Danny Orlis Goes to School (11 page)

Danny said nothing.

"We don't blame either you or Larry," she went on. "Claude has been too busy with his business to have any time for the boys, and I have my bridge clubs and parties to take my time." She sat there for a long while, fingering the tablecloth nervously. "We haven't taken the time to provide the boys with the sort of home they have deserved."

Danny didn't say anything. There was nothing he could say to help ease the pain in her heart.

"Would you go and visit him, Danny?" she asked desperately.

"Certainly, I'll go and see him," Danny told her.

That night the young woodsman knelt beside his bed and prayed for his cousin. He prayed that Larry would have the strength to go through the time he had to spend in the reformatory and come out a better boy and that he might find the Lord Jesus as his personal Saviour before it was too late.

The next day after school Danny started down the hall with his cap and jacket on when several of the fellows called to him.

"Hey, Danny, aren't you going out for baseball tonight?"

"Nope," he told them, stopped for a moment. "I'm going down to see Larry."

"See Larry?" Chet echoed disdainfully. "What do you want to go down and see that jailbird for?"

"He's going to try to convert him, that's what," somebody else echoed. "You remember that you're talking to Dynamite Dan, don't you?"

"I'm going to talk to him about the Lord," the young woodsman said simply.

A couple of the guys snickered.

"And it wouldn't hurt you guys to listen, either," he went on. "According to what the Bible says, you need Christ in the same way that Larry does. If you and Larry were to die without taking Jesus as your Saviour, you'd all go to the very same Hell."

They stood there, their faces turning white. For once Chet had nothing to say. In silence Danny turned and walked toward the door.

It was hard to see Larry sitting there in jail. Danny gulped hard and blinked back the tears that seemed to hang in his eyelashes. His cousin got to his feet the instant he saw him and came to the narrow iron door.

"I didn't think anybody would come to see me," he said brokenly.

Danny shook his head. "We haven't turned against you, Larry," he answered.

The boy in the cell walked to the window and back again. "A guy can surely get his life all messed up, can't he?"

"I'll say we can," Danny told him. "But you know we've always got a way out. We can always turn our lives over to the Lord Jesus and let Him straighten us out. That's what I did, Larry. That's what you need to do."

"I've wished a thousand times that I'd listened to you when you first started talking to me about taking Christ as my Saviour," Larry said seriously, "instead of waiting until now when it's too late."

"But it isn't too late," Danny went on. "God doesn't care what you are or what you've done. If you realize that you're a sinner and need a Saviour and put your whole trust in Jesus to save you from sin, that's all He cares about."

"Do you mean that He'd take a guy like me?" Larry asked, his voice trembling. "Someone who's done what I've done?"

Prayerfully, thankfully, Danny took his New Testament from his pocket and began to leaf through it for the verses he wanted. It would be so much easier for Larry in the reformatory with Jesus by his side. It would be so much easier for him when he got out and came back among his old friends at Iron Mountain.

The young woodsman was happier than he had been in months as he found the place in the Book of John and began to read to his eager, listening cousin: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Danny looked up to see that Larry was listening carefully. "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out," he continued.

Finally both boys knelt as Larry invited the Lord Jesus into his heart.

And then, for the first time, Danny Orlis saw clearly why it was that the Lord had led him to go to school in the Colorado mountain community.

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About the Book:

Danny Orlis was already excited about having his twin cousins come for the summer. While on the way to pick them up he overhears a conversation that promises to give them a special adventure during their time together. Buried treasure, clues from an old Indian chief and an old map all add to the mystery. They soon discover they are not the only ones searching for the treasure. Because of Danny's faithful witness for the Lord, the boys come up with some better ideas about the use of so much money, should they find it. By the time the adventure is over, they have found a far greater treasure than they had ever imagined.

D
ANNY ORLIS, with his dog Laddie by his side, walked slowly to the corner. Danny looked up the highway for a glimpse of the International Falls Bus which should have pulled into Warroad, Minnesota an hour before.

"They'll be along in a minute, Laddie," he said to the mixed collie and shepherd dog beside him. His voice was tense with excitement. "They'll be along in a minute," he said again.

He could hardly wait to tell them what he had overheard coming out on the boat from American Point. He could tell them the thing that had sent the blood rushing to his cheeks and caused his spine to tingle with excitement, the thing that had kept him awake for half the night and even now set his heart to pounding. Treasure! And hidden in his own Angle Inlet territory! It was enough to make him excited. He looked up the street again, then turned and walked slowly toward the hotel. If only the twins would come!

Danny Orlis was not especially tall for all of his twelve years, but he was lean and wiry, strong as a hickory sapling and quick as a deer that inhabited his native Northwest Angle in Northern Minnesota. His face was burned brown from long months out of doors in the sun and rain. His eyes had already taken on a sharp, alert look, and he carried himself with the easy grace of one who could walk or swim all day.

There was a dull rumble up the street, and Danny turned quickly to see the bus braking to a stop. Bob and Mike Lance were the first ones off. They took a step or two out onto the sidewalk, stopped, and looked nervously about. Danny would have known them anywhere.

"Hi," he called to them.

"Hi, yourself," Mike said.

Bob only grunted.

"Boy, I thought you two were never going to get here," Danny said as he picked up one of their suitcases and led them down the wide street toward the dock on Lake of the Woods. "The boat is due to sail at 8 o'clock. If we miss it we'll have to stay until tomorrow morning."

"That wouldn't be so bad," Bob said. "Even staying in this dump of a town would be better than going out in the—the wilderness where we're headed."

"Oh, you'll like it out at Angle Inlet," Danny said quickly. It was all he could do to keep from telling his secret now—but it wasn't safe out here on the street. Better wait until they were safely out on the boat, headed across the Lake of the Woods toward Oak and Flag Islands and Angle Inlet. "We've got the best fishing in the country and all sorts of big game."

"You can have them," Bob said. "I'll take St. Paul."

"Oh, don't pay any attention to him," Mike said, laughing. "He's just mad because Mom got sick and we had to come up here to the Northwest Angle to spend the summer with you."

"We could've stayed at home," Bob went on, "where we could have some fun. Why, I'll bet they don't even have a show out where you live, Dan."

"A show?" Danny echoed. "Why, we don't have any roads or electricity or towns out on the Angle. I guess we don't have any shows." Then he added, "Of course I wouldn't go to them if we did have."

"You wouldn't go to a show?" Bob repeated. "Why not?"

"Well, you see," Danny told him, hoisting the suitcase into the lower deck of the boat, the
Bert Steele,
"I'm a Christian, and I feel it's better not to go to shows. There's so much drinking and gambling and sin in them."

"I never heard of such a thing as not going to shows," Bob said as he scrambled into the fisheries' boat after his brother. "But I might have expected that from a hayseed."

"What do you mean by being a Christian?" Mike asked.

"I mean that I've confessed my sins before God and put my trust in Jesus Christ to save me," Danny said, sitting down on the corner of a box of tools. "And because I'm a Christian I try to live as close to the way Jesus would want me to live as I possibly can."

"A Christian!" Bob snorted. "Sissy stuff."

"Aw, cut it out, Bob, will you?" Mike said. He was the taller of the twins, blond and good-natured, where Bob was dark-headed and sour.

"I've got a secret I want to let you in on," Danny whispered as they stood together at the ladder that led up to the top deck; "but we've got to be sure that we're alone before I can tell you."

Mike's eyes sparkled with excitement, but Bob was unimpressed. "What are you going to do?" he asked, "tell us that you know where an old mother rabbit has her nest?"

"You wait and see," Dan told him.

They climbed up the ladder and went to the back of the deck where they found a private corner away from the other passengers.

"Now what was this secret you were going to tell us?" Mike whispered.

"Well, I—" Danny began. But just then the captain of the
Bert Steele
called to him.

"Say, Danny, would you come down and move these suitcases for me? I've got a load of lumber and a couple of outboard motors that go out to Oak."

"I'll be back in just a minute," he said to the twins.

"I'Il go," Bob said, getting quickly to his feet. "It's our stuff anyway."

Before Danny could protest, Bob had climbed down the ladder to the lower deck where the fish and freight were hauled.

"I wonder what came over him?" Mike said.

In a few minutes Danny heard his dog growl. "I wonder what's wrong with Laddie?" he asked.

"Sounds like he's got someone cornered," Mike said.

Laddie growled again, deep down in his throat. "It sure does sound like he's got someone cornered," Danny said, getting to his feet and starting toward the ladder. "He doesn't usually act like that."

Just then Bob screamed. "Danny! Get him off!" he cried. "Danny! Danny! He's killing me! Get me loose! Get me loose!"

Danny ran and descended the ladder to the lower deck. There was Laddie holding Bob's hand between his teeth. The hair on the back of his neck was ruffed, and his long sharp teeth were bared. His jaws were trembling, and he was still growling.

"Get me loose, Danny!" Bob cried. "He's killing me!"

"Laddie!" Danny ordered sharply. "Laddie Boy. Come!"

The big dog looked at him appealingly, then loosed his hold on the frightened Bob and moved obediently to Danny's side.

"What's the matter, fella?" Danny spoke sternly to his dog.