Patsy Carroll Under Southern Skies

CHAPTER VII

THE COTTAGE IN THE PALM GROVE

Greatly to their relief, the Wayfarers were not called upon to do battle with their stout snake sticks. For a quarter of a mile they followed the narrow path. It wound in and out of the tall, coarse grass and around wide-spreading trees and ragged clumps of bushes. At length they reached the point for which they had been aiming.

“It’s simply splendiferous!” exclaimed Eleanor, as the quartette halted well inside the first grove to breathe in the fragrance of orange blossoms and feast their eyes on the beauty of the tropical scene spread out before them.

“Why, it isn’t just an orange grove!” Beatrice cried out. “Look, girls! There are lemons on that tree over yonder!”

“Yes, and see the tangerines!” Patsy pointed out. “Those stiff, funny bushes there have kumquats on them. And I do believe – yes, sir – that ragged old tree there is a banana tree. This is what I call a mixed-up old grove. I supposed oranges grew in one grove and lemons in another, etc., etc.”

“I guess we don’t know very much about it,” laughed Eleanor. “We’ll have to get busy and learn what’s what and why. Let’s walk on through this grove and see what’s in the next one. There seems to be a pretty good path down through it.”

Amid many admiring exclamations, the Wayfarers strolled on, seeing new wonders with every step they took. The brown, woody litter which covered the ground under the trees was plentifully starred with the white of fallen blossoms. To quote Mabel, “Why, we’re actually walking on flowers!”

Late in the season as it was they found considerable fruit growing within easy reach of their hands. Eager to avail themselves of the pleasure of “actually picking oranges from the trees,” the girls gathered a modest quantity of oranges and tangerines.

Warned by Mr. Carroll always to be on the watch for spiders, scorpions and wood-ticks before sitting down on the ground, Beatrice and Patsy energetically swept a place clear with a huge fallen palmetto leaf, and the four seated themselves on the dry, clean-swept space to enjoy their spoils.

All of them had yet to become adepts in the art of out-door orange eating as it is done in Florida. In consequence, they had a very delightful but exceedingly messy feast. Picking oranges at random also resulted in their finding some of the fruit sour enough to set their teeth on edge. These they promptly flung from them and went on to others more palatable.

“No more oranges for me this morning,” finally declared Eleanor, pitching the half-eaten one in her hand across the grove. “I’m soaked in juice from head to foot. Look at my skirt.”

“I’ve had enough.” Bee sprang to her feet, drying her hands on her handkerchief. “We ought to pick a few oranges to take to Miss Martha.”

“Let’s get them when we come back,” proposed Patsy. “What’s the use in lugging them around with us. I want to walk all the way through these groves to the end of the estate. Dad says it’s not more than a mile from the house to the west end of Las Golondrinas.”

“All right. Lead on, my dear Miss Carroll,” agreed Bee with a low bow. “Be sure you know where you’re going, though.”

“I know just as much about where I’m going as you do,” merrily flung back Patsy over her shoulder.

Headed by their intrepid leader, the little procession once more took the trail, wandering happily along under the scented sweetness of the orange trees. Overhead, bright-plumaged birds flew about among the gently stirring foliage. Huge golden and black butterflies fluttered past them. Among the white and gold of blossom, bees hummed a deep, steady song as they pursued their endless task of honey-gathering.

On and on they went, passing through one grove after another until they glimpsed ahead the high, wrought-iron fence which shut in the estate on all four sides. Reaching it, they could look through to a small grassy open space beyond. Behind it rose a natural grove of tall palms. Set down fairly in the middle of the grove was a squat, weather-stained cottage of grayish stone.

“Oh, see that funny little house!” was Mabel’s interested exclamation. “I wonder whom it belongs to!”

“Let’s go over and pay it a visit,” instantly proposed Patsy. “Perhaps someone lives there who can tell us about old Manuel Fereda and Eulalie, his granddaughter. It doesn’t look as though darkies lived there. Their houses are mostly tumble-down wooden shacks. Still it may be deserted. Anyway, we might as well go over and take a look at it.”

“How are we going to get out of here?” asked Eleanor. “I don’t see a gate.”

“There must be one somewhere along the west end,” declared Bee. “Let’s start here and follow the fence. Maybe we’ll come to one.”

“We’d better walk north through the grove then. There’s no path close to the fence and that grass is too high and jungly looking to suit me,” demurred Eleanor.

Traveling northward through the grove, their eyes fixed on the fence in the hope of spying a gate, the explorers walked some distance, but saw no sign of one. Finally retracing their steps to their starting point, they headed south and eventually discovered, not a gate, but a gap in the fence where the lower part of several iron palings had been broken away, leaving an aperture large enough for a man to crawl through.

“This means us,” called Patsy and ran toward it.

Energetically beating down the grass under it with the stick she carried, she stooped and scrambled through to the other side, emitting a little whoop of triumph as she stood erect.

One by one her three companions followed suit until the four girls were standing on the grassy clearing, which, a few rods farther on, merged levelly into the grove of palms surrounding the low stone cottage.

From the point at which they now halted they could obtain only a side view of it among the trees.

“Judging from the big cobweb on one of those windows, I should say no one lives there,” commented Eleanor.

“It does look deserted. Let’s go around to the front of it. Then we can tell more about it,” suggested Patsy.

Crossing the grassy space, the quartette entered the shady grove. A few steps brought them abreast of the front of the cottage.

“The door’s wide open! I wonder – ”

Patsy broke off abruptly, her gray eyes focussing themselves upon the open doorway. In it had suddenly appeared a woman, so tall that her head missed but a little of touching the top of the rather low aperture. For an instant she stood there, motionless, staring or rather glaring at her uninvited visitors out of a pair of wild black eyes. The Wayfarers were staring equally hard at her, fascinated by this strange apparition.

What they saw was a fierce, swarthy countenance, broad and deeply lined. The woman’s massive head was crowned by a mop of snow-white hair that stood out in a brush above her terrifying features. A beak-like nose, a mouth that was merely a hard line set above a long, pointed chin, gave her the exact look of the proverbial old witch. Over the shoulders of a shapeless, grayish dress, which fell in straight ugly folds to her feet, she wore a bright scarlet shawl. It merely accentuated the witch-like effect.

In sinister silence she took the one stone step to the ground and began to move slowly forward toward the group of girls, a deep scowl drawing her bushy white brows together until they met.

“She’s crazy!” came from Mabel, in a terrified whisper. “Let’s run.”

“I will not,” muttered Patsy. “I’m going to speak to her.”

Stepping boldly forward to meet the advancing figure, Patsy smiled winningly, and said: “Good-morning.”

“What you want?” demanded a harsh voice.

Ignoring Patsy’s polite salutation, the fearsome old woman continued to advance, halting within four or five feet of the group of girls.

“Oh, we were just taking a walk,” Patsy brightly assured. “We saw this cottage and thought we’d like to see who lived here. We – ”

“Where you live?” sharply cut in the woman.

“We are staying at Las Golondrinas. My father owns the property now. I am Patricia Carroll and these three girls are my chums,” amiably explained Patsy. “We are anxious to find someone who can tell us something about the Feredas. We are looking for – ”

“You will never find!” was the shrieking interruption. “It is not for you, white-faced thieves! Madre de Dios! Old Camillo has hidden it too well. Away with you! Go, and return no more!”

This tempestuous invitation to begone was accompanied by a wild waving of the woman’s long arms. The gold hoop rings in her ears shook and swayed as she wagged a menacing head at the intruders.

“Just a minute and we will go.”

Undismayed by the unexpected burst of fury on the part of the disagreeable old woman, Patsy stood her ground unflinchingly. There was an angry sparkle in her gray eyes, however, and her voice quivered with resentment as she continued hotly:

“I want you distinctly to understand that we are not thieves, even though we happen to be trespassers. When we saw this cottage we thought it might belong to some one who had lived here a long time and had been well acquainted with Manuel Fereda and his granddaughter, Eulalie – ”

“Eulalie! Ah-h! Ingrata! May she never rest! May the spirit of old Camillo give her no peace!”

Here the strange, fierce old creature broke into a torrent of Spanish, her voice gathering shrillness with every word. She appeared to have forgotten the presence of the Wayfarers and directed her tirade at the absent Eulalie, who was evidently very much in her bad graces.

“Come on. Let her rave. She surely is crazy. She may try to hurt us,” murmured Eleanor in Patsy’s ear.

“All right. Come on, girls.”

Tucking her arm in Eleanor’s, Patsy turned abruptly away from the ancient belligerent who was still waving her arms and sputtering unintelligibly.

Without a word the quartette hurried out of the palm grove, across the grassy space and made safe port on their own territory, through the gap in the fence. This accomplished, curiosity impelled each girl to peer through the palings for a last glimpse at the tempestuous cottager.

She had not been too busy anathematizing the unlucky Eulalie to be unaware of the hasty retreat of her unwelcome visitors. She had now stopped flapping her arms and was bending far forward, her fierce old eyes directed to where the Wayfarers had taken prudent refuge. Noting that they were watching her, she shook a fist savagely at them, threw up both arms menacingly as though imploring some unseen force to visit vengeance upon them, and bolted for the cottage.

CHAPTER VIII

PATSY SCENTS A MYSTERY

“Now who do you suppose she is?” broke from Bee, as the old woman disappeared.

“Ask me something easier,” shrugged Patsy. “She’s a regular old witch, isn’t she? Dad must know who she is. Funny he never said anything about her to us. Suppose we trot back to the house and watch for him. He promised, you know, at breakfast, to be back from Palm Beach in time for luncheon so as to take us down to the boathouse this afternoon. He had a business appointment with a man at the Beach. That’s why he hurried away so fast this morning.”

Suiting the action to the word, the Wayfarers started back through the orange groves, discussing with animation the little adventure with which they had recently met.

“That woman was Spanish, of course,” declared Beatrice. “Could you understand her, Mab, when she trailed off into Spanish, all of a sudden? She said ‘ingrata.’ I caught that much. What does it mean?”

“It means ‘the ungrateful one,’” Mabel answered. “I couldn’t understand much of what she said. I caught the words, ‘Camillo, Manuel, Eulalie,’ and something about a spirit torturing somebody – Eulalie, I suppose she meant. ‘Madre de Dios’ means ‘Mother of God,’ or ‘Holy Mother.’ It’s a very common form of expression among the Mexicans. I believe this woman is a Mexican.”

“We know who Eulalie is. By Manuel she must have meant the Manuel Fereda who died just a little while ago,” said Bee reflectively. “But who in the world is or was old Camillo? And what did he hide? What made her call us ‘white-faced thieves’? What is it that we’ll never find? Will somebody please answer these simple questions?”

“Answer them yourself,” challenged Patsy gaily. “We’ll be delighted to have you do it. You know you are fond of puzzling things out.”

“It sounds – well – ” Bee laughed, hesitated, then added: “Mysterious.”

“Exactly,” warmly concurred Patsy. “We’ve actually stumbled upon something mysterious the very first thing. I knew, all the time, that we were going to find something queer about this old place.”

“I don’t think there’s anything very mysterious about a tousle-headed old crazy woman,” sniffed Mabel. “She certainly didn’t act like a sane person. Maybe she had delusions or something of the sort.”

“Perhaps her name is Camillo,” suggested Bee, her mind still occupied with trying to figure out to whom the name belonged.

“No.” Mabel shook her head. “Camillo is a man’s name, not a woman’s. She might have meant her husband or her brother. Goodness knows whom she meant. I tell you, she’s a lunatic and that’s all there is to it. If we hadn’t been armed with four big sticks she might have laid hands on us.”

“Well, Uncle Jemmy’s snake sticks were some protection, anyhow,” laughed Eleanor. “I’m going to keep mine and lug it around with me wherever I go. I may – ”

A wild shriek from Mabel left the sentence unfinished. Walking a pace or two ahead of the others, Mabel had almost stumbled upon a huge black snake, coiled in a sunny spot between the trees. Quite as much startled as she, the big, harmless reptile uncoiled his shining black folds in a hurry and slid for cover.

“Oh!” she gasped. “Did you see him? He was a whopper! And I almost stepped on him! He might have bitten me.”

“Black snakes don’t bite, you goose,” reassured intrepid Patsy. “He was probably more scared at the yell you gave than you were to see him. He must be the same one Uncle Jemmy saw this morning.”

“Maybe he’s been raised a pet,” giggled Eleanor. “We may get to know him well enough to speak to when we fall over him coiled up on various parts of the estate. If you ever get really well acquainted with him, Mab, you can apologize to him for yelling in his ears.”

“First find his ears,” jeered Mabel, who had sufficiently recovered from the scare to retaliate.

“Our second adventure,” commented Beatrice. “Wonder what the next will be.”

“Nothing more weird or exciting than luncheon, I guess,” said Patsy. “There! We forgot to pick those oranges we were going to take to Auntie.”

“Let’s go back and get them,” proposed Eleanor.

“Oh, never mind. I dare say there are plenty of oranges at the house,” returned Patsy. “Auntie won’t mind. We’ll go down to the grove to-morrow and pick a whole basketful for her.”

By this time the Wayfarers were nearing the house. Rounding a corner of the building they spied Mr. Carroll some distance down the drive. He was sitting in his car engaged in conversation with a white man who stood beside it. Both men were too far away from the girls for them to be able to make out plainly the stranger’s features. They could tell little about him save that he was tall, slim, dark and roughly dressed.

“That must be the new man,” instantly surmised Patsy.

Pausing, she shaded her eyes with one hand, to shut out the glaring sunlight, and stared curiously at the stranger.

“Can’t tell much about him,” she remarked. “There; he’s started down the drive. Now we’ll find out from Dad who he is.”

The stranger, having turned away, Mr. Carroll had started the car and was coming slowly up the drive. Sighting the group of white-clad girls he waved to them.

“Hello, children!” he saluted, as he stopped the car within a few feet of them. “Where have you been spending the morning? Want to ride up to the house?”

“No, thank you,” was the answering chorus, as the girls gathered about the automobile.

“We’ve been exploring, Dad,” informed Patsy. “Is that the new man? I mean the one you were just talking to.”

“Yes. I met him at the gate. He had been up to the house looking for me. His name is Crespo; Carlos Crespo. He’s a Mexican. He tells me he used to work for old Fereda. That he was practically brought up on the estate.”

“Then he’s the very man we want!” exclaimed Beatrice eagerly. “He’ll be able to tell us about the Feredas.”

“I doubt your getting much information from him,” returned Mr. Carroll. “He seems to be a taciturn fellow. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t very favorably impressed by him. He acted sulky, it seemed to me. I’m going to give him a trial, because it’s so hard to get a white man for the job. I can’t afford to let this one slip without giving him a chance. If I find him balky, and ungracious to your aunt and you girls, I’ll let him go. He says he knows nothing about automobiles, but a great deal about horses.”

“Oh, well, we don’t want him as chauffeur, anyway,” declared Patsy. “You and I can do all the driving. He’ll be handy when we go on our trip into the jungle. He can attend to the horses. Very likely, when he gets used to us, he’ll be fairly amiable. He can’t be any more snippy and disobliging than John was last summer while we were at Wilderness Lodge. He was positively hateful to us. Of course, that was all on account of his loyalty to that horrid Rupert Grandin. If this Carlos man proves honest and dependable, we sha’n’t mind if he sulks at first. He’ll probably get over it as he comes to know us better. We had an adventure this morning, Dad.”

Patsy straightway left the subject of the new man and plunged into a colorful account of their meeting with the strange old woman.

“Do you know who she is, Mr. Carroll? Did you ever see her?” questioned Mabel eagerly.

“No.” Mr. Carroll shook his head. “She must be the woman one of my colored boys was trying to tell me about the other day. He described the cottage you’ve just mentioned and said a ‘voodoo’ woman lived there who was ‘a heap sight crazy.’ He claimed he saw her out in her yard late one night ‘making spells.’ I didn’t pay much attention to him, for these darkies are full of superstitions and weird yarns.”

“We’ll ask Carlos about her,” decided Patsy. “That makes two things we’re going to quiz him about; the ‘voodoo’ lady and the Feredas. When is he to begin working for you, Dad?”

“He’ll be back this afternoon. I’m going to set him to work at clearing up the stable. It’s a regular rubbish shack. I’ll give him a gang of black boys to help him. I’m anxious to have it put in trim as soon as possible. To-morrow I must go over to the stock farm and see about getting some horses for our use while here. I’ll take Carlos with me and then we’ll see how much he knows about horses.”

“We’d better be moving along. We promised Miss Martha to be back in plenty of time for luncheon,” reminded Mabel.

“I’ll see you girls at the house,” Mr. Carroll said. “I’m going to take the car to the garage. We’ll hardly need it this afternoon. The Wayfarers are such famous hikers, they’ll scorn riding to the beach,” he slyly added.

“Of course we are famous hikers. Certainly we intend to walk to the beach,” sturdily concurred Patsy.

“Scatter then, and give me the road,” playfully ordered her father.

Moving briskly out of the way of the big machine, the chums followed it up the drive at a leisurely pace.

“Well have to change our gowns before luncheon.”

Eleanor ruefully inspected her crumpled white linen skirt, plentifully stained with orange juice.

The others agreeing, they quickened their pace and reaching the house hurriedly ascended to their rooms to make the desired change. As usual Mabel and Eleanor were rooming together. Patsy and Bee shared a large airy room next to that occupied by the two Perry girls. Miss Martha roomed in lonely state in a huge, high-ceilinged chamber across the corridor from the rooms of her flock.

“I don’t care whether or not this Carlos man acts sulky,” confided Patsy to Bee when the two girls were by themselves in their own room. “I’m going to beam on him like a real Cheshire cat. He’ll be so impressed by my vast amiability that he’ll be telling me all about the Feredas before you can say Jack Robinson. I’m awfully interested in this queer family and I simply must satisfy my curiosity. Do you really believe, Bee, that there is a mystery about them?”

“I don’t know whether there’s any mystery about the Feredas themselves,” Bee said slowly. “That old woman may or may not be crazy. I was watching her closely all the time we stood there. At first she was just suspicious of us as being strangers. It was your saying that we were living at Las Golondrinas and that your father owned the property that made her so furious. She had some strong reason of her own for being so upset at hearing that.”

“Maybe she used to be a servant in the Fereda family and on that account can’t bear to see strangers living here in their place,” Patsy hazarded.

“I thought of that, too. It would account for her tirade against Eulalie. I believe there’s more to it than that, though, else why should she call us thieves and go on as she did?”

Bee reflectively repeated the question she had earlier propounded.

“That’s precisely what we are going to find out,” Patsy said with determination.

“But you know what your aunt said,” Bee dubiously reminded.

“Don’t you worry about Auntie,” smiled Patsy. “When we tell her at luncheon about our adventure she’ll probably say we had no business to trespass. You let me do the talking. I sha’n’t mention the word ‘mystery.’ I’ll just innocently ask her what she thinks the old witch woman could have meant. She’ll be interested, even if she pretends that she isn’t. Last summer, at Wilderness Lodge, she was as anxious as we for the missing will to be found. If there is truly a mystery about Las Golondrinas, Aunt Martha will soon be on the trail of it with the Wayfarers. Take my word for it.”