"Well, what is it you want to tell me, Horatio?" demanded Hugh, not even taking the trouble to drop down into the chair the owner of the "den" shoved toward him; for it seemed as though he must soon be on the jump—-there was evidently something hanging over their heads, which would be needing prompt attention.
"Why, it's just this, Hugh," began the other. "K.K. took a foolish notion he'd like to say he'd one over the full course just for practice. And, Hugh, he told me he meant to make use of the short-cut that crosses the old haunted quarry!" Hugh started, and looked serious.
"Then, if anything has happened to K.K., it just have been while he was crossing that mile tract between the two main roads," he went on to say, without hesitation. Horatio nodded his head eagerly.
"I jumped to that same conclusion, Hugh, only I didn't dare mention it to Mrs. Kinkaid. I thought you ought to know first of all, and decide on the program. It's terrible just to think of it; and K.K. actually pretended to make light, too, of all those stories the farmers have been telling about that awful place."
"Hold your horses, Horatio!" Hugh exclaimed. "When I said that I wasn't thinking of ghosts, or anything else unnatural. I meant that in all probability poor K.K. met with some ordinary accident while on that stretch, and has been unable to continue his run. He may have tripped on a vine he failed to see, and either broken his leg, or else sprained his ankle so badly that he can't even limp along. I've known such a thing to happen—-in fact, once I got myself in the same pickle, and had to crawl two miles to a house, every foot of the way on hands and knees, because the pain was frightful whenever I tried to stand up. Well, the chances are K.K. has had such a thing befall him."
Horatio heaved a tremendous sigh, as though quite a weighty load had been taken off his chest.
"You make me feel a heap better, Hugh, when you're so positive," he hastened to admit. "I was afraid it might be something even worse than a sprain; but never mind what I thought. The question now is, what ought we do about it?"
"There's only one thing that can be done," Hugh told him in his customary straight-from-the-shoulder fashion, "which is for some of his chums to organize a searching party, get the old Kinkaid car out, and go up there to look over that abandoned road from one end to the other. We'll find K.K., or know the reason why."
"That sounds good to me, Hugh!" declared Horatio, always ways ready to follow where a bold leader showed the way; "and perhaps we may have an opportunity to discover whether there is any truth about those queer happenings the farmers keep telling of whenever the old quarry is mentioned in their presence."
"We'll not bother our minds about fairy stories," Hugh assured him. "What we're meaning to do is to look for a practical explanation of K.K.'s holding out. And, mark my words, the chances are ten to one we'll find the poor chap groaning alongside that road somewhere. But let's get busy now, Horatio!"