Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island Part 17

"I don't know. I didn't want to know--and you don't, either."

"But suppose something happens to him?" objected the girl, fearfully.

"Why, he knows all about this island. You said so yourself. I just told him we'd get some grub to him to-morrow."

"How?"

"Told him we'd leave it at the foot of that tall pine at the far end of the island. Then he slipped out of the kitchen and disappeared."

But Blent was a crafty old party and did not easily give up the pursuit of the young fellow he had come to the island to nab. The coat of fresh snow over everything made tracking the fugitive an easy task.

After a few minutes of sputtering anger, the real estate man organized a pursuit of Jerry. He made sure that the forest youth had run out of the kitchen at about the time the visitors came up from the dock.

"He ain't got a long start," said Blent to his satellite, the constable.

"Let's see if he didn't leave tracks."

He had. There was still an hour of daylight, although the winter evening was closing in rapidly. Jerry had left by the back door of the lodge and had gone straight across the yard, through the unbroken snow, to the bunkhouse used by the male help.

There he had stopped for his rifle and shotgun, and ammunition. Indeed, he had taken everything that belonged to him, and, loaded down with this loot, had gone right up the hill, keeping in the scrub so as to be hidden from the big house, and had so pa.s.sed over the rising ground toward the middle of the island.

"The track is plain enough," Blent said. "Ain't ye got a dog, Preston? We could foller him all night."

"Not with our dogs," declared the foreman.

"Why not?"

"Don't think the boss would like it. We don't keep dogs to hunt men with."

"You better take care how you try to block the law," threatened the old man. "That boy's goin' to be caught."

"Not with these dogs," grunted Preston. "You can put _that_ in your pipe and smoke it."

Blent and the constable went off over the ridge. Ruth was so much interested that she stole out to follow them, and Ann Hicks overtook her before she had gotten far up the track.

"Ruth Fielding! whatever are you doing?" demanded the girl from the Montana ranch. "Don't you know it will soon be night? Mrs. Tingley says for you to come back."

"Do you suppose those horrid men will find Jerry?"

"No, I don't," replied Ann, shortly. "And if they do----"

"Oh! you're not as interested in him as I am," sighed Ruth. "I am sure he is honest and that Mr. Blent is telling lies about him. I--I want to see that they don't abuse him if they catch him."

"Abuse him! And he a backwoods boy, with two guns?" snorted Ann. "Why, he wouldn't even let them arrest him, I don't suppose. _I_ wouldn't if I were Jerry."

"But that would be dreadful," sighed Ruth. "Let's go a little farther, Ann."

Dusk was falling, however, and when they got down the far side of the ridge they came to a swift, open water-course. Blent and the constable were evidently "stumped." Blent was snarling at their ill-luck.

"He's took to the water--that's all _I_ know," drawled Lem Daggett, the constable. "Ye see, there ain't a mark in the snow on 'tother side."

"Him wadin' in that ice-cold stream in mid-winter," grunted Blent. "Ain't he a scoundrel?"

"Can't do nothin' more to-night," announced the constable, who didn't like the job any too well, it was evident. "And dorgs wouldn't do us no good."

"Ha! ye know what ye gotter do," threatened Blent. "I'm goin' back to town when the punt goes this evenin'. But you stay here, an' you git the hue an' cry out after him to-morrer bright and early.

"I don't want him rummagin' around this island at all. You understand? Not at all! It's up to you to git him, Lem Daggett."

Daggett grunted and followed his master back to the lodge. The girls went on before and Ruth was delighted that, for a time, at least, Jerry was to have his freedom.

"If it froze over solid in the night he could get to the mainland from the other end of the island, and then they'd never find him," she confided to Tom.

But when morning came the surface of the lake was still a ma.s.s of loose and shifting ice. Lem demanded of Mrs. Tingley the help of all the men at the camp, and they started right away after breakfast to "comb" the island in a thorough manner.

There wasn't a trace near the running stream to show in which direction the fugitive had gone. Had Jerry gone up stream he could have reached the very heart of the rough end of the island without leaving the water-trail.

A party of the boys, with Ruth, Helen, and Ann Hicks, stole out of the lodge after the main searching party, and struck off for the high point where the lone pine tree grew.

"I'd hate to think we'd draw that constable over there and help him to catch Jerry," said Bobbins.

"We won't," Tom replied. "We are just going to leave the tin box of grub for him. He probably won't come out of hiding and try to get the food until this foolish constable has given up the chase. And I put the food in the tin box so that no prowling animal would get it instead of Jerry."

It was hard traveling in the snow, for the party of young folk had not thought to obtain snowshoes. "We'll string some when we go back," Tom promised. "I know there are some frames all ready."

"But no more such tobogganing as we had last winter up at Snow Camp,"

declared Busy Izzy, with deep feeling. "Remember the spill I had with Ruth and that Heavy girl? Gee! that was some spill."

"The land here Is too rough for good sliding," said Tom. "But I wish the lake would freeze hard again. Ralph says there are a couple of good scooters, and we all have our skates."

"And the fishing!" exclaimed Helen, eagerly. "I _do_ so want to fish through the ice again."

"Oh! we're bound to have a bully good time," declared Bobbins. "But we'll do this Jerry Sheming a good turn, too, if we can."

CHAPTER XV

OVER THE PRECIPICE

Under the soft snow that had fallen the day before was a hard-packed layer that had come earlier in the season and made a firm footing for the explorers. Ruth and her chum, with Ann Hicks, were quite as good walkers as the boys. At any rate, the three girls determined not to be at the end of the procession.

The constable and his unwilling helpers (for none of the men about the Tingley camp cared to see Jerry Sheming in trouble) were hunting the banks of the stream higher up for traces of the trail the boy had taken when he ran away from Rufus Blent the previous afternoon.

Therefore the girls and boys who had started for the rendezvous at the lone pine, were able to put the wooded ridge between them and the constable's party, and so make their way un.o.bserved toward the western end of Cliff Island.

"They may come back and follow us," growled Tom. "But they'll be some way behind, and we'll hurry. I have a note in this tin box warning Jerry what he must look out for. As long as that Lem Daggett is on the island, I suppose he will be in danger of arrest."