OVER THE PRECIPICE
Under the soft snow that had fallen the day before was a hard-packed layer
that had come earlier in the season and made a firm footing for the
explorers. Ruth and her chum, with Ann Hicks, were quite as good walkers
as the boys. At any rate, the three girls determined not to be at the end
of the procession.
The constable and his unwilling helpers (for none of the men about the
Tingley camp cared to see Jerry Sheming in trouble) were hunting the banks
of the stream higher up for traces of the trail the boy had taken when he
ran away from Rufus Blent the previous afternoon.
Therefore the girls and boys who had started for the rendezvous at the
lone pine, were able to put the wooded ridge between them and the
constable's party, and so make their way unobserved toward the western end
of Cliff Island.
"They may come back and follow us," growled Tom. "But they'll be some way
behind, and we'll hurry. I have a note in this tin box warning Jerry what
he must look out for. As long as that Lem Daggett is on the island, I
suppose he will be in danger of arrest."
"It is just as mean as it can be!" gasped Helen, plodding on.
"The boys wouldn't leave much o' that constable if they caught him playin'
tag for such a man as Blent, at Bullhide," Ann Hicks declared, with
warmth.
"This Blent," said Bobbins, seriously, "seems to have everybody about
Logwood buffaloed. What do you suppose your father will say to the
constable taking the men with him this morning to hunt Jerry down?"
This question he put to Ralph Tingley and the latter flushed angrily.
"You wait!" he exclaimed. "Father will be angry, I bet. I told mother not
to let the men have anything to do with the hunt, but you know how women
are. She was afraid. She said that if Blent and the constable were within
their legal rights----"
"All bosh!" snapped Isadore Phelps.
"I do not think Mrs. Tingley would have let them go with Daggett if she'd
had the least idea they would be able to find Jerry," observed Helen,
sagely.
"And they won't," put in Ruth, with assurance. "I know he can hide away on
this island like a fox in a burrow."
"But he'll find it mighty cold sleeping out, this weather," remarked
Bobbins.
"He sure will!" agreed Tom.
The party went ahead as rapidly as possible, but even the stronger of the
boys found it hard to climb the steeper ascents through the deep snow.
"Crackey!" exclaimed Isadore. "I know I'm slipping back two steps to every
one I get ahead."
"Nonsense, Izzy," returned Helen. "For if you did _that_, you had better
turn around and travel the other way; then you'd back up the hill!"
They had to wait and rest every few yards. The rocks were so huge that
they often had to go out of the way for some distance to get around them.
Although it could not be more than five miles, as the crow flies, from the
lodge to the lone pine, in two hours they still had the hardest part of
the journey before them.
"I had no idea we should be so long at it," Tom confessed.
"It's lucky Heavy didn't come with us," chuckled Helen.
"Why?"
"She would have been starved to death before this, and the idea of going
the rest of the distance before turning back for home and luncheon would
have destroyed her reason, I am sure."
"Then," said Ruth, amused by this extravagant language, "poor Heavy would
have been first dead and then crazy! Consider an insane corpse!"
They came out at last upon the foot of the last ascent. The eminence
seemed to be a smooth, cone-shaped hill. On it grew a number of trees, but
the enormous old pine, lightning-riven and dead at the top, stood much
taller than any of the other trees.
Here and there they caught glimpses of chasms and steep ravines that
seemed to split the rocky island to the edge of the water. When the snow
did not cover the ground there might be paths to follow, but at this time
the young explorers had to use their judgment in climbing the heights as
best they might.
The boys had to help the girls up the steeper places, with all their
independence, and even Ann admitted that their male comrades were "rather
handy to have about."
The old pine tree sprang out of a little hollow in the hill. Behind it was
the peak of the island, and from this highest spot the party obtained an
unobstructed view of the whole western end of Tallahaska.
"It's one big old lake," sighed Isadore Phelps. "If it would only just
freeze over, boys, and give us a chance to try out the iceboats!"
"If it keeps on being as cold as it was this morning, and the wind dies
down, there'll be all the ice you want to see to-morrow," declared Ralph
Tingley. "Goodness! let's get down from this exposed place. I'm 'most
frozen."
"Shall we stop and make a fire here, girls, and warm up before we return?"
asked Tom Cameron.
"And draw that constable right to this place where you want to leave
Jerry's tin box?" cried his sister. "No, indeed!"
"We'd better keep moving, anyway," Ruth urged. "Less danger of frost-bite.
The wind _is_ keen."
Tom had already placed the box of food in a sheltered spot. "The meat will
be frozen as solid as a rock, I s'pose," he grumbled. "I hope that poor
fellow has some way of making a fire in his hide-out."
They began to retrace their steps. Instead of following exactly the same
path they had used in climbing to the summit, Tom struck off at an angle,
believing he saw an easier way.
His companions followed him in single file. Ruth happened to be the last
of all to come down the smooth slope. The seven ahead of her managed to
tramp quite a smooth track through the snow, and once or twice she slipped
in stepping in their footprints.
"Look out back there, Ruthie!" called Tom, from the lead. "The snow must
have got balled on your boots. Knock it off----"
His speech was halted by a startled cry from Ruth. She felt herself going
and threw out both hands to say her sudden slide.
But there was nothing for her hands to seize save the unstable snow
itself. She fell on her side, and shot out from the narrow track her
companions had trod.
"Ruth!" shrieked Helen, in the wildest kind of dismay.
But the girl of the Red Mill was already out of reach. The drifting snow
had curled out over the brink of the tall rock across the brow of which
Tom had unwisely led the way. They had not realized they were so near the
verge of the precipice.
Ruth's body was solid, and when she fell in the snow the undercrust broke
like an eggshell. Amid a cloud of snow-dust she shot over the yawning edge
of the chasm and disappeared.
Several square yards of the snow-drift had broken away. At their very feet
fell the unexpected precipice. The boys and girls shrank back from the
peril with terrified cries, clinging to each other.
"She is killed!" moaned Helen, and covered her face with her mittened
hands.
"Ruth! Ruth!" called Tom, charging back toward the broken snow-drift.
But Bobbins caught and held him. "Don't make a fool of yourself, old man!"
commanded the big fellow. "You can't help her by falling over the cliff
yourself."
"Oh! how deep can that place be?" gasped Ralph Tingley.
"What will mother say?" cried his brother.
"Ruth! Ruth!" shouted Ann Hicks, and dropped on her knees to crawl to the
edge.
"You'll be down there yourself, Ann!" exclaimed Helen, sobbing.
"A couple of you useless boys grab me by the ankles," commanded the
western girl. "Come! take a good hold. Now let me see----"
She hung half over the verge of the rock. The fall was sheer for fifty
feet at least. It was a narrow cut in the hill, with apparently unscalable
sides and open only toward the lake.
"I--I don't see a thing," panted the girl.
"Shout again," urged Helen.
"Let's all shout together!" cried Isadore. "Now!"
They raised their voices in a long, lingering yell. Again and again they
repeated it. They thought nothing now of the possibility of attracting the
constable and his companions to the scene.
Meanwhile nothing but the echoes replied to their hail. Down there in the
chasm Ann Hicks saw no sign of the lost girl. The bottom of the place
seemed heaped high with snow.
"She plunged right into the drift, and perhaps she's smothered down
there," gasped Ann. "Oh! what shall we do?"
"If it's a deep drift Ruth may not be hurt at all," cried Tom. "Do let me
look, Ann. That's a good girl."
The western girl was drawn back and the boy took her place. Bobbins and
Ralph Tingley let Tom slide farther over the verge of the precipice than
they had Ann.
"She went down feet first," panted Tom. "There isn't an obstruction she
could have hit. She must have dropped right into the snowbank in the
bottom--Ruth! Ruth Fielding!"
But even his sharp eyes could discover no mark in the snow. Nothing of the
lost girl appeared above the drift at the foot of this sheer cliff. She
might have been smothered under the snow, as Ann suggested. And yet, that
scarcely seemed probable.
Surely the fall into the soft drift could not have injured Ruth fatally.
She must have had strength enough to struggle to the surface of the snow.
Her disappearance was a most mysterious thing. When Tom crept back from
the brink of the precipice and stood on his feet again, they all stared
at one another in growing wonder.
"What could have happened to her down there?" groaned Helen, her own
amazement stifling her sobs.