“I suppose you’re right, Jeff. But it means we’ll have to sleep out if we go that way.”
“I guess that won’t hurt us,” Jeffrey returned. “If anything happens we might have to sleep out a good many nights––and a lot of other people would have to do the same.”
“All right then,” Stocking agreed. “We’ll get a bite and give the horses a feed and a rest at Hosmer’s, that’s about two miles over the hills here; and then we can go on as far as you like.”
At Hosmer’s they got food enough for two 127 days in the hills, and having fed and breathed the horses they rode on up into the higher woods. They were now in the region of the uncut timber where the great trees were standing from the beginning, because they had been too high up to be accessible to the lumbermen who had ravaged the lower levels. Though the long summer twilight of the North still lighted the tops of the trees, the two men rode in impenetrable darkness, leaving the horses to pick their own canny footing up the trail.
“Did anybody see Rogers in that crowd?” Jeffrey asked as they rode along. “You know, the man that was in French Village this summer.”
“I don’t know,” Stocking answered. “You see they came up to the end of the rails, at Grafton, on a handcar. And then they scattered. Nobody’s sure that he’s seen any of ’em since. But they must be in the hills somewhere. And Rafe Gadbeau’s with ’em. You can bet on that. That’s all we’ve got to go on. But it may be a-plenty.”
“It’s enough to set us on the move, anyway,” said Jeffrey. “They have no business in the hills. They’re bound to be up to mischief of some sort. And there’s just one big mischief that they can do. Can we make Bald Mountain before daylight?”
“Oh, certainly; that’ll be easy. We’ll get a little light when we’re through this belt of heavy 128 woods and then we can push along. We ought to get up there by two o’clock. It ain’t light till near five. That’ll give us a little sleep, if we feel like it.”
True to Stocking’s calculation they came out upon the rocky, thinly grassed knobs of Bald Mountain shortly before two o’clock. It was a soft, hazy night with no moon. There was rain in the air somewhere, for there was no dew; but it might be on the other side of the divide or it might be miles below on the lowlands.
Others of the men of the hills were no doubt in the vicinity of the mountain, or were heading toward here. For the word of the menace had gone through the hills that day, and men would decide, as Jeffrey had done, that the danger would come from this direction. But they had not heard anything to show the presence of others, nor did they care to give any signals of their own whereabouts.