In the library he told the Tinkletown posse that Tom Reddon had met Miss Banks while she was at school in New York. He was a Chicago millionaire's son and she was the daughter of wealthy New York people.

Her mother was eager to have the young people marry, but the girl at that time imagined herself to be in love with another man. In a pique she left school and set forth to earn her own living. A year's hardship as governess in the family of Congressman Ritchey and subsequent disillusionment as a country school-teacher brought her to her senses and she realised that she cared for Tom Reddon after all. She and Miss Gray together prepared the letter which told Reddon where she could be found, and that eager young gentleman did the rest. He had been waiting for months for just such a message from her. The night of the spelling-match he induced her to come to Colonel Randall's, and now the whole house-party, including Miss Banks, was to leave on the following day for New York. The marriage would take place in a very few weeks.

"I'll accept your explanation," said Mr. Crow composedly as he took a handful of cigars. "Well, I guess I'll be startin' back. It's gettin'

kind o' late-like."

There was a telegram at the livery stable for him when he reached that haven of warmth and rest in Tinkletown about dawn the next day. It was from Chicago and marked "Charges collect."

"What girl and whose body," it said, "do you refer to? Miss Lovering has been dead two years, and we are settling the estate in behalf of the other heirs. We were trying to establish her place of residence. Never mind the body you have lost."

"Doggone," said Anderson, chuckling aloud, "that was an awful good joke on 'Rast, wasn't it?"

The stablemen stood around and looked at him with jaws that were drooping helplessly. The air seemed laden with a sombre uncertainty that had not yet succeeded in penetrating the nature of Marshal Crow.

"Is it from her?" finally asked Ike Smith hoa.r.s.ely, his lips trembling.

"From what her?"

"Rosalie."

"Thunder, no! It's from my lawyers in Chicago."

"Ain't you--ain't you heerd about it?" half groaned Ike, moving away as if he expected something calamitous.

"What the d.i.c.kens are you fellers drivin' at?" demanded Anderson. The remainder of his posse deserted the red-hot stove and drew near with the instinctive feeling that something dreadful had happened.

"Ro--Rosalie has been missin' sence early last night. She was grabbed by some feller near Mrs. Luce's, chucked into a big wagon an' rushed out of town before Ros Crow could let out a yell. Clean stole her--look out!

Ketch him, Joe!"

Anderson dropped limply into a hostler's arms.

CHAPTER XV

Rosalie Disappears

Things had happened in Tinkletown that night. Alf Reesling finally found some one who would listen to his story. He told the minister and the minister alarmed the town. To be brief, Alf admitted that 'Rast Little was at his house in the outskirts of the village, laid up with a broken arm and a bad cut in the top of his head.

"He came crawlin' up to my place about six o'clock in the mornin',"

explained Alf, "an' I took the poor cuss in. That's what I wanted to tell Anderson, but the old rip wouldn't listen to me. Seems as though 'Rast waited around the schoolhouse last night to git a crack at that feller from town. Miss Banks and her three friends set around the stove in the schoolhouse for about an hour after the crowd left, an' 'Rast got so cold he liked to died out there in the woodshed.

"Purty soon they all come out, an' 'Rast cut acrost the lot to git inside the house by the fire. He was so derned cold that he didn't feel like crackin' anybody. When they wasn't lookin' he sneaked inside. Jest as he was gittin' ready to hug the stove he heard Miss Banks an' one of the men comin' back. He shinned up the ladder into the garret just in time. In they come an' the feller lit a lamp. 'Rast could hear 'em talkin'. She said good-bye to the schoolhouse forever, an' the feller kissed her a couple of times. 'Rast pretty nigh swore out loud at that.

Then she said she'd leave a note in her desk fer the trustees, resignin'

her job, er whatever she called it. He heard her read the note to the man, an' it said somethin' about goin' away unexpected to git married.

'Rast says ef Anderson had looked in the desk he'd have found the note.

"Then she packed up some books an' her an' the feller went out. 'Rast was paralysed. He heerd the sleigh-bells jingle an' then he come to. He started down the ladder so quick that he missed his hold and went kerslam clear to the bottom. Doggone ef he didn't light on his head, too. He don't know how long he laid there, but finally he was resurrected enough to crawl over by the stove. His arm was broke an' he was bleedin' like a stuck hog. Miss Banks had left her handkerchief on the desk, an' he says he tried to bind up his head with it, but it was too infernal small. Somehow he got outside an' wandered around half crazy fer a long time, finally pullin' up at my house, derned nigh froze to death an' so weak he couldn't walk no more. He'd lost his hat an' his ear m.u.f.fs an' his way all at the same time. If Anderson had let me talk this mornin' he'd 'a' knowed there wasn't no murder. It was just a match."

Hours pa.s.sed before Anderson was himself again and able to comprehend the details of the story which involved the disappearance of his ward.

It slowly filtered through his mind as he sat stark-eyed and numb before the kitchen fire that this was the means her mysterious people had taken to remove her from his custody. The twenty years had expired, and they had come to claim their own. There was gloom in the home of Anderson Crow--gloom so dense that death would have seemed bright in comparison.

Mrs. Crow was prostrated, Anderson in a state of mental and physical collapse, the children hysterical.

All Tinkletown stood close and ministered dumbly to the misery of the bereaved ones, but made no effort to follow or frustrate the abductors.

The town seemed as helpless as the marshal, not willingly or wittingly, but because it had so long known him as leader that no one possessed the temerity to step into his place, even in an hour of emergency.

A dull state of paralysis fell upon the citizens, big and little. It was as if universal palsy had been ordained to pinch the limbs and brains of Tinkletown until the hour came for the rehabilitation of Anderson Crow himself. No one suggested a move in any direction--in fact, no one felt like moving at all. Everything stood stockstill while Anderson slowly pulled himself together; everything waited dumbly for its own comatose condition to be dispelled by the man who had been hit the hardest.

It was not until late in the afternoon that Blucher Peabody, the druggist, awoke from his lethargy and moved as though he intended to take the initiative. "Blootch" was Rosalie's most persistent admirer. He had fallen heir to his father's apothecary shop and notion store, and he was regarded as one of the best catches in town. He approached the half-frozen crowd that huddled near old Mrs. Luce's front gate. In this crowd were some of the prominent men of the town, young and old; they left their places of business every half hour or so and wandered aimlessly to the now historic spot, as if drawn by a magnet. Just why they congregated there no one could explain and no one attempted to do so. Presumably it was because the whole town centred its mind on one of two places--the spot where Rosalie was seized or the home of Anderson Crow. When they were not at Mrs. Luce's gate they were tramping through Anderson's front yard and into his house.

"Say," said "Blootch" so loudly that the crowd felt like remonstrating with him, "what's the use of all this?"

No one responded. No one was equal to it on such short notice.

"We've got to do something besides stand around and whisper," he said.

"We've got to find Rosalie Gray."

"But good gosh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Isaac Porter, "they've got purty nigh a day's start of us."

"Well, that don't matter. Anderson would do as much for us. Let's get a move on."

"But where in thunder will we hunt?" murmured George Ray.

"To the end of the earth," announced Blootch, inflating his chest and slapping it violently, a strangely personal proceeding, which went unnoticed. He had reached the conclusion that his chance to be a hero was at hand and not to be despised. Here was the opportunity to outstrip all of his compet.i.tors in the race for Rosalie's favour. It might be confessed that, with all his good intentions, his plans were hopelessly vague. The group braced up a little at the sound of his heroic words.

"But the derned thing's round," was the only thing Ed Higgins could find to say. Ed, as fickle as the wind, was once more deeply in love with Rosalie, having switched from Miss Banks immediately after the visit to Colonel Randall's.

"Aw, you go to Guinea!" was Blootch's insulting reply. Nothing could be more disparaging than that, but Ed failed to retaliate. "Let's appoint a committee to wait on Anderson and find out what he thinks we'd better do."

"But Anderson ain't--" began some one. Blootch calmly waived him into silence.

"What he wants is encouragement, and not a lot of soup and broth and lemonade. He ain't sick. He's as able-bodied as I am. Every woman in town took soup to him this noon. He needs a good stiff drink of whiskey and a committee to cheer him up. I took a bottle up to 'Rast Little last night and he acted like another man."

At last it was decided that a committee should first wait on Anderson, ascertaining his wishes in the premises, and then proceed to get at the bottom of the mystery. In forming this committee the wise men of the town ignored Mr. Peabody, and he might have been left off completely had he not stepped in and appointed himself chairman.

The five good men and true descended upon the marshal late in the afternoon, half fearful of the result, but resolute. They found him slowly emerging from his spell of la.s.situde. He greeted them with a solemn nod of the head. Since early morning he had been conscious of a long stream of sympathisers pa.s.sing through the house, but it was not until now that he felt equal to the task of recognising any of them.

His son Roscoe had just finished telling him the story of the abduction.

Roscoe's awestruck tones and reddened eyes carried great weight with them, and for the tenth time that day he had his sisters in tears. With each succeeding repet.i.tion the details grew until at last there was but little of the original event remaining, a fact which his own family properly overlooked.

"Gentlemen," said Anderson, as if suddenly coming from a trance, "this wasn't the work of Tinkletown desperadoes." Whereupon the committee felt mightily relieved. The marshal displayed signs of a returning energy that augured well for the enterprise. After the chairman had impressively announced that something must be done, and that he was willing to lead his little band to death's door--and beyond, if necessary--Mr. Crow pathetically upset all their hopes by saying that he had long been expecting such a calamity, and that nothing could be done.

"They took the very night when I was not here to pertect her," he lamented. "It shows that they been a-watchin' me all along. The job was did by persons who was in the employ of her family, an' she has been carried off secretly to keep me from findin' out who and what her parents were. Don't ye see? Her mother--or father, fer that matter--couldn't afford to come right out plain an' say they wanted their child after all these years. The only way was to take her away without givin' themselves away. It's been the plan all along. There ain't no use huntin' fer her, gentlemen. She's in New York by this time, an' maybe she's ready fer a trip to Europe."