Grove said it was pretty risky leaving the auto, with no lights on it up
there in the road, but Harry said it was worse to leave some one dying
maybe, but more likely dead, between two rocks down there in that
jungle.
But anyway, this is what we decided to do. Grove said he’d go up with a
torch and keep a fire burning near the machine, while the rest of us
hunted around below. He went along under the cliff to where it wasn’t so
high and steep, and pretty soon we could see his torch bobbing along the
road high up. Then pretty soon we could see a pretty good blaze up there
and something black near it.
But down below we just couldn’t find those rocks. We each went
separately (except Skinny who stayed by Harry) but the more we hunted
the more mixed up we got. Oh, boy, but that was some jungle! From up on
the cliff those two rocks had been good and plain, but now that we were
down below, all the rocks looked alike. That’s the way it is with rocks;
they look different in a bird’s-eye view.
After a while, Pee-wee shouted, “I’ve got a trail! I’ve got a trail!
Come here, quick!”
Harry and I were pretty far apart, but we both heard him and followed
the light of his torch until we got to the place where he was standing.
Sure enough, there was a trail winding all in and out among the rocks.
“It’s a sure enough trail all right,” Harry said; “Pee-wee, you’re a
winner. I dare say this starts away up there along the road; it will
show us the easiest way back, if it doesn’t show us anything else.”
“Will it show us that man that’s dead?” little Skinny piped up.
Harry said, “I dare say, Alf; we’ll soon see. If he wasn’t thrown off
the cliff he probably came by the trail.”
“When I saw those rocks from above,” I put in, “they looked too far out
from the cliff for anybody to be thrown there, or to fall there.”
Harry said, “Well, I dare say you’re right. As long as we thought it was
our young hero that was wedged in there, and as long as we knew that the
only way he could have got there was by falling, it didn’t occur to me
that it was pretty far out from the cliff.”
“Then there’s a mystery!” Pee-wee shouted.
“Yes?” Harry said. “Break it to us gently.”
The kid said, “Well, if that man wasn’t thrown down and didn’t fall
down, then how did he get down? He couldn’t have come across far over
toward the east there, because when I had the fire going, I could see it
was all marshy.”
“Well then, he came down by the trail,” Harry said.
“All right, show me a footprint in this trail,” Pee-wee shot right back
at him.
Harry looked and I looked, and even little Skinny got down on his knees
and looked, and there wasn’t the sign of a footprint in that trail. It
was soft there, too, and if there had been any footprints they would
have shown good and clear.
“Maybe he came in an airplane,” Skinny piped up.
“I guess if there was an airplane anywhere around here, we’d have found
it before this,” I said.
Harry said, “Well, I suppose it’s possible that somebody picked his way
down the same as Roy did and then maybe stumbled. None of us know where
those rocks are, but they did look pretty far out from above, and it
does seem mighty funny that there aren’t any footprints in this trail.
Anyway, we’ll push ahead and see what we see.”
We went along the trail single file, Pee-wee going first, because if any
one can follow a trail, he can. All the while we kept holding our
torches down, looking for footprints, but there wasn’t a sign of any.
Then all of a sudden he stopped short, saying kind of scared sort of,
“There it is! Look—straight ahead—I can see it.”
About fifty feet ahead of us that trail ran between two big rocks, only
they were farther apart and looked different than they did from up on
the cliff. And right there in the trail between them lay a man with a
soldier’s uniform on. He was lying face down, and we knew he must be
dead, because his arms were spread out and one of his legs was lying up
over a corner of rock, kind of crazy like. No matter how badly injured a
man may be, even if he’s unconscious, he never lies sprawling like that.
There’s kind of a way that a dead person lies.
Pee-wee just stopped short in the trail and we all stopped behind him. I
guess for just about a second, none of us wanted to go nearer. The way
that man’s leg was lying made me feel creepy. Harry said that was the
way men lay on the battle field before the nurses took them—all
sprawling, sort of.
Pretty soon Pee-wee moved a little nearer and held his torch toward the
rocks.
“Funny there isn’t any blood there,” Harry said.
“Maybe the rain washed it away,” I told him.
“Go ahead, Pee-wee,” he said; “move along.”