FRANK ALLEN AT OLD MOOSE LAKE

OR

The Trail in the Snow

BY

GRAHAM B. FORBES

Author of “Frank Allen—Pitcher,” “Frank Allen and His Motor Boat,” etc.

NEW YORK

GARDEN CITY

GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC.

1926

THE FAMOUS FRANK ALLEN SERIES

BY GRAHAM B. FORBES

See back of book for list of titles

COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.

Frank Allen at Old Moose Lake MADE IN THE U. S. A.

[Page 1]

FRANK ALLEN AT OLD MOOSE LAKE

CHAPTER I PREPARING FOR THE CAMP

“And I’ll be happy!” came the loudly sung final line of a popular song, the words of which had been changed to inform the hearer that a camping party was most in the mind of the singer.

Lanky Wallace, the slim, athletic, quick-thinking pal of Frank Allen, was sauntering along the street towards Frank’s home, a rifle carried jauntily on his right shoulder, the singing being done by that young man for the sole purpose of attracting the attention of his friend.

Frank’s head popped out of an upper front window of the house.

“Don’t! Don’t! You’ll get arrested for disturbing the peace!” he cried, as Lanky looked up at him.

“What’s that? Get arrested for singing?” and Lanky struck a hurt attitude.

[Page 2]

“Oh, that’s different! I didn’t know that was what you were doing. I thought you were calling hogs or selling peanuts!” called Frank, while Lanky swung the gun quickly from his shoulder as if he might bring it up to kill such an insulting speaker.

“Be down in a minute!” called Frank again, as he slammed the window to the bottom and disappeared into his room.

In a few minutes the two boys were together on the street, each with his rifle, headed for the homes of other boys.

Paul Bird, Ralph West and Buster Billings were sought and found, and when each had his rifle on his shoulder, the five young fellows started back toward the main road north.

“We ought to have some good target practice this morning,” said Frank, while the boys, all bunched together, made along the road. “Camping up at Old Moose Lake is going to call for some regular shooting, and too much practice isn’t enough.”

“Guess we’re the lucky boys,” remarked Lanky, after they had gotten to the edge of town and were approaching the woods in the rolling land beyond Columbia.

One of the boys asked him the “why” for the remark.

“Well, if Frank hadn’t been out West just when he was and if he hadn’t been where he was when we[Page 3] found dad’s treasure in the hills, and if dad hadn’t given Frank the Rocket, the best little old motor boat ever born, and if we hadn’t been coming down the Harrapin River just at the time we heard the cries of Mrs. Parsons and——”

“Say, listen!” Paul Bird interrupted the long-drawn out sentence of Lanky Wallace. “Are you making a speech or something?”

“—and,” continued Lanky, paying no heed to the interruption, “if we hadn’t seen that auto leave there, if we hadn’t luckily stumbled on to the rowboat taking the stolen stuff to Jed Marmette’s, if we hadn’t followed up the lead and seen old Jed stealing some of the stuff and if we hadn’t broken down that night, run out of gas, when we raced to Coville, all might have been different about this camping party.”

Lanky was quite right in this. The boys had planned a camping party at this autumn season, and Mrs. Parsons, the wealthy widow just above the city of Columbia who had been robbed of her jewels and silver, was so grateful to Frank and his friends for what they had done that she had offered them the use of the late Mr. Parsons’ camp at Old Moose Lake for their camping expedition when she learned they had made plans for one.

In the preceding volume, called “Frank Aden and His Motor Boat,” is told the story of the manner in which Frank and his boy friends had come into the[Page 4] activities of the robbery in time to catch the thieves redhanded and also to find for Mrs. Parsons her jewels and the silverware, most of which had come to her from her ancestors and those of her husband, who had died only two years before.

It so happened that Mrs. Parsons had accepted some questionable rumors for fact and had accused the boys of knowing more than they did. Her chagrin after the disclosure and her gratitude over the good work done by Frank Allen, Lanky Wallace, Paul Bird and Ralph West, caused her to reward them first with a very, very delightful picnic at her country home, a palatial spot facing the Harrapin River. It was following this picnic that, hearing the boys had been planning a camping expedition for the autumn season, she graciously tendered to Frank and his friends the use of a beautiful camp which had been the pride of Mr. Parsons in his lifetime, an offer the boys had cheerfully accepted.

“It was mighty good of Mrs. Parsons to offer us the camp up at Old Moose Lake,” said Frank, in reply to Lanky’s humorous recital. “She says it is stocked with food and she said she was going to order some more sent there, so we’ll have plenty of chance to keep alive, if eating is the only thing we have to do to keep alive.”

“No,” said Lanky, very sagely shaking his head in[Page 5] the negative, “we can’t keep alive unless we bring down fourteen deer, a couple of hundred pickerel, and——”

“And kill yourself getting it all home,” laughed Paul Bird.

By this time the chums had come to the grove where they proposed to hold their target practice, and Frank, with his usual sense of safety, led the way from the road almost a quarter of a mile, coming at last to a ravine which broadened out at one point to a great bowl, its sides of rock and sand.

“We can set up the target over that bed of sand,” and Frank pointed to one stratum of fine sand which broke out in the side of the ravine. “That will allow the bullets to imbed in something soft and we won’t take any chances on their glancing off.”

“That’s provided any one hits the target—except me, of course, I know my shots will all hit it all right——”

Once again Lanky Wallace was telling the other boys what he was going to do, joking with them.

“Listen to Mr. Lanky Wallace, who hates himself!” cried Ralph West. “How close do you expect to stand to hit that sand bed?”

“Come on, fellows,” broke in Frank. “Get that old piece of board and lean it against the sand bed, then pin the targets on. I’m anxious to shoot with my rifle——”

[Page 6]

“That’s more than Lanky’s shooting with!” laughed Buster Billings. At this Lanky reached for Buster, but not quickly enough. That live lad was expecting the necessity for moving out of the way, and was successful.

The boys soon had the target placed properly, and then tossed up for the firing order, with Frank getting third shot, Paul and Lanky coming first and second, respectively.

Crack! Paul’s first shot broke the stillness, for the other boys paid the courtesy of keeping quiet while the contestant was sighting.

“Hit the atmosphere!” cried Lanky. “Watch me move that sand bed for you!” he added as he stepped up to the line to take Paul’s place.

Crack! Lanky’s rifle rang out—and there was a hole in the bullseye to show where he had struck.

“Just requires a man who knows how to handle it,” he calmly said as he raised his rifle for the next shot.

Crack!

“Wow! Where did that one go? Trying to hit the top of that hemlock?” yelled Ralph West, for there was not a mark on the board to show where Lanky’s second shot had gone.

“Just take a look in the bullseye and you’ll find both of them. I just pile them one on top of another!”[Page 7] Lanky calmly let his rifle drop to the ground.

Ralph and Buster raced to the target and looked carefully. It was Ralph who spoke:

“Both in the same spot!”

Frank Allen did not attempt to restrain his smile, for he knew that Lanky was a good shot, one of the best in Columbia, and he was amused by the bombastic attitude that Lanky had taken, realizing that Lanky, unassuming ordinarily, was just putting this on to-day for the fun of it. Frank knew that Lanky himself had not been certain whether or not he had put his second shot on top of the first.

Lanky took his third shot, permitted him by their unwritten rules that when a boy hit the bullseye he was entitled to another shot at once.

This time Frank watched the level of Lanky’s rifle, and smiled broadly again as he realized that Lanky was deliberately shooting over the top of the ravine. When his shot rang out there was no additional mark on the target.

“Just look in the bullseye where the others went,” he calmly said, and the same two boys, Paul and Buster, hurried to the target to see if this could possibly be true.

Lanky turned to Frank, saw the broad smile on Frank’s face, and whispered to him:

[Page 8]

“Shot over the top of the ravine. Bet they’ll say I hit in the center again.”

Just then Paul, spokesman for the two, called out:

“Right in the center again! That’s some shooting, Lanky! Three of them right in the middle!”

Frank did not restrain himself any longer.

“You fellows certainly are easy. Don’t you know that Lanky deliberately shot away over the top of the target, just to see if you could find his mark in the center?”

“Hay!” yelled Lanky Wallace. “Wait a minute. Who are the judges? I appeal to the judges. They said I hit in the middle again. How about it, Paul?”

If any one else had said anything about it, perhaps Paul Bird would have stood by his guns and may have reiterated his decision. But Paul knew that Frank’s eye was good, and he knew that Frank Allen had caught on to some kind of joke.

Frank stepped to the line and pushed Lanky aside. And Lanky gave way for his friend, laughing heartily at the way in which he had put over a practical joke on the boys.

Frank Allen’s rifle was a repeater, and when he took his stand in front of the target he determined he would fire three times very quickly to see what were the results.

[Page 9]

Crack! Crack! Crack!

As he sighted and made his first shot he drew back the ejector and made the second, following which he as quickly made the third.

“Wow!” yelled two of the boys whose sight was best. “Made the ring of the bullseye on all three of them and didn’t pile them up, either!”

Even from the distance at which they stood, all of the boys could see that Frank had put three straight shots, made as closely together as was possible, at the edge of the bullseye, each one scoring.

“That was great——”

“Help—Help!”

A girl’s voice just over the top of the ravine to their right reached the boys. It was a sincere cry for help.

All bantering stopped. The boys turned their eyes toward the spot from which the cries had come.

“Help! Help!”

Two different voices sounded this time.

“Helen and Minnie!” cried Frank, as he took a firmer grip on his rifle and leaped for the opening up the right side of the ravine, from which direction the cries, mingled now with another voice, had come.

“And in trouble!” came from Lanky. “Come on, fellows, make it snappy! They may need us the worst way!”

[Page 10]

CHAPTER II FRANK IS THREATENED

As the boys scrambled out of the ravine they again heard the screams of the girls, one of them a decidedly louder scream than was made by the others.

Over a small ridge the five lithe, active young fellows went, and, in full view there now unfolded to them the panorama of a frightful scene!

On a ledge forming a step in a steep incline of a hill stood Minnie Cuthbert, Frank’s best girl friend. She was frantically trying to grasp the limb extending downward from a tree in an effort to swing out on it. Further along the ledge stood two other girls, one of them Helen Allen, Frank’s sister, the other Dora Baxter.

Rushing toward Minnie, and now only a few yards from where she stood on the lower part of the ledge, its mouth issuing foam and its head covered with it, flecks of foam flying over its back, came a beautiful dog—evidently mad!

There could be no question as to the intent of the animal.

[Page 11]

Crack! A rifle shot rang through the woods.

Without more than a passing aim, relying on that sense of direction which had brought Frank several target practice triumphs, he had raised his repeating rifle to his shoulder and brought the dog to the ground in the midst of a leap which would have carried it to the feet of the screaming, struggling girl.

As the dog, shot full in its final leap, struck at her feet, Minnie made a final jump high in the air, and landed back of the rolling animal which passed the spot where she had been standing, rolled over several times on the ledge, ending against the perpendicular wall of the hillside.

“Minnie! Minnie! Wait a minute!” Frank yelled to the frantic girl as, not being in the grip of the dog, she rushed headlong down the incline to the glen below.

Minnie stopped, turned, and saw the dog lying on the ledge above her, saw the other girls walking, though excitedly, toward her.

By this time Frank had dashed across the intervening space and had reached her side.

“You’re safe now! Where did that dog come from?” he asked her. “What were you doing here?”

But Minnie’s tongue was not ready to function just yet. She was breathing hard. Her breast was heaving sharply, her face was of a grayish pallor,[Page 12] her wide eyes glassy, her lips trembling, her body aquiver.

Frank took her hand and held it for a moment, thinking she might faint, but as the other boys approached and the girls, too, the color came back to her cheeks, her eyes became normal, and she was able to stammer:

“We were nutting, and all of a sudden this dog came rushing toward us. It ran around in a big ring, and I saw the foam flying. I realized that it was mad!”

“It was mad!” exclaimed Helen Allen. “It ran around in a big ring and we thought it was going to go back to the road, but we started running away from it, anyhow. Then it ran again at us, and we screamed and ran back.”

Frank turned the dog over, after a quick glance had told him it was breathing no more, and all of them saw the red spot where the bullet had reached its mark—squarely in the side of the head.

“This hunting dog was dead when it struck at Minnie’s feet,” observed Ralph West.

“I’ll claim to the world that’s some shooting,” said Lanky. “Good thing you had some target practice—especially following my good lessons.” And there was a merry smile on the lean fellow’s face as he permitted a laughing remark to fit into the situation.

[Page 13]

The boys and girls marveled at the shot that Frank Allen had made at a time when only a good shot would answer the requirements.

“I wonder who it belongs to,” murmured Frank, taking a very careful look at the dog again. “I don’t remember seeing one like him around here lately.”

None of the party remembered a dog of its kind.

“Did it come from the road?” asked Frank, turning to Helen.

The girls replied in chorus that it did.

“It has every resemblance of a mad dog,” said Frank, “but I thought dogs went mad in the middle of the summer. This is nutting time, autumn, and no time for a dog to go mad.”

“Frank,” spoke up Lanky slowly, deliberately, “do you know something—this is a good dog—it belongs to some one who values it—and I believe we ought to have a veterinarian come out here and see it.”

The idea struck Frank at once as being an important one, whereupon, after a moment’s thought, he said:

“I believe you’re right, Lanky. We’ll get Doc Whittaker to look at it and hear what he has to say. And we’ll have his support in case our guess is right. We have killed this dog—that is, I have—and[Page 14] I’ll have to pay for it, and pay well, too, unless I’m able to prove that it was mad.”

“But it was rushing at me to bite me!” cried Minnie. “You could tell the man who owns it just that. That’s certainly good enough reason!”

“He—ah, Bill! He—ah, Bill!” came a voice followed by several shrill whistles. Some one from the road was calling a dog.

“The owner—now!” said Paul Bird excitedly.

The entire crowd was quiet for several seconds, until the same call and the same whistled signal came again, this time much closer.

“Here you are, mister! Come down this way!” Frank made a trumpet of his hands and called back to the man.

A moment later a burly man, dressed in a heavy brown suit, a rather lengthy, drooping mustache partially covering an ugly looking mouth, broke through a small bunch of brush and came out at the top of the hillock next to them.

“I think that is your dog over here,” said Frank, speaking directly to the man.

“He—ah, Bill! Come here!” called the man, but no dog answered.

“It can’t come, mister, it’s dead.”

Frank spoke to the man very plainly, and in a tone of voice that was quiet, each word enunciated distinctly.

[Page 15]

“Dead!” Whereupon the man rushed down the little dale or glen that separated them, and came up to the hillock where the boys and girls were huddled together. Two other men came over the farther hillock behind him, attracted by the conversation.

The large man gave one look at the dog lying on the ledge, a bloody spot showing very conclusively what had happened, each of the boys carrying rifles as further mute evidence.

“Who killed that dog? Who killed it?” he demanded threateningly, drawing himself to his full height and glaring at the boys menacingly.

For a tense moment all were silent.

“I killed the dog,” said Frank, then.

“What’s that? You killed my dog?” and the man made as if to leap on Frank to throttle him.

“Hold off, there,” Frank’s voice was piercing in its deadly quiet. “Don’t come too close to me. Listen to what I’ve got to say.”

“Well, what’ve you got to say, you——”

“And don’t say that, either,” said Frank. “Just keep cool a minute. Some one else in the world can be just as right as you are. That dog was shot just as it was making a wild leap at one of these girls. See the foam all over its head? The dog was mad, and I killed it before it could hurt one of these girls.”

By this time the other two men had come up to[Page 16] where the crowd was standing, one of them being close to Frank.

Frank saw this and stepped farther away, thus putting the distance, several yards, between himself and anyone else.

“That dog was not mad—that dog was worth two hundred dollars, and you’ve got to pay for it!” yelled the man, anger breaking out in every tone, every movement.

“I beg your pardon, mister——”

“Jeek, that’s my name. Fordham Jeek, from Bellport, young fellow, and you’re going to pay me for that dog.”

The name of this man was familiar to all the boys. They had heard of him on several occasions when down at Bellport, and had also heard of him from a certain element around Columbia.

He was a race-track follower, not of the higher type, but one of those about whom there is usually some question, some whispered rumor that will not quite stand the scrutiny of daylight or repeating aloud—a reputation which cannot be called savory.

Those who have followed Frank Allen from the time of the story, “Frank Allen’s Schooldays,” the first volume of the series, down to the volume just previous to this story, which was “Frank Allen and His Motor Boat,” know that Frank Allen was an upstanding boy who could think straight and always[Page 17] fairly, one who did his utmost in anything at which he went, a boy who was popular among his schoolmates and also among the older people, primarily because he was not given to conceit nor bombast, but was always just a wholesome, healthy, American boy who loved the out-of-doors, who was honest and square in all his dealings, and who, though a leader in athletics, was also a leader in his studies at school.

For a long minute Frank thought over the attitude of this man Jeek, of the situation with his two cronies present, and he noticed they were a rough looking pair.