The Witch Tree Symbol (5 page)

“That’s possible,” Mr. Zinn agreed. “Particularly if he has already found the other authentic table and it didn’t contain the secret. He could easily learn Aunt Sara owned its mate and in his haste, he took both of her tables with him. Maybe he couldn’t distinguish the genuine from the reproduction. Oh dear, this is confusing!”

Just then a woman appeared in the barn shop. Mr. Zinn introduced her as his wife. She was as round as her husband and wore a full skirt, a shirred light-blue apron, and ruffled collar and sleeves. Her pretty face was dimpled and she had a radiant smile, which vanished when she heard the news of the robbery.

“Papa, it is a great loss to you, ain’t?”

Her husband tried to hide his distress. “What one does not own is never a loss”,“ he told her, and perhaps the furniture will be found.”

“Papa, I came to tell you that dinner is ready,” Mrs. Zinn said. She added, “It would please us to have you girls break bread with us.”

“Oh, that would be wonderfull” Bess exclaimed. Nancy and George also accepted.

Mrs. Zinn led the way into the farmhouse. It was gayer than that of the Kreutzes, with flowers, window draperies, and quaint hooked rugs in every room. The cloth on the kitchen table was hand-embroidered with red and blue pigeons.

Mrs. Zinn set three more places at the table, and soon the five were eating a hearty meal. The dessert was shoofly pie. Between courses, the Zinns asked where the girls were staying.

When they told them, Mrs. Zinn frowned. “Mr. Kreutz is too strict,” she complained. “He never allowed Manda to have a good time. He said he would pick her a husband. That’s why she ran away. You know she ran away?”

Nancy nodded and said that Mr. Kreutz now wanted his daughter to come home, and that the girls had promised to help find her. She told of the clue the bakery woman had suggested, but the Zinns did not know of any new Amish couple in town.

An hour later Nancy and her friends were on their way back to the Kreutz farm. Bess, looking out the rear window, suddenly declared that she thought they were being followed by a car.

“Maybe the hex is working again,” she said.

George, disgusted, told her cousin to stop talking nonsense. Suddenly a horn blasted. Nancy pulled into a service station and the car shot past them so quickly that the girls caught only a glimpse of the Amish driver. He was bearded and his black hat was pulled far down over his ears.

“That speed demon didn’t follow us long,” George observed.

When Nancy’s car was refueled, they set out again. As she rounded a sharp turn, she suddenly gasped and stepped on the brake. Strewn across the road, directly in their path, were cinder blocks. There was no way to avoid plowing into them!

The car hit several of the blocks. All three girls were thrown forward. Bess, seated in the middle, struck her head on the mirror and blacked out!

 

 

 

QUICKLY Nancy stopped the car. She and George got out and laid the unconscious girl on the front seat of the convertible.

As they leaned over Bess, worried, their friend raised her eyelids and blinked. Then she gingerly tried to sit up.

“Ow!” she moaned, sinking down again and putting a hand to her forehead. “I certainly gave my head a bang!”

“All of us might have been killed!” George cried indignantly. “Who could have been so careless?”

Nancy noticed an excavation for a building and a neat pile of the cinder blocks off to the side. She declared that the obstruction seemed to have been caused by more than carelessness. “I think it was done deliberately!”

“The hex is at fault,” Bess muttered, sitting up cautiously.

Nancy and George carried the blocks out of the way so they could drive on. Bess sat and watched them through the open door of the car. Suddenly a piece of paper stuck between two of the blocks caught her eye.

Bess got out and picked up the paper. There was writing on it.

“Listen!” she cried, and read, “
‘Nancy Drew, witches are not wanted in Amish country.’ ”

Nancy and George rushed to Bess’s side and read the note themselves.

“This explains a lot,” Nancy said. “I bet that man who passed us was Roger Hoelt in disguise! He knew these blocks were here and threw them into the road and left this note!”

The cousins gasped. “You’re right,” said George, “and we’re after him. Come on!”

The girls quickly got into the car and started off. Bess remarked that the man had such a head start they would never be able to find him.

“We’ll watch for his tire tracks in the dust,” Nancy said. She thought it should be easy to trail the man, for the road was not well traveled and was extremely dusty.

As they rode along, Nancy said she had a new slant on the case. The couple for whom Manda might be working were Roger Hoelt and his wife.

“You mean they’re posing as an Amish couple?” George asked.

“Yes. Since he once lived here, he’d know just how to do it.”

“I agree. But how long are we going to follow these tracks?” Bess asked.

“If we don’t catch him by the time we get to the highway, we’re out of luck,” Nancy replied. “This road leads into it, according to the map, and Hoelt’s trail will disappear once he’s on the pavement.”

The girls sped along for nearly a mile in that direction, but did not overtake the suspect.

Finally Bess pleaded that they give up the chase. “I have a dreadful headache,” she said.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Nancy asked kindly. “We’ll go right back to Kreutzes’.”

At the farm, Manda’s mother greeted the girls eagerly. “Did you find any trace of my daughter?”

Nancy alighted from the car and told the woman about the Amish couple for whom Manda might be working. “Tomorrow we’ll try to locate them,” she promised.

Mrs. Kreutz looked at Bess, who was being helped out of the car. “Why, look at your head!” she cried solicitously. “What happened?”

“We had to stop suddenly and I bumped it,” Bess replied.

Nancy told Mrs. Kreutz about the cinder blocks that had been thrown in the road, and said she had been unable to avoid hitting them. But she did not mention the note or her suspicions regarding the Hoelts.

They all went into the house and George asked, “Have you something we can put on Bess’s head? It’s aching badly.”

“Yes, I have some homemade liniment,” Mrs. Kreutz replied. “But I will do a little powwowing too. Come upstairs.”

Bringing the bottle of liniment and a cloth to Bess’s bedroom, she told the girl to lie down. She sprinkled the folded cloth with the liniment and placed it on Bess’s forehead. Then she went for her
Gabrauch Buch.

In a low voice, Mrs. Kreutz began to read from the book in German. She gently stroked Bess’s head, then her arms. Finally the woman closed her eyes and began to mumble to herself. Nancy and George wondered if she were praying. A few minutes later Bess sighed, closed her eyes, and went to sleep.

Mrs. Kreutz seemed to be unaware of anything but her powwow. But presently she stopped speaking, rose, and motioned to Nancy and George to follow her from the bedroom.

“Bess will feel better now,” the woman said.

Downstairs, Mrs. Kreutz’s mood changed abruptly. Smiling, she asked the two girls if they would like to help her prepare supper. “We will have moon pies tonight,” she said.

“And I’ll bet they’ll taste out of this world,” George said with a laugh.

“That is a good joke,” Mrs. Kreutz said. “And I suppose you never heard of them. Come. We will prepare a dozen.”

The woman rolled the piecrust dough out on a table and floured it. Then she told the girls to cut it into round sections six inches in diameter. This done, she asked George to go outside to the small stone house through which a stream of cold water flowed. Here crocks of milk, cream, cheeses, and meats were kept cool.

“Bring the roast of veal,” the woman directed. “It stands behind on the top shelf over.”

When George returned with the meat, Mrs. Kreutz cut a generous piece from it. She put this into a wooden chopping bowl and cut it up fine with an old-fashioned chopper.

The meat was now transferred to a skillet on the stove. Butter, cream, salt, pepper, and pickled relish were added. After it had cooked a while, Mrs. Kreutz directed the girls to butter the rounds of dough. Into half of each she put generous spoonfuls of the meat mixture.

“Now pull the lids over and pinch the edges all around with your thumbs,” she instructed.

“They look like half-moons!” George declared.

Mrs. Kreutz spread more butter on top of each, and said the moon pies were ready for the oven. “Papa likes these for supper,” she said. “By the way, do not mention Manda to Papa. When he is ready to talk about her, he will ask you.”

Within an hour, Bess came downstairs, saying she felt much better. “And doesn’t something smell good! Mm-mm!”

George laughed. “Bess must be back to normal. She’s hungry!” She told her cousin of Mrs. Kreutz’s request not to mention Manda.

During the meal Mr. Kreutz did not bring up the subject of his missing daughter. But as soon as the dishes had been washed, he called Nancy aside and asked her what she had learned about Manda.

Nancy told him in detail, and added, “Mr. Kreutz, I think you should notify the police. They may be able to locate Manda easily.”

“Not” Mr. Kreutz cried loudly. “I am an Amish man. We take care of family matters without the help of the police. I gave you my permission to locate my daughter. But no one outside the family, except you three, will be allowed to interfere.”

The farmer then asked Nancy what else she and her friends had done that day. When the girl described the accident and the note in the cinder block, Mr. Kreutz exclaimed,
“Du bin en hex maydel!”

“I’m not a witch!” Nancy protested, amazed that evidently he now believed the superstition.

Despite her denial, Mr. and Mrs. Kreutz at once became cool toward all the girls. The farmer said it was time to go to bed, and they both nodded a curt good night and left the room.

The girls, nonplussed by the change in their hosts’ attitude, spoke in whispers. “This settles it,” said Bess. “We’ll move out in the morning.”

“Yes, we’re certainly not wanted,” George agreed. “Imagine their believing that you’re a witch, Nancy!”

Their friend, with a mystified expression, asked herself, “But why are the Kreutzes so convinced all of a sudden that I am a witch? There’s something to this they haven’t told us!”

 

 

 

THE sudden change in the attitude of the Kreutzes toward the girls bothered them so much that they slept fitfully. The farmer had said he did not believe in hexing, yet when Nancy had shown him the note about witches, he had acted as if she were one!

“If people around this area are going to be afraid of me,” Nancy thought, “I’ll have a difficult time trying to solve the mystery.”

Although Nancy did not intend to give up the case because of such an attitude, Bess was of a different frame of mind. Sensitive by nature, she did not want to stay where she would be shunned. Besides, she felt that further work on the mystery would involve more danger all the time.

“I’ll try to talk Nancy into leaving this Amish country,” she decided.

As for George, she was angry with the Kreutzes. After Nancy and her friends had made their best efforts to locate a girl who had run away, her parents were now treating their guests as suspects!

Early the following morning, Nancy and the girls packed their bags and went downstairs. Mr. and Mrs. Kreutz were already at the table, having breakfast. They nodded, but did not invite the girls to join them.

“We’re leaving,” said Nancy. “I’m sorry that you’ve been disturbed by rumors about me and that you evidently believe them. I strongly suspect that Roger Hoelt is behind all of this. Some day he’ll be caught, then I’ll be cleared of these silly charges.”

Nancy’s hope that her words might convince Mr. and Mrs. Kreutz was not fulfilled. The farmer and his wife merely nodded again, and did not rise or even say good-by. Nevertheless, each of the girls thanked the couple for their hospitality, then walked out the kitchen door. In silence they got into Nancy’s convertible and drove off.

“Well, I’ve never been so badly treated by nice people in all my life!” George stormed.

“Maybe we shouldn’t blame them too much,” Nancy suggested. “There may be more to this than we realize. But I intend to find out what it is!”

“Will you keep on looking for Manda?” Bess asked Nancy.

“Certainly. If she’s working for a thief, I want to warn her as soon as possible.”