CHAPTER XV.
THE HUT IN THE WOODS.
Following his first flush of surprise at the strange reappearance andvanishment of the mysterious man, Ralph was conscious of a feelingclosely akin to hot indignation.
“I’m going to catch him,” thought the lad fiercely. “What does he meanby going on like this? What’s he following us for and spying on us? I’dlike to find out what sort of tricks he is up to, and I’m going to.”
So saying he set off through the woods at a good pace, following asnearly as he could the direction the man had taken. But it soon dawnedon him that he had undertaken an almost hopeless task. Judging fromthe man’s appearance, he had been a denizen of the woods for a longperiod, although just how he lived was not apparent.
At any rate, before he had gone far Ralph was compelled to admit thatthere did not appear to be much chance of his catching up with theman. No sign of him was visible, and no crackling of brush or sound offootsteps betrayed in what direction he had gone.
“Guess I’ll have to give it up,” mused Ralph disgustedly. “At any rateI’m sure of one thing now, I’ve got nothing to fear from this strangecustomer, whatever may be his object in hanging about us like this. Hemust have followed us and----”
Ralph paused abruptly. He had last seen the man on the other side ofthe _brulee_. It was hardly likely that he could have passed throughsuch a tract of country. Yet, on the other hand, the boy could notdoubt that the man he had seen on the rock overlooking their camp andthe wild figure of the valley were one and the same. There was a deepmystery about it all. One too deep for the boy to fathom, for he brokeoff his meditations with a sigh.
“It’s no use keeping up the chase to-day,” he declared to himself withemphasis, “but if that fellow keeps on dodging our tracks he’s going tohear from me in no uncertain fashion.”
He rose from the stump on which he had sat down to think things overand resumed his search for the stray ponies. As he moved along hemunched his bread and chocolate, taking his lunch “on the hoof,” so tospeak.
Before long he struck the trail of the missing ponies once more. Thistime it soon led him into a swampy country and he followed it rapidly.Along the floor of the valley he went till suddenly, on coming arounda pile of great rocks, hurled from the summit of the ridge in someprehistoric convulsion, he saw something that gave him a big surprise.In a little clearing stood a ruinous log cabin, and tethered outsideit was one of the missing ponies!
Of the other there was no trace. All at once Ralph heard a scramblingand clambering among the rocks above him on the steep hillside. Heglanced quickly and just in time to see the mysterious man remounted onthe other pony, rapidly urging it away from the hut.
“Stop thief!” yelled Ralph, carried away by excitement. “Come backhere!”
“Stop or I’ll shoot!” he shouted the next instant throbbing withindignation.
He had no intention of hitting the fugitive, but he did mean tofrighten him into stopping if he could. For an instant the form of thestolen pony and its rider became visible among the trees through whichthe afternoon sun was sending down oblique shafts of light.
Ralph raised his rifle, sighted it to carry a bullet well above thefugitive’s head and fired.
“The next will come closer,” he warned; but the next minute all otherthoughts were rushed abruptly out of his mind when a bullet whizzed byhis head close enough to fan his ear. The ping-g-g-g-g-g-g of the ballas it sped by, ruffling his hair, did not appeal to Ralph. Evidentlythe fugitive was a dead shot and was not inclined to be pursued if hecould avoid it by putting his tracker out of the way.
“Jove!” exclaimed Ralph as he slipped behind a tree trunk, “that bulletwas a message meant for me, all right. I don’t care to be at home tosuch callers.”
He listened an instant and then came the sound of the pony’s hoofsmaking off at a good pace through the trackless forest.
“He’s escaped me again,” exclaimed Ralph angrily. “Confound him, he’sworse than a mystery now. I’ll bet that it was he who stampeded theponies last night and now he turns out to be a miserable horse thief.Wonder if I can’t get a clew to him at that hut yonder? At any ratethere’s Baldy tied up and safe and sound as ever. I suppose I ought tothank our mysterious friend for leaving him behind.”
The boy slipped from behind his tree trunk and made his way toward thehut. Baldy whinnied as the boy approached. It was plain that the ponywas glad to see him.
“Good Baldy! Good old pony,” exclaimed Ralph, slapping the animal’sthigh and then giving him some bread. “I wish you could talk, oldfellow, and then maybe you could throw some light on what in creationall this means anyhow.”
Ralph then looked all about him with much curiosity. The hut wasmoss-grown and moldering into decay. Judged from its exterior it hadnot been lived in for many years. At the rear of it a spring bubbledinto a rusty iron pot beside which lay a rust-eaten dipper.
The door of the shack--windows it had none--hung on one crazy hingemade of raw-hide.
“Guess I’ll take a look inside,” said Ralph, feeling a very livelycuriosity, “but from general appearances I don’t think our mysteriousfriend and horse thief actually lives here. Looks to me more as if heused it as a temporary camping place. Yet he could hardly have foundhis way here unless he previously knew of its existence.”
Cautiously, and with his rifle ready for a surprise, for he did notknow what he might encounter next, Ralph entered the hut. It smelledmoldy and stuffy, and in the dim light he could not at first see verymuch of its interior.
Bit by bit the details began to grow out of the gloom. In the center ofthe shack was a rough board table and on it stood some rusted platesand cups. In a corner hung some old garments and a few moldering furs,skins of raccoons and minks. A rusty stove stood in another corner, oneleg missing and sagging drunkenly.
By the door Ralph now noticed a yellow bit of paper tacked up, withsome writing on it. He came closer to read it and made out in fadedcharacters:
“Gone on April 16, 1888, Jess Boody, Trapper.”
This inscription made one thing plain to Ralph. The hut had once beenoccupied by one of those solitaries of the wilds whose trap lines aresometimes forty or fifty miles long. This Jess Boody had been sucha man and had either “made his pile,” or getting disgusted with thelocation as a source for peltries had, as he tersely put it, “gone on.”
There were no traces of more recent occupancy of the hut, and Ralph wascompelled to come back to his first theory; the mysterious man had usedthe place simply as a convenient shelter from time to time. Some ashesin the stove, that looked fairly fresh, appeared to lend color to thisbelief. Probably the horse thief had spent the night there.
“Well, if this hasn’t the makings of a first-class mystery about it,”gasped Ralph, pushing back his sombrero and running one hand throughhis curly hair.
As there seemed to be no use in making any further investigation ofthe tumble-down shanty, Ralph untied the pony left behind by the horsethief, and mounting it rode back toward camp in a thoughtful mood. Hewas deeply puzzled, and small wonder, by the events of the day.
He reached camp that evening shortly before dusk, and found thatMountain Jim had returned with the ponies that he had been after andwhich he had found in a glade across another ridge. The professor,and Jimmie, too, had had a successful day, having gathered in almosta sackful of what the professor called “specimens,” and Mountain Jim“rocks.” But of Harry Ware and Percy Simmons there was no sign.