Leppard, Lois Gladys - [Mandie 02] (4 page)

“Where do you think we are, Sallie? Do you have any idea?” Joe asked.

“I do not know this land, but I think we should keep going downhill because we went uphill all the way to the cave,” she replied, pushing the limbs of a bush out of her face.

Mandie, carrying Snowball on her shoulder, was having the roughest time of all because the kitten insisted on clinging to her dress; and every time she took an uneven step because of unlevel ground or rocks and underbrush in the way, Snowball tightened his claws. And with the nightfall, it had become cold on the North Carolina mountain.

“I hope we’re not too far away from food. I’m hungry!” Joe exclaimed.

“Me, too,” Mandie added. “And I’m cold.”

“Here is food,” Sallie said, stopping by a huge bush and pulling berries from its limbs. “Serviceberries. They are good to eat.”

“Oh, yes,” agreed Mandie as she and Joe joined the Indian girl for a berry supper. They sat down on a boulder
nearby. She offered one to Snowball. He turned his nose away from it. “Snowball, if you don’t want these berries, you’re going to have to wait, and no telling how long.”

“Cats don’t eat berries, Mandie,” Joe laughed at her.

“Well, Snowball eats tomatoes, so why can’t he eat berries?” Mandie told him. “Goodness gracious, I’m tired.” She took a deep breath and stretched.

“Me, too, but we must keep moving on. There may be dangerous animals here,” Sallie told them as she stood up.

“Of course! And we don’t have a thing to defend ourselves,” Joe said, as he and Mandie got to their feet and Snowball clung to the shoulder of Mandie’s dress.

“Joe, what did we do in that cave?” Mandie admonished him. “We said we would trust in God. Have you forgotten so soon?”

“Well, no, but it would help if we had a rifle,” he answered.

“Since we do not have one, I suggest we make haste,” Sallie said, going ahead downhill through the bushes. The other two quickly followed.

It was a cloudy night with no moon to light the way. The three hurried along, slipping, sliding, sometimes falling over huge boulders along the path they took, sometimes getting caught in the briers of a bush, sometimes being struck in the face by an unseen branch. On Sallie’s advice they tried to keep on a downhill route, but it was so dark and the trees and brush were so thick, they could not be sure which way they were going.

A small animal brushed by Sallie’s legs in the darkness, and in her fright she lost her balance and went sliding downhill straight into a stream. Mandie and Joe ran after her.

“Here I am. Here!” the Indian girl called to them as
she rose from the edge of the water. Luckily the wet sand had stopped her and only her feet had gone into the water.

“I can’t see you,” Joe called.

“Keep talking,” Mandie told her. “We’ll follow your voice.” She put Snowball down so she could hurry.

“I landed in a stream down here,” Sallie called to them.

“I can hear you,” Joe yelled back to her. He went running down the hill and suddenly ran into what sounded like a bunch of huge tin cans.

Mandie, frightened by the noise, called out. “Joe, are you all right? What was that noise?”

“Looks like a whole lot of big cans,” he said, as Mandie and Sallie both got to his side.

The Indian girl walked slowly around, feeling the cans and trying to see in the darkness. “I think it is a still.”

“A still?” asked Mandie.

“A real moonshine still?” asked Joe.

“That means someone has been here and may be somewhere close around,” Mandie figured.

“Sure does, and it means they must be bootleggers,” Joe laughed.

Sallie did not understand his language. “Bootleggers?”

“Yeh, that’s people who make liquor illegally,” the boy said.

“Bad Cherokees make liquor, but not here,” Sallie replied.

They were talking loudly enough that their voices carried in the dark, still night.

Mandie cautioned them. “The bootleggers might be around. We’d better be quiet. You’ve already made
enough noise banging against those tin cans.”

Out of the darkness a pair of hands grabbed Joe from behind and at the same time another pair latched onto Sallie, pushing her against Mandie and causing the girls to fall. The two dark forms were barely visible.

“Hey, what are you doing to me?” Joe demanded, as he felt his hands being tied behind him. He put up a struggle but the hands were too strong.

“They ain’t nothin’ but younguns, Snuff,” a woman’s coarse voice said as she held onto the two girls.

There was a strong, sickening smell about the two strangers. Evidently they had been drinking what they made in the still.

“Ne’er mind what they be, they done found somethin’ that ain’t none of their bidness and they’s aliable to be atellin’ the wrong people ’bout it,” Snuff replied as he finished tying Joe’s hands, and with the end of the long rope started to tie Sallie’s as well, leaving a short piece of rope between the two.

“Please, Mr. Snuff, we won’t tell anyone we saw you, or whatever it is you don’t want us to tell,” begged Mandie, the woman still holding her tightly.

“No, we’ll just do as you say, Mr. Snuff,” put in Joe.

“Shet up!” Snuff replied.

“Y’see, Snuff, they don’t even know what we’re atalkin’ about,” the woman told him.

“Shet your smacker, too, Rennie Lou,” the man said. He jerked Mandie’s hand from the woman, causing the girl to slip as he jerked her around. She almost fell head first into a bush. As she stumbled, her hair ribbon fell out and caught on a twig unnoticed.

Snuff pulled Mandie’s hand behind her, and leaving a short space in the rope for Sallie’s hands, he tied Mandie’s,
letting the long end of the rope dangle. Now all three were tied to the same rope.

“We are lost,” Sallie tried to explain. “We do not even know where we are. If you would just show us the way back to Deep Creek, we would be most grateful.”

Snuff turned quickly to look at Sallie in the darkness. “An Injun, by George! We’ve captured an Injun here!”

“Now, how do you know? It’s so dark I can’t even tell what color hair they’ve got,” Rennie Lou said.

“Don’t you catch that Injun accent? No matter how much eddication they git, you kin always hear that kind of lisp they have,” Snuff said, trying to look closely at Sallie in the dark.

“Yes, you are right. I am Cherokee,” Sallie proudly told him, as she tried to straighten up in pride.

“Well, well, well, whadda ya know!” Rennie Lou slapped her skirt and laughed hoarsely. “And is the udder two Injuns, too?”

Snuff was trying to see what the other two looked like but it was too dark.

“Nope, don’t think so. That ’un has got yellar hair,” he said. “Well, now that you’ins can’t git away too well, mind tellin’ me whar you thought you was goin’ this time o’ night?”

“Sallie told you the truth, Mr. Snuff. We are lost,” Joe replied.

“That’s right. We are,” Mandie added.

“Lost? Everybody that believes that stand on your head,” the man growled. He pulled the rope, almost causing the three to lose their balance. “Now, where was you’ins goin’?”

“We were in the cave and got lost,” Sallie told him. “There are probably search parties out right now looking for us.”

“In the cave? What cave?” the man asked.

“The cave where the Indian Charley hid,” Mandie told him.

“The cave whar the whut?” he howled and stomped his foot. “Now that’s a good ’un. Ain’t no cave nowhere ’round hyar, much less an Injun called Charley.”

“Well, we were in a cave,” Joe said, “whether you believe it or not. We were in a cave.”

“I know every leaf and stone in these hyar woods. Ain’t no cave hyar,” the old man argued.

“But Joe’s right. We were in a cave. The Indian boy with us ran off and left us and we got lost,” Mandie insisted.

“Snuff,” the woman said as the old man jerked Mandie around on the rope. “Make ’em show us if thar’s a cave. A cave might come in handy sometime.”

“All right. We’ll keep ’em in the barn till daylight and then they will show us the cave,” Snuff agreed, pushing the three together in front of him. “This way. Rennie Lou, lead the way and watch out for any sudden-like tricks.”

O God, please help us!
Mandie prayed silently as they were herded forward. She had never been so scared in all her life. The old man and woman didn’t seem to have any common sense about anything, and there was no telling what they might do to them. Besides, everyone would be out looking for them, and her mother would be awfully worried.

They stumbled about in the darkness trying to follow the woman as they were ordered to do. Snowball, unseen by the man and woman, scampered along near Mandie. All three were already tired, hungry, and worn out. Now they were about to collapse from their weariness in avoiding the branches that scratched their faces and the
thorns and briers that tore their clothes. Mandie slipped on a rock and pulled the other two down with her as she fell.

“Now, look ahyar. None of that stuff!” the old man yelled, jerking cruelly at the rope. “You’re agoin’ to the barn whether you like it or not. Git up! Now! Rennie Lou, give ’em a hand!”

The old woman tried to help in the dark but she wasn’t much help. They finally managed to get to their feet.

“I’m sorry, Sallie, Joe. I accidentally fell. I didn’t do it on purpose,” Mandie apologized.

“It’s all right, Mandie,” Joe calmed her.

“It could have happened to either one of us,” Sallie said, as they moved on.

Soon they could make out the blurred outline of a building in the clearing ahead. As they came closer they could see it was a rough log cabin, and to their dismay they were pushed on past it. Snowball followed.

“Go on! This ain’t the barn,” Snuff told them.

“Ain’t far,” Rennie Lou looked back and informed them.

After passing a clump of bushes behind the house, another structure showed up in the darkness. Rennie Lou walked on toward it and stopped at the door. She swung it open on creaky hinges.

“All right, inside!” Snuff prodded them on through the doorway into the darkness.

“Want me to light the lantern, Snuff?” the woman asked.

“Course not, woman. You want them to see us?” the old man growled. He pushed the three forward. “There’s a pile of hay over thar. You kin sleep thar till it gits daylight!”

“Could we have a drink of water?” Joe asked. “We haven’t had any food or water since noon yesterday.”

“Water? Well, reckon you kin. Rennie Lou, git the water bucket over thar,” Snuff said.

The woman picked up something in the darkness and came toward them. Joe felt a metal bucket in her hands as she pushed it in his face. “Hyar you air. Sorry we ain’t got no dipper,” she said. “But I tell you whut. There’s apples in that haystack if you kin manage to eat one without usin’ yer hands!” She laughed hysterically, holding the bucket to Joe’s mouth.

“Rennie Lou, leave ’em be,” Snuff warned her. Turning back to the three captives, he said, “Now we’ll be back as soon as the sun cracks that darkness. Meantime you’d better rest good ’cause you’re gonna find that cave for us, or else.”

The man and the woman left the barn then, slamming the door behind them. The three prisoners gave a sigh of relief. Snowball moved around Mandie’s feet.

“Now, we’ve got to think fast,” Joe whispered to the others. “How can we get loose? We’ve got to get loose before they come back, so we can get away.”

“Yes, they are definitely drunk,” Mandie agreed. “I’m afraid of people who drink liquor.”

“You never know what they will do when they have been drinking spirits,” Sallie said. “But what can we do?”

“Oh, I don’t know offhand but I suggest we start thinking,” Joe replied. “I have no idea how you go about sitting down when you are all tied together like we are, but why don’t we just take a plop all together?”

“All right, on count of three we’ll all sit at once,” Mandie agreed.

“One, two, three!” Together they landed in a pile of hay in the dark. Snowball prowled around them and
started playing with the end of the rope hanging from Mandie’s hands.

“We’ll never be able to get up again,” Sallie told them.

“We’ve got an awful lot of thinking to do first,” Joe said.

“Yes, we’ve got to get back to Uncle Ned’s, so we can go back to the cave and get the gold,” Mandie reminded them.

“I do not want any of that gold, but I will go with you,” Sallie told her.

“Yeh, we’ve got to get back to that gold somehow. There must be a fortune there,” Joe said.

“I wonder who put it there,” Mandie mused as she twisted her hands in the rope. “Do you suppose these people here did?” Snowball’s paw caught at the rope behind her.

“No, because they don’t even know about the cave,” Joe said.

“Maybe some bank robbers left it there,” Mandie suggested.

“I doubt it because it is too hard to get to the cave from any road or trail,” the Indian girl replied. “Besides, they would probably guard it. And Tsa’ni seems to know his way around in there.”

“You don’t mean
he
could have put it there?” asked Mandie.

“No, he would never have gold like that,” Sallie answered. “I mean someone would have seen him around if they were guarding the gold.”

“You’re right. But how did it get there? And who put it there?” Joe asked.

“We could ask Uncle Ned about it,” Mandie said.

“First, we have to get away from these people, so we’d better concentrate on that,” Joe reminded the two girls.

It was going to take an awful lot of thinking to get them out of their predicament.

Chapter 4 - Dimar

Elizabeth Shaw could sit still no longer waiting for her daughter to come back or to be found. It was a long time after midnight and no word had come from anyone. She decided it was time she helped in the search.

“Morning Star,” she began, trying to talk to the old squaw. “You and me—” she pointed to the squaw and to herself—“let’s go to Bird-town and get Mandie’s kinpeople to help find them.”

Morning Star understood part of it. “Bird-town,” she said.

Elizabeth smiled and made motions like she was riding a horse and then pointed to the old woman and to herself again. “Bird-town,” she said again.