BILLY TAKES THE TRAIL.
"What's the matter?"
Just as Jack stole out of the house Billy Raynor sat bolt upright in bed and asked himself that question. He was on the other side of the cottage, and, like Jack a few minutes before, he too heard the cautious footsteps of the marauders, as they crept round the cottage, reconnoitering.
"Somebody's up to mischief," thought the boy. "It may only be common thieves, or it may be that rascally outfit. I'll go and rouse Jack. Perhaps we can get after them."
He tiptoed across the main room of the cottage to Jack's door. Inside the room he struck a match. He almost cried out aloud when he saw that the bed was empty and that there was no sign of his chum.
"Where can he be?" thought the lad. "Surely he has not gone after that gang single-handed."
Raynor hastened to his own room, slipped on some clothes, and went to the door. Far up on the hillside a lantern was twinkling like some fallen star.
"That's mighty odd," reflected the lad. "I guess I'll take a look up there and see what's coming off."
He picked his way cautiously up the rough hillside. But the lantern retreated as he went forward. As we know, Judson and his gang, led by Bill, were carrying off Jack. Without realizing how far he had gone, Raynor kept on and on. Some instinct told him that the dodging will-o'-the-wisp of light ahead of him had something to do with Jack, and he wanted to find out what that something was.
But, not knowing the trail Bill was following, and having no light but the spark ahead of him, Raynor found it pretty hard traveling. At last he was so tired that he sat down to snatch a moment's rest, leaning his back against a bush.
As his weight came against the bush, however, a strange thing happened. The shrub gave way altogether under the pressure. Raynor struggled for an instant to save himself, and then felt himself tumbling backward down an unknown height. He gave a shout of alarm, but his progress down what appeared to be a steep wall of rock, was over almost as soon as it had begun.
"What happened?" gasped the lad, as, shaken by his adventure, he picked himself up and tried to collect his wits. "Oh, yes, I know, that bush gave way and I toppled over backward. I must be in some sort of hole in the ground. Well, the first thing to do is to get a light."
Luckily Raynor's pockets held several matches, and he struck one of them and looked about him.
His eyes fell on the bush which lay at his feet.
"No wonder it gave way," he muttered. "The thing is dead and withered. But"—as a sudden thought struck him—"it will make a dandy torch and help save matches."
He lit the dead bush, which blazed up bravely, illumining his surroundings with a ruddy glow. Above him was a dark hole, presumably the one through which he had fallen. But there was no way of escape in that direction. He turned his gaze another way. The cave appeared to recede beyond the light of the blazing branch.
Looking down, he saw that the floor of the cave was thickly littered with leaves and small branches. This encouraged him a good deal.
"They couldn't have been blown in by the hole I fell through," he mused, "for the dead bush covered that. Their being here must mean that there is another entrance to this place."
Carrying his torch aloft, he struck off into the cave. Its floor sloped gently upward as he progressed and the walls began to grow narrower. The air, too, rapidly lost its musty odor, and blew fresh and sweet on his perspiring head.
"This will be quite an adventure to tell about if I ever get out of here," muttered Raynor, and the thought of Jack, whom he had almost forgotten in his fright at his fall into the cave, occurred to him.
What could have happened to his chum? Surely he had not been foolhardy enough to face the marauders alone? Raynor did not know what to make of it.
"Somehow," he pondered, "I am sure that lantern had something to do with Jack. I wonder if they would have dared to carry him off? I wish to goodness I'd kept on, instead of leaning against that bush. Even if I do get out of here, the light must be far out of sight by this time, and I'll have to wait till daylight, anyhow, for I must have walked almost a mile from the other entrance to the cave by this time."
His thoughts ran along in this strain as he walked. The thought of Captain Simms' alarm, too, when he found both boys missing, gave him a good deal of worry.
He was thinking over this phase of the situation when he was startled by a low growl, coming from a pile of rocks just ahead of him. What could it be? Holding his breath painfully, while a cold chill ran down his spine, Raynor came to a dead pause and listened. His improvised torch had almost burned out and it was appalling to think that he faced the possibility of being in darkness ere long, with a wild beast close at hand.
Again came the growl. It echoed and re-echoed hollowly in the cave till the frightened lad appeared to be menaced from all directions.
"It must be a bear, or some wild beast just as bad," thought Raynor.
The growling was repeated, but now it appeared to be retreating from him. Plucking up courage, after a while, Raynor, waving his torch, pushed forward again. He came to a place where it was necessary to scramble up to a sort of platform considerably higher than the path he had been traversing.
As he gained this, he saw several tiny bright lights in front of him.
"Hurrah! It's the stars!" he cried aloud.
"The—s-t-a-r-s!" the echoes boomed back.
At almost the same instant Raynor saw, in front of him, what looked like two balls of livid green flame.
But the boy knew that they were the eyes of whatever beast it was that had sent its growls echoing fearfully through the cave.