Rannie drew a deep breath as he heard his bolt drawn back, and waited. His time had come. Would his scheme work? He must make it work.
Chapter 14
The door was thrown back, and Rannie’s closed eyes felt the daylight coming into the dim room where he lay. He waited until the two men had advanced and stood beside his cot looking down at him, and then suddenly opened his eyes wide, blinked a moment to get used to the light, gazed around at his surroundings, and tried to lift a casual hand. He looked in well-feigned surprise down at his shackles, then focused an amazed scrutiny on his two captors, then suddenly and amazingly let his face break into an impish grin of pleased surprise.
“Oh, gee!” he said in his best school vernacular. “I ain’t been kidnapped, have I? Neat, really? Gee, isn’t that great! I’ve always wondered how it would feel! Say, this is great! I wonder what the fellas back in school’ll think when they hear it. They’ll be green with envy.”
The two captors stopped in astonishment and scowled at their captive, disarmed for a moment. The boss spoke, softening his hard voice into a gruff growl intended for a false pleasantry.
“Feelin’ pretty good, ain’t ya, kid? One o’ them high-sperited modern kids, ain’t ya? Well, I guess ya’ll have plenty use fer high spirits afore ya git through ’ith us. But ya ain’t got no need ta be scairt ef ya do jes’ as we say. We don’t aim ta hurt ya ef ya do yer part an’ everythin’ goes through okay. Here, eat yer grub. Ya oughtta be plenty ready fer it.”
“Sure thing!” swaggered Rannie, endeavoring to rise and finding his head swimming dizzily. “Got any water there? Seem kinda dry after that old rag you stuffed into my mouth. I s’pose ya had ta do that, didn’t ya? It’s okay with me, of course, only I can’t say it’s the tastiest mouthful I ever had. Say, after we get fixed here and ya have plenty o’ time, I’d like ta know just how you pulled this off from start to finish. I’ve always wondered how they did it, but I don’t seem somehow ta remember much that happened about the time you began on me.”
The two men cast a second astonished glance at one another and lowered the plate of uninviting dinner to Rannie’s knees.
Rannie tried to lift a shackled hand to steady the plate, but his arms were still bound with cords to his sides as far down as his elbows.
“Say, ya couldn’t just loosen up these bracelets an inch ur so, could ya?” he asked genially, looking up at the boss. “I can’t seem ta navigate sa well. It’s just that I ain’t accustomed, ya know. It takes practice ta eat with things like this on ya. Something like chopsticks, I guess. Ever been ta China? There was a fella in our school whose dad was a sea captain, and he went around the world with him when he was a little kid. He useta tell how they ate with chopsticks just as easy as we use forks.”
They loosened up the cords, leaving Rannie’s arms freer, and arranged the chains on his wrist so he could move his hands more easily.
Now that food was before him, it looked so unappetizing even in the dim light, Rannie felt little inclination to eat. The bacon was reeking with grease and was quite cold. The bread was stale, and the coffee had an odd taste. He decided against drinking it. He felt it might be doped. He drank the water eagerly, however, that Bud brought at the direction of the boss, and he managed to make a show of eating. But when he looked up from the last bite, he saw that the two men before him each held a revolver in his hand, and that the boss’s gun was pointed straight at him.
Something seemed to happen to his heart just then, but he took a deep breath and broke into his impish grin again. Someone, some trainer perhaps, in his faraway football days, had once said that if you were frightened, the best thing to do was laugh, so Rannie grinned. It was the one thing he was sure he could do well, and lips couldn’t very well tremble when they were stretched in a wide grin. So Rannie grinned.
“Oh, gee!” he said when he got control of his wits again. “Is that what you carry? What make are they? Are they the noiseless, smokeless kind? I’ve always wanted to see one. Say, will ya teach me ta shoot ef I stay here long enough? I sure would like ta own one of those babies. I guess they make a pretty shot, don’t they?”
Rannie was nothing if he was not impudent, and at school he was known as having a line of talk equal to anyone on campus. The boys said he could kid the eyeteeth out of a cop if he really wanted to, and they always sent Rannie on the difficult errands. So now Rannie summoned all his arts of speech and grinned straight into the eye of that terrible instrument of death that he knew in the waft of a breath could blow him into the next world.
His two captors eyed him almost with admiration, though the boss narrowed his gaze as he watched the boy. He wasn’t altogether sure he was as carefree as he looked. He was pretty white around the gills, though he sure was a game kid. The boss was old and experienced.
“You get a chance ta see what kind of a hole they make in yer own heart ef ya don’t do as yer told,” growled the boss. “See?”
“Oh, sure,” swaggered Rannie. “I know yer a tough egg, all right. That’s why I admire ya sa much. Say, this is goin’ ta be a great experience fer me all right, ain’t it?”
“I’ll say!” said the boss dryly. “Now, Bud, ya can take him out fer a stroll just ta see how fur he is from any help, an’ when ya come back it’s time fer ya ta sleep, see?” He wrinkled one eye in a professional way and sauntered out of the room, but Rannie had a feeling that he had eyes in the back of his head.
Bud helped Rannie get to his feet, and though he felt exceedingly shaky and was greatly hampered by the chains about his feet, he managed to get himself out through the main room and across the threshold into the outer world.
It was thick woods where the cabin stood. The growth was so dense that it seemed just dusk instead of late afternoon, as it really was.
Rannie had no idea how long he would be allowed out, so he scanned the place most carefully, while trying not to seem to do so. He remembered a party he had attended once where in one of the games a table filled with a number of objects was brought out for a ten-second inspection. Rannie had won the prize for remembering every one of them. He had always been good at observation. He prided himself on being able to remember everything he saw. So now he cast a quick glance about and then looked up to the sky that must be overhead but was entirely obscured by tall plumy pines.
“Say, it’s great here, isn’t it?” he declared, drawing in a deep breath and grinning at his guard. “This would be wonderful in the summertime with the trees all out and the birds singing.” He had the jaunty air of a guest at a house party, though he was shivering in the keen mountain air, and for the first time really noticing the shoddy, ill-fitting, much-worn garments he was wearing.
“Wish I’d remembered ta bring my overcoat along, ur my heavy sweater,” he said with another grin, pulling his inadequate coat collar up around his neck. “Great oversight. However, I s’pose one gets used ta bein’ chilly.”
Rannie tried not to wonder who had worn these clothes before he fell heir to them. He tried with all his dizzy frightened might to keep his grin and act as if he were enjoying himself. Bud looked at him curiously, with a growing admiration.
“Well, this certainly is great fer a summer camp,” said Rannie as Bud led him along around the tangled growth and out into a semi-clearing where rocks jutted out from the side of the mountain and one could see a long way off.
There were mountains on every side and more mountains stretching like clouds along the horizon. Rannie scanned them eagerly to see if there was a single familiar outline of the rugged peaks they could see from the school camp last summer. He had an idea that perhaps he was somewhere in the Adirondacks or Catskills, perhaps even farther north and east up in the lonely stretches of Vermont and New Hampshire. He had nothing whatever to judge by, for he had no idea how long he had been traveling before he began to come to consciousness. He felt sure by his own wretched feelings that it had been a long journey. But his sense of direction had always been great, and now as he scanned
the landscape quickly, he took careful note of where the sun lay, and tried to get the points of the compass. But there was no sign along the skyline of the Presidential Range or any of the mountain peaks he knew. Nothing but wild bare trees varied by great patches of dark plumy pines.
“Any water around for fishing?” queried Rannie affably. “You’n I might go fishing if we had any line and bait.”
Bud whirled him around and led him to the other side of the cliff, to a startling precipice, sheer and steep, with a rushing mountain torrent tearing and plunging and boiling into a deep caldron far below where they were standing. Rannie instinctively drew back and closed his eyes a second to steady his dizzy head.
“Bad place ta fall!” suggested the attendant dryly, almost significantly, turning Rannie about and steering him back through the undergrowth to the cabin.
“It sure is,” said Rannie politely, reflecting on how easily his body could be made away with in this lonely spot with such a watery tomb so close at hand.
Back to his small dark log cell went Rannie, glad to lie down on even the hard army cot, because it seemed as if he had just been on a long journey. How could one get so weary just taking a few steps?
Quiet settled down upon the wilderness save for the stirring of a branch now and then in the breeze or the crack of a twig here and there under some silent stealthy furry foot, perhaps. And presently he could hear two separate kinds of snores from the other room.
He had heard the bolt slide sharply into place and knew that he was shut in hopelessly. He wanted to get up and move around his tiny box cell and explore a bit, see if he could possibly climb up to that little square of a window and measure his shoulders to its size, but a great inertia was upon him, and he also feared to wake his captors. So he lay still and must have been almost asleep at once.
When he woke up, he sensed at once even before he opened his eyes that it must be night. The blackness about him seemed so dense that it could be felt. He reached out and touched the wall and then a cover that had been spread over him. A rough, ill-smelling blanket. He was grateful for the warmth, yet startled that it could have been spread over him without his knowledge. Then his captors must have been in to look at him! Had they doped him again, that he slept so soundly, or was it just the effect of the first knockout drug that had not yet worn off?
He lay and listened to the far sound of water rolling down over the age-old rocks and shuddered at the sinister pool that he knew might be so easily reached. Yet even so, the boy reflected, it might be a more welcome death than some, if it came to that.
He thought he heard a distant howl of an animal. Would that be a wolf? Were they far enough from civilization for wolves and coyotes?
He thought of his father and Christobel wondering where he was. Well, perhaps his absence might somewhat make his father more forgiving toward his misdeeds. He had a passing sorrow that he had brought that gray look into his father’s face, that tired look to his eyes. He thought of Charmian, lying in her coffin, a silly, empty, painted face, painted even in death, and he felt a strange wonder at her, that the dignity of death should have granted her apathy toward life. Then he knew that against his will he was falling asleep again. He wondered how long life would be like that, whether it would ever end. Would it end in that deep green pool after a shove from the precipice, a swift hurtling through space, and then oblivion? Where was his mother? Did she know where he was now? How sweet it must have been to be a little boy and lie there, cared for and guarded!
Morning came with a rough shake. The boss had brought him his breakfast. Dry bread and condensed milk. The boss was impatient. His breath smelled of sour liquor. Bud was not anywhere around. Rannie recognized suddenly that he liked Bud a great deal better than the boss. Why should one admire one crook above another? But he did. There was sometimes a gleam of something almost human about Bud.
Rannie managed a few bites and wondered why he had complained so much about the table fare at school. The food was not appetizing, and the surroundings were filthy. But Rannie tried to be cheerful.
“Say, Boss,” he said, as he handed back the tin plate that obviously had not been washed since yesterday’s meal of bacon, “what about givin’ me a job? I got expelled from school the other day, an’ I gotta get myself a job. I’m pretty good at gettin’ away with most anythin’. Whaddaya say? Got a opening for me?”
The boss looked at the boy quizzically a moment and narrowed his eyes.
“Yep,” he responded, “I gotta job fer you right now, leastways as soon as Bud gets back. One you gotta do whether ye like it or not. I want a letter writ an’ you gotta do jus’ wot I tell ya. Savvy?”
“Oh, sure, I can write letters,” said Rannie with a sudden sinking of heart. It was coming now, and what was he going to do about it?
“Say,” he said, hoping to change the topic, “ever play basketball?”
“Whaddaya think I am?” growled the boss. “Somebody’s darling? I was doing tough stuff when other fellas was the age ta play basketball. I reckon that’s about your size, basketball! Ugh!” He uttered a grunt of disgust. “An’ you think you’d train fer a buddy of ours, do ya! Ha! Been dancin’ round on a ten-cent piece, pattin’ a ball an’ trimmin’ it into a basket with a hole in the bottom! Hot stuff! You’d make one all right,” said the boss with a sneer that was ugly to see.
“Aw, now, don’t get funny.” Rannie grinned cheerfully. “I was just cheerleader for ’em, kinda ta help ’em out, ya know. I wasn’t givin’ that as a reference. Say, how ’bout wrestlin’? You’re up in that, aren’t ya? You gotta build fer wrestling, I should think.”
“What’s the idea?” roared the boss, now thoroughly mystified. “What ya gettin’ at?”
“Oh, I was just thinkin’ of a little exercise,” said Rannie nonchalantly. “Feel a little stiff myself after that long trek yesterday, don’t you? I thought ef you were a good wrestler, we might have a round or two. Or boxing? Only of course we haven’t any gloves.”
The boss frowned deeply.
“You better get in yer box, young feller, an’ stay there till I tell ya different, ur ya’ll have a kinda exercise ya ain’t useta, and I’m tellin’ ya.”
With that the boss went out and locked the door, and Rannie was left to his own meditations.
He felt better than the night before. His spirits were better also. He had got away with kidding the boss, he might get away with more. At least he was sure the boss hadn’t known how near the surface were tears while he was grinning. And what was more, he hadn’t had to write any letter home as yet. The next task was to discover a way to get out, if there was such a way, though his reason told him that as long as those two bullies guarded his way with two smokeless, noiseless guns, there was little chance.
He took the first opportunity when he heard the boss step out the door to climb up as high as he could toward the window. There were only a few chinks where there was a foothold, and it was a slow task, because the chains about his ankles clinked noisily. He did not want to get caught in the act. He did not know what might be the consequences. Also, it would ruin his attitude of indifference to be found looking out the window, or trying to. So presently he gave it up and dropped like a cat to the floor again.
An awful feeling of being trapped came over him. In prison, that was what he was. How long could he keep it up?
He began to feel around in the tattered pockets of his suit to find a stray pencil or scrap of paper, anything to occupy the time, but there was nothing. It was terrible to be shut up in the contracted dimness when outside the sun must be shining. He knew that by the color of the yellow beam that struck down across the wall from the little high window.
He lay on his back with his shackled hands impatiently picking at the rough blanket, his eyes wandering along the lines of his log walls. If he only had something to do, he felt he could stand it better. As it was, he could only lie there and think of home and Dad. But this awful inaction was getting to him. He was afraid he wasn??
?t going to be able to keep up this brave front before his captors much longer, yet he knew he must.
Suddenly his eyes focused on a little place between the logs where the crack was filled with something, a little gray line, it seemed. In the dim light he could scarcely tell. It was way up at the very edge of the roof where it joined to the side wall, and it was so in shadow that he thought his eyes were deceiving him. He lay for some time watching it. He had reached the stage when he couldn’t bear to find out that it wasn’t anything. He wanted to just keep up the delusion that it was something besides just wall and crack. Even if it was only a folded paper, it would be interesting to get it and unfold it. If it was a bit of folded newspaper put there to keep the wind from coming through the crack, it might have something in it he could read. If only he had some of the magazines and mystery tales he had left on his closet shelf at school! He wouldn’t mind reading them over again. Just anything to read would be so good.
He managed to get through the day at last, sleeping a good deal and climbing up to his window now and then when the boss was snoring or away from the place for a little while. He tried applying his eye to a crack here or there, but it was so little he could see from any of them, a twig perhaps, or a tossing cone or the branch of a pine. Once he worked for a long time trying to catch with a bent nail he found on the floor a needle of pine that rubbed the log wall. It was a game just to see if he could hook a brown pine needle and draw it inside between the logs. It would be a little touch with the outside world. But once when he thought he almost had it, the nail slipped through and fell away from his grasp and the needle waved on outside. Then he fell back, despairing, on his cot and finally fell asleep. So passed another day in captivity.
Before dawn the next morning, Bud returned. He heard the two men whispering in gruff voices outside his door. He could see a crack of light under the door. He could smell the coffee heating. And presently his door was unlocked and the two men came in. Bud bore a plate of food and looked sleepy and discontented. But about them both was a determined look that made Rannie’s heart sink.