Tom Slade on the River Part 8

"Looks that way to me."

"If there are buzzards up here a skeleton might look like that in a month or so," Connie suggested.

"There aren't any buzzards around here."

"Sure there are," said Doc. "Look at Buzzard's Bay-it's named for 'em."

"It's named for a man who had it wished on him," said Garry. "You might as well say that Pike's Peak was named after the pikers that go there."

"How long do you suppose that aeroplane's been there?"

"Five or six years, maybe," Doc said. "The frame'll be as good as that for ten years more. There's nothing more to rot."

"Well," said Garry, "it looks to my keen scout eye as if that wreck had been there for about six months and the skeleton for about six years."

"Maybe if you had tried shutting your keen scout eye and opening it in a hurry-- Hey, Toma.s.so?" teased Doc.

"Maybe they got here at the same time but the man lived for a while," Tom condescended to reply.

"You've got it just the wrong way round, my fraptious boy," said Doc.

"The skeleton's been here longer, if anything."

"Did you see that hickory stick there-all worm-eaten?" Tom asked. "It had some carving on it. None of these trees are hickory trees."

"I saw it but I didn't notice the carving," said Doc, surprised.

"Didn't you notice there weren't any hickory trees anywhere around there?" Tom asked.

"No, I didn't-I'm a punk scout-I must be blind," said Doc.

"You're good on first-aid," said Tom, indifferently.

"How'd you know it was hickory?" Connie asked.

"Because I can tell hickory," said Tom, bluntly, "and it's being all worm-eaten proved it-kind of. That's the trouble with hickory."

They always had to make the best of Tom's answers.

"I don't know where he got the hickory stick," he said, as he pushed along through the underbrush, "but he didn't get it anywhere around here, that's sure."

"And he probably didn't sit down that same day and carve things on it, either," suggested Garry; "Tom, you're a wonder."

"He might have lived up here for two or three years after he fell," said Doc reflectively. "Gee, it starts you thinking, don't it?"

Connie shook his head. "It's a mystery, all right," said he.

The thought of the solitary man, disabled crippled, perhaps, living there on that lonely mountain after the terrible accident which had brought him there lent a new gruesomeness to their discoveries. And who but Tom Slade would have been able to keep an open mind and to see so clearly by the aid of trifling signs as to separate the two apparent catastrophes and see them as independent occurrences?

"Toma.s.so, you're the real scout," said Doc. "The rest of us are only imitations."

Tom said nothing. He was used to this kind of talk and was about as proof against such praise as a battleship is against a popgun. And just now he was thinking of other things. Yet if he could have looked into the future and seen there the extraordinary explanation of his discovery and known the strange adventures it would lead to, he might have paused, even on that all but hopeless errand of rescue, and looked again at those pathetic remains. But those things were to be reserved for another summer.

"Is there anything we can do? What do you suggest, Tom?" Garry asked, dropping his half flippant manner.

"I say, let's shout again," said Tom. "We must be nearly a mile farther on by now, and the brook's getting around to the east, too."

"Good and loud," said Connie.

"All together-now!"

Again their voices woke the mountain echoes. A sudden rustling of the underbrush told of some frightened wood creature. The brook rippled softly as before. There was no other sound, and they waited. Then, from somewhere far off came the faint answering of a human voice. It would never have been distinguishable save in that deathlike stillness and even there it sounded as if it might have come from another world. It seemed to be uttering the letter L in a kind of doleful monotony.

They paused a moment in a kind of awe, even after it had ceased.

"It's calling _help_," said Garry.

"I can go there now," said Tom. "The brook probably winds around that way, but we can cut across and get there quicker. We'll chop our way through here. Let him rest his lungs now-I can go right for a ways. I got to admit I was wrong."

In the dim light of the lantern Garry looked at Tom as he stood there, his heavy, stolid face scratched by the brambly thicket, his coa.r.s.e shirt torn, his thick shock of hair down over his forehead-no more elated by triumph than he would have been discouraged by defeat, and as the brighter, more vivacious and attractive boy looked at him he was seized with a little twinge of remorse that he had made game of Tom's clumsy speech and sober ways.

"Got to admit you were wrong _how_-for goodness' sake?" he said, almost angrily. "Didn't you bring us here? Didn't you bring us all the way from Temple Camp to where we could hear that voice calling for help? Didn't you?"

"I said I could find the trees that had the stalking marks last summer,"

said Tom, "and I got to admit I was wrong, 'cause I couldn't."

"Who was it that wouldn't sit down and eat supper while somebody was dying?" demanded Doc. "There's a whole lot of good scouts, believe _me_, but there's only one Tom Slade!"

It was always the way-they made fun of him and lauded him by turns.

"There's a kind of trail here," said Tom, unmoved, "but it hasn't been used for a long time-see those spider webs across it? Lend me your axe, will you, mine is all dulled."

A hand-to-hand combat with more tangled underbrush, which they tore and chopped away, brought them to comparatively open land which must have been very high for they were surprised to see, far below, several twinkling specks of light which they thought to be at Temple Camp. It was the first open view they had had.

They called again, and again the voice answered, clearly audible now, crying, "Help help!" and something more which the boys could not understand. They called, telling the speaker not to come in search of them, that they would come to him, and to answer them for guidance when they called.

They plunged into more thicket, tearing it aside with a will, sometimes going astray, then pausing to listen for the guiding voice, and pushing on again through the labyrinth.

After a little they fell into a path and then could hear the brook rushing over stones not far distant, and knew that it must verge to the east as Tom had said and that the path did lead to it. It would have been a long journey following the stream.

Soon a greater intercourse of speech was possible and they called cheerily that they were scouts and for the waiter to cheer up for they would soon be with him.

Presently, along the path they could hear the sound of footsteps. Tom, who was leading the way, raised his lantern and just beyond the radius of its flickering light they could see a dark figure hurrying toward them; then a face, greatly distraught in the moonlight, and Tom stopped, bewildered. As the stranger grasped his arm he held the light close to the haggard, wild-eyed face.

"h.e.l.lo," he said, "I-I guess I know you. Let go-what's the matter?

Weren't you at Temple Camp last summer?"

The stranger, a young fellow of perhaps eighteen, shook his head.