Dorothy Dale's Camping Days Part 17

"Oh, must I die here?" she murmured. Then she fell back on the bed, on the red and white quilt. Sobbing, too weak to cry, too weak to think, but not too weak to know!

CHAPTER XIV

TAVIA'S MISTAKE

Meanwhile Tavia Travers, the light-hearted, reckless Tavia, realized that she had made a dreadful mistake. It was the second afternoon since she had left the camp, and she was at the railroad station, waiting for something unforseen to develop that would enable her to get back to her friends.

It was such a lonely place--away out there in the woods, and she had spent one awful night locked up in that station!

"I'll walk," she declared, "if I cannot get away from here before dark!"

Walk! Fifteen miles to Innernook! With hardly a chance of a single town in between!

It was at the little rustic bridge that she had met the man, according to the appointment made under the harvest apple tree.

"Come with me and I will prove to you that what I say is absolutely correct," he declared. "I have an old uncle out at Breakaway, and he will tell you about the fortune with his own lips--I shall make him do so."

"But is it far?" Tavia had demurred, for she did not just like that gla.s.sy stare in the man's eyes, handsome though he was.

"Only a pleasant little train ride--it will do you good to get away from this place. They call it camp--I would call it 'cramp,'" and he chuckled at his attempted joke.

Tavia had not been inclined to go. He had seen that she hesitated.

"Well, if you think I am not brotherly enough, I can take you to my sister Belle. She is surely sisterly enough--she will meet us at Durham."

This had convinced Tavia. Surely if they met his sister at the first station, there could be no harm in her going. And though the story about the fortune might be vapory, it was fun to have had such an experience--to actually run away!

Poor foolish Tavia! _Was_ it fun to run away?

At the station, of course, there had been no sister Belle, but Tavia could not turn back now. This man seemed so compelling--so completely her master! What was his strange power?

On they had gone, he telling all sorts of absurd stories about the money, which, he claimed, was actually secreted in his uncle's house.

But long before he reached the station at Breakaway Tavia had decided that he was insane--and that _she_ had been insane not to have realized this awful truth before.

Then she knew that she must humor him--what might happen if she crossed this strange man of iron will, who had only to ask her to do such a ridiculous thing and she did it?

To run away from camp! Fun! Yes, it was funny, very----

"When we get to the station I will go on ahead," he had said, to her immense relief. "Then, when I have told uncle you are coming, and I have gotten him into his good clothes--uncle is very vain when there are ladies around--then I shall return for you," and he had waved himself like a tall young sapling, in that conceited self-conscious pose peculiar to the stage and to--but Tavia was not sure. Perhaps, after all, he might not be altogether unbalanced.

With many protestations of his earnestness he had left her at the little railroad station, and as she saw him saunter down the tan-barked path, she had been glad; then again she was sorry.

It was dreadful to be all alone there, and night coming on. Even the station was locked; to whom could she go or whom could she ask for money to get back to the dear old camp?

For two long hours she had sat there, then the old station agent hobbled along, and opened the ticket office. Tavia told him something of her plight, but instead of saying that she had come away from her friends on the word of a perfect stranger, she pardonably made the man out to be a distant cousin.

"Hum! That fellow with the long hair? Well, I guess they'll git him to-night. He's got loose from the sanitarium on the hill, and there's been a lot of looking for him in the last two weeks. Seems to me he's jest about toured the country," said the old man as he dusted the window shelf with his cap. "I reckon they'll git him now. And you was out with that chap?"

"Why--yes, no, that is----"

"Your cousin, eh? Say, miss, he ain't n.o.body's cousin. But like as not he thinks he is cousin to the president himself."

"If I could only borrow a dollar!" sighed Tavia.

"Well, you could if I hadn't been caught with that trick twice this summer. Why, if I gave you a dollar, girl, you would make me believe I was your cousin, too."

This retort angered Tavia, and she determined to ask no further favors from this old man. Though he did wear the uniform of a Civil War veteran, he certainly had poor manners.

"What will happen?" she asked herself, confident that something must happen to relieve the situation.

"The best I kin do," growled the old station agent, "will be to fetch you a bite to eat back from my boardin' house; and then let you sleep here till mornin'----"

"Sleep alone in a station!" exclaimed Tavia. "I'm not afraid of anything--but--I don't believe I'd like to stay in this--place all night. I have a horror of rats."

"Rats! No rats around here. I've got the best cat in the country.

Switch is his name, an' that's him--he's no slouch."

"But shut up alone with a big strange cat----" and Tavia looked at the animal curled up under the beautifully-blacked and summer-s.h.i.+ned stove.

"Well, you kin do as you please, miss, but there ain't no more trains your way to-night, supposin' you did have a ticket."

Tavia looked out over the gloom that was quickly descending upon the little hamlet. Soon it would be night! No one but that station agent in sight! No place to go, but over the hills to his boarding house, or perhaps to some farm house; where, should she have the courage to make her way through the fields up to a cabin, perhaps fierce dogs, that were already howling and barking, would become more her enemies than would be the cat, and the solitude of the station.

"And is there no church--no minister's house where a stranded girl might get shelter?"

"Nice young girls don't often get stranded," replied the old man not unreasonably, "and if I was you I'd keep my trouble purty much to myself. You kin depend upon Sam Dixon. If I say I'll do a thing I'll do it; and no harm will come to you in this here station for a night.

Besides, I come over for the ten o'clock train, and I'm back for the milk train before daylight."

Something about this speech convinced Tavia she was unfortunate, and it would be best to keep her trouble to herself, for what would strangers care about her predicament? Could she deny that it was through her own fault that she had been thus situated?

"I'm goin' along now, and say," said the agent, "if you like I'll just lock the office, and give you the outside door key. There ain't no tramps, but if you should be timid, before I come back, just turn the key in the door."

"Oh, thank you," Tavia was compelled to say, for this was a condescension; "I'm sure I shall not be afraid--in the twilight."

"Well, take the key anyhow," and locking the inner office he came out in the open room. "I'll fetch you a bite--I'm glad I ain't got no gals to--get left over from way trains."

How Tavia Travers ever choked down the biscuit and the slice of ham that Sam Dixon brought back to her that night--how she actually fondled old gray Switch, and was glad of his friendly purring during that long, dreary night, as she lay cuddled up in the very farthest corner bench--how the night did, after all, go by, and a very gray dawn bring the welcome step or limp of the station agent, only Tavia--poor unfortunate Tavia--could ever know!

And it was the next day--daylight at last!

To-day she must get back to camp if she had to walk!

Oh, she _must_ get back! Surely something would happen to a.s.sist her!