Lucile stepped out upon the sand, then bent down to examine a footprint. Quickly she dodged back into the brush.
"They"re here, all right," she whispered. "That"s the track of the fellow with the mis-mate feet."
"Listen!" said Marian.
"Sounds like shouting," said Lucile, after a moment"s silence.
"What do you suppose?"
"We"d better move around to a better position."
Cautiously they worked their way through the dense undergrowth.
Pausing now and again to listen, they laid their course by the sounds.
These sounds resolved themselves into bursts of song and boisterous laughter.
"They"re drinking," said Lucile with a shudder.
"If they are, we daren"t get near them," whispered Marian.
Closer and closer they crept until at last they expected at any moment to come into view of the camp.
"It"s no use," said Lucile at last, shrinking back into the brush. "I can"t go on. They"re drunk, and all drunken men are dangerous. It is no use risking too much for a motorboat."
Wearily then they made their way back through the brush. So sore were their muscles by this time that every step gave them pain. Missing their way, they came out upon the beach a hundred yards from their boat. There, behind the sheltering boughs of a dwarf fir tree they threw themselves upon the bed of pine needles to rest.
"Look!" exclaimed Lucile suddenly. "What"s that out there?"
"Our motorboat," Marian gasped. "It"s broken loose and is going out with the tide. They must not have seen it. Quick! Our rowboat! We may beat them yet!"
With wildly beating hearts they raced up the beach. Having reached the heavy rowboat they pushed it off. Wading knee-deep in the sea to give the boat a good start, they at last leaped to their seats and grasped the oars, and with strong, deft, strokes set her cutting the water.
Length by length they lessened the distance between them and the drifting prize.
Now they were two hundred yards away, now one hundred, now fifty, now--
There came a shout from the sh.o.r.e. With a quick glance over her shoulder Lucile took in the situation.
"We"ll make it," she breathed. "Pull hard. They"re a long way off."
Moments seemed hours as they strained at the oars, but at last they b.u.mped the side of the motorboat and the next second found themselves on board.
Marian clung to the tiller of the rowboat while she swung round to the wheel. Lucile gave the motor a turn and to their great joy the n.o.ble little engine responded with a pop-pop-pop.
There came another shout, a hopeless one, from the robbers.
"We beat them. We--" Marian broke short off. "Look, Lucile. Look over there!"
To the right of them, bobbing up and down as they had seen it once before, was the head of the strange brown boy.
"Do you suppose they did kidnap him?" said Lucile.
"We can go by where he is," said Marian. "They can"t catch us now."
The boat swung round and soon they were beside the swimmer.
"Look," cried Lucile, "his feet are tied tightly together! He mustn"t have been their friend. They carried him off. They had him bound and he rolled down to the beach to escape by swimming."
They dragged the boy on board. Then they were away again, full speed once more.
"Well, that"s done," sighed Lucile, as she settled herself at the wheel. "They"ve our rowboat and we have theirs. I hope that after this they will let us alone."
"The person who is bothering me," said Marian with a frown, "is this little brown visitor of ours. Who is he? Where did he come from?
Where does he want to go? Where should he go? What are we going to do with him?"
"That," said Lucile, wrinkling her brow, "is more than I know. Neither do I know how those men came to steal him. They probably kidnapped him from his home, wherever that is, and have been making a slave of him."
"I think you are right," said Marian, "and probably the problem will solve itself in time."
The problem did solve itself, at least part of it, that very night; the remaining part of the problem was to be solved months later under conditions so strange that, had the girls been able to vision them lying away, like a mirage on the horizon of the future, they would have been tempted to change their plans for the year just before them.
The first question, what was to be done with the little brown stranger, was solved that night. He solved it himself. The girls had decided upon maintaining a watch. Lucile was on the second watch at something like one o"clock in the morning, when she saw the brown boy stirring in his place by the fire. She was seated far back in the shadowy depths of the tent with a rifle across her knee. He could not see her, though she could catch his every move in the moonlight.
With a gliding motion he carried his two blankets to a shadowy spot and there folded each one, laying one upon the other. He then proceeded to gather up certain articles about camp. A small ax, a knife, fishing tackle and matches were hurriedly thrown upon the blanket. Now and again, like some wild thing of the forest, he paused to c.o.c.k his head to one side and listen.
"Should I call Marian and stop him?" Lucile asked herself. The question was left all undecided. The little drama being enacted was too fascinating to suffer interruption. It was like something that had happened in her earlier childhood when she had lain in a garret watching a mother mouse carry away her five children, Lucile thereby suffering a loss of six cents, for she would have been paid a cent apiece for the capture of those mice.
The brown boy next approached the kitchen tent. He entered, to appear a moment later with a modest armload of provisions.
When these had been placed on the blanket, with marvelous speed and skill he converted the whole into a convenient pack.
"Shall I stop him?" Lucile asked herself.
She was about to call out from her dark corner, when a peculiar action of the boy arrested her. He appeared to be taking some small object from beneath the collar of his strange suit of bird-skin.
"I wonder what it is?" she puzzled.
Whatever it was, he walked with it to a broad, flat rock, and placing it in the very center, turned and left it there. The object gave forth such a startling l.u.s.tre in the moonlight, and Lucile was so intent upon watching it, she did not realize that the brown boy had thrown his pack over his shoulder and disappeared into the woods.
When she did discover it, she merely shrugged her shoulders and smiled:
"Probably for the best," she told herself. "He"s taken nothing of any great value and nothing we will need badly, and, unless I miss my guess, he"ll be quite able to take care of himself in a wood that is full of game and berries and where there are fish for throwing in the hook. Let"s see what he left, though."
Cautiously she crept out into the moonlight. A low exclamation escaped her lips as her hand closed upon the glistening object. As she examined it closely, she found it to be three teeth, apparently elk teeth. They were held together with a plain leather thong, but set in the center of each was a ring of blue jade and in the center of each of two of the rings was a large pearl. The center of the third was beyond doubt a crudely cut diamond of about two carats weight. Lucile turned it over and over in her palm.
"Why, the poor fellow," she murmured. "He"s given us a king"s ransom for a few trinkets and a little food! And I thought he was stealing,"
she reproached herself.
Her first instinct was to attempt to call him back. "But," she told herself, "my voice would not carry far in that dense woods. Besides, he wouldn"t understand me and would only be frightened."