THE SEARCH.
In the midst of troublesome dreams, Ned Osgood, half-awake, fancied he
heard hail beating against the windows of his sitting room. Fully awake
at last, he lifted his head from the pillow and listened; but, hearing
it no more, he decided that it must have been a figment of his
distasteful dreams.
He heard something else, however. Far away the voices of men were
calling, but as he listened and wondered, the sounds grew more distant,
became fainter, and died away.
Returning to his pillow, he settled down, seeking to compose himself,
and praying that those rest-disturbing dreams might trouble him no more.
But thoughts of Hooker would not let him sleep, and presently something
else brought him bolt upright on the bed, startled and wondering.
It was a clamor of bells, beginning with a peal from the steeple of the
Methodist church down the street. The night air vibrated with the
sounds, which seemed to pour in upon him through the partly opened
window of his bedroom. Why were those church bells ringing at such an
hour? He could distinguish the tones of the academy bell, as well. In a
moment he knew it must be an alarm meant to arouse the town, and out of
bed he sprang, catching his trousers up from the back of a chair and
getting into them as quickly as he could, trembling slightly all the
while with excitement.
Below he heard Mrs. Chester calling to the maid, and, opening the door
of his room, her words came plainly to his ears:
“Sarah! Sarah! Get up quick! I’m frightened. There must be a big fire.
The bells are ringing.”
“So that’s it,” muttered Osgood, hastening to a window. “There’s a fire
in the village. They sound the bells to give the alarm.”
Looking from the window, he failed to observe any glow of light against
the sky to indicate where the fire might be. Through a momentary lull of
the bells, he fancied he heard some one shouting far away in town.
Surely some terrible thing had happened or was taking place.
Lighting a lamp, he rapidly finished dressing, and pulling on his
turtle-neck sweater he grabbed up his cap.
As he bounded down the stairs, Mrs. Chester called to him from a partly
opened door at the end of the hall:
“Where is it, Ned? Where’s the fire?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I looked out, but I couldn’t see any fire.
Don’t be alarmed; it must be a long distance away, in another part of
the village.”
A man was running down the middle of the street as Osgood dashed from
the house, slamming the door behind him. He called to the man, but
received no answer. Then he took to the street and followed.
The bell in the Methodist steeple hammered and banged as he raced past
the church. Lights were shining everywhere from the windows of houses.
Men and boys came running from side streets, questioning one another
excitedly without getting satisfactory answers.
There was a crowd in the village square, and, contrasted with the
agitated people who came running to join it from every direction, it was
strangely calm.
Ned grabbed some one by the arm, as he demanded:
“What is it? What’s the matter? Why are they ringing the bells?”
He recognized Jack Nelson, as the person he had questioned turned to
answer.
“It’s Hooker!”
“Hooker!” choked Osgood, aghast.
A fearsome thought smote him. Hooker was dead! But why should they ring
the bells in the middle of the night and bring all the people out?
“Yes,” Nelson was saying, “Roy has disappeared. He was left, apparently
asleep, and later, when some one looked into his room, he was gone.”
“Great Scott!” breathed Ned. “I thought perhaps he was dead.”
“Oh, no. In that case, it wouldn’t be necessary to turn the whole
village out. He’s wandering around somewhere, half dressed and probably
crazy. They’re getting the people out to search for him.”
“Is it necessary to turn out the whole town this way?”
“Perhaps so. They’ve tried to find him, but can’t. Now they’re asking
everybody to join in the search. You see, there’s no telling what the
result may be if he’s not found soon. In his dotty condition he may do
himself harm; and, anyhow, with only a few clothes on, he’s liable to
get pneumonia.”
Some of the men who had early learned the cause of the disturbance were
now seen bringing lanterns, and in the midst of the gathering in the
square, William Pickle, the deputy sheriff, was suggesting a plan of
search, by which four parties should spread out in different directions.
“You want to look everywhere, feller citizens,” the officer was saying;
“look into sheds and barns and under fences, and every old nook and
corner where the boy may be hidin’. He’s plumb loony, ye know, and he’s
li’ble to crawl into any old place. Mebbe he’ll be scat of ye and want
to fight when ye do find him, so handle him gentle.”
At this juncture two men came panting down Main Street. “We know where
he is!” shouted one. “We’ve seen him!”
“Yep, we’ve seen him,” gulped the other. “We almost ketched him, but he
got away from us somehow.”
“Where is he? Where is he?” cried twenty voices.
“We was goin’ up the street, lookin’ for him, and we’d almost got to the
Widder Chester’s, when we see somebody scoot across the road, jump the
fence and put off inter the field above Cedar Street. When we hollered
for him to stop he run faster.”
“And he could run some,” gasped the smaller man. “We chased him into a
strip of trees and bushes, and he must be hid there right now, for we
couldn’t find him.”
“Come on,” commanded William Pickle, taking the lead—“come on,
everybody. Show us the way, Turner and Crabtree.”
Forgetting the original plan of search, the crowd poured up the main
street, straggling out into a long, irregular body. Osgood, keeping
close to the leaders, felt some one press against him, and recognized
Billy Piper.
“This is bad business,” said Piper in a low tone.
“You’re right,” agreed Ned instantly. “No one can feel any worse about
it than I do.”
“But feeling bad,” retorted Billy grimly, “doesn’t make amends; it’s got
to be something more than that.”
As the searchers turned from the road near Mrs. Chester’s house, climbed
the fence and streamed across the field, Ned began to understand that
the shouting, which had seemed to break in upon his troubled dreams, had
been real. And with this conviction came the thought that in his
delirium Hooker had sought to return to the place where he had been
injured. It was a disagreeable thought, which Osgood tried to put aside.
The rising moon, breaking now and then through ragged clouds, promised
aid to the searchers. Directed by Pickle, they spread out and
practically surrounded the long, narrow strip of trees and bushes. This
done, a body of men entered the growth and worked their way through it,
leaving scarcely a yard of ground uninspected. But when they had passed
over it all in this thorough manner, it became known that not one of
them had found the slightest trace of the missing lad.
“He must have hid till Turner and Crabtree left,” said the deputy
sheriff. “As soon as they were gone, he prob’ly hit out for somewhere’s
else.”
“Too bad one of ’em didn’t have sense enough to stay and watch while
t’other one went for help,” said Abel Hubbard, the constable.
The posse gathered in a group, seeking further instructions from their
leaders.
“Don’t believe they’ll ever find him this way,” said Billy Piper.
“They’re not going about it with any sort of method.”
“Yeou’re so all-fired clever at sech things,” said Sile Crane, “why
don’t yeou suggest a plan?”
“They wouldn’t listen to me if I proposed anything.”
“If you have a plan, Piper,” said Nelson, joining the little cluster of
boys that surrounded Billy, “just tell us what it is. If it sounds
reasonable, we’ll carry it out.”
“Let me think a moment—let me think,” said Piper, tapping his knuckles
against his forehead. “The report is that Roy was talking some along
about nightfall, though his words were jumbled, without much sense in
them. He kept repeating certain things, such as ‘poker,’ ‘five aces,’
and ‘cabin.’”
“You know what Professor Richardson said,” put in Rodney Grant. “It’s
thought that Roy was playing cards for money when he was hurt.”
“If so,” said Billy, “that would explain the words ‘poker’ and ‘five
aces’; but why did he keep talking about a cabin? Ha! I have it. I
happen to know that once on a time a certain little bunch of fellows
went over to the old camp in Silver Brook Swamp to play poker, and Hook
was one of the crowd. Cabin—that’s what he meant; he had something in
his muddled mind about that old camp in the swamp. Come on, fellows,
perhaps we’ll find him there.”
“You’ve always been so lucky in your guesses,” said Nelson, “that
there’s a chance you may be right this time. If you should happen to be,
your reputation as a great detective will be established on a firm——”
“I don’t want any such reputation!” snapped Billy shortly. “I think I
told you so once before, Jack.”
“Geewhilikens!” exclaimed Crane, astonished. “What’s happened to yeou
naow? Yeou’ve alwus been red-hot to play the detective, and some folks
have begun to say that yeou’re purty clever at it.”
“I haven’t time to explain my reasons for cutting that tommyrot out,”
retorted Piper. “Let’s get a move on.”
There were eight boys in the party that set out for Silver Brook Swamp,
led by Piper. Striking across the fields, they passed to the south of
Turkey Hill and reached the Barville road. The clouds were dispersing
and the moon was shining clear and bright when they drew near Silver
Brook and came to the old path that led into the swamp.
Phil Springer and Chipper Cooper were disposed to lag behind somewhat,
although something seemed to draw them on after the others.
“I’ve been expecting Piper to blow the whole thing any minute,” said
Cooper, speaking to Phil in a low tone.
“Wonder why he hasn’t?” speculated Springer. “He sus-swore to us that he
would if Shultz or Osgood didn’t own up pup-pretty quick.”
“Guess he’s waiting for what he’d call the psychological moment. You
know Pipe’s always great for dramatic effects.”
“There can be only one outcome to this thing now. We’re all in the
sus-sus-soup.”
“Billy says it’s our duty to think of Roy, not ourselves.”
“I’ve been th-thinking of him too much. It’s made me sick. I’m thinking
of him now, and what we’re liable to fuf-find in this old swamp if
Pipe’s guess is right about the way he went. Being crazy enough to jump
out of bub-bed and run off half-dressed, anything may huh-happen to
him.”
“That’s right,” agreed Chipper dolefully. “I wonder where Charley Shultz
is? Didn’t see anything of him with the crowd.”
“Yah!” growled Springer. “He hasn’t got any fuf-feelings. I’ll bet he’s
in bed, sleeping like a log, this very minute. Probably not even the
ringing of the bells woke him up.”
“He must have a heart of stone,” said Cooper.
Had they known all that had happened to Shultz in the last two hours,
could they have seen him in his present painful and wretched condition,
their judgment of him might not have been so harsh.