The Corner House Girls Snowbound

  CHAPTER XV

  A VARIETY OF HAPPENINGS

  They were near the shortest day of the year and the sun rose very lateindeed; so nobody at Red Deer Lodge got up early, unless it was thekitchen man who had to light the fires and bring in much wood. Hetramped paths through the new-fallen snow to the outbuildings beforesunrise. By the time Neale O'Neil, his head filled with the puzzlingthoughts of the night before, reached the rear premises, the yard ofthe Lodge was marked and re-marked with footsteps.

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

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

  "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 ofthe men was not out with a small rifle, and plugged old Reynard whenhe was howling at the moon, was he?"

  "No," replied the butler. "Neither John nor Lawrence knows how to usea 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," saidNeale, ruminatingly. "It's worth something all right, when furs are sohigh. Say, Hedden, how do you get upstairs into the garret?"

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

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

  "Smokeless powder is all right," muttered the boy. "But they can'tovercome the flash of the exploding shell in the dark. No, sir! Thatmarksman was not in the wood. And the report sounded right over ourheads!"

  He said nothing more to Hedden, but found the upper stairs at the rearof the house. At the top was a heavy door, but it was not locked. Hethrust it open rather gingerly, and looked into the great, rafteredloft.

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

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

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

  The windows were all fastened with buttons. As far as he could seenone gave evidence--at least on the inside--of having been recentlyopened. Neale shivered in the chill, dead air of the loft.

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

  Suddenly the boy began opening the windows, one after the other. Someof them stuck, but he persisted until each one swung open. Outside thesnow that had fallen the evening before lay in a fluffy layer on thewindow 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 hadfired the shot which had finished Reynard, the fox!

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

  The boy got down and squinted along the mark in the snow. His keen eyeeasily brought the huddled, sandy object on the snow down below intorange.

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

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

  However that might be, Neale O'Neil was sure that somebody had accessto the garret and had shot the fox therefrom. After the rear premisesof the Lodge had been tracked up so before daylight, half a dozenpeople might have left the house by the rear door without theirfootprints being seen. If the marksman had no business in the Lodge hecould easily have got away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "This is no 'expectorates' dog," chuckled Neale, grabbing the creatureby 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 backkitchen where he will thaw out. No, Tom Jonah! you are not going toworry him."

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

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

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

  Luke and Ruth and Cecile had gone for a tramp through the wood. Thelittle folks set to work building a snow man which was to be ofwondrous proportions when completed. Naturally Neale and Agnes kepttogether.

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

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

  "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 ranalong the edge of the wood.

  "Crackey!" ejaculated the boy. "Those are deer."

  "You don't mean it?"

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

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

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

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

  Here began a narrow path into the woods. The spoor of the two animalsled into this path, and the boy and girl tramped along after them.

  "I guess nothin
g frightened them," said Neale, "for they appear to betrotting right along at an easy gait. They must have passed this wayin the night. And that's kind of funny, too."

  "What is funny?" asked Agnes.

  "Why, deer--especially two, alone--ought to have been hiding in someclump of brush during the night. They don't go wandering around muchunless they are hungry. And there is plenty of brush fodder for themto eat along the edge of the swamps, that is sure."

  "Are you sure they are deer?" asked Agnes. "They couldn't be anythingelse, could they?"

  "I reckon not," laughed Neale. "I say! who lives here?"

  They caught a glimpse of an opening in the forest ahead. Then a cabinappeared, from the chimney of which a curl of blue smoke rose into theair. There were several smaller buildings in the clearing, too.

  "Guess we have struck that old timber cruiser's place," Neale said,answering his own question.

  "Oh! Mr. Ike M'Graw!" cried Agnes. "Now we can ask him if he shot thefox last night."

  "But where did these deer go?" exclaimed Neale, stopping on the edgeof the little clearing and staring all around.

  For here the tracks they had followed seemed to cross and criss-crossall about the clearing. That wild deer should frolic so about anoccupied house was indeed puzzling. He saw, too, that there were humanfootprints over-running the marks of the split hoofs.

  Suddenly from around the corner of the cabin appeared the long,slablike figure of the woodsman. He saw them almost immediately.

  "Hullo, there!" he cried. "Ain't you out early? I wouldn't have beenup near so early myself, if it hadn't been for those confounded shoatsof mine."

  "What happened to the pigs?" asked Neale, smiling.

  "They broke out o' their pen. Always doin' that!" returned M'Graw."Run off through the woods somewhere, and then come back and made secha racket around my shanty that I can't sleep. Confound 'em!"

  Neale suddenly saw a great light. He seized Agnes' hand and squeezedit in warning. With his other hand he pointed to the marks in thesnow.

  "Are those the pigs' footprints?"

  "Yes. I just got 'em shut up again," said the woodsman. "Come in,won't you? I guess my coffee's biled sufficient, and I'm about to fryme a mess of bacon and johnnycake."

  "What do you know about that?" murmured Neale to the giggling Agnes."We followed those pig tracks for deer tracks. Aren't we greathunters--I don't think!"