"She couldn"t have," maintained Nyoda. "We haven"t stopped since then and she couldn"t have fallen out while we were going without making a splash that would have sent the water over the car."
"It"s nearly a foot deep most of the way." We thought hard about the circ.u.mstances attendant upon our getting back into the car and it came to us that we were not positive, after all, that Sahwah had been with us.
"That wind--don"t you remember?" said Nakwisi. "It whipped the corner of my veil into my eye and I couldn"t open it again for some time after we started."
I remembered the wind. It had wrapped my veil around my face so that I couldn"t see anything, and in my blindness I had slammed the door on my finger, and the pain made me forget everything else. It hadn"t been a propitious time to count noses. I had dropped into the corner of the seat trying to get my finger into my mouth through the folds of my veil, and the effort not to cry out with pain made me faint. I had not even noticed when the car started. Margery was on the front seat with Nyoda and they had thought, of course, that Sahwah was in the back with Nakwisi and me. Well, it was evident that she wasn"t.
"Poor Sahwah," said Nyoda. "Such a night to be waiting at the gate!"
"Backward, turn backward, Glow-worm, in your flight, Rescue poor Sahwah from her muddy plight!"
I spouted.
Which was easier said than done. That road was built for traveling ahead and not for turning. On one side was the swamp and on the other a steep drop off into a lake.
"We"re in the straight and narrow path all right," said Nyoda, viewing the landscape. Then she sarcastically began to quote from a well-known automobile advertis.e.m.e.nt which emphasized the superiority of a long wheel base, whatever that is. "The Glow-worm simply won"t make the turn," she said. "Here"s one instance when the worm won"t turn."
"It"s a long worm that knows no turning," I misquoted.
Nyoda tried again, and this time, with its rear wheels in the swamp and its front lamps hanging over the precipice, the Glow-worm did turn. We were limp as rags from the strain by the time we were safely back in the road. I had been trying to make up my mind which would do the least damage to my clothes, landing in the swamp or in the lake, and had just about decided on the lake as the lesser of the two evils, as I couldn"t get much wetter anyhow, when Nyoda called out, "It"s all over."
"If you"re speaking of the mud it certainly is all over," I said, feeling of the spatters on the back of the seat.
"Mud baths are hygienic," said Nyoda drily, if anyone can be said to speak drily when they are dripping at every corner. "Be a sport if you can"t be a philosopher." Which statement contained food for reflection, as they say in books.
We made our way slowly and splashily back to the mud-wreathed gate, alas, we shoved sir--Gracious! I"m tobogganing into a quotation again!
But, like the girl in the poem when the lover comes back to the gate after many years, Sahwah wasn"t there. We called, oh, how we did call!
With voices as hoa.r.s.e as the frogs in the swamp.
"We might as well stop calling," said Nyoda, disgustedly. "She won"t be able to tell the difference between us and the frogs."
But we kept on calling just the same and a hideous echo from somewhere threw our words back at us in a broken, mocking answer. That was all.
We were paralyzed with fear that Sahwah had wandered into the swamp or had fallen over the precipice in the dark into the lake. We turned the lights of the car on the swamp for a long distance, but saw nothing.
I shuddered until my teeth chattered at that lonely stretch of marsh.
Given the choice between a graveyard at night and a swamp, I think I should take the graveyard. The nice friendly ghosts that sit on tombstones are so much more cheerful than the nameless and shapeless Things that flit over a swamp at night. The yellow circle thrown by the Glow-worm"s lamps was the only thing that linked us to earth and reason. Within that circle the mysterious shadows melted and no spirits dared dance. Then without warning the yellow circle dimmed and vanished, and left us completely at the mercy of the Shapes. The lights had gone out on the Glow-worm.
"Probably short circuited," we heard Nyoda"s voice say.
"Where was Moses when the light went out?" I asked, trying to be cheerful.
Margery trembled and clung to Nyoda. The swamp now seemed a living thing that clutched at us with hands. And somewhere in that darkness that pressed around us Sahwah was wandering around lost, or perhaps lying helpless in the water. It is not my intention to dwell on the unpleasant features of our trip any more than I have to. But somehow that night stands out more clearly in my memory than any of the other events. Nyoda says it is because I am gifted, or rather cursed, with a constructive imagination, and see and hear things that aren"t there. I suppose it is true, because I can see whole armies marching in the sky, and boats and horses and dragons, when the other girls only see clouds.
But I know I heard sounds in that swamp that night that weren"t earthly; voices that sang tunes and children that cried, and things that fiddled and shrieked and sobbed and laughed and whispered and gurgled and moaned.
Our hunt for Sahwah had to be given up because without lights we dared not venture forth on the road for fear of running into the swamp.
"Sit up in front, Migwan, and be the headlight; you"re bright enough,"
said Nyoda, cheerfully.
"I"m having an eclipse to-night," I replied.
So we sat still in the Glow-worm not far from the gate which had been the fountain and origin of all the trouble and wished fervently, not for Blucher or night, but for Sahwah or morning. And the reader knows which one of them came.
The rain stopped about dawn and the east began to redden and then we knew there was going to be a sunrise. I have been glad to see many things in my life; but I never was so glad to see anything, as I was, when the sun began to rise that morning after the night of water.
Viewed in the magic light of morning, the road was not so bad, while the lake, rippling in the wind, was a thing of beauty, and the swamp was merely a swamp. The gate was right at the corner of a fence which enclosed a very large farm. We could just barely see the house and barn in the distance, set up on a sort of hill. The property ended on this end at the gate, and just beyond it began the descent to the lake. How we had gotten inside that fence the night before we never found out. We must have crossed that entire farm in the darkness on a private road which we mistook for the main road.
In the broad light of day we descended the steep way down to the lake and examined every foot of ground around it. It was all soft mud and if Sahwah had been down there she must have left traces of some kind. But the surface was unbroken save for a few tracks of birds. Clearly, she had not fallen over the edge. Where, then, had she gone. The mud around the gate was such soup that no footprints could be seen. Oh, if the gate could only speak!
"Could she have possibly found her way up to that farmhouse?" I asked.
"I don"t see how she ever did it in the dark, but still it"s a possibility."
So we dragged the gate open again and drove up to the farmhouse. The men were just starting to work in the fields. It must be nice to work where you can see the earth wake up every morning. There are times when I simply long to be a milkmaid. A lean, sun-burned woman was washing clothes out under the trees and she looked up in surprise when we appeared. No, Sahwah had not been there. The mystery was still a mystery. But from the height of the farmhouse we saw what we had not seen from the level of the road, and that was that there was another road running parallel to the one we had been on, skirting the swamp on the other side and bordered by thick trees. From the gate we had thought that those trees grew in the swamp, as we could not see the road beyond it. Sahwah must have blundered into that road in the darkness, we concluded, and thought she was going after us.
We found a narrow lane leading to it, covered with water for most of its length, and there, sure enough, we saw deep footprints in the new road. We followed these, expecting to come upon her sitting in the wayside every minute. But the footprints went on. There were no houses along here; the only building we pa.s.sed was an empty red barn covered over with tobacco advertis.e.m.e.nts. A little farther on the road ran into a highway and so did the footprints. A little beyond the turn Nyoda spied something lying in the road. How she managed to see it is beyond me, but Nyoda has eyes like a hawk. It was a b.u.t.ton from Sahwah"s coat.
Sahwah"s b.u.t.ton-shedding habit is very useful as a clue.
"Here is a b.u.t.ton; Sahwah can"t be very far now," said Nyoda, cheerfully. A sign post we pa.s.sed said "Lafayette 20 miles." At last we knew where we were. Deep ruts in the road showed where a car had pa.s.sed just ahead of us. Then all of a sudden the footprints came to a stop; ended abruptly in the road, as if Sahwah had suddenly soared up into the air. There was a low stone where the footprints came to a stop and around it the mud was all trampled down.
At first we were frightened to death, thinking that Sahwah had been attacked and carried off. But the footprints did not lead anywhere. "Of course, they don"t," said Nyoda. "Whoever made them got into that car and Sahwah did too. It"s the car that"s traveling ahead of us. It stopped and picked Sahwah up." (Just how literally Sahwah had been "picked up" we did not guess.)
"What will we do now?" asked Nakwisi.
"Follow the car," replied Nyoda.
"It sounds like Cadmus and "follow the cow"," said I.
So we followed the ruts. The sun was up fair and warm by this time and we were beginning to dry off beautifully. I took off my soaked shoes and tied them out on the mud guard where they could bake. Nakwisi went me one better in the scheme of decoration and hung hers on the lamp bracket. Then we hung up our wet coats where they could fly in the wind. Margery was cold all the time and we let her have the exclusive use of the one robe, and the rest of us took turns being wrapped in the Winnebago banner. It was blanket shaped and made of heavy felt and served the purpose admirably. In a moment of forethought Sahwah had taken it down from the back of the car just before we were caught in the storm, and so it had escaped being soaked also.
"This is traveling _de luxe_" said I, stretching out my stockinged feet on the foot rail, and wiggling my cramped toes.
"I don"t know about de looks," said Nyoda with a twinkle, "but as long as no one sees you it doesn"t matter."
"Who"s making puns now?" inquired Nakwisi, severely.
"What"s this in the road?" asked Nyoda presently, as we came upon a bundle of bright green.
We stopped and picked it up. "It"s a veil just like ours, and a hat,"
said Nyoda. "It"s Sahwah"s veil and hat!" she exclaimed, looking in the hatband where Sahwah"s name was written. Then she discovered something tied in the veil. It was Sahwah"s address book and on the first page was scrawled a message:
"To those interested:
Picked up by tourists. On way to Carrie Wentworth Inn, Chicago.
SARAH ANN BREWSTER."
Beside the signature was the familiar Sunfish which is Sahwah"s symbol.
There was no doubt about the note being genuine. Besides, it could only be quick-witted Sahwah who would think of leaving a blaze in the road on the slender chance that we would be coming along that way. How it smoothed everything out! Not knowing that we were so close behind her, Sahwah had had a chance to go on to Chicago, and would simply go to our hotel and wait until we came! What a long headed one Sahwah was, to be sure! We could have played hide and seek with each other around those roads for days and never found each other, the way the children did around the voting booth, but by clearing out altogether and going to our place of rendezvous she knew the chances of our meeting were much greater. How she had managed to find tourists who were on the way to Chicago was a piece of luck which could only have befallen Sahwah.
"I think the best thing for us to do is to hunt some breakfast and then make for Chicago as fast as we can," said Nyoda. "I"ve been thinking that that would be the best way to find the others. We don"t seem to have been very successful in running around the country after them, and if they managed to get the wire we sent to Chicago the other day they will probably find us if we go there too."