CHAPTER X.

THE LIGHT ON THE INDIAN GRAVES.

Renfro grasped one of the wall lamps, lifted it from its socket and with all the power of his lungs blew down the chimney. The blaze was instantly extinguished and left one smoking wick. At the same moment Scout Brown had extinguished the other. Outside there sounded faint footsteps. But when the boys reached the window no one was outside. The door was opened, the scouts circled the cabin, and even journeyed to the spring but no one was there.

“Bill’s excited,” Jimmie confided to Renfro, “He’s watching for the lights at the grave.”

“What?” Renfro was amazed.

“Oh, last summer when we were out here, one of the scoutmasters, who knew all the old men and women around here, told the boys that once every ten years the two chiefs would come back to again fight by the spring. And they believed it. The other two troops which were out here said that at midnight queer lights played around the graves and word has gone out that this is nearing the time for the two braves to appear.”

Renfro laughed and moved close to the fire. “Of course,” he smiled, “you don’t believe it.”

Jimmie in turn asked a question. “You heard those steps--didn’t you?”

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.