A RUNAWAY IN GOOD EARNEST
Fred Hatfield, the runaway, was approaching the old, rambling
country store at Emoryville Crossroads. It was so cold an evening
that there were no loungers upon the high, railless porch which
extended clear across the front of the building. Indeed, there was
but one wagon standing before the store and probably there were very
few customers, or loungers either, inside. The stopping of the train
had brought nobody to the door.
As Fred gained the sidewalk in front of the store he glanced back.
There was Ruth crossing the tracks behind him.
"You come back! Come back immediately, Fred Hatfield!" she called.
"Come back or I shall call Mr. Cameron."
The girl had been his Nemesis all day. Fred knew he could have given
the party the slip at some station, had Ruth not kept such a sharp
watch upon him. And here she was on his very heels, when he might
have gotten well away.
The next stop would be Scarboro. Fred did not want to appear in
Scarboro again. And he had a suspicion that Ruth knew his reasons for
desiring to keep away from his home and friends.
He looked wildly about the lonely crossroads. The panting of the
locomotive exhaust was not the only sound he heard. The two mules
hitched to the timber wagon--the only wagon standing by the store--
jingled their harness as they shook their heads. One bit at the
other, and his mate squealed and stamped. They were young mules and
full of "ginger"; yet their driver had carelessly left them standing
unhitched in the road.
Fred gave another glance at Ruth and kept on running. The engineer
suddenly whistled for the return of the flagman. But none of the
train-hands--nor did the party in the private car--notice the boy and
girl who had so incautiously left the train.
"Come back!" commanded Ruth, so much interested in following Fred
that she did not notice the lantern of the rear brakeman bobbing
along beside the ties. In a moment he swung himself aboard the
private car and his lantern described half an arc in the dusk. The
engine answered with a loud cough and the heavy train began to move.
But at that moment Fred Hatfield, grown desperate because of Ruth's
pursuit, leaped aboard the timber wagon. He was a backwoods boy
himself; he knew how to handle mules. He gave a shout to which the
team responded instantly. They leaped ahead just as Ruth came to the
side of the long reach that connected the small pair of front wheels
with the huge wheels in the rear.
"Get off of that wagon, Fred!" she had just cried, when the mules
started. She was directly in front of the large rear wheel. If it
struck her--knocked her down--ran over her! Fred knew that she would
be killed and he seized her hands and dragged her up beside him on
the jouncing timber-reach.
"Now see what you've done!" he bawled, as the mules broke into a
gallop.
But Ruth was too frightened for the moment to speak. Her uncle had a
pair of mules, and she knew just how hard they were to manage. And
this pair were evidently looking toward supper. They flew up the
road, directly away from the railroad, and the wagon jounced about so
that she could only hold on with both hands.
"Stop them! Stop them!" she cried.
But that was much easier said than done. The animals had been
willing enough to start when given the word by a stranger; but now
they did not recognize their master's voice when the boy yelled:
"Yea-a! Yea-a!"
Instead of stopping, the mules went faster and faster. They had
their bits 'twixt their teeth and were running away in good earnest.
Almost immediately, when the bumping and jouncing wagon got away
from the store and the two or three neighboring houses, they were in
the deep woods. There were no farms--no clearings--not even an open
patch in the timber. The snow lay deep under the pines and firs. The
road had been used considerably since the last snow, and the ruts
were deep. Therefore the mules kept to the beaten track.
"Oh, stop them! stop them!" moaned Ruth, clinging to the swaying,
jouncing cart.
"I can't! I can't!" repeated the terrified boy.
"Oh, you wicked, wicked boy! you'll kill us both!" cried Ruth.
"It's your own fault you're here," returned Fred, sharply. "And I
wouldn't never have got onto the wagon if you hadn't chased me."
"I believe you are the very worst boy who ever lived!" declared the
girl from the Red Mill, in both anger and despair. "And I wish I had
let you go your own wicked way."
"I wish you had," growled Hatfield, and then tried to soothe the
running mules again.
He was successful in the end. He had driven mules before and
understood them. The beasts, after traveling at least two miles,
began to slow down. The wagon was now passing through a wild piece of
the forest, and it was growing dark very fast. Only the snow on the
ground made it possible for the boy and girl to see objects at a
distance.
Ruth was wondering what her friends would think when they missed
her, and likewise how she would ever get back to the railroad. Would
Mr. Cameron send back for her? What would happen to her, here in the
deep woods, even when the mules stopped so that she dared leap down
from the cart?
And just then--before these questions became very pertinent in her
mind--she was startled by a wild scream from the bush patch beside
the road. Fred cried out in new alarm, and the mules stopped dead--
for a moment. They were trembling and tossing their heads wildly. The
awful, blood-chilling scream was repeated, and there was the soft
thudding of cushioned paws in the bushes. Some beast had leaped down
from a tree-branch to the hard snow.
"A cat-o'-mountain!" yelled Fred Hatfield, and as he shouted, the
lithe cat sprang over the brush heap and landed in the road, right
beside the timber cart.
Once Ruth had been into the menagerie of a traveling circus that had
come to Darrowtown while her father was still alive. She had seen
there a panther, and the wicked, graceful, writhing body of the beast
had frightened her more than the bulk of the elephant or the roaring
of the lion. This great cat, crouching close to the snow, its tail
sweeping from side to side, all its muscles knotted for another
spring, struck Ruth dumb and helpless.
Fortunately her gloved hands were locked about the timber on which
she lay, for the next instant a third savage scream parted the
bewhiskered lips of the catamount and on the heels of the cry the
mules started at full gallop. The panther sprang into the air like a
rubber ball. Had the mules not started the beast must have landed
fairly upon the boy and the girl clinging to the reach of the timber
wagon.
But providentially Ruth Fielding and her companion escaped this
immediate catastrophe. The savage beast landed upon the wagon,
however--far out upon the end of the timber, beyond the rear wheels.
Mad with fright, the mules tore on along the wood road. There were
many turns in it, and the deep ruts shook them about terrifically.
Ruth and Fred barely retained their positions on the cart--nor was
the catamount in better situation. It hung on with all its claws,
yowling like the great Tom-cat it was.
On and on plunged the poor mules, sweating and fearful. Ruth and
Fred Hatfield clung like mussels to a rock, while the panther bounded
into the air, screeching and spitting, always catching the tail of
the cart as it came down--afraid to leap off and likewise afraid to
hang on.
The mules came to a hill. They were badly winded by now and their
pace grew slower. The panther scratched along the reach nearer to the
two human passengers, and Ruth saw its eyes blazing like huge
carbuncles in the dusk. There was a fork of the roads at the foot of
the hill. Fred Hatfield uttered a shriek of despair as the mules took
the right hand road and struck into the bush itself--a narrow and
treacherous track where the limbs of the trees threatened to brush
all three passengers from the cart at any instant.
"Oh! oh! we're done for now!" yelled Fred. "They've taken the road
to Rattlesnake Hill. We'll be killed as sure as fate!"