He was headed directly from Pioneer Lake, as he thought, toward the hills beyond it, and presently, as he began to climb, the scenery grew wilder and more unfamiliar, the trees taller and set more thickly together, the undergrowth almost impenetrable. Still he fought on. It seemed he had never been so far in this direction before, and after the first rush of angry despair had passed, he felt doggedly curious to learn whither he was going, and what landmark he would see first.
For almost two hours he plodded on, burdened with his rifle and the pair of eagles, scratching his hands and face, tearing his clothes. It was a miserable, heart-breaking tramp, one which might have caused a less plucky lad to sit down and give way to doleful helplessness. Even Ralph felt an uncanny sense of utter loneliness, and he upbraided his own stupidity, as he chose to call it, in wandering so far afield.
At last he noticed a faint roaring noise at the right, and he turned in that direction, blindly, aimlessly. As he advanced through the undergrowth the sound grew louder and louder, until finally he emerged from the thicket and stood upon the bank of a deep stream which rushed turbulently along and dropped over a ridge, falling sixty or seventy feet into a cup-like hollow in the rock.
Ralph uttered a cry of delight. "Why, it's my own waterfall! I've been wandering in a big circle all this while, and here I am not far from my boulder where—-ouch!" The sentence ended in a loud wail of agony, for, taking a step forward, the young wayfarer's foot had slipped on a loose stone. His ankle was severely wrenched.
For a few moments the pain was intense, almost unendurable. Poor Ralph groaned aloud and sank down on the ground, biting his lips in trying to keep tears of agony from welling to his eyes. How could he walk the remaining distance home? Even with an improvised crutch made from a forked branch of some tree, it would be well-nigh impossible to travel up and down the stony grades that stretched between the place where he had met with this unfortunate accident and the farmhouse.
"Oh, if Keno had only not broken away!"
The futile wish was maddening in his present plight. He showered sharp epithets upon the absent pony, until he remembered the probability that Keno's return without him would be the means of sending some one to the rescue. This was some consolation, though it was but cold comfort in view of the fact that, had Keno not bolted, this mishap would not have occurred.
However, there was no help for it now. Meanwhile, the badly sprained ankle was throbbing painfully, and Ralph's next thought was to thrust it, without taking off his shoe, into the cold running water in order to check the swelling. He held his foot there, shivering with relief, then he stretched himself out on the bank of the stream, in the warm sunlight. Whereupon, with anxious mind and weary body soothed by the loud splash of the waterfall, with the pain in his ankle considerably relieved, and with a soft, grassy nook beside a rock offering repose, it was not very strange that, after closing his eyes drowsily, Ralph sank into a troubled slumber.
When he awoke, the sun was only a little way above the tops of the highest trees, and long golden shafts of light were slanting down through the branches, making an intricate tracery of shadows on the ground. The air was beginning to have a decided chill, for the wind had shifted to the west and was blowing the spray of the waterfall into Ralph's face.
Strange that no one had come, in search of him! Of course his mother could not have hitched Keno to the old buggy and driven here, but she might have telephoned to Tom Walsh and asked him to find out what had become of the missing hunter. He made another bold attempt to walk, with the aid of a stout pine branch; but he could not bear to put any weight on that cursed ankle.