OUT OF THE FRYING PAN.
For only an instant did Rob remain motionless. Then, as if by instinct,
he suddenly crouched. It was well he did so. A bullet sang above his head
as he clung, swinging on his frail support, and flattened itself with an
angry "ping!" against the rock wall above him.
The report brought the rest of the sleeping camp to its feet. In an
instant voices rang out and hastily lighted lanterns flashed. Rob, taking
advantage of even such a brief diversion, sprang upward. But with a roar
of fury, Dale sprang to the foot of the ladder. Desperation gave Rob
nimble feet. He literally leaped upward.
In his mind there was a dreadful fear. The ladder was hardly strong
enough to bear two. By placing his weight on the lower part of it, it was
Dale's intention to bring him down to the ground. That in such an event
he could escape with his life, seemed highly improbable.
But fast as he went, he felt the ladder quiver as Dale's hold was laid
upon it from below. At this critical instant a sudden diversion occurred.
From right above Rob's head, or so it seemed, a voice roared out through
the night.
"Tak' yo' dirty paws off'n dat ladder, white man, or, by de powers, it's
de las' time you use 'em!"
It was Jumbo's voice. But Dale answered with a roar of defiance. He shook
the ladder violently. Rob felt himself dashed with sickening force
against the cliff-face. But all at once there was a warning shout.
Something roared past his ears, just missing him.
"Haids below!" sung out Jumbo as he watched the huge rock he had
dislodged go crashing downward.
It missed Dale by the fraction of an inch. But his narrow escape unnerved
the fellow for an instant. In that molecule of time Rob gained the summit
of the ladder, and Jumbo's strong arms drew him up to safety beside him.
"Well done, Jumbo," he exclaimed.
"Oh, dat wasn' nuffin'," modestly declared Jumbo, "if dat no-account
trash hadn't uv leggo I'd have flattened him out flatter'n dan a hoe
cake. Yas, sah."
"I guess you would, Jumbo. But there's no time to lose. Come, we must be
getting on."
"One ting we do firs' off wid alacrimoniousness, Marse Blake," said
Jumbo.
"What's that?"
"Jes' len' me dat lilly knife you take frum dat pestiferous pussonage
below an' I shows yoh right quick."
Rob had thrust the knife into his scout belt. He now withdrew it and
handed it to the negro. With two swift slashes, Jumbo severed the top
strands of the ladder. A crash and outcry from below followed. Rob,
peeping over, saw that Dale, who had just begun to mount after them, was
the victim. He was rolling over and over, entangled in the strands of the
ladder, while Stonington Hunt stood over him in a perfect frenzy of rage.
"Now den, Marse Blake, ah reckin' we done cook de goose of dem
criminoligous folks," snorted Jumbo as he gazed. "He! he! he! dey is sure
having a mos' fustilaginal time down dere."
"I guess they'll have plenty to think over for a time," said Rob, rather
grimly; "come, let's set out. Have you any idea in which direction the
camp lies?"
"No, sah. But I raickon if we des foiler de lake we kain't go fur wrong."
"We must go toward the south, then. See, there's the Scout's star, the
north one. The outer stars in the bucket of the dipper point to it."
"Wish ah had a dippah full ob watah. I'm po'ful thirsty," grunted Jumbo.
"We'll run across a stream before very long, no doubt," said Rob.
With these words the lad struck off through the forest of juniper and
hemlocks. The moon had not yet risen, and it was dark and mysterious
under the heavy boughs. Jumbo held back a minute.
"Come on. What's the matter, Jumbo?" exclaimed Rob.
"It look powerful spooky in dar, Marse Blake."
"Well, I guess the spooks, if there are any, will do us less harm than
that gang behind us," commented Rob.
Jumbo, without more words, followed him. But he rolled his eyes from side
to side in evident alarm at every step. On and on they plunged, making
their way swiftly enough over the forest floor. From time to time they
stopped to listen. But there was no sound of pursuit. In fact, Rob did
not expect any. With the ladder destroyed, there was not much chance of
the Hunt crowd clambering over the cliff tops.
At such moments as they paused, Rob felt, to the full, the deep
impressiveness of the forest at night. Above them the sombre spires of
the hemlocks showed steeple-like against the dark sky. The night wind
sent deep pulsations through them, like the rumbling of the lower notes
of a church organ. All about lay the deeper shadows of the recesses of
the woods. They were shrouded in a rampart of impenetrable darkness.
"I hope we're keeping on the right track," thought Rob, as it grew
increasingly difficult, and finally impossible, to see the north star
through the thick mass of foliage above them.
The boy knew the danger of wandering in circles in the untracked waste of
forest unless they kept constantly in one direction. Without the stars to
guide him, it grew increasingly difficult to be sure they were doing
this.
"Golly! Ah suttinly hopes we gits out of dis foliaginous place befo'
long," breathed Jumbo stentorously, stumbling along behind Rob over the
rough and stony ground that composed the floor of the Adirondack forest.
All at once, as Rob strode along, he stopped short. Some peculiar
instinct had caused him to halt. Just why he knew not. But he was brought
up dead in his tracks.
"Wha's de mattah, Marse Blake?" quavered Jumbo, "yo' all hain't seein'
any hants or conjo's, be yoh?"
Rob replied with another question.
"Got a match, Jumbo?" he asked.
"Yas sah, Marse Blake, I done got plenty ob dem lilly lucilfers."
He dived in his pocket and produced a handful of matches, which he handed
to Rob. The boy struck one, and, as the yellow flame glared up, he
uttered a little cry and stepped back with a perceptible shrinking
movement.
No wonder he did so. At the young Scout's feet the flare of the match had
revealed a yawning abyss. One more step and he would have been over it.
Gazing into the ravine he could hear the subdued roar of a stream
somewhere far, far below. A cold blast seemed to strike upward against
his face.
"Gracious, what a narrow escape!" he exclaimed. Then, stirring a small
stone with his foot he dislodged it and sent it bounding over the edge.
Bump! bump! tinkle! tinkle! plop! plop!--and then--silence.
"Golly, goodness, dat hole mus' be as deep as de bad place itself!"
exclaimed Jumbo, shrinking back in affright, "dat hole mus' go clean
frough de middle of de world an' come out de odder side in China."
"It certainly does seem as if it might," agreed Rob; "at any rate, if
we'd gone over it we'd have had no time to investigate--ugh!"
Rob gave a shudder he could not subdue as he thought of their narrow
escape.
The only thing to be done under the circumstances, was to turn aside and
keep on slowly, awaiting the daylight to see where they were, and the
nature of their surroundings. They had progressed in this fashion perhaps
half a mile or so, when Jumbo gave a sudden cry:
"Look, Marse Blake! Wha' dat froo de trees dere? Look uncommon lak a
light."
"It is a light. Although I don't know what any habitation can be doing in
this part of the world," answered Rob.
"Maybe even ef it's only er camp we kin git suffin' ter eat dar,"
suggested Jumbo hopefully, "ah'm jes' nacherally full ob nuttin' but
emptiness."
"You'd never make a Scout, Jumbo."
"Don' belibe I wants ter be no Skrout nohow," retorted Jumbo, "dar's too
much peregrinaciusness about it ter suit me."
Rob did not reply. But a moment later he cautioned Jumbo to progress as
cautiously as possible. The boy could see now that the light proceeded
from the open doorway of a hut. Within the rude structure he could make
out a masculine figure in rough hunting garb bending over a stove at one
end of the primitive place.
All of a sudden Rob's foot encountered something. He tripped and fell,
sprawling on his face. At the same instant the sharp report of a gun rang
out close at hand.
The wire over which the boy had tripped, and which was stretched across
the pathway, had discharged the alarm signal. As the echoes went roaring
and flapping through the forest, the man who had been bending over the
stove, straightened as if a steel spring had suddenly sprung erect.
He was a small, dwarfish-looking fellow, with a clay-colored skin, beady,
black eyes, shifty as a wild beast's. The animal-like impression of his
face was heightened by a shaggy beard of black that fell in unkempt
fashion almost to his waist. He wore blue jean trousers, moccasins and a
thick blue flannel shirt.
With a swift, panther-like movement, he snatched up a rifle that stood in
one corner of the hut. His next move was to extinguish the light with a
sharp puff. Then, with every sense wire-strung, he stood listening.