FOLLOWING UP THE MYSTERY.
In the course of the day Mr. Betterson and Rufe visited the supposed
scene of Rad's disaster, and there met by chance Jack and his friend
Forrest Felton, who for a similar object had driven up from North Mills.
The river had gone down almost as rapidly as it had risen, and fording
it now by daylight was no such difficult matter. But there still were
the timbers and tree-tops amidst which the vehicles had passed the night
before.
Jack showed marks on one of his wheels where the spokes had been sharply
raked, and told how, examining Snowfoot by daylight, he had found muddy
splashes on his flank, as if he had been struck there by a bough or
branch drenched in turbid water.
"I think," said he, "that as Rad was getting the buggy clear, the limb
of a tree turned over and hit the horse. That started him, and away he
went. I don't believe Rad is drowned."
Search was made among the rubbish at the bridge, and for some distance
down the river; but no traces of Rad were discovered.
"Maybe he has gone home by water," was Rufe's rather too playful way of
saying that the drowned body might have floated down stream.
"If he got out alive," said Jack's friend Felton, "he must have found
his way to some house near by, in quest of pantaloons." And the party
now proceeded to make inquiries at the scattered huts of the Dutch--or
rather German--settlers along the edge of the timber.
At the first two doors where they stopped they found only women and
children, who could speak no English. But at the next house they saw a
girl, who eagerly answered "Yah! yah!" to their questions, and ran and
called a man working at the back door.
He was a short, thick-set man, with a big russet beard and serious blue
eyes.
"Goot morgin," he said, coming to the road to greet the strangers. "Der
been some vind dis vay,--you see some?--vas las' ebening."
The strangers acknowledged that they had experienced some effects of the
wind the night before, and repeated their questions regarding Radcliff.
"Young man,--no priches,--yah! yah!" replied Meinheer. "He come 'long
here, vas 'pout nine hours, may pe some more."
"A little after nine o'clock last night?" suggested Jack.
"Yah, yah! I vas bed shleepin', somebody knock so loud, I git some
candle light, and make de door open, and der vas some young feller, his
face sick, his clo'es all so vet but his priches,--his priches vas not
vet, for he has no priches, only some shoes."
"Where did he come from?"
"He say he come from up stream; he pass de pridge over, and der vas no
pridge; and he dhrive 'cross de vaser, and he cannot dhrive 'cross; so
he git out, only his priches not git out, for de vaser vas vet, and his
priches keeps in de vagon, vile he keeps in de vaser; he make some lift
on some logs, and someding make de hoss fright, and de hoss jump and
jerk de vagon, and de vagon jerk someding vat jerk him; and de priches
rides off, and he shtop in de vaser, and dhink some, and git sick, and
he say de log in his shtomach and so much vaser was pad, and I mus' give
him some dhink viskey and some dry priches, and I gives 'em."
"A pair of _your_ breeches?" cried Rufe, eying the baggy proportions of
Meinheer's nether garments.
"I have no oder; I fetch 'em from faderland; and I gives him some. He
stick his legs in, and some of his legs come too much under; de priches
vas some too vide, and some not long genoof. He dhink more viskey, and
feel goot, and say he find his team and bring back my priches to-morrow,
and it is to-morrow yet, and he not come."
Even the grave uncle of the luckless nephew had to laugh as he thought
of the slim legs pursuing their travels in the short but enormous
"priches" fetched from fatherland.
"How much were your breeches worth?" Lord said, taking out some money.
"I don't know--I don't keeps priches to sell; may pe vun tollar."
Betterson gave the German a dollar, saying,--
"Allow me to pay for them; for, if I mistake not, you will never see the
young man or your breeches again."
He was quite right: the German never did.
Neither--it may as well be said here--did Radcliff's own relatives see
him again for many years. What various adventures were his can only be
surmised, until one of the "Philadelphia partners," settling up his
accounts with the world, left him a legacy of six thousand dollars, when
he once more bloomed out as a fine gentleman, and favored his Western
friends with a visit.
He ran through his little fortune in a few months, and once more
disappeared from view, to turn up again, five or six years later (when
Jack and Vinnie saw him for the last time), as a runner for one of the
great Chicago hotels.