An Oregon Girl Part 19

"Yes; that way!" and the policeman waved his hand to the left.

"Thank you," and Sam followed the direction indicated. A strange foreboding hurried him on. He was then fully aroused to something extraordinary about to happen. He walked on the gra.s.s whenever possible to m.u.f.fle the sound of his footfalls, and soon was rewarded by making out the dim form of a woman some distance ahead, being still in the range of the gate arc light. There was no mistaking the figure.

From that moment he never lost sight of her.

To avoid suspicion of shadowing her, he took a diverging path and boldly clambered over the hill, and proceeded toward the children's playgrounds, apparently away from her. Pa.s.sing on and in the direction of the reservoirs, he at length stopped at the fountain.

He was the "man near the fountain" whom she discovered while she was standing under the cedar.

Sam had stopped but a moment when, to his amazement, he discovered Virginia suddenly had disappeared down the hillside. He at once followed her, and was the man she again saw on the driveway beneath her. Again she disappeared, and he shrewdly suspected, into the deep shadow of the clump of firs nearby.

He was straining his eyes diagonally up the slope, trying to penetrate the gloom, when a low scream of terror a.s.sailed his ears, and was quickly followed by a low, rea.s.suring masculine voice. He determined to get near them. He threw himself flat against the bank and, s.h.i.+elded some by the unmowed gra.s.sy slope, dragged himself along for about fifty feet, to where the driveway, rounding westward, divided them from the long flight of steps. He pa.s.sed within fifty feet of the couple, then cautiously pulled himself near the summit. The ridge was strategically of great value. It enabled him to flank them unseen.

He immediately availed himself of its cover and sneaked slowly and cautiously along the side of the crest to a point which he judged to be near enough to them, and then he peered above the summit. The couple were between him and the dim city lights. He strained his ears to catch their words, and drew himself closer, inch by inch, fearing discovery, yet desperately anxious to catch the purpose of the meeting, and when he saw the glittering knife, his alarm gave expression in the low whistle.

When he sprang on in pursuit of Jack, it was with a determination to ascertain who he was, where he lived, and, if possible, to gain some knowledge of his purpose in this meeting with Virginia at such an unseasonable time and place.

The few words of low-spoken conversation he had heard gave him no clue to the real object of the meeting; but he was convinced that some grave and momentous purpose was involved to have induced Virginia to keep so perilous an appointment alone.

"Did she make the appointment?" The thought was no sooner uttered than it gave place to another equally as suggestive, for just then thoughts raced through Sam's brain with amazing rapidity. "Or, rather, was she not compelled to meet the stranger by some power which he had obtained over her--some secret of her life which she feared--a deathly fear, of disclosure, and which this man knew, and its power he knew only too well, how to wield."

The more he thought about it, the more the mystery, for such it appeared to him, deepened. He determined to fathom it. Inured to a rough, open-air life on the Texas plains, his const.i.tution was hard and tough, and well seasoned for the job presented--and, it must be confessed, it was to his liking.

Sam felt his blood tingle as his enthusiasm rose to the prospect of a genuine adventure, and he hurried along, over the soft, yielding gra.s.s, to catch sight of the fellow ahead. A clump of low bushes suddenly confronted him. It was an unusually dark spot, and then, for the first time, he thought of the ugly knife the stranger had displayed, and realized that he himself was unarmed.

He almost halted--wary of running into an ambush, and cautiously made a wide detour, meanwhile alert for any sudden surprise from the direction of the bush. Discovering no sign of a crouching figure there, he hastened on, and finally caught sight of a moving shadow, as it crossed a faint shaft of light shot from a window of a dwelling on Ford street, to his left.

"Ah, I guess so. That's the party," he muttered to himself, and from that moment Sam was as keen on the trail as a sleuth on the scent, never losing sight of his quarry, but himself avoiding, as he believed, discovery.

Occasionally, as the moon cleared from an obscuring cloud, he could make out the man halting under the shelter of a fir or clump of saplings, evidently to listen for sounds of a pursuer, and then, seemingly satisfied, again move on.

So far the direction of his course was toward the reservoir, but of a sudden he turned, and sharply cutting across Sam's front, swiftly entered the deep gloom of a cl.u.s.ter of cedars, where he was lost to the eyes of the pursuer.

It was plain that his man intended to avoid exit by the main gate, or by Park avenue, a circ.u.mstance to cause Sam keen chagrin, for he hoped by an adroit move to get a good square look at the fellow's face as he would pa.s.s under the entrance arc light.

To the right, a foot path wound its way to the main gate. To the left of a cl.u.s.ter of dark firs stretched a comparative level, past the bear pit, and right down to the deer corral; but what park features lay beyond and between the firs and corral, he could not determine. In his effort to mislead Sam, the fugitive had doubled on his track, and at that moment was but a short distance west of the starting point. Sam reasoned that this man would not cross that smooth, gra.s.sy plot, nor emerge from his retreat and go down the path, but most likely would take a direct course through the cl.u.s.ter of firs, and under the shelter of their dark shadow strike the fence directly opposite, and so reach the Barnes road, a hundred yards or so west of the park gate.

It was obvious that time was an important factor. There being no possible place of concealment between his present position and the firs, he must either go back and take a circuitous route, or boldly approach by the path. He chose the latter. Skirting the firs--for he dared not enter the cl.u.s.ter's gloomy precincts in his defenseless condition--he soon pa.s.sed them and discovered a succession of odd-looking shrubs, trained to fantastic growths by the gardener. They afforded excellent cover right down past the bear pit to the deer corral fence, which ran along the brow of the hill; farther down, a second fence, which still exists, bounded the deer corral and separated the park from the Barnes road. A little further along and against the upper picket fence (since removed), a ma.s.s of tangled ivy and Virginia creeper foliage, revelled in wild luxuriance.

The vines had seized upon and had grown about and over some dwarf locust trees, forming a series of natural bowers, rather picturesque by daylight, but at night, dismally dark and forbidding.

Sam hesitated, which was well for him, for under the shadow of these dark vines, Rutley and Jack Sh.o.r.e had met by previous arrangement.

They were silently watching him.

"I cannot shake him off. He tracks me like a bloodhound," Jack informed his companion, in a whisper.

"The meddlesome fool!" replied Rutley. "If he will not stop following you--why--he carries his life in his hands."

"No, no! Not that. We don't want any killing in ours, Phil, anything but that. Who is he?"

"Sam Harris. I saw him follow Virginia and was sure he would run foul of you."

"The simpleton is harmless anyway. He is moving to the fence. See him?

Hist!"

After studying the wild growth for a few moments, Sam decided to approach it by way of the fence. There he suddenly dropped to his knees and crept noiselessly--very close beside the fence, toward the tangle. As he neared it he could make out its black cavernous recesses. Twice he paused, his eyes strained with the utmost tension of watchfulness against a surprise, for he now fully believed that the man he was attempting to shadow was a desperate character.

However, he crept nearer, hardly stirring a blade of gra.s.s, so cautious was his progress--so silent his movements. He listened intently, scarcely breathing, lest its sound should betray his presence. His hands gently touched a vine to part the leaves--instantly he was greeted with a hiss and a rattle, and then something glittered close to his eyes, which in the moment of his startled alarm he believed to be the glitter of a reptile's fangs. It caused him to bolt suddenly with a panicky feeling at his heart, and then it brought from Jack a soft chuckle of merriment.

"He's not as plucky as the girl. We must throw him off the scent at any cost," whispered Rutley, "or we will be trapped." Suddenly he laid his hand on Jack's arm and continued with a low, sardonic laugh: "I have it, Jack. You lead him down on the Barnes road; I'll meet him there," and without any further delay Rutley slipped down the steep slope to his automobile, which lay in the deep shadow of the canyon walls, a little further to the west, where he waited with the evil purpose in his heart for the climax.

Sam was no coward. He had faced dangerous situations fearlessly, but that hiss and rattle, in the stillness of a dark, lonely and forbidding place, fairly raised his hair, and lent a lightness to his feet that amazed him, when he halted and noted the distance covered in the few moments of his flight.

"One of those deadly reptiles got out of the park zoo," he thought, "sneaked his way into that jungle--I guess so!" and he wiped the beads of perspiration from his face as he added aloud: "An almighty close call! But," and he looked up at the dark sky, and then around and about, and as gathering confidence returned to him, continued: "I shall not give up yet, not yet. I guess not."

Yet it was apparent his pursuit of the stranger had signally failed, and he stood motionless wondering what course then best for him to adopt.

True, he was in a dilemma, and instinctively realized that to remain in the park was useless. So, without forming any practical conclusion, and for the purpose of keeping active, he again moved toward the fence. It was then he conceived the notion to climb over the fence and make a short descent to the gate, in order to catch sight of Virginia, for she could not be far away yet, and to follow her and secretly to protect her on her return to her home. With that object in mind, he climbed the fence, and, securing a position on its top, looked cautiously about. He was some distance to the west of the tangle of vines, from which he was screened by the foliage of a small tree that grew nearby.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sam--"One of those deadly reptiles got out of the Park Zoo."]

The gate light threw a faint glimmer along the fence, and on the Barnes road in the gorge below. He peered down the steep hillside, and looked up and down the road. There being no one in sight, he let his legs slip quietly down the other side of the fence, and gradually lowered himself, without sustaining other injury than a few trivial scratches. As he brushed mechanically the debris which had clung to his clothes, he was surprised to see the figure of a man step out, seemingly from the fence itself, and slip down the hillside, and climbing the lower fence, cross the almost dry bed of the stream, close to the road, and proceed cityward.

Sam was sure the man, whoever he was, had not been on the corral side of the fence a moment before, and to give the mysterious appearance a deeper significance, the point of exit was about the location of the tangled vines. The appearance of the man differed from the one he had followed, inasmuch that one had on a long coat and bushy beard, the other wore a short pilot coat and mustache. For a moment Sam was puzzled, and he scratched his head. Suddenly he broke out in an unconscious whisper to himself, as though urged on by some supernatural agency, for afterward it surprised him when he thought of that moment: "d.a.m.ned if I don't think he's the same party I've been after, disguised."

And he made straight for the place, as near as he could estimate, where the man had emerged.

It was a few moments before he found it, but a close examination soon revealed two yielding pickets of the fence. True, just sufficient to admit a man's body sideways, but there it was, as he afterwards discovered, and perfectly screened from observation by ma.s.ses of slender leaf-laded branches and twigs. The inner, bushy part being skilfully cut away. The trick employed to evade him was now palpable.

The hiss, the buzzing rattle, the glitter--"Ah; it was the glitter of a steel blade"--and at the thought he s.h.i.+vered, as with an icy chill, for he realized how dangerously near a death-trap he had ventured. As the reaction came, his face flamed with the hot blood of indignation and chagrin at the smart dodge by which he had been temporarily baffled.

In the distance, down near the park entrance, was still dimly visible the retreating form of a man. Sam determined to follow him.

He slid and partly tumbled down the steep hillside, sprang over the lower fence, and crossed the bed of the creek and on to the road--and was so intent on his mission that he did not hear or see, until it was almost upon him, a dark, noiseless machine, approaching from the rear.

He moved hastily aside to let it pa.s.s, but to his intense astonishment, the automobile followed him with evident intention of running him down. Again he sprang aside, but too late. The front wheel grazed his left leg and swung him around on to the rear wheel, which hurled him violently to the ground.

Having accomplished his purpose, Rutley at once stopped the machine, alighted, and examined Sam.

He was soon joined by Jack, who asked, in a low voice: "Have you killed him?"

"I don't think so. Bad gash on the side of his head, though."

"Dangerous?"

"Impossible for me to say."

"Just unconscious?" anxiously inquired Jack.

"Yes; but I don't think he will interfere with us again for some time.

What shall we do with him?"