"Shout again," urged Helen.
"Let"s all shout together!" cried Isadore. "Now!"
They raised their voices in a long, lingering yell. Again and again they repeated it. They thought nothing now of the possibility of attracting the constable and his companions to the scene.
Meanwhile nothing but the echoes replied to their hail. Down there in the chasm Ann Hicks saw no sign of the lost girl. The bottom of the place seemed heaped high with snow.
"She plunged right into the drift, and perhaps she"s smothered down there," gasped Ann. "Oh! what shall we do?"
"If it"s a deep drift Ruth may not be hurt at all," cried Tom. "Do let me look, Ann. That"s a good girl."
The western girl was drawn back and the boy took her place. Bobbins and Ralph Tingley let Tom slide farther over the verge of the precipice than they had Ann.
"She went down feet first," panted Tom. "There isn"t an obstruction she could have hit. She must have dropped right into the s...o...b..nk in the bottom--Ruth! Ruth Fielding!"
But even his sharp eyes could discover no mark in the snow. Nothing of the lost girl appeared above the drift at the foot of this sheer cliff. She might have been smothered under the snow, as Ann suggested. And yet, that scarcely seemed probable.
Surely the fall into the soft drift could not have injured Ruth fatally.
She must have had strength enough to struggle to the surface of the snow.
Her disappearance was a most mysterious thing. When Tom crept back from the brink of the precipice and stood on his feet again, they all stared at one another in growing wonder.
"What could have happened to her down there?" groaned Helen, her own amazement stifling her sobs.
CHAPTER XVI
HIDE AND SEEK
Ruth had fallen with but a single shriek. From top to bottom of the precipice had been such a swift descent that she could not cry out a second time. And the great bank of snow into which she had plunged did--as Ann suggested--smother her.
The shock of dropping fifty feet through the air, and landing without experiencing anything more dangerous than a greatly accelerated heart-action was enough, of itself, to make the girl of the Red Mill dumb for the moment.
She heard faintly the frightened cries of her companions, and she struggled to get to the surface of the great, soft heap of snow that had saved her from instant death.
Then she heard a voice p.r.o.nounce her name, and a hand was thrust into the snow bank and seized her shoulder.
"Ruth Fielding! Miss Ruth! That come nigh to being your last jump, that did!"
"Jerry Sheming!" gasped the girl, as he drew her out of the snow.
"In here--quick! Are they after me?"
Ruth shook the snow from her eyes. She was like a half-drowned person suddenly coming to the surface.
"Where--where are we?" she whispered.
"All right! This is one of my hide-outs. Is that old Blent up yonder?"
"Oh, Jerry! he"s not on the island to-day. He"s left the constable----"
"Lem Daggett?"
"Yes. They are searching for you. But I was with Tom and Helen and the others. We brought you some food----"
He led her along a narrow shelf, which had been swept quite free of snow.
Now a hollow in the rock-wall opened before them, and there a little fire of sticks burned, an old buffalo robe lay nearby, and there were other evidences of the fugitive"s camp.
Ruth was shaking now, but not from the cold. The shock of her fall had begun to awaken the nervous terror which is the afterclap of such an adventure. So near she had been to death!
"You are sick, Miss Ruth?" exclaimed Jerry.
"Oh, no! Oh, no!" repeated the girl of the Red Mill. "But so--so frightened."
"Nothin" to be frightened over now," he returned, smiling broadly. "But you _did_ miss it close. If that pile of snow hadn"t sifted down there yesterday----"
"I know!" burst out Ruth. "It was providential."
"You girls and boys want to be careful climbing around these rocks," said Jerry Sheming, gravely.
At that moment the chorus of shouts from above reached their ears. Ruth turned about and her lips opened. She would have replied, but the backwoods boy leaped across the fire and seized her arm.
"Don"t make a sound!" he exclaimed.
"Oh! Jerry----"
"If that constable hears----"
"He isn"t with us, I tell you," said Ruth.
"But wait. He might hear. I don"t want him to find this place," spoke the boy, eagerly. "He may be within hearing."
"No. I think not," Ruth explained. Then she told Jerry of the morning"s hunt for him and the course followed by both parties. He shook his head for a moment, and then ran to a shelf at the other side of the little cavern.
"I"ll communicate with your friends. I"ll make them understand. But we mustn"t shout. Lem Daggett may be within hearing."
"But I can"t stay with you here, Jerry," objected the girl.
"Of course you can"t, Miss. I will get you out--another way. You"ll see.
But we"ll explain to your friends above and they will stop yelling then.
If they keep on that way they"ll draw Lem Daggett here, if he isn"t already snooping around."
Meanwhile Jerry had found a sc.r.a.p of paper and a pencil. He hurriedly wrote a few lines upon the paper. Then he produced a heavy bow and a long arrow. The message he tied around the shank of the arrow.
"Oh! can you shoot with that?" cried Ruth, much interested.