Tom Slade on Mystery Trail Part 7

And there stood Tom, holding the memorial of Hervey's heroism in his hand. Hervey had apparently forgotten all about it....

CHAPTER XII

AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT

Hervey picked his way among the rocks, looking here and there in the crevices and upon the intervening ground as if he had lost something. A more random quest could scarcely be imagined. Tom watched him for a few minutes, then took the shorter way to camp with his little charge.

Hervey followed the rocky ledge for about fifty yards to a point where the dry bed of a stream came winding down out of the mountain. It ran in a tiny canyon between two rocks and so out upon the level fields to the south where the camp lay.

The twilight was well advanced now, the last vivid patches were mellowed into a pervading gray, which seemed to cover the rocks and woods like a mantle. Clad in this somber robe, the wooded height which rose to the north seemed the more forbidding. Not a sound was to be heard but the voice of a whip-poor-will somewhere. Even Hervey's buoyant nature was subdued by the solemn stillness.

Suddenly something between the two rocks caught his eye. The caked earth looked as if a narrow board had been drawn over it. Bordering this broad line, about half an inch from it on either side, were two narrow fancy lines--or at least that is what Hervey called them. Examining these carefully, he saw that they were made up of tiny, diagonal lines. In the place where this ran between the rocks, in the deep shadow, these singular marks were surprisingly legible, and bore not a little the appearance of a border design. The big stones formed a sort of shadow box, causing the markings to appear in bold relief.

Hervey knew nothing of the freakish influence of light on tracks and trails, but he saw here something which he knew had been made by a moving object. The continuous design was so nearly perfect that it seemed like the work of human beings, but Hervey knew that it could hardly be this.

What, then, was it?

Where the lines emerged from between the rocks the marking was less regular and less clear, but plain enough in the damp, crusted earth which covered the mud in the old stream bed.

With heart bounding with joy and elation, Hervey followed the bed of the stream. The tracks, or whatever they were, were so clear that he could keep to the side of the muddy area and still see them.

It was characteristic of him that having made this great discovery, he did not trouble himself about the direction he was taking. In point of fact he was going in a southwesterly direction toward the camp.

For perhaps a quarter of a mile the strange markings were clearly legible in the dusk, running as they did in the yielding caked surface of the stream bed. They were as clear as tracks in caked snow. Then the path of the dried up waterway petered out in an area of rocks and pebbles and beyond that there was no clearly defined way; the brook had evidently trickled down into the lower land taking the path of least resistance among the rocks.

No doubt Tom Slade could have followed that water path to its end, but Hervey was puzzled, baffled. Yet the enthusiasm which carried him, as though on wings, to his triumphs was aroused now. He had the prophecy of Tom Slade to strengthen his determination. He must make good for Tom's sake now, as well as for the sake of his troop. He had told Tom that if he only once found a trail, nothing would stop him--_nothing_. Very fine. All that talk about there being something higher than the Eagle award was nonsense, and Tom Slade knew it was nonsense. "He said I'd do it, and I'm going to," Hervey muttered to himself.

Hervey had no patience with obstacles, he must be always moving, so now he began frantically scrutinizing the ground to see if he could find some sign of the marks which had eluded him. Since he could no longer distinguish the stream bed, he looked for some sign of those marks outside the stream bed.

And presently he was rewarded by the discovery of tracks, animal tracks sure enough, without any ribbon, so to speak, printed between them.

There they were upon the hard, bare earth, two lines of claw marks, continuing to a point where they disappeared again at the edge of a close cropped field. Evidently his mysterious predecessor had known just where he wished to go and had forsaken the stream bed when it no longer went in his direction. These were no aimless tracks, they were the tracks of a creature that had particular business in the southwest, and that knew how to get there.

CHAPTER XIII

THE STRANGE TRACKS

Hervey had not the slightest idea in which direction he was going, but in point of fact he was heading straight in the direction of Temple Camp. But he had found his precious tracks and nothing would stop him now. He would go over the top in a blaze of glory next day, and then perhaps a telegram could be sent to scout headquarters to have the Eagle badge sent up immediately so that he could receive the very award itself on Sat.u.r.day night. He was on the home stretch now, as luck would have it, and nothing would stop him--nothing....

_Nothing!_ He would send a line to his mother that very night and tell her all about it, and put E. S. after his name. _Eagle Scout._ The bicycle his father had promised him when he should attain that pinnacle of scout glory, he would now demand. That would be where dad lost out....

If Tom Slade knew some secret about a higher award, that meant more stunts, Hervey would do those stunts, too; the more the merrier. He should worry....

Yes, he was on the trail at last, and at the end of that trail was the stalking badge--and the Eagle award. _Hervey Willetts, Eagle Scout._ It sounded pretty good....

He realized now that this discovery of his was just a streak of luck, that the chances would have been altogether against his finding real tracks in these two remaining days. "I'm lucky," he said. Which must have been true, else he would have lost his life long ere that....

Darkness was now coming on apace, and it must be long past supper-time.

But this was no time to be thinking of eating. Nothing would stop him now, _nothing_. When he set his mind on a thing....

The tracks changed again in traversing the fields. They were not tracks at all, in fact, but a narrow belt of trampled gra.s.s, which was not visible close by. It was only by looking ahead that Hervey could distinguish it. Half way across the field he lost it altogether, but, remembering the fact that it could be seen better at a distance, he climbed a tree and there lay the long narrow belt of trampled gra.s.s running under the rail fence at the field's edge and into the spa.r.s.e woods beyond. He had not to follow it, only pick out the rail of the fence near where it pa.s.sed and hurry to that spot.

And there it was, waiting for him. If Hervey had been well versed in tracking lore and less of a seeker after glory, he would have scrutinized the lowest rail of the fence, under which the track went, for bits of hair. But Hervey Willetts was not after bits of hair. It was quite like him that he did not care two straws about what sort of animal he was tracking. He was tracking the Eagle badge.

In the spa.r.s.e woods the tracks appeared as regular tracks again, sharply cut in the hard earth. Where the ground was bare under the trees, the tracks were as clear as writing on a slate, but in the intervening s.p.a.ces the vegetation obscured them and he found them with difficulty.

This tracking in the woods was the hardest part of his task because it required patience and deliberation, and Hervey had neither.

But he managed it and was beginning to wonder how far his tracking had led him and whether he was near to covering the required distance. When he felt certain of that, he would drive a stake in the ground, fly his navy blue scarf from it to prove his claim, and go back to camp in triumph. He had made up his mind that he would at once report his feat in Council Shack, and offer to escort any or all of the trustees back over the ground in verification of his crowning accomplishment. The only Eagle Scout at Temple Camp, except Tom Slade; and Tom Slade didn't count....

Still, as he looked back, the base of the mountain seemed almost as near as when he had made his discovery, the fields and wood which had seemed so long to the tracker were but small to the casual glance and he realized that his whole journey was yet far short of a quarter mile.

The tracks now ran, as clear as writing, across one of those curious patches of damp ground with a thin, slippery skin, which was torn straight across in a kind of furrow. Hervey was so intent on studying this that he did not notice in the shadow about a hundred feet ahead of him a log directly in line with the tracks. When suddenly he looked up, he paused and stared ahead of him in consternation.

Some one was sitting on the log.

CHAPTER XIV

HERVEY'S TRIUMPH

As soon as Hervey's dismay subsided he approached the log, and as he did so the figure appeared familiar to him. There was something especially familiar in the scout hat which came down over the ears of the little fellow who was underneath it, and in the hair which straggled out under the brim. The belt, drawn absurdly tight around the thin little waist, was a quite sufficient mark of identification. It was Skinny McCord, the latest find, and official mascot of the Bridgeboro troop, one of the crack troop of the camp. Alfred was his Christian name.

The queer little fellow's usually pale face looked ghastly white in the late dusk, and the strange brightness of his eyes, and his spindle legs and diminutive body, crowned by the hat at least two sizes too large, made him seem a very elf of the woods. At camp or elsewhere, Skinny was always alone, but he seemed more lonely than ever in that still wood, with the night coming on. Nature was so big and Skinny was so little.

"h.e.l.lo, Skinny, old top!" Hervey said cheerily. "What do you think you're doing here? Lost, strayed, or stolen?"

Skinny's eyes were bright with a strange light; he seemed not to hear his questioner. But Hervey, knowing the little fellow's queerness, was not surprised.

"You look kind of frightened. Are you lost?" Hervey inquired.

For just a moment Skinny stared at him with a look so intense that Hervey was startled. The little fellow's fingers which clutched a branch of the log, trembled visibly. He seemed like one possessed.

"Don't get rattled, Skinny," Hervey said; "I'll take you back to camp.

We'll find the way, all right-o."

"I'm a second-cla.s.s scout," Skinny said.

"Bully for you, Skinny."