TWO COLUMNS OF SMOKE.
Through the deep woods a boyish figure was creeping. It was Hiram,
footsore, sick and despondent. It was the second day since he had left
the scene of the Boy Scouts' misfortune. Behind him lay the lake. And
that was about all he knew definitely of his situation.
For the last hour of his slow progress over the cruelly rough ground, the
lad's heart had almost failed him. But he had kept pluckily on. At last,
though, he was compelled, from sheer exhaustion, to sink down under a big
hickory tree. He was lost, hopelessly lost in the midst of the Adirondack
wilds.
Few men or boys who have ever been in a similar fix will not realize the
extreme danger of Hiram's position. There are still vast tracks in these
mountains untrodden, except, perchance, at long intervals, by the foot of
man. The predicament of one who misses his way in their lonely stretches
is serious indeed. Hiram was a nervous, sensitive boy, moreover, and, as
the dark shadows of late afternoon began to steal through the woods, he
felt a sense of keen fear, and alarm. He even thought he could make out
the forms of savage beasts prowling about him.
At last the boy determined, by a brave effort, to make the best of it. He
ate a meal of bread and salt meat from his haversack and washed it down
with water from his canteen. Then he set himself to thinking about a way
out of his position.
But as is often the case with those hopelessly lost in the wilderness,
his brain refused to work coherently. A sort of panic had clutched him.
To his excited, overwrought imagination it appeared that it was his fate,
his destiny to die alone in these great, silent woods, stretching, for
all he knew, to infinity on every side of him.
"I must brace up and do something," thought Hiram desperately; "maybe I
haven't wandered as far as I think. Perhaps a signal fire might be seen
by somebody. I'll try it, anyhow."
The thought of doing something cheered him mightily. The task of
gathering wood and bark to make his fire also helped to keep his mind off
his predicament.
The young Scout built his fire on the summit of the highest bit of ground
he could find. It was a bare hillock, rocky and bleak, rising amid the
trees.
The fire Hiram constructed was, properly speaking, composed of two piles
of sticks and dry leaves and bark. Close at hand he piled a big armful of
extra fuel to keep it going. For he had determined to watch by the fires
all night, if necessary. It was, he felt, his last hope.
The fires arranged to his satisfaction, the boy set a match to each pile
in turn. From the midst of the forest two columns of smoke ascended. The
afternoon was still. Not a breath of wind ruffled a leaf. In the calm air
the columns of smoke shot up straight. Hiram piled green leaves on his
blazing heaps and the smoke grew thicker.
The message the two smoke columns spelled out, in Scout talk, was this:
"I am lost, help!"
Hiram knew if there were any Scouts within seeing distance of the two
smoke columns, that he would be saved. If not--but he did not dare to
dwell on that thought.
The late afternoon deepened into twilight, and still Hiram sat on,
feeding his fires, although the flames of hope in his heart had died out
into gray ashes of despair. As the darkness thickened and a gloom spread
through the woods, his fears and nervousness increased. It is one thing
to have a companion in the woods and the surety of a camp fire and
comfort at night, and quite another pair of shoes to be lost in the
impenetrable forest. Anybody who has experienced the dilemma can
appreciate something of poor Hiram's state of mind.
It grew almost dark. The two fires glowed in the twilight like two red
eyes.
All at once Hiram almost uttered a shout of alarm. Then he grew still,
his heart beating till it shook his frame. Somewhere, close to him, a
twig had cracked. He was certain, too, that he had seen a dark form dodge
behind a tree.
"Who's there," he cried shrilly.
As if in reply, from behind the surrounding trees, a dozen dark forms
suddenly emerged and started toward him. Half beside himself with alarm,
Hiram, his mind full of visions of moonshiners, Indians and desperadoes,
leaped to his feet and started to run for his life.
But he had not gone a dozen steps before he stumbled and fell. As he did
so his head struck a rock and the blow stunned him.
The men who had emerged with such suddenness from behind the trees
hastened up.
"We needn't have feared a trap," said one; "it was a genuine Scout
signal. I'm glad my boys taught them to me or we might have been too late
to save this boy."
The speaker was the same man who had recognized Rob Blake, and whose two
sons were members of the Curlew Patrol. He picked Hiram up.
"Lost and half scared to death," he said tenderly; "and just to think
that we crept up on him like a bunch of prowling Indians."
"Well, we've got to look out for traps, you know," put in the leader, the
gray-moustached man; "those two smoke columns that you knew the meaning
of might have been a trick to decoy us. I'm glad we approached
stealthily, but I'm sorry we scared this poor kid so badly."
"Oh, he'll be all right directly," was the easy reply. "Sam, you and Jim
get a kettle boiling and make coffee. We'll camp here to-night," said
Rob's friend.
He set Hiram down at the root of a big tree just as the lad opened his
eyes and gazed with astonishment on the group of stalwart, kind-eyed men
gathered in wonderment about him.
* * * * * * * *
It was moonlight, and almost midnight, before Tubby deemed it safe to
reconnoitre the vicinity of the cave mouth. Followed by Jumbo, who was
quaking with fear, but accompanied the stout youth in preference to being
left alone, Tubby cautiously made his way through the undergrowth. A spot
of bright light above showed him the location of the camp fire of Hunt's
gang. It was hardly likely that they would be patroling the entrance to
the cave, effectually blocked as it was. But Tubby took no chances. With
the skill and silence of an Indian he wormed his way along.
He had almost reached the open space where they had chopped down the
brush when, without an instant's warning, the figure of Stonington Hunt
strode into view.
At the same unlucky instant Jumbo, lumbering along quite silently,
stubbed his toe against an out-cropping rock. He fell headlong with a
crash.
"Gollygumptions! I'm killed dead!" he yelled at the top of his lungs,
utterly regardless of consequences.
Tubby turned and was about to dodge back into the shelter of the dense
growth when Hunt espied him. With an angry oath he sprang at him,
pointing a pistol. But Tubby, in a flash, changed his tactics
surprisingly. Converting himself into a human battering ram, he lowered
his head and rushed full tilt at Hunt.
Completely taken by surprise by Tubby's onslaught, Hunt stopped and
hesitated. The fat boy, at the same instant, rushed between the man's
legs, seizing them in a firm grip as he did so. The unexpected assault
resulted in hurling Hunt violently forward. He fell sprawling in a heap.
At the same instant his pistol was discharged in the air.
As the report rang out from close at hand half a dozen figures sprang
into being. They were those of his followers who had been behind him at
some distance on this nocturnal visit of inspection.
Dale and Bumpus instantly recognized Tubby.
"That's the fat kid who wrecked our sloop!" cried Dale.
"A hundred dollars to the one that gets him!" shouted Hunt from the
ground where he still lay.
"How under the sun did he escape?" shouted Freeman Hunt, taking up the
chorus of cries and exclamations.
But before Dale, agile as he was, could reach him, Tubby had darted
nimbly off. He was heading for the bushes. In another instant he would
have reached them but a second figure suddenly dodged into the moonlight
and blocked his way. It was Black Bart. He outspread his long arms to
catch the hunted youth.
The next instant he had shared Hunt's fate. Tubby, for the second time
that night, executed his skillful tackle. Black Bart, with a string of
bad words accompanying his fall, was upset without ceremony. But Dale was
close on Tubby's nimble heels. As the lad dodged from his fallen foe Dale
reached out, and his big hand grabbed the fleeing lad's collar. Tubby
gave a dive and a twist but he could not get away.
"Good boy, Dale. Hold him!" came Freeman Hunt's voice.
Suddenly another figure appeared. The newcomer sprang out of the shadows
behind them. With one blow this personage knocked Dale sprawling beside
Black Bart, and the next instant, as Pete Bumpus essayed to take part in
the fray, he was sent to join the other two.
Tubby felt himself snatched up and carried swiftly off into the darkness
of the friendly brush.
"Gollygumptions!" chuckled Jumbo, for it was he, as he ran, "but it shuah
did feel good to swat dem no-good trash."
"Hullo, Jumbo, is that you?" asked Tubby as he heard; "I'll forgive you
for almost getting us captured."
"Tank you, Marse Hopkins," rejoined Jumbo gravely; "but we bes' keep our
words till we get furder away. Hark!"
Behind them they could hear angry voices, and shouts and trampling in the
brush.
The strong-muscled black, bent almost double, ran swiftly with his burden
for some distance further. Then he set Tubby down and rested, breathing
heavily. The sounds of the chase came from afar to them, much fainter
now.
"Ha! ha!" chortled Jumbo; "dey look an' look, but dey no find us."
"That's all right, too, Jumbo," said Tubby, sitting down on a decayed
log; "but it doesn't help to get the major and the rest out of that hole
in the ground."
"Maybe Marse Hiram got frough," suggested Jumbo hopefully.
"I hope so, I'm sure," said Tubby with a mournful intonation; "it looks
now as if that was our only chance of saving them.
"Where are we?" added Tubby, suddenly gazing about him. There was
something familiar about the scenery. Especially about a tall,
cone-shaped rock that loomed up close at hand.
"That's Ruby Glow!" he exclaimed the next instant.
"And gollygumptions, ef dere ain't a spook or suthin' on top of it,"
cried Jumbo.
He pointed to a dark figure standing upright in the white moonlight that
flooded the isolated mass of rock.