CHAPTER X
A WILD AFTERNOON
This was a serious situation. Five miles behind the automobile party was the nearest dwelling on this road, and Tom was sure that the nearest gasoline sign was all of five miles further back!
Ahead lay more or less mystery. As the rain began to drum upon the roofs of the two cars, harder and harder and faster and faster, Tom got out the road map and tried to figure out their location. Ridgeton was ahead somewhere—not nearer than six miles, he was sure. And the map showed no gas sign this side of Ridgeton.
Of course there might be some wayside dwelling only a short distance ahead at which enough gasoline could be secured to drive the smaller car to Ridgeton for a proper supply for both machines. But if all the gasoline was drained from the tank of the big car into that of the roadster, the latter would be scarcely able to travel another mile. And without being sure that such a supply of gas could be found within that distance, why separate the two cars?
This was the sensible way Tom put it to Henri; and it was finally decided that Tom should start out on foot with an empty can and hunt for gasoline, while Colonel Marchand remained with the girls and Aunt Kate.
When the two young men ran back through the pouring rain to the big car and announced this decision, they had to shout to make the girls hear. The turmoil of the rain and thunder was terrific.
“I really wish you’d wait, Tom, till the tempest is over,” Ruth anxiously said. “Suppose something happened to you on the road?”
“Suppose something happened to us here in the auto?” shrieked Helen.
“But Henri Marchand will be with you,” said her brother, preparing to depart. “And if I delay we may not reach Boston to-night.”
“Oh!” gasped Jennie. “Do please find some gas, Tom. I’d be scared to death to stay out here in these woods.”
“One of the autos may bite her,” scoffed Helen, ready to scorn her own fears when her friend was even more fearful. “These cars are the wildest thing in these woods, I warrant.”
“Of course you must do what you think is best, Tom,” said Ruth, gravely. “I hope you will not have to go far.”
“No matter how long I am gone, Ruth, don’t be alarmed,” he told her. “You know, nothing serious ever happens to me.”
“Oh, no!” cried his sister. “Of course not! Only you get carried away on a Zeppelin, or are captured by the Germans and Ruth has to go to your rescue. We know all about how immune you are from trouble, young man.”
“Thanks be! there are no Boches here in peaceful New England,” exclaimed Jennie, after Tom had started off with the gasoline can. “Oh!”
A sharp clap of thunder seemingly just overhead followed the flash that had made the plump girl shriek. The explosion reverberated between the hills in slowly passing cadence.
Jennie finally removed her fingers from her ears with a groan. Aunt Kate had covered her eyes. With Helen they cowered together in the tonneau. Ruth had been sitting beside Tom in the front seat when the cars were stalled, and now Henri Marchand was her companion.
“I heard something then, Colonel,” Ruth said in a low tone, when the salvo of thunder was passed.
“You are fortunate, Mademoiselle,” he returned. “Me, I am deafened complete’.”
“I heard a cry.”
“Not from Captain Cameron?”
“It was not his voice. Listen!” said the girl of the Red Mill, in some excitement.
Despite the driving rain she put her head out beyond the curtain and listened. Her face was sheltered from the beating rain. It would have taken her breath had she faced it. Again the lightning flashed and the thunder crashed on its trail.
Ruth did not draw in her head. She wore her raincoat and a rubber cap, and on her feet heavy shoes. The storm did not frighten her. She might be anxious for Tom’s safety, but the ordinary chances of such a disturbance of the elements as this never bothered Ruth Fielding at all.
As the rolling of thunder died away in the distance again, the splashing sound of the rain seemed to grow lighter, too; or Ruth’s hearing became attuned to the sounds about her.
There it was again! A human cry! Or was it? It came from up the hillside to the north of the road on which the automobiles were stalled.
Was there somebody up there in the wet woods—some human creature lost in the storm?
For a third time Ruth heard the wailing, long-drawn cry. Henri had his hands full soothing Jennie. Helen and Aunt Kate were clinging together in the depths of the tonneau. Possibly their eyes were covered against the glare of the lightning.
Ruth slipped out under the curtain on the leeward side. The rain swept down the hillside in solid platoons that marched one after another from northwest to southeast. Dashing against the southern hillside, these marching columns dissolved in torrents that Ruth could hear roaring down from the tree-tops and rushing in miniature floods through the forest.
The road was all awash. The cars stood almost hub-deep in a yellow, foaming flood. The roadside ditches were not deep here, and the sudden freshet was badly guttering the highway.
Sheltered at first by the top of the big car, Ruth strained her ears again to catch that cry which had come down the wind from the thickly wooded hillside.
There it was! A high, piercing scream, as though the one who uttered it was in great fear or agony. Nor did the cry seem to be far away.
Ruth went around to the other side of the automobile. The rain was letting up—or seemed to be. She crossed to the higher ground and pushed through the fringe of bushes that bordered the road.
Already her feet and ankles were saturated, for she had waded through water more than a foot in depth. Here on the steep hillside the flowing water followed the beds of small rivulets which carried it away on either side of her.
The thick branches of the trees made an almost impervious umbrella above her head. She could see up the hill through the drifting mist for a long distance. The aisles between the rows of trees seemed filled with a sort of pallid light.
Across the line of her vision and through one of these aisles passed a figure—whether that of an animal or the stooping body of a human being Ruth Fielding could not at first be sure.
She had no fear of there being any savage creature in this wood. At least there could be nothing here that would attack her in broad daylight. In a lull in the echoing thunder she cried aloud:
“Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! Where are you?”
She was sure her voice drove some distance up the hillside against the wind. She saw the flitting figure again, and with a desire to make sure of its identity, Ruth started in pursuit.
Had Tom been present the girl of the Red Mill would have called his attention to the mystery and left it to him to decide whether to investigate or not. But Ruth was quite an independent person when she was alone; and under the circumstances, with Henri Marchand so busy comforting Jennie, Ruth did not consider for a moment calling the Frenchman to advise with her.
As for Helen and Aunt Kate, they were quite overcome by their fears. Ruth was not really afraid of thunder and lightning, as many people are. She had long since learned that “thunder does not bite, and the bolt of lightning that hits you, you will never see!”
Heavy as the going was, and interfering with her progress through her wet garments did, Ruth ran up the hill underneath the dripping trees. She saw the flitting, shadowy figure once more. Again she called as loudly as she could shout:
“Wait! Wait! I won’t hurt you.”
Whoever or whatever it was, the figure did not stay. It flitted on about two hundred yards ahead of the pursuing girl.
At times it disappeared altogether; but Ruth kept on up the hill and her quarry always reappeared. She was quite positive this was the creature that had shrieked, for the mournful cry was not repeated after she caught sight of the figure.
“It is somebody who has been frightened by the storm,” she thought. “Or it is a lost child. This is a wild hillside, and one might easily be lost up here.”
Then she called again. She thought the strange figure turned and hesitated. Then, of a sudden, it darted into a clump of brush. When Ruth came panting to the spot she could see no trace of the creature, or the path which it had followed.
But directly before Ruth was an opening in the hillside—the mouth of a deep ravine which had not been visible from the road below.
Down this ravine ran a noisy torrent which had cut itself a wider and deeper bed since the cloudburst on the heights. Small trees, brush, and rocks had been uprooted by the force of the stream, but its current was now receding. One might walk along the edge of the brook into this hillside fastness.
Determined to solve the mystery of the strange creature’s disappearance, and quite convinced that it was a lost child or woman, Ruth Fielding ventured through the brush clump and passed along the ragged bank of the tumbling brook.
Suddenly, in the muddy ground at her feet, the girl spied a shoe. It was a black oxford of good quality, and it had been, of course, wrenched from the foot of the person she pursued. This girl, or woman, must be running from Ruth in fear.
Ruth picked up the shoe. It was for a small foot, but might belong to either a girl of fourteen or so or to a small woman. She could see the print of the other shoe—yes! and there was the impress of the stockinged foot in the mud.
“Whoever she may be,” thought Ruth Fielding, “she is so frightened that she abandoned this shoe. Poor thing! What can be the matter with her?”
Ruth shouted again, and yet again. She went on up the side of the turbulent brook, staring all about for the hiding place of her quarry.
The rain ceased entirely and abruptly. But the whole forest was a-drip. Far up through the trees she saw a sudden lightening of the sky. The clouds were breaking.
But the smoke of the torrential downpour still rose from the saturated earth. When Ruth jarred a bush in passing a perfect deluge fell from the trembling leaves. The girl began to feel that she had come far enough in what appeared to be a wild-goose chase.
Then suddenly, quite amazingly, she was halted. She plunged around a sharp turn in the ravine, trying to step on the dryer places, and found herself confronted by a man standing under the shelter of a wide-armed spruce.
“Oh!” gasped Ruth, starting back.
He was a heavy-set, bewhiskered man with gleaming eyes and rather a grim look. Worst of all, he carried a gun with the lock sheltered under his arm-pit from the rain.
At Ruth’s appearance he seemed startled, too, and he advanced the muzzle of the gun and took a stride forward at the same moment.
“Hello!” he growled. “Be you crazy, too? What in all git out be you traipsing through these woods for in the rain?”