CHAPTER XIII
_A Night of Searching_
The bonfire was quickly built and stout, willing hands piled upon it thebrush left over from their chopping till the blaze of it rose thirtyfeet into the air, illuminating the entire mountain side.
So far as anybody could plan there was nothing else to be done while thenight lasted, except scour the woodlands and thickets round about,hallooing now and then; but nothing that the boys could do produced anyresult. Hour after hour passed and still Tom did not appear.
"It would be useless," said Jack, "to go off into the darkness to lookfor him. We simply must wait for daylight, particularly as we don't knowwhat direction he took. Possibly by daylight we may track him. Butunfortunately there is no snow on the ground."
"Unfortunately there will be snow on the ground before daylight comes,"said the Doctor, who had conceived a great affection for little Tom,"and it will obliterate whatever tracks the boy may have made. All theindications are for snow, and indeed it is beginning to snow now. I tellyou, boys, we must make some torches and study the ground by theirlight. Perhaps we may find Tom's tracks before the snow covers them."
The suggestion was no sooner made than it was carried out, and by thelight of great, flaring torches the whole party minutely scanned theground, beginning at the cabin door, and prosecuting their researches inevery direction.
After an hour of this work, the Doctor called out from a point near thechute:
"Come here, boys!" and when they came he said:
"Tom went over the bank at this point. See! Here are his tracks in thesoft earth, and look! There are the bent and broken bushes by which helet himself down over that cliff. Thank heaven we know now in whatdirection to look for him as soon as morning comes. It would be uselesssuicide to attempt to follow his trail now."
"Well, I don't know," said Jack. "But I'm ready for that sort of suicidein behalf of little Tom. Give me your best torch, boys! I'm going tofollow the trail down the mountain. You see Tom may have slipped off acliff somewhere down there and broken his legs or rendered himselfhelpless in some other way. I'm going to follow him right now, and therest of you can come after daylight--which isn't more than half an houroff now."
"No!" said the Doctor. "If you think best to follow the trail now, we'regoing with you, every one of us. But first let us get our guns and somenecessaries. If Tom is hurt anywhere down there I must have someappliances with which to dress his wounds. If he has fallen into thehands of the moonshiners we must rescue him, and to that end we musthave guns and ammunition. Let us go over his trail by all means, but letus go prepared to do him some good when we find him!"
To this thought there was unanimous assent, and instantly the Doctor andJim Chenowith hurried back to the house to bring surgical appliances,guns and ammunition. Meantime Jack, who was greatly excited turned tothe two boys who remained with him, and said, in a voice so cold andcalm that they knew it meant intense emotion--
"Boys! If the moonshiners have caught little Tom and done any harm tohim, I am going to drive every moonshiner out of these mountains andinto a penitentiary or better still to a gibbet, if I have to give mywhole life to it. Will you join me in that? And if I get killed will youpromise to go on with the work?"
By that time the others had returned, and they had caught enough of whatJack had said to understand its purport. For answer the Doctor graspedJack's hand and said with emotion: "To that purpose I pledge my wholelife and all of my fortune! If those beasts have dealt foully withlittle Tom, I'll hire and bring here from Baltimore a hundreddesperately courageous men, every one of them armed with the latestmagazine rifle there is and commissioned by the revenue chief, and Ipledge you my honor that when I am through with the job there will notbe a moonshiner left in these mountains! I'll do that, Jack, if I haveto hang for it."
The other boys responded with enthusiasm, "We'll be with you in thatjob, Doctor, without any hiring!"
"Thank you, comrades!" That was all that Jack could say before thestrain upon him overcame even his iron nerves, and for a moment he lostconsciousness. It was only for a moment, however. At the end of thattime Jack led the way over the cliff, five torches lighting the journey.Presently daylight came, and the torches were thrown away.
The trail that Tom had made of broken bushes, cliff growing saplings,bent down in letting himself drop over bluffs and declivities, and bootmarks where he had scrambled over a ledge, was not very difficult tofollow for a space. But then came a long stretch of shelving rockentirely bare, with a dense forest growth beyond, where the leaves thathad fallen in the autumn were still a foot deep, and beyond that pointit was impossible to trace Tom's course. After earnest endeavors torecover the trail, the effort was abandoned, and sadly the littlecompany made their way back to camp by a circuitous route, for theycould not climb again the cliffs over which they had managed to clamberdown.
On the way back they were encouraged by the hope that they might findTom in the camp, when they got there, but in this they weredisappointed.
They were all disposed to sit down and mourn dejectedly, but at thatpoint the Doctor's scientific knowledge came to the rescue.
"See here, boys," he said; "we've got some strenuous work to do forTom's rescue, and we must do some clear and earnest thinking before webegin it, in order that we may do it in the best way. We're exhausted.We have passed a night with only two hours or less of sleep, and we'veeaten nothing for fifteen hours, for it's now after nine o'clock. In themeantime we have made a tiresome journey down the mountain and backagain and worse still--for worry is always more wearing than work--wehave undergone a great stress of anxiety. Now we're going to do all thathuman endeavor can do to rescue Tom. To that end we must have strengthin our bodies and alertness in our minds. We must have breakfast at onceand a hearty breakfast at that."
None of the boys had an appetite, but the Doctor insisted and presentlythere was a breakfast served, consisting of bacon, cut into paper-thinslices and broiled on the sharpened point of a stick, held in a blazefrom the fire; corn pones baked to a crisp brown in a skillet, and abrimming pot of hot and strong coffee. For butter on their bread, theboys had a mixture of the drippings from their recent roasts--thevenison, the wild boar, the rabbits and the rest--all of which drippingsthey had carefully saved for that purpose.
Appetizing as such a breakfast was to hardworking, sleep-losing andexhausted boys, not one of them felt the least relish for it. Itrequired all of the Doctor's urging to make them even taste their food,till presently Harry, who stood outside as a sentinel, threw down hisgun and started away at a break-neck pace, calling out at the top of hisvoice as he went:
"There's Tom! There's Tom! There's Tom, and he's all right!"
With that the whole company abandoned breakfast and rushed out to greetthe returning boy. They plied and bombarded him with questions, ofcourse, until at last he said pleadingly:
"Please, boys, I'm awfully hungry and tired. I'll answer all yourquestions after awhile. Just now the only things you really want to knoware that I'm back safe and sound, and that nothing worse has happened tome than the loss of a night's sleep, a good deal of anxiety about youfellows, and the getting up of a positively famished appetite. I say,"he added, as he entered the cabin, "who broiled that bacon?" and as heasked the question he picked up two or three slices of it and thrustthem one after another into his mouth.
"I did," answered Ed, "and now that you're back, Tom, I'm going to eat alot of it too."
"Well cut three or four times as much more of it," Tom said, slippingstill another slice of the dainty between his teeth, and following itwith a mouthful of corn pone, "and I'll help you toast it. But don'tlet's talk till we eat something to talk on."
Ed quickly cut a great plateful of the bacon slices, and every boy inthe party except the one on guard duty, sharpened a stick and helped inthe broiling.
Tom had brought their appetites back with him.