“Is there anything we can do? What do you suggest, Tom?” Garry asked, dropping his half flippant manner.
“I say, let’s shout again,” said Tom. “We must be nearly a mile farther on by now, and the brook’s getting around to the east, too.”
“Good and loud,” said Connie.
“All together—now!”
Again their voices woke the mountain echoes. A sudden rustling of the underbrush told of some frightened wood creature. The brook rippled softly as before. There was no other sound, and they waited. Then, from somewhere far off came the faint answering of a human voice. It would never have been distinguishable save in that deathlike stillness and even there it sounded as if it might have come from another world. It seemed to be uttering the letter L in a kind of doleful monotony.
They paused a moment in a kind of awe, even after it had ceased.
“It’s calling help,” said Garry.
“I can go there now,” said Tom. “The brook probably winds around that way, but we can cut across and get there quicker. We’ll chop our way through here. Let him rest his lungs now—I can go right for a ways. I got to admit I was wrong.”
In the dim light of the lantern Garry looked at Tom as he stood there, his heavy, stolid face scratched by the brambly thicket, his coarse shirt torn, his thick shock of hair down over his forehead—no more elated by triumph than he would have been discouraged by defeat, and as the brighter, more vivacious and attractive boy looked at him he was seized with a little twinge of remorse that he had made game of Tom’s clumsy speech and sober ways.
“Got to admit you were wrong how—for goodness’ sake?” he said, almost angrily. “Didn’t you bring us here? Didn’t you bring us all the way from Temple Camp to where we could hear that voice calling for help? Didn’t you?”