CHAPTER VIII
A STARTLING SURPRISE
A STARTLING SURPRISE
A STARTLING SURPRISE
Dave ran to the door, his heart sinking, and alive with the keenest excitement. Arrived there, he checked himself. He realized that he could not rush out in the shape he was in.
“I can’t do it!” he cried resentfully, as his eyes fell upon the clothes left in place of his own. “Oh, this is terrible!”
A little faint and a good deal dismayed, the youth sat down on the edge of his bed to get a better grasp of the situation. He saw now that he was probably too late to overtake the thief. His eyes fell upon two nickels lying on the floor near the cot. These had been a sort of a guide to the robber, who must have heard them jangle to the floor when Dave accidentally dropped them.
“That fellow must be a real bad one,” mused Dave. “He probably pretended to be asleep all the time, and was watching me! Anyhow, he has managed to get hold of everything I had. The worst of it is the watch and the money and the medal belonging to Mr. King are gone too. Thethief may have been gone from here for hours, for all I know. I’m in a bad fix.”
Dave felt very rueful. He had not come up against much of the wickedness of the world before this. He blamed himself for not guarding his possessions more carefully, for coming to the lodging house at all.
“There’s nothing for it but to put on these clothes,” he decided at last, with a sigh. “I don’t suppose it will do any good to tell the lodging house keeper about the thief, and in a big, strange city there is little chance of my running him down.”
The clothes of the boy who had robbed Dave very nearly fitted him. Dave’s own attire had been threadbare in spots, but it had been clean. Somehow, Dave could not repress a feeling of repugnance as he put on the clothes. The shoes pinched, being short and narrow, but he managed to get them on.
Dave went down stairs and into the office on the second floor of the building. A lot of loungers were sitting around on benches and a new clerk was behind the desk.
“Is the young man here who was on duty last night?” inquired Dave, returning the room key.
“I just relieved him,” was the reply. “He’s gone home to sleep.”
“He gave me room 58,” went on Dave. “There was a boy in one of the beds. These clothes are his.”
“Hey?” ejaculated the man, with a stare.
“Yes, sir. He’s taken mine. I shouldn’t think you would allow such characters in here.”
The man shrugged his shoulders indifferently. He pointed to a sign behind the desk. It informed roomers that the house was not responsible for thefts.
“If you had anything valuable in your clothes,” advised the man, “you should have left it in our safe.”
The speaker pointed to a box with a padlock behind him. Dave decided that he could place little reliance in either the man or his strong box.
“I did lose something valuable,” he cried, smarting under his lost.
“Did, eh?”
“Yes, sir—fifty dollars in money, beside other valuables.”
“That so?” smiled the man incredulously. “Know the thief?”
“I do. Don’t I tell you that he slept in the same room with me?”
“Know him again?”
“I am sure I would.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Yes, he had a scar on one cheek.”
“Better put the police on his track, then.”
“Thank you, I’ll do just that,” replied Dave with energy, starting briskly for the door under the impetus of the suggestion.
Dave hurried from the building and down the street. At a crossing he found an officer in uniform. This man directed him to the nearest station. Dave framed in his mind the most accurate description he could give of the thief.
“It hadn’t ought to be very hard to trace down a fellow with a scarred face like that,” meditated Dave. “Hello! I never thought of it before.”
With the words “Police Station” staring him in the face from the front of a grim looking brick building, Dave came to a dead halt with a shock.
It had just occurred to him that he might invite considerable risk by visiting the police. They would want to know how he came by the pocket book of Robert King. He would have to tell them the circumstances and his name. They might have received some word already from Brookville to look out for him. They might get to inquiring into his story and detain him as a runaway.
“No, it won’t do at all,” declared the boy emphatically.
He got away from the place as fast as he could, all stirred up as he found time to realize that he was still near enough to Brookville to be seen and recognized by some one who might inform on him. Dave went back to the railroad depot and consulted some maps and time tables.
He found that Fairfield was not on the direct line, and that the indirect route covered about sixty miles. If he could go back past Brookville in the other direction it would be ten miles less. Across country on foot, as nearly as he could make it out, on air line route it was not over thirty-five miles.
“Why, I could walk it in a day,” thought Dave—“and I’ll do it!”
He had just ten cents in his pocket—the two nickels the thief had disdained to pick up. He had made up his mind that it would be a waste of time to try and hunt up the boy who had robbed him. In the first place, Dave was unfamiliar with the city. The thief had probably got away from it with his booty as fast as he could.
Dave walked across the city. Near its limits he went into a bakery and invested the ten cents in crackers and buns. The shoes he wore began to hurt his feet. After a brief lunch he struck off on a smooth country road.
“It’s my duty to reach Fairfield and find this Mr. King,” he decided. “I suppose he values that medal very highly. He is in better shape than I am to start a search for the thief or the plunder.”
A little after noon Dave sat down by a little stream and took off his shoes. They had hurt him terribly the last mile he had traveled. He found his feet blistered and swollen, bathed them in the cool water, and when he resumed his tramp walked barefooted, carrying the shoes strung over his shoulder.
Shortly afterwards Dave reached a little village. As he passed a cobbler’s shop he went in and asked the man in charge if he would exchange his shoes for anything he could wear. The shoemaker went over a lot of stock uncalled for, but there was nothing among them that would fit Dave. Finally he made a bargain to take twenty-five cents for his shoes, and resumed his journey.
It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when Dave met with a new adventure. It had more influence on his future career than he dreamed of at the time.
He had followed a path leading along a ravine. Its edges were heavily wooded, and at the bottom a pretty babbling brook coursed its way. Dave was glad to get once more where things were green. He lay down on the grass, fell asleep, and awoke from his nap with the echoes of a series of sharp reports ringing in his ears.
“Hello! some one shooting,” exclaimed Dave. “Oh, the mischief!”
He had traced the sounds as coming from the valley, and had crept to the edge of the ravine and leaned far over in an effort to peer past the thick foliage. The crumbling edge gave way under the weight of his body, and Dave took a tumble.
He grabbed out at some bushes, but they gave way, only briefly slowing down his progress.
Then as he whirled along he was conscious that he was rolling directly towards a towering bronzed figure, standing like a statue on a ledge of rock.
The form was that of an Indian, remarkable and startling in this unexpected place. He stood posed magnificently, an uplifted tomahawk in his hand, and not ten feet distant on another ledge of rock was a man dressed in hunter’s costume. This latter person had a rifle in his hand, and was sighting along its barrel, and on the other side of the ravine, seated under a tree conversing with a young lady, was another man.
In the flashing sight he had of all this, it looked to Dave as though the hunter was going to shoot the man with the lady, unless the Indian hurled his tomahawk in time to prevent him.
Straight up against the Indian Dave rolled. Quickly the latter put out his foot. He brought it squarely down on Dave’s chest and held him motionless.
“Lie still,” he spoke rapidly, “or you’ll spoil the picture!”