted stairs on his side of the house. The light was so dim that hefumbled around a good while hunting for the missing knife.

  Suddenly something clattered about his ears--some missiles that camefrom above, but were not much heavier than snowflakes, it would seem.Neale jumped, and then stared around.

  He could not see a thing moving or hear anything. Where the whiteobjects had come from he could not understand. Finally he found onethat had rolled on the floor.

  "Popcorn! Say! it's not snowing popcorn in here--not by any naturalmeans," the boy told himself, immediately suspicious.

  Suddenly he spied his knife, and he pocketed that. As he did so therecame another baptism of popcorn. He dropped down below the edge of atable which stood in the middle of the room under the chandelier. Allthe light came from above, and there was not much of that; so it wasdark under the table.

  He heard a faint giggle. "Ah-ha!" thought Neale. "I smell a mouse!That is a girl's giggle."

  He saw that the way to the foot of the stairs that were nearest thegirls' rooms, was quite dark. He ran out from under the table, butsoftly and on his hands and knees, and reached the stairway withoutmaking a sound.

  The popcorn rattled again upon the table top, and once more he heardthe giggle. He wormed his way up the stairs in the shadow and reachedthe gallery. Here a jet of gas from the side wall gave some light. Hesaw the robed figure hanging over the bannister and in the act ofthrowing another handful of popcorn at the spot where the boy wassupposed to be crouching.

  Neale O'Neil crept forward from the top of the stairs, still on hishands and knees. He was likewise in the shadow, although he could seethe figure ahead of him plainly.

  "Meow!" crooned the boy, imitating a cat with remarkable ingenuity."Meow!"

  "Oh, mercy!" hissed a startled voice.

  "Ma-ro-o-ow!" urged Neale O'Neil, repeating his feline success.

  "Mercy!" ejaculated the whisperer. "That's a strange cat."

  "Ma-row-ro-o-ow!" continued Neale, with a lingering wail.

  "Here, kitty! kitty! kitty!" murmured the girl crouching by thebannister. "Oh, where are you? Poor kitty!"

  Immediately Neale changed his tone and produced a growl that not onlysounded savage but seemed so near that the startled girl jumped upwith a cry:

  "Oh! Oh! Neale!"

  "Ma-row-ro-o-ow! Ssst!" continued what purported to be a cat, and onethat was very much annoyed.

  "Oh! _Oh!_ OH!" shrieked Agnes, springing up and leaning over therailing. "Neale! Come quick!"

  And there Neale was right beside her! He appeared so suddenly that shewould have shrieked again, and perhaps brought half the household tothe spot, had not the boy grabbed her quickly and placed a hand overher mouth, stifling the cry about to burst forth.

  "Hush!" he commanded. "Want to get Mrs. Mac or Mr. Howbridge out hereto see what is the matter?"

  "Oh, Neale!" sputtered Agnes. "I thought you were a cat."

  "And I thought you were a hailstorm of popcorn."

  "You horrid boy! To scare me so!"

  "You horrid girl! To shower me with popcorn!"

  "I don't care--"

  "Neither do I."

  Agnes began to giggle. "What were you doing down there?" she asked.

  "I was looking for my pocketknife. Wouldn't lose it for a farm DownEast with a pig on it!" declared the boy. "What are you doing outhere?"

  "I went to Mrs. Mac's room to give her her nightcap. It was in my bag.Oh, Neale! do you suppose it will be clear by morning, as that funnyold man says?"

  "It's clear now."

  "You don't mean it?"

  "Come along here to the window and look for yourself," the boy said,and led her toward the front of the house along the gallery.

  There was a broad and deep-silled window over the front door of theLodge. Neale drew back the hangings. They could see out into the nightwhich was now all black and silver.

  The forest that edged the clearing in which stood the Lodge was asblack as ever an evergreen forest could be. The tops of the trees weresilvered by the moonbeams, but the shadows at the foot of the treeswere like ink.

  In the open the new-fallen snow glittered as though the moonlight fellon precious stones. It was so beautiful a scene that for a momentAgnes could only grip Neale O'Neil's arm and utter an ecstatic sigh.

  "Scrumptious, isn't it?" said the boy, understanding her mood.

  "Lovely!" sighed Agnes. "Ruth and Cecile ought to see this."

  "Hold on!" warned the boy. "Get them out here and we'll both be sentto bed in a hurry. Ruth's got her bossing clothes on--has had 'em onever since we left Milton."

  "Te-he!" giggled Agnes suddenly. "She feels her responsibility."

  "Guess she does," chuckled Neale. "But there's no need to add to hertroubles. Believe me! the less I am bossed around by her the better Ilike it."

  "Oh, Neale," said Agnes, "she only does it for your good."

  "Don't you fret," returned the boy, with a sniff. "I can get alongwithout Ruth or anybody else worrying about whether I'm good, or not.Believe me!"

  "Oh!" squealed Agnes suddenly. "What's that?"

  "Huh! Seen a rat? Scared to death?" scoffed Neale O'Neil.

  "Look at that thing out there! It's no rat," declared the girleagerly.

  Neale then looked in the direction she pointed. Not twenty yards fromthe house, and sitting on its haunches in the snow, was an object thatat first Neale thought was a dog. The shadow it cast upon the moon-litsnow showed pointed ears, however, and a bushy tail.

  "Crackey, Aggie!" gasped Neale, "that's a fox."

  "A fox? Right here near the house? Just like that?" gasped the girl."Why--why, he must be wild!"

  "Crackey!" returned Neale, smothering his laughter, "you didn'tsuppose he was tame, did you?"

  "But--but," stammered the girl, "if a wild fox comes so near thehouse, one of those dreadful lynxes may come--or a bear. I never! Why,we might be besieged by wolves and bears and wildcats. Did you ever?"

  "No, I never was," scoffed Neale. "Not yet. But, really, I am willingto be. I'll try anything--once."

  "I guess you wouldn't be so smart, young man, if the animals reallydid come here and serenade us. Why--"

  "Listen! That fellow is serenading us now," declared Neale, muchamused.

  The sharp, shrill yap of the fox reached their ears. Then, from therear of the house where Tom Jonah was confined in the back kitchen,the roar of the old dog's bark answered the fox's yapping.

  And then from somewhere--was it from above and inside the house, oroutside and in the black woods?--there sounded a sharp explosion.Agnes flashed a questioning glance at Neale; but the boy pointed,crying:

  "Quick! Look! The fox!"

  The little animal with the bushy ta
il that had raised its pointed noseto yap mournfully at the moon, had suddenly sprung straight up intothe air. It cleared the snow at least four feet. One convulsivewriggle it gave with its whole body, and fell back, a black heap, onthe snow.

  "Oh, Neale! what happened to it?" gasped Agnes, amazed.

  "Shot," said the youth, a curious note in his voice.

  "Oh, who shot it?"

  "Ask me an easier one."

  "Why--what--I think that was sort of cruel, after all," sighed thegirl. "He wasn't really doing any harm."

  "I thought you were afraid he might eat us all up," said Neale,dropping the curtain which he had been holding back, and turning awayfrom the window.

  "Oh--but--I am serious now," she said. "Who do you suppose shot him?"

  "I could not say."

  "That old woodsman, perhaps? There is none of our party out there witha gun, of course. Oh, dear! I hope I don't dream of it. I don't liketo see things killed."

  But the thought of dreaming about seeing the fox shot did not troubleNeale O'Neil when he parted with Agnes and went back to his room. Norwas it anything about the death of the creature that absorbed hisattention.

  It was who the huntsman was and from where the shot was fired thatpuzzled Neale O 'Neil. Had the shot been made from outside or insidethe house?

  For it seemed to the boy that the explosion had been above theirheads; and he chanced to know that none of the party from Milton--noteven the servants--were quartered on the third floor of Red DeerLodge.

  Who, then, could be up there shooting out of one of the small windowsat the yapping fox? He said nothing about this to Agnes; but hedetermined to make inquiry regarding it the first thing in themorning.