CHAPTER X
A WILD AFTERNOON
This was a serious situation. Five miles behind the automobile party wasthe nearest dwelling on this road, and Tom was sure that the nearestgasoline sign was all of five miles further back!
Ahead lay more or less mystery. As the rain began to drum upon the roofsof the two cars, harder and harder and faster and faster, Tom got out theroad map and tried to figure out their location. Ridgeton was aheadsomewhere--not nearer than six miles, he was sure. And the map showed nogas sign this side of Ridgeton.
Of course there might be some wayside dwelling only a short distance aheadat which enough gasoline could be secured to drive the smaller car toRidgeton for a proper supply for both machines. But if all the gasolinewas drained from the tank of the big car into that of the roadster, thelatter would be scarcely able to travel another mile. And without beingsure that such a supply of gas could be found within that distance, whyseparate the two cars?
This was the sensible way Tom put it to Henri; and it was finally decidedthat Tom should start out on foot with an empty can and hunt for gasoline,while Colonel Marchand remained with the girls and Aunt Kate.
When the two young men ran back through the pouring rain to the big carand announced this decision, they had to shout to make the girls hear. Theturmoil of the rain and thunder was terrific.
"I really wish you'd wait, Tom, till the tempest is over," Ruth anxiouslysaid. "Suppose something happened to you on the road?"
"Suppose something happened to _us_ here in the auto?" shrieked Helen.
"But Henri Marchand will be with you," said her brother, preparing todepart. "And if I delay we may not reach Boston to-night."
"Oh!" gasped Jennie. "Do please find some gas, Tom. I'd be scared to deathto stay out here in these woods."
"One of the autos may bite her," scoffed Helen, ready to scorn her ownfears when her friend was even more fearful. "These cars are the wildestthing in these woods, I warrant."
"Of course you must do what you think is best, Tom," said Ruth, gravely."I hope you will not have to go far."
"No matter how long I am gone, Ruth, don't be alarmed," he told her. "Youknow, nothing serious ever happens to me."
"Oh, no!" cried his sister. "Of course not! Only you get carried away on aZeppelin, or are captured by the Germans and Ruth has to go to yourrescue. We know all about how immune you are from trouble, young man."
"Thanks be! there are no Boches here in peaceful New England," exclaimedJennie, after Tom had started off with the gasoline can. "Oh!"
A sharp clap of thunder seemingly just overhead followed the flash thathad made the plump girl shriek. The explosion reverberated between thehills in slowly passing cadence.
Jennie finally removed her fingers from her ears with a groan. Aunt Katehad covered her eyes. With Helen they cowered together in the tonneau.Ruth had been sitting beside Tom in the front seat when the cars werestalled, and now Henri Marchand was her companion.
"I heard something then, Colonel," Ruth said in a low tone, when the salvoof thunder was passed.
"You are fortunate, Mademoiselle," he returned. "Me, I am deafenedcomplete'."
"I heard a cry."
"Not from Captain Cameron?"
"It was not his voice. Listen!" said the girl of the Red Mill, in someexcitement.
Despite the driving rain she put her head out beyond the curtain andlistened. Her face was sheltered from the beating rain. It would havetaken her breath had she faced it. Again the lightning flashed and thethunder crashed on its trail.
Ruth did not draw in her head. She wore her raincoat and a rubber cap, andon her feet heavy shoes. The storm did not frighten her. She might beanxious for Tom's safety, but the ordinary chances of such a disturbanceof the elements as this never bothered Ruth Fielding at all.
As the rolling of thunder died away in the distance again, the splashingsound of the rain seemed to grow lighter, too; or Ruth's hearing becameattuned to the sounds about her.
There it was again! A human cry! Or was it? It came from up the hillsideto the north of the road on which the automobiles were stalled.
Was there somebody up there in the wet woods--some human creature lost inthe storm?
For a third time Ruth heard the wailing, long-drawn cry. Henri had hishands full soothing Jennie. Helen and Aunt Kate were clinging together inthe depths of the tonneau. Possibly their eyes were covered against theglare of the lightning.
Ruth slipped out under the curtain on the leeward side. The rain sweptdown the hillside in solid platoons that marched one after another fromnorthwest to southeast. Dashing against the southern hillside, thesemarching columns dissolved in torrents that Ruth could hear roaring downfrom the tree-tops and rushing in miniature floods through the forest.
The road was all awash. The cars stood almost hub-deep in a yellow,foaming flood. The roadside ditches were not deep here, and the suddenfreshet was badly guttering the highway.
Sheltered at first by the top of the big car, Ruth strained her ears againto catch that cry which had come down the wind from the thickly woodedhillside.
There it was! A high, piercing scream, as though the one who uttered itwas in great fear or agony. Nor did the cry seem to be far away.
Ruth went around to the other side of the automobile. The rain was lettingup--or seemed to be. She crossed to the higher ground and pushed throughthe fringe of bushes that bordered the road.
Already her feet and ankles were saturated, for she had waded throughwater more than a foot in depth. Here on the steep hillside the flowingwater followed the beds of small rivulets which carried it away on eitherside of her.
The thick branches of the trees made an almost impervious umbrella aboveher head. She could see up the hill through the drifting mist for a longdistance. The aisles between the rows of trees seemed filled with a sortof pallid light.
Across the line of her vision and through one of these aisles passed afigure--whether that of an animal or the stooping body of a human beingRuth Fielding could not at first be sure.
She had no fear of there being any savage creature in this wood. At leastthere could be nothing here that would attack her in broad daylight. In alull in the echoing thunder she cried aloud:
"Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! Where are you?"
She was sure her voice drove some distance up the hillside against thewind. She saw the flitting figure again, and with a desire to make sure ofits identity, Ruth started in pursuit.
Had Tom been present the girl of the Red Mill would have called hisattention to the mystery and left it to him to decide whether toinvestigate or not. But Ruth was quite an independent person when she wasalone; and under the circumstances, with Henri Marchand so busy comfortingJennie, Ruth did not consider for a moment calling the Frenchman to advisewith her.
As for Helen and Aunt Kate, they were quite overcome by their fears. Ruthwas not really afraid of thunder and lightning, as many people are. Shehad long since learned that "thunder does not bite, and the bolt oflightning that hits you, you will never see!"
Heavy as the going was, and interfering with her progress through her wetgarments did, Ruth ran up the hill underneath the dripping trees. She sawthe flitting, shadowy figure once more. Again she called as loudly as shecould shout:
"Wait! Wait! I won't hurt you."
Whoever or whatever it was, the figure did not stay. It flitted on abouttwo hundred yards ahead of the pursuing girl.
At times it disappeared altogether; but Ruth kept on up the hill and herquarry always reappeared. She was quite positive this was the creaturethat had shrieked, for the mournful cry was not repeated after she caughtsight of the figure.
"It is somebody who has been frightened by the storm," she thought. "Or itis a lost child. This is a wild hillside, and one might easily be lost uphere."
Then she called again. She thought the strange figure turned andhesitated. Then, of a sudden, it darted into a clump of brush. When Ruthcame panting to the spot she could see no trac
e of the creature, or thepath which it had followed.
But directly before Ruth was an opening in the hillside--the mouth of adeep ravine which had not been visible from the road below.
Down this ravine ran a noisy torrent which had cut itself a wider anddeeper bed since the cloudburst on the heights. Small trees, brush, androcks had been uprooted by the force of the stream, but its current wasnow receding. One might walk along the edge of the brook into thishillside fastness.
Determined to solve the mystery of the strange creature's disappearance,and quite convinced that it was a lost child or woman, Ruth Fieldingventured through the brush clump and passed along the ragged bank of thetumbling brook.
Suddenly, in the muddy ground at her feet, the girl spied a shoe. It was ablack oxford of good quality, and it had been, of course, wrenched fromthe foot of the person she pursued. This girl, or woman, must be runningfrom Ruth in fear.
Ruth picked up the shoe. It was for a small foot, but might belong toeither a girl of fourteen or so or to a small woman. She could see theprint of the other shoe--yes! and there was the impress of the stockingedfoot in the mud.
"Whoever she may be," thought Ruth Fielding, "she is so frightened thatshe abandoned this shoe. Poor thing! What can be the matter with her?"
Ruth shouted again, and yet again. She went on up the side of theturbulent brook, staring all about for the hiding place of her quarry.
The rain ceased entirely and abruptly. But the whole forest was a-drip.Far up through the trees she saw a sudden lightening of the sky. Theclouds were breaking.
But the smoke of the torrential downpour still rose from the saturatedearth. When Ruth jarred a bush in passing a perfect deluge fell from thetrembling leaves. The girl began to feel that she had come far enough inwhat appeared to be a wild-goose chase.
Then suddenly, quite amazingly, she was halted. She plunged around a sharpturn in the ravine, trying to step on the dryer places, and found herselfconfronted by a man standing under the shelter of a wide-armed spruce.
"Oh!" gasped Ruth, starting back.
He was a heavy-set, bewhiskered man with gleaming eyes and rather a grimlook. Worst of all, he carried a gun with the lock sheltered under hisarm-pit from the rain.
At Ruth's appearance he seemed startled, too, and he advanced the muzzleof the gun and took a stride forward at the same moment.
"Hello!" he growled. "Be you crazy, too? What in all git out be youtraipsing through these woods for in the rain?"