Home > Authors Index > H. Irving Hancock > High School Boys' Fishing Trip > This page
The High School Boys' Fishing Trip, a fiction by H. Irving Hancock |
||
Chapter 23. "Four Of Us Are Pin-Heads!" |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XXIII. "FOUR OF US ARE PIN-HEADS!" "Oh, you fellows have spoiled it!" groaned Dave as he joined last of all in the chase. From the tent to the cleft rock was perhaps a hundred and twenty yards. For such sprinters as these members of the Gridley High School eleven it did not require much time to cover the distance. Yet, by the time that Danny Grin, in the lead, had reached the further side of the rock there was no sign of the presence of the Man with the Haunting Face. "You dreamed it, Dave," charged Greg Holmes. "No, I didn't, either," muttered Darrin, joining the group of puzzled youngsters. "I saw the face as plainly and positively as I see any of your faces." "It's hard to believe that," muttered Tom, shaking his head. "I was wide awake, and my eyesight is good," Darry insisted. "Then where has your man gone?" asked Dick. "If he had run to any point near here we would have found him." Dave Darrin began to pry about, looking for some concealed opening near the base of the cleft, rock. He explored diligently, but could find no such clue as he had hoped. "Nonsense! I'm going back to camp," declared Tom Reade. "So'm I," Hazelton agreed. "Dave can't have been mistaken," offered Greg. "Thank you for one trusting soul," said Dave gratefully. "But one thing I do know," Greg went on. "What?" asked Darry. "Even if our strange fellow was here, he is here no longer, and moreover, he has succeeded in getting away without leaving any trace," young Holmes continued. "So I'm going to join the delegation that returns to camp." Only Dick and Dave were left standing there by the cleft rock. The sun had sunk below the horizon, but the light was still strong. "If you fellows had taken it easily, as I asked," complained Dave, "we might have gotten hold of that elusive chap. To me he looked hungry. I thought he was eyeing our camp longingly, as though he'd like to stroll down and ask us for food. But that startling charge of the light brigade must have bewildered or frightened him---and so he went up in smoke, as he has always done when we've sighted him. "It wouldn't surprise me if we could find which way he has gone," whispered Prescott. "What do you mean?" "Look where I'm pointing with the toe of my boot," Dick went on. "I'm looking." "Do you see anything?" "The earth." "Look harder!" Down went Darry to his knees. "Look out," warned Dick, "or you'll obliterate it." "And I was bragging of my good eyesight," grunted Darry. "Why, this is a footprint, and none of our crowd saw it." "Besides, it's the print of a bare foot," Prescott went on. "You see the way in which it is pointing?" "Yes; toward that patch of low bushes yonder. But our chap couldn't have run through those low bushes, or we'd have seen him." "Yes; if he had been holding himself erect." "Or even had he crouched and run," Dave affirmed. "Dave Darrin, you've played baseball, if my recollection serves me correctly." "Of course." "Did you ever slide for a base?" "What-----" "Or see anyone else slide for base?" "Then our man-----" "He held himself low and ran as far as the bushes," Dick went on. "Then he fell and slid for it through the low bushes. See, here's the second print of a bare foot, and the direction is the same." "Don't tell our mutton-head chums about it," Darrin begged. "Let's follow it up ourselves." "All right," nodded Dick; "but if we find our fellow, don't let him suspect that we've reached his hiding place and know it. We'll just see what we can find out, and not give ourselves away." "Go ahead," begged Darry. "Remember, I'm not certain that we can find the fellow's hiding place before dark. It may be some distance from here. We'll try, though, and hope for luck." Dick sauntered easily along in the direction indicated by the two footprints. As they entered the patch of low bushes both boys noted the fact that the ground had been slightly disturbed, as it might have been by the sliding of a human body over it. Dick, whose eyes were keener, easily followed the marks on the ground. Indeed, he did so without appearing to pay much heed to the earth under his feet. Then the trailers passed three trees, behind which the escaping man might have found good cover. A hundred yards further on Dave and Dick entered the edge of a grove of trees. Here there were also several rather thick tangles of brush and bush. Well inside of one clump Dave, with a start, fancied he saw something that looked like a wall woven of green leaves. But Dick was trudging on ahead. Prescott continued in the lead for another quarter of a mile before he turned. "You passed the one real sign," murmured Darry at last. "I know I did," agreed Dick, "and we're going back wide of that place. You mean the jungle where you saw a bit of what looked like the brush-woven wall of a bush hut?" "Yes," assented Darrin. "It's a well-hidden place," declared Dick, "and I don't so much wonder that we didn't find it before. But now we'll go back to camp." "And what next?" "I don't know," Prescott confessed, looking puzzled. "We really haven't any right to pounce on the man unless we catch him doing something. Anyone has a right to lead the wild life in the woods, unless he's a criminal or a lunatic." "My vote is that our chap is a lunatic," suggested Darry. "If he is, then he's a harmless one, anyway. Let's go back, by a roundabout way, and tell the fellows." "There are four pin-heads in this camp," was Tom Reade's decision, when he heard the report brought back by the others. "Only two of us have brains enough to see anything that's written right on the face of the earth." "But what are we going to do about our man?" asked Greg. "That's what we must figure out," Dick replied. "I don't see that we can do anything except send word to the authorities down in the village, and let them act as they see fit." "What authorities are there in the village?" Dave inquired. "I don't know. That we'll have to find out. We-----" Dick paused suddenly, listening keenly. "Do you fellows hear that?" he whispered. "I hear a rumble of wheels off in the distance," replied Greg. "The air is so wonderfully still that sound carries a long way this evening." Dick ran into the tent, returning with an envelope and a pad of paper. "Come along, Dave," Dick requested. "And you'd better bring Tom's flashlight. It will be dark before we get back." The battery of the flashlight having had a good rest, now furnished an excellent light again. As the two chums set off at a trot Greg inquired: "Now what are that pair up to?" "Being one of the four pin-heads belonging to this outfit," Tom made solemn reply, "I can only guess." "Then what's your guess?" quizzed Danny Grin. "From the sound that wagon makes rolling over the rough road," Tom answered, "I judge that it's headed for the village. If it is, Dick is going to send in a note by the driver, and thus save one or two of us the tiresome sixteen-mile round trip." Which proved to be a very correct guess, for Prescott and Darrin, returning three quarters of an hour later, informed the others that Dick had halted the driver, asking the farmer to wait while the note was being written. "I sent the note to the post-master," Dick. went on. "If he and the other folks in the village take enough interest in the matter, I imagine a constable will be sent up to-morrow." "Perhaps to-night," hinted Dalzell. "If you were a constable," asked Tom, "would you want to be pulled out of your bed and sent on such a trip in the night time?" "I'll tell you one thing that we fellows want to do," hinted Darrin, a few minutes later. "When we go to bed we want to take pains to leave some food where it can be easily borrowed by our man of mystery. I've an idea that he has been making night trips down here once in a while to obtain something to eat." "Two or three times I've thought I missed food in the morning," nodded Greg. "Yet, if our man has been getting all his food here, then he is a very light eater." "And welcome to the little he borrowed," Dick finished. "Drowsiness is overcoming curiosity for me," yawned Reade, as he rose and strolled toward the tent. "Any of you other fellows going to turn in?" "I will," yawned Dalzell, "if you'll permit me to sleep in the same tent with you." Fifteen minutes later all of the high school boys were sound asleep. They all dreamed that night of the Man with the Haunting Face. _ |
||