PURSUIT
Gale’s left hand clasped tightly in that of Phyllis and with Gale
holding her gun tightly and ready for instant action should the need
arise, the two walked forward. They tried to make as little noise as
possible, but though they walked on tiptoe, the sound echoed back to
them dully. The ground underfoot was rough and uneven. On both sides of
them the earth walls were damp and cold. The air was heavy and musty and
the girls shivered as they tried to walk bravely forward. From up ahead
of them came a sudden sound as of a boot heel striking against stone.
“There he is!” Phyllis said in a sharp whisper. “What’ll we do?”
“Follow him and see where he is hiding,” Gale returned.
Slowly and with the utmost caution the girls crept forward. Once when
they came to a turn in the passage they were unprepared for it and
stumbled into the wall. Thereafter as they walked along, Phyllis kept
one guiding hand against the wall. Suddenly her hand came in contact
with something round and small set in a large niche in the wall.
“Hold on, I’ve found something, Gale,” she said. “I wish we had a
flashlight.”
“What is it?”
“I guess it’s a candle. It _is_ a candle, and it’s been lit recently,
too, because the end is still warm and the wax isn’t hard yet.”
“Keep it, maybe we’ll find some matches,” Gale laughed.
They came to a turn in the passage and for a moment a little speck of
light showed ahead of them. But suddenly it flickered and died out.
“I’ll bet it was another candle,” Phyllis whispered. “But if that was
the man we are after who blew it out, he is awf’ly far away from us.”
Gale stood still and Phyllis stopped also. Over and about them was
silence. As they stood there they seemed to imagine all sorts of sounds,
footsteps, whispers from unseen antagonists, scurrying of mice in the
passageway.
“I don’t like this,” Phyllis said nervously. “Let’s go back to camp and
get Tom or Jim.”
“If you will lead the way out,” invited Gale.
“You mean to say we are lost in here?”
“Well, I haven’t the faintest knowledge in which direction the entrance
lies,” Gale said candidly. “Do you?”
“It is back of some place,” Phyllis said uneasily. “We’ve got to find
it.”
“We’ve got to find it if we want to get out,” Gale agreed. “Suppose we
turn around and walk the other way.”
A mocking laugh arose from somewhere in the passage and echoed loudly
and weirdly. Both girls shivered from the ominous tone of it. They
walked along, Phyllis’ hand against the wall to guide them, but soon her
hand touched empty air.
“There’s a turn here,” she cautioned.
“It’s a cross passage,” Gale said. “Passages on both sides of us, but
which one do we take?”
Again that taunting laugh rumbled from behind them.
“Whichever way we go, I hope it is away from him,” Phyllis declared
trembling. “That laugh gives me the jitters, it is so melodramatic. Soon
he will be telling us we are in his power.”
Gale laughed nervously as the girls continued along the right hand
passage. Phyllis stumbled wildly over something and shrieked madly as
her exploring fingers came in contact with something cold and hard.
“What is it?” Gale demanded.
“It f-feels like a s-skull,” Phyllis murmured with difficulty.
“Don’t be silly,” Gale said, repressing a shudder. “Probably only a
rock. Come along, the girls will begin to worry about us soon.”
“They would worry more if they knew we were lost in here,” Phyllis
declared.
They walked on for what seemed hours, straining their eyes into the
darkness for that bit of light which would mean they were near the
entrance, straining their ears to catch unfamiliar sounds.
“G-Gale, do you really think we will find the way out?” Phyllis asked
after a long while.
“Of course,” Gale said staunchly, with far more cheerfulness than she
felt. “We can’t stay in here forever.”
“No,” Phyllis said and her voice shook uncontrollably. “Soon we would
starve.”
Gale, her own nerves on edge with the darkness and their hopeless search
for the opening, recognized the hysteria in her friend’s voice. But
before she could remonstrate, there arose that maddening, taunting
laugh.
“Gale,” Phyllis said hysterically, “I can’t stand it! I can’t! If we
don’t find the entrance soon, I’ll----”
Gale shook her sternly. “Phyllis! Pull yourself together! Don’t you see,
that is just what he is trying to do, get us rattled? Of course we’ll
find the entrance. We’ve got to, but for goodness sake don’t go to
pieces now. Wait until we get back to camp and then we’ll scream and
tear our hair.”
The picture of the two of them screaming and tearing their hair was a
little too much for Phyllis’ sense of humor and she laughed jerkily.
“It wouldn’t be so bad,” she said, Gale’s arm about her shoulders, “if
Relentless Rudolph would stop laughing.”
“That’s a good name for him,” Gale smiled.
They stood together in the darkness, trying to fathom a way out of their
predicament.
“Gale, do you suppose----” Phyllis began.
“What?” her friend encouraged.
“This sort of thing was what your uncle was thinking of when he gave us
those revolvers?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Gale said slowly.
“I wish I had mine now,” Phyllis wailed. “A lot of good it does us in my
slicker.”
“I’ve got mine,” Gale reminded her, “but we haven’t seen anything to
shoot at yet.”
“Why do you suppose he, Relentless Rudolph, is trying to scare us so?”
was Phyllis’ next question.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Gale answered. “Unless he is trying to
scare us so we will be afraid to send the police after him.”
“Not much chance,” Phyllis said indignantly. “I’d like to lead the
police here, myself. If this cave didn’t give me the jitters,” she
added. “Let’s get going--some place.”
Hand in hand they started off again. This passage had a more hollow
sound than the others. Their footsteps, for they no longer bothered to
tread silently, sounded like thunder in their ears. The ground was
getting more uneven and suddenly they bumped ignominiously into the
wall.
“That’s the end of that,” Phyllis said in a tired voice. “We’ll wear
ourselves out before long.”
They went back the way they had come and when they came to the cross
passages, chose one going in the opposite direction. Their steps were
lagging, and their eyes burned from straining them to catch one glimpse
of daylight.
“Phyllis! Look! The entrance!” Gale cried joyously.
“Hurray! Let’s run!” Phyllis said eagerly.
All their tiredness was gone now. They raced eagerly for the patch of
light ahead of them and burst out upon a valley of green.
“I was never so glad to leave any place,” Phyllis said, sinking down
beneath a tree and leaning wearily against the trunk. “Rest a couple of
minutes and then we’ll go back to camp.”
“Phyllis,” Gale said slowly, gazing about them first this way and then
that. “This isn’t the same place where we went in.”
“No,” Phyllis agreed thoughtfully, after looking around, “it isn’t.
Don’t tell me we’re lost again! At that,” she said calmly, “I’d rather
be lost out here in the open than in those underground passages.”
“Come on,” Gale said impatiently, “we can’t sit here all day. We have to
find the camp.”
The sun was high overhead. It was hours since they had left their camp
site. What must the others be thinking? Had Tom or Jim started out to
find them?
“Maybe we could stay here and let ’em find us,” Phyllis said, relaxed
and lazy.
“We can’t stay here,” Gale said decidedly. She hit upon a sudden
inspiration to make her friend bestir herself. “We are too close to the
cave, the bandit might pursue us,” she added smilingly.
That was enough. Phyllis jumped to her feet and started to climb over
the uneven ground through the trees. At the top of the rise they saw
their camp nestling beside the little creek in the valley. The
subterranean passages they had been in led directly through the hill
which they had started to climb earlier in the day. From where they
stood now, they could see the partly hidden entrance which they had
first discovered. On their way down the hillside they took particular
care not to go near the mouth of the cave, lest they should see and be
seen by the bank bandit.
When they returned to the camp the others greeted them with mingled
exclamations of curiosity and thankfulness.
“We had about decided that you were lost,” Carol declared.
“You would have been right----” Gale began.
“Hold on!” Phyllis exclaimed. “Who is that with Jim?”
The girls saw Jim approaching the campfire where they were all gathered,
and with him was the man who two days before had brought the news of the
escape of the bank bandits to the K Bar O.
“Are you still hunting for the escaped robbers?” was Phyllis’ eager
question the minute the two men came within hearing distance of the
girls and Tom.
“Shore!” he answered promptly.
“Well,” Phyllis smiled over the sensation she knew her words would
create, “we saw one of them this morning.”
“You what? Where? Are you sure it was one of them?” The questions poured
from all present.
“Oh, we’re sure all right,” Phyllis said. “He scared us out of a month’s
sleep. I’ve christened him Relentless Rudolph the way he followed us and
laughed at us.”
“Followed you? Laughed at you?” Janet echoed. “What _do_ you mean?”
“Explain yourself,” urged Carol.
So while the others listened Gale let Phyllis tell of their morning’s
adventure. Phyllis recreated vividly with words the suspense they had
felt while fumbling around in the dark of the passages. The other girls
were quite beside themselves with excitement when she had finished.
Armed with flashlights and the revolvers they always carried now Tom
followed Jim and the special deputy into the cave when Gale and Phyllis
had shown them the entrance.
The girls returned to the camp to await the return of the three and
their prisoner. They had no doubts that if the bandit was still in the
cave, the three men would find him and bring him back to face justice.
“But there might be another exit to the cave that you don’t know about,”
Virginia mused to Phyllis and Gale. “Even now he might be miles away.”
“Well,” Phyllis said uncomfortably, remembering the thief’s laughter,
“the farther he stays away from me, the better.”
“I hope nothing happens to Tom,” Virginia said with a worried frown for
her brother. “If there is any danger, he is bound to rush right into
it.”
“Don’t worry,” Gale consoled her, “Tom is old enough to take care of
himself. While we are waiting, I’m going to have some target practice so
I’ll know how to handle this revolver.”
“A good idea,” Phyllis declared jumping to her feet. “We’ll have a
shooting match.”
Virginia tacked a large piece of paper to a tree and paced off
twenty-five feet. From her mark Gale tried her luck at hitting their
target. When she had finished they discovered that one of her six
bullets had just nicked the edge of the paper. The others had gone clear
past the tree. Phyllis was not even as lucky. None of her tries was
successful.
“You couldn’t hit a barn door if you were inside the barn,” Carol
teased.
“You couldn’t do any better!” was Phyllis’ spirited retort. “Give us a
chance, we’ll show you.”
The sun fell farther and farther in the west. The girls nervously idled
away the time, keeping anxious eyes on the hill opposite where they
expected Tom and his companions to reappear. But the minutes flew and
the others did not come. The sun dropped from sight, leaving a trail of
glorious colors in his wake. From the east, night like a pearly gray
blanket covered the sky.
Virginia sliced bacon in the frying pan over the fire. Gale made coffee
and soon inviting aromas of their supper drifted on the air.
“The smell of food will bring Tom if nothing else does,” Virginia
declared laughingly.
But it grew later. Darkness with its impenetrable shadows closed down.
The girls huddled about the campfire, watching the fantastic shadows the
flames threw over the tents. They had had their supper and put aside
things to be warmed when the others returned.
“Do you suppose they could have gotten lost like we did?” Phyllis asked
after a long and heavy silence.
“They had flashlights,” put in Madge. “They shouldn’t have.”
“Ah, but you don’t know that place!” Phyllis shivered, “It gives me the
creeps to think of it.”
“What’s that?” Virginia cried suddenly.
They listened attentively. A stick cracked as a heavy foot trod on it.
In the fitful firelight’s gleam they could see three shadowy figures
crossing the creek.
“Tom?” Virginia called uncertainly.
“All safe,” Tom’s hearty voice assured her.
“But where is the bandit?” Valerie asked excitedly.
“That’s what we’d like to know,” grumbled Tom. “We searched that place
all through but there was no one in there.”
“But we did see him,” Phyllis insisted. “He must have escaped before you
got there.”
“That’s what we figgered,” Jim put in. “We found footprints of a man,
but escaping the law seems to be that fella’s strong point.”
“He won’t escape all the time,” murmured the deputy. “We’ll catch up
with him some day.”
The girls, Virginia and Gale, warmed the supper for the three men and
before they all turned in for the night, the deputy took his leave,
declaring he could not spend the night at their campfire, but had to be
miles away by morning.
The girls slept peacefully and dreamlessly, storing up energy for the
day’s ride ahead of them, for it was Tom and Jim’s plan to continue on
to a new camp site the next day.