CHAPTER XV
THE LOST GIRL
"That ain't Bill!" exclaimed Jaroth. "That's as sure as you're a foothigh. Nor yet it ain't his wife. If either one of them has cried sincethey were put into short clothes I miss my guess. Huh!"
He hesitated, standing in the snow half way between the pung and thesnow-smothered door of the hut. Sheltered as it had been by the hill andby the woods, the hut was not masked so much by the drifted snow on itsfront. They could see the upper part of the door-casing.
"By gravy!" ejaculated Mr. Jaroth, "it don't sound human. I can't make itout. Funny things they say happen up here in these woods. I wouldn't be amite surprised if that crying--or----"
He hesitated while the boys and girls, and even Mr. Gordon, staredamazedly at him.
"Who do you think it is?" asked Uncle Dick finally.
"Well, it ain't Bill," grumbled Jaroth.
The sobbing continued. So engaged was the person weeping in the sorrowthat convulsed him, or her, that the jingling of the bells as the horsesshook their heads or the voices of those in the pung did not attractattention.
Jaroth stood in the snow and neither advanced nor retreated. It really didseem as though he was afraid to approach nearer to the hut on themountain-side!
"That is a girl or a woman in there," Bob declared.
"Huh!" exclaimed Bobby sharply. "It might be a boy. Boys cry sometimes."
"Really?" said Timothy. "But you never read of crying boys except inhumorous verses. They are not supposed to cry."
"Well," said Betty, suddenly hopping out of the sleigh, "we'll never findout whether it is a girl or a boy if we wait for Mr. Jaroth, it seems."
She started for the door of the hut. Bob hopped out after her in a hurry.And he took with him the snow-shovel Jaroth had brought along to use inclearing the drifts away if they chanced to get stuck.
"You'd better look out," said Jaroth, still standing undecided in thesnow.
"For what?" asked Bob, hurrying to get before Betty.
"That crying don't sound natural. Might he a ha'nt. Can't tell."
"Fancy!" whispered Betty in glee. "A great big man like him afraid of aghost--and there isn't such a thing!"
"Don't need to be if he is afraid of it," returned Bob in the same lowtone. "You can be afraid of any fancy if you want to. It doesn't need toexist. I guess most fears are of things that don't really exist Come on,now. Let me shovel this drift away."
He set to work vigorously on the snow heap before the door. Mr. Gordon,seeing that everything possible was being done, let the young people goahead without interference. In two minutes they could see the frozenlatch-string that was hanging out. Whoever was in the hut had not takenthe precaution to pull in the leather thong.
"Go ahead, Betty," said Bob finally. "You push open the door. I'll standhere ready to beat 'em down with the shovel if they start after you."
"Guess you think it isn't a girl, then," chuckled Betty, as she pulled thestring and heard the bar inside click as it was drawn out of the slot.
With the shovel Bob pushed the door inward. The cabin would have beenquite dark had it not been for a little fire crackling on the hearth. Overthis a figure stooped--huddled, it seemed, for warmth. The room was almostbare.
"Why, you poor thing!" Betty cried, running into the hut. "Are you hereall alone?"
She had seen instantly that it was a girl. And evidently the stranger wasin much misery. But at Betty's cry she started up from the hearth andwhirled about in both fear and surprise.
Her hair was disarranged, and there was a great deal of it. Her face wasswollen with weeping, and she was all but blinded by her tears. At Betty'ssympathetic tone and words she burst out crying again. Betty gathered herright into her arms--or, as much of her as she could enfold, for the othergirl was bigger than Betty in every way.
"You?" gasped the crying girl. "How--how did you come up here? And in allthis snow? Oh, this is a wilderness--a wilderness! How do people ever livehere, even in the summer? It is dreadful--dreadful! And I thought I shouldfreeze."
"Ida Bellethorne!" gasped Betty. "Who would ever have expected to find youhere?"
"I know I haven't any more business here than I have in the moon," saidthe English girl. "I--I wish I'd never left Mrs. Staples."
"Mrs. Staples told us you had come up this way," Betty said.
Immediately the other girl jerked away from her, threw back her damp hair,and stared, startled, at Betty.
"Then you--you found out? You know----"
"My poor girl!" interrupted Betty, quite misunderstanding Ida's look, "Iknow all about your coming up here to find your aunt. And that wasfoolish, for the notice you saw in the paper was about Mr. Bolter's blackmare."
"Mr. Bolter's mare?" repeated Ida.
"Now, tell me!" urged the excited Betty. "Didn't you come to Cliffdale tolook for your aunt?"
"Yes. That I did. But she isn't up here at all."
By this time Uncle Dick and the others were gathered about the door of thehut. Jaroth, with a glance now and then at his horses, had even steppedinside.
"By gravy!" ejaculated the man, "this here's a pretty to-do. What you beendoing to Bill Kedders' chattels, girl?"
"I--I burned them. I had to, to keep warm," answered Ida Bellethornehaltingly. "I burned the table and the chairs and the boxes and thenpulled down the berths and burned them. If you hadn't come I don't knowwhat I should have done for a fire."
"By gravy! Burned down the shack itself to keep you warm, I reckon!"chuckled Jaroth. "Well, we'd better take this girl along with us, hadn'twe, Mr. Gordon? She'll set fire to the timber next, if we don't, aftershe's used up the shack."
"We most surely will take her along to Mountain Camp," declared Betty'suncle. "But what puzzles me, is how she ever got here to this, lonelyplace."
"I was trying to find the Candace Farm," choked Ida Bellethorne.
"I want to know!" said Jaroth. "That's the stockfarm where they pasture somany sportin' hosses. Candace, he makes a good thing out of it. But it'seight miles from here and not in the direction we're going, Mr. Gordon."
"We will take her along to Mountain Camp," said Uncle Dick. "One more willnot scare Mrs. Canary, I am sure."
Ida brought a good-sized suitcase out of the hut with her. She hadevidently tried to walk from Cliffdale to the stockfarm, carrying thatweight. The girls were buzzing over the appearance of the stranger and theboys stared.
"Oh, Betty!" whispered Bobby Littell, "is she Ida Bellethorne?"
"One of them," rejoined Betty promptly.
"Then do you suppose she has your locket?" ventured Bobby.
To tell the truth, Betty had not once thought of that!