“I’ve got to take the bull by the horns if we ever want to get Minory by his whiskers,” he said to himself, and struck into a narrow sort of cow-track that appeared to lead toward the distant light. Behind him the sea moaned and crashed on the beach; ahead of him towered the solitary house in the gloomy canyon.
It was a rough track, little more than a trail, that the boy had decided to follow, but he found that it was steadily bringing him nearer to the light. Once he almost turned heel and ran for his life, such was the tension on his nerves. Out of the darkness before him had loomed suddenly a white face. It looked like a ghostly skull, and Ding-dong was so startled that he almost cried out aloud. The next minute he got mad with himself, for with a “Whoof!” the “baldy” steer, for that was what the white-faced apparition was, turned and clattered off.
“Wow! I’m getting as nervous as a girl on graduation day,” said Ding-dong to himself. “Bother this rain! I’ll catch one thing sure out of this, and that’s a fine young cold.”
The light was quite close now, and he advanced more cautiously. At last he could see the outlines of the ranch house bulking blackly against the slope of the bare hillside beyond. Like a cat stalking a mouse, Ding-dong crept forward. His heart beat so loudly that it sounded to him like the banging of a hammer against his ribs.
“Wish I could muffle it,” he said, in vain trying to compose his nerves.
It was a risky thing that the boy was doing, and one which a lot of men would have hesitated at. He knew Minory’s character, and was pretty sure that the man who would harbor him could not be much better than his guest. He might expect small mercy if he fell into their hands. Yet he was doing what he deemed to be his duty, and that thought gave him courage to proceed.
At last he reached a point of vantage where he could creep up on the window sidewise, and very slowly and patiently he did so. The casement was open, for the night was warm, and crouching under the open sash he listened attentively to the growl of masculine voices which was audible from within.
With a sharp thrill he recognized one of them as being Minory’s. The other was unknown. He had just made this discovery when something happened so entirely unexpected that the boy was for an instant almost deprived of his wits.
Without knowing it, he had been standing on a board. Suddenly it snapped in two without the slightest warning. As it broke, it gave a loud “crack!” almost as loud as a pistol shot.
“What’s that?” came a shout from within, and Ding-dong heard a heavy-footed rush for the window.