Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains | Page 8

finished reading, Helen looked up at her friend and the gaze of
penetrating curiosity that she saw in Marion's eyes caused her to blush
with confusion. Unable to meet her friend's gaze steadily, she shifted
her eyes toward the most uninteresting part of the car, the floor, and
said:
"That looks like a dangerous letter. It ought to be turned over to the
police as soon as possible."
"Both of them, don't you think?" Marion inquired.
"Why? I don't see anything in this shorter one. My guess would be that
it was written by your cousin or one of his friends."
"But do you notice the way they both end?--the same words," Marion
insisted.
"Yes, I noticed that," Helen replied slowly. But that is such a common,
ordinary expression, almost like 'a,' 'an,' or 'the,' that it doesn't mean
much to me here. Where are the letters postmarked?"
"Both in Westmoreland."
"That's something in favor of your suspicion that both letters were
written by the same person," Helen admitted. "Still it doesn't convince
me. You wouldn't expect the Spring Lake boys to mail a letter like the
shorter one at Spring Lake, would you? That would stamp its identity
right away."
"You are sure those letters were written by different persons?" Marion

inquired curiously.
"I don't think it makes any difference whether they were or not," Helen
answered more decisively than she had spoken before. "It is in that
skull-and-cross-bones letter that you are most interested. I think you
can disregard the other entirely. I would say this, however, that if both
were written by one person, you have less to fear than if the shorter one
was written by your cousin or one of his friends."
"Why?"
"Because if one person wrote both of them, he is probably suffering
from softening of the brain. But if the person who wrote the longer one
did not write the shorter one, there is more likelihood that he means
business and will attempt to carry out his threat."
"I never realized that you were such a Sherlock Holmes," Marion
exclaimed enthusiastically, while the suggestion came to her that
perhaps a genius for this sort of thing accounted for her friend's
peculiarities. "You ought to be a detective for a department store to
catch shoplifters."
"Thanks, Marion, for the compliment, but I am not inclined that way.
I'd rather do something in this case to keep our vacation plans from
ending in trouble."
"I was looking for someone who could advise me," Marion said; "and I
am now convinced that you are just the person I was looking for. What
do you think I ought to do, Helen?"
"All the girls ought to know about this letter," Helen replied. "But you
can't go to them and blurt out anything so sensational. We must break
the news gently, as they say in melodrama. I wish we hadn't come."
"So do I," Marion replied, but with just a suggestion of disappointment
in her voice.
"Not that I am afraid of getting hurt," Helen added hastily, realizing the

suspicion of cowardice that might rest against her. "Still, if my advice
had been asked, I would have argued against this very dangerous
vacation scheme of yours."
"Why?" inquired Marion in a tone of disappointment.
"Because of the very situation complained of in that
skull-and-cross-bones letter. I hope I don't hurt your feelings, Marion,
but it is very natural for some of these rough miners to suspect that
your plan was cooked up by your father to pull the wool over their eyes,
and to regard you as a tool employed by him to put the scheme into
operation."
"Some of the girls' parents raised the objection that there might be
danger in a mining district during a strike, but none of them suggested
anything of this sort," Marion remarked with humble anxiety. "I
explained to them that there could hardly be any danger even if the
strikers should get ugly, as the mines are some distance from where we
live and any violence on the part of the miners would surely be
committed at the scene of their labors. This seemed to satisfy them.
Most of the miners live at the south end of the town or along the
electric line running from Hollyhill to the mines."
"That doesn't make much difference if the miners once get it into their
heads that the girls are being used to put over a confidence game on
them," Helen argued authoritatively. "Miners are peculiar people,
especially if they are lead by radical leaders of aggressive purpose.
They believe that they are a badly misused set, turning out the wealth
of the wealthy, who repay them by holding them in contempt, keeping
their wages down to a minimum and pressing them into social