Frank Merriwell's Champions Part 8

Then Browning saw that her gaze was not fixed so much on the sleeping man as on him, and awoke to a realization of the fact that Nell was trying to come to his rescue, and that the knife was to sever the ropes that held him, and was not intended as a weapon with which to do murder.

He could not restrain the sigh of relief and hope that welled from his heart.

Nell Thornton's keen ears caught it, and again her finger went to her lips, and she stopped, looking anxiously at the sleeper.

For several seemingly interminable seconds she stood thus, and when Turner did not move, she took another cautious step.

With her eyes fixed on Turner's upturned face, she stepped warily over his body, and stood in the room at Browning's side.

The knife gleamed in the moonlight. It was her father's keen-bladed hunting knife.

"I hev come ter git ye out o' hyar," she whispered, laying her lips against Browning's ear. "Don't ye so much ez whimper a sound, er--"

She pointed significantly with the knife toward the sleeping form of Turner.

Then she pressed the blade against the rope that held Browning's wrists.

It was almost as sharp as a razor, and ate through the tough strands with noiseless ease.

She worked quickly, but silently; then stood erect, and pointed toward the door.

Browning moved his head to show that he understood.

"Do ye need ter hev me holp ye?" she whispered, stooping till her lips again touched his ear.

For reply, Browning lifted himself cautiously and struggled slowly to his feet.

She smiled encouragingly, and stepped through the doorway, Bruce following close after her, as silently as he could. Thus he pa.s.sed over the sleeping form of Sam Turner, and moved toward the outer air.

He scarcely ventured to breathe till they were both outside, under the flooding moonlight.

Here she took him by the hand, without speaking, and hurried him away from the cabin, into a path that led toward the hills and in the direction of the village.

"Hev you a knife?" she anxiously asked, stopping when they had gained the friendly shelter of the trees.

"Yes. Why?" inquired Browning, venturing to speak for the first time.

"'Case, ef you hev, I'll slip back inter that thar room with it an' lay it open on the floor, so that when Sam Turner hev come ter himself he'll 'low ez how you cut them ropes an' got away 'thout anybody holping ye."

Browning took out his pocketknife, opened the biggest blade, and placed it in her hand.

"I'm 'bleeged ter ye!" she said.

"And I'm obliged to you, Nell-Miss Thornton!" declared Browning, with an uncommon warmth of feeling. "Likely I should have been killed if you hadn't come to my a.s.sistance. And at such a fearful risk! I owe you my life!"

She was about to turn away, but faced around abruptly and looked him squarely in the eyes.

"You ain't nary revnoo spy, air ye, come hyar ter hunt down the moonshiners?"

"No!" said Browning, with st.u.r.dy emphasis. "I am not! Nor are any of my friends. I came back to your house because I was lost."

Her lips parted in a smile.

"I knowed you warn't," she a.s.serted.

Then, before Bruce could say anything more, or even bid her good-by, she leaped away and hastened back toward the cabin.

The racking pains, which Bruce had temporarily forgotten, shot again through his head and shoulder as he saw her vanish, and he turned toward the mountain with a groan.

But ever, as he toiled on over the wild path, slipping, sliding, groaning, he thought of Nell Thornton, going back into that room, over the body of the slumbering rifleman, to place the pocketknife on the floor by the side of the cut ropes, and his heart throbbed in sympathy with her great peril.

CHAPTER VII-BY THE WATERS OF LAKE LILY

"It's a trick to enable them to get out of the match!" a.s.serted Ward Hammond, with a stinging sneer. "All this pretense of making a search is the veriest humbug! The idea that one of their number would wander away into the woods, or drown himself in the lake while out of his head from a little fever, is the greatest rot that any one ever tried to foist on the public."

A considerable concourse of people had gathered on the margin of Lake Lily to witness the swimming match announced to come off that morning at nine o'clock sharp. They were seated on camp stools, on wooden benches, and on the rocks and gra.s.s. The boathouse of the Lake Lily Athletic Club was filled with them.

And now the rumor had gone forth that Frank Merriwell and his friends of the Lake Lily Club would not enter the contest because they were organizing to search for one of their number who had been strangely missing since the previous afternoon.

"It's a clear backdown," declared Hammond, walking up to a group of his Glendale friends. "They know they dare not meet us, and they're simply making that an excuse. I'll bet big money that, if the truth were known, the fellow they say is lost is hidden away somewhere in one of their cottages."

Merriwell's party, with Colson, Tetlow and others, came out of a cottage at that moment. They wore a sober, serious air. They had been talking the thing over, and were intending to inst.i.tute another search through the woods and along the sh.o.r.es of the lake, though they had already made a number of such searches. Merriwell was to speak to the people, and explain why it was they could not enter the swimming match, and was to announce that if nothing was heard of Browning by noon, the lake would then be dragged for his body.

But scarcely were they out of the cottage, when Harry Rattleton swung his cap and gave a great cheer.

"There he is!" he whooped. "Just in sight, coming over that rise!"

He broke away from the crowd and ran swiftly to meet Browning, who had lost his way again, in spite of the moonlight, and had been forced to remain in the woods all night.

The story that Browning had strolled across the mountains for a walk, and had been a.s.saulted and robbed by highwaymen, spread like wildfire.

It was not started by Browning's friends, but when they found it current, they did not try to correct it, choosing to let it go at that, instead of giving the true account of his experiences.

Ward Hammond's boasting came to a sudden termination when he saw Browning return, and knew that he would have to swim against the youths he had been so maliciously maligning.

It was ten o'clock, an hour later than the time fixed, when Frank Merriwell and Sep Colson, who had been selected by the members of the Lake Lily Club to uphold the club honors in the swimming match, came out of their dressing-room in the boathouse.

Ward Hammond and Dan Matlock, the chosen champions of the other club, were already at the starting point, and the spectators, who had been kept so long in waiting, were growing impatient at the delay.

"Oi'm bettin' thot yez kin bate thim fellies out av soight, Frankie, me b'y!" cried Barney, jubilantly. "Thot Hommond sint up his rooster crowin' a bit too soon, so he did, as he'll be foindin' out moighty quick, now!"

"I'm sure we'll do our best, Barney," promised Merriwell, touched by the Irish lad's loyalty.

"We can always depend on you for that, Merry!" said Rattleton. "We want you to beat Hammond worse than you did in the shooting. And you can do it, too!"