The Blind Man's Eyes

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE MAN HUNT

  The rolling, ravine-gullied land where Harriet had left Eaton waswooded thickly with oaks, maples and ash; the ground between thesetrees was clear of undergrowth upon the higher parts of the land, butits lower stretches and the ravines themselves were shrouded withclosely growing bushes rising higher than a man's waist, and, wherethey grew rankest, higher than a man's head. In summer, when trees andbushes were covered with leaves, this underbrush offered cover where aman could conceal himself perfectly; now, in the early spring beforethe trees had even budded, that man would be visible for some distanceby day and nearly as clearly visible by night if the headlights of themotor-cars chanced to shine into the woods.

  Eaton, fully realizing this chance as he left Harriet, had plungedthrough the bushes to conceal himself in the ravine. The glare fromthe burning bridge lighted the ravine for only a little way; Eaton hadgained the bottom of the ravine beyond the point where this light wouldhave made him visible and had made the best speed he could along itaway from the lights and voices on the road. This speed was not verygreat; his stockinged feet sank to their ankles in the soft mud of theravine; and when, realizing that he was leaving a trace easily followedeven by lantern-light, he clambered to the steep side and tried totravel along its slope, he found his progress slower still. In thedarkness he crashed sometimes full against the tree-trunks; busheswhich he could not see seized and held him, ripping and tearing at hisclothes; invisible, fallen saplings tripped him, and he stepped intounseen holes which threw him headlong, so that twice he rolled clear tothe bottom of the ravine with fierce, hot pains which nearly deprivedhim of his senses shooting through his wounded shoulder.

  When he had made, as he thought, fully three quarters of a mile in thisway and must be, allowing for the winding of the ravine, at least halfa mile from his pursuers, he climbed to the brink of the bank andlooked back. He was not, as he had thought, half a mile from the road;he was not a quarter of a mile; he could still see plainly the lightsof the three motor-cars upon the road and men moving in the flare ofthese lights. He was certain that he had recognized the figure ofAvery among these men. Pursuit of him, however, appeared to have beenchecked for the moment; he heard neither voices nor any movement in thewoods. Eaton, panting, threw himself down to recover breath andstrength to think.

  There was no question in Eaton's mind what his fate would be if hesurrendered to, or was captured by, his pursuers. What he had seen inSantoine's study an hour before was so unbelievable, so completelyundemonstrable unless he himself could prove his story that he feltthat he would receive no credence. Blatchford, who had seen it in thelight in the study, was dead; Santoine, who would have seen it if hehad had eyes, was blind. Eaton, still almost stunned and yet wildlyexcited by that sight, felt only, in the mad confusion of his senses,the futility of telling what he had seen unless he were in a positionto prove it. Those opposed to him would put his statement aside withthe mere answer that he was lying; the most charitably inclined wouldthink only that what he had been through had driven him insane.

  Besides, Eaton was not at all sure that even if he had attempted totell what he had seen he would be allowed to tell it, or, if heattempted to surrender to the men now pursuing him, he would be allowedto surrender. Donald Avery was clearly in command of those men and wasdirecting the pursuit; in Avery, Eaton had recognized an instinctiveenemy from the first; and now, since the polo game, he sensed vaguelyin Avery something more than that. What Avery's exact position was inregard to himself Eaton was not at all sure; but of Avery's activehostility he had received full evidence; and he knew now--though how heknew it was not plain even to himself--that Avery would not allow himto surrender but that, if he tried to give himself up, the men underAvery's orders would shoot him down.

  As Eaton watched, the motor, which from its position on the road heknew must be Harriet's, backed out from the others and went away. Theother motors immediately afterward were turned and followed it. ButEaton could see that they left behind them a man standing armed near tothe bridge, and that other men, also armed, passed through the light asthey scrambled across the ravine and gained the road on its oppositeside. The motors, too, stopped at intervals and then went on; heunderstood that they were posting men to watch the road. He traced themotor headlights a long way through the dark; one stopped, the otherwent on. He remembered vaguely a house near the place where the car hewatched had stopped, and understanding that where there was a housethere was a telephone, he knew that the alarm must be given still morewidely now; men on all sides of him must be turning out to watch theroads. He knew they did turn out like that when the occasion demanded.

  These waste places bordering upon the lake to north and south ofChicago, and within easy car-ride of the great city, had been the sceneof many such man-hunts. Hobos, gypsies, broken men thrown off by theseething city, wandered through them and camped there; startling crimestook place sometimes in these tiny wildernesses; fugitives from thecity police took refuge there and were hunted down by the local police,by armed details of the city police, by soldiers from Fort Sheridan.These fugitives might much better have stayed in the concealment of thehuman jungle of the city; these rolling, wooded, sandy vacant landswhich seemed to offer refuge, in reality betrayed only into certaincapture. The local police had learned the method of hunting, they hadlearned to watch the roads and railways to prevent escape.

  Eaton understood, therefore, that his own possibility of escape wasvery small, even if escape had been his only object; but Eaton'sproblem was not one of escape--it was to find those he pursued and makecertain that they were captured at the same time he was; and, as hecrouched panting on the damp earth, he was thinking only of that.

  The man at the bridge--Dibley--had told enough to let Eaton know thatthose whom Eaton pursued were no longer in the machine he had followedwith Harriet. As Eaton had rushed out of Santoine's study after thetwo that he had fought there, he had seen that one of these men wassupporting and helping the other; he had gained on them because ofthat. Then other men had appeared suddenly, to give their help, and hehad no longer been able to gain; but he had been close enough to seethat the one they dragged along and helped into the car was that enemywhose presence in the study had so amazed him. Mad exultation hadseized Eaton to know that he had seriously wounded his adversary. Heknew now that the man could not have got out of the car by himself--hewas too badly wounded for that; he had been taken out of the car, andthe other men who were missing had him in charge. The three men whohad gone on in the machine had done so for their own escape, but withthe added object of misleading the pursuit; the water they had got atDibley's had been to wash the blood from the car.

  And now, as Eaton recalled and realized all this, he knew where theothers had left the machine. Vaguely, during the pursuit, he hadsensed that Harriet was swinging their motor-car in a great circle,first to the north, then west, then to the south. Two or three milesback upon the road, before they had made their turn to the south, Eatonhad lost for a few moments the track of the car they had beenfollowing. He had picked it up again at once and before he could speakof it to Harriet; but now he knew that at that point the car they werefollowing had left the road, turning off onto the turf at the side andcoming back onto the road a hundred yards beyond.

  This place must be nearly due north of him. The road where he had leftHarriet ran north and south; to go north he must parallel this road,but it was dangerous to move too near to it because it was guarded.The sky was covered with clouds hiding the stars; the night in thewoods was intensely black except where it was lighted by the fire atthe bridge. To the opposite side, a faint gray glow against theclouds, which could not be the dawn but must be the reflection of theelectric lights along the public pike which followed the shore of thelake, gave Eaton inspiration. If he kept this grayness of the cloudsalways upon his right, he would be going north.

  The wound in Eaton's shoulder still welled blood each time he moved; he
tore strips from the front of his shirt, knotted them together andbound his useless left arm tightly to his side. He felt in thedarkness to be sure that there was a fresh clip of cartridges in hisautomatic pistol; then he started forward.

  For the first time now he comprehended the almost impossibility oftraveling in the woods on a dark night. To try to walk swiftly was tobe checked after only two or three steps by sharp collision with sometree-trunk which he could not see before he felt it, or brought to afull stop by clumps of tangled, thorny bushes which enmeshed him, or tobe tripped or thrown by some inequality of the ground. When he wentround any of these obstacles he lost his sense of direction and wastedminutes before he could find again the dim light against the easternsky which gave him the compass-points.

  As he struggled forward, impatient at these delays, he came severaltimes upon narrow, unguarded roads and crossed them; at other times thelittle wilderness which protected him changed suddenly to a well-keptlawn where some great house with its garages and out-buildings loomedahead, and afraid to cross these open places, he was obliged to retracehis steps and find a way round. The distance from the bridge to theplace where the three men he was following had got out of their motor,he had thought to be about two miles; but when he had been travelingmore than an hour, he had not yet reached it. Then, suddenly he cameupon the road for which he was looking; somewhere to the east along itwas the place he sought. He crouched as near to the road as he daredand where he could look up and down it. This being a main road, wasguarded. A motor-car with armed men in it passed him, and presentlyrepassed, evidently patroling the road; its lights showed him a manwith a gun standing at the first bend of the road to the east. Eatondrew further back and moved parallel to the road but far enough awayfrom it to be hidden. A quarter of a mile further he found a secondman. The motor-car, evidently, was patroling only to this point;another car was on duty beyond this. As Eaton halted, this second carapproached, and was halted, backed and turned.

  Its headlights, as it turned, swept through the woods and revealedEaton. The man standing in the road cried out the alarm and fired atEaton point blank; he fired a second and third time. Eaton fled madlyback into the shadow; as he did so, he heard the men crying to oneanother and leaping from the car and following him. He found lowground less thickly wooded, and plunged along it. It was not difficultto avoid the men in the blackness of the woods; he made a wide circuitand came back again to the road further on. He could still hear for atime the sounds of the hunt on the turf. Apparently he had not yetreached the right spot; he retreated to the woods, went further alongand came back to the road, lying flat upon his face again and waitingtill some other car in passing should give him light to see.

  Eaton, weak and dizzy from his wounds and confused by darkness and hisstruggle through the woods, had no exact idea how long it had taken himto get to this place; but he knew that it could have been hardly lessthan two hours since he had left Harriet. The men he was following,therefore, had that much start of him, and this made him wild withimpatience but did not discourage him. His own wounds, Eatonunderstood, made his escape practically impossible, because any one whosaw him would at once challenge and detain him; and the other man wasstill more seriously wounded. It was not his escape that Eaton feared;it was concealment of him. The man had been taken from the car becausehis condition was so serious that there was no hope of hiding it; Eatonthought he must be dead. He expected to find the body concealed underdead leaves, hurriedly hidden.

  The night had cleared a little; to the north, Eaton could see stars.Suddenly the road and the leafless bushes at its sides flashed out inthe bright light of a motor-car passing. Eaton strained forward. Hehad found the place; there was no doubt a car had turned off the roadsome time before and stopped there. The passing of many cars had sotracked the road that none of the men in the motors seemed to havenoticed anything of significance there; but Eaton saw plainly in thesoft ground at the edge of the woods the footmarks of two men walkingone behind the other. When the car had passed, he crept forward in thedark and I fingered the distinct heel and toe marks in the soft soil.For a little distance he could follow them by feeling; then as they ledhim into the edge of the woods the ground grew harder and he could nolonger follow them in that way.

  It was plain to him what had occurred; two men had got out of the carhere and had lifted out and carried away a third. He knelt where hecould feel the last footsteps he could detect and looked around. Thegray of the electric lights to the east seemed growing, spreading;against this lightness in the sky he could see plainly the branches ofthe trees; he recognized then that the grayness was the coming of thedawn. It would be only a few minutes before he could see plainlyenough to follow the tracks. He drew aside into the deeper cover ofsome bushes to wait.

  The wound in his shoulder no longer bled, but the pain of it twingedhim through and through; his head throbbed with the hurt there; hisfeet were raw and bleeding where sharp roots and branches had cutthrough his socks and torn the flesh; his skin was hot and dry withfever, and his head swam. He followed impatiently the slow whiteningof the east; as soon as he could make out the ground in front of him,he crept forward again to the tracks.

  There was not yet light enough to see any distance, but Eaton,accustomed to the darkness and bending close to the ground, coulddiscern the footmarks even on the harder soil. They led away from theroad into the woods. On the rotted leaves and twigs was a dark stain;a few steps beyond there was another. The stains had sunk into thedamp ground but were plainer on the leaves; Eaton picking up a leaf andfingering it, knew that they were blood. So the man was not dead whenhe had been lifted from the car. But he had been hurt desperately, wasunable to help himself, was probably dying; if there had been any hopefor him, his companions would not be carrying him in this way away fromany chance of surgical attention.

  Eaton followed, as the tracks led through the woods. The men had gonevery slowly, carrying this heavy weight; they had been traveling, as hehimself had traveled, in the dark, afraid to show a light and avoidingchance of being seen by any one on the roads. They had been asuncertain of their road as he had been of his, but the general trend oftheir travel was toward the east, and this evidently was the directionin which they wished to go. They had stopped frequently to rest andhad laid their burden down. Then suddenly he came to a place whereplainly a longer halt had been made.

  The ground was trampled around this spot; when the tracks went on theywere changed in character. The two men were still carrying thethird--a heavy man whose weight strained them and made their feet sinkin deeply where the ground was soft. But now they were not careful howthey carried him, but went forward merely as though bearing a deadweight. Now, too, no more stains appeared on the brown leaves wherethey had passed; their burden no longer bled. Eaton, realizing whatthis meant, felt neither exultation nor surprise. He had known thatthe man they carried, though evidently alive when taken from the car,was dying. But now he watched the tracks more closely even thanbefore, looking for them to show him where the men had got rid of theirburden.

  It had grown easier to follow the tracks with the increase of thelight, but the danger that he would be seen had also grown greater. Hewas obliged to keep to the hollows; twice, when he ventured onto thehigher ground, he saw motor-cars passing at a distance, but near enoughso that those in them could have seen him if they had been looking hisway. Once he saw at the edge of the woods a little group of armed men.His dizziness and weakness from the loss of blood was increasing; hebecame confused at times and lost the tracks. He went forward slowlythen, examining each clump of bushes, each heap of dead leaves, to seewhether the men had hidden in them that of which he was in search; butalways when he found the tracks again their character showed him thatthe men were still carrying their burden. The tracks seemed freshernow; in spite of his weakness he was advancing much faster than theothers had been able to do in the darkness and heavily laden. As nearas he could tell, the men had passed just
before dawn. Suddenly hecame upon the pike which ran parallel to the line of the lake, somehundred yards back from the shore.

  He shrank back, throwing himself upon his face in the bushes; the menevidently had crossed this pike. Full day had come, and as Eatonpeered out and up and down the road, he saw no one; this road appearedunguarded. Eaton, assured no one was in sight, leaped up and crossedthe road. As he reached its further side, a boy carrying a fishpoleappeared suddenly from behind some bushes. He stared at Eaton; then,terrified by Eaton's appearance, he dropped the fishpole and fledscreaming up the road. Eaton stared dazedly after him for a fractionof an instant, then plunged into the cover. He found the tracks again,and followed them dizzily.

  But the boy had given the alarm. Eaton heard the whirring of motors onthe road and men shouting to one another; then he heard them beatingthrough the bushes. The noise was at some distance; evidently the boyin his fright and confusion had not directed the men to the exact spotwhere Eaton had entered the woods or they in their excitement hadfailed to understand him. But the sounds were drawing nearer. Eaton,exhausted and dizzy, followed feverishly the footmarks on the ground.It could not be far now--the men could not have carried their burdenmuch further than this. They must have hidden it somewhere near here.He would find it near by--must find it before these others found him.But now he could see men moving among the tree-trunks. He threwhimself down among some bushes, burrowing into the dead leaves. Themen passed him, one so close that Eaton could have thrown a twig andhit him. Eaton could not understand why the man did not see him, buthe did not; the man stopped an instant studying the footmarks imprintedin the earth; evidently they had no significance for him, for he wenton.

  When the searchers had passed out of sight, Eaton sprang up andfollowed the tracks again. They were distinct here, plainly printed,and he followed easily. He could hear men all about him, out of sightbut calling to one another in the woods. All at once he recoiled,throwing himself down again upon the ground. The clump of busheshiding him ended abruptly only a few yards away; through their baretwigs, but far below him, the sunlight twinkled, mockingly, at him fromthe surface of water. It was the lake!

  Eaton crept forward to the edge of the steep bluff, following thetracks. He peered over the edge. The tracks did not stop at the edgeof the bluff; they went on down it. The steep sandy precipice wasscarred where the men, still bearing their burden, had slipped andscrambled down it. The marks crossed the shingle sixty feet below;they were deeply printed in the wet sand down to the water's very edge.There they stopped.

  Eaton had not expected this. He stared, worn out and with his sensesin confusion, and overcome by his physical weakness. The sunlit wateronly seemed to mock and laugh at him--blue, rippling under the breezeand bearing no trail. It was quite plain what had occurred; the wetsand below was trampled by the feet of three or four men and cut by aboat's bow. They had taken the body away with them in the boat. Tosink it somewhere weighted with heavy stones in the deep water? Or hadit been carried away on that small, swift vessel Eaton had seen fromSantoine's lawn? In either case, Eaton's search was hopeless now.

  But it could not be so; it must not be so! Eaton's eyes searchedfeverishly the shore and the lake. But there was nothing in sight uponeither. He crept back from the edge of the bluff, hiding beside afallen log banked with dead leaves. What was it he had said toHarriet? "I will come back to you--as you have never known me before!"He rehearsed the words in mockery. How would he return to her now? Ashe moved, a fierce, hot pain from the clotted wound in his shouldershot him through and through with agony and the silence and darkness ofunconsciousness overwhelmed him.