“There they go along the edge of the Dead Timbers,” said Mr. Ashley, watching the runners through a glass. “I’ve counted them all but three. Three seem missing entirely.”
“That’s so,” agreed Paul Proctor, who likewise had a pair of strong field glasses. “They strung out now, but three of them have never issued from the cedars down in the hollow.”
“Can you see anything of Merriwell?” anxiously asked Hodge, who had just mounted the steps to the observatory.
He bore not a mark of his encounter with Hollingsworth, although his face was somewhat flushed and he seemed to be perspiring freely. He had field glasses of his own, and these he quickly trained on the distant moving specks which were creeping up along the edge of the far-away, dark timberland.
“I haven’t been looking for him particularly,” acknowledged Proctor. “I think one of our boys is missing, although I cannot tell which one. I wonder what happened in the cedars.”
Something had happened to Frank Merriwell before he plunged into the cedars. Leaping a bit of thick brush, he thrust his left foot into the hole of some sort of burrowing animal and went down, giving his ankle a fearful wrench. For a moment he fancied he had broken the bone.
“Hurt?” cried Tom Bramwell, as he passed.
“No,” answered Frank, rising quickly.
When he tried to step on that foot, however, he nearly went down, and an excruciating pain shot from his ankle to his hip. This cutting pain threatened to rob him of strength and put him out of the race at once.
But he found the ankle was not broken. It was a wrench or a sprain. He knew sprains were sometimes more obstinate than breaks in the recovery, yet he had no thought of letting that stop him.