At the sharp exclamation in his tone the others looked at him, noted his startled facial expression, and then glanced up the slope to a ledge some twenty feet above them, and off to one side. The lantern was coming toward them, but even as they looked it stopped, hesitated, and began a speedy retreat. Whoever was behind it was represented merely by a blur.
They forgot the advancing storm at once and set off in pursuit. At the moment of seeing the light so near to them they were too startled to move, and had the man with the light advanced upon them, they would have been frozen to the spot with apprehension. But now that the man with the lantern ran from them the thing was put in a different light. Seeing it run away put courage into them.
“Stick together and don’t get lost!” cried Buck, as he ran up the slope to the ledge upon which the man had been walking.
This ledge could only be climbed by taking a diagonal course and Charlie Wells complicated matters by slipping when he was almost at the top and falling all the way down to the level upon which they had been a minute or two previously. Not wishing to run on without him they were compelled to wait and when he joined them, adorned with a few cuts and scratches, they ran on again. When they rounded a knob of the mountain there was no light to be seen and they guessed the story only too well. The mountain man had put his lantern out and all trace of him was lost, to the eye at least.
They stood in a cluster listening, but no sound except the wind greeted them. The stillness inspired a new idea.
“I’ll bet he just put out his light and is hiding around here somewhere,” said Drummer, voicing the thought.
“I’m afraid that is true,” agreed Ted. “Well, we don’t care to go looking all around the bushes for him. I can see now where we made our mistake in the first place.”
“Where?” asked Buck.
“By going around with five lanterns lighted, making ourselves absolutely conspicuous,” returned Ted. “If we had had only one light we wouldn’t have advertised ourselves as we did. Perhaps if he hadn’t thought there were five of us he would have offered to talk or fight instead of legging it away as fast as he did!”
“Yes, one light would have been enough,” admitted Buck.