Cautiously we advanced. “There’s a lamp on the shelf just inside the kitchen door,” I stated half-heartedly. “And the matches are just beside it. It would only take a minute to light it.”
Eve did not answer. Suddenly she stopped and I felt her hand tighten in mine. “Listen! What’s that?”
From somewhere inside the house a vague clatter reached us—a shuffling noise—the thud of something falling. Then, quite close at hand, came the scud and scurry of running feet! Immediately after we heard the beat of quick panting breaths and two flying figures hurtled past us into the night!
With one accord, we turned and followed them. But they had vanished into the blackness of the lower garden almost before we knew it. Back of the garden is a steep bank, ending in a muddy ditch. If they’d gone down that, it looked like a pretty sure spill for both of them. The thought sent us hurrying on. We reached the stone wall which forms the lower border of Aunt Cal’s property. Eve shouted frantically into the darkness, “Michael, where are you?”
There was no answer. I climbed gingerly onto the wall. I thought of the muddy ditch at the bottom of the bank and I had a vision of Michael lying there wounded and bleeding. “Michael,” I called, “are you down there?”
Then to our infinite relief, a faint voice answered, “Coming!”
Presently we heard him thrashing his way upward. Finally he stumbled out from the bushes below where we stood. Even in the darkness, we could see that his clothes were a wreck. And there was a dark patch on his forehead—though this subsequently turned out to be mud. “Oh, you’re hurt!” Eve cried.
“Well, not fatally!” he panted as he reached the wall and sank down upon it. “But the rascal got away, worse luck! If I hadn’t caught my foot in a branch down there, I’d have had him. As it is, all I got is this!” He held up a fuzzy-looking object.
We peered at it. “What in the world——?”
“Big Injun scalp lock!” chuckled Michael.