The New Boys at Oakdale Part 19

"Perhaps they'll trust me," he muttered. "I'll tell a good story. I'll make it out a case of life or death-and perhaps it is."

Then something seemed to whisper in his ear that he could not endure the scrutiny of any one without betraying himself. Furthermore, if he should hire a rig and a man to drive him to Watertown, that would betray the direction of his flight. Should they desire to stop him and bring him back, the telephone would serve them well.

"I'm done for," he groaned-"done for! I don't know what to do."

Desiring sympathy, longing for advice, he thought of Osgood, and at once he decided that Ned ought to know without delay what had happened.

Crossing lots and open fields, he avoided the streets of the town as far as possible. He was still pursued by the conviction that some unseen thing was following him, but with set teeth, he restrained the desire to run, holding himself down to a sharp, jerky walk, which was interrupted occasionally as he looked back. Finally he saw before him the big white two-story house of Mrs. Chester.

Now another problem arose, how to reach Osgood. If he rang at the door he would eventually bring either the maid or Mrs. Chester to answer the bell. What could he tell them?

"I know what I'll do," he decided, stooping to run the palm of his hand over the loose earth of the street bed.

It did not take him long to gather up a handful of small pebbles, and with these he approached the house. One after another he flung them upward and heard them clink against the window gla.s.s, but he used them all without perceiving a token that he had awakened Osgood. The house remained dark and silent. A rising breeze caused the limbs of some trees to knock together; it swept Shultz's clammy cheek and made him shiver.

"I must get Ned up," he muttered. "Fool that I am, I've been trying the wrong window. He's in his bedroom, of course, and the window to that is on the side of the house."

Back to the street he went for more pebbles. He was crouching froglike, feeling for them with his hands, when he heard a sound that turned him rigid for an instant.

Footsteps were approaching on the sidewalk; some one was coming up the street. Why should any one in that sleepy, well-behaved little town be out at this hour? Was it possible they had already begun searching for him?

Then he heard voices. There were two persons approaching.

Rising to a crouching position, he ran to the fence across the way from Mrs. Chester's and flung himself over. And, again started in flight, the terror that had driven him in the first place came back with additional force; and this was augmented by the sound of voices shouting after him-the voices of the two men on the street, who had seen his shadowy figure as he vaulted the fence.

"There he is!" "That's him!" "There he goes!" "Stop! stop!"

Crying after him in this manner, they came on in pursuit. Venturing to look back, he saw them tumbling over the fence he had leaped, and once more he strained every nerve.

There was now no doubt in his mind; they were after him. Perhaps before the coming of the end Roy Hooker's mind had cleared sufficiently for him to tell who struck the fatal blow. Perhaps Roy's father, running from the house, had been hurrying to set the officers at work.

In advance, he perceived a dark, straggling line of bushes and low trees. Amid them he turned sharply to the left, hoping somehow to double on his tracks and baffle the pursuers. Through a thicket of shrubbery he plunged, with the tiny branches viciously whipping his face and tearing at his clothes, as if even they sought to grasp and hold him.

Suddenly he stopped short, his mouth wide open, that he might listen the better. The two men had reached the growth, and he could hear them floundering amid it.

"This way!" one of them cried. "He went this way!"

"Keep still!" urged the other. "We ought to be able to hear him. Keep still a minute."

The crashing sounds ceased, and the listening boy knew the men were listening also. Through a great effort of self-command, he kept himself from resuming the flight, waiting until the noise of their own movements should prevent them from hearing what sounds he might make.

They soon grew impatient and began beating about in the underbrush in an aimless search.

As soon as this happened Shultz moved away, proceeding with a certain amount of caution. Keeping just within the border of the timber and thickets, he went forward as fast as he dared, putting out his hands to part the bushes and slipping through them as silently as possible. At times twigs snapped beneath his feet, but, as he had hoped, the men were themselves making sufficient noise to drown such minor sounds, and gradually he left them far behind.

In the blackness he ran full against a wire fence, and the barbs of the lower strands slashed his trousers and cut his legs. He tore himself free, felt for the smooth upper strand, bent it downward and straddled over.

Following the line of the fence, he turned full upon the course he had been pursuing when he plunged into the timber. Leaving that shelter behind him, bending low, he ran on until he returned to the highway some distance above the home of Mrs. Chester. In the middle of the road he paused uncertainly.

The moon was rising. Its light, although somewhat m.u.f.fled by the clouds, was sufficient to enable him to perceive the outlines of objects at a considerable distance; it would also reveal him far better to pursuers, and make his escape more difficult were he again seen by them.

"Good-by, Ned," he whispered. "You're asleep, and you don't know anything about it. Probably you'll never realize just what I've had to go through this night."

Fearing to follow the highway, he again struck across the fields, before him the deep stretch of timberland to the north of Turkey Hill. By making his way through those woods and pa.s.sing round the hill, he could reach the Barville road some miles from Oakdale.

At the edge of the timber the night wind bore to his ears a sound that again halted him dead in his tracks. The bells of Oakdale were ringing-ringing wildly, furiously, as they might ring to arouse the villagers to battle with a conflagration. Peal upon peal vibrated through the night air, and their clanging strokes stabbed the miserable boy like dagger thrusts.

"I know what it means!" he half panted, half sobbed. "They're turning the whole town out to hunt me down! I'm alone, alone, with everybody against me! What chance have I got? Well, they'll have to catch me before I give up."

The woods swallowed him; he was gone. The bells continued to fling forth their wild alarm. As if wondering at it, and curious to know what it was all about, the silvery moon peered through a break in the clouds, flooding the open s.p.a.ce with its light.

But in the woods through which Charley Shultz staggered on it was dark.

In his heart it was darker still.

CHAPTER XIX

THE APPARITION IN THE WOODS.

In the midst of the woods Shultz stopped to rest, seating himself upon a log against which he had stumbled. The clouds having dispersed, the moon was silvering the tree-tops above his head, but it had not yet risen high enough to cast its light upon the ground of the little glade. On every hand were the mysterious night shadows of the woods.

The boy's legs quivered as he sat there, grateful for this respite, although he felt that time was precious and he should waste no moments.

No longer could he hear the village bells; they had ceased to ring, and he was glad of that.

It was a melancholy and terrible thing to feel himself an outcast and a fugitive from justice, practically with the hand of mankind in general turned against him. He had read stories of daring fugitives in similar positions, and always the fugitives had seemed enfolded by a glamor of romance, which had almost made him long to pa.s.s through such an experience; but, now that the experience was his, it held no glamor, no single feature of allurement or romance. It was simply a horrible situation, to be freed from which he felt that he would willingly give up years of his life.

That he could escape, he still had a faint hope; but it was faint indeed, and, had he heeded sober judgment, he would have put it aside as something false and deceptive and merely adding to his suspense and torture. With the telephone and telegraph, the surrounding country could be warned and every loophole stopped. With the bulk of the villagers searching for him, it was simply a matter of time before he would be run down.

"I'll never give up," he kept telling himself; "I'll never give up till they catch me."

He had always thought of the night woods at this season of the year as silent and lifeless. Now, however, resting upon that log, he became aware of many strange sounds all around him. There seemed to be faint rustlings and whisperings, as if the very trees were telling one another that he was there, and pointing him out with their bare, extending arms.

Continually he kept turning his head to look first in one direction and then in another. Several times he was startled by shadows that seemed to move, but when he watched them more closely they were motionless enough.

Nevertheless, the fancy that something was drawing nearer, creeping upon him bit by bit, increased with the pa.s.sing moments. He could feel it approaching silently, stealthily, steadily. He had escaped the two men who had tried to run him down, but there was something he could not escape, and, recalling what he had beheld through the window of his chamber, he leaped up and resumed his reckless flight.

This way and that he turned and darted to avoid the trees and the denser thickets. The woods seemed endless. Long ere this, he told himself, he should have pa.s.sed through them and reached the Barville road.

Presently before him the moonlight showed a broad open s.p.a.ce, and with a gasp of thankfulness he tottered forth from the forest. His clothes were in tatters. There was blood on his legs from the wounds inflicted by the barbed wire fence. His hands and his face were scratched and bruised.

Seeing him now, a stranger must surely have wondered with curiosity to know what had brought him to such a pitiful plight.

But the woods, they were behind him. The Barville road must be near at hand. Not far away the moonlight showed him an orchard and some buildings.

He stopped, stood still, gazed at those buildings. There was something familiar about them. Farther away, to the right, he could see more houses.

"Where am I?" he muttered hoa.r.s.ely. "So help me, that looks like Sage's home! It is! it is! I got turned round in the woods. I've come straight back to the place where I entered."