Tom Slade on the River Part 28

"I could see it in his face," Tom said.

"Sherlock n.o.body Holmes again," called Roy from the other boat.

Presently, the scrambling figure emerged upon the bare surface above, wriggling and bracing itself on what seemed to be mere points of rock. A few yards more and he would be safe upon the wooded summit.

"Don't shout!" said Mr. Ellsworth, antic.i.p.ating an impulse on Roy's part.

"You might rattle him. Wait till he's out of danger."

Now he had reached the edge of the woods which covered the summit and extended somewhat down the precipitous side, and as he disappeared among the trees the scouts on the lake sent up a l.u.s.ty cheer.

Scarcely had the echo of their shout died away when Roy jumped to his feet.

"Look!" he cried.

Following his pointing finger, the whole troop stood aghast in utter horror as they saw the limp and sprawling figure of the freckled scout go tumbling headlong over tree and rock down the rugged precipice. Harry Stanton gasped and almost fainted away. Pee-wee grasped the rail, white as a sheet.

The figure fell against a crooked tree, the limp arms of the apparently dead or unconscious boy making no effort to grasp it, then tumbled headlong from the ledge and fell with a sickening impact upon the jagged rocks below. There it paused for a second, then fell again like a dead weight, over sheer walls of rock. Once again it paused against some obstacle and Mr. Ellsworth, watching with the gla.s.s, could see the neck hanging limp, the head far back in a ghastly, unnatural att.i.tude. The boy was evidently quite dead. Again the body fell, the loose arms and limbs sprawling this way and that until it was precipitated over the edge of the lowest rocky wall and the dreadful sight was ended by its disappearance into the swampy woods below.

"He must have lost his foothold," whispered Connie.

"It's-it's terrible," breathed little Raymond, almost in a panic.

"Get the oars," said Mr. Ellsworth, quietly. "We'll row ash.o.r.e. Cast the anchor," he called. "We may be able to get the body. That's about all we can do, I'm afraid. He probably lost his life with the first impact. He was dead long before he reached the bottom."

There was not a scout among them but was sobered by the dreadful thing; Harry Stanton had lost his nerve entirely; and it was a solemn little group that scrambled into the _Honor Scout's_ skiff and rowed for sh.o.r.e.

Garry Everson, who was a better swimmer than any member of the Bridgeboro troop, had already thrown off his outer clothing and was well toward sh.o.r.e. Others, for whom there was not room in the skiff, followed swimming, until only Harry Stanton, Raymond, and Westy Martin whom Mr.

Ellsworth had asked to remain with them, were left on the smaller boat.

"It's worse than that hill near camp," Garry called to the boys in the approaching boat. "It's a regular everglades."

They found the place a veritable maze of tangled swamp, with a spongy, uncertain foothold. In toward the hill the land was firmer but at close range and without an open view it was impossible to determine where the body had fallen.

"Can you point out about where it was?" called Roy, from the sh.o.r.e.

Westy pointed as best he could and the sh.o.r.e party, spreading, began a systematic search of the spot.

"Is this the place?" said Doc who, as a matter of general precaution, had his first-aid case slung over his shoulder. He was standing on the brink of a black pool, which they thought to be right under the spot where the body had fallen.

"Wait till I see how deep it is," said Garry, wading in. He was soon beyond his depth and swimming. "If he fell in _there_ we'll never get him," he said, emerging with black slime dripping from him.

"Maybe he caught in the branches of some of those trees," suggested Connie.

It was the signal for several scouts to scramble up among the knotty branches of the trees in toward the precipice, but without result.

They scoured the whole treacherous ground for fifty yards or more in every direction, but no sign of the unfortunate boy's body could they discover. They lashed together the two oars from the boat, making a length of perhaps twenty feet, and probed the pool but found nothing.

"I'm going to dive into that," said Garry.

"I don't think you'd better, my boy," said Mr. Ellsworth.

But Garry had already dived and came up dripping with mud and slime.

"I couldn't get to the bottom," said he; "there _isn't_ any bottom."

Tom Slade who, as usual, had pursued his own way, called to the others, "There's a kind of a trail here-a pearl necklace,[2] I should think. It runs through this swamp and up around the side there. See?"

Roy and Mr. Ellsworth, who had come close to him, saw what he meant, though it is doubtful if even those good scouts would have recognized it as a trail.

"See?" said Tom, "you can get to the top without that climb. This runs up around where it isn't so steep."

Sure enough, there was a sort of zigzag trail, becoming plainer as it wound its way up, by which one might ascend by a longer though safer route. It followed a deep cleft in the rocks and led, as they surmised, to the easier slope on the landward side of the mountain.

"Why didn't he take that path, do you suppose?" said the scoutmaster.

"Because he was a dare-devil," said Roy.

Mr. Ellsworth stood silently as Tom and Roy started up the trail. It led them, as they had supposed it would, to a broader path by which the hill could be surmounted. Here were indistinct footprints at intervals. Why they were not regular Tom could not imagine.

"Why _didn't_ the fellow go this way, I wonder?" Roy said.

"You answered that yourself," Tom answered.

They were now upon the summit and could look down and see the two boats side by side in the lake. It was a dizzy height. Behind them was a broad, flat plateau which became a gentle slope and fell away into the lower country beyond. The path crossed this and here the footprints were plainer and more regular. Then they verged from the path and were difficult to follow amid the spa.r.s.e vegetation of the plateau.

A few yards and they ended abruptly at a point where there was a little disturbance of the earth and what Tom and Roy thought to be the imprints, very faint, of rubber tires.

"There must have been an auto here," said Roy.

"It must have been one of those motor-cycle affairs with a kind of a baby carriage alongside it," said Tom. "Those prints are too close together for a regular auto."

"How could an auto or a motor-cycle get up here, anyway?" queried Roy.

From the spot where they happened to be, they could just manage to trace a second line of footprints coming from another direction.

Roy was very much sobered by this whole affair, but he could not refrain from his usual comment, "The plot grows thinner."

"Come on, let's follow those," said Tom.

They did so until the prints ended abruptly upon the flat, rocky surface near the edge of the precipice.

"I don't know what to make of the whole business," said Roy. "Blamed if I do! It's a puzzle."

"My idea," said Tom, as they started down again, "is this; the other fellow was down there below somewhere and was going to follow that fellow, when all of a sudden he fell. They must have chosen that way just for a stunt, I suppose. Didn't you ever hear that red-headed fellows are reckless? It might possibly be," he added, hesitatingly, "that the other fellow managed to get his-his body and drag it around up this way. That might account for the way that path looked back there; if someone had been dragged along it might sort of wipe out the footprints. I don't see how he could have got so far ahead of us, though," he added.

"But where could he have taken the-body?"

"I don't know-unless he managed to carry it to that automobile or whatever it was back there. Maybe they'd left some kind of a car there to go out on the lake."

"But all that wouldn't account for those other footprints we saw out toward the edge," said Roy, skeptically.