In the Camp of the Black Rider

In the Camp of the Black Rider

Ted Thorn and his friend Buck Dalton, eighteen-year-old Ridgefield Academy athletes, work in Ted’s father’s lumber yard while planning a camping trip. Lawyer Calvert, president of the local Boys’ Club, asks them to lead eighteen younger boys on a month-long camp at Black Riders’ Camp, a wooded basin forty miles away beside Bear Creek. Ted and Buck accept without salary, eager for the experience, though Calvert warns them that the historic site is reputedly haunted. When Ted inspects the camp before the group arrives, he sees a lantern-bearing stranger climb to an abandoned mountain house and lower the lantern down a chimney. Later, the same man hides at the camp springs after realizing Ted is nearby. Ted and Buck keep this secret, determined not to alarm the younger campers. At Black Riders’ Camp, Ted and Buck establish tents, fireplaces, work committees, swimming lessons, and discipline. The boys enjoy the creek and outdoor life, but Ralph Plum, a large, resentful seventeen-year-old, repeatedly encourages fears about ghosts. Strange events soon begin: an unknown visitor prowls with a lantern, a conch shell is blown from a nearby rock to produce a terrifying howl, and a skeleton is found hanging from a tree. Ted discovers that the skeleton came from Doctor Hemple’s office and recognizes it as another attempt to frighten them away. During a violent storm, Ted, Buck, and several boys pursue a lantern light into the mountains, while Plum is left in charge of camp. The tents collapse, but Buck discovers that their ropes were cut rather than blown loose. Ted and Buck suspect someone is deliberately trying to drive the boys away. They improve the camp’s tents and food storage, investigate an abandoned furnished house called the Bainbridge place, and hear of an isolated, hostile man living behind a barbed-wire fence. After Ted tells the history of Simon Reed and the Black Riders, a black-clad rider on a black horse appears briefly on a rock near camp. Ted finds powder traces and hoofprints, concluding that an educated person staged the apparition. Plum uses the incident to persuade several boys to leave. When he tries to pressure little Tom Clayton into going home, Ted challenges him to a fight. Ted defeats Plum, and Plum leaves alone when none of the other boys follow him. Ted reports the troubles to Calvert but insists that the camp can continue. He organizes the boys into a camp squad and a chasing squad, equips them with flashlights, and prepares to catch the prowlers. When a man is heard fleeing near camp, Buck’s squad chases him to a graveyard. Buck is seized by the stranger, but Drummer, searching for apples, spots the struggle and pelts the captor with apples until Buck escapes. The stranger disappears into the woods, leaving behind an old lantern. While Buck is away, another prowler groans near camp and then sets fire to a pine grove. Ted finds footprints across Bear Creek, proving that at least one man has been watching them. Buck’s squad returns in time to help put out the fire, and Ted and Buck conclude that there may be two separate intruders. They visit Hogs’ Hollow and find Jerry Jackson’s crude shack empty, but discover a white hooded costume being sewn there, apparently intended for use as a ghost disguise. Ted devises a trap: the campers pretend to sleep in their tents but secretly hide in a maple grove overlooking camp. On a moonlit night, they see one white-clad “ghost” approach from the creek and another from behind the tents. Instead of cooperating, the two apparitions appear to mistake each other for real spirits. One flees in terror, the other pursues him, tearing his costume and driving him across Bear Creek. Ted and Buck realize that the two prowlers may not be partners after all. When they revisit Hogs’ Hollow, Jerry Jackson has abandoned his shack, leaving them to continue searching for clues in the mountains.

By Capwell Wyckoff · First published 1921 · Genre: Children's Mystery Fiction, Children's Adventure Fiction, Camping and Outdoor Fiction · 24 chapters · 60,854 words

First lines

The noon whistles blew in the little inland town of Ridgefield and the sound, flung from many a hoarse factory siren, reached the ears of the few men who worked at piling lumber in Thorn's Lumber and Millwork Company yard. The work of the men was instantly suspended and most of them walked off to look into well-filled lunch pails. A few, fortunate enough to live close by, started off for their homes.

At the first sound of the whistles two clean-cut young fellows at the far end of the yard had just lifted a long plank, preparatory to tossing it on a towering pile beside them. They looked smilingly at each other as the whistles, joined by others, increased in volume of sound.

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juvenile adventure fiction · boys' camp story · mystery novel · outdoor adventure · summer camping · American small-town setting · early 20th-century America · wooded mountain basin · Bear Creek · haunted camp legend · Revolutionary War folklore · ghost hoax

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In the Camp of the Black Rider is listed on Textopian as a novel by Capwell Wyckoff, dated 1921 CE.

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