The Young Mountaineers Part 13

It was impossible. He glanced down at the sheer walls of the column below, shook his head, and lay back on the ledge. Reckless as he was, he realized that the attempt would be fatal.

Then came a thought that filled him with dismay,--how long was this to last?--who would rescue him?

He knew that a prolonged absence from home would create no surprise. His mother would only fancy that he had slipped off, as he had often done, to go on a camp-hunt with some other boys. She would not grow uneasy for a week, at least.

He was deep in the heart of the forest, distant from any dwelling. No one, as far as he knew, came to this spot, except himself and Barney, and their errand here was for the sake of the exhilaration and the hazard of climbing the crag. It was so lonely that on the Old Man's Chimney the eagles built instead of the swallows. His hope--his only hope--was that some hunter might chance to pa.s.s before he should die of hunger.

The shadow of the great obelisk s.h.i.+fted as the day wore on, and left him in the broad, hot glare of the sun. His broken arm was fevered and gave him great pain. Now and then he raised himself on the other, and looked down wistfully at the cool, dusky depths of the woods. He heard continually the impetuous rus.h.i.+ng of a mountain torrent near at hand; sometimes, when the wind stirred the foliage, he caught a glimpse of the water, rioting from rock to rock, and he was oppressed by an intolerable thirst.

Thus the hours lagged wearily on.

CHAPTER IV

When the wagon was rolling along the road in the valley, Barney at first kept his eyes persistently fastened upon the craggy heights and the red and gold autumnal woods of Goliath Mountain, as the mighty range stretched across the plain.

But presently the two men began to talk to him, and he turned around in order to face them. They were urging him to confess his own guilt and tell who were the other burglars, and where they were. But Barney had nothing to tell. He could only protest again and again his innocence.

The men, however, shook their heads incredulously, and after a while they left him to himself and smoked their pipes in silence.

When Barney looked back at the mountains once more, a startling change seemed to have been wrought in the landscape. Instead of the frowning sandstone cliffs he loved so well, and the gloomy recesses of the woods, there was only a succession of lines of a delicate blue color drawn along the horizon. This was the way the distant ranges looked from the crags of his own home; he knew that they were the mountains, but which was Goliath?

Suddenly he struck his hands together, and broke out with a bitter cry.

"I hev los' G'liath!" he exclaimed. "I dunno whar I live! An' whar _is_ Melissy?"

A difficult undertaking, certainly, to determine where among all those great spurs and outliers, stretching so far on either hand, was that little atom of dimpled pink-and-white humanity known as "Melissy."

The constable, being a native of these hills himself, knew something by experience of the homesickness of an exiled mountaineer,--far more terrible than the homesickness of low-landers; he took his pipe promptly from between his lips, and told the boy that the second blue ridge, counting down from the sky, was "G'liath Mounting," and that "Melissy war right thar somewhar."

Barney looked back at it with unrecognizing eyes,--this gentle, misty, blue vagueness was not the solemn, sombre mountain that he knew. He gazed at it only for a moment longer; then his heart swelled and he burst into tears.

On and on they went through the flat country. The boy felt that he could scarcely breathe. Even tourists, coming down from these mountains to the valley below, struggle with a sense of suffocation and oppression; how must it have been then with this half-wild creature, born and bred on those breezy heights!

The stout mules did their duty well, and it was not long before they were in sight of the cross-roads store that had been robbed. It was a part of a small frame dwelling-house, set in the midst of the yellow sunlight that brooded over the plain. All the world around it seemed to the young backwoodsman to be a big cornfield; but there was a garden close at hand, and tall sunflowers looked over the fence and seemed to nod knowingly at Barney, as much as to say they had always suspected him of being one of the burglars, and were gratified that he had been caught at last.

Poor fellow! he saw so much suspicion expressed in the faces of a crowd of men congregating about the store, that it was no wonder he fancied he detected it too in inanimate objects.

Of all the group only one seemed to doubt his guilt. He overheard Blenkins, the merchant, say to Jim Dow,--

"It's mighty hard to b'lieve this story on this 'ere boy; he's a manly looking, straight-for'ard little chap, an' he's got honest eyes in his head, too."

"He'd a deal better hev an honest heart in his body," drawled Jim Dow, who was convinced that Barney had aided in the burglary.

When they had gone around to the window with the broken pane, Barney looked up at it in great anxiety. If only it should prove too small for him to slip through! Certainly it seemed very small.

He had pulled off his coat and stood ready to jump.

"Up with you!" said Stebbins.

The boy laid both hands on the sill, gave a light spring, and went through the pane like an eel.

"That settles it!" he heard Stebbins saying outside. And all the idlers were laughing because it was done so nimbly.

"That boy's right smart of a fool," said one of the lookers-on. "Now, if that had been me, I'd hev made out to git stuck somehows in that winder; I'd have scotched my wheel somewhere."

"Ef ye hed, I'd have dragged ye through ennyhow," declared Jim Dow, who had no toleration of a joke on a serious subject. "This hyar boy air a deal too peart ter try enny sech fool tricks on _Me_!"

Barney hardly knew how he got back into the wagon; he only knew that they were presently jolting along once more in the midst of the yellow glare of sunlight. It had begun to seem that there was no chance for him. Like Nick, he too had madly believed, in spite of everything, that something would happen to help him. He could not think that, innocent as he was, he would be imprisoned. Now, however, this fate evidently was very close upon him.

Suddenly Jim Dow spoke. "I s'pose ye war powerful disapp'inted kase ye couldn't git yerself hitched in that thar winder; ye air too well used to it,--ye hev been through it afore."

"I hev never been through it afore!" cried Barney indignantly.

"Well, well," said Stebbins pacifically, "it wouldn't have done you any good if you hadn't gone through the pane just now. I'd have only thought you were one of those who stood on the outside. You see, the _main_ point against you is that sc.r.a.p of your coat and your b.u.t.ton found right there by the Conscripts' Hollow,--though, of course, your going through the window-pane so easy makes it more complete."

Barney's tired brain began to fumble at this problem,--how did it happen?

He had not been on the ledge nor at the Conscripts' Hollow for six months at least. Yet there was that bit of his coat and his b.u.t.ton found on the bush close at hand only to-day.

Was it possible that he could have exchanged coats by mistake with Nick the last afternoon that they were on the crag together?

"Did Nick wear _my_ coat down on the ledge, I wonder, an' git it tored?

Did Nick see the plunder in the Conscripts' Hollow, an' git skeered, an'

then sot out ter lyin' ter git shet o' the blame?"

As he asked himself these questions, he began to remember, vaguely, having seen, just as he was falling asleep, his friend's head slowly disappearing beneath the verge of the crag.

"Nick started down ter the ledge, anyhow," he argued.

Did he dream it, or was it true, that when Nick came back he seemed at first strangely agitated?

All at once Barney exclaimed aloud,--

"This hyar air a powerful cur'ous thing 'bout'n that thar piece what war tored out'n my coat!"

"What's curious about it?" asked Stebbins quickly.

Jim Dow took his pipe from his mouth, and looked sharply at the boy.

Barney struggled for a moment with a strong temptation. Then a n.o.bler impulse a.s.serted itself. He would not even attempt to s.h.i.+eld himself behind the friend who had done him so grievous an injury.

He _knew_ nothing positively; he must not put his suspicions and his vague, half-sleeping impressions into words, and thus possibly criminate Nick.

He himself felt certain now how the matter really stood,--that Nick had no connection whatever with the robbery, but having accidentally stumbled upon the stolen goods, he had become panic-stricken, had lied about it, and finally had saved himself at the expense of an innocent friend.

Still, Barney had no _proof_ of this, and he felt he would rather suffer unjustly himself than unjustly throw blame on another.

"Nothin', nothin'," he said absently. "I war jes' a-studyin' 'bout'n it all."