Meredith Beyers - The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 4, No. 3 — December 1921)

“The thief must have dropped them on his way to town.”

Swiftly a veil of mistrust had been drawn between them. He was seeking an answer to his doubts with a look as bold as hers had been a moment since. She turned away, a crimson glow mounting to her temples. In the lengthening silence, Jack had no alternative but to thank the girl and go.

“She’d have no reason to steal my traps,” said Jack to himself as he followed the trail southward. “If she had, she wouldn’t confess it by returning them to me!”

“Blind as a bat!” Mary Gage remarked to Jimmie Willets, as she watched Ramsey go. “He won’t guess our secret till he falls head first into it.”

Jack lingered over his traps that evening till it was almost dark, watching for the return of the thief. There being no sign of one, he finally made his way to his camp.

In a swamp near the middle of the wilderness lay a low mass of rock covered with woodland. On this island Jack had set up a shelter of poles, canvas and spruce boughs and stored his food and equipment. A dry, winding path across the swamp had ends which he had cunningly concealed from casual eyes.

In the darkness, he wrapped himself in his blankets and stretched himself on a heap of spruce twigs to sleep. How long he lay thus he could not tell. Suddenly he found himself wide awake, staring at a light shining across the swamp.

Beyond the causeway boulders were piled fifty feet high in ragged confusion, ending abruptly in a flattened top. Jack had named it the Bag of Bones. On the summit, out of reach of plundering lumbermen, rose a stately ash, its boughs flung wide.

It was among the leaves of this ash tree that the rays of light were shining. Any natural source for them was discounted by the fact that the light rose from below. So great was its power that the leaves and branches over which it strayed were stamped with the brilliant vividness of sunshine.

Ramsey stumbled toward the causeway. Before he reached it, the light had vanished. He stared into the darkness to make sure, then kicked himself for his stupidity. A searchlight in the bowels of the earth was too grotesque for belief. He returned to his bed, certain he had been dreaming.

Through the mist of the early morning he made a round of his traps. Of the thirty, on this day eighteen were missing! Ramsey’s eyes grew hard. He began a thorough combing of the wilderness, searching for traces of the thief.

Finally he found footprints beside a brook. They had been made by a short, broad shoe on the soles of which had been fastened strips of iron in the form of a double cross, to obtain a firmer foothold on uncertain ground.

With dogged patience, Ramsey traced these footprints through woodland, gully, swamp and meadow. They led toward the road to Honesdale. He had nearly reached this road when the footprints were merged with the ruts of a heavy automobile. The car had been driven several times into a deserted lumber trail, turned and taken out again.

Suddenly he saw that which made him conceal himself in a heap of boulders and stare cautiously through a screen of laurel toward the highway.

A man had jumped out of a big, high-powered car and scurried into the neighboring forest. The car passed on as the stranger mounted a hillock and climbed a pine tree to the topmost branches.

In a few minutes the car came back. A whistle sounded from the lookout in the pine tree. The automobile was turned into the trail and stopped in the old tracks. Two men leaped from the tonneau. One of them was carrying several packages. While the chauffeur turned the car, these passengers walked quickly to a large stone and, by their united strength, turned it over as if it were hinged and balanced. One of the men took a small package from the cavity beneath; the other deposited in it the parcels he was carrying. The stone was lowered into place and a moment later the men were in the automobile.

One of the passengers whistled. No answer from the pine tree. A motorcycle came into view on the main road. The men in the car exchanged glances, whispering, and one of them shook his head.

A low whistle from the pine tree assured them that the way was clear. The automobile shot out of the lumber trail into the highroad and disappeared, as the lookout descended from the pine tree and walked away in the opposite direction.

Hastening from cover, Jack struggled to move the flat stone. It might have been bed rock so sturdily did it resist his strength. He recalled that it had required the efforts of both passengers from the automobile to shift its balance, so he could not hope to stir it unassisted. The hollow beneath and the parcels it contained preserved their secret. But he resolved to return and watch again.

The second theft of traps had crippled Jack’s enterprise, so with his store of skins he went to Honesdale, sold the pelts and refitted, turning a balance of cash over to his mother. After supper, he strolled downtown to the cigar store of his friend, Bert Walton.

As he passed the hotel, he did not notice two men on the verandah, who were regarding him closely.

“That’s him!” whispered one of them to his burly companion.

“That kid?”

“Sure thing. Knows more about that stretch of woods than anyone round here.”

“Doesn’t look as if he stood in with crooks.”

“Don’t believe he does, unless Gage’s girl has hypnotized him. You’d better find out-about that. Go to it! Say you want to hunt— You know.”

So it came that when the big burly man strolled into Walton’s cigar store, nodded to Bert like an old customer and bought a costly cigar, the proprietor introduced him to Jack Ramsey. The stranger came from New York and went by the names of Cox. Could Ramsey take him hunting? When Jack saw the color of his money — a twenty-dollar bill — a bargain was struck. Early the next morning Cox hired a flivver and in it they rattled northward.

Reaching the wilderness, Jack found a familiar trail and they plunged into it, stopping the flivver in a grassy gully.

“What d’ye know about that!” cried Cox, pointing to long furrows in the sod.

“They’re automobile tracks.”

“It has been here often — a big, bang-up, classy city car!”

Jack told him of the mysterious visit of the automobilists, the lookout in the pine tree and the balanced stone.

“Let’s have a look at that stone,” suggested Cox.

With their united strength they moved the slab. Under it was a cavity three feet square and of half that depth. It was empty.

The stone replaced, Cox insisted that they go back to the main road and find another entrance to the forest. No complaints would make him alter the plan or did he offer an explanation as they drove to a new parking place, a mile further up the road.

Ramsey began to think that he had a queer bird on his hands. As the hours passed, the opinion was confirmed by Cox’s impatience, his half-interest in the hunting and his curiosity and questions in no way connected with their sport.

Perhaps the boy’s impatience arose from the fact that his own thoughts were not on hunting. In the quivering, golden-purple haze of Indian summer came dreams, dancing lightly or touching reverently things which another held intimate. In his mind’s eye he was watching the sunlight as it filtered through the golden-brown hair of Mary Gage and painted her cheek in wonderful colors like the heart of the rose; again he saw her dimples come and go—

“Say, sonny, when I see a kid like you,” Cox finally remarked, “absentminded and dreaming of hither and yon, so to speak, I know it means just one thing. Who’s the girl?”

“Aw — Mr. Cox — I—”

“Come long! Who is she?”

Point by point, Cox learned Mary Gage’s name, where she lived, of her family and surroundings.