CHAPTER XXIV. TWO COLUMNS OF SMOKE.
Through the deep woods a boyish figure was creeping. It was Hiram,footsore, sick and despondent. It was the second day since he had leftthe scene of the Boy Scouts' misfortune. Behind him lay the lake. Andthat was about all he knew definitely of his situation.
For the last hour of his slow progress over the cruelly rough ground, thelad's heart had almost failed him. But he had kept pluckily on. At last,though, he was compelled, from sheer exhaustion, to sink down under a bighickory tree. He was lost, hopelessly lost in the midst of the Adirondackwilds.
Few men or boys who have ever been in a similar fix will not realize theextreme danger of Hiram's position. There are still vast tracks in thesemountains untrodden, except, perchance, at long intervals, by the foot ofman. The predicament of one who misses his way in their lonely stretchesis serious indeed. Hiram was a nervous, sensitive boy, moreover, and, asthe dark shadows of late afternoon began to steal through the woods, hefelt a sense of keen fear, and alarm. He even thought he could make outthe forms of savage beasts prowling about him.
At last the boy determined, by a brave effort, to make the best of it. Heate a meal of bread and salt meat from his haversack and washed it downwith water from his canteen. Then he set himself to thinking about a wayout of his position.
But as is often the case with those hopelessly lost in the wilderness,his brain refused to work coherently. A sort of panic had clutched him.To his excited, overwrought imagination it appeared that it was his fate,his destiny to die alone in these great, silent woods, stretching, forall he knew, to infinity on every side of him.
"I must brace up and do something," thought Hiram desperately; "maybe Ihaven't wandered as far as I think. Perhaps a signal fire might be seenby somebody. I'll try it, anyhow."
The thought of doing something cheered him mightily. The task ofgathering wood and bark to make his fire also helped to keep his mind offhis predicament.
The young Scout built his fire on the summit of the highest bit of groundhe could find. It was a bare hillock, rocky and bleak, rising amid thetrees.
The fire Hiram constructed was, properly speaking, composed of two pilesof sticks and dry leaves and bark. Close at hand he piled a big armful ofextra fuel to keep it going. For he had determined to watch by the firesall night, if necessary. It was, he felt, his last hope.
The fires arranged to his satisfaction, the boy set a match to each pilein turn. From the midst of the forest two columns of smoke ascended. Theafternoon was still. Not a breath of wind ruffled a leaf. In the calm airthe columns of smoke shot up straight. Hiram piled green leaves on hisblazing heaps and the smoke grew thicker.
The message the two smoke columns spelled out, in Scout talk, was this:
"I am lost, help!"
Hiram knew if there were any Scouts within seeing distance of the twosmoke columns, that he would be saved. If not--but he did not dare todwell on that thought.
The late afternoon deepened into twilight, and still Hiram sat on,feeding his fires, although the flames of hope in his heart had died outinto gray ashes of despair. As the darkness thickened and a gloom spreadthrough the woods, his fears and nervousness increased. It is one thingto have a companion in the woods and the surety of a camp fire andcomfort at night, and quite another pair of shoes to be lost in theimpenetrable forest. Anybody who has experienced the dilemma canappreciate something of poor Hiram's state of mind.
It grew almost dark. The two fires glowed in the twilight like two redeyes.
All at once Hiram almost uttered a shout of alarm. Then he grew still,his heart beating till it shook his frame. Somewhere, close to him, atwig had cracked. He was certain, too, that he had seen a dark form dodgebehind a tree.
"Who's there," he cried shrilly.
As if in reply, from behind the surrounding trees, a dozen dark formssuddenly emerged and started toward him. Half beside himself with alarm,Hiram, his mind full of visions of moonshiners, Indians and desperadoes,leaped to his feet and started to run for his life.
But he had not gone a dozen steps before he stumbled and fell. As he didso his head struck a rock and the blow stunned him.
The men who had emerged with such suddenness from behind the treeshastened up.
"We needn't have feared a trap," said one; "it was a genuine Scoutsignal. I'm glad my boys taught them to me or we might have been too lateto save this boy."
The speaker was the same man who had recognized Rob Blake, and whose twosons were members of the Curlew Patrol. He picked Hiram up.
"Lost and half scared to death," he said tenderly; "and just to thinkthat we crept up on him like a bunch of prowling Indians."
"Well, we've got to look out for traps, you know," put in the leader, thegray-moustached man; "those two smoke columns that you knew the meaningof might have been a trick to decoy us. I'm glad we approachedstealthily, but I'm sorry we scared this poor kid so badly."
"Oh, he'll be all right directly," was the easy reply. "Sam, you and Jimget a kettle boiling and make coffee. We'll camp here to-night," saidRob's friend.
He set Hiram down at the root of a big tree just as the lad opened hiseyes and gazed with astonishment on the group of stalwart, kind-eyed mengathered in wonderment about him.
* * * * * * * *
It was moonlight, and almost midnight, before Tubby deemed it safe toreconnoitre the vicinity of the cave mouth. Followed by Jumbo, who wasquaking with fear, but accompanied the stout youth in preference to beingleft alone, Tubby cautiously made his way through the undergrowth. A spotof bright light above showed him the location of the camp fire of Hunt'sgang. It was hardly likely that they would be patroling the entrance tothe cave, effectually blocked as it was. But Tubby took no chances. Withthe skill and silence of an Indian he wormed his way along.
He had almost reached the open space where they had chopped down thebrush when, without an instant's warning, the figure of Stonington Huntstrode into view.
At the same unlucky instant Jumbo, lumbering along quite silently,stubbed his toe against an out-cropping rock. He fell headlong with acrash.
"Gollygumptions! I'm killed dead!" he yelled at the top of his lungs,utterly regardless of consequences.
Tubby turned and was about to dodge back into the shelter of the densegrowth when Hunt espied him. With an angry oath he sprang at him,pointing a pistol. But Tubby, in a flash, changed his tacticssurprisingly. Converting himself into a human battering ram, he loweredhis head and rushed full tilt at Hunt.
Completely taken by surprise by Tubby's onslaught, Hunt stopped andhesitated. The fat boy, at the same instant, rushed between the man'slegs, seizing them in a firm grip as he did so. The unexpected assaultresulted in hurling Hunt violently forward. He fell sprawling in a heap.At the same instant his pistol was discharged in the air.
As the report rang out from close at hand half a dozen figures spranginto being. They were those of his followers who had been behind him atsome distance on this nocturnal visit of inspection.
Dale and Bumpus instantly recognized Tubby.
"That's the fat kid who wrecked our sloop!" cried Dale.
"A hundred dollars to the one that gets him!" shouted Hunt from theground where he still lay.
"How under the sun did he escape?" shouted Freeman Hunt, taking up thechorus of cries and exclamations.
But before Dale, agile as he was, could reach him, Tubby had dartednimbly off. He was heading for the bushes. In another instant he wouldhave reached them but a second figure suddenly dodged into the moonlightand blocked his way. It was Black Bart. He outspread his long arms tocatch the hunted youth.
The next instant he had shared Hunt's fate. Tubby, for the second timethat night, executed his skillful tackle. Black Bart, with a string ofbad words accompanying his fall, was upset without ceremony. But Dale wasclose on Tubby's nimble heels. As the lad dodged from his fallen foe Dalereached out, and his big hand grabbed t
he fleeing lad's collar. Tubbygave a dive and a twist but he could not get away.
"Good boy, Dale. Hold him!" came Freeman Hunt's voice.
Suddenly another figure appeared. The newcomer sprang out of the shadowsbehind them. With one blow this personage knocked Dale sprawling besideBlack Bart, and the next instant, as Pete Bumpus essayed to take part inthe fray, he was sent to join the other two.
Tubby felt himself snatched up and carried swiftly off into the darknessof the friendly brush.
"Gollygumptions!" chuckled Jumbo, for it was he, as he ran, "but it shuahdid feel good to swat dem no-good trash."
"Hullo, Jumbo, is that you?" asked Tubby as he heard; "I'll forgive youfor almost getting us captured."
"Tank you, Marse Hopkins," rejoined Jumbo gravely; "but we bes' keep ourwords till we get furder away. Hark!"
Behind them they could hear angry voices, and shouts and trampling in thebrush.
The strong-muscled black, bent almost double, ran swiftly with his burdenfor some distance further. Then he set Tubby down and rested, breathingheavily. The sounds of the chase came from afar to them, much fainternow.
"Ha! ha!" chortled Jumbo; "dey look an' look, but dey no find us."
"That's all right, too, Jumbo," said Tubby, sitting down on a decayedlog; "but it doesn't help to get the major and the rest out of that holein the ground."
"Maybe Marse Hiram got frough," suggested Jumbo hopefully.
"I hope so, I'm sure," said Tubby with a mournful intonation; "it looksnow as if that was our only chance of saving them.
"Where are we?" added Tubby, suddenly gazing about him. There wassomething familiar about the scenery. Especially about a tall,cone-shaped rock that loomed up close at hand.
"That's Ruby Glow!" he exclaimed the next instant.
"And gollygumptions, ef dere ain't a spook or suthin' on top of it,"cried Jumbo.
He pointed to a dark figure standing upright in the white moonlight thatflooded the isolated mass of rock.