CHAPTER XIII
COBWEB WEED
"Well! you certainly are the laziest bunch; you'd carry a whole bakeryin your knapsacks rather than do any cooking--especially if there aregirls around. Lazy as Ludlam's dog you are! Next time--next time, I'llset you to peeling potatoes."
It was the chaffing voice of the Scoutmaster, Malcolm Seaver, whichspoke, addressing some twenty scouts who were scattered about thevine-draped entrance to Snowbird Cave, where, yearly, the littlegray-white junco birds--otherwise snow-birds--fluffy balls, with noheads to speak of, wintered among the low hemlocks near the cavern'smouth and fed upon the spicy hemlock bark.
"I--I wonder if you could tell me of what breed Ludlam's dog was, sir?If he could burn up daylight chasing his tail any better than this crowdcan, lolling around on a picnic, he must be the limit."
The answer came with the low, drawling laugh of Stud Bennett, otherwiseStudart, brother to Jessie, the "merle's" calling mate, who was himselfplaying fiddle-faddle in the sunshine, after a four-mile hike.
"Humph! Well, _I'm_ off to locate a spring--where's the bluebucket? When I get back you'll _have_ to turn to, you dummies,build a fire and unpack the commissariat--otherwise rolls by the dozen.The 'duff' and Frankforts are in the 'Baby', I guess." The Scoutmastershot a glance at a big, brown duffle bag reposing on a mound, capable ofcontaining ten bags of rations, each pertaining to individual scouts ona long hike, yet hardly sufficient to transport the "cates", theluncheon for eighteen Camp Fire Girls and twenty scouts, plus a coupleof invited guests, on a Together picnic.
"Are there any boys and girls who are dying to come with me, to prospectfor water?" he put forth alluringly, to the rhythmic swing of the bigwater bucket in his right hand, painted bright blue.
There was an instant volunteering flutter among certain green-clad girlsand lads in khaki, breezing up from the grass where they had languished;others held back.
"I'd rather explore the cave--I love creepy caves--and we haven't beenhalf through it yet," said Pemrose Lorry.
Forthwith Stud, the Henkyl Hunter, decided that cave-exploiting was thepastime for him; there was rarely a younger boy--Studart was barelyfifteen--who did not become the captive knight of this older girl withthe sky in her eyes under jet-black lashes!
Jessie, sister of Stoutheart, she of the thrush-song in her heart,wanted to be near to the girl who was mate to a Thunder Bird, too; andothers were drawn by the same abstract birdlime--or else the bat-stirredcave had lures.
"There--there's a secret lobby in it," said Stud, "a dark, rocky passageleading off from that queer black, three-cornered fissure in the rightwall, ten feet from the ground--I guess nobody has ever explored it;nobody has cracked the nut of what's behind that triangular crevice, sohigh up!"
"Come--come; that sounds exciting, very exciting!" remarked Tanpa, theGuardian, remaining behind too, as chaperon.
But her husband wheeled upon his jog-trot off after water, swinging hisgalvanized iron bucket after a manner to give the air the blues.
"Well! I wouldn't try to crack the nut, solve the riddle, of what'sbehind that queer-shaped crevice, Stud," he said. "It's black--black asa tinker's pot in there. You wouldn't know what you were heading into!"
"Aw, gammon! I wouldn't be afraid to tackle that fissure--find outwhat's back of it--although I'm not a Tin Scout--ha! ha!--out with thewhole toyshop to-day; all my monkey trappings," exploded a rough voicesuddenly from among a trio of clownish-looking boys who hovered,vulture-like, on the edge of the picnic ground, transfixing with asanguinary eye the Baby, whose soft heart was of blueberry "duff."
"An' I tell you what's more, if I were to climb up an' in there, I'dtrust to my own 'bean' and a few matches, 'thout any gimcracks," crakedthe boastful voice further, the special gewgaw on which the braggartfixed his eye, at the moment, being the little Baldwin safety lamp, fourinches high, which Stud was just lighting, attached to the front of hisolive-green scout hat.
"Tr-rust to your own 'bean'--your own head--an' what's inside it! Well!I'll admit it's fiery enough," flouted the Henkyl Hunter, piqued even inthe presence of girls into giving back tit for tat. "But you're carryingtoo many eggs in one basket, let me tell you, and you're likely enoughto take a leap in the dark an' smash 'em all."
"Ha! Am I now," snarled the other, resenting the implication that hisbrick-red head was a brash basket into which to pack all his chances ofsafety, such as were not anchored to the poor stay of a few ficklematches.
"Am I now-ow?" he chortled, very red in the face--and tongue-tied--as heshadowed the picnic party through the cave.
At his wits' end for a verbal retort, he presently proceeded, after themanner of his kind, to throw a stone in his own garden.
"See here! you kids, if you'll let me stand on your shoulders, you two,I'll give those Tin Scouts an eye-opener," he said, retaliating after amanner to hurt only himself, as he addressed the two younger boys withhim, his eyes cast up to that mysterious fissure, outlined, a rockytripod, above his head, of which the Scoutmaster had remarked that allbehind it was black as a tinker's pot.
Into that ebony pot, forthwith, climbing by the willing step-ladder ofhis companions' bodies, Ruddy, the rashling, presently thrust hishead--that flaming head with all his chances in it!
His body followed, finding entrance through the crevice amidships, so tospeak, where it broadened out to some three feet across from thetapering point of the lowest corner.
"Oh-h! look at him. Do look at him!" panted the girls, held up in theirsearch for pale-faced cave flowers and strange fungi by the "derring-do"act.
"Gracious! some of you scouts ought to stop him--re-al-ly ought to stophim," shrilled Jessie, catching her breath at the shock of darknessvisible in the yawning fissure's mouth, where the brief flicker of amatch now chased bogies.
"Humph! We can't head him off, Jess." Her brother disclaimedresponsibility with a shrug--while the little lamp winked sarcasticallyfrom his hatbrim--but in the heedful tone of the boy who had beentrained to feel--as Toandoah did with his little petticoated pal--thatLife was a game in which two could hunt together, even upon the trail ofa Thunder Bird, and make good headway. "We can't turn him back!" Studshrugged his khaki shoulders. "But he'll strike a blind bargain inthere. Ha! There goes another 'niggling' match!"
A frippery flame, indeed, its reflection flickered a moment, a goldtooth in the fissure's grinning mouth--darkness followed!
Two or three of the boy scouts--those who did not, like Stud, showincredulity, sarcasm gleaming, hawk-eyed, from a ruby lamp hooked to ahatband, and from a level eye beneath it--held their breath, dazzled;for the moment beaten at their own brave game of exploring.
So did the girl who had been piqued and dared into sitting in theDevil's Chair--with a sheer abyss beneath her!
Again did her wide-open, staring eyes, under their black lashes, sport aBlue Peter, the flag of adventure.
"Oh! he's plucky, anyhow. I wonder what he'll find in there?" her palmswere laid together upon a spicy filling of excitement. "He really isdaring--awfully daring, you know!"
"Ha! Courage cobweb-weed!" muttered Stud laconically. "Well--well, he'llhave tears in his eyes before I go after him!"
And--with that--there was the rasp of a third "niggling" match,faintly-heard, far in, a momentary reflection, a tiny glance-coal, inthe fissure's leering mouth! And--and, following that, a shriek!
A shriek, headlong, sinking and pitching--dying like a falling star, asif some clutch were stifling it.
"Hea-vens!" The girls, blanching, shrank against the opposite cave-wall,which shuddered behind them.
A bat, flying low, a winged Fear, brushed Tanpa's cheek, as she stood,transfixed,--and her cry was almost as hysterical as theirs.
In the blackness of that Tinker's Pot behind the looming fissure, werethere other things--other things besides a boy, a broken braggart of aboy?
Was Death in the pot with him? Had he sipped of its mystery--only toperish? Death--it seemed a raving possibility--in the shap
e of some wildanimal, perhaps--a live, a clutching claw!
Tales were always current among the mountains, trappers' tales--and mostof them airy "traveler's yarns", too--of strange tracks seen in lonelyspots, of lynx and bobcat; and even of the young and roving panther.
To be sure, a three-cornered tunnel, the second floor back of a loftycave, would be the last place to look for such an ambush, unless therewas some fly-trap opening to it from above. But there might be!
Boys and girls, both, their blood flamed upon the fear, thenfroze--until the silence, the bat-churned cave silence, was hung withicicles above them.
Then, once more, it was ripped from on top by that perishingshriek--passing strange, remote--but now it was as if the fissure'sthree-cornered mouth filled with it, faintly gibbered the one word:"C-caught!"
"'_Caught!_' Oh! Stud, you warned him; it's his own doing. Letthose other two boys--his friends--climb up to him! Well--if youfeel--you--must?"
Jessie's cry gibbered in agony in her throat, too, liquid as thethrush-tone in terror for its mate. But it struck a high note at theend.
For Stud's hand was groping mechanically for the bright little lampabove his forehead, as if for inspiration, his left for the lariat athis waist, in defiance of his threat that the desperado in the "pot"might have tears in his eyes before he would help him.
But there was something worse than cave-tears in question now--of thatStudart felt sure.
And Pem, watching,--Jessie, too--caught from an entering shaft ofday-light which shivered as if aghast, the reflection of the tighteningglow upon his young face--the waggish features of the Henkyl Hunter!
And she recognized it, by the feeling of her stiff, cold cheeks, as sheclapped her hands to them--did Toandoah's little chum--for the glowwhich had electrified her own when she fought her way out of a swampedPullman, saving her friend, driving it into the teeth of the flood, andof the World, too, that neither her father's honor, nor hisinvention--nor anything he ever turned out--was a Quaker gun; lettingfly with it faintly at a rescuing youth, too, when she bade him "takeUna first."
For by that glow as by an altar-lamp, in whose gleam she had worshipedbefore she saw as the strong boy's hand went automatically to hisequipment that lamp and lariat were nothing--nothing--"without the heartof a Scout!"