Mandie Collection, The: 8 (13 page)

“You either tell me where my father is or you are going to walk all the way back to town and to jail,” Joe declared. “And you sure won’t get out for a long time, maybe never.” He swung the watch in front of the man’s face. “This is my father’s watch.”

“All right, all right. I’ll show you where I last saw him,” the man replied, scrambling around in the dirt until he was able to stand up. “And, mind you, I can’t guarantee he’ll still be thar.” He made a clucking sound, and his horse came back out of the bushes.

Joe immediately spotted the rifle in the saddlebag and ran to get it. Pointing it at the man, he said, “I know very well how to use this, so don’t try running away.”

The man looked at him, halfway smiled, and said, “You wouldn’t shoot a man in the back, would you, now?”

“Depends on who he is and what he is doing,” Joe said sharply. “Now, get moving.”

“You ain’t gonna leave my horse here, are you?” the man asked.

“Grab the reins, Mandie, and lead him along with us,” Joe told her. “Let’s go, mister. Now!”

As she stooped to pick up Snowball, Mandie glanced at the bag of ammunition and the pistol they had left sitting nearby. “Joe, what do we do with that?” she asked, pointing to the bag and gun.

“Can you drag it out of sight under the porch?” Joe asked, holding the rifle pointed at the man, who was listening and watching.

After she carefully put the pistol in the bag with the ammunition, Mandie managed to push the bag into the weeds under the back porch. She snatched up her white cat and ran to grab the reins. The horse seemed to be tame, so she thought she would be able to handle it. “You walk ahead of me and the horse with that gun on the man,” she said. “If he tries to run away, I’ll run him down with the horse.”

“You fergit that’s my horse,” the man called back to her as they started out of the yard.

“It may be your horse, but I know how to make him run,” Mandie yelled back at the man.

“And I know how to shoot your rifle,” Joe added. “Now, get going! Which way?”

“Up the mountain,” the man replied as he began walking toward the road with Joe following and Mandie and the horse behind. Snowball clutched his mistress’s shoulder.

Mandie was anxious to ask questions, but she knew it wouldn’t do to divert Joe’s attention for a second from the man. She realized Joe and the man must have had some kind of conversation before she joined them. Evidently Joe had told the man he knew he was the one
who had come to the Shaws’ house for his father. She wondered if the man had denied it. She also wondered what was in the bag the man had tied to the saddlebags.

“Snowball, please be still,” she told the cat as he wiggled in her one arm. She bent her head and rubbed his head with her cheek. He settled down and began to purr.

The stranger led them on up the main road until they came to a trail that was barely visible, leading off to the left and going up the mountain. As the man left the main road and stepped onto the trail, Mandie and Joe followed.

“You’d better not be trying to play any tricks,” Joe warned the stranger. “Just where does this pathway go?”

“All the way to the top of the mountain. Only we ain’t goin’ that fur,” the man replied, glancing back as he walked on ahead.

Joe looked back at Mandie. The trail was awfully rough and narrow for a horse. “Stop, Mandie,” he said, turning sideways so he could keep the gun aimed at the stranger while he spoke to Mandie. “Tie that horse to a tree over there. Someone can come back and get him. You’ll have too much trouble getting him through all this.”

The man stopped to look back and watch.

“I was wondering how I’d ever manage,” Mandie replied as she led the horse off the track. She managed to get the reins tied around a young sapling with Snowball still hanging on to her shoulder. The horse looked at her with sad eyes, and she patted his head and said, “Don’t worry, old boy. We’ll be back.”

As she followed Joe and the man on up the trail, she glanced back at the huge animal. He seemed to be watching her.

After a while the trail became awfully steep. Mandie kept catching on to branches along the way to keep from sliding down in the loose rocks. Snowball clung to the shoulder of the coat and meowed now and then in protest of the rough ride. She was beginning to wonder how much longer the pathway could be when the man suddenly stopped.

“Thar’s a cabin over to the left right above hyar,” the man said. “And my buddy and the doctor’s in thar. But you gonna hafta let me go ahead, ’cause if my friend sees you holdin’ that gun on me, he’ll start shootin’. That I can guarantee.”

“Mister, I’m not that dumb,” Joe quickly answered. “I’ll decide how
we are going to do this when we get there. Just you keep on moving.” He held the rifle still pointed at the man.

The stranger shrugged his big shoulders, made an angry face at Joe, and walked on. Joe followed with Mandie behind him.

Mandie wondered exactly how they would handle this situation. She figured Joe was thinking that if he let the man go on ahead, the man would then circle around out of sight, head back down the mountain, grab his horse, and get away. And there was no guarantee there really was a cabin where the man had indicated.

But what if there really was a cabin up there with another man holding Dr. Woodard at gunpoint? What would they do then? She couldn’t discuss it with Joe without the stranger overhearing what they said. This could be a really dangerous matter.

In a few minutes they rounded a bend in the trail, and there was the cabin ahead, just like the stranger had said, on the left-hand side. Suddenly Mandie had an idea that would solve the problem.

“Joe,” she said in a loud whisper. “Let’s talk a minute.”

Joe glanced back quickly and then told the stranger, “Stop right there and don’t move another inch.”

The man stopped, glanced back at Joe, and then leaned his shoulder against a tree, with his hands still tied behind him.

Joe stepped back, still holding the rifle pointed at the stranger. “He was telling the truth about a cabin being up here,” he whispered to Mandie. “But we don’t know whether anyone is in it.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk about,” Mandie said, holding Snowball tightly with both hands as he tried to get down. “I have an idea. Suppose I let Snowball down and then I go up and knock on the door of that cabin and ask if they’ve seen my cat? You could hold the stranger at the back of it, where they couldn’t see you from inside, but you could see me. What do you think?”

“Mandie, I don’t want to put you in any more danger,” Joe said in a low voice.

“But if your father is in danger, we have to try,” Mandie protested. “If there is a man inside that cabin holding your father, then Dr. Woodard would see me and would know that you or somebody else is here to help. Then he would be prepared to help us in some way or other.”

“But if the man inside is holding my father, he must have a gun. Otherwise my father could just walk out and go home,” Joe told her.

“Another thing that I’m wondering about, Joe,” Mandie whispered. “Where is your father’s horse and buggy? I don’t believe he could have made it up this tiny trail in the buggy.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Joe spoke softly. “They are bound to be somewhere at the bottom of this trail. Also, if there is another man in the cabin, where is his horse? I don’t think anyone would be up in here without some means of transportation.”

“Joe, please let me just go up and knock on the door, like I said, and ask if they’ve seen my cat,” Mandie whispered.

“But the man inside would definitely know you wouldn’t be up here alone in this isolated place, Mandie,” Joe insisted.

“What else are we going to do?” Mandie asked.

“I haven’t decided yet. I’m going to get that stranger to move around behind the cabin where I hope there’s no windows, and then we can figure out what to do,” Joe told her. He started to move back toward the man.

“All right,” Mandie reluctantly agreed.

She stood still and watched while Joe motioned for the stranger to walk on up behind the shack. Then she followed far enough to see what the building looked like. There weren’t any windows on either of the two sides they could see.

As soon as Joe had the man positioned in back of the cabin, Mandie called softly, “All right, Joe, here goes Snowball.” She quickly let the white cat down, and to her astonishment, Snowball ran directly toward the cabin. He must have smelled food.

Joe looked at Mandie in exasperation as she softly stepped up the hill and reached the door of the cabin. She raised her fist, took a deep breath, and knocked hard.

The door slowly opened and a man with a bandage around his head and another one covering his right arm appeared in the doorway.

“Mister, my cat has run away. I was wondering if you had seen him,” Mandie said in a loud voice.

She immediately heard a loud cough from inside the cabin that had to be Dr. Woodard. The man frowned as he looked at her and then turned far enough that she could see a gun in his left hand.

“Haven’t seen any cat up here, miss,” the man replied. “Where did you come from, anyway? Nobody lives up this way. Who’s with you,
anyhow?” He leaned out to look over her head. When he did, Snowball came running to the door and pushed his way inside the cabin.

“Oh, there he is,” Mandie exclaimed, trying to see inside. “He went off last night and has not been home since. I wonder how he got all the way up here to your house. Could I just come in and get him?”

Mandie noticed the man kept staring at her. She didn’t like to be stared at. She reached to straighten her tam and asked, “Why do you keep looking at me like that? Is there something wrong with my hat or something?”

“No, no, miss. You look just fine,” the man replied. “It’s just that you’re the spitting image of someone else I used to know.” He had a sad voice and a sad look on his face.

“Used to know? You don’t know her any longer?” Mandie asked.

“No, miss, she was my only daughter,” the man explained. “Fever took her three years ago in spite of the efforts of Dr. Woodard to save her.”

“Dr. Woodard? You know Dr. Woodard?” Mandie asked, her heart beating fast.

The man didn’t answer but threw the door wide open, placed the gun on a table behind him, and said, “I give up, Dr. Woodard.” And as he stepped aside, Mandie saw Dr. Woodard sitting on the other side of the table.

“Oh, Dr. Woodard!” she cried, running around to embrace him. “Are you all right? We’ve been so worried. Joe is outside. Wait, let me go get him.”

“I’m fine, Miss Amanda,” the old doctor told her with a big grin.

Mandie rushed back outside and yelled, “Joe, come on. It’s all right. Your father is in here.” She stepped back inside and saw Snowball jump up into the doctor’s lap.

Joe came rushing to the doorway, ordering the stranger inside, ahead of him, then he stepped into the cabin. He looked at the second man and then hurried to his father. Mandie’s eyes filled with tears as she watched them hug each other. She looked around the room and saw that the first stranger had sat down on a wooden crate. Then she was amazed to see the second stranger on his knees, praying softly.

“Are you all right?” Joe asked his father.

“Yes, son,” Dr. Woodard told him. “These two men were holed
up, getting ready to rob the bank in Franklin, but Walter Dickens there was injured when his horse ran away with him. So the other man got me to come out here.”

“Bank robbers?” Mandie exclaimed. “These men are really bank robbers?”

“No, we ain’t no bank robbers,” the first stranger spoke up for the first time. “Never got the chance to rob a bank.”

Mandie leaned over to whisper to Dr. Woodard, “That man is praying.”

“That’s right,” Dr. Woodard said with a big smile. “I’ve been working on him ever since I came up here. You see, I knew his family well, and they were all good people.” He paused to look at the man and then added, “By the way, he knew your father. He—”

“Mr. Dickens knew my father?” Mandie interrupted. She ran to stoop down by the kneeling man and said, “You knew my father, Jim Shaw?”

“Yes, miss, I knew Jim Shaw pretty well when we were growing up,” the man told her as he rose to sit on one of the wooden crates nearby. “But I never had seen his daughter. It’s hard to believe that he and I had daughters who looked so much alike.” The man’s voice broke.

“I am sorry about your daughter, Mr. Dickens,” Mandie told him as she stooped down beside him. “You probably know I lost my father,” her voice broke, but she continued on. “So maybe we could be friends, me and you.”

“Yes, yes, we must be friends,” Mr. Dickens said, reaching to pat her hands.

Mandie squeezed his hand, then she straightened up to look around the room. Suddenly she became focused on the table. Sitting there in Aunt Lou’s pan was the last of their turkey. She became almost hysterical as she laughed, looked at Joe, and pointed to the pan. “There. Look,” she said. “Your father solved the mystery of the missing turkey for us.”

“Not exactly,” Dr. Woodard told her. “I didn’t know where it came from until Joe just now told me it must have been your mother’s.” He laughed and added, “It was a pretty good turkey.”

“I’m glad you had something to eat while they were holding you
here,” Mandie said and then asked, “What are we going to do about these men?”

Dr. Woodard stood up and said, “I’m going home as soon as I can find my horse and buggy. We’ll let the law worry about these men. They never really got around to robbing the bank, so I don’t know what charges can be brought.”

“But they kidnapped you,” Joe protested.

“No, I would say it was a sick call,” Dr. Woodard said. “Mr. Dickens there really needed a doctor, and I was glad to help. I don’t believe he will ever try anything dishonest again.”

Joe quickly reached in his pocket and pulled out the doctor’s watch. “Here is your watch. The other man had it.” Joe explained how they had met up with the man.

“I don’t believe he’s from around here,” Dr. Woodard said as the man stared at him and listened to the conversation. “I’ll leave it up to Mr. Dickens whether he wants to take the man in or let him go, but right now I’m going home.” He walked toward the door and said, “Mr. Dickens, if you need any more medical help, I’ll be leaving Franklin next Tuesday. In the meantime, I’ll be staying at John Shaw’s house.”