Chip stopped on the narrow trail and looked around. A lovely afternoon, but everything else was scary. He pulled his Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and examined it hopefully, but it wasn’t reassuring. He felt as if he were about to attack a machine-gun emplacement with a peashooter.
From where he stood he couldn’t see very much. Alders and thick reeds screened the shoreline, the jetty, and the cabin. At this extreme end of Blackwood Lake, the beavers had dammed up the streams, and a few rotting birches lay on the edge of a large bog, wedged between stumps of dead maples.
Chip put his hands in his pockets and touched the packets of raw hamburger. He had wrapped them with some care in the grimy cottage kitchen. The traces left scattered on the floor by May’s abductors had inspired him. “Don’t touch them!” his father had ordered, indicating the broken glass and dishes, the patch of clothing, all the signs that spoke tellingly of May’s struggle and her abduction. “The police may have to run tests. Let’s just pray that we find her in good shape.”
But Chip was sure that his parents were heading in the wrong direction. They wouldn’t find May at the shanty town. It was all his fault that she’d been left here — it had been his suggestion. And now he was sure the farmers had dragged her away — taken her off to their hill farms — which was why he had volunteered to stay behind. “Maybe she’ll come back,” he told his parents, “and then I can be here to help her.”
They had considered this carefully, and then finally agreed. “But don’t you go anywhere,” his mother warned, almost as if she knew his thoughts already. “We may have to visit the Children’s Aid people in Kingston, as well as the police, and we’re counting on you to help us.”
Once they had driven off with Lee, Cal, and Rachel, Chip dug out the meat and wrapped it carefully, hoping that the Dobermans would be hungry.
The path wound up from the swamp. Chip climbed it, then looked around, attempting to recall Dalton Smith’s and Garth Laberge’s vague references to their farms. Since they’d been afraid that the Mallorys might intrude on them, their home base couldn’t be very far away. He remembered how one of the men had waved his hand toward this very hillside. Somewhere beyond this he’d be sure to find them.
Now his path led him into an evergreen forest where the deer flies and the mosquitoes seemed fewer and less vicious than in the swampy bottom-land below. The land was level, and at the end of the forest patch Chip came out on a large, open field, overgrown, weedy, and very desolate. Rusted farm machinery, half sunk in earth, occupied one corner; on the far side he could see what looked like a burnt-out shack.
Quickly, he crossed this field, only to find another — the second one thick with tall corn, almost ready for harvest. He moved cautiously between the corn rows, noticing an ancient red tractor, and not far from the vehicle a scarecrow with a straw hat and upraised ragged arms. Beyond lay a dirt road, curving away toward an old stone farmhouse, and some other buildings, partially shaded by a small clump of very large maples.
He stopped and shook his head. Could this be where Dalton and Garth hung out? A stone house, and beside it a big, shabby barn with a rusted tin roof. Some rickety sheds, then a field, then another dwelling — a white-frame bungalow half-circled by a sagging fence with a broken gate.
Chip headed straight for the big stone house. He was praying that the men wouldn’t be there, hoping that they wouldn’t suddenly return, because there was nowhere to hide. If they appeared, he’d have to take his chances. It was nerve-racking, but at least there was no sign of them, and so far, no sign of the dogs.
In fact, there was no sign of life at all, except for the birds.
Now Chip began to feel the heat, and to pick up the heavy manure smell of the farms. He reached into his pocket and got out a couple of the hamburger packets, which were beginning to stink.
He walked on and nothing challenged him until he reached a line of old snake fencing that ran along the road right in front of the stone farmhouse.
It was then that he heard the dogs, barking, growling, snarling close by. He stopped in his tracks. If anybody was around…
Beyond the snake fence, and across a wide patch of brown lawn, he saw a gleaming page-wire fence, some ten feet high, looking incongruous in its newness, but very efficient. It formed a kind of pen or enclosure in front of the old stone house.
Suddenly, from the back of this enclosure, three large dogs appeared. They ran forward, stood up against the fence wire, and barked at him. Smooth-faced, flat-skulled Dobermans, their white teeth flashing — and they seemed just as vicious as the men had said they’d be. Chip made an effort to ignore their stentorian barking. He looked up and down the road, gritted his teeth, and moved forward.
No one’s at home, he thought. You’re a lucky guy on that score — those creeps just aren’t here.
They couldn’t be, because the dogs were now in a frenzy. He was afraid that one of them might actually climb the fence and get him. He opened the packets and tossed them the foul meat.
As they devoured his offerings, he tried to think: if Dalton and Garth had taken the girl, where would they put her? Maybe in one of the sheds — although the buildings didn’t look strong enough to hold May, who had impressed him as quite athletic. Of course, they might have tied her up.
But the stone house with the dogs was the more likely place. With the Dobermans making a racket, nobody would be likely to come very close.
Chip moved around the wire fence to the side of the house that faced the yard. To the right he saw the big barn, with a shattered wooden silo attached, and two or three rusted cars beside it. He had noticed that the farmhouse had a sagging wooden porch running along this side. It was an old house, one that surely had a basement and an attic, and the dogs were only guarding the front door.
Moving along the porch, Chip found a side door. He approached it and pressed his face against the glass, then shrank back as a dark form leapt at him, barking, slavering on the pane, and tearing with big teeth at the dirty white curtains inside.
Of course there’d be a dog in there, he thought, standing back, sweating, gulping hard, and trying to control the wild pounding in his chest.
Chip examined the porch carefully and found that it had been built over a couple of basement windows. He got down on his hands and knees and peered down through the filthy glass windowpanes, the tops of which were accessible above the porch boards.
Slowly, his eyes adjusted and he looked into a dimly lighted basement — a dreary-looking place, but with no dog in sight.
Chip had an idea — a dangerous one, but he was already in too deep to back away.
He searched the yard and found a suitable stone, and with it hammered at the half-rotten porch boards. When they crumbled and came loose, he pulled them up, exposing one of the windows. Then, with the stone, he smashed the window, striking over and over until there was space for him to crawl through. When he’d finished, he crouched there, bathed in sweat, gasping for breath, and fearfully listening.
The only sound was the barking of the dogs from the front enclosure and the back kitchen. Nothing from down there in the basement.
Chip stuck his feet through the window and clung for a moment to the frame and ledge. Then he let go and jumped down, crying out when one hand caught a sliver of glass.
On his feet in the basement, he sucked at his bloody hand and swore. He had landed in a storeroom full of cupboards and boxes, old tools, broken chairs, mirror frames, and a couple of large seed bags that appeared to have been rifled by rats.
Chip shuddered and moved into the next room. An old furnace, electrical wires and boxes, metal vents and pipe covers, a stairway leading up to the first floor, and the Doberman, above his head now, still barking and prowling in the kitchen.
Chip was in despair. They hadn’t put her in the basement. Was she in the house at all? Had he made a terrible mistake? He suddenly realized that he had just broken a window and entered a private dwelling — he’d committed a crime. If they caught him here, he would be the criminal. His parents would kill him. He might even go to jail.
He stepped gingerly around the furnace, pushed aside a few screens and broken window frames, and approached a large wooden door that seemed to give access to the front basement, but the door was padlocked.
Chip remembered the tools in the other room. Minutes later he had a crowbar in hand and was smashing at the cheap padlock, his hand hurting more by the minute, his torn palm smeared with cruel dirt and rust.
The cursed thing doesn’t want to give, he thought.
Almost in tears, he finally broke the latch, pulled it away from the door frame, swung the door back, and stood staring into a darkened room.
A moan from the darkness startled him. A soft whimpering. He was fearful, and hopeful. He hesitated.
What was wrong? The dogs were suddenly quiet. Had he just heard a car engine? Had someone arrived up there? The farmers might kill him if they found him.
He stood shivering — the air seemed very cold. He groped and found a light switch.
Chip caught his breath. “Oh my God!” he said aloud.
May Bates, crouched in a corner, gazed up at him. She moaned and shook her head. They had chained her to the wall.
“Don’t worry, May,” he said. “I’ll get you out of here!”
He scrambled over to her, bent down, and examined the chain. “I can get this off you. Hold still now!”
“I know you. It’s Chip,” she whispered.
He struck at the manacle with the crowbar. “Yeah, it’s me. I think I’ve bent it. Now let me get this running shoe off. That’s it — now you can wriggle your foot out.”
Her thin body was shivering and she was in tears, but she managed it.
“Here, put your shoe back on. We’ve got to get out of here! But first I want to check something.”
The room was full of large food freezers. They vibrated slightly, seemingly electrified, and were cold to the touch. Chip opened one, then another. They were packed tight with wrapped meat — far too much meat for one man, or even two.
May bent over beside him. “They kill wild animals,” she said. “They go in the woods and kill animals. They sell it from here. My whole village knows.”
“So that’s it. Poachers, among other things. Come on, May, everyone will be looking for you by now. And maybe for me, too — I hope!”
He led the way back to the storeroom. A relief — the dogs were barking again.
“Let’s drag this box over. We can get out the window,” he told her.
Standing on the boxes, Chip pushed himself up through the window frame, taking care not to touch the jagged glass. He emerged on the porch, then turned back to assist May. She scrambled out, and they stood side by side, gazing nervously around. Chip was horrified. A familiar red car was parked outside the barn. It hadn’t been there when he’d arrived.
“One of them is back,” he whispered. “He didn’t notice this mess on his dumpy porch. But they’ll catch us now for sure. They’ll set the dogs on us.”
“Over there!” May pointed to a nearby shed. She began to run in that direction.
“It’s no good — they’ll find us there.”
When she didn’t stop, there was nothing to do but run after her.
May reached the shed a few steps before him, unlatched the door, and stepped inside. Chip followed her. The place smelled of hay and dung; it was hot with the breath of an animal. “At least we’re out of sight,” Chip whispered.
“See, there — we can escape now.”
May pointed. Chip saw a rough wooden barrier — a horse stall — and a horse standing in it. He stared for a minute, then it dawned on him.“My God!” he almost shouted. “It’s the white stallion.”