The Silent Alarm.

by Roy J. Snell.

CHAPTER I

THE PRISONER IN A LONE CABIN

In a cabin far up the side of Pine Mountain, within ten paces of the murmuring waters of Ages Creek, there stood an old, two roomed log cabin.

In one room of that cabin sat a girl. She was a large, strong girl, with the glow of ruddy health on her cheeks.

Her dress, though simple, displayed a taste too often missing in the c.u.mberland Mountains of Kentucky, and one might have guessed that she was from outside the mountains.

If one were to observe her, sitting there in a rustic splint bottomed chair; if he were to study her by the flickering firelight, he might have said: "She is a guest."

In this he would have been wrong. Florence Huyler was virtually a prisoner in that cabin. As she sat there dreamily gazing at the flickering fire, a man did sentry duty outside the door. He seemed asleep as he sat slouched over in a chair tilted against the cabin, but he was not. Nor would the occupant of that chair sleep this night.

Yet, had you said to Florence, "Why do they hold you prisoner here?" she would have replied:

"I'm sure I don't know."

That would have been true, too.

"What can they want?" she asked herself for the thousandth time as she sat there watching the coals of her wood fire blink out one by one. "Are they moonshiners? Do they think I am a secret agent of the revenue men?

Do they want this," she patted a pocket inside her blouse, "or have they been hired by the big coal company to hold me until the secret of the railroad is out?"

When she patted her blouse there had come a crinkling sound. Ten new fifty dollar bank notes were pinned to the inside of the garment.

"If that's what they want," she said to herself, "why don't they demand it and let me go?"

She shuddered as she rose. The room was cold. She dreaded facing a night in that cabin.

Having entered the second room, she closed the door softly behind her, then sat down upon the edge of the bed.

After removing her shoes, she glanced up at the smoke blackened ceiling.

"Hole up there," she mused. "I wonder if.... No, I guess not. Never can tell, though."

At once her lithe body was in motion. With the agility of a cat, she sprang upon a chair, mounted its back, caught the edge of the opening above and drew herself up into the attic, then dropped noiselessly down upon a beam.

"Whew! Dusty," she panted.

Five minutes later she found herself staring out into the moonlight. At the upper end of the cabin loft she had found a small door that opened to a view of the mountain side. Having found this she opened it noiselessly.

It would be an easy matter to hang by her hands, drop to the ground and then attempt her escape through the brush. This she was about to do when something arrested her-a very small thing. On a narrow level s.p.a.ce where the gra.s.s had been eaten short by cows or wild creatures, three young rabbits were sporting in the moonlight.

"Shame to spoil their fun," she whispered to herself. "Time enough." She seated herself close to the opening.

A moment later she was thankful for the impulse that caused her to wait.

In an instant, without a sound, the rabbits disappeared into the brush.

With a little gasp the girl closed the small door. Ten seconds later, by peering through a crack, she saw a man cross the small clearing. It was her guard.

"Thanks, little rabbits," she whispered. "You did me a good turn that time."

A moment later the man returned across the patch of short gra.s.s and once more the girl set herself to listening and watching.

"When the little gray fellows come back to play, I'll risk it," she told herself.

As she sat there waiting, feeling the cool caress of the mountain night air upon her cheek, listening, watching, she allowed her eyes to wander away to the half dozen little peaks that formed the crest of Pine Mountain.

"How dark and mysterious they seem in the night," she thought to herself.

"How-"

Her meditations were suddenly cut short. Her eyes had caught a yellow gleam that had suddenly appeared on the very crest of the highest peak of the mountain.

"Wha-what can it mean?" she whispered. "It can't be-but it is!"

Even as she looked, the yellow gleam blinked out for a second, glowed again, only to vanish, then to glow steadily once more.

The girl's heart grew warm, her cheeks flushed. Whereas only the moment before she had felt herself utterly alone in an unknown and hostile world, now she knew that on the crest of yonder mountain there stood a friend, her very best friend, Marion Norton. Between her and that peak lay many a long and tangled trail. What of that? That golden glow spoke warmly of friendship.

"The Silent Alarm," she murmured as she hastily drew from her pocket two dark cylinders. One of the cylinders she placed before her on the window ledge. The other she grasped at either end, drawing it out to four times its original length. The thing was a pocket telescope such as is often carried in the mountains. From the ends of this she unscrewed the lenses.

After that, lying flat upon the dusty floor that was all but level with the sill of the small shuttered door, she glanced along the tube of the dismantled telescope. Slowly, surely, as if the thing were a rifle, she aimed it at the distant yellow gleam. Then, without allowing the tube to move, she picked up the other shorter one which had all this time rested on the window sill. Having placed the end of this against the end of the hollow tube, she pressed a b.u.t.ton, and at once a needle point of glowing light shot forth into the night. The second cylinder was a small but powerful flashlight.

"The Silent Alarm," she whispered once more.

She had kept the small flashlight aimed at the distant yellow flash of fire less than a moment when, with a suddenness that was startling, the glow on the distant mountain crest vanished. It was as if someone had thrown a shovel of earth or a bucket of water upon a small camp fire.

The little tableau was not at an end. Florence, by moving her hand before her tube, sent out successive flashes, some short, some long. Now a short one, now two long ones, now three short; so it went on for some time.

"The Silent Alarm," she thought. "I only hope she gets it right. She might try to come to me. That would be too terrible."

This had scarcely pa.s.sed her mind when, of a sudden, from that same distant hillside there gleamed a star. Or was it a star? If a star, then a tree branch must wave before it, for now it appeared, only to disappear and reappear again.

It was no star. At once, with a pencil and a sc.r.a.p of paper, the girl was marking down dots and dashes, taking the message being sent by signal code from the distant mountain crest.

As she scratched down the last dash, the star vanished, not to reappear.

Once more darkness brooded over the foothills of Pine Mountain and the somber peaks beyond were lost in the glooms of night.

For a time, by the steady gleam of her flashlight, the girl studied her dots and dashes. Then, as she closed her tired eyes for a moment, she murmured:

"Oh! I had hoped for a real message, a message that would mean success."

As she opened her eyes she glanced down to the spot of golden moonlight on the gra.s.s. The rabbits had returned to complete their frolic.

"Time to try it," she whispered as she drew herself up on her knees.