CHAPTER III--THE HOUSE IN THE LAKE

“It is certainly a most admirable situation for safety and defensive purposes,” said Sergeant Dick, regarding the distant lake-dwelling with great curiosity and interest.

“You will find it even stronger than it looks,” laughed Muriel Arnold. “My uncle has been quite ingenious, I consider, in the way he has fortified it. He has improved on Fenimore Cooper’s idea; and I am sure that you will say that the place is almost impregnable when you have seen over it. We keep our horses and the buggy on that little island you see just behind the castle.”

“Signal to mother, Muriel,” said her cousin Jenny, a little impatiently.

They had all three alighted from the buggy. Muriel drew an automatic pistol from her belt, and fired three shots into the air.

At the southern end of the strange dwelling out in the lake appeared to be a kind of platform; and, quickly on the echoing reports of the pistol shots--which would carry far in the light mountain air and across the water at any time, but were now blown directly towards the house by the strong wind--the figure of a woman appeared on the platform.

She seemed to regard them through a spyglass, and remained gazing at them a long time, so long, in fact, that Jenny Arnold asked:

“What ails mother? Surely she can see that it is you and I, Muriel, through the field-glass. And the sergeant’s red coat ought to reassure her. She knows the uniform of the Mounted Police.”

Muriel was waving her long white scarf vigorously to the distant figure.

“Naturally she does not know what to make of you being in my company,” said Sergeant Dick.

“Of course,” said Muriel, “she is concerned, and fears something terrible must have happened to us or to my uncle and cousins.”

The figure on the platform of “Water Castle” turned and hurried to the farther end, where she evidently stepped into a boat of some kind, concealed by the house.

A minute later Sergeant John Dick saw a long, low craft, not unlike the ordinary conception of Noah’s ark, slowly emerging into view round the far side of the platform and house.

As it came round the corner of the “castle” into full view, Sergeant Dick saw it was furnished with a short, stumpy mast, upon which a ridiculously small leg-of-mutton sail was being hoisted by the only apparent occupant.

Small though the sail was, it served its purpose well, and, bellying before the wind, caused the great, clumsy-looking craft to slip with considerable speed through the choppy little waves caused by the moaning wind. The figure aboard ran aft, and, taking a long sweep which was rigged astern to act as tiller and rudder combined, brought the ark’s broad nose steadily round almost into the eye of the wind, and headed the craft for a point close to where the two girls and the police officer stood.

Leading the horses, Muriel made along the shore for the point the ark was steering towards. Her cousin and Sergeant Dick followed leisurely, the last-mentioned feeling his wound very slightly now, to his great satisfaction and surprise.

As they went, his eye traveled up and down Muriel Arnold’s trim, graceful figure with increasing interest and approval, and finally rested with evident admiration upon her sunny brown hair, drawn back in many a clustering curl and knotted so charmingly in the nape of her lovely white neck.

Her simple blue print dress, belted at the waist with a broad leathern cincture, supporting a pistol holster, became her well, as did the exceedingly small and dapper Wellington boots which were shown almost to their tops beneath the rather short dress, and the great broad-brimmed, flapping “wide-awake” hat, set so rakishly upon her head and ornamented with a single upright eagle’s feather.

About her shoulders and her neat little waist was wound a long flimsy white veil or muslin wrap.

Her cousin’s costume was very much the same, save that there was no feather in the hat, and this was not set at a rakish angle, but as squarely as that of the inmate of an orphanage, while the print dress was a pale, washed-out pink.

“Gee!” muttered Sergeant John Dick. “She’s almost as lovely a creature as the novelist, Fenimore Cooper, described Judith Hutter to be in his story, ‘The Deerslayer.’”

Of course he referred to Muriel, not to poor, uncomely, dowdyish Jenny, whose Wellington boots were squaretoed instead of round-toed like her cousin’s and fully twice as large in the feet.

“What a curious chain of coincidences or circumstances,” Dick went on musing; “here we have almost exactly what the American author, Cooper, imagined; two girls--one quite a beauty and the other half-witted and otherwise rather poorly favored, certainly not as pretty--living in a wonderful lake-dwelling, built to resist a siege. I wonder what sort of a man the uncle and father of the girls, this ‘Floating Tom Hutter,’ of real life, will be. He ought to prove a rather interesting old fellow.”

And then, with sparkling eyes, his thoughts ran again on the girl in front of him; and he nodded and murmured:

“Yes, she’s the sort of girl I’d like. She’s not tall, but she strikes me as being just the right height a girl should be, and she’s just as plump, too, as I like them. I owe them both a debt of gratitude. It was plucky of them and no error, to come to my help as they did, and not turn and bolt as most girls would have done.”

They reached the little spit of land for which the scow or “ark” was making; and, while they stood waiting for it to come in, Muriel drew Dick’s attention to the scenery around them--the lovely wooded shores of the lake. She asked him, with enthusiastic eyes, if he had ever seen finer views.

He had to admit that he had not.

The sun was throwing a golden, glittering track now across the waters of the lake, which were gradually subsiding into their usual peaceful serenity as the gale dropped to mere fitful, ragged gusts.

It was about a mile across the lake where they stood, but both higher up and lower down, that is to northward and southward of them, the water was much broader, then narrowed again, and curved round prettily out of sight.

All around, the trees grew close to the water--in some places they overhung it and dipped their branches in it--and on the farther shore the woods, rising steeply to the crests of the low but gently rounded hills behind, were faithfully mirrored in the stiller pools and backwaters.

Sergeant Dick and Muriel were still pointing out the more charming prospects to one another when the ark drew within hail, and its occupant called out:

“What’s that policeman doing with you, Muriel--Jenny? Anything wrong?”

“No, Aunt Kate, there’s nothing wrong,” Muriel answered, with her hand held trumpet-wise beside her mouth. “Nothing, that is, so far as we are concerned. But the sergeant was wounded in the head, as you may see, in a fight with the White Hood Gang, who held up the stage-coach in Crooked Gulch. As his horse was lamed, and he must get to the Indian Reservation on the island at the south end of the lake as quickly as possible, we brought him along. Jenny and I have promised to take him to Paquita Island in the ark.”

“Oh, indeed!” her aunt responded, in a rather ungracious tone. “Allow me to tell you, Muriel Arnold, that it is not for you, or Jenny either, to make use of the ark without first consulting _my_ wishes, or those of your uncle and Jenny’s father. However, as you are a police officer, sir, I don’t suppose my husband ’ill object to the girls taking you down to the Reservation, and I’m sure I shan’t. But you must first come to the ‘castle,’ and get your wound dressed properly. Reckon, too, you could do with something to buck you up.”

“You had better do as mother says,” whispered Jenny, the half-witted girl, “that is, come to the ‘castle’ first, and take something and have your wound redressed. She doesn’t like any one not to do as she says, and, asides, you might just as well humor her.”

Dick looked at Muriel and capitulated.

“I’m rather pressed for time,” he said, “but still, I don’t suppose just visiting your home for a few minutes will delay me much; and I never believe in crossing old ladies if it can be avoided--or anybody else for that matter, I may add.”

The ark came sailing in, and softly grounded her forefoot on the spit. As her square bow projected fully five feet over the bank, Muriel was able to leap on board dryshod.

She swiftly cast free a wide, sliding gangway in the bow, and thrust it out, so that, as it dropped outboard, it formed a gentle gradient, up which her cousin at once led the two horses in the buggy.

Behind the sliding gangway, and covered by it when it was inboard, was another gentle, boarded slope; and the space between it and the cabin or “house” was sufficiently long, as well as broad to accommodate the vehicle and the two horses abreast.