THE GATE OF THE GREEN EYES
It was a dark lane, beneath overhanging oaks, that met and intertwined
their branches from either side--this was the Wilkins Corners road.
And it was very steep and stony--up hill and down dale--with deep
ruts in places and other spots where the Spring rains had washed out
the gravel and sand and left exposed the very foundations of the
world.
It seemed as though no bicyclist, or motor-cyclist would have chosen
this road to travel after dark. Yet there was a narrow path at the
side--just wide enough for Ruth and Doctor Davison to walk abreast,
and Reno to trot by the girl's side which seemed pretty smooth.
"We don't want to go by the spot, Doctor," said one of the men walking
ahead with the lights. "Don't the dog show no signs of looking for
Tom?"
"Where's Tom, Reno? Where's Tom?" asked Ruth, earnestly, believing
that the dog would recognize his master's name.
The mastiff raised his muzzle and barked sharply again, but trotted
onward.
"He might have fallen down any of these gullies, and we'd miss him,
it's so dark," observed the previous speaker.
"I don't believe the dog will miss the place," responded Doctor
Davison.
Just then Reno leaped forward with a long-drawn whine. Ruth hurried
with him, leaving the doctor to come on in the rear. Reno took the
lead and the girl tried to keep pace with him.
It was not for many yards. Reno stopped at the brink of a steep bank
beside the road. This bank fell away into the darkness, but through
the trees, in the far distance, the girl could see several twinkling
lights in a row. She knew that they were on the railroad, and that she
was looking across the great swamp-meadow.
"Hullo!" shouted one man, loudly. "Something down there, old fellow?"
Reno answered with a short bark and began to scramble down the rough
bank.
"Here's where somebody has gone down ahead of him," cried another of
the searchers, holding his own lantern close to the ground. "See how
the bank's all torn up? Bet his wheel hit that stone yonder in the
dusk and threw him, wheel and all, into this gulley."
"Wait here, child," ordered Doctor Davison, quickly. "If he is in bad
shape, boys, call me and I'll come down. Lift him carefully--"
"He's here, sir!" cried the first man to descend.
And then Reno lifted up his voice in a mournful howl.
"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" murmured Ruth. "I am afraid he is badly hurt."
"Come, come!" returned Doctor Davison. "Be a brave girl now. If he is
badly hurt he'll need us both to keep our wits about us, you know."
"Ye needn't fret none, leetle gal," said Jasper Parloe's voice, behind
her. "Ye couldn't kill that there Cameron boy, I tell ye! He is as
sassy a young'un as there is in this county."
Doctor Davison turned as though to say something sharp to the mean old
man; but just then the men below shouted up to him:
"He's hit his head and his arm's twisted under him, Doctor. He isn't
conscious, but doesn't seem much hurt otherwise."
"Can you bring him up?" queried the physician.
"That's what we mean to do," was the reply.
Ruth waited beside the old doctor, not without some apprehension. How
would this Tom Cameron look? What kind of a boy was he? According to
Jasper Parloe he was a very bad boy, indeed. She had heard that he was
the son of a rich man. While the men were bringing the senseless body
up the steep bank her mind ran riot with the possibilities that lay in
store for her because of this accident to the dry-goods merchant's
son.
And now the bearers were at the top of the bank, and she could see the
limp form borne by them--a man holding the body under the arms and
another by his feet. But, altogether, it looked really as though they
carried a limp sack between them.
"Fust time I ever see that boy still," murmured Jasper Parloe.
"Cracky! He's pale; ain't he?" said another man.
Doctor Davison dropped on one knee beside the body as they laid it
down. The lanterns were drawn together that their combined light might
illuminate the spot. Ruth saw that the figure was that of a youth not
much older than herself--lean, long limbed, well dressed, and with a
face that, had it not been so pale, she would have thought very nice
looking indeed.
"Poor lad!" Ruth heard the physician murmur. "He has had a hard fall--
and that's a nasty knock on his head."
The wound was upon the side of his head above the left ear and was now
all clotted with blood. It was from this wound, in some moment of
consciousness, that he had traced the word "Help" on his torn
handkerchief, and fastened the latter, with the lamp of his
motorcycle, to the dog's collar.
Here was the machine, bent and twisted enough, brought up the bank by
two of the men.
"Dunno what you can do for the boy, Doctor," said one of them; "but it
looks to me as though this contraption warn't scurcely wuth savin'."
"Oh, we'll bring the boy around all right," said Doctor Davison, who
had felt Tom Cameron's pulse and now rose quickly. "Lift him carefully
upon the stretcher. We will get him into bed before I do a thing to
him. He's best as he is while we are moving him."
"It'll be a mighty long way to his house," grumbled one of the men.
"I believe yeou!" rejoined Jasper Parloe. "Three miles beyond Jabe
Potter's mill."
"Pshaw!" exclaimed Doctor Davison, in his soft voice. "You know we'll
not take him so far. My house is near enough. Surely you can carry him
there."
"If you say the word, Doctor," said the fellow, more cheerfully, while
old Parloe grunted.
They were more than half an hour in getting to the turn in the main
road where she could observe the two green lights before the doctor's
house. There the men put the stretcher down for a moment. Jasper
Parloe grumblingly took his turn at carrying one end.
"I never did see the use of boys, noway," he growled. "They's only an
aggravation and vexation of speret. And this here one is the
aggravatingest and vexationingest of any I ever see."
"Don't be too hard on the boy, Jasper," said Doctor Davison, passing
on ahead, so as to reach his house first.
Ruth remained behind, for the old gentleman walked too fast for her.
Before the men picked up the stretcher again there was a movement and
a murmur from the injured boy.
"Hullo!" said one of the men. "He's a-talkin', ain't he?"
"Jest mutterin'," said Parloe, who was at Tom's head. "'Tain't nothin'"
But Ruth heard the murmur of the unconscious boy, and the words
startled her. They were:
"It was Jabe Potter--he did it! It was Jabe Potter--he did it!"
What did they mean? Or, was there no meaning at all to the muttering
of the wounded boy? Ruth saw that Parloe was looking at her in his sly
and disagreeable way, and she knew that he, too, had heard the words.
"It was Jabe Potter--he did it!" Was it an accusation referring to
the boy's present plight? And how could her Uncle Jabez--the relative
she had not as yet seen--be the cause of Tom Cameron's injury? The
spot where the boy was hurt must have been five miles from the Red
Mill, and not even on the Osago Lake turnpike, on which highway she
had been given to understand the Red Mill stood.
Not many moments more and the little procession was at the gateway, on
either side of which burned the two green lamps.
Jasper Parloe, who had been relieved, shuffled off into the darkness.
Reno after one pleading look into the face of the hesitating Ruth,
followed the stretcher on which his master lay, in at the gate.
And Ruth Fielding, beginning again to feel most embarrassed and
forsaken, was left alone where the two green eyes winked in the warm,
moist darkness of the Spring night.