Varley splashed after his leader. No other word would quite describe
the sort of journey he made at the heels of the Shark; for as soon as
they had descended from the slight rise of the “Island,” and come to
the lower levels, they encountered many evidences of the rapid progress
of the thaw. Probably even in summer there was more or less swampy
ground hereabouts; but now water from the melting snow stood in shallow
pools, through which the Shark marched unconcernedly. He was wearing
big overshoes, with tops of waterproof cloth buckled tightly about the
bottoms of his trousers, and appeared to give no more thought to the
puddles underfoot than he gave to the rain.
Paul had a somewhat different equipment, inasmuch as he was shod in
leather only, but leather prepared by some new process for rough wear
and guaranteed to be water-tight. So far the new shoes--they laced
well up his legs--had seemed to meet the guarantee, but he began to
wonder if they would continue to do so. Certainly he was putting them
to an extreme test, as, for that matter, he was testing the qualities
of his heavy outer jacket. Indeed, he smiled more than once to himself
as he thought how curiously unlike his city experience it was to be
trudging along on such a day, and in such a place, and, it may be
added, in such company. For the Shark surely was an odd stick. He
hardly opened his lips as they tramped along, but Varley found him
entertaining, for all that.
Thick clumps of undergrowth here and there prevented a march in a
straight course, and also so narrowed the field of view that Paul had
small notion of the direction they were taking. The Shark, however,
went along quite as if he were on familiar ground. To be sure, he
glanced about him frequently, but with an effect, almost, of picking up
landmarks; and, presently, quickening his pace, headed straight into a
hedge-like line of bushes, forced a passage through them, and gave a
grunt of satisfaction.
“Ugh! Hit it about right. Not too far up--that’s the main thing.”
Paul overtook him, and halting, as he had halted, looked out upon the
Sugar River. It was a sizable stream at all times, but now, swollen by
melting snow, it was a river of imposing proportions. It was running
almost bank full. There was a great deal of ice coming down-stream; the
cakes, in some cases, were like small floes. The current was swift,
and the cakes ground and grated together savagely. Moreover, the water
was of a muddy color, which could have had nothing to do with its
temperature, but which, for some reason Paul didn’t understand, made
him shiver.
“Whew! I’d hate to have to take a dip in there,” said he.
The Shark nodded absently. He was giving a moment to studying the
opposite bank.
“Of course--too cold.... Be too cold for two months yet,” he added.
Varley pushed the collar of his coat higher. If he were not mistaken,
the rain was increasing. Funny how sight of that yellow, rushing river
made everything seem more dismal than ever, he reflected.
Somewhere in the dim distance the Shark made out what he had been
looking for.
“Um-m! That’ll be it--highest ground anywhere around. Now, if I can
get a line----” He broke off the sentence, and, turning, stared in the
direction in which, by Varley’s hazy reckoning, lay the Grant farmhouse.
“What are you up to?” Paul inquired.
“What do you s’pose?” countered the Shark testily. “Think I’m looking
for birds’ nests?”
“Oh, no,” Varley answered humbly; just then he was not disposed to
controversy. His tone was not lost upon the Shark, who said, quickly
and almost apologetically:
“Oh, I say! ’Tisn’t as if you knew more--er--er--as if you were better
posted, I mean. Ought to have thought of that! But I’m getting my
bearings. And I _am_ getting them, too.”
“Your bearings?” Paul repeated, doubtfully. “Then you’ve been here
before.”
“Never in my life. Saw that map, though, didn’t I?”
“The map? But--but you didn’t commit it to memory, did you?”
“Only the most important part of it,” said the Shark simply. “Few of
the elevations--that sort of thing. They were marked down plain as
print.”
“I didn’t notice ’em,” Varley confessed.
The Shark’s lip curled. “Huh! What do you have eyes for?” Then he
recalled that the other was in a sense a stranger and a guest. “I
mean, it’s a mighty good scheme, when you see figures, to jot ’em down
in memory. Then, if you’ve got nothing else to do, you can have fun
thinking ’em over and setting yourself little problems with ’em. Now,
this valley’d fool you. Lot less slope to the floor of it than you’d
suppose. And the way the hills line up--say, though, didn’t notice
that, either, did you?”
“I--I guess I didn’t.”
“It would have paid you. That government marker we’re looking for is
right between the two highest hills--one on each side of the valley.
That is, it is, if the map’s accurate. So far, everything’s working
out all right. I schemed on hitting the river a little below the real
point and working up, and I think I’ve done it. Now let’s get along.
Ready?”
“After you,” said Varley.
“Good!” cried the Shark, and off he set, not keeping to the bank of the
stream, but bearing away from it on a long diagonal.
Varley pursued him. By this time there could be no doubt that the rain
was heavier. Underfoot, even where there were no puddles, the snow was
a clammy mush of penetrating chill. Varley began to suspect the worth
of that guarantee of his new shoes. Very gladly he would have turned
back, had he been alone; but, being with the Shark, he followed his
leader, who plodded on, giving no heed to rain or snow. Again they came
to clumps of brush, and made detours about them. At intervals the Shark
halted briefly, scanned his surroundings, grunted and went on. Varley
felt sure they were getting far from the island, though he would have
been put to it to make an estimate of the distance.
The Shark began to slacken pace. His halts for observation were more
frequent and longer. Once or twice he even turned back briefly, working
over ground they had crossed a moment before. Varley saw that a frown
was on his face.
“Are we--are we ’most there?” he inquired solicitously.
“Huh! Ought to be.”
Varley cast a glance about him. “I don’t see anything of that--that
marker, you called it, didn’t you?”
Very deliberately the Shark removed his spectacles, and pulled out a
handkerchief. He cleared the lenses of moisture, set them before his
eyes, peered--or tried to peer--at the hills. But the thickening rain
hid them.
“Huh! Closing in, ain’t it?” he growled.
“It surely is!” Varley agreed.
“Then I’ll have to depend more on dead reckoning. Let’s see! Um--um!
Allowing for the---- Look here!” The Shark whipped about to glare at
his companion. “Look here! Don’t suppose that map’s inaccurate, do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I’m going to know--and know mighty quick,” said the Shark
grimly. “That marker ought to be within a hundred yards--no, within
fifty--of where we are this minute. Maybe there’s snow over it. Still,
it ought to show--way the stuff’s melting and going off, you know.”
Varley said “Yes,” because he did not know what else to say. He was
about to add that it was raining a lot harder, when his comrade gave a
shout, and, darting across the little open space in which they chanced
to be, dropped on his knees beside an object just protruding from the
remains of a snow bank. With frantic haste the Shark tore away the
heavy snow, revealing a low stone post, bearing a cryptical, chiseled
inscription, of which Varley could make nothing. But the Shark was
raising a shout of jubilation.
“Bully for us! Bully for the map! It’s all right! We’re all right! Say,
ain’t this cracking good sport, Varley?”
Paul tried to feign friendly enthusiasm, but he was too damp to be very
successful.
“It--it’s wonderful. Why--why--why, you didn’t know anything about this
place except what that map told you, and you came straight to--to where
you wanted to come! I--I never heard anything like it!”
The Shark patted the stone with a demonstrative affection Varley hadn’t
dreamed he was capable of displaying.
“Bully old rock! Sure you’d be here, where you belong! Oh, but I say!
This is just the greatest sport outdoors!”
“But I don’t see--the marker wasn’t shown on the map--it was put in
long after the map was made--I don’t understand----”
The Shark interrupted Varley’s broken speech.
“Of course! But naturally it would be put about here by the government
men. If you’d taken a good look at the map, you’d have seen why. You’d
get the line. Then Mr. Grant as good as pointed out the spot. After
that it was just a case of getting the bearings in your head and
keeping them there--easy as falling off a log, wasn’t it?”
“It seems to have been easy for you,” Paul confessed. “But--but now
that this is done, what--er--er--what do you want to do next?”
“I don’t care--anything,” shrugged the Shark.
A dash of rain drove into Paul’s face, and gave a hardly needed hint
of the desirability of shelter.
“It’s getting pretty damp,” he said. “We ought to go back, or find some
cover till there’s a let up in the shower.”
“Oh, all right,” said the Shark carelessly. “Just as you please--’tis
getting to be quite a rain, eh?”
“Yes, it is. And it’s going to be a good deal of a tramp.”
Thereupon the Shark squinted at the leaden sky.
“Umph! Doesn’t show signs of clearing, I must say. Still, the weather’s
the weather, and what we know about it doesn’t make an exact science.
Maybe there’ll be a lull. Meanwhile, I suppose we might as well make
for the house.”
“You mean the Grants’ house or the sugar camp?”
“Neither. There’s another, nearer by.”
“Oh!” said Varley, and, in spite of him, the doubt in his tone was
manifest.
“Case of map again,” quoth the Shark. “House indicated somewhere ’round
here. Course, I didn’t pay the same attention to it that I would to
something that really mattered. But if you’d like to hunt it up, I’m
willing enough to hunt with you.”
“I’d very much like to!”
The Shark glanced about him. He furrowed his brow reflectively.
“Let’s see, now! Farther along it was. Yes, and off to the left, I
should say--away from the river, that is. Um, um!... Hullo! What’s
that?”
The “that” had been a sound, faint and far off, but easily to be known
as the whistle of a locomotive. Varley said as much, and said it a bit
testily; the rain was seemingly growing heavier every minute, and he
was becoming impatient to seek shelter.
“Umph! I knew that, too--any chump’d know it,” growled the Shark.
“But was it from a main line engine or one of the old machines on the
branch?”
Paul stared at him. “What difference----” he began hotly; then changed
his tone. “Say, you don’t mean to tell me you know all the engines by
their whistles?”
“No; not all of ’em--my ear isn’t true enough,” the Shark confessed. “I
know a fellow, though, who can spot every last one as far as he can
hear it. He’s got absolute pitch.”
“Eh?”
“If he hears a sound he can tell you what’s the note--something like
that, anyway. Bully thing to be able to do! Still, you don’t have to
have the knack to get a lot out of music. I’m going in for music, by
the way, when I have time.”
“Oh!” said Paul, dubiously. Somehow, the Shark never had suggested to
him one of musical tastes. “So you’re going in for it? Oh, yes! And
it’ll be--er--er--violin, or piano, or--or----”
“Shucks, no!” The Shark’s lip curled scornfully. “What’d I want to play
anything for? And tunes? Bah! I can’t tell one from another. And what’s
the use of bothering to learn to play one instrument, when you can have
a whole band going for you by just starting up a phonograph? But they
tell me there’s really some good stuff under it all--real mathematics,
I mean, when you get into counterpoint, or whatever it is they call it.
So I’m going to take it up when I have a little leisure.”
“Oh, I see--I get you,” said Paul. Then he was reminded by another
dash of rain that this was hardly a time for gossip in the open. “Now,
though, how about that house?”
“Well, we’ll look for it,” said the Shark; and set off in the direction
in which he believed the building to be.
Paul followed him. He noticed that his guide went more slowly than
before, and that he veered from left to right, and then from right to
left, as if desiring to cover a wider strip of territory. The brush
was not especially dense, but it was thick enough to limit the field
of view, so that often it was impossible to see more than a few score
yards ahead. Suddenly, however, the Shark pulled up.
“Huh! That’ll be the place, I guess,” he announced.
Paul made out dimly the line of a roof; but what with the rain, and the
trees, he could do little more than make it out. It was not, in fact,
until he and the Shark were close to the building that they obtained a
fair view of it.
The house, evidently, was very old. So much could be guessed from the
mossy roof and weatherbeaten walls. Midway of the ridge-pole rose a
squat and very thick chimney. In front the house showed two stories,
but in the rear the roof ran in a great sweep from the ridge-pole to
within a couple of feet of the tops of the ground-floor windows. There
was no porch, and, indeed, the house was most severely plain in all its
outlines.
“Huh! Old timer,” the Shark observed. “And nobody home!”
Presumably it had been a good many years since anybody had been at
home there. Still, the place was not utterly neglected in appearance.
The stout shutters at the windows were closed, and the front door was
boarded up; what was once the front yard had been kept clear of brush.
Varley surveyed the premises with a feeling of helplessness; they
seemed to offer no more shelter than was given by the leafless boughs
of the trees.
“No; nobody home!” he echoed.
The Shark grunted. “Ugh! Say, ’tis getting to rain!” One might suppose
from his tone that this was a fresh discovery.
Varley nodded. As he did so, the motion sent a shower of drops flying
from the visor of his cap.
The Shark gave a moment or two to consideration of the weather signs.
Then he shook himself much in the manner of a dog emerging from a pond.
“Huh! Can’t say it looks like clearing. Still, you never can tell. So
long’s we’re here, we might as well crawl in somewhere out of the wet,
and wait a while.”
“Where’s a place to crawl in?”
The Shark stepped up to the door and gave a tug at the boards. They
were tightly nailed.
“Huh! Nothing doing there,” he reported.
“Nothing doing,” Varley repeated dismally. His courage was good enough,
but he was becoming acutely conscious of the physical drawbacks of the
situation.
The Shark tried the nearest shutter. Its rusty catch proved obstinate,
but at last gave way, and the shutter swung, revealing the small panes
of the window. One or two were broken. Quite coolly the Shark smashed
another, and cautiously thrust a hand through the opening.
“What! You’re going to break in?” Varley demanded.
“I sure am! If I can find the thing that fastens this window!” quoth
the Shark. “No other way--that is, if we mean to get inside. We can pay
for any damage we do afterward, but just now our business is to get
somewhere out of the wet.”
A sharp increase in the downpour--and by this time it undeniably
was a downpour--served to emphasize his words. Varley sprang to his
assistance, and the Shark finding the nail which had served as a lock,
their united efforts contrived to raise the lower sash. The Shark
climbed and wriggled, and Varley boosted so energetically that at last
the explorer shot through the opening and into the dimness of the room
beyond. He was up in a minute and stretching out a hand to his ally,
who lost no time in climbing after him.
“Whew! What faded-out air!” gasped the Shark.
“Yes; it’s all of that!” Varley agreed.
Indeed, the room was close and stuffy, as rooms long closed are likely
to be. But it was a dry, if musty, closeness, a deal better than the
wetness of out-of-doors. The Shark shook himself again.
“Gorry! Say, but this beats the other thing,” he declared. “Bet you
that window hasn’t been open, though, in ten years; though the folks
seem to have kept a lot of furniture here.”
Varley peered into the shadows. He could make out the shapes of a
settle and a table, and something he took to be an ancient chest of
drawers. Also he was quite sure there was a fireplace. Cold and black
as it was, it drew him like a magnet. He started across the room, and
now the Shark followed instead of led.
“Now look--I’ve the luck to have a box of matches along,” said he. “If
we can find something to burn we----”
There he broke off, as Varley uttered a startled exclamation.
Beneath the feet of the explorers was an ominous creak. It turned
swiftly to the grating sound of breaking wood. The floor sagged; the
old boards parted. The boys, clawing vainly for support, shot down
through the aperture into a cellar, which was like a pit for blackness.