The Oakdale Affair

“I never seen her afore,” he cried.  “I don’ know nothin’ about it.  Honest I don’t.”  But the girl did not quail.

“You get out,” she commanded.  “You a bad man.  Kill, steal.  He know; he tell me.  You get out or I call Beppo.  He keel you.  He eat you.”

“Come, come, now, my dear,” urged Bridge, “be calm.  Let us get at the root of this thing.  Your young friend accuses me of being a murderer, does he?  And he tells about murders in Oakdale that I have not even heard of.  It seems to me that he must have some guilty knowl-edge himself of these affairs.  Look at him and look at me.  Notice his ears, his chin, his forehead, or rather the places where his chin and forehead should be, and then look once more at me.  Which of us might be a murderer and which a detective?  I ask you.

“And as for yourself.  I find you here in the depths of the wood digging a lonely grave for a human corpse.  I ask myself:  was this man murdered? but I do not say that he was murdered.  I wait for an explanation from you, for you do not look a murderer, though I cannot say as much for your desperate companion.”

The girl looked straight into Bridge’s eyes for a full minute before she replied as though endeavoring to read his inmost soul.

“I do not know this boy,” she said.  “That is the truth.  He was spying on me, and when I found him he told me that you and your companions were thieves and murderers and that you were hiding there watching me.  You tell me the truth, all the truth, and I will tell you the truth.  I have nothing to fear.  If you do not tell me the truth I shall know it.  Will you?”

“I will,” replied Bridge, and then turning toward the brush he called:  “Come here!” and presently a boy and a girl, dishevelled and fearful, crawled forth into sight.  Willie Case’s eyes went wide as they fell upon the Oskaloosa Kid.

Quickly and simply Bridge told the girl the story of the past night, for he saw that by enlisting her sym-pathy he might find an avenue of escape for his com-panions, or at least a haven of refuge where they might hide until escape was possible.  “And then,” he said in conclusion, “when the searchers arrived we followed the foot prints of yourself and the bear until we came upon you digging this grave.”

Bridge’s companions and Willie Case looked their sur-prise at his mention of a bear; but the gypsy girl only nodded her head as she had occasionally during his nar-rative.

“I believe you,” said the girl.  “It is not easy to de-ceive Giova.  Now I tell you.  This here,” she pointed toward the dead man, “he my father.  He bad man.  Steal; kill; drink; fight; but always good to Giova.  Good to no one else but Beppo.  He afraid Beppo.  Even our people drive us out he, my father, so bad man.  We wan-der ’round country mak leetle money when Beppo dance; mak lot money when he steal.  Two days he no come home.  I go las’ night look for him.  Sometimes he too drunk come home he sleep Squeebs.  I go there.  I find heem dead.  He have fits, six, seven year.  He die fit.  Beppo stay guard heem.  I carry heem home.  Giova strong, he no very large man.  Beppo come too.  I bury heem.  No one know we leeve here.  Pretty soon I go way with Beppo.  Why tell people he dead.  Who care?  Mak lot trouble for Giova whose heart already ache plenty.  No one love heem, only Beppo and Giova.  No one love Giova, only Beppo; but some day Beppo he keel Giova now he is dead, for Beppo vera large, strong bear—­fierce bear—­ogly bear.  Even Giova who love Bep-po is afraid Beppo.  Beppo devil bear!  Beppo got evil eye.

“Well,” said Bridge, “I guess, Giova, that you and we are in the same boat.  We haven’t any of us done any-thing so very bad but it would be embarrassing to have to explain to the police what we have done,” here he glanced at The Oskaloosa Kid and the girl standing beside the youth.  “Suppose we form a defensive alli-ance, eh?  We’ll help you and you help us.  What do you say?”

“All right,” acquiesced Giova; “but what we do with this?” and she jerked her thumb toward Willie Case.

“If he don’t behave we’ll feed him to Beppo,” sug-gested Bridge.

Willie shook in his boots, figuratively speaking, for in reality he shook upon his bare feet.  “Lemme go,” he wailed, “an’ I won’t tell nobody nothin’.”

“No,” said Bridge, “you don’t go until we’re safely out of here.  I wouldn’t trust that vanishing chin of yours as far as I could throw Beppo by the tail.”

“Wait!” exclaimed The Oskaloosa Kid.  “I have it!”

“What have you?” asked Bridge.

“Listen!” cried the boy excitedly.  “This boy has been offered a hundred dollars for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the men who robbed and mur-dered in Oakdale last night.  I’ll give him a hundred dollars if he’ll go away and say nothing about us.”

“Look here, son,” said Bridge, “every time you open your mouth you put your foot in it.  The less you adver-tise the fact that you have a hundred dollars the better off you’ll be.  I don’t know how you come by so much wealth; but in view of several things which occurred last night I should not be crazy, were I you, to have to make a true income tax return.  Somehow I have faith in you; but I doubt if any minion of the law would be similarly impressed.”

The Oskaloosa Kid appeared hurt and crestfallen.  Giova shot a suspicious glance at him.  The other girl in-voluntarily drew away.  Bridge noted the act and shook his head.  “No,” he said, “we mustn’t judge one another hastily, Miss Prim, and I take it you are Miss Prim?” The girl made a half gesture of denial, started to speak, hesitated and then resumed.  “I would rather not say who I am, please,” she said.

“Well,” said the man, “let’s take one another at face value for a while, without digging too deep into the past; and now for our plans.  This wood will be searched; but I don’t see how we are to get out of it before dark as the roads are doubtless pretty well patrolled, or at least every farmer is on the lookout for suspicious strangers.  So we might as well make the best of it here for the rest of the day.  I think we’re reasonably safe for the time being—­if we keep Willie with us.”

Willie had been an interested auditor of all that passed between his captors.  He was obviously terrified; but his terror did not prevent him from absorbing all that he heard, nor from planning how he might utilize the information.  He saw not only one reward but sev-eral and a glorious publicity which far transcended the most sanguine of his former dreams.  He saw his picture not only in the Oakdale Tribune but in the newspapers of every city of the country.  Assuming a stern and arro-gant expression, or rather what he thought to be such, he posed, mentally, for the newspaper cameramen; and such is the power of association of ideas that he was presently strolling nonchalantly before a battery of mo-tion picture machines.  “Gee!” he murmured, “wont the other fellers be sore!  I s’ppose Pinkerton’ll send for me ’bout the first thing ‘n’ offer me twenty fi’ dollars a week, er mebbie more ’n thet.  Gol durn, ef I don’t hold out fer thirty!  Gee!” Words, thoughts even, failed him.

As the others planned they rather neglected Willie and when they came to assisting Giova in lowering her father into the grave and covering him over with earth they quite forgot Willie entirely.  It was The Oskaloosa Kid who first thought of him.  “Where’s the boy?” he cried suddenly.  The others looked quickly about the clearing, but no Willie was to be seen.

Bridge shook his head ruefully.  “We’ll have to get out of this in a hurry now,” he said.  “That little defective will have the whole neighborhood on us in an hour.”

“Oh, what can we do?” cried the girl.  “They mustn’t find us!  I should rather die than be found here with—­” She stopped abruptly, flushed scarlet as the other three looked at her in silence, and then:  “I am sorry,” she said.  “I didn’t know what I was saying.  I am so frightened.  You have all been good to me.”

“I tell you what we do.”  It was Giova speaking in the masterful voice of one who has perfect confidence in his own powers.  “I know fine way out.  This wood circle back south through swamp mile, mile an’ a half.  The road past Squeebs an’ Case’s go right through it.  I know path there I fin’ myself.  We on’y have to cross road, that only danger.  Then we reach leetle stream south of woods, stream wind down through Payson.  We all go Gypsies.  I got lot clothing in house.  We all go Gypsies, an’ when we reach Payson we no try hide—­jus’ come out on street with Beppo.  Mak’ Beppo dance.  No one think we try hide.  Then come night we go ’way.  Find more wood an’ leetle lake other side Payson.  I know place.  We hide there long time.  No one ever fin’ us there.  We tell two, three, four people in Payson we go Oakdale.  They look Oakdale for us if they wan’ fin’ us.  They no think look where we go.  See?”

“Oh, I can’t go to Payson,” exclaimed the other girl.  “Someone would be sure to recognize me.”

“You come in house with me,” Giova assured her, “I feex you so your own mother no know you.  You mens come too.  I geeve you what to wear like Gypsy mens.  We got lots things.  My father, him he steal many things from our people after they drive us out.  He go back by nights an’ steal.”

The three followed her toward the little hovel since there seemed no better plan than that which she had offered.  Giova and the other girl were in the lead, fol-lowed by Bridge and the boy.  The latter turned to the man and placed a hand upon his arm.  “Why don’t you leave us,” he asked.  “You have done nothing.  No one is looking for you.  Why don’t you go your way and save yourself from suspicion.”

Bridge did not reply.

“I believe,” the youth went on, “that you are doing it for me; but why I can’t guess.”

“Maybe I am,” Bridge half acknowledged.  “You’re a good little kid, but you need someone to look after you.  It would be easier though if you’d tell me the truth about yourself, which you certainly haven’t up to now.”

“Please don’t ask me,” begged the boy.  “I can’t; hon-estly I can’t.”

“Is it as bad as that?” asked the man.

“Oh, its worse,” cried The Oskaloosa Kid.  “It’s a thou-sand times worse.  Don’t make me tell you, for if I do tell I shall have to leave you, and—­and, oh, Bridge, I don’t want to leave you—­ever!”

They had reached the door of the cabin now and were looking in past the girl who had halted there as Giova entered.  Before them was a small room in which a large, vicious looking brown bear was chained.

“Behold our ghost of last night!” exclaimed Bridge.  “By George! though, I’d as soon have hunted a real ghost in the dark as to have run into this fellow.”

“Did you know last night that it was a bear?” asked the Kid.  “You told Giova that you followed the foot-prints of herself and her bear; but you had not said any-thing about a bear to us.”

“I had an idea last night,” explained Bridge, “that the sounds were produced by some animal dragging a chain; but I couldn’t prove it and so I said nothing, and then this morning while we were following the trail I made up my mind that it was a bear.  There were two facts which argued that such was the case.  The first is that I don’t believe in ghosts and that even if I did I would not expect a ghost to leave footprints in the mud, and the other is that I knew that the footprints of a bear are strangely similar to those of the naked feet of man.  Then when I saw the Gypsy girl I was sure that what we had heard last night was nothing more nor less than a trained bear.  The dress and appearance of the dead man lent themselves to a furtherance of my belief and the wisp of brown hair clutched in his fingers added still further proof.”

Within the room the bear was now straining at his collar and growling ferociously at the strangers.  Giova crossed the room, scolding him and at the same time attempting to assure him that the newcomers were friends; but the wicked expression upon the beast’s face gave no indication that he would ever accept them as aught but enemies.

It was a breathless Willie who broke into his mother’s kitchen wide eyed and gasping from the effects of ex-citement and a long, hard run.

“Fer lan’ sakes!” exclaimed Mrs. Case.  “Whatever in the world ails you?”

“I got ’em; I got ’em!” cried Willie, dashing for the telephone.

“Fer lan’ sakes!  I should think you did hev ’em,” re-torted his mother as she trailed after him in the direc-tion of the front hall. “‘N’ whatever you got, you got ’em bad.  Now you stop right where you air ‘n’ tell me what-ever you got.  ’Taint likely its measles, fer you’ve hed them three times, ‘n’ whoopin’ cough ain’t ‘them,’ it’s ‘it,’ ‘n’—.”  Mrs. Case paused and gasped—­horrified.  “Fer lan’ sakes, Willie Case, you come right out o’ this house this minute ef you got anything in your head.”  She made a grab for Willie’s arm; but the boy dodged and reached the telephone.

“Shucks!” he cried.  “I ain’t got nothin’ in my head,” nor did either sense the unconscious humor of the state-ment.  “What I got is a gang o’ thieves an’ murderers, an’ I’m callin’ up thet big city deetectiff to come arter ’em.”

Mrs. Case sank into a chair, prostrated by the weight of her emotions, while Willie took down the receiver af-ter ringing the bell to attract central.  Finally he ob-tained his connection, which was with Jonas Prim’s bank where detective Burton was making his headquarters.  Here he learned that Burton had not returned; but fi-nally gave his message reluctantly to Jonas Prim after exacting a promise from that gentleman that he would be personally responsible for the payment of the reward.  What Willie Case told Jonas Prim had the latter in a machine, with half a dozen deputy sheriffs and speed-ing southward from Oakdale inside of ten minutes.

A short distance out from town they met detective Burton with his two prisoners.  After a hurried consulta-tion Dopey Charlie and The General were unloaded and started on the remainder of their journey afoot un-der guard of two of the deputies, while Burton’s com-panions turned and followed the other car, Burton tak-ing a seat beside Prim.

“He said that he could take us right to where Abigail is,” Mr. Prim was explaining to Burton, “and that this Oskaloosa Kid is with her, and another man and a for-eign looking girl.  He told a wild story about seeing them burying a dead man in the woods back of Squibbs’ place.  I don’t know how much to believe, or whether to believe any of it; but we can’t afford not to run down every clew.  I can’t believe that my daugh-ter is wilfully consorting with such men.  She always has been full of life and spirit; but she’s got a clean mind, and her little escapades have always been en-tirely harmless—­at worst some sort of boyish prank.  I simply won’t believe it until I see it with my own eyes.  If she’s with them she’s being held by force.”

Burton made no reply.  He was not a man to jump to conclusions.  His success was largely due to the fact that he assumed nothing; but merely ran down each clew quickly yet painstakingly until he had a foundation of fact upon which to operate.  His theory was that the simplest way is always the best way and so he never be-fogged the main issue with any elaborate system of de-ductive reasoning based on guesswork.  Burton never guessed.  He assumed that it was his business to know, nor was he on any case long before he did know.  He was employed now to find Abigail Prim.  Each of the sev-eral crimes committed the previous night might or might not prove a clew to her whereabouts; but each must be run down in the process of elimination before Burton could feel safe in abandoning it.

Already he had solved one of them to his satisfac-tion; and Dopey Charlie and The General were, all un-known to themselves, on the way to the gallows for the murder of Old John Baggs.  When Burton had found them simulating sleep behind the bushes beside the road his observant eyes had noticed something that resem-bled a hurried cache.  The excuse of a lost note book had taken him back to investigate and to find the loot of the Baggs’s crime wrapped in a bloody rag and hastily buried in a shallow hole.

When Burton and Jonas Prim arrived at the Case farm they were met by a new Willie.  A puffed and important young man swaggered before them as he retold his tale and led them through the woods toward the spot where they were to bag their prey.  The last hundred yards was made on hands and knees; but when the party arrived at the clearing there was no one in sight, only the hovel stood mute and hollow-eyed before them.

“They must be inside,” whispered Willie to the detec-tive.

Burton passed a whispered word to his followers.  Stealthily they crept through the underbrush until the cabin was surrounded; then, at a signal from their leader they rose and advanced upon the structure.

No evidence of life indicated their presence had been noted, and Burton came to the very door of the cabin unchallenged.  The others saw him pause an instant upon the threshold and then pass in.  They closed be-hind him.  Three minutes later he emerged, shaking his head.

“There is no one here,” he announced.

Willie Case was crestfallen.  “But they must be,” he pleaded.  “They must be.  I saw ’em here just a leetle while back.”

Burton turned and eyed the boy sternly.  Willie quailed.  “I seen ’em,” he cried.  “Hones’ I seen ’em.  They was here just a few minutes ago.  Here’s where they bur-rit the dead man,” and he pointed to the little mound of earth near the center of the clearing.

“We’ll see,” commented Burton, tersely, and he sent two of his men back to the Case farm for spades.  When they returned a few minutes’ labor revealed that so much of Willie’s story was true, for a quilt wrapped corpse was presently unearthed and lying upon the ground beside its violated grave.  Willie’s stock rose once more to par.

In an improvised litter they carried the dead man back to Case’s farm where they left him after notifying the coroner by telephone.  Half of Burton’s men were sent to the north side of the woods and half to the road upon the south of the Squibbs’ farm.  There they sep-arated and formed a thin line of outposts about the entire area north of the road.  If the quarry was within it could not escape without being seen.  In the mean time Burton telephoned to Oakdale for reinforcements, as it would require fifty men at least to properly beat the tangled underbrush of the wood.

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