"Answered in the affirmative," said Roy.
"Well, anyway," Tom said, "it looked as if the owner of the car might have gone up the mountain. And he hasn"t come down. At least he hasn"t come after his car. I"d like to get a look at him. I"m going to follow that trail up a ways----"
"To-night?"
"When did you suppose? Next week? I"d like to find out where the trail goes. I"m not saying any more. The bright spot we saw from camp went out to-night. And here"s a trail on the other side of the mountain that I never knew of. Here"s a man that had a map of it and he went away and hasn"t come back. I"m not asking anybody to go with me."
"And I"m not asking you to let me," said Roy. "I"ll go just for spite.
You don"t think you"re afraid of me, am I, quoth he. Now that we"re here, we might as well be all separated together. What do you say, Gilly? Yes, kind sir, said he. We"ll _all_ go, what do you say? Indeed we will, they answered joyously----"
"Well, come ahead then," said Tom, "and stop your nonsense."
"Says you," Roy answered.
CHAPTER XIV
ON THE SUMMIT
The two facts uppermost in Tom"s mind were these: Some one had marked the trail up that mountain, and the patch of brightness on the top of the mountain which had lately been familiar to the boys in camp had that very night disappeared.
The owner of the gray roadster had not come back for it. He might be the fugitive of the newspaper article, and he might not. If Tom had any _particular_ reason for thinking that he was, he did not say so. There are a good many gray roadsters. One thing which puzzled Tom was this: the car had been in storage at Berry"s for a few days at the very most, but the bright patch on the mountain had been visible for a month or more. So if the owner of this machine had gone up the mountain, at least he was not the originator of the bright patch there. But perhaps, after all, the bright patch was just some reflection.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SUDDENLY ROY CALLED, "LOOK HERE! HERE"S A BOARD!"
Tom Slade"s Double Dare. Page 83]
"Let"s have another look at that letter," said Tom.
He read it again with an interest and satisfaction which certainly were not justified by the simple wording of the missive.
"Come ahead," he said; "we can"t get much wetter than we are already. We might as well finish the night"s work. I guess Mr. Berry"ll take care of the searchlight."
Mr. Berry had no intention of leaving the scene of his ruined possessions to the mercy of vandals. Moreover, it seemed likely that with the abatement of the storm the neighboring village would turn out to view the devastation.
Once the end of the trail was located, the ascent of the mountain was not difficult, and the four explorers made their way up the comparatively easy slope, hindered only by trees which had fallen across the path. The old mountain which frowned so forbiddingly down upon the camp across the lake was very docile when taken from behind. It was just a big bully.
As Tom and the three scouts approached the summit, the devastation caused by the storm became more and more appalling. Great trees had been torn up as if they had been no more than house plants. These had fallen, some to the ground and some against other trees, their spreading roots dislodging big rocks which had gone crashing down against other trees.
Some of these rocks remained poised where the least agitation would release them.
Nature cannot be disturbed like this without suffering convulsions afterwards, and the continual low noises of dripping roots and of trees and branches sinking and settling and falling from temporary supports, gave a kind of voice of suffering and anguish to the wilderness.
These strange sounds were on every hand and they made the wrecked and drenched woods to seem haunted. Now and again a sound almost human would startle the cautious wayfarers as they picked their way amid the sodden chaos. In places it seemed as if the merest footfall would dislodge some threatening bowlder which would blot their lives out in a second. And the ragged, gaping chasms left by roots made the soggy ground uncertain support for yards about.
Toward the summit the path was quite obliterated under the jumble of the wreckage, and the party clambered over and threaded their way amid this debris until the tiny but cheering lights of Temple Camp were visible far down across the lake. There the two arriving troops were about finishing their hot stew! Far down and nearer than the camp was a moving speck of light; some one was on the lake. The boys did not venture too near that precipitous descent.
Suddenly Roy, who had been walking along a fallen tree trunk, called, "Look here! Here"s a board!"
He had hauled it out from under the trunk, and the others, approaching, looked at it with interest. In all that wild desolation there was something very human about a fragment of board. Somehow it connected that unknown wilderness with the world of men.
"That didn"t come up here by itself," said Tom.
"You"re right, it didn"t," said Tyson.
"Here"s a rusty nail in it," Roy added.
The board, unpainted and weather beaten as it was, seemed singularly out of place in that remote forest.
Suddenly Roy grasped Tom"s arm; his hand trembled; his whole form was agitated.
"_Look!_" he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "Look--down there--right _there_. See?
Do you see it? Right under.... Oh, boy, it"s _awful_...."
CHAPTER XV
A SCOUT IS THOROUGH
Scout though he was, Roy"s hand trembled as he pa.s.sed his flashlight to Tom. He could not, for his life, point that flashlight himself at the grewsome object which he had seen in the darkness.
Lying crossways underneath the trunk was the body of a man, his face looking straight up into the sky with a fixed stare, and a soulless grin upon his ashen face. Somewhere nearby, mud was dripping from an exposed root, and the earth laden drops as they fell one by one into the ragged cavity gave a sound which simulated a kind of unfeeling laughter. It seemed as if that stark, staring thing might be chuckling through its rigid, grinning mouth. Roy"s weight and movement on the trunk communicated a slight stir to the ghastly figure and its head moved ever so little....
"No," said Tom, antic.i.p.ating Winton"s question; "he"s dead. Get off the log, Roy."
"Well, I wish that dripping would stop, anyway," said Winton.
Tom approached the figure, the others following and standing about in silence as he examined it. They all avoided the log, the slightest movement of which had an effect which made them shudder.
Raising one cold, muddy hand, Tom felt the wrist, laying it gently down again. There was not even a faint, departing vestige of life in the trapped, crushed body.
"Is it him?" Gilbert Tyson asked in a subdued tone.
"Guess so," said Tom, kneeling.
The others stood back in a kind of fearful respect, watching, waiting.... Now and then a leaf or twig fell. And once, some broken tree limb crackled as it adjusted itself in its fallen estate. And all the while the mud kept dripping, dripping, dripping....
Lying on the dead man"s open coat, as if they had fallen from his pocket, were two cards and a letter. These Tom picked up and glanced at, using Roy"s flashlight. One of the cards was an automobile registration card. The other was a driver"s license card. They were both of the State of New Jersey and issued to Aaron Harlowe. The letter had been stamped but not mailed. It was addressed to Thomas Corbett, North Hillsburgh, New York. This name tallied with the name of the child"s father in the newspaper.
Here was pretty good proof that the man who had met death here upon this wild, lonely mountain was none other than the owner of the gray roadster, the coward who had fled from the consequences of his negligence, and turned it into a black crime!
"Are you going to open it?" Bert Winton asked.
"I guess no one has a right to do that but the coroner," Tom said. "We have no right to move the body even."