So the other hillsides had been searched and the tongues of local gossipers had wagged incessantly. Bitter enemies had it that, seeing herself defeated in the coming election and being ashamed or afraid to stand trial for carrying concealed weapons, the girl had fled in the night and had taken the child with her to the "Outside." All this, they argued, was known well enough by Mrs. McAlpin and Marion, but they did not care to admit it.

In spite of all this, Ransom Turner and Marion had continued, almost against hope, to carry on the election fight. Black Blevens had sent word to Lige Howard up on Pounding Mill Creek that his mortgage would be foreclosed if he and his three boys did not promise to come down on election day and vote for him as trustee. Ransom Turner, on hearing this had sent word to Lige that his mortgage would be taken care of-that he was to vote for the best man.

Mary Anne Kelly, a niece of Black Blevens, who lived down at the mouth of Ages Creek, sent word to her fiance, Buckner Creech, that if he did not vote right she would break her engagement. That had put Buckner on the doubtful list. Pole Cawood's wife, who was a daughter of Black Blevens, threatened to leave him and his four small children if he did not vote for her father.

"Such," said Marion, rubbing her forehead with a groan, "is a school election in the c.u.mberlands. Nothing is too low or mean if only it helps to gain an advantage. We have fought fair, and lost, as far as I can see.

Ransom says we will lack ten or twelve votes, and he doesn't know where we can find a single other one."

And yet, with the cheerful optimism of youth, the girl still hoped against hope and looked forward with some eagerness the coming of to-morrow and the election.

Needless to say, with worry over Florence and Hallie, and interest in the election, she had found neither time nor interest for further exploration of the attic nor a search for Jeff Middleton's treasure.

Strange were the circ.u.mstances that had held Florence within the forbidden gates these three long days.

She had wakened with a start on the morning following the storm and her strange experiences in the cabin. The sun, streaming through a small window, had awakened her. At first she had been utterly unable to account for her strange surroundings. Then, like a flash, it all came to her. The aged giant, Bud Wax with his arm in a sling, the women, the other man, little Hallie, the storm,-all the strange and mysterious doings of the night flashed through her mind and left her wondering.

The very window through which the sunlight streamed suggested mystery.

Whence had it come? These mysterious people who lived beyond the stone gateway had come from below, had travelled up Laurel Creek and had not come back to the settlement. Where had the gla.s.s for the window come from? Had it been taken from some older cabin? This log cabin seemed quite new. Had these strange people some hidden trail to the outside world? Ransom Turner had said there was no mountain pa.s.s at the head of Laurel Branch. Could it be possible that he was wrong?

All the wondering was cut short by thought of little Hallie. How was she?

Had consciousness returned? Perhaps she needed care at this very moment.

With this thought uppermost in her mind, Florence sprang from her bed, drew on her outer garments, then pushed open the door that led to the other room.

She found Hallie feverish, and somewhat delirious. Upon discovering this, without begging leave of her strange host and with not one thought for her own safety, she set herself about the task of bringing the bloom of health back to the child's cheek.

The people about her brought the things she asked for, then stood or sat quietly about as they might had she been a doctor.

During the course of the day some twenty men and women, and quite as many children, came to peek shyly in at the door, or to enter and sit whispering together.

"More people in this neighborhood than one would think," was Florence's mental comment.

A day came and went. Hallie improved slightly. The next day she was so much better that Florence took time for a stroll out of doors. It was then that she received something of a shock. Having wandered down the creek trail until she was near to the stone gateway, she saw a tall, gaunt, young mountaineer step out into the path. With a rifle over his arm, he began to pace back and forth like a sentry on duty.

"I-I wonder-" she whispered to herself, "if he would let me pa.s.s?"

She had no desire to leave without taking Hallie, she did not try, but deep in her heart was the conviction that for some strange reason she was virtually a prisoner within those gates.

At once her mind was rife with speculation. Who were these people? What had they to fear from contact with the outside world? Were they moonshiners? She had heard much of mountain moonshine stills before she came to the c.u.mberlands. If they were moonshiners, where had they sold the product of their stills?

"No, it couldn't be that," she shook her head.

Were they a band of robbers? If so, whom did they rob? She thought of the peddler and the one-armed fiddler, and shuddered.

Still, as she thought of it now, she had seen very little in these cabins that could have come from a peddler's pack. The bare-topped wooden tables were innocent of linen. Towels were made of coa.r.s.e, hand-woven linen. The women wore no jewelry such as might have come from a peddler's black box.

"It's all very strange and mysterious," she said with a shake of her head.

Only one thing came to her clearly as she returned to the cabin-she must remain beside little Hallie until she was out of danger.

"After that-what?"

This question she could not answer.

CHAPTER XII THE MYSTERY TRAIL

As Florence halted in her upward march she felt herself overawed by a terrible sense of desolation. For an hour she had traveled over the most silent, lonely trail her feet had ever trod. Little more than a footpath, possible mayhap to a sure-footed horse, the trail wound up and up and up toward the point where the green of forest ended in ma.s.sive crags of limestone. She was now among the crags.

Far away on the opposite mountainside the sun was still shining, but on this trail there fell neither sunlight nor form of shadow. The north slope lay bathed in the perpetual chill of a cheerless autumn. No sound came to her from above, not a whisper from below. Beneath her feet was solid rock, above her more rock.

"What's the use?" she asked herself as she stood there irresolute. "There couldn't be a pa.s.s. There just couldn't. Yet it seems there must be! And some way, some way, I must escape! To-morrow is my trial. To fail to appear is to face disgrace. Besides, there are my faithful friends, my bondsmen. I must not fail them!"

Once more, with an eagerness born of despair, she pressed forward.

It was, indeed, the day before the trial. Three days has pa.s.sed since she had entered the forbidden portals of the rock made gateway. Little Hallie was now so far recovered that she at this moment sat wrapped in a blanket, smiling at the flames in the great fireplace. Yes, Hallie was all right now, but she, Florence, was in trouble. It was necessary that she return to the settlement. But how was she to do it? Three times that day she had approached the stone gateway. Each time the silent sentinel had appeared, treading his monotonous watch before the trail. She had not mustered up the courage to ask him to let her pa.s.s.

"There must be another trail, a pa.s.s over the mountains at the head of the creek," she had told herself. So, before the day had half gone, she had walked slowly up the creek trail until far beyond sight of the farthest cabin. Then she had quickened her pace almost to a run.

One thing she had seen in pa.s.sing the cabins had surprised her not a little. As she rounded a corner she had caught a gleam of white and had at once recognized the forms of three persons standing in the shadows of a great pine. Two were men, one a grown boy. That boy, there could be no mistake, was Bud Wax. The white she had seen was the wrappings on his arm, which was still in a sling.

With his back to her he was so engrossed in the conversation which he was carrying on with the other man that he did not so much as see her.

From that distance she caught only fragments of the talk. As the boy's voice rose shrill and high, almost as if in anger, she heard:

"Hit's your bounden duty. That's what hit are! Look what she's been doin'. Look-"

But here she pa.s.sed behind a clump of young pines which m.u.f.fled the sound of his voice.

As she pushed on through the deepening shadows she thought of this and wondered deeply. Bud had disappeared before she was up that first morning. She had always supposed that he had escaped to his home in the darkness of night and storm. But here he was. What was she to make of that? Why had he come in the first place? Why had he stayed? Was he, also, virtually their prisoner? Or had he gone out and returned for a reason? What was his feeling toward her? There had been times during that last week of school that she had surprised on his face a look almost of admiration. The look had vanished so quickly that she had doubted its existence.

And that night? Why had he leaped at the one-armed giant when he put out a hand to seize her? It looked like a desire to protect her. But why? Was he not from the camp of the enemy-Black Blevens' camp? Had she not destroyed his most priceless possession, hammered it to bits between two rocks? What could she think?

Her thoughts were suddenly cut short. Before a wall of stone that towered a hundred feet in air, she had come to the end of the trail.

In the meantime, all unknown to Marion and Mrs. McAlpin, a clan was gathering at the mouth of Laurel Branch. It was Ransom Turner's clan. A strangely silent, uncommunicative people, the mountaineers of the c.u.mberlands seldom confide fully in those who have but late come to live among them. Ransom Turner and the men of his clan had not confided their suspicions, nor even all that they knew about Florence's strange disappearance, to either Marion nor Mrs. McAlpin.

Having always suspected that the mysterious child, Hallie, had somehow strayed beyond the portals of the gate that led to the head of the creek, and that she belonged to that silent, forbidden land beyond, they had a.s.sumed that she had found her way back to her home.

That Florence had followed Hallie beyond the gate, they had suspected at once. As time pa.s.sed and she did not return, this suspicion, aided by certain rumors that came to their ears, became a conviction.