“No, it ain’t,” was MacLester’s reply. “What I know, I know!”
This difficulty finally adjusted, the pair resumed their march in Phil’s wake, who had taken particular pains to leave a trail of broken branches so that the rest could follow. Going thus, they diligently but slowly kept on until Dave suddenly looked up, shouting:
“Eighty-eight lengths! We’re there—eight hundred and eighty yards. Hullo! What’s become of Phil?”
No Phil was in sight.
CHAPTER XIII
THE KIDNAPERS
Phil, it appeared, was the only one to think out two reasons why there was little necessity for being exact about measurements. Coster had drawn his rough diagram on the envelope probably from memory. It was, according to Coster, somewhere near a half mile from the tavern to the split hemlock. The main thing was to keep the proper direction, if anything like strict obedience was due to the pencilled chart. Therefore he took upon himself the sole task of going south, and when he had convinced himself that he was somewhere in the neighborhood of that half mile, he began to look about for the big split hemlock.
None could he then see. There were other hemlocks, but all of a younger, second-growth variety. So he ranged to and fro, but no such tree could he find. The undergrowth was not thick, yet it prevented clear vision of anything more than a few yards away. He was about to give up, feeling a first sense of coming despair, when he caught sight of a high bulge upward through the tops of some clumps of bushes. He sprang on a nearby log and his pulse thrilled a bit when he saw that what was in view was the rounded top of a big rock.
Impetuously he leaped on through the bushes, but when nearly there he stumbled and fell over a tree root. Following the fallen trunk he noted an enormous split, extending from where the trunk divided halfway down towards the upturned root.