Somewhere not far off was the sound of falling water and ten or fifteen minutes more of difficult progress brought us to a long, narrow cleft crossing our line of travel. Into this tumbled a rushing brook which wriggled down in its boisterous course from high up the mountain. I thought that Tom might have heard this falling water from a long distance and come thither intending to follow the course of the brook. We wondered how he had crossed the cleft, for as far as we could see, it did not seem to narrow in either direction. Brent walked on ahead a little way.
“We might as well see how far this cleft goes,” he called.
“You’re right,” I said. “There might be a turn we can’t see from here.”
“We can only try. If there’s a place one can cross, Tom has foundthat place.”
“I dare say,” I said, greatly admiring Brent’s implicit faith in Tom’s judgment.
We walked along then in silence, the stillness being broken only by the occasional crackle of dried twigs underfoot and the now distant sound of the turbulent little brook swishing down the mountain side.
“Bad turn ahead,” Brent called to me, “Keep in line!” As usual I had been lagging in the rear, but on hearing this, increased my speed and caught up to him at the turn.
Some distance beyond, the cleft stopped abruptly. Even our own trackless path ahead, narrowed out before our eyes and ended against another towering wall of frowning stone rising out of a deep gully.
“Well this is once we’ll stand with our backs to the wall,” Brent said, with a mixture of humor and despair.
“It looks that way, certainly,” I replied, feeling only the despair and none of the humor.
We were glancing around rather hopelessly for some sign that Tom might have made in his search. So far, there had been no telltale signs of any human being, but here and there we noticed broken down wild growths where some heavy footed night prowler had recently passed.
It must have been well on toward seven o’clock and the sun had not shown any more than a faint line of sickly pinkish hue in the East. The skies too, looked threatening and overcast. Clouds of ashen gray roofed the summit of old Hogback and the ragged outer edges, like some weatherbeaten circus top, seemed to lap over all the rest of the world.
The silence was rather depressing. The misty chill of that dark morning had gotten into my system. Brent too, I noticed, had become unusually quiet.
“Hadn’t we better find our way back again before this deluge traps us?” I asked.
“I guess so,” Brent replied. He sauntered over toward the indomitable looking wall of stone that shut off our progress in that direction.
“At least wecango back,” I called to him and wishing he would give up the idea of trying to cross over the cleft.
I stood there thinking how helpless mere Man really is in the face of Nature. Why even that noisy brook whistling over the stones in the gully was not daunted by that high mountain wall. It was tirelessly finding its way until it finally rushed out and over the jagged rocks and thence down into the foothills, white-foamed and free. My reverie was interrupted by the sound of Brent’s voice.
“See what we have here! Looks like an old Roman bridge, doesn’t it?”
Not being able to see from where I stood, I moved towards Brent and saw that the high wall had one really fine advantage. It had undoubtedly taken ages to form, but there it surely was, a natural narrow bridge of fallen rock. Hardly more than a ledge and too narrow to walk it; one would have to crawl on hands and knees.
Besides, there was a jump of about eight or nine feet on the opposite side before one could skirt the ravine and land safely. Beyond that, we could see the thick woodland declining in the direction of camp. I mentioned this to Brent.
“I know,” he said, “but all this doesn’t give us the slightest idea as to where Tommy’s spent the night and where he is now.”
“I realize that, Brent,” I said. “Still I feel quite confident that Tom is safe and knows what he’s doing. We’ll probably find him at camp when we get there.” Perhaps I felt suddenly buoyed up at the sight of the firm rocks ready to give us safe passage over the gully. I only know that I wanted to get out of the deepening gloom of the mountains as quickly as possible.
“If he’s not there, maybe Rivers will be able to suggest something,” Brent ventured to say.
“He’s probably there,” I said, and feeling that my words had sounded rather half-hearted.
Brent started for the narrow ledge and I followed slowly, so as to keep a safe distance between us. Neither spoke until we were safe on firm ground again.
I laughed nervously as I scooped and brushed the oozy green scum from my clothes. The stuff was thick all along the ledge. Brent did the same. And we both realized it had been a risky jump across that yawning chasm.
In a self-congratulatory mood for our good fortune, we moved simultaneously toward the edge of the precipice and looked over. Almost instantly Brent gave my arm a painful jerk and drew back.
“Heavens!” he cried, hoarsely. “Look what’s down there!” His head was turned toward mine but his hand was outstretched and I followed the line of his pointed finger.
Down in the gully, lying face downward and partly immersed in the swift mountain brook was the form of a man.
“It can’t be—I began.
“It must be!” Brent exclaimed, his voice quivering.
“Tom?” I asked, in a voice that sounded not like my own. Brent nodded.
“But how?” I couldn’t seem to grasp the meaning of it all. It seemed inconceivable for Tom to come to such an end. “Why, he’s too cautious to have made such a ghastly error!” I cried.
I couldn’t and I wouldn’t believe thatthatwas Tom!
“Who else would it be?” Brent’s broken tones sounded hopelessly positive, somehow. “He’s tried to find his way through here in the early dawn probably. He couldn’t have seen what a gap it was!”
“No, of course not!” I agreed, mechanically. “We must hurry back to camp. Get some help. The storm’s almost upon us.”
“Oh, yes! The storm. I had almost forgotten it,” Brent murmured, as though the storm and all else now meant nothing. “We’ll get some rope. He can’t lie there for long. He’sdead, of course!”
“Of course!”
We ran when we could and walked as fast as the thick brambles permitted. Where it was less thickly wooded, I could get a slight view of the camp through the trees. It looked like a speck of black on the horizon. We still had some distance to go.
The heavens were rumbling angrily and yet we had not sighted a place where we could find foothold enough to make a descent to the slope below us. Fully a half hour had passed and the rain was pelting us in huge drops before we found some jagged indentations running down to the first slope.
With hands and faces scratched and bleeding, our clothing torn and wet we finally reached the lower edge. Whether to follow along the base toward camp or strike out for the table-land was the question uppermost in our minds.
Which way would enable us to get there quickly? Brent took my arm in his and made a flourish with his free hand to the southeast.
“Isn’t that a sort of trail there?”
So it was, indeed! Though not much more of a trail than any we had just travelled. It was noticeable, however, that here and there the heavy grass lay tumbled on the earth as though some heavy object had flattened it.
“We can try it,” I said, “although it seems a long way ’round.”
“I know,” Brent said, “but it’s better to keep in the open. There’s a slight chance one of the boys might see us, there, where they wouldn’t be looking toward the mountain.
“I can signal every once in a while as we go along that we need help. Some one of them, especially Rivers, ought to be able to understand the code. It will save time if they spy us and we can turn right back.”
I shuddered to think of that ghastly sight in the dark ravine. And I shivered in my wet clothes when I thought of the fury of the storm. Even at that moment, it was converting the busy little brook into a frothing whirlpool, dashing unmercifully against that stark, helpless form.
I wouldn’t let my thoughts quell my hopes.
“We won’t give up hope, Brent! Perhaps, he’s there—at the Lodge.”
“Perhaps not,” Brent answered, gloomily.
The wet clinging grass of the foothills, though disagreeable and cold, was a welcome relief from our mountain experiences.
Dejected and despairing we hurried on, Brent stopping now and then to signal some hoped for, unseen observer. There was nothing in our hearts that we could find to say to one another that would better the situation or make it worse—if that could have been possible.
The howling of the wind through the mountains and down across the open country with its tall waving grass seemed to emphasize the dismal solitude. No living thing had crossed our path. Nothing but rain. It seemed eternal.
“There’s a clearing over to the right,” Brent called to me. I glanced casually.
From where we were walking I judged it to be a clearing about one hundred feet in circumference. When the wind blew the grass aside we noticed a slight eminence in the center of the bare looking ground that could not be mistaken for other than what it was. A small rough wooden cross was its marker.
We deliberately walked on. The sight brought to mind more forcibly the tragic puzzle in which our own lives had become involved.
“Now I know,” I said to Brent, “how Weston felt when he went to the Lodge to see if young McClintick was there. And here we’re doing the same thing.”
“We’re almost there,” Brent said, quietly. His voice betrayed a sort of fear that when we did get there, we’d find out the worst.
There wasn’t a sign of anyone about as we neared camp. The men were keeping indoors and out of the storm.
We were standing before the Lodge door!
It seemed as though we had been away from it for years. And no one to welcome us! Not a sound came from within.
Brent and I stared at the door. I felt panicky. The one waiting for the other to open the door and neither one moving.
For a second, I thought it was just an hallucination. But the door did really swing open slowly and a figure in khaki reached out and pulled us in as though we were two powerless puppets.
“For heaven’s sake!” the figure in khaki was exclaiming. “Where have you been? You both look as though you’ve stepped out of Poe! Say something!”
The moment must come to everyone, sometime, when extreme grief or gladness renders the human tongue speechless. That moment had come to Brent and I.
Some seconds passed before I heard a voice sounding very much like my own saying, “Tom!”
All that Brent could find to say was, “This is too much for me!” And he went to the fireplace to thaw out.
After we’d slipped into dry clothes and had something hot to drink we demanded an explanation from Tom.
“Why, I got back here right after you left,” he explained. “In fact, I could hear the echo of the flivver from the woods as I got to the Lodge. I thought you fellows had taken a notion to go to Harkness. In fact, I didn’t think about it again until I saw Brent passing the window. I was reading here alone. That’s why I didn’t bother getting up to open the door. Thought you were old enough to do it yourselves.” He laughed heartily.
“Come on, Tomasso!” Brent pleaded. “Give an account of your wanderings. We deserve to hear it after ours.”
“To begin with,” Tom said, “I set straight out, intending to follow up, if I could, the scarred footprint.”
“He sounds like Sherlock Holmes,” said Brent, poking a log into the flames. Tom took no notice of the interruption.
“At first I didn’t fare very well in that direction. Too much undergrowth. But, around noontime, up on the second slope, I discovered some soft moss under a huge tree. And I saw some footprints. Of an animal.
“I got curious and looked on further. No sign of any more. So after a while I went on back to the tree and tore up some weeds just beyond it. Found more footprints of the same animal and followed them on down the slope.
“And along with the animal’s tracks, sometimes a little ahead or just beside them; sometimes a trifle back—was thescarred footprint!”
“This is interesting,” I murmured. “Go on.”
“I followed it carefully. Every little way I stopped and examined the ground where it seemed to be soft. I’d find them together most every time—the human, bare footprints that had sunken in the soft ground under the frail weeds and those of the animal.
“Oh, I was pretty much convinced. But I wanted to make sure and when I got through fussing around, it was six o’clock.
“I took enough grub with me so I sat down and finished what I had left from noon. About that time the sun was setting. Somehow, it gave me a hunch to stick around.
“Well, I looked around and found myself a nice perch up in a tree overlooking the rocks and the camp. It wasn’t long after dark that the moon made a feeble effort to come through the clouds. It had quite a ring around it last night, if you remember; still there was enough light for me to see the rocks and a little beyond.
“I waited patiently and was soon rewarded for my pains, with a nervous chill. Our friend, the lynx, was howling gaily on the slope above me. With each howl the echo came nearer and nearer until it almost deafened me. Finally it ceased, and I could hear quite plainly in the stark silence that followed, a crackle of dry twigs and soft footfalls coming toward me.”
“Whew!” Brent exclaimed.
“I was cramped,” Tom went on. “My rigid position was beginning to get on my nerves. I was about to shift a little when I heard the soft whisper of a man’s voice right near me. Gosh what a scare!
“I felt I had been sitting there for days, when I heard the voice again, and looking down saw something pass under the tree and on down through the rocks in the direction of the camp.”
“What was it?” Brent asked.
“A terribly emaciated looking man. Just like a hermit you read about and have never seen. Long beard and hair; rags for clothes and barefoot. And with him—walking alongside like a pet dog—wasthe lynx! Absolutely!”
lynx walkingWALKING ALONG LIKE A PET DOG—WAS THE LYNX!
WALKING ALONG LIKE A PET DOG—WAS THE LYNX!
“Almost incredible!” I exclaimed.
“I knew you’d hardly believe it,” Tom protested. “But I saw it with my own eyes! And besides, I got down out of the tree after they were well out of sight and examined the ground with my flashlight. The footprints were there all right. Both man’s and beast’s.”
“What next?” Brent queried.
“I decided that as long as I had seen that much, I might as well wait for the finish. Not that alone, but I was afraid if I started for camp I might meet the queer looking couple on the way. And I didn’t relish the thought of that unarmed.
“I stretched myself, took a little stroll around the tree; then resumed my former position and waited for their return. It was difficult to keep my eyes open, but I managed to watch pretty steadily. It was some long night, I can tell you, and I was mighty cold besides. The first sight of dawn was pretty welcome.”
“And your friends?” I asked, eagerly.
“You have me there,” Tom answered. “They didn’t come back.”
“How do you account for that?” I asked.
“I don’t account for it at all,” Tom answered.
“In other words they just vanished into thin air!” Brent remarked, lightly.
“That must be it,” said Tom, and shook his head wonderingly. “I know positively they didn’t come back.”
“That’s stupid of us, Brent!” I exclaimed, and suddenly remembering. “He must be the man in the gully. They went around the other way, you see. That explains it!”
“Sure,” said Tom, “but I wonder where the lynx went?”
“We saw his tracks on both sides of the cleft,” Brent said.
“Well it’s too stormy to go up there again to-day,” Tom said. “Furthermore, the poor fellow can’t come to any further harm where he is now.”
“Do any of the boys know of our morning excursion?” I asked Tom. No, he hadn’t told them. Neither had they any idea but that Tom had returned safely the previous night from Harkness.
“Would you suggest our telling the boys about what you saw in the gully?” Tom asked Brent.
“No, I wouldn’t,” he said. “As long as they don’t know where we were this morning, I don’t think it would be wise to say anything now. This mystery has to be cleared up first. We don’t know positively whether the body in the gully is that of the hermit or not. It’s bad enough to have to tell when we are sure without circulating any false reports now.”
“But the hermitdidn’tcome back,” Tom repeated, persistently. “And it’s perfectly logical for me to suppose he went back the same way you fellows came this morning. You thought when you saw the body, I had tried to cross before daylight and missed my step. Couldn’t he have done the same thing?”
“I’ll tell you better to-morrow, Tommy,” Brent said in drawling tones. “Meanwhile you better think up a good excuse to give the boys for our absence from camp in the morning. You could say (if you can’t think of anything else) that our fountain pen adventurer here wants to get some material and we have to go help him carry it back.”
“That’s not so bad either,” I said, refusing to take Brent seriously.
At this juncture, our friend Heinie came in and asked Tom if he could use his flivver to go to Harkness. He wanted to buy a few personal necessities and as long as the rain prevented any work that day, he might as well go and “do some-tings yet,” as he said to Tom.
We gave Tom a significant look remembering that we had hidden the Ford down the road quite a little way. However, Brent rose to the occasion and offered to go down and get the flivver started. “It stalled on Sladey in the middle of the woods,” he explained to Heinie. “I’ll find it and bring it back.” Heinie was satisfied to sit down with us and wait.
“Maybe dere iss noddings you vant in Harkness, yes?” he inquired of Tom and me solicitously.
“Nothing I know of,” Tom answered, for both. “Except that you can take that bunch of mail to the post office and get it off.”
We kept a small mail bag hanging near the door so as to make it convenient to carry to and from Harkness. We devised the bag as a means of keeping it intact and incidentally were preparing for the future when Leatherstocking Training Camp would mean quite something to the postal authorities in Harkness.
“I guess they’re all stamped,” Tom said, handing it to Heinie as he was leaving, “but if there’s been any overlooked, keep track of what you spend.”
An hour or so later, a hearty knock sounded at the door. We all answered in response and a tall, husky looking woodsman stepped in. He introduced himself as “Peters” a state game warden. Tom asked him to sit down.
“Jes’ thought I’d make a little visit fer an hour or so,” he said, genially; then, lighting a foul smelling pipe, he spread his bulky frame in the willow easy chair.
“Going to stay for the night?” Tom asked kindly.
“Lord, no!” he exclaimed. “Hev ter keep on the move this time o’ the year. Been nigh onto a year since I wuz here in these parts. Camp was locked up then—tighter than a game garden’s heart.”
“Well, well,” Tom said, “must have been lonely.”
“Nah, not at all,” he said, seemingly glad of the chance to talk to us. “Plenty excitement a’ right though. ’Nother feller ’n I wuz bunking together here fer two nights. Nary a human soul disturbed us but we hed ’nough frum other directions.”
“How’s that?” I asked, impulsively thinking he might divulge something extraordinary.
“Why,” he went on, “the first night a little imp of a lynx cub kept us awake all through ’till dawn, running around the Lodge and a-makin’ all sorts of divlish noises. We didn’t bother him, but the second night he got ter hollerin’ agin and when I went fer him he made a leap. But I fixed him!”
“Did you kill him?” Tom asked.
“Nah, he wuz too quick fer thet—ter kill him right off. But I shot his front paw near off ’n enough ter make him bleed ter death. He run up the mountain a-howlin’ like fury.
“The next day my buddy ’n I trailed his bloody tracks up the slope a little ways thinking he cudn’t hev gone far bleedin’ like thet. We thought too, we’d get his pelt. But nary a dead lynx did we find nor a live one neither.”
“What do you think became of him?” Tom queried, rather anxiously I thought.
“I cudn’t imagine,” Peters replied, “unless he fell into one of them gully places. Anyway we hed ter be on the move ’n didn’t hev time ter look.”
“I don’t suppose you ever met the former owner of this camp, did you?” Brent asked Peters.
“Naw, I never seen nothin’ o’ the McClinticks’,” he replied, as though it was something he sincerely regretted. “I’ve always been sorry the old man had the Lodge locked up so tight too, fer I mighta been able ter do him a favor—I don’t know!” he sighed mournfully.
“Yes?” I queried, “Explain all that!”
“Aw, it mightn’t hev amounted ter anything,” he said. “But, yet it might. They wuz away frum here ’bout five months at thet time. That wuz after the son wuz killed.
“Now everybuddy in these parts knew thet the old man put the place up fer sale ’roun’ February. ’N everybuddy in New York must ’a’ known it too fer I heerd as how he had it advertised in all the big papers. So thet means all his best friends knew it anyways.
“Ter make a long story short,” he went on, relighting his pipe, “the fust night we wuz here and hed got rid o’ the lynx cub fer a spell, my buddy shakes me ’n wakes me up, ’n he sez, ‘Sh-shush, listen, c’n yer hear thet telephone ringin’ ’r are ye deaf?’
“I gits up ’n sure ’nuff, there wuz a telephone bell a-ringin’ like Squaw Harry and it’s in the Lodge. It rang fer nigh onto half an hour I guess. But we cudn’t git in ter do a thing about it.
“Ez I told yer afore, all Mr. McClintick’s friends knew he wuzn’t comin’ here no more. ’N I told my buddy thet it must ’a been the ghost of the dead son ’n nobody else! Sure as I live!” He said it with finality.
“And what makes you think it was a ghost?” I asked, a trifle impatient with the man’s stubborn superstition about small things.
“Wa’al, becuz after we left here ’n got ter Harkness we run inter Minnie Schultz ’n she told us a thing or two about it.”
“And pray, who is Miss Minnie Schultz?” Brent asked, with mock gravity. Peters seemed delighted to impart to us his knowledge of the lady.
“She worked fer the ’phone company—night operator, until they let her out fer listenin’ in. Nice girl Minnie is, but my goodness how she does love ter chat with a body.”
“I think I understand it now,” Brent said, straightening up in his chair. “She knew about the call to the Lodge that night and told you. Is that it?”
“Right you are, young man!” Peters said, admiringly. He seemed to puff his pipe extra hard over this morsel of gossip.
“Between us four gentleman,” the fellow continued, “’n I know it won’t go no further, Minnie told me as how she wuz the very operator thet handled the call. It wuz from Montreal Central Office ’n she sez thet she told them she wuz positive Mr. McClintick wudn’t be at the Lodge.
“She rung and rung ’n no answer came, o’ course, ’n she sez she told Montreal so. Then Montreal comes back at her ’n sez that their party wud like to speak ter Minnie herself.
“She sez she heard the man’s voice, very excited like, ’n thet he told her she must get McClintick at the Lodge and thet there must be someone there. When she sez there isn’t, he sez McClintick alwuz cum ter the Lodge fer thet night on account of it’s being his wife’s anniversary or something.
“’N Minnie, being the clever girl she is, smells a rat, ’n sez to the man, ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ ’n he screams back at her, ‘Well, I ought to know somethin’ about it, fer I’m his son!’
“Minnie sez, ‘Who?’ She’s frozen, she gits such a shock, but the feller rings right off and Montreal tells her she should excuse the call.”
“What does Miss Minnie think of it?” Tom asked, plainly excited.
“Minnie sez she doesn’t want ter think about it at all. She feels sorry fer the McClinticks’ troubles, but she sez it cost her her job. It wuz too good fer her to keep, you see, ’n within a week the story wuz all over and so she got the gate.”
“How did the folks around here take to the story?” Brent asked, evidently interested.
“Well, ter tell the truth, folks hereabouts don’t take much stock in Minnie and they laughed about it. Called it one of her yarns, but I don’t. No, siree! Didn’t we hear the ’phone ringin’ thet night ourselves? It was a ghost, sure as ye live!”
“Or a real live person,” I put in.
“It cudn’t o’ been a live person if he sez he wuz the son!” Peters exclaimed vociferously. “’N another thing, ain’t he dead and buried ’bout a mile ’n a half frum here. Thet proves it wuzn’t a live person.”
The man was so insistent that we had to agree with him out of sheer courtesy, but as for the ghost story, of course we wouldn’t give credence to it.
“But wait a minute, Peters,” said Brent, with an alertness that quite startled Tom and me. “How is it there’s no sign of any ’phone or wires around here now?” Peters grinned as though to say he would win anyhow.
“Oh, they said in Harkness, thet Mr. McClintick hedn’t paid his bill, so they took it out right after we wuz here. ’N shortly after thet, a terrible storm brought down the wires as neat as you ever see so the ’phone people never bothered puttin’ ’em up agin, thinkin’ the Lodge wudn’t be sold fer a spell.” He arose and knocked his pipe against the bricks over the fireplace. Then he leaned forward as if he was about to tell us a secret.
“Minnie told me confidentially thet McClintick owed the ’phone people one hundred dollars and thet the ’phone number at the Lodge here wuz number one hundred too! Now, thet’s what you gentlemen wud call a coincidence, eh?”
“I wonder what he meant when he said he could have done McClintick a favor by answering the ’phone?” Tom asked Brent, after Peters had left us.
“I guess he felt he had the power to act as medium and relay the ghost’s message to Mr. McClintick, had he been able to answer the phone!” Brent teased.
“Seriously though,” I said, “leaving the ghost entirely out of this, someone did want to speak to McClintick badly. The telephone company’s action regarding their employee authenticates that much.”
“Yes,” Brent said, “and I believe that Minnie wasn’t talking entirely through her hat, either.”
“What do you mean, Brent?” Tom asked. “You think it really was the son stillalive?”
“I do! The very same.”
“I’d hardly say that, Brent,” I remarked.
“Not only did we see the young fellow’s grave, but Peters confirms it to be his also.” Brent smiled disdainfully and flicked some ashes across the hearth.
“Granted, my revered friend,” he said, in solemn tones. “But the fact that we saw a grave doesn’t prove it’s the grave of young Rolly. Nor does Peters’ confirmation mean a thing. After all he doesn’t know any more than we do, and we don’t know anything,yet.”
“In other words,” Tom said, with a tinge of sarcasm, “you don’t believe anything! Perhaps you could give us a little hint as to the reason for your skepticism, eh?”
“Just what I intended to do, Tommy!” Brent said, cheerily and taking no notice of Tom’s impatience. “There’s this much about it, the whole thing is beginning to rankle, with so much mystery and no way of solving it. We know there aren’t any ghosts and apparitions floating around. But there has been a live ghost walking around here!”
“It’s beginning to get on my nerves too!” Tom said, “but what can we do about it? We can’t go to the authorities and order them to exhume the body in that grave, can we?”
“Another thing,” I interposed, “no one seems to know or has even heard what became of that Weston fellow. There wasn’t any mention of him in the papers in connection with Mr. McClintick’s death. I wonder if the police know of him?”
“We could find that out easily enough,” Brent answered, “but it would make a mess of this Camp. Put a stigma on it before it’s had a chance to breathe. Don’t you see?”
“You’re right, Brent, you’re right!” Tom exclaimed, nervously. “We’ve got to keep this thing from everyone if we possibly can. We can follow each clue carefully and quietly. First, why we heard there were only three people here at the Lodge, when we have evidence there were really four. Where the targets disappeared to and who took them. How the hermit came to get the key of the Lodge (and I’m sure it was he that visited here). The scarred footprint is evidence enough for that.”
“Take your time, Tommy,” Brent interrupted, “we have the whole evening before us.”
“Then,” Tom went on, “we must start at dawn and get the poor fellow’s body. I’m sure it’s the hermit. We can tell the boys that we just discovered it. Then we’ll take a look at the grave coming back and satisfy our minds on that score.”
“In other words we can look forward to a cheerful day to-morrow,” Brent murmured.
“Now that it’s all settled, I suggest we all go to bed right after supper. Getting up with the birdies two mornings in succession will have me worn to a shadow, unless I make it up to-night.”
I guess we were all pretty willing to follow Brent’s suggestion after our day’s adventures. We were wearied physically as well as mentally and sleep would be a welcome refuge. I, for one, was wishing the supper hour over.
Heinie had not gotten back from Harkness when we sat down to eat and his empty place directly opposite the hearth, with the footprint showing so clear in the light, seemed ominously significant. Even I was becoming affected by the sinister shadow of mystery pervading the Lodge.
I shook myself out of it and tried to make some small talk with Rivers. But of no avail. He seemed more taciturn than ever and answered even Tom in sharp monosyllables. It was probably the weather with him though, I told myself.
We were ready to go to bed. The clock lacked just five minutes of eight when we heard Tom’s flivver rattling up the wagon road. Then it stopped.
“That’s Heinie now!” Tom said, as Brent went up the stairs. But he stopped just before he reached the top, for Heinie had opened the door of the Lodge and walked in.
“I’m sorry to keep you up,” he said to us in an apologetic manner and nodding up to Brent, “but I thought I must tell you so I don’t forget it, yess?”
“Sure, Heinie,” said Tom. “What is it?”
“You know you told me to vatch out vat I spent on der letters. Veil, dere vass only vun letter vat didn’t have postage mit. A beeg fat letter sent to North Dakota. Und der man in der post office told me dere was money in der inside and it needed a register yet. So I got it mit twenty-five cents.”
Tom turned to me questioningly. “Did you write again?”
“No,” I answered, “I did not!”
“How big was the letter, Heinie?” Tom inquired.
“Och! Like diss,” he said, indicating with his large hands a letter of about eight inches in diameter. “Und it pulged out like dere vass vun hundred pages mitt der inside.”
“Are you sure that letter was addressed to North Dakota?” Tom asked. Heinie was positive. He even remembered it was Coover’s Falls.
“What was the handwriting like?” Brent asked Heinie, coming down the stairs as he spoke.
“Och!” the fellow answered. “Der writing vass der craziest, like somebody mitt shivers. See?”
“I know I’m trying hard to see, Heinie,” Tom said, in tones of despair. “But here’s your quarter back anyway and many thanks for all your trouble.”
“Who else,” I said, after Heinie had left, “could have written her, do you think?”
“I feel as though I’ll never be able to think again,” Tom said, and flung himself wearily into the easy chair. “What do you think, Brent?”
Brent adjusted his spectacles and started to rummage among the papers on the table, saying: “I think I’ll look for a time-table and find me a nice cozy train for Bridgeboro. I need the rest!”
We decided to think no more that night about the letter. It was far too deep a problem for us to solve and I suggested letting the matter drop. That is, until we heard from Mrs. Northrop or Mrs. Boardman.
Tom roused Brent and me next day at dawn. A faint gleam of pink had broken through the dull gray horizon and we took heart immediately. At least it would be a clear day.
We started out well supplied in the event of meeting with any further contingencies. In fact, we were beginning to feel like thoroughly seasoned mountain climbers.
The first slope was reached in no time, it seemed, but of course we were giving one another help. Tom then went ahead showing us the footprints he had discovered two days before.
“Are there any new ones, Tommy?” Brent asked.
“Not that I’ve seen yet. That proves then it’s the hermit, in the gully all right. Doesn’t it?”
“Not necessarily,” Brent replied, as adamant as ever.
We fell into a continued silence the rest of the way. Our purpose was gruesome enough and the less we talked, the less we would be reminded of it before-time.
I shall never forget the beauty of that morning. The sun had risen as we reached the cleft and was playing its bright golden shadows in and out among the trees. The glistening dew had transformed the entire mountain into one huge, lacy coverlet, with millions of tiny iridescent bubbles like sparkling jewels dancing upon it. A good omen, I thought, or rather hoped.
The brook was gushing after the heavy rains and as we looked down the water seemed to have risen about eight or more inches. Brent thought it was considerably more than that, and as I have a poor eye for measuring anything I accepted his decision.
On account of jutting rocks and overhanging trees, we were unable to see the brook at the point where the cleft ended. I think we were all equally thankful for that and deliberately wished we could postpone the awful errand.
Taking no chances this time, we crossed the gully in true mountaineer style, protected by the rope which Tom had lassoed to a stump on the farther side.
“I wonder how much rope we’ll need to reach down there,” Tom said uncoiling it deftly. I knew he hated looking over. So did I.
“Brent could tell you,” I suggested. “He has the mathematical eye.”
“Someone has to do it,” Brent said, with an air of resignation, “so it might as well be I!” He went toward the edge quickly and just as suddenly turned about, facing us again. The color of his face had turned an ashen gray.
“It’s not there!” he cried.
“Not there?” Tom echoed. We all looked over together.
True, it was gone!
Only an occasional twitter of young birds sounded from the dim woods. The wild cry of a large bird of prey greeted our ears as it flew over the gully and disappeared through the trees. All was silent then, except for the brook tripping gaily over its rocky bed. As it turned to leave the gully and leap over the rocks and down the mountainside, I fancied it made a moaning sound as if to mock our tragic stricken faces above.
“You can let me down,” Brent said quietly. “I’ll look about.”
I held the rope firmly and Tom helped Brent over the edge and let him down slowly. Pretty soon he shouted up that he was all right. We watched him go back and forth over the rocks and then disappear under a huge boulder.
We let him down slowlyWE LET HIM DOWN SLOWLY.
WE LET HIM DOWN SLOWLY.
He probably hadn’t been out of sight more than sixty seconds, but it seemed like sixty minutes to us waiting for his reappearance. Tom shouted. He answered for us to wait; and then emerged, waving his readiness to come up.
“We’ll never see him again,” Brent said as he clambered over the top.
“Where do you think it’s gone?” Tom asked.
“I guess the water rose just high enough since we were here to carry him away. And there’s a space under that boulder where the water leaves the gully. It’s just wide enough to permit any ordinary-sized man’s body to pass through. It’s safe to say that by now the hermit, or whoever it was, is divided into some hundred pieces. The rocks and the water below the gully wouldn’t even leave a button whole.”
“We’ve been spared that much distress at any rate,” I said, as we proceeded to leave the cleft and gully behind us.
“Yes,” Tom agreed. “I suppose it’s a selfish way to feel, but I think we have enough to do, without taking upon our shoulders the full responsibility of a hermit’s dead body. Fate is kind after all.”
Gloomy people we were that morning. Walking back in the midst of glorious green earth and sunshine, we should have been full of the joy of living. But we were not.
Mystery upon mystery. Tainted death! All had succeeded in wearing down fragile human nerves. We were even getting irritable with one another. Brent had lost his quiet composure and drawling humor. Tom was morose. And I was completely unnerved.
“As long as this funereal spirit is so rampant among us,” Tom said, “we’ll visit the grave. It can’t put us in a much worse humor than we are now.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Brent said, in dull tones.
“I’m beginning to feel that I can stand most anything now.”
There being no wind that morning to blow the tall grass aside, we did not see the clearing until we were almost upon it.
Tom flung the coil of rope to the ground when we reached there. One by one we sat down upon it, crowding close together. We were tired and it was preferable to the damp ground.
I know that Tom and Brent saw it as quickly as I! The place was in an extraordinary condition! The little mound seemed to have sunken and chunks of fresh earth were lying about the clearing. The wooden cross had fallen.
The circumstance that had made that grave necessary was tragic enough. The unfortunate boy, buried in the midst of that vast solitude of sky and mountain, his last resting place in such a deplorable state—it was pathetic indeed.
Tom got up and kicked around the edges of the grave with the toe of his stout shoe. Then he dug his heel in the brown earth; and whistled with surprise.
“Someone has been digging here,” he said. “Within the last few days, too!”
“Digging?” I repeated.
“Yes, digging.” Then, “Brent, had me that shovel!”
We went over to Tom and watched him as he took a few shovelsfull of loose dirt from the left side of the grave. It came away like sand.
“You see?” he said, shoving the sharp spade into the earth. Lifting his foot up on the top edge he rested it heavily there. With the movement, we heard plainly the hollow sound that falling stones and dirt will make when hitting some solid object.
“And did you hearthat?” Brent almost whispered it.
“Certainly I did,” Tom said, tersely. He moved his foot and tried to pull the shovel out.
He couldn’t get it out. It seemed stuck fast into something, and we each took a turn at it without any success. It wouldn’t budge an inch.
“Wait a minute,” Tom said. He got down on his knees and started scooping up the dirt around the spade by the handful and flung it aside.
In a few moments we saw to our bewilderment that the shovel was wedged tightly in a slight fissure of some wooden obstruction, directly underlying the few layers of earth.
“We might as well uncover this,” said Tom, grimly, and gradually loosened the spade from the wood.
It was hardly five minutes’ work. Brent and I scooping up the dirt with our hands and Tom with the shovel, uncovered what proved to be a rough board.
It was the kind of wood that is generally used for packing boxes. Printed in large letters and written in indelible ink across the board was