Frank Merriwell's Champions Part 6

The sun dropped out of sight, and the shadows gathered quickly in the hollows of the hills. The exertion of climbing warmed Bruce, bringing the perspiration out on his face and body. He pushed back the collar of the coat, and mopped his face. Then went on again, slipping, sliding, grumbling.

"I thought this path ascended all the time," he growled, peering into the thickening gloom. "I don't remember this slope, but of course we crossed it in coming down. These hills and hollows look bewilderingly alike in this light."

Half an hour later, he came to a dead stop, with the unpleasant feeling that he had wandered from the right path and was lost.

"Here's a pretty kettle of fish!" he groaned. "I'll take on another cartload of malaria if I have to lie out in these woods to-night. Well, it's no use to turn back. I couldn't find Thornton's cabin if I tried."

When he had stumbled on for another provoking half hour, with the darkness increasing, he came to another halt. A gleam of light, from a lamp or candle, reached him through the trees.

"I can inquire my way there, if nothing else," he reflected, "and perhaps if it seems impossible for me to get home, I can find a bed for the night."

Though still in a grumbling humor, he went on again with a decided feeling of relief, which changed to one of surprise and bewilderment when he was near enough the light to make out the manner of house from which it issued.

He had returned to Bob Thornton's cabin!

CHAPTER V-HAMMOND'S PLOT

"I don't see how I could have done that," Bruce Browning growled, unpleasantly mystified. "I don't suppose Nell will be very glad to see me, and probably she will think I came back purposely. But her 'dad,' as she calls him, will have to show me the way out of this place, or give me shelter."

He walked toward the door, the soft carpet of gra.s.s and leaves m.u.f.fling the sound of his footsteps. But at the corner of the cabin he was brought to as sudden a stop as if struck in the face.

"His name is Frank Merriwell, and I came down to tell you about him!"

These words, given in the voice of Ward Hammond, with the hissing emphasis of intense hate, reached Bruce Browning like a blow, and stayed his feet.

"He's pretending to be a summer visitor, and is staying with a crowd at the cottages on the lakeside, but I overheard him talking last night, and caught on to the whole thing. He has been sent here by the government to hunt you down and drag you to jail."

The voice did not come from within the cabin, but from behind it, where, as Bruce recollected, there was a bench under a shade tree.

Bruce put a hand against the cabin wall as a stay, for he found himself unexpectedly weak and violently trembling, and listened for the reply.

It came at once in angry, grating tones:

"Then he's one o' them thar cussed revnoo fellers! Dad-burn my hide, ef he don't wisht he'd never set hoof in these hyar mountings, 'fore he's a week older! Ef he comes nosin' 'round hyar, I won't hev no more mercy on him'n I would a she-wolf!"

"Ef you recommember, Bob, thar war one hyar 'bout this time las' year, too!" another and younger voice put in. "I reckon it air about time ter do a leetle shootin'!"

"That first one must be Nell's father, for she said his name was Bob,"

Browning reflected, straining his ears to catch every word. "I wonder if she is in the house and hears that?"

"It's for you to say what you'll do," Ward Hammond purred. "I thought it my duty to tell you what I had discovered, for I can't forget that you're related to me, even though we live so differently. I could not bear the thought of seeing you dragged to jail, without so much as lifting a finger to prevent it."

"We're 'bleeged to you, Ward," Bob Thornton confessed. "You never did seem like t'other big-bugs up ter ther village, an' 'tain't the fust time ye've put yerself out ter gimme a p'inter."

"Blood is thicker than water, you know!" avowed Ward, "I always stand by those who are related to me. If you go gunning for that fellow, I want to warn you to keep your eyes open. He's smart, and if you give him half a chance, he'll strike you before you can strike him."

"I don't doubt he is ez sharp ez a steel trap," Thornton admitted. "The guv'ment don't send no other kind out ter hunt moonshiners, knowin' ez how it wouldn't be no sort o' use."

Bob Thornton got on his feet, and Ward Hammond closed the knife with which he had been whittling.

"Air ye goin' up thar ter-night?" the younger man drawled.

"It air my 'pinion that it'll be better," said Thornton, in a husky tone. "Ef you hev a thing ter do, do it. Them's my sentiments, an' I allus acts on 'em. Ef you hev a thing ter do, do it!"

"I do believe there is to be an attempt to murder Frank this very night," Bruce Browning inwardly groaned, almost afraid to move an eyelid lest it should bring discovery. "I've got to get back to the cottages ahead of these fellows, or break my neck trying."

Then he almost groaned aloud as he thought of the dark woods and the paths that seemed little better than squirrel tracks, where he had already lost himself, and could hardly hope to do better in a wild race for the cottages against these miscreants.

Hammond and Thornton moved away. Bruce heard the third man strike a match, and caught the odor of burning tobacco. Then he noticed that the moon was rising behind him over a shoulder of the mountain, and that the night was growing lighter.

"I can get along with that moon," he reflected. "But I'm afraid it's going to puzzle me to get away from this cabin without detection."

He was on the point of making a dash and trusting to his heels for safety, for, though he was large-limbed and heavy, the bicycle trip across the continent had trained him down into fair condition for running, and the malarial trouble that seemed to have fastened on him had not yet materially affected his strength. But he was kept from this by the voice of Nell Thornton, who entered the cabin at this juncture, singing that old, old song of the backwoods:

"Fair Charlotte lived by the mounting side, In a wild an' lonely spot, No dwellin' thar fur ten mile 'roun', Except her father's cot!"

The voice was not unmusical, but it had the piping tw.a.n.g of the mountaineers.

"She has been away somewhere, and heard none of that talk," thought Browning, with a sigh of relief. "I guess her arm was not so badly hurt by that arrow as I fancied. Anyway, she doesn't seem to be suffering much now, judging by the way she sings."

He inclined his head toward the cabin wall, expecting to catch the voice of the younger man from the bench under the tree and Nell's answer to his words. But he heard only Nell singing of that other mountain girl who went sleighing to a dance in defiance of parental authority and was punished for her disobedience by being frozen to death in the sleigh.

Had Browning looked behind him, his thoughts would have been given another turn, for he was never in more peril in his life than at that moment.

The man on the bench, chancing to glance around the corner of the cabin toward the increasing light, had seen Bruce clearly outlined against the moon's silver rim. His instant thought was that Bruce was the man against whom he and Bob Thornton had been warned-that here was the officer of the revenue service, with head pressed close to the cabin wall, having already spotted Bob Thornton as a moonshiner and tracked him to his home.

The man was a muscular giant of a fellow, as big and as strong in every way as Bruce. He was smoking and nursing a heavy stick, almost a club, which he habitually carried as a cane, but which, in his hands, was a weapon to fell an ox.

He quickly and stealthily slipped out of his shoes, then stole with catlike steps around the building, and approached Browning from the rear.

Step by step he moved forward, as silent as a shadow and as merciless as a red Indian. His face, revealed by the faint moonlight, was distorted with rage and hate, and his grip on the deadly club was so tense that the muscles on his right arm stood out in a knotted ma.s.s under the sleeve of his thin, cotton shirt.

Bruce still stood, with head inclined toward the cabin wall, listening for the words he was not to hear, wholly unaware of his peril.

Lifting himself slowly erect, the man poised the club for a brief instant, then brought it down with an inarticulate cry.

That cry saved Bruce's life, but it did not ward off the terrible blow.

Bruce straightened his head and tried to leap back, instinctively throwing up an arm as a shield.

But the club descended, beating down the arm and striking the head a glancing blow, under which Bruce sank down with a hollow groan.

The blow, the groan, the man's fierce curse as Browning fell, reached the ears of Nell Thornton, stilling the words of the song.

She was out of the cabin in a flash.

"What hev ye done, Sam Turner?" she demanded, as she hurried around the corner of the cabin, and saw the man standing over the senseless form, with the murderous club still in his hands. "Who hev ye killed, hyar, I'd like ter know?"