THE HUT IN THE WOODS.
Following his first flush of surprise at the strange reappearance and
vanishment of the mysterious man, Ralph was conscious of a feeling
closely akin to hot indignation.
“I’m going to catch him,” thought the lad fiercely. “What does he mean
by going on like this? What’s he following us for and spying on us? I’d
like to find out what sort of tricks he is up to, and I’m going to.”
So saying he set off through the woods at a good pace, following as
nearly as he could the direction the man had taken. But it soon dawned
on him that he had undertaken an almost hopeless task. Judging from
the man’s appearance, he had been a denizen of the woods for a long
period, although just how he lived was not apparent.
At any rate, before he had gone far Ralph was compelled to admit that
there did not appear to be much chance of his catching up with the
man. No sign of him was visible, and no crackling of brush or sound of
footsteps betrayed in what direction he had gone.
“Guess I’ll have to give it up,” mused Ralph disgustedly. “At any rate
I’m sure of one thing now, I’ve got nothing to fear from this strange
customer, whatever may be his object in hanging about us like this. He
must have followed us and----”
Ralph paused abruptly. He had last seen the man on the other side of
the _brulee_. It was hardly likely that he could have passed through
such a tract of country. Yet, on the other hand, the boy could not
doubt that the man he had seen on the rock overlooking their camp and
the wild figure of the valley were one and the same. There was a deep
mystery about it all. One too deep for the boy to fathom, for he broke
off his meditations with a sigh.
“It’s no use keeping up the chase to-day,” he declared to himself with
emphasis, “but if that fellow keeps on dodging our tracks he’s going to
hear from me in no uncertain fashion.”
He rose from the stump on which he had sat down to think things over
and resumed his search for the stray ponies. As he moved along he
munched his bread and chocolate, taking his lunch “on the hoof,” so to
speak.
Before long he struck the trail of the missing ponies once more. This
time it soon led him into a swampy country and he followed it rapidly.
Along the floor of the valley he went till suddenly, on coming around
a pile of great rocks, hurled from the summit of the ridge in some
prehistoric convulsion, he saw something that gave him a big surprise.
In a little clearing stood a ruinous log cabin, and tethered outside
it was one of the missing ponies!
Of the other there was no trace. All at once Ralph heard a scrambling
and clambering among the rocks above him on the steep hillside. He
glanced quickly and just in time to see the mysterious man remounted on
the other pony, rapidly urging it away from the hut.
“Stop thief!” yelled Ralph, carried away by excitement. “Come back
here!”
“Stop or I’ll shoot!” he shouted the next instant throbbing with
indignation.
He had no intention of hitting the fugitive, but he did mean to
frighten him into stopping if he could. For an instant the form of the
stolen pony and its rider became visible among the trees through which
the afternoon sun was sending down oblique shafts of light.
Ralph raised his rifle, sighted it to carry a bullet well above the
fugitive’s head and fired.
“The next will come closer,” he warned; but the next minute all other
thoughts were rushed abruptly out of his mind when a bullet whizzed by
his head close enough to fan his ear. The ping-g-g-g-g-g-g of the ball
as it sped by, ruffling his hair, did not appeal to Ralph. Evidently
the fugitive was a dead shot and was not inclined to be pursued if he
could avoid it by putting his tracker out of the way.
“Jove!” exclaimed Ralph as he slipped behind a tree trunk, “that bullet
was a message meant for me, all right. I don’t care to be at home to
such callers.”
He listened an instant and then came the sound of the pony’s hoofs
making off at a good pace through the trackless forest.
“He’s escaped me again,” exclaimed Ralph angrily. “Confound him, he’s
worse than a mystery now. I’ll bet that it was he who stampeded the
ponies last night and now he turns out to be a miserable horse thief.
Wonder if I can’t get a clew to him at that hut yonder? At any rate
there’s Baldy tied up and safe and sound as ever. I suppose I ought to
thank our mysterious friend for leaving him behind.”
The boy slipped from behind his tree trunk and made his way toward the
hut. Baldy whinnied as the boy approached. It was plain that the pony
was glad to see him.
“Good Baldy! Good old pony,” exclaimed Ralph, slapping the animal’s
thigh and then giving him some bread. “I wish you could talk, old
fellow, and then maybe you could throw some light on what in creation
all this means anyhow.”
Ralph then looked all about him with much curiosity. The hut was
moss-grown and moldering into decay. Judged from its exterior it had
not been lived in for many years. At the rear of it a spring bubbled
into a rusty iron pot beside which lay a rust-eaten dipper.
The door of the shack--windows it had none--hung on one crazy hinge
made of raw-hide.
“Guess I’ll take a look inside,” said Ralph, feeling a very lively
curiosity, “but from general appearances I don’t think our mysterious
friend and horse thief actually lives here. Looks to me more as if he
used it as a temporary camping place. Yet he could hardly have found
his way here unless he previously knew of its existence.”
Cautiously, and with his rifle ready for a surprise, for he did not
know what he might encounter next, Ralph entered the hut. It smelled
moldy and stuffy, and in the dim light he could not at first see very
much of its interior.
Bit by bit the details began to grow out of the gloom. In the center of
the shack was a rough board table and on it stood some rusted plates
and cups. In a corner hung some old garments and a few moldering furs,
skins of raccoons and minks. A rusty stove stood in another corner, one
leg missing and sagging drunkenly.
By the door Ralph now noticed a yellow bit of paper tacked up, with
some writing on it. He came closer to read it and made out in faded
characters:
“Gone on April 16, 1888, Jess Boody, Trapper.”
This inscription made one thing plain to Ralph. The hut had once been
occupied by one of those solitaries of the wilds whose trap lines are
sometimes forty or fifty miles long. This Jess Boody had been such
a man and had either “made his pile,” or getting disgusted with the
location as a source for peltries had, as he tersely put it, “gone on.”
There were no traces of more recent occupancy of the hut, and Ralph was
compelled to come back to his first theory; the mysterious man had used
the place simply as a convenient shelter from time to time. Some ashes
in the stove, that looked fairly fresh, appeared to lend color to this
belief. Probably the horse thief had spent the night there.
“Well, if this hasn’t the makings of a first-class mystery about it,”
gasped Ralph, pushing back his sombrero and running one hand through
his curly hair.
As there seemed to be no use in making any further investigation of
the tumble-down shanty, Ralph untied the pony left behind by the horse
thief, and mounting it rode back toward camp in a thoughtful mood. He
was deeply puzzled, and small wonder, by the events of the day.
He reached camp that evening shortly before dusk, and found that
Mountain Jim had returned with the ponies that he had been after and
which he had found in a glade across another ridge. The professor,
and Jimmie, too, had had a successful day, having gathered in almost
a sackful of what the professor called “specimens,” and Mountain Jim
“rocks.” But of Harry Ware and Percy Simmons there was no sign.