Tom Slade on the River

  CHAPTER VI THE MOUNTAIN SHELTER

  For a few moments they stared at the wreck and said nothing.

  "Maybe it was Kinney," suggested Doc, at last. "Do you remember aboutKinney?"

  "Come on," urged Tom.

  Half reluctantly the others followed him, glancing back now and againtill the tattered mass became a shadowy speck and faded away in thedarkness.

  "He started from somewhere above Albany," said Doc, "and he was neverheard of again. I often heard my father speak about it and I read aboutit 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 engineat night," said Doc, "and that's what made people think he had got pastthat point--but that's all they ever knew. Some thought he must have gonedown in the river."

  "How long ago was it?" Garry asked.

  Tom plodded on silently. It was well known of Tom that he could not thinkof 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'sin," said Garry, "but anything less than that would be too short a timefor 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 monthor 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 mightas 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 thatfor ten years more. There's nothing more to rot."

  "Well," said Garry, "it looks to my keen scout eye as if that wreck hadbeen 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 ahurry---- Hey, Tomasso?" teased Doc.

  "Maybe they got here at the same time but the man lived for a while," Tomcondescended 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. "Ithad 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 aroundthere?" 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 allworm-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 pushedalong 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," saidDoc 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 thereon that lonely mountain after the terrible accident which had brought himthere lent a new gruesomeness to their discoveries. And who but Tom Sladewould have been able to keep an open mind and to see so clearly by theaid of trifling signs as to separate the two apparent catastrophes andsee them as independent occurrences?

  "Tomasso, you're the real scout," said Doc. "The rest of us are onlyimitations."

  Tom said nothing. He was used to this kind of talk and was about as proofagainst such praise as a battleship is against a popgun. And just now hewas thinking of other things. Yet if he could have looked into the futureand seen there the extraordinary explanation of his discovery and knownthe strange adventures it would lead to, he might have paused, even onthat all but hopeless errand of rescue, and looked again at thosepathetic remains. But those things were to be reserved for anothersummer.

  "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 fartheron 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 theunderbrush told of some frightened wood creature. The brook rippledsoftly as before. There was no other sound, and they waited. Then, fromsomewhere far off came the faint answering of a human voice. It wouldnever have been distinguishable save in that deathlike stillness and eventhere it sounded as if it might have come from another world. It seemedto 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 calling _help_," said Garry.

  "I can go there now," said Tom. "The brook probably winds around thatway, but we can cut across and get there quicker. We'll chop our waythrough here. Let him rest his lungs now--I can go right for a ways. Igot 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 shirttorn, his thick shock of hair down over his forehead--no more elated bytriumph than he would have been discouraged by defeat, and as thebrighter, more vivacious and attractive boy looked at him he was seizedwith a little twinge of remorse that he had made game of Tom's clumsyspeech and sober ways.

  "Got to admit you were wrong _how_--for goodness' sake?" he said, almostangrily. "Didn't you bring us here? Didn't you bring us all the way fromTemple Camp to where we could hear that voice calling for help? Didn'tyou?"

  "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 wasdying?" demanded Doc. "There's a whole lot of good scouts, believe _me_,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 beenused for a long time--see those spider webs across it? Lend me your axe,will you, mine is all dulled."

  A hand-to-hand combat with more tangled underbrush, which they tore andchopped away, brought them to comparatively open land which must havebeen very high for they were surprised to see, far below, severaltwinkling specks of light which they thought to be at Temple Camp. It wasthe first open view they had had.

  They called again, and again the voice answered, clearly audible now,crying, "Help help!" and something more which the boys could notunderstand. They called, telling the speaker not to come in search ofthem, that they would come to him, and to answer them for guidance whenthey called.

  They plunged into more thicket, tearing it aside with a will, sometimesgoing astray, then pausing to listen for the guiding voice, and pushingon again through the labyrinth.

  After a little they fell into a path and then could hear the brookrushing over stones not far distant, and knew that it must verge to theeast as Tom had said and that the path did lead to it. It would have beena long journey following the stream.

  Soon a greater intercourse of speech was possible and they calledcheerily that they
were scouts and for the waiter to cheer up for theywould soon be with him.

  Presently, along the path they could hear the sound of footsteps. Tom,who was leading the way, raised his lantern and just beyond the radius ofits flickering light they could see a dark figure hurrying toward them;then a face, greatly distraught in the moonlight, and Tom stopped,bewildered. As the stranger grasped his arm he held the light close tothe haggard, wild-eyed face.

  "Hello," he said, "I--I guess I know you. Let go--what's the matter?Weren't you at Temple Camp last summer?"

  The stranger, a young fellow of perhaps eighteen, shook his head.

  "With one of the troops from----?"

  "No," said the young man.

  "Hmn," said Tom, still holding the lantern up; "I thought----Don't youfellows remember him?"

  Connie shook his head; Garry also.

  "Never saw him in my life," said Doc.

  "Hmn," said Tom. "Maybe I----just for a minute I thought----I guess youfellows are right."

  The stranger was dressed in the regulation camping outfit--the kind ofcostume usually seen on dummies in the windows of sporting goods storesin the spring, with a spick and span tent in the background, a modellunch basket near by and a canoe crowded in. His nobby outfit was verymuch the worse for wear, however, and he looked about as fresh as theimmaculate Phoebe Snow would look after a _real_ railroad journey.

  "Maybe I can be rescued now," he said imploringly, clinging to Tom. "Isaw the lights way down there. There was only one till tonight andtonight I counted seven--little bits of ones. I tried to get to them, butI got lost. You can't go to them. It looks as if you can, but you can't.They're just as far away, no matter how far you go--they get farther andfarther. Nobody can ever get away from here. Are you afraid of deadpeople?"

  "No," said Doc. "We're scouts. Is----"

  "If a person looks very different, then he's dead, isn't he?"

  "Come on," said Doc. "We'll see."

  "We'll never get off this hill; I've tried every way----"

  "Oh, yes, we will," spoke up Garry, putting his arm over the boy'sshoulder and urging him along.

  They could see that he was hardly rational, and Garry, better than any ofthe others, knew how to handle him.

  "It's terrible without a light," he said; "I spilled all the oil--I'mglad you've got a light."

  "What's your name?" Garry asked.

  "Jeffrey Waring--come on, I'll show you the place." He shuddered as hespoke.

  Once more Tom held his lantern up to the white, distracted face.

  "_He_ was never at camp," laughed Doc.

  "Hmn," said Tom, apparently but half convinced.

  A few steps brought them to a little clearing where stood a rough shack.Outside it, fastened against a tree, was a vegetable crate with barsnailed across it--the silent evidence of departed pets. Several fishingrods lay against a tree. Close by was a makeshift fireplace. On a roughbunk inside the shack lay a man, no longer young, with iron gray hair.His eyes were open and staring and one seemed larger than the other. Docfelt his pulse and found that he was living.

  "He fell on the rocks and hurt his arm--I think it's broken," saidJeffrey. "It bled and I bandaged it."

  Doc raised the bandaged arm and it fell heavily. Removing the bandagecarefully he saw that the cut itself was not dangerous, but fromfirst-aid studies he thought the man was suffering from an apoplecticstroke or something of that nature. He wondered if the injury to the armhad not been incidental to the man's seizure and sudden fall. Peoplesometimes lingered in an unconscious condition for days, he knew. It washardly a case for first-aid, but it was certainly a case for skill andresource, for whatever happened the patient, dead or living, would haveto be taken away from this mountain camp.

  With Garry's help, he raised the victim into a recumbent posture, pilingeverything available under the head while Connie hurried back and forthto the brook, bringing wet applications for the head and neck.

  There was no sign of returning consciousness and the question was how toget the patient away down to Temple Camp where medical aid might be had,and where any contingency might be best handled.

  The four boys, greatly hampered in their discussion by Jeffrey, whoselong vigil had brought him to the verge of collapse, decided that itwould be quite useless to signal for help, since it would mean anotherexpedition with most of the difficulties of their own, even if attemptedafter daybreak.

  So they decided to wait for dawn, which happily would come soon, and withthe first sign of it to send a smudge signal that they were coming and tohave a doctor at camp. They believed that in the daylight they couldcarry the patient back over the same path which they had so laboriouslyopened and though delay was irksome this plan seemed the only feasibleone to follow.

  Despite their weariness none could sleep, so they kindled a little fireand sat about it chatting while they counted time, impatiently waitingfor the first streak of daylight.

  It was then that they learned from the overwrought boy something of hishistory, but they got it piecemeal and had to patch together as best theycould his rather disjointed talk.

  "Is he your father?" Doc asked.

  "No, he's my uncle," said Jeffrey. "He isn't a real governor; I only callhim that. He's eccentric--know what that is? If we hadn't come troutfishing it would have been all right. I could have sent my pigeons fromthe boat--I've got a regular coop there--it cost thirty dollars."

  "But you like the stalking, don't you?" Connie asked.

  "Yes, but I can't be quiet enough--I can't sneak up to them. You have tobe quiet and stealthy when you stalk."

  They made out that Mr. Waring was something of a sportsman and waswealthy and eccentric.

  "We live in a big house in Vale Centre," Jeffrey told them, "and we havefountains and I have twenty-seven pigeons and two dogs--and I can haveanything I want except an automobile. I can't have an automobile becauseI'm nervous."

  "You don't mean you live near Edgevale Village, down the Hudson?" Garryasked in surprise. "I live about two miles from the Centre myself."

  "We live in a house that cost thousands and thousands of dollars, but Ilike our boat best. If there's a war we're going to give it to thegovernment, but if there isn't any war it's going to be mine some day."

  It appeared that Jeffrey and his uncle lived alone, save for theservants, and had cruised up the Hudson to Catskill Landing in their boatfor the trout fishing of which the old gentleman was fond. How the pairhad happened to penetrate to this isolated spot was not quite clear, butthe boys gathered that it had been a favorite haunt of Mr. Waring'syouthful days.

  "He told me he'd bring me and show me," said Jeffrey, "and that we'd stayhere and catch fish and I could send my pigeons back to James--he's ourchauffeur--and I'd get better so's I could remember things better. Do youthink you get better living in the woods?"

  "Surest thing you know," said Garry.

  The picture of the kindly old gentleman, bringing his none too robustnephew to this lonely spot, which lingered in his memory perhaps as thescene of woodland sports of his own boyhood, touched the four boys andseemed to bring them in closer sympathy with the figure that lay proneand motionless within the little shack.

  "I can have anything I want," Jeffrey told them again. "Spotty cost fiftydollars, but he died. That's because I was sick and my brain didn't workgood. My other carrier cost thirty dollars and I sent him to James totell him the governor was hurt."

  The scouts told him the fate of the pigeon and of how they had receivedthe message.

  "But we'll never get away from here," Jeffrey said hopelessly. "We'llnever find our way back."

  With the first light of dawn Garry increased the dying blaze and sent thesmudge signal. Piling damp leaves on the fire he caused a straight thincolumn of thick smoke to rise high into the air and by inverting thedeserted pigeon coop over this, and removing and replacing it as theMorse code required, he imprinted against the vast gray dawn the words

  COMING HAVE
DOCTOR

  They knew well enough that some one in the camp would keep sleeplessvigil, watching for just such a message. Three times the words werespelled out in smoke to make sure that they would be caught andunderstood.

  To Jeffrey, whose only resource had been his pet pigeon and who had beenunnerved by his inability to find his way from the hill, the sending ofthis message and the quiet orderly preparations for departure whichfollowed were the cause of gaping amazement. He clung to Garry, as theothers got his uncle onto the stretcher, and walked along at his side,plying him with excited questions. Sometimes it was necessary for him totake a corner while one of the scouts went ahead to open a way and thenhis panic was pitiable.

  It did not seem at all peculiar to the others that he should single outGarry and cling to him, for everybody fell for Garry almost at firstsight. What they did notice was that he appeared to shun Tom, who,indeed, was entitled to all his gratitude and was the hero of theoccasion if anyone was.

  But then he was a queer boy anyway, and thoroughly shaken up by hisexperience.

  As for Garry, the sudden hit which he had apparently made quite amusedhim.

  "You should worry," he said, laughingly to Tom.

  And Tom shrugged his shoulders and smiled.