Little Raymond was greatly amused. So was Mr. Ellsworth who poked up the fire and resumed his seat on the old bench beside Jeb Rushmore.
“Team work,” someone suggested, slyly, indicating Gordon and Pee-wee.
“The kindergarten class will please be quiet,” said Roy. “I repeat, the shadows of night were tumbling. It began to rain. And it rained, and it rained—and it rained.
“Suddenly, we saw this boat—we thought it was a shanty at first—in the middle of a big marsh. So we plowed our way through the muck and crawled into it. Pity the poor sailors on a night like that!
“Well, believe me, it was too sweet for anything in that old cabin. Pee-wee wasn’t homesick any more (here Roy dodged again) and we settled down for the night. The rain came down in sheets and pillowcases and things and the cruel wind played havoc—I mean it blew—and shook the old boat just as if she’d been in the water. But what cared we—yo, ho, my lads—we cared naught!
“Well, in the morning along came an old codger with a badge and said he was a sheriff. He was looking for an escaped convict and we didn’t suit. He told us the boat was owned by an old grouch in Nyack and said if we didn’t want to be arrested for trespassing and destroying property we’d better beat it. He told us some more about the old grouch, and I guess Pee-wee and I thought the best thing to do was to hike it right along for Haverstraw and not wait for trouble. We had chopped up a couple of old stanchions for firewood—worth about two Canadian dimes, they were, but our friend said old What’s-his-name would be only too glad to call that stealing and send us to jail. Honest, that old hulk was asight. You wouldn’t have thought anybody would want to admit that he owned such a ramshackle old pile of junk and that’s why we made so free with it.
“Well, zip goes the fillum! Here’s where Tom comes on the scene. He said that if that was the kind of a gink Old Crusty was we’d have to go and see him and tell him what we’d done. He just blurted it out in that sober way of his and Pee-wee was scared out of his——”
This time Pee-wee landed a wad of uprooted grass in Roy’s face.
“Pee-wee, as I said, was—with us (dodging again). The sheriff must have thought Tom was crazy. He gave us a—some kind of a scope—what d’you call it—when they read your fortune?”
“Horoscope?” suggested Arnold, smiling.
“Correct—I thank you. He told us that we’d be in jail by night. You ought to have seen Pee-wee stare. I told himheought not to kick—he’d been shouting for adventures and here was a good one. So we trotted back to Nyack behind Tom and strode boldly up to Old Crusty’s office and—here’s where the film changes—”
“Go ahead,” said Arnold. “You’ve got me started now.”
“Well, who do you think Old Crusty was?”
“Not the escaped convict!”
“Not on your life! He turned out to be the father of the little girl whose pet bird Pee-wee had captured the day before.”
“The plot grows thinner,” said someone.
“Well, he had all the signs of an old grouch, hair ruffled up, spectacles half-way down his nose—but he fell for Pee-wee, you can bet.
“When he found out who we were (the girl must have told him about us, I suppose) he got kind of interested and when Pee-wee started to explain things he couldn’t keep from laughing. Well, in the end he said the only way we could square ourselves was to take the boat away; he said it belonged to his son who was dead, and that he didn’t want it and we were welcome to it and he’d send us a couple of men to help us launch it. He seemed to feel pretty bad when he mentioned his son and we were so surprised and excited at getting the boat that we just stood there gaping. Gee, how can you thank a man when he gives you a cabin launch?”
Arnold shook his head.
“Well, we spent a couple of days and eight dollars and fifty-two cents fixing the boat up and then, sure enough, along came two men and Mr. Stanton’s chauffeur to jack the boat over and launch her for us. The girl came along, too, in their auto, and oh, wasn’t she tickled! Brought us a lot of eats and a flag she’d made, and stayed to wish us—what do you call it?”
“Bon voyage?”
“Correct—I thank you. Understand, I’m only giving you the facts. We had more fun those three days and that night launching the boat than you could shake a stick at. Well, when we got her in the water I noticed the girl had gone off a little way and kept staring at it. Gee, the boat did look pretty nice when she got in the water. I thought maybe she was kind of thinking about her brother, you know, and it put it into my head to ask one of the men how he died. She didn’t come near us while we talked, but stood off there by herself staring at the launch. You see, it was the first time she’d seen it in the water since he was lost, and she was almost crying—I could tell that.
“Well, this is what the man told me. They said this Harry Stanton and another fellow named Benty Willis were out in the launch on a stormy night. There was a skiff belonging to the launch, and people thought they must have been in that, fishing. Anyway, the next morning, they found the skiff broken and swamped to her gunwale and right near it the body of the other fellow. The launch was riding on her anchor same as the night before. The men said Mr. Stanton was so broken up that he had the boat hauled ashore and a flood carried her up on the marsh where she was going to pieces when we found her. He would never look at her again. They said Harry Stanton could swim and that made some people think that maybe they were run down by one of the big night boats on the Hudson and that Harry was injured—killed that way, maybe.
“Anyway, when the girl got in the auto and said good-bye to us I could see she’d been crying all right, and she said we must be careful and not run at night on account of the big liners.”
“Hmph,” said Arnold, thoughtfully.
“Gee, I’ll never forget that night, with her sitting in the auto ready to start home and the boat rocking in the water and waiting for us. I can’t stand seeing a girl cry, can you? I guess we all felt kind of sober when we said good-bye and she told us to be careful. Tom told her we’d try to do arealgood turn some day to pay her back, because we really owed it to her, you know, and there was something in the way he said it—you know how Tom blurts things out—that made me think he had an idea up his sleeve.
“Well, it was about an hour later, while we were sitting on the cabin roof, that Tom sprung it on us. We were going to start up river in the morning; we were just loafing—gee, it was nice in the moonlight!—when he said it would be a great thing for us to find Harry Stanton! Go-o-d ni-i-ght! I was kind of sore at him because I didn’t like to hear him joking, sort of, about a fellow that was dead, especially after what the fellow’s father and sister had done for us, but he came right back at me by pointing to the board we had the oil stove on. What do you think he did? He showed us the letters N Y M P H under the fresh paint and said that board was part of the launch’s old skiff and wanted to know how it got back to the launch. What do you know about that? You see, we had run short of paint and it was thin on that board because we’d mixed gasoline with it. We ought to have mixed it with cod liver oil, hey?
“So there you are,” concluded Roy; “Pee-wee and I just stared like a couple of gumps. Those fellows had been out in the skiff and they couldn’t have used it with that side plank ripped off. And how did it get back to the launch?”
“Sounds as if the man might have been right about the skiff being smashed by a big boat,” said Arnold. “Maybe Harry Stanton was injured and clung to that board. But why should he have pulled it aboard the launch? And what I can’t understand is that nobody should have noticed it except you fellows. Was it in the launch all the time?”
“Yup—right under one of the lockers. Pee-wee and I had hauled it out to make a shelf for the oil stove.”
“But how do you suppose it was no one had noticed it till you fellows got busy with the boat?”
“A scout is observant,” said Roy, laughingly.
“Hmph—it’s mighty interesting, anyway,” mused Arnold. He drummed on a log with his fingers, and for a few moments no one spoke.
“Some mystery, hey?” said Roy, adding a log to the fire.
Several things more or less firmly fixed in his mind had impelled Tom Slade to challenge that wooded hill the dense summit of which was visible by day from Temple Camp.
He knew that high land is always selected for despatching carrier pigeons; a certain book on stalking which he had read contained a chapter on this fascinating and often useful sport and he knew that in a general sort of way there was a connection between carrier pigeons and stalking; one suggested the other—to him, at least. He knew for a certainty that the message had been written on the unprinted part of a stalking blank and he knew also that on the slope of the hill he had seen chalk marks on the trees the previous summer. Tom seldom forgot anything.
All these facts, whether significant or not, were indelibly impressed upon his serious mind, and to him they seemed to bear relation to each other. He believed that the pigeon had been flying homeward, to some town or city not far distant, where the sender perhaps lived and he believed that the pigeon’s use in this emergency had been the happy thought of some person who had taken the bird to the hill only to use for sport. He had no doubt that somewhere in the wilderness of these Catskill hills was a camp where the victim of accident lay, but the weak point was that he was seeking a needle in a haystack.
“I wish we’d brought along the fog horn from the boat,” he said, as they made their way across the open country below the hill; “we could have made a lot of noise with it up there; you can hear a long way in the woods, and it might have helped us to find the place.”
“If the place is up there,” said Doc Carson.
“There’s a trail,” said Tom, “that runs about halfway up but it peters out at a brook and you can’t find any from there on.”
“If we could find the trees where you saw the marks last summer,” said Connie Bennet, “we might get next to some clue there.”
“I can usually find a place where I’ve been before,” said Tom.
“What’s the matter with following the brook when we get to it?” said Garry. “If there’s anyone camping there they’d have to be near water.”
“Good idea,” said Doc.
“That settles one thing I was trying to dope out,” said Tom. “Why should people come as far as that just to stalk?”
“Maybe they’re scouts, camping.”
“They’d have smudged up the whole sky with signals,” said Tom.
“Maybe it’s someone up there hunting.”
“Only it isn’t the season,” laughed Garry. “No sooner said than stung, as Roy would say. Gee, I wish he was along!”
“Same here,” said Doc.
“They’re probably there fishing,” said Tom. “The stalking business is a side issue, most likely.”
“That’s what the little brook whispers to us,” said Doc.
They all laughed except Tom. He was not much on laughing, though Roy could usually reach him.
The woods began abruptly at the foot of the hill and they skirted its edge for a little way holding their lantern to the ground so as to find the trail. But no sign of path revealed itself. Twice they fancied they could see, orsense, as Jeb would have said, an opening into the dense woods and the faintest suggestion of a trail but it petered out in both cases—or perhaps it was imaginary.
“Let’s try what Jeb calls lassooing it,” said Garry.
He retreated through the open field to a lone tree which stood gaunt and spectral in the night like a sentinel on guard before that vast woodland army. Climbing up the tree, he called to Tom:
“Walk along the edge now and hold your lantern low.”
Tom skirted the wood’s edge, swinging his light this way and that as Garry called to him. The idea of trying to discover the trail by taking a distant and elevated view was a good one, but the tree was either too near or too far or the light was too dim, and the four scouts knew not what to do next.
“Climb up a little higher,” called Doc. “They say that when you’re up in an aeroplane you can see all sorts of paths that people below never knew about. I read that in an aviation magazine.”
“The Fly-paper, hey?” ventured Connie. “Look out for rotten branches, Garry.”
Garry wriggled his way up among the small branches, as far as he dared, while Tom moved about at the wood’s edge holding the lantern here and there.
“Nothing doing,” said Garry, coming down.
“We’re up against it, for a fact,” said Doc.
“That’s just what we’re not,” retorted Connie. “It seems we’re nowhere near it.”
“Gee-whillager!” cried Garry as he scrambled down the tree trunk. “Sling me over the peroxide, will you!”
“What’s the matter?” asked Doc, interested at once.
“I’ve got a scratch. What Pee-wee would call an artificial abrasion.”
“Superficial?” laughed Doc, pouring peroxide on a pretty deep scratch on Garry’s wrist.
“See there?” said Garry. “Feel. It’s sticking out from the trunk.”
As Tom held his lantern a small, rusty projection of iron was visible on the trunk of the tree about five feet from the ground.
“Is it a nail?” asked Connie.
“Well-what-do-you-know-about-that?” said Garry. “It’s what’s left of a hook; the tree has grown out all around it, don’t you see?”
It was indeed the rusty remnant of what had once been a hook but the growing trunk had encased all except the end of it and the screws and plate that fastened it were hidden somewhere within the tree.
“That tree has grown about an inch and a half thicker all the way around since the hook was fastened to it,” said Doc.
“It’s an elm, isn’t it?” Garry said.
Tom thought a minute. “Elms, oaks,” he mused, “that means about ten or twelve years ago.”
“There are only two reasons why people put hooks into trees,” said Connie, after a moment’s silence; “for hammocks and to fasten horses to. Nix on the hammocks here,” he added.
“What I was thinking about,” said Tom, “is that if somebody used to tie a horse here it must have been so’s they could go into the woods. The trail goes as far up as the brook. Maybe they used to tie their horses here and go fishing. There ought to be a trail from this tree to where the trail begins in the woods.”
“Probably there was—twelve years ago,” said Doc, dryly.
“The ground where a trail was is never just the same as where one wasn’t,” said Tom, with a clumsy phraseology that was characteristic of him. “It leaves a scar—like. When they started the Panama Canal they found a trail that was used in the Fifteenth Century—an aviator found it.”
“Well, then,” said Garry, cheerfully, “I’ll aviate to the top of this tree again and take a squint straight down.”
“Shut your eyes and keep them shut,” Tom called up to him; “keep them shut till I tell you.”
“Wait till Tom says peek-a-boo!” called Connie.
Tom gathered some twigs that were none too dry, and pouring a little kerosene over them, kindled a small fire about six feet from the tree.
“Can you see down here all right?”
“Not with my eyes shut,” Garry answered.
“Well, open them,” said Tom, “and see if the leaves keep you from seeing.”
“What he means,” called Doc, “is, have you an unobstructed view?”
There was always this tendency to make fun of Tom’s soberness.
“Wait till I look in my pocket,” called Garry. “Sure, I’ve got one.”
“Shut your eyes again and keep them shut,” commanded Tom.
“I have did it,” came from above.
With a couple of sticks which he manipulated like Chinese chopsticks, Tom moved the fire a little to a spot which seemed to suit him better, then retreated with his lantern to the wood’s edge.
“Now,” he called; “quick, what do you see? Quick!” he shouted. “You can’t do it at all unless you do it quick!”
“To your left!” shouted Garry. “Down that way—farther—farther still—go on—more. Hurry up! Just a—there you are!”
The boys ran to the spot where Tom stood and a few swings of the lantern showed an unmistakable something—certainly not a path—hardly a trail—but a way of lesser resistance, as one might say, into the dense wood interior.
“Come on!” said Tom. “I hope the kerosene holds out—I dumped out a lot of it.”
Instinctively, they fell back for him to lead the way and scarcely a tree but he paused to consider whether he should pass to the left or the right of it.
“What did you see?” Connie asked of Garry.
“I couldn’t tell you,” said Garry, still amazed at his own experience, “I don’t know as I saw anything; I suppose I sensed it, as Jeb would say. It was kind of like a little dirty green line from the tree and it kept fading away the longer I had my eyes open. It wasn’t exactly a line, either,” he corrected; “it was—oh, I don’t know what it was.”
“It was a ghost,” said Tom.
“That’s a good name for it,” conceded Garry.
“It’s the right name for it,” said Tom, with that blunt outspokenness which had a savor of reprimand but which the boys usually took in good part.
“That’s just about what I’d say it was,” Garry agreed.
“That’s what you ought to say it was,” said Tom, “because that’s what it was.”
Doc winked at Garry, and Connie smiled.
“We get you, Steven,” he said to Tom.
“Even before there were any flying machines, scouts in Africa knew about trail ghosts,” Tom said. “They’re all over, only you can’t see them—except in special ways—like this. You can only see them for about twenty seconds when you open your eyes. If I’d have told you to look cross-eyed you could have seen it better.”
“Wouldn’t that have been a sight for mother’s boy!” said Garry. “Swinging on a thin branch on the top of a tree and looking cross-eyed at a ghost! I’d have had that Cheshire cat inAlice in Wonderlandbeaten a mile.”
“Captain Crawford who died,” said Tom, “picked up a lot of them. The higher up you are the better. In an aeroplane you needn’t even shut your eyes.”
“Well, truth is stranger than friction, as Roy says,” said Connie; “this trail we’re on now is no ghost, anyway—hey, Tomasso?”
Tom did not answer.
“I got a splinter in my finger, too,” said Garry.
“Must have been scratching your head,” said Connie.
“That’s what I get from seein’ things,” said Garry.
“We’ll string the life out of Pee-wee, hey?” said Doc. “Tell him we saw a ghost——”
“We did,” Tom insisted.
“You mean Garry did,” said Doc. “Of course, we have to take his word for it.”
“Buffalo Bill saw them, too,” said Tom, plodding on.
“Not Bill Cody!” ejaculated Doc, winking at Garry.
“Yes,” said Tom.
“Is itpossible?” said Doc, “Where’d you read that—in theFly-paper?”
“There’s a trail ghost a hundred miles long out in Utah that nobody on the ground ever saw. Curtis followed it in his biplane,” said Tom.
“Fancy that!” said Doc.
Tom plodded on ahead of them, in his usual stolid manner. “I don’t say you can always do it,” he said; “it’s kind of—something—there’s a long word—sike——”
“Psychological?” said Doc. “We get you, Tomasso.”
“I bet there are real ghosts in here,” said Garry, as they climbed the slope which became more difficult as they went along.
“Regular ones, hey?” said Doc.
“Sure, the good old-fashioned kind.”
“No peek-a-boo ghosts,” said Garry.
“Well, you can knock ghosts all you want to,” said Connie, “but I always found them white.”
“Slap him on the wrist, will you!” called Doc. “Believeme, this is some impenetrable wilderness!”
“How?”
“Impenetrable wilderness—reduced to a common denominator, thick woods.”
Withal their bantering talk, it seemed indeed as if the woods might be haunted, for with almost every step they took some crackling or rustling sound could be heard, emphasized by the stillness. Now and again they paused to listen to a light patter growing fainter and fainter, or a sudden noise as of some startled denizen of the wood seeking a new shelter. Ghostly shadows flitted here and there in the moonlight; and the night breeze, soughing among the tree tops, wafted to the boys a murmuring as of some living thing whose elusive tones now and again counterfeited the human voice in seeming pain or fear.
The voices of the boys sounded crystal clear in the solemn stillness. Once they paused, trying to locate an owl which seemed to be shrieking its complaint at this intrusion of its domain. Again they stopped to listen to the distant sound of falling water.
“That’s the brook, I guess,” said Tom.
Their approach to it seemed to sober the others, realizing as they did that effort and resourcefulness were now imperative, and mindful, too, though scarcely hopeful, that these might bring them face to face with a tragic scene.
“Pretty tough, being up here all alone with somebody dying,” said Doc.
“You said something,” answered Garry.
They were entering an area of underbrush, where the trail ceased or was completely obscured, so that there wasn’t even a ghost of it, as Doc remarked. But the sound of the water guided them now and they worked their way through such a dense maze of jungle as they had never expected to encounter outside the tropics.
Tom, going ahead, tore the tangled growth away, or parted it enough to squeeze through, the others following and carrying the stretcher and first-aid case with greatest difficulty.
“How long is this surging thoroughfare, I wonder,” asked Garry.
“Don’t know,” said Tom. “I don’t seem to have my bearings at all.”
After a little while they emerged, scratched and dishevelled, at the brook which tumbled over its pebbly bed in its devious path downward.
“We’re pretty high up, do you know that?” Doc observed.
“I don’t see as there’s much use hunting for marked trees,” Tom said. “I must have come another way before. I don’t know where we’re at. What d’you say we all shout together?”
This they did and the sound of their upraised voices reverberated in the dense woods and shocked the still night, but no answering sound could be heard save only the rippling of the brook.
“We stand about as much chance as a snowball in a blast furnace,” said Garry.
“The thing to do,” said Tom, ignoring him, “is to follow this brook, somebody on each side, and look for a trail. If there’s anybody here they’ll be upstream; it’s too steep from here down. And one thing sure—they’d have to have water. Lucky the moon’s out, but I wish we had two lanterns.”
“We’ll be lucky if the oil in this one lasts,” Doc put in.
Following the stream was difficult enough, but it was easier than the forest they had just come through and they picked their way along its edge, Tom and Garry on one bank and Doc and Connie on the other.
“I don’t believe anyone’s been in this place in a thousand years; that’s the way it looks to me,” said Doc.
“I’d say at least three thousand,” said Garry.
Tom paid no attention. He had paused and was holding his lantern over the stream.
“Those four stones are in a pretty straight line,” he said. “Would you say that was a ford?”
“Looks more like a Buick to me,” said Garry, but he added, “Theyarein a pretty straight line. I guess it’s a flivver, all right.”
“Look on that side,” said Tom, to the others. “Do you see anything over there?”
He was looking carefully along the edge; of the water when Doc called suddenly,
“Come over here with your light, quick!”
Tom and Garry crossed, stepping from stone to stone, and presently all four were kneeling and examining in the lantern light one of those commonplace things which sometimes send a thrill over the discoverer—a human footprint. There upon that lonesome mountain, surrounded by the all but impenetrable forest, was that simple, half-obliterated but unmistakable token of a human presence. Tom thought he knew now how Robinson Crusoe felt when he found the footprint in the sand.
The exposed roots of a tree formed ridges in the hard bank, where footprints seemed quite impossible of detection, and it was in vain that the boys sought for others. Yet here was this one, and so plain as to show the criss-cross markings of a new sole.
“It’s from a rubber boot,” said Garry.
“There ought to besomesigns of others even if they’re not as clear as this one,” said Tom. “Maybe whoever was wearing that boot slipped off one of those stones and got it wet. That’s why it printed, probably. Anyway, somebody crossed here and they were going up that way, that’s sure.”
They stood staring at the footprint, thoroughly sobered by its discovery. They had penetrated into this rugged mountain in the hope of finding some one, but the remoteness and wildness of the place had grown upon them and the whole chaotic scene seemed so ill-associated with the presence of a human being that now that they had actually found this silent token it almost shocked them.
PRESENTLY ALL FOUR WERE EXAMINING—A HUMAN FOOTPRINT.PRESENTLY ALL FOUR WERE EXAMINING—A HUMAN FOOTPRINT.
PRESENTLY ALL FOUR WERE EXAMINING—A HUMAN FOOTPRINT.
“Maybe the wind was wrong before,” said Tom. “What d’you say we call again—all together? There don’t seem to be any path leading anywhere.”
They formed their hands into megaphones, calling loud and long, but there was no answer save a long drawn out echo.
“Again,” said Tom, “and louder.”
Once more their voices rose in such stentorian chorus that it left them breathless and Connie’s head was throbbing as from a blow.
“Hark!” said Doc. “Shhh.”
From somewhere far off came a sound, thin and spent with the distance, which died away and seemed to mingle with the voice of the breeze; then absolute silence.
“Did you hear that?”
“Nothing but a tree-toad,” said Garry.
They waited a minute to give the answering call a rest, if indeed it came from human lips, then raised their voices once again in a longHelloo.
“Hear it?” whispered Connie. “It’s over there to the east. That’s no tree-toad.”
Whatever the sound was, the distance was far too great for the sense of any call to be understood. The voice was impersonal, vague, having scarce more substance than a dream, but it thrilled the four boys and made them feel as if the living spirit of that footprint at their feet was calling to them out of the darkness.
“Even still I think it must be near the stream though it sounds way off there,” Tom pointed; “we might head straight for the sound or we might follow the stream up. It may go in that direction up a ways.”
They decided to trust to the brook’s guidance and to the probability of its verging in the direction of the sound. It wound its way through intertwined and over-arching thickets where they were forced to use their belt-axes to chop their way through. Now and again they called as they made their difficult way, challenged almost at every step by obstructions. But they heard no answering voice.
After a while the path became less difficult; the very stream seemed to breathe easier as it flowed through a comparatively open stretch, and the four boys, torn and panting, plodded along, grateful for the relief.
“What’s that?” said Garry. “Look, do you see a streak of white way ahead—just between those trees?”
“Yes,” panted Connie. “It’s a tent, I guess—thank goodness.”
“Let’s call again,” said Tom.
There was no answer and they plodded on, stooping under low-hanging or broken branches, stepping cautiously over wet stones and picking their way over great masses of jagged rock. Never before had they beheld a scene of such wild confusion and desolation.
“Wait a minute,” said Tom, turning back where he stood upon a great rock and holding his lantern above a crevice. “I thought I saw something white down there.”
They gathered about him and looked down into a fissure at a sight which unnerved them all, scouts though they were. For there, wedged between the two converging walls of rock and plainly visible in the moonlight was a skeleton, the few brown stringing remnants depending from it unrecognizable as clothing.
Tom reached down and touched it with his belt-axe, and it collapsed and fell rattling into the bed of the cleft. He held his lantern low for a moment and gazed down into the crevice.
“This is some spooky place, believeme,” shivered Connie. “Who do you suppose it was?”
A little farther on they came upon something which apparently explained the presence of the skeleton. As they neared the spot where they had seen what they thought to be a tent among the trees, they stopped aghast at seeing among the branches of several elms that most pathetic and complete of all wrecks, the tattered, twisted remnants of a great aeroplane. A few silken shreds were blowing about the broken frame and beating against the network of disordered wires and splintered wood.
For a few moments they stared at the wreck and said nothing.
“Maybe it was Kinney,” suggested Doc, at last. “Do you remember about Kinney?”
“Come on,” urged Tom.
Half reluctantly the others followed him, glancing back now and again till the tattered mass became a shadowy speck and faded away in the darkness.
“He started from somewhere above Albany,” said Doc, “and he was never heard of again. I often heard my father speak about it and I read about it in that aviation book that Roy loaned me.”
“He’s going to loan it to me when he gets it back from you,” said Connie; “he says you’re a good bookkeeper.”
“Put away your little hammer,” laughed Garry.
“Some people in Poughkeepsie thought they heard the humming of the engine at night,” said Doc, “and that’s what made people think he had got past that point—but that’s all they ever knew. Some thought he must have gone down in the river.”
“How long ago was it?” Garry asked.
Tom plodded on silently. It was well known of Tom that he could not think of two things at once.
“Five or six years, I think,” said Doc.
“That would be too long a time for the wreck, seeing the condition it’s in,” said Garry, “but anything less than that would be too short a time for the skeleton.”
“Do you mean they were lost here at different times?” Connie asked.
“Looks that way to me.”
“If there are buzzards up here a skeleton might look like that in a month or so,” Connie suggested.
“There aren’t any buzzards around here.”
“Sure there are,” said Doc. “Look at Buzzard’s Bay—it’s named for ’em.”
“It’s named for a man who had it wished on him,” said Garry. “You might as well say that Pike’s Peak was named after the pikers that go there.”
“How long do you suppose that aeroplane’s been there?”
“Five or six years, maybe,” Doc said. “The frame’ll be as good as that for ten years more. There’s nothing more to rot.”
“Well,” said Garry, “it looks to my keen scout eye as if that wreck had been there for about six months and the skeleton for about six years.”
“Maybe if you had tried shutting your keen scout eye and opening it in a hurry—— Hey, Tomasso?” teased Doc.
“Maybe they got here at the same time but the man lived for a while,” Tom condescended to reply.
“You’ve got it just the wrong way round, my fraptious boy,” said Doc. “The skeleton’s been here longer, if anything.”
“Did you see that hickory stick there—all worm-eaten?” Tom asked. “It had some carving on it. None of these trees are hickory trees.”
“I saw it but I didn’t notice the carving,” said Doc, surprised.
“Didn’t you notice there weren’t any hickory trees anywhere around there?” Tom asked.
“No, I didn’t—I’m a punk scout—I must be blind,” said Doc.
“You’re good on first-aid,” said Tom, indifferently.
“How’d you know it was hickory?” Connie asked.
“Because I can tell hickory,” said Tom, bluntly, “and it’s being all worm-eaten proved it—kind of. That’s the trouble with hickory.”
They always had to make the best of Tom’s answers.
“I don’t know where he got the hickory stick,” he said, as he pushed along through the underbrush, “but he didn’t get it anywhere around here, that’s sure.”
“And he probably didn’t sit down that same day and carve things on it, either,” suggested Garry; “Tom, you’re a wonder.”
“He might have lived up here for two or three years after he fell,” said Doc reflectively. “Gee, it starts you thinking, don’t it?”
Connie shook his head. “It’s a mystery, all right,” said he.
The thought of the solitary man, disabled crippled, perhaps, living there on that lonely mountain after the terrible accident which had brought him there lent a new gruesomeness to their discoveries. And who but Tom Slade would have been able to keep an open mind and to see so clearly by the aid of trifling signs as to separate the two apparent catastrophes and see them as independent occurrences?
“Tomasso, you’re the real scout,” said Doc. “The rest of us are only imitations.”
Tom said nothing. He was used to this kind of talk and was about as proof against such praise as a battleship is against a popgun. And just now he was thinking of other things. Yet if he could have looked into the future and seen there the extraordinary explanation of his discovery and known the strange adventures it would lead to, he might have paused, even on that all but hopeless errand of rescue, and looked again at those pathetic remains. But those things were to be reserved for another summer.
“Is there anything we can do? What do you suggest, Tom?” Garry asked, dropping his half flippant manner.
“I say, let’s shout again,” said Tom. “We must be nearly a mile farther on by now, and the brook’s getting around to the east, too.”
“Good and loud,” said Connie.
“All together—now!”
Again their voices woke the mountain echoes. A sudden rustling of the underbrush told of some frightened wood creature. The brook rippled softly as before. There was no other sound, and they waited. Then, from somewhere far off came the faint answering of a human voice. It would never have been distinguishable save in that deathlike stillness and even there it sounded as if it might have come from another world. It seemed to be uttering the letter L in a kind of doleful monotony.
They paused a moment in a kind of awe, even after it had ceased.
“It’s callinghelp,” said Garry.
“I can go there now,” said Tom. “The brook probably winds around that way, but we can cut across and get there quicker. We’ll chop our way through here. Let him rest his lungs now—I can go right for a ways. I got to admit I was wrong.”
In the dim light of the lantern Garry looked at Tom as he stood there, his heavy, stolid face scratched by the brambly thicket, his coarse shirt torn, his thick shock of hair down over his forehead—no more elated by triumph than he would have been discouraged by defeat, and as the brighter, more vivacious and attractive boy looked at him he was seized with a little twinge of remorse that he had made game of Tom’s clumsy speech and sober ways.
“Got to admit you were wronghow—for goodness’ sake?” he said, almost angrily. “Didn’t you bring us here? Didn’t you bring us all the way from Temple Camp to where we could hear that voice calling for help? Didn’t you?”
“I said I could find the trees that had the stalking marks last summer,” said Tom, “and I got to admit I was wrong, ’cause I couldn’t.”
“Who was it that wouldn’t sit down and eat supper while somebody was dying?” demanded Doc. “There’s a whole lot of good scouts, believeme, but there’s only one Tom Slade!”
It was always the way—they made fun of him and lauded him by turns.
“There’s a kind of trail here,” said Tom, unmoved, “but it hasn’t been used for a long time—see those spider webs across it? Lend me your axe, will you, mine is all dulled.”