LOST IN THE WOODS
Pausing for an instant to get his bearings, Bart dashed forward, circled around the edge of the mud volcano, and ran on in the direction he had seen the man take.
“I’m going to catch him,” thought the lad, fiercely. “I’m going to get at the bottom of this. Why does he seem to be following us—hanging around our camp? What’s he doing here? Did he take the diamond bracelet? I’m going to find out some of those things—when I catch him.” He added the last with a grim smile, for, as he went on, and the snow storm increased in fury, Bart was aware that he had no easy task before him.
The swirling white flakes were now so thick that he could hardly see five feet in advance, and he was soon made unpleasantly aware of this, for he collided, with no little force, into a tree. The shock threw him backward, and he nearly dropped his gun, but it had one good effect, for it made him pause to consider what he was doing.
“I wonder if there’s any use in me going on like this?” Bart reflected. “He’s got a good start of me, and he evidently knows these roads as well as I do. Guess I’d better go back to camp, get the fellows, and then see if I can trail him. Though if it keeps on snowing it’s not going to be easy to see his footprints. I wonder if I can hear anything of him?”
He paused in a listening attitude, but the only sounds that came to him were those of the wind howling through the leafless branches of the trees, and the swish of the snowflakes as they swirled downward. Once Bart heard a crashing amid the underbrush to one side. He darted in that direction, thinking it was the fugitive.
There came, at that instant, a lull in the storm, and, peering at the lad from under the shelter of a pine tree was the big buck, the chase of which had led to such unexpected results. Bart fired, point blank, but he saw the deer bound away, and he knew he had only wounded it slightly, if at all. He started after it, but a moment later the snow began again, more thickly than before, and everything was blotted out.
“That settles it,” murmured Bart, grimly, “back to camp for mine. No use keeping up the chase to-day.”
It was not without considerable regret that the lad retraced his steps. He wanted, very much, to get the buck, and he wanted still more to capture the mysterious man who seemed to be playing such an important part in the lives of himself and his chums.