I must now tell you of an incident which shook me as nothing else in my
whole life has ever shaken me, and the meaning of it was not clear to me
till long afterward. I suppose that the gloom of that cheerless day
affected me. I can hardly describe my feeling more than to say that
throughout the long, bleak afternoon, as I sat at work in the lodge, I
was harassed by a strange presentiment as of something impending.
I had looked forward to a few days of solitude, but the loneliness of
the place was intolerable in the half darkness and that continuous,
blowing rain. By mid-afternoon I was in such a state that I blew out the
smelly little lamp which had lighted my work in the dim apartment and
resigned myself to idleness. I stood at one of the windows gazing out
upon the dismal scene. Through the thin, driven rain, the lake looked
hazy and there was the odd effect of the water moving toward me. It was
not like the surf on a seashore, ever lapping and receding, but a sort
of straining of the whole body of water under the impetus of the wind.
There occurred to me the whimsical fancy that if the water should
succeed in its effort the bed of the lake would be laid bare and I would
see, perchance, the object which had enmeshed and held for so many days
the body of poor Roland McClintick. I think I never saw a more gloomy
sight than Weir Lake on that dreary, haunting afternoon.
The lodge, you will understand, was between the base of the mountain and
the lake. I stepped across the room and stood looking out upon the
deserted scene of our recent labors. And there I beheld a strange sight
which for the moment startled me. It was a trail passing between two of
the new cabins. It ran behind the stone bungalow of the old camp (where
the boys slept) but beyond this, in the direction of the mountain, I saw
no certain trace of it. At one spot where the rugged ascent began I
could just make out a faint line perhaps fifty feet in extent. It
hovered between visibility and invisibility; I thought it was the trail.
The sight of this hardly tangible and broken line leading, as I thought,
up the mountain, astonished me. I had always understood that there was
no regular trail up Hogback. Tom is a perfect fiend on such matters; he
will find a trail if there is one, but he knew of none up those dense
slopes. Many times I had looked from that window, and heaven knows I had
never seen the faintest sign of a trail. Nor had any of our group ever
mentioned one. In talking of our projected ascent after the prowling
creature whose moaning we had heard, Tom had said that he thought the
best way was to hike around the base of the mountain and ascend the
easier slopes of the farther side.
I was so curious about what I had seen that despite the weather I went
to the cupboard beside the fireplace and took from its hook the great
oilskin coat with hat to match, which belonged to Skipper Tim. How many
times I had seen him in this storm attire helping canoeists at the
boating club home in Bridgeboro! It was then that I noticed (I don’t
know how I happened to think about them) that the used targets were not
in their place upon the shelf. I don’t know that the disappearance of
these telltale squares of paper aroused any suspicions in my mind. But
as I told you before, the gloom and loneliness somehow gave the whole
place a certain ghostly unreality, the McClintick tragedy seemed to
haunt the bleak scene, and I was strangely unnerved by every sound and
by this discovery. I was curious enough to go up into Brent’s little
room to see if the targets were there. But they were neither in his room
nor Tom’s and I was puzzled. As I descended the bare stairs my own
echoing footsteps startled me and brought home to me a vivid sense of my
isolation.
I sallied forth into the storm to examine the trail and follow it a
little distance. But I could not find it. Try as I would, I could not
find it. I returned indoors and looked again from the window, but could
not see it. Then in a sudden gust of wind I saw it even more clearly
than before. And I saw, too, that the elusive line upon the mountainside
was indeed a visible section of it.
Here was a strange phenomenon. I was reminded of a certain novel toy I
had in childhood, a bit of glass which one had only to breathe upon to
see a picture which immediately faded out with the dissolving breath.
And so it is with trails, the trails of bygone days. Uncle Jeb Rushmore,
up at Temple Camp has told me that the route man has trodden in the
wilds is never wholly obliterated. The freakish wind, a lucky vantage
point, a certain slant of light and the obscure path is revealed in
hovering uncertainty, if only for a moment. I have not the scout’s eye.
I think now that the rushing wind, swaying the long grass, showed me
stretches of that faint hidden trail. Perhaps the soaked and glossy
condition of the vegetation had something to do with it. All I know is
that I saw it, the ghost of a departed trail, and that when my friends
returned we could not find it again.
I went out again into the driven rain and the heavy, bending grass clung
to my limbs, impeding my progress. It was like trying to walk through
seaweed. The rain smote my right cheek leaving my left cheek almost dry;
it seemed horizontal. I plodded through this drenching artillery of the
elements to the space between two cabins where I had seen the trail from
the window. I had thought to surprise it, as it were, in this narrow
pass. But there was no sign of a trail there. Why could not my exploring
limbs and hands lay bare this elusive marking, so apparent from the
lodge? I parted the drenched grass, searching in vain. In heaven’s name,
I said aloud, is this desolate wilderness haunted by a spectral trail? I
had seen it; where was it?
But there upon the rugged lower reaches of the mountain, between two
mighty rocks, I could see, not the trail, but a certain narrow length of
gray earth where surely, if there were indeed a trail, it must pass. It
would pass between those sentinel rocks for that would be the path of
least resistance in the arduous ascent. And it seemed to me that the
farthest section of the broken line I had seen from the window was in
that direction.
Well, I was in for it now; I was thoroughly soaked, a fine, adventurous
resolve was aroused within me, and I would not be baffled and confounded
by storm and taunting shadows. I vowed that I would scramble over
obstacles and through soaking foliage to those two mammoth rocks which I
thought were Nature’s rough portals, to the unknown upper reaches of the
towering Hogback Mountain.
I don’t know what I expected to find there. But if the passage between
those rocks were clear surely that would prove that the trail passed
through there in its circuitous windings up the mountain. Perhaps at
that point I could get a clear sight of it, up or down. And if I could I
would have something to say to Tom Slade and Brent Gaylong. I would be a
scout and a detective rolled into one. They could no longer call me a
fountain pen adventurer.
I shall never as long as I live forget that laborious scramble. What I
had called the _lower reaches_ of the mountain proved to be a whole
range of mountains before I had attained my goal. One looks at a
mountain and says, “I would like to climb it.” Looking and doing are two
such different matters where mountains are concerned. There are cliffs
and crevices that one never sees from the land below. And yet in plain
fact those two huge rocks were not a fifth part of the way up that
mighty jumble of rock and forest. I stumbled and groped and climbed and
in places became enmeshed in dripping, tangled undergrowth. No sign of
any trail could I find in my difficult progress.
Excepting one sign. At the head of a certain short, precipitous place I
saw a long withe tied like a rope around a tree trunk with a long end
hanging loose. It was perfectly evident to me that this had been
fastened there to assist a climber in scrambling up or down, probably
down, this declivity. By holding the loose end one might be saved from
falling while groping for a sure foothold below it. It could have been
fastened there only by a human being and my discovery of it in that
desolate jungle quite startled me. I thought the wood seemed fresh; I
pulled with all my strength, but could not break it. I was not a good
enough scout to know what kind of wood it was, but I thought it was
willow. Yet there were no willow trees thereabouts. I suppose that
willow retains its moisture and pliancy a long time, though surely not
for years or even months. Whence, then, came this crude device to brace
one on that perilous climb?
To search for any sign of a trail in that topsy-turvy thicket was out of
the question and I made my way by easier progress now to the great rocks
which I have called the portals to the upper reaches of Hogback. Here I
could look down upon our camp. How strange it appeared in bird’s-eye
view! I wondered how it would look from the summit of the mountain. The
lake seemed small and the fine, rustic effect of the lodge was even more
attractive from my vantage point than it was at closer range. The new
buildings stood out clear and detached from the surrounding disorder of
our labors. The whole scene was wrapped in mist so that I saw the camp
as through a gauze curtain.
Now these rocks were of an odd formation; quite different from their
appearance as seen from below. That front view of them, as I might call
it, had shown them as two great rocks with a passageway between them.
But on closer view, I saw that one rock leaned against the other (save
at the entrance) so that the narrow passage was not only between
precipitous walls, but was roofed also by the meeting of these walls
above. The falling of one rock against the other had made a sort of
triangular passage with the converging walls touching the head as one
passed through.
Into this narrow pass the storm had not penetrated, and I later found
that the crevice between the two rocks was completely overgrown outside.
But the narrow pass was dank and mossy and frequented by little lizards
that paused, heads upraised, then scooted this way and that. If
human-kind had ever used this passage in following a trail, there
certainly was no sign of a trail at the time of my inspection. The
ground was rocky so that one might pass through the entire length of a
dozen yards or so without stepping on earth. But there was one little
area of earth, hard but with a thin mossy surface, or rather hardened
scum. It was as if moss had started to grow there, but had not
developed; a thin, damp crust of vegetation, compact but sensitive to
pressure.
Upon this natural film some living being had laid a naked foot, and all
the beating fury of the drenching storm, and of other storms for aught I
knew, had not obliterated it. What I noticed particularly about it was
that running diagonally across the ball of the foot was an irregular
mark which identified the footprint with the one I had seen permanently
embedded in the concrete of the McClintick lodge on the first night of
our arrival at Leatherstocking Camp.
Then suddenly, before my consternation had subsided, I noticed some
crude lettering on the rocky wall of the passage. If the letters were
intended to form a word their irregular size and positions suggested an
erratic, not to say irrational, procedure in the work. Yet large and
small and tilted crazily as they were, they were still in proper order
to form the appalling word STRANGLE.
I recalled with a shudder that Harrison McClintick had met his tragic
end at the hands of an unknown strangler.