Tom Slade : Forest Ranger

Front matter

TOM SLADE: FOREST RANGER By PERCY KEESE FITZHUGH

It was said that the old fire lookout station was haunted.

A weird tale of ghostly wailing and of a spectral presence was told of the old deserted, lonely tower in the wilderness on Tempest Peak.

Contents

VoIcEs OF THE NIGHT

As Luck Woutp Have It Watson’s BEND

THe SCHOOLMASTER Tue New Jos .

Chapter I Voices Of The Night

IN a momentary lull of the storm the baying of a dog could be heard in the heavy darkness at the base of the lonely lookout station—a weird, long moan seeming like one of the many voices of the raging wind. It lasted for only a few seconds, then was drowned in the furious tempest. The structure trembled as the frenzied gale swept through the steel framework.

Up in the little surmounting enclosure Tom Slade stood aghast. Could it have been the yoice of the spectral dog that he had heard? What nonsense! The very thought aroused all Tom’s common sense and he laughed to think that the wild elements could play such a trick on him. If it had not been for the weird stories he had heard, the moaning would never have I sounded like the voice of a dog at all. He laughed good-humoredly, as he had laughed when the people of the distant village had edified him with those ghostly yarns.

“It’s blamed funny the different noises the wind can make,” he reflected aloud. It was so lonesome in that high, storm-swept wilderness that almost unconsciously he spoke aloud to keep himself company.

Yet the sound of his own cheery voice, bespeaking his common sense, did not quite reassure him. And in spite of himself he listened . again for that moaning voice amid the storm. He waited; he was almost ashamed of himself for his credulity, but yet he waited for another jull in the black hurricane.

Then in a brief subsidence of the gale he heard again the baying in the darkness below him. To be sure, it seemed unreal, intangible, a part of the furious storm. Yet he could distinguish it as something different. If it was not the robust voice of a dog heard clearly, above the clamorous elements, that only bore out the stories told by the people down in Watson’s Bend. For was it not the whining of a spectral dog of which they had spoken? Was it not this that had caused the place to be deserted and shunned? The whining of a spectral dog and the terrifying presence of a ghostly master.

Tom stood motionless, gazing at the candle which cast its faint glow over the large, round map that covered the table in the center of the little, lofty shelter. ‘The electric wires had gone down in the storm and this candle was all that stood between Tom and utter darkness. And the little box of a shelter standing high upon its trestled pedestal was all that stood between him and the tempestuous night.

Now and again, as the shrieking, furious demon shook the tower, the tin candlestick joggled and the light flickered on the glass which covered the map. And the field-glass, which stood there too, ready for scanning those rugged mountain slopes and distant hills in the daytime, danced a little jig with its two stout legs with every fresh gust of the hurricane. ‘There was something uncanny in the way those two connected cylinders would start and cease to joggle on the sounding glass to the uproarious accompaniment without. It was odd and disturbing how, whenever they ceased their ghoulish dancing, that ominous baying could be heard below.

“And then the ghost of his dead master comes out up there in the tower and tries to call the dog, only he can’t make out to speak, so the ghost of the dog never knows he’s up there.” That was what they had told Tom off in the village. ‘‘No, siree, you couldn’t get none of us ter go up and mind that tower—not us.” And Tom had tried to laugh them to shame.

But he did not laugh now, for just then he saw the face.

Chapter II As Luck Would Have It

IF any one in Watson’s Bend had been willing to take charge of the fire lookout station on Tempest Peak, that lonely job would never have fallen to Tom Slade.

Even Tom, with all his adventurous spirit, would have balked at the isolation of the tower far up in the mountain wilderness, had it not been that his companion in former adventures, Brent Gaylong, had agreed to spend the summer with him in his wild retreat. But Brent could not join his friend until the summer was well on and, meanwhile, the job must be filled.

“Took for me around the first of July,” Brent had said. ‘Keep scanning the horizon with your trusty field-glass and you'll espy me in the distance approaching up the rugged slopes with my knitting. ll spend the summer doing crossword puzzles while you're fire-lookouting. I only hope we have some good conflagrations. Keep the forest fires burning. If we don’t I’m going in for floods on the Mississippi next summer. My soul craves adventure. How about the ghost?”

“Oh, he pokes his head out now and then, so I’m told,” Tom had answered laughingly.

“That’s great,” Brent had answered with a kind of drawling relish, “but I’m afraid he'll be away on his vacation while I’m there. I kind of like the idea of a spectral dog, don’t you? Don’t know as I ever heard of one.”

“You'll hear enough about one if you go to Watson’s Bend,” Tom had laughed.

“I hope he’s not a spectral mut,” Brent had answered. “Anyway, we won’t have to feed him.”

“Pm not worrying about the ghost and his ghostly dog,” Tom had said, “but if you don’t show up I’ll kill you.”

“Never fear, Tommy,” Brent had laughed. “It’s always been the dream of my young life to meet a ghost. I feel like Hamlet already.”

That conversation had occurred a couple of months prior to the tempestuous night when

Tom’s adventures on Tempest Peak began. During April he had driven up to Temple Camp in his outlandish flivver. As assistant manager of the big Scout community in the Catskills, it was his custom to run up from Bridgeboro each spring to look about and help old Uncle Jeb Rushmore open up the cabins and pavilions and get ready for the rush to camp which would begin as soon as school closed.

During the winters Tom was in the Temple Camp office, which was maintained in Bridgeboro under the supervising eye of Mr. John Temple, Bridgeboro’s most public-spirited citizen as well as founder of the famous Scout camp. The Temple Camp office was in the fine building which Mr. Temple owned and in which his bank was housed.

Tom was particularly anxious to make an early flying trip to camp this spring, for he was to have the summer off, and he wished to see Uncle Jeb and find out how that old hickory nut of a scout had enjoyed his own summer off in his old familiar Rockies. Old Uncle Jeb had returned to the closed-up camp in March, and Tom was to have his turn in the summer now approaching. Mr. Temple had insisted on Tom’s taking a summer off, as his old superior had done. “Get out among grown-ups for a while and then you'll appreciate the kids when you get back,” Mr. Temple had said.

We need not concern ourselves with Tom’s visit with Uncle Jeb. He stayed there two days, then bade a regretful good-by to the beloved camp and to the old man who was its very spirit. As he drove home in his dilapidated nineteen-ten flivver, he had not the slightest idea how he’ was going to spend the summer. He was a little sorry that he had not insisted on staying at camp, his camp, where the thunderous voice of Pee-wee Harris could be heard to the bantering accompaniment of Roy Blakeley.

As he drove down the state road, one loose fender waving like some martial emblem in the breeze, he thought that perhaps he would go out and surprise his sister in Missouri. He had not seen her since he was a little boy in Barrel Alley. She had renounced the alley and had married and gone west. Then it occurred to him that he would take a flyer over the water and see the old battlefields where he had fought. He would hunt up Frenchy (you remember Frenchy?) and they would have an old-time hike in the Black Forest. Then he thought he would like to go up to Overlook Mountain, just for memory’s sake, and see

Whoa! That was a narrow escape. His daydreaming had almost brought him plunk into a big red sign which stood across the road. And upon that sign perched Tom’s good little angel of adventure. ROAD CLOSED. TAKE DETOUR TO LEFT. FOLLOW ARROW, he read. Around went the rickety little Ford down into a sequestered country road, over bumps and into puddles, and into a country where it seemed to Tom that no automobile had ever gone before. Soon he was in a wilderness. And his own particular little angel of adventure perched upon the leaky radiator of his car. But of course Tom could not see her. Lickety-split, he went, down into the loneliest and wildest region he had ever seen, cursing the autocratic signs and bone-racking detours.

And that is how Tom Slade came to Watson’s Bend.

Chapter III Watson’s Bend

WHOEVER Watson was, about the only thing he seemed to have was his Bend. But it was a terrible bend. From whichever direction the motorist approached it, it was a place to cause a shudder. At night, thought Tom, it would be the worst kind of a death-trap. He paid his respects to it by jamming on his brakes and going around the horrible corner at a decorous speed. ‘That was more respect than he had shown the remote little village itself which lay just westward of the bend. The turn formed almost a right angle. The narrow, grass-grown road ran west and east, then turning as if some giant had pulled it across his knee and broken it, it ran north and south.

After Tom had made the turn, he paused to look about him. He was so interested that he drove his long-suffering car into a thicket of

TOM SLADE II brambles and sauntered out into the road. He saw that the road, such as it was, bordered the lower reaches of a mountain which towered in the southwest. It was because the road followed so closely the base of that frowning height that it made so abrupt and perilous a turn. Off to the north and east the land lay in low, undulating fields as far as the eye could see.

The road was not exactly cut into the mountain-side like many scenic highways—it followed a natural course around the base of the heights. It cut a sharp corner because the base of the mountain did. In other words, this sequestered road enclosed a mountain or jumble of mountains. Off to the other side of the road was low country. If you plunged off the road at the bend you would go down twenty or thirty feet, and that would be enough.

“Some place, I’ll say!” mused Tom.

He shaded his eyes and looked away off up into that mountain wilderness. “What the— dickens ”» he said, somewhat puzzled. Then he concentrated his gaze on something which he saw or thought he saw. The trees upon those distant slopes were still bare, though here and there a patch of green could be seen in the bleak landscape.

‘“‘That’s some blamed kind of a thing away up there,” said Tom. “I'll be hanged if it "

He changed his position and gazed again, long, intently. Then, as if resolved to settle some matter in his mind, he strode back along the road, around the bend, and to the little village. He paused to gaze again far off into that rising wilderness. But from this new point of view he could see nothing.

Beside its perilous corner, Watson’s Bend possessed about twenty houses, a village store, a tiny schoolhouse and some chickens perched in a row on a wayside watering trough. Watson’s Bend was absolutely harmless save for its sharp turn in the road.

On the platform of the village store sat three men who had not yet recovered from their astonishment at seeing the stranger go rattling by.

“That turn in the road is the sharpest thing I ever saw outside of a razor,” said Tom. “But I don’t suppose there’s much traffic through here ordinarily.”

“Don’t drive like yer hadn’t oughter do ’n yell be all right, I reckon,” said one of the men.

“T’wan’t fer that there bend this town wouldn’ hev no name at all,’ said another, evidently the local wit. ‘Yer in the army?” he asked, alluding to the khaki which Tom almost invariably wore.

“No, I’m mixed up with the Scouts,” Tom said. And he could not deny himself the pleasure of adding, “Ever hear of them?”

“We got one on ’em.”

“No, we hain’t, they go in gangs, sort o” regiments like,” said another of the trio.

“Sterrett’s youngster, he’s one on ’em.”

“No, he hain’t nuther.”

“Yere, he is,” said the first speaker, ‘the’s one them all ’lone scouts.”

“He hain’t got no togs,” said another of the three. ‘’N’f I wuz Sterretts I wouldn’ git ’im none. He’s a dirty little devil of a Heinie, that’s what he is. All ‘lone scout, huh? If I wuz ter give ’im anything, I’d give ’im a taste er harness strap.”

“The war’s over,” said the one member of

- the trio who was hatless. Tom thought he was the presiding genius of the store.

“How'd yer find that out?” the village wit shot at him.

Tom laughed too and, looking casually about him, wondered how they had found it out.

“Nice day,” the hatless man said.

“You bet,” said Tom. “I was going to ask you if that’s a fire lookout station away off up the mountain. I saw it from around the Bend. I don’t seem to be able to see it from here. Kind of a box up on—I guess it’s on a framework? I could only see the top part.”

“°Tain’t, but uster be,” said one of the trio. “They ain’t nobody up there now— less yer call a spook somebody.”

“There seem to be plenty of woods all around to get on fire,” Tom said.

“Oh, there’s woods enough,” said the other loiterer. ‘I'd take my chances with a fire any time before I’d get inter a mess with a spook, J would. I seed fires sence I wuz a kid, ’n’ I ain’t seed nobody killed by one yet, I hain’t.”

“Lizey Henk’s man wuz killed by a wood fire,’ the other visitor said. ‘Comin’ through from Skunk Holler.”

“That wuz thirty year ago,” said the other.

“Killed then or killed now, it’s no matter,” his companion retorted. ‘All Derry Conner’s woods wuz burned down. Nobody never knowed what started ’em.”

“Twas the ole feud started it, that’s what ‘twas. Derry’s wife’s folks wuz agin her hookin’ up with Irish. Skunk Holler ’n’ Irish Pond wuz alluz hittin’ back one way or another.”

The proprietor of the store leisurely pulled a corncob pipe out of his ticking overalls and, disregarding the conversation, proceeded to fill and light it. It seemed to Tom that this comfortable, white-haired man was not altogether of a mind with the others.

“Tizey Henk’s man wuz tipsy,” the old man finally drawled.

Tom was rather amused at these village reminiscences with all their quibblings and ignorant prejudices. But he thought that the store owner was rather more intelligent, or at least more mellowed than the others, and so to him he addressed his next question. There was something breezy and offhand and broad-minded about ‘Tom which set him off in strange contrast with these citizens of Watson’s Bend.

“Well, anyway,” he said cheerily, ‘‘tell me about the ghost. I don’t know as I’m specially interested in ghosts, but I’m blamed interested in saving the forests, and you can bet there ought to be somebody up there for what’s the use of having it if they don’t use it? Why, you've got miles and miles of unbroken forests around here. That’s a nice state of things.”

“N’ I s’pose you’d like to go up here?” the old man asked.

“Well, I sure wouldn’t let a spook keep me out,” laughed Tom.

“If you went up there ye’d come back lickety-split, hop, skip and a jump, quick enough,” said the humorist of the party.

“No, he wouldn’ come back nuther,” said the other loitering historian. ‘Did Chevy Ward come back? Yere, I reckon! But not hop, skip and jump. He come back ’cause we carried him back, me an’ George Terris an’ Denny.”

“What happened to him?” Tom asked.

“Murdered.”

* “Murdered? Did they get the one who did it?”

“A spook done it, him ’n’ his spook dog. Why, sonny, if yer wuz to offer one thousand dollars ter any one round these parts ter go ’n’ look after that hell spot, they’d on’y laugh in yer face. The State wardens they ain’t even tryin’ ter git anybody, not this season, as I heered. Let the ole woods blaze away, I don’t want ter go near no place that’s haunted.”

“Reckon the ole thing’s ’bout fallin’ ter pieces anyway,” said the store proprietor.

Tom gazed at him. That, at least, seemed a sensible observation.

Chapter IV The Schoolmaster

THE thought which was uppermost in Tom’s mind was not that of ghosts. It was that the safety of the forest was being jeopardized in deference to ignorant superstition.

“Can’t they get some one from another village?” he asked.

“They'd hey ter git th’ other village fust, I’m thinkin’,” said the local wag. ‘‘Chevy, he come here from over the mountain yonder in Todd’s Crossroads. He was the fust one ter live up on the peak.” )

“Vollmer, he stayed up there some nights,” said the storekeeper.

“He was welcome,” said the other, “a heap sight more welcome ’n he wuz down,here.”

“Dead rebels is worser’n live ones, I says,” his companion observed.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Tom laughed. “You can’t do much harm after you’re dead.”

“Tooks if poor Chevy had some harm done him by somebody ’t was dead,” the storekeeper remarked.

‘Well,’ said Tom conclusively, “if I can get that job I’m going to take it. So maybe you'll have me for a neighbor. My name is Slade and I live in Bridgeboro, New Jersey, and I’m not afraid of spooks, but I am afraid of fires. Who should I apply to, I wonder; the head warden, State warden, or whatever you call him?”

The three men simply gaped at him. What the climax of their amazement might have been it would be hard to say; for the tableau of incredulity was cut short by an anticlimax. The storekeeper turned lazily around and addressed a young man who had just come unobtrusively among them and was leaning back against one of the supports of the platform roof. How long he had been standing there listening Tom did not know. His age might have been thirty and he was attired in city fashion; that is, he wore a suit of clothes. His face was pale and intelligent, and it was evident from his appearance that he was not a tried and true native of Watson’s Bend.

He seemed so far above the level of the conversation that Tom was a little perplexed at his not laughing as he himself was doing. He would have supposed that such an apparently enlightened young man would give him at least a sly wink to denote his amusement. Yet the young man gave no sign of being his ally in this absurd talk.

“Wotcher after, Horry?” the storekeeper asked.

“Cigarettes,” said the young man; “no hurry.”

The storekeeper lazily arose and went within, which had the effect of ending the talk. The young man, having received his purchase, strolled along toward the Bend with Tom.

“I didn’t know there were any houses down this way,” Tom said, by way of making talk. “I left my machine around the corner. You live here, I suppose.”

“Yes, I board here,” the young man answered. “‘Watson’s Bend isn’t quite so small as it looks. There are a few houses scattered around in the woods. You can’t see them all. My name is Dennison, I’m school teacher here.”

“Oh,” said Tom.

“Yes, I came here just after the war when jobs were hard to get and I’ve been stalled here ever since.’ He seemed to apologize for his rustic position. “It isn’t so bad though,” he added; “nice and quiet. You’re on your way down through to Jersey, I suppose? We've seen more traffic in the last six days than we've seen in the last six years, I guess.”

“Yes, the road’s closed from High Falls down,” Tom said. ‘‘What do you think about those ghost stories? Some spook fans, hey, these rubes?”

They had passed around the treacherous Bend and were standing by Tom’s car. Far up on the distant mountain could be seen a gray speck, the little surmounting shelter of the lookout tower. The supporting structure was concealed among the trees and the tiny house looked like a large nest in the new foliage. At such a distance not one among a hundred strangers would have distinguished it for what it was. Dennison commented upon this.

“Oh, I suppose I happened to notice it because I’m interested in forest conservation,” Tom said. “But I never saw one so far up before. Boy, it must be pretty lonely up there! Well, I’m going to see if I can get the job; I'll try anything once. Did you ever hear such nonsense as those men talked? Spooks!”

“There are lots of things that we don’t know anything about,” Dennison said. “It’s easy to say you don’t believe a thing just because you don’t understand it. You never saw anything supernatural, so you say there isn’t any such thing. I don’t say there is, either, but just the same I wouldn’t go up there. And I wouldn’t advise you to either. It’s an uncanny place.”

Tom stared at his chance acquaintance in blank amazement. “Well — I’ll — be — jiggered!” he laughed. “You don’t mean to tell me that you believe those stories?”

‘Where there’s a lot of smoke there’s apt to be a little fire,’ Dennison commented. “I wouldn’t just exactly advise any one to go up there.”

Tom laughed. “Well, there’ll be some smoke and some fire too if somebody doesn’t go up there,” he said. “Why, this little berg is just surrounded by woods. There'll be some pretty little bonfire in this country first thing you know.”

By way of showing his resolve and his impatience with the silly rumors, he jumped into his car as if this were a first decisive step toward carrying out his plan. ‘‘Well, I’ll see you later,” he said.

“J guess you'll never be back,” laughed the school teacher. Then after a pause he added, “You don’t really mean that, do you?”

It seemed to Tom that Dennison was just a trifle anxious, too anxious for one who had no interest in the matter.

“T’ll say I do,” said Tom, leaning on the steering wheel.

‘Did they tell you what happened up there?” Dennison asked.

‘No, what happened up there?” ‘Tom laughed derisively.

Chapter V The New Job

THE young schoolmaster of Watson’s Bend climbed into the car and sat beside Tom. “I don’t meet many people from the great world,” he said. He seemed to offer this as an excuse for causing Tom to linger. “It’s like a circus come to town.”

“Oh, I’m in no hurry,” Tom said. “Half the time I can’t get the blamed old thing started anyway,” he added, in his happy-go-lucky way. “Go ahead, shoot. We often tell ghost stories around the camp-fire. I’m connected with the Scouts.”

“Oh, I thought maybe you were in the service,” Dennison said. It seemed to Tom that he was just a trifle reassured by this intelligence.

“Scouts, eh,’ Dennison said. ‘‘We boast of one of those youngsters here; sort of near scout, I guess he is. It was his father who used to be up at the lookout station; Vollmer, his name was.

That was before my time. You know there are always feuds in a little place like this. Folks think all is peace and quiet in these simple, little rustic hamlets, but believe me it’s just in little places like this that quarrels become feuds. I suppose that’s because there isn’t any social life to feed on. So they feed on quarrels. Why, the war isn’t over here yet.”

Tom glanced sideways at this friendly and intelligent young man who seemed to understand the ignorant village life so thoroughly and was yet so respectful of the absurd local superstition.

“They feed on ghosts, too,” Tom said.

“The war has awakened many people to truths they never dreamed about,” Dennison said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Who are you and I to say that there is nothing in spirit manifestation? You’re not interested, that’s all.”

“I’m more interested in where you throw that lighted match,” Tom said. He jumped out of the car and trampled down a tiny area of dry grass which had become ignited.

“My fault,” said Dennison.

“As long as there’s no one up at the station we might as well be careful,” Tom laughed, as he climbed in again. ‘How about Vollberg or whatever his name was? Was he scared away?”

The young schoolmaster slid down on the seat and stuck his feet up on the frame of the broken windshield. He smoked and seemed friendly and at home. Tom did not wonder that an educated young man, marooned in such a place, should encourage a passer-by to pause and chat.

“Don’t mind my making myself at home?”

“Go to it,” Tom said. ‘As long as we're going to know each other better we might as well start in now.”

“Oh, you won’t be back here,’’ Dennison laughed. “I guess you’re sort of adventurous, hey? Well, Pll tell you about Vollmer. Did you notice a big white house around the Bend—opposite the store? Only decent house in the place. Well, old man Peck used to live there; Wolfson Peck, his name was. Place is closed up now, but I heard he’s coming back to fix it up or sell it or something. Well, there’s an old story about how—don’t you smoke ?”

“Not now,” Tom said.

“Most troubles in little villages start on account of land disputes, do you know that? Somebody or other puts a fence a sixteenth of an inch beyond where he ought to put it, or something like that. Well, when old Peck built his place he put his fence so as to just bring Vollmer’s well on the Peck side of the fence. That’s what started it. I don’t know who was wrong or who was right. Only all of a sudden Vollmer couldn’t get any more water. Maybe he was wrong and maybe he was right, but anyway he went thirsty. Peck had a lot of money and he beat him in court. Then Vollmer carried it higher and I guess it must have looked as if he was going to win out. And then this country got into the war and Vollmer made a break

“He had charge of the lookout station, you say?” Tom interrupted.

“Oh, yes, he was up there. He said that in Germany a rich man couldn’t beat a poor man like that. That was old Peck’s cue. He came out and said.that Vollmer had a wireless on the mountain and all sorts of stuff—no truth in it at all as. far as I can make out. But that little break about the poor man’s chances in Germany queered him. Peck got him interned for disloyal utterances and poor Vollmer died in jail. War's rotten anyway you look at it, isn’t it?”

“Tt’s no pink tea,” Tom said.

“T'll say it isn’t. Well, after poor Vollmer died you can imagine how his folks felt. This kid, Henny, he swore he’d kill Peck if he ever came back to the Bend. You know how kids talk. But this little devil kept it up. He didn’t forget. Why, even after I came here J kept that little rascal in school one day for insolence. I told him to make a sentence and write it a hundred times— punishment. What do you think the little rascal wrote? J’ll kill Wolfson Peck. He wrote it one hundred times.

“Of course all these front-porch patriots here were against the Vollmers and they’re sore at the kid yet; he’s sixteen now. They cherish their grudges here and pass "em down from father to son.”

“Is that the kid that’s a sort of a near scout as you say?” ‘Tom asked.

“Yes, he got hold of some sort of a manual book, but I guess it isn’t doing him much good; keeping him from his lessons, that’s about all,” Dennison laughed. “He says he’s got to be loyal

_ to his dead father; he says there’s a law about

that. Which means he’ll kill old Peck if he ever sees him, I guess. I suppose that’s what you’d call the German mind, hey?”

Tom smiled, but he was thoughtful. “How about the ghost ?”’ he finally encouraged.

“Well,” said Dennison, “they went up to the station one night after Vollmer had died to see if they could find any signs of a wireless. Of course the Secret Service men had visited the place and found nothing. But these woodland patriots had to go up and snook around just the same. They got a good scare for their pains.