The Scranton High Chums on the Cinder Path Part 12

"Do you really mean, Hugh," he went on to task, in a voice that trembled more or less despite Horatio's effort to control the same, "that you half expect to find K.K.lying alongside the road, either dead, or else insensible from the pain of his broken leg?"

"Well, I wasn't just thinking things would be as bad as all that,"

Hugh hastened to say. "What I had in mind was the chance of coming on his footprints, and then trying to follow the same. We could easily tell them, for K.K. had on his running shoes, you remember.

By tracking him, step by step, don't you see, we could tell just where he met with his trouble, even find out, perhaps, the nature of his accident, and continue to follow him up."

"That would suit me first rate," said Julius, promptly; "and my fine electric hand-torch might come into play with a vengeance. There's nothing better going for following a trail in the dark, because the light is focussed, you see, on a small compa.s.s. Why, you can pick up night-walkers like everything when the fis.h.i.+ng season's on, by using a flashlight. I could even find a needle in a haystack, I believe, with one of these jim-dandy contraptions."

"All right, Julius, we'll appoint you head tracker, then," chuckled Horatio. "But, after all, perhaps we'll run across our comrade yet, before we get out of this tangle. We're about to come to the most critical point of the entire trip, remember, for the old quarry is just ahead of us."

Horatio chanced to be on the side of the car toward the quarry. He was not spending nearly so much time now looking ahead, leaving that task to his chums; even while talking he kept his eyes fixed upon the dark expanse that represented the surrounding woods, antic.i.p.ating catching a glimpse of something, he hardly knew what, at any moment now. Doubtless all those silly yarns retailed by the ignorant gossiping farm-hands in the market-place in Scranton, while they tried to outdo one another in matching fairy stories, must have been circulating through Horatio's brain just then. The heavy atmosphere of the deserted stone quarry, and its lonely surroundings, added to the mysterious disappearance of K.K., combined to make him peculiarly susceptible to such influences as see ghosts in every white object that moves in the darkness.

This being the case with the Juggins boy it was not to be wondered at that there could be traced a vein of actual gratification in his voice when he suddenly electrified his companions by exclaiming:

"Hugh! fellows, I tell you I saw it right then, just as that Swanson farmhand vowed to me he did once on a time this last summer---it was a light, waved up and down, back and forth, and just like they teach you when you join the Signal Corps, and learn how to wigwag with a flag or a lantern. It came from right over yonder, where we all know the old quarry lies! And I'm not fooling, either; cross my heart if I am!"

CHAPTER XV

PROWLING AROUND THE QUARRY

Everybody was staring hard by the time Horatio finished. Hugh, of course, had immediately stopped the car on the road, so that they were now stationary.

It chanced that the spot was one of few where a glimpse of the quarry could be picked up, as the boys had discovered at the time they pa.s.sed along this way, when we overtook them on their nutting trip.

Seconds crept past.

Each boy could measure time by the beating of his wildly accelerated heart, and as these were throbbing at the rate of something like a hundred pulsations per minute it can be easily understood that "things were going some," to quote Horatio, when afterwards telling the story.

Then all of them saw what the first discoverer had attempted to describe. They stared as though fascinated. Truly Horatio had said well when he spoke of the odd movements of the mysterious light; for it moved swiftly up and down, then sideways, and in eccentric circles, after which it vanished as suddenly as it had come into being.

Some of the boys sighed, as though being wakened from a dream. Horatio, of course, was full of deepest gratification, since he had detected a skeptical air in the actions of Thad and Owen, which seemed to place him in the light of one who saw things where none existed."

"There, didn't I tell you?" he exclaimed, triumphantly. "And, say, wasn't that---eh, party, whoever he might be, making some sort of telegraphic signals with his old lantern or torch?"

"Hugh, what do you think?" demanded Thad. "You're up in all that kind of wigwag signal work, and perhaps now you could tell what it means."

"I lost some of it, I'm sorry to say, fellows," observed Hugh, gravely; "but all the same I caught enough to tell me that waving of a light was meant as a signal message, though who sent it, and to whom, is all a mystery."

"But could you make out enough of the message, Hugh, to give you any idea what it stood for?" persisted Thad.

"Yes, I believe I did," the other admitted, solemnly, so that each of his chums bent closer to catch the next words that fell from his lips. "I'm certain it spelled out the word 'Help,' for one; and I thought another was 'quick'!"

"Oh! what do you think of that?" gasped Horatio.

"The mystery deepens," added Owen, dramatically, just as he had probably been accustomed to reading in some story of excitement.

"Of course," continued Hugh, immediately, "we've got to take a look around that same old quarry, and see what's going on. Somebody's holding the fort there, even if it is said to be deserted. Who and what he can be, of course, remains to be seen; but I'm not taking a bit of stock in those old wives' yarns about a ghost, remember, Horatio."

"Then we'll have to leave the car on the road, won't we, Hugh, when we tackle this big job?" questioned Owen.

"Of course; and since I marked the best spot where anyone could make their way along to the face of the quarry, we must start up again, and keep moving till we strike that place."

"But, Hugh, do you think the---er---party making those signals with a light could have noticed our illumination, and that message was meant for us?" Horatio went on to ask, solicitously.

"I'm not prepared to say," he was told, "though I don't see how anybody with eyes could miss discovering us coming along. And, besides, the old car makes plenty of noise in the bargain, to attract attention. So it looks as if he did know, and was trying to talk to us."

All this only added to the thrill that was forever pa.s.sing through each and every member of the night expedition. It would be manifestly impossible to describe their mixed feelings as they advanced slowly along the rough road so long abandoned to nature. A dozen times Horatio believed he heard cries; why, it seemed as though the air must be filled with uncanny sounds, for his lively imagination was working at race-horse speed just then.

The car stopped short.

"Wow! what's happened now, Hugh?" whisened Horatio.

"We've arrived at the getting-out place, that's all," came the steady reply, as the chauffeur caused the engine to cease working and then proceeded to leave his seat, after his companion had jumped out.

The lanterns were now lighted and the electric torch made ready for use. If hands trembled considerably during this operation, causing several matches to be used before the desired results were obtained, could anyone blame Owen and the other possessor of a lantern? It was a most remarkable thing that no one evinced the slightest disposition to stay by the car, and guard it against thieves. It was a case of "follow the leader," and where Hugh went they were all bound to go also. To be honest, the chances were that Horatio, for one, could not have been coaxed to separate himself from the company of his four chums; because there was a great deal of truth in that old maxim, "in union there is strength."

Hugh now led the way. He had been given one of the lanterns with which to light a pa.s.sage across the heaps of broken stones, earth, and rubbish, cast there at the time in the remote past when the quarry was in full blast, with workmen delving into the hillside, blasting away sections through the use of dynamite or powder, and sending out many wagon-loads of building-stone each of the six working days of the week.

They did not string out in single file, but kept bunched together.

Indeed, this came through no accident, but there was a method in their madness; because, you see, no fellow would want to be the hindmost in the file.

Hugh showed a wonderful amount of knowledge of the place, considering that he had never before in his life placed a foot upon the ground and had to depend entirely on his former observations. But he kept on as straight as could be expected, and presently Owen managed to muster up courage enough to say in a low and most carefully guarded tone:

"Hugh, did you take note of the exact spot where the light showed up?

I'm asking because you seem to be heading direct for somewhere."

"I believe I know where it was," Hugh told him simply. "You see, I noted several things about the face of the quarry that day we stopped to look it over; and when I saw that dancing trail of fire I figured out that it must be at just such a place, which spot I'm heading for right now. And just as you spoke I had ample proof that I was right in my guess."

"Why, what happened, Hugh?" demanded Horatio eagerly.

"I caught a faint glimpse of light up there," Hugh told him. "I wonder none of the rest of you happened to notice the same. It made me think that some person might be in one of those holes we saw in the face of the wall---caves, the natives call them, Horatio says.

As this was somewhat deep only a tiny bit of illumination escaped, and you could just detect that when at a certain angle. Stop short, now, and see for yourselves, for there it is again!"

Thrilled to the bone they stood and gaped. Hugh was pointing with his disengaged hand, half holding the lantern back of him so that its glow might not further interfere with their view.

"You're right, Hugh; that's surely what it is," greed Thad, almost immediately; and each of the other three went on record with a corresponding affirmative.

"Then the next thing for us to do is to find some way of climbing up to that same fissure," the leader explained, showing that he meant to lose no time in trying to open negotiations with the unknown denizens of the quarry, whose actions were becoming more and more mysterious as time pa.s.sed.

"Which means that we're going to beard the tiger in his den," quoth Owen, gripping his gun more firmly as he edged a little closer to Hugh; for since he was the only member of the expedition who could be said to possess a weapon it was proper that he should be found in the van at such a crisis.

They walked on, not hastily, and showing no outward sign of the tumult that must have raged in each boyish heart. Now it was no longer possible for them to discern that faint glow; but such a little thing did not daunt them. Hugh had marked well the exact location of their objective point, and Hugh seldom made mistakes, those other confident fellows were telling themselves as they cheerfully trudged along.

The foot of the cliff was at hand. Rains and winds and snow avalanches had, during the years that had pa.s.sed since the hands of men worked those diggings, served to cut loose great quant.i.ties of debris from the face of the height, so that here and there at the foot irregular pyramids of earth and rocks could be seen. Hugh now seemed to have turned his attention from above and was bending half over, as though examining the ground. Owen knew what this meant. The other antic.i.p.ated finding a track leading directly to the route by means of which that cavern halfway up the cliff might be easiest attained.