Tom Slade on the River Part 9

"With one of the troops from--?"

"No," said the young man.

"Hmn," said Tom, still holding the lantern up; "I thought--Don't you fellows remember him?"

Connie shook his head; Garry also.

"Never saw him in my life," said Doc.

"Hmn," said Tom. "Maybe I--just for a minute I thought--I guess you fellows are right."

The stranger was dressed in the regulation camping outfit-the kind of costume usually seen on dummies in the windows of sporting goods stores in the spring, with a spick and span tent in the background, a model lunch basket near by and a canoe crowded in. His n.o.bby outfit was very much the worse for wear, however, and he looked about as fresh as the immaculate Phoebe Snow would look after a _real_ railroad journey.

"Maybe I can be rescued now," he said imploringly, clinging to Tom. "I saw the lights way down there. There was only one till tonight and tonight I counted seven-little bits of ones. I tried to get to them, but I got lost. You can't go to them. It looks as if you can, but you can't.

They're just as far away, no matter how far you go-they get farther and farther. n.o.body can ever get away from here. Are you afraid of dead people?"

"No," said Doc. "We're scouts. Is--"

"If a person looks very different, then he's dead, isn't he?"

"Come on," said Doc. "We'll see."

"We'll never get off this hill; I've tried every way--"

"Oh, yes, we will," spoke up Garry, putting his arm over the boy's shoulder and urging him along.

They could see that he was hardly rational, and Garry, better than any of the others, knew how to handle him.

"It's terrible without a light," he said; "I spilled all the oil-I'm glad you've got a light."

"What's your name?" Garry asked.

"Jeffrey Waring-come on, I'll show you the place." He shuddered as he spoke.

Once more Tom held his lantern up to the white, distracted face.

"_He_ was never at camp," laughed Doc.

"Hmn," said Tom, apparently but half convinced.

A few steps brought them to a little clearing where stood a rough shack.

Outside it, fastened against a tree, was a vegetable crate with bars nailed across it-the silent evidence of departed pets. Several fis.h.i.+ng rods lay against a tree. Close by was a makes.h.i.+ft fireplace. On a rough bunk inside the shack lay a man, no longer young, with iron gray hair.

His eyes were open and staring and one seemed larger than the other. Doc felt his pulse and found that he was living.

"He fell on the rocks and hurt his arm-I think it's broken," said Jeffrey. "It bled and I bandaged it."

Doc raised the bandaged arm and it fell heavily. Removing the bandage carefully he saw that the cut itself was not dangerous, but from first-aid studies he thought the man was suffering from an apoplectic stroke or something of that nature. He wondered if the injury to the arm had not been incidental to the man's seizure and sudden fall. People sometimes lingered in an unconscious condition for days, he knew. It was hardly a case for first-aid, but it was certainly a case for skill and resource, for whatever happened the patient, dead or living, would have to be taken away from this mountain camp.

With Garry's help, he raised the victim into a rec.u.mbent posture, piling everything available under the head while Connie hurried back and forth to the brook, bringing wet applications for the head and neck.

There was no sign of returning consciousness and the question was how to get the patient away down to Temple Camp where medical aid might be had, and where any contingency might be best handled.

The four boys, greatly hampered in their discussion by Jeffrey, whose long vigil had brought him to the verge of collapse, decided that it would be quite useless to signal for help, since it would mean another expedition with most of the difficulties of their own, even if attempted after daybreak.

So they decided to wait for dawn, which happily would come soon, and with the first sign of it to send a smudge signal that they were coming and to have a doctor at camp. They believed that in the daylight they could carry the patient back over the same path which they had so laboriously opened and though delay was irksome this plan seemed the only feasible one to follow.

Despite their weariness none could sleep, so they kindled a little fire and sat about it chatting while they counted time, impatiently waiting for the first streak of daylight.

It was then that they learned from the overwrought boy something of his history, but they got it piecemeal and had to patch together as best they could his rather disjointed talk.

"Is he your father?" Doc asked.

"No, he's my uncle," said Jeffrey. "He isn't a real governor; I only call him that. He's eccentric-know what that is? If we hadn't come trout fis.h.i.+ng it would have been all right. I could have sent my pigeons from the boat-I've got a regular coop there-it cost thirty dollars."

"But you like the stalking, don't you?" Connie asked.

"Yes, but I can't be quiet enough-I can't sneak up to them. You have to be quiet and stealthy when you stalk."

They made out that Mr. Waring was something of a sportsman and was wealthy and eccentric.

"We live in a big house in Vale Centre," Jeffrey told them, "and we have fountains and I have twenty-seven pigeons and two dogs-and I can have anything I want except an automobile. I can't have an automobile because I'm nervous."

"You don't mean you live near Edgevale Village, down the Hudson?" Garry asked in surprise. "I live about two miles from the Centre myself."

"We live in a house that cost thousands and thousands of dollars, but I like our boat best. If there's a war we're going to give it to the government, but if there isn't any war it's going to be mine some day."

It appeared that Jeffrey and his uncle lived alone, save for the servants, and had cruised up the Hudson to Catskill Landing in their boat for the trout fis.h.i.+ng of which the old gentleman was fond. How the pair had happened to penetrate to this isolated spot was not quite clear, but the boys gathered that it had been a favorite haunt of Mr. Waring's youthful days.

"He told me he'd bring me and show me," said Jeffrey, "and that we'd stay here and catch fish and I could send my pigeons back to James-he's our chauffeur-and I'd get better so's I could remember things better. Do you think you get better living in the woods?"

"Surest thing you know," said Garry.

The picture of the kindly old gentleman, bringing his none too robust nephew to this lonely spot, which lingered in his memory perhaps as the scene of woodland sports of his own boyhood, touched the four boys and seemed to bring them in closer sympathy with the figure that lay p.r.o.ne and motionless within the little shack.

"I can have anything I want," Jeffrey told them again. "Spotty cost fifty dollars, but he died. That's because I was sick and my brain didn't work good. My other carrier cost thirty dollars and I sent him to James to tell him the governor was hurt."

The scouts told him the fate of the pigeon and of how they had received the message.

"But we'll never get away from here," Jeffrey said hopelessly. "We'll never find our way back."

With the first light of dawn Garry increased the dying blaze and sent the smudge signal. Piling damp leaves on the fire he caused a straight thin column of thick smoke to rise high into the air and by inverting the deserted pigeon coop over this, and removing and replacing it as the Morse code required, he imprinted against the vast gray dawn the words

COMING HAVE DOCTOR

They knew well enough that some one in the camp would keep sleepless vigil, watching for just such a message. Three times the words were spelled out in smoke to make sure that they would be caught and understood.

To Jeffrey, whose only resource had been his pet pigeon and who had been unnerved by his inability to find his way from the hill, the sending of this message and the quiet orderly preparations for departure which followed were the cause of gaping amazement. He clung to Garry, as the others got his uncle onto the stretcher, and walked along at his side, plying him with excited questions. Sometimes it was necessary for him to take a corner while one of the scouts went ahead to open a way and then his panic was pitiable.

It did not seem at all peculiar to the others that he should single out Garry and cling to him, for everybody fell for Garry almost at first sight. What they did notice was that he appeared to shun Tom, who, indeed, was ent.i.tled to all his grat.i.tude and was the hero of the occasion if anyone was.