CHAPTER V

THE TRAP IS BAITED

The dilapidated little engine, with its train of two battered cars, puffed despondently away around the curve, and disappeared in the forest, leaving Rose and Gordon standing alone, the sole occupants of the small station platform.

Everything about the place spoke of desolation. With each gust of wind the weather-beaten door swung to and fro on its rusty hinges; the two cracked windows stood open; beneath their feet the rotting timbers sagged creaking; around them, on every side, the tall black pines towered upward against the sky, save where the narrow ribbon of the little single track stretched away a stone's throw to right and left before losing itself among the winding curves of the forest wilderness.

The girl, glancing about her with much disfavor, gave a shiver of repulsion. "You must be fond of shooting," she said, "if you can stand coming here for it. It's worse even than your description."

Gordon smiled. He remembered vividly his own first impressions of the place, and his wonderment that such a spot could exist only fifty miles from civilization.

"Oh, well," he answered defensively, "it isn't exactly Fulton Street, of course. This is the worst of it, though. Wait till you've seen the island, and you'll change your mind."

For twenty minutes they followed what was by courtesy known as the road, and then, turning abruptly down a narrow wooded path, plunged ahead straight into the heart of the huge pines. To the girl, after the ceaseless roar and tumult of the city, the silence was almost appalling. No sound echoed from their footsteps as they trod the carpet of fragrant pine needles and velvet moss. About them all was dark, and solemn with the hush of the great forest's majestic repose. Far overhead the sun appeared to shine less brightly and the blue of the sky seemed infinitely far away. Ahead and to the right a bluejay screamed. A squirrel poised a moment on the top of a stump before darting away in headlong flight. The girl, subdued and silent, kept close to Gordon's side. "I wish I hadn't come," she sighed, half in jest, half in earnest. Gordon, less imaginative, thoroughly familiar with his surroundings, smiled at her mood. "Just you wait," he kept repeating encouragingly; "you'll see."

At last the trees grew less thickly together. Bushes, higher than one's head, began to appear, and tangled vines stretched themselves underfoot Occasional gleams of sunlight lay quivering across their path. Faintly, as if from far away, a swamp-sparrow's song rang sweet and clear. Chickadees bustled and scolded in the branches. And then, on the instant, Gordon and his companion turned straight to the left, and the lake burst on their sight.

The girl uttered a sharp cry of delight, and Gordon, smiling, stood and watched her in silence. Far away, seemingly to the utmost limit of the eye, the blue waves danced and sparkled before the westerly breeze. Far away to the north, the distant shore eluded the vision with the unreality of a mirage. To east and west, the low black line of the pines stretched on and on till they too melted away against the dark blue of the water and the fainter blue of the sky. Half a mile or so from the shore, a little island, pine-covered, also, like its parent shore, lay sleeping in the afternoon sunshine, and the girl's glance, slowly withdrawn from the sweep of the distant horizon, fell suddenly upon it.

"Oh, that's it," she cried. "It's beautiful, Dick."

Gordon smiled a brief self-satisfied smile, not altogether pleasant to witness. "Yes, isn't it," he answered; "and I think useful as well. You really couldn't find a better place for duck shooting—or for other things."

Instantly the girl's expression changed, and her face clouded. "Ah, don't, Dick," she said. "Let's not spoil our day while we're here. There'll be time enough later to talk of that."

Gordon's expression hardened a trifle. "As you please," he rejoined coolly; "only don't forget that we're here primarily on business, and not for pleasure. If you don't care to discuss things as we go along, I shall take it for granted that you'll at least keep your eyes open."

The girl nodded as if relieved. "Of course," she rejoined, "I'll do that anyway. But out here, on a day like this, to be deliberately planning—well, I can't put it in words exactly, but you know perfectly well what I mean. It's too—cold-blooded—that's the word I want. I've got to get back to Bradfield's before I'll be any good at scheming."

Gordon made no reply, but busied himself with launching the boat. Five minutes later, lying back at ease in the stern of the little rowing skiff, the girl watched the island grow steadily larger and larger as the boat shot forward under Gordon's long, steady strokes. As they approached more nearly, she could see that the whole southern side was guarded by gray cliffs rising sheer from the water's edge, but as they rounded the eastern point they shot into a quiet little cove, narrowing as it ran inland, and ending in a short stretch of smooth gray sand. Here they beached the boat, and walked slowly up the pebbled pathway to the house. Gordon fitted the key to the lock, threw open the door, and stepped back to allow his companion to enter. The girl moved quickly forward, and then paused on the threshold with a soft cry of pleased surprise.

Built square and low, with its back against a huge gray boulder so that winter northeasters might thunder overhead in vain, the shooting-box was little more than the one huge living-room and dining-room combined. To the right were two bedrooms and to the left the tiny kitchen and pantry, but it was on the living-room that Gordon had lavished all his care. Everything was in keeping: the big center-table of dark oak, the enormous fireplace with its store of logs, the heavy rugs on the floor, the guns and shells in their racks, the shooting and fishing prints upon the walls, all combined to make up a room ideal to the sportsman and charming even to the girl's more critical eye.

Crossing swiftly to the cushioned window-seat she tossed hat and coat aside, and with a deep sigh of contentment threw herself back among the cushions. A pretty enough picture she made, and Gordon, gazing at her a moment, crossed the room, and seating himself by her side, drew her to him and covered her face with kisses. Yielding herself to him, the girl suddenly lifted her face to his and clasped her arms around his neck. "Let's not go back," she whispered; "let's stay here for good and all."

Gordon smiled, humoring her mood. "All right," he answered, "I'm agreeable. I suppose my customers might miss me a little, though. And you," he added, a trifle maliciously, "I know they'd miss you at Bradfield's."

The girl's face flushed, and she drew herself from his embrace. "I hate it, Dick," she cried passionately, "I loathe it more and more every day. Nobody can be happy leading a life she was never meant to lead. You know that yourself. And every word I've told you about Bradfield's is God's own truth. What was I when they started me going there? Fifteen years old. Nothing but a baby, Dick. I swear I never knew what it all meant. And now I've met you. Oh, Dick, if only you'd marry me, and let us have a little home somewhere, I'd be so happy. I'd make you the best wife in the world. I'd see to it—" She broke off quickly, with a laugh mirthless, almost of self-contempt; then added, in a very different tone, "but there's no use in saying all this. No man that ever lived can know for a minute what real love—or what a real home—means to a woman. We might as well forget it, I suppose, and go on as we are."

Gordon's face had seemed imperceptibly to harden as she spoke, but his tone, as he answered her, was kindness itself, as one might try to soothe a too insistent child. "I do know," he said, "and I think you're right about it; entirely so. And you know how much I love you, Rose. Just let us get this one thing out of the way, and I give you my sacred word of honor I'll get out of this sort of thing for good, and we'll buy the finest little home in the state, and settle down to farming, or anything else you want. Or we'll go around the world in a steam yacht, if we hit things right. Just which you'd rather. But we can't quit the thing now. It looks too good. After we pull it off, I promise you anything in the world in return, and I shall be very proud of my wife."

He rose quickly, and then, as if to forestall a reply, added with an entire change of manner. "Well, we mustn't get too serious over things, Rose. You were the one that didn't want our day spoiled. So we might as well get down to the point while daylight lasts."

Reluctantly enough the girl rose, with a vaguely dissatisfied feeling of having once more been put off from a definite decision on the unwelcome plan. Gordon's mood, on the contrary, was cheerfulness itself. Taking down his favorite little sixteen-bore from the rack, he snapped it open, ran his eye lovingly through the glistening barrels, tested the safety-catch, and caught up a box of shells from the table. "Come on," he cried, with boyish enthusiasm, "ducks for supper, unless I've forgotten how to shoot."

Leisurely enough, in all the glory of the crisp autumn air just tempered by the pleasant warmth of the mellow, waning sunlight, they made their way down towards the point. Gordon, in a mood entirely different from any the girl had ever seen him display, eager as a boy set free from school, kept constantly calling her attention to one thing and another as they strolled along. Here he pointed out the hollow in the rocks where he had lain all through the great northeast gale of two years before, when the frightened wildfowl, storm driven, low sweeping to the southward, had passed over his head all day long in countless flocks; there he showed her the little cove where he had stalked the Canada geese, and, nearing the point, he made her shudder as he pointed to the treacherous quicksand beyond the clump of pines where, in reckless pursuit of a wounded duck, he had come within an ace of losing his life.

Twenty minutes later found them in readiness, safely hidden in the gunning box sunk level with the ground on the pebbly point of land which stretched far out to the westward of the island. Before them, the little flock of wooden decoys, moored in the lee of the point, nodded and dipped gaily to the rising breeze. The girl's eyes were bright with excitement. "Will the ducks really come, Dick?" she whispered.

For answer Gordon pulled out his watch for the twentieth time; then nodded reassuringly. "Of course they will," he answered. "In fact, it's pretty near—there, look! There they come now!"

The girl peered through the screen of bushes that fringed the box. Sure enough, off to the southward, a flock of ducks was flying swiftly towards them. A moment more, and they swerved farther to the west. She heard Gordon swear softly under his breath, and strangled a hysterical desire to laugh. Then all at once the birds caught sight of the decoys. Just for an instant they seemed to hang motionless against the sky; then, with set wings, came on straight for the blind. The girl felt her heart leap with excitement; for, all in the same breath, she saw the flock wheel quickly, and Gordon rise to his knees. The little sixteen-bore cracked spitefully once—twice—and two of the flock, doubled up in mid-air as if struck by lightning, fell stone dead among the decoys, the others, towering high into the air, made off far to the westward and safety.

Gordon, obeying the wild-fowler's first instinct, swiftly slipped in fresh shells, then turned to his companion, his eyes bright with the triumph of the hunter, his whole bearing alert, eager, confident.

"Well," he queried briefly, "what do you think?—Look out, there they come again!"

A second flock, larger than the first, was bearing down upon them. Just in time to escape detection, Gordon sank into the box. Again the birds swung, again Gordon rose, and again two ducks fell dead to the quick right and left of the little sixteen-gage.

Twenty minutes passed. Fainter and fainter grew the light, until the sun sank low behind the pines, and the laughing blue and white waves turned sullen and gray. Together they left the blind, and, walking along the beach, Gordon began to gather up his spoils. Poor little wild ducks, there they lay, rising and falling as the tiny waves splashed gently against the shore, as if vainly seeking to rouse them once more to flight. No, they would never fly again; quietly enough they lay there, their bright, glossy feathers stained with a faint crimson, their wild, bright eyes closed in death.

With a swift revulsion of feeling the girl knelt over a mallard duck and drake, the little brown mate by some trick of fate, with her dusky head lying across the neck of her bright-plumed lord. "Oh, the poor darlings!" she cried pitifully. "Oh, Dick, we can't wish them alive again."

Gordon stood silent. The faint afterglow still hung in the fading west, but elsewhere all was dark. A star or two shone far up in the blue. The wind, erstwhile such a jolly companion, seemed graver now, as it moaned through the swaying tops of the dark pines. Suddenly the world became a solemn place, sad, unfriendly, vast. Gordon's face set hard as he looked at the kneeling girl and the two little dead wild ducks. "No," he said, with a world of meaning in his tone; "no, we can't wish them alive again," and together they turned toward home.