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.