The mystery of the missing eyebrows
Renfro nodded and smiled. “But you didn’t see anything nor anyone,”
Jimmie continued.
Another nod from Renfro. “And Hooch,” Jimmie moved closer to him. “You
saw those footprints.”
This time he excited Renfro’s interest. He was intensely concerned in
those footprints. He could hardly wait for morning to come to give him
an opportunity to study them. He felt that an answer was due Jimmie,
“Yes, I saw them,” he said, “And they are sure big ones.”
“Now I tell you--”
But Jimmie didn’t get to tell Renfro anything more. The patrol was
back in the room. Some of the boys had made weather observations
while out of the cabin and they were anxious to mark them on their
charts. A discussion on cooking meat followed their work and then the
ceremonials for the evening began.
They had just gotten to the most interesting part when Jimmie announced
that it was bedtime. One of the rules of the cabin committee, in order
to keep a strong friendship with the parents of the scouts, required
the hikers to go to bed at a certain hour. And like good scouts they
observed that rule.
The boys rolled up in blankets on the bunks. Several of them whispered.
Jack Burton next to Renfro, insisted upon telling both Jimmie and
Renfro of how his high school brother got angry every time he came out
to the cabin. The fraternity to which he belonged had wanted to buy
the cabin; but the scouts had offered a larger sum for it than did the
fraternity. “We beat them to it,” the little fellow finished, “and
every boy in that frat hates me ’cause I told the committee they was
wantin’ it and--”
He trailed on and on but Jimmie’s snores told that he was asleep and
Renfro’s mind was bent on other things. He saw again Captain Pete--the
big cabin--the dog--Lang Tammie, and then the many foot prints on Twin
Cedars’ floor. In the morning--
But in the morning he didn’t make his investigation. For hardly had
Renfro gotten to sleep when he was awakened by a low, warning voice.
Sibilant whispers went from one bunk to the other. “The light, the
light!” the boys whispered. “It’s on the graves now.”
Renfro raised on his elbow and saw that he was directly in range of the
window and of the enclosure on the graves. And the boys were right. A
weird unearthly blue light was playing over some of the boards of the
fence and over the two mounds inside the enclosure.
With quick breaths the boys watched it. Jimmie and Renfro went to the
window. For several minutes the lights, alternating from purple to
blue, played along the graves and then suddenly they went out.
“I’m in favor of investigating them,” Renfro began, turned away from
the window, struck the bench with his foot and fell headlong to the
floor. Something on which he landed slipped, he felt a soft wooly, mass
and realized with a start that he had fallen on his own coat.
“And on the foot prints,” he thought with a start.
“Light the lamp, Jim,” he called. “I want to see what I’ve done.”
“Hurt?” Jimmie Noel’s voice was full of hope. A chance for first aid
was not to be despised.
He carried the lamp to where Renfro lay. The other boys followed him.
And with a sinking heart Renfro feared that if he had not destroyed the
contour of the footprints the boys had.
Slowly and carefully he raised himself from the floor. He lifted
the coat, his paper bag and then the paper. Below, it was just an
indistinguishable lot of soil which had once been mud brought in on
shoes--the shape of which Renfro would have given a small fortune to
have been able to have told.
But now he knew that it was impossible.
* * * * *
The next morning Jimmie, Bill and Renfro made a trip to the two graves
while the other boys cooked breakfast in camp style. There were
no marks around the grave, no sign of destruction nor any kind of
invasion. Jimmie crawled over both mounds feeling his way carefully.
“It’s mighty queer,” was the only remark he made when his investigation
was finished.
And Renfro and Bill nodded.
Back in the cabin the other boys were discussing the same happening.
Before they left the cabin they made a vow to tell none of their
experiences to the rest of the scouts but to have weekly overnight
hikes out to the cabin. “Investigation hikes,” Bill dubbed them.
On the way back to town the boys overtook a solitary driver in a low
spring wagon. It was Captain Pete and he gave them a genial invitation
to ride back with him. “Good hunting weather,” he told them and
laughed, “but I don’t notice you fellows brought in anything.”
“We were making a hike,” Bill answered for the crowd. “We camped out at
Twin Cedar cabin last night.”
Captain Pete chuckled. “Where did you git them Indian mounds?” he
insisted.
The boys looked at Jimmie but that worthy did not even offer to answer.
Instead he changed the conversation back to rabbit hunting and got
Captain Pete into a monologue again. While he talked, Renfro studied
him--his face across which there were long scratches and his shifting
eyes. Sometimes they were as gentle as a woman’s and again when he was
angry they were cruel.
As the boys clambered out of the wagon, he gave a shrewd chuckle,
“Didn’t see anything queer out there last night--did you?” he asked.
“Some of the scouts did last week, ’cordin’ to what one of their
mothers told me. Didn’t see nothin’--you fellows--did you?”
And they disdained to even answer.
From the little restaurant where he went to supplement his camp
breakfast, Renfro telephoned home before he went on to school. His
father answered the telephone and he was in a very agreeable mood. He
asked Renfro if he had enjoyed his trip and then gave him a telephone
number which had been left for him the night before.
Renfro recognized the number as that of Morrison’s telephone. The clock
on the restaurant wall told him that he had time to go past the office
on his way to school. Better talk face to face with Morrison than over
the telephone, he decided.
The morning paper on the table had big headlines about the Wier
kidnaping. The story it contained was almost a repetition of the one
the Globe had had the evening before. No new clues had been discovered,
according to the detectives. He also admitted that if any were
uncovered they would be kept secret.
Then followed detailed interviews from all of the Wier servants, none
of whom could or would add a bit of information to the stories already
told. Renfro read them thoroughly. And while he ate his buck-wheat
cakes, he wondered whether or not the cabin at Twin Cedars had harbored
any of the kidnapers.
The lights outside the cabin had interested but not disturbed him.
Now he was inclined to give them more attention. Of course, it was
ridiculous to think that they were made by returning spirits, as some
of the younger scouts seemed to think. But still these lights did not
just happen to come to the grave.
Back of their coming was some weird purpose, Renfro was sure. “I’ll
keep them in mind the next time I go out that way,” he decided. “Jim’s
so interested in them that he’ll ask me to go with him again I’m sure.
They may--”
With a rush of cold air the front door opened and Jimmie Noel entered
the room. He had stopped at the office to see if his brother had
carried his route on time. “No complaints,” he said cheerfully to
Renfro. “Going past home?”
Renfro shook his head. “Have to see Morrison,” he returned.
“I’m not going that way,” Jimmie warmed his hands at the radiator.
“Have to go by home. But I want you to go back to the cabin soon,
Hooch, with me. There’s something back of those lights--something
mysterious. You’re a bear at working out mysteries. And for the good of
Twin Cedar camp I want that one solved. If something isn’t found out to
prove those lights aren’t ghostly things, that camp will be about as
popular as a water snaked swimming hole for the scouts. You’ll go with
me--won’t you, Hooch?”
“You bet!” Renfro smiled. He was surely glad Jimmie had not connected
the cabin with the kidnaping. He didn’t want to share honors with
Jimmie even in working out his kidnaping clues. And besides he wasn’t
sure that the Twin Cedar cabin held any part in the episode. Yet he
wished he had not fallen and himself destroyed the footprints.
CHAPTER XI.
RENFRO BECOMES A MENTOR.
Morrison was at his desk. He jerked out a surly answer to Renfro’s
pleasant, “Good morning.”
In the same mood he turned in his chair and saw Renfro. The frown
by some mysterious manner was jerked into a smile. “Hello Horn,” he
beamed. “Got my message--didn’t you?” In rapid jerks he continued,
“Needn’t have bothered to come in. Could have told you over the wire.
Want you to take a pupil on Old Grief.”
A look of dismay on Renfro’s face answered him. “Oh, no--haven’t the
least idea of taking it away from you,” he hastened to reassure Renfro.
“I want you to take Merle Riker out there with you this afternoon and
teach him how you get new customers.”
He pointed to a chair and Renfro dropped into it. But there was no
break in Morrison’s conversation. “Good kid, but lacks pep--Mother’s
a widow--needs the money--gave him one of our best routes. He’s good
to collect, because the people are all good pay. He doesn’t lose a
subscriber. Doesn’t get any new ones either. Just keeps the route the
way it is. And he’s got the best route for new customers in town--all
except Old Grief,” he winked. “Now the Riker family will need a
Christmas turkey and the Globe needs new subscribers out there. See?”
“Yes sir,” Renfro got in an answer this time.
“I’ll send a sub out in Merle’s place this afternoon and you take him
with you,” Morrison continued. “Keep still about it. Don’t want to make
a precedent out of this--unusual case--feel sorry for the family. All
the kid needs is some pep. Inspire it. Get me, Horn?”
Renfro nodded. “I’ll do my best,” he promised.
And he kept his word. When he reached the station that night, a slender
boy with a face which was molded along feminine lines, and whose
clothes were well worn met him. Renfro studied him a minute before he
began talking. As he studied he decided that like Morrison, he was
going to like this boy. He lacked enterprise. But Renfro believed that
this was on account of shyness due to his poverty.
For when the boy lifted his eye lashes there was a quality of steel
in his gray eyes. His mouth too had a firmness at the corners that
promised much. He walked along the street in quick long steps, which
matched those taken by Renfro and he was ever in an alert, ready to
listen attitude.
“We’ll try some new subscribers first,” Renfro volunteered. “Then you
can help me throw my papers and if we have time we’ll get a few more.”
“All right,” the steel quality was also in the boy’s voice.
Renfro consulted his book, found a number three doors away and led the
way to a little L shaped cottage. A big, burly man came to the door.
“Do you read the Globe?” Renfro began in a pleasant way.
The man started to shut the door with a gruff, “No,” when Renfro’s foot
slipped just inside enough to prevent that. “I am the new carrier on
this route,” he began. “I have taken it for several years’ service, so
I wanted all the people to know me.”
The man stared at him more kindly and opened the door a bit farther
himself. “I don’t like the Globe,” he said, the surliness still in his
voice. “It comes too late in the evening and--”
“It came too late in the evening,” Renfro smiled. “I bring it before
any other carrier on this route brings the other evening papers. And I
can prove it. You ask any of the people on my route.”
The man hesitated. Renfro reached into his bag and brought out a paper.
“I’ll leave one now and stop on my way home to get your order,” he
smiled.