CHAPTER IV THE OLD TRAIL
Several things more or less firmly fixed in his mind had impelled TomSlade to challenge that wooded hill the dense summit of which was visibleby day from Temple Camp.
He knew that high land is always selected for despatching carrierpigeons; a certain book on stalking which he had read contained a chapteron this fascinating and often useful sport and he knew that in a generalsort of way there was a connection between carrier pigeons and stalking;one suggested the other--to him, at least. He knew for a certainty thatthe message had been written on the unprinted part of a stalking blankand he knew also that on the slope of the hill he had seen chalk marks onthe trees the previous summer. Tom seldom forgot anything.
All these facts, whether significant or not, were indelibly impressedupon his serious mind, and to him they seemed to bear relation to eachother. He believed that the pigeon had been flying homeward, to some townor city not far distant, where the sender perhaps lived and he believedthat the pigeon's use in this emergency had been the happy thought ofsome person who had taken the bird to the hill only to use for sport. Hehad no doubt that somewhere in the wilderness of these Catskill hills wasa camp where the victim of accident lay, but the weak point was that hewas seeking a needle in a haystack.
"I wish we'd brought along the fog horn from the boat," he said, as theymade their way across the open country below the hill; "we could havemade a lot of noise with it up there; you can hear a long way in thewoods, and it might have helped us to find the place."
"If the place is up there," said Doc Carson.
"There's a trail," said Tom, "that runs about halfway up but it petersout at a brook and you can't find any from there on."
"If we could find the trees where you saw the marks last summer," saidConnie Bennet, "we might get next to some clue there."
"I can usually find a place where I've been before," said Tom.
"What's the matter with following the brook when we get to it?" saidGarry. "If there's anyone camping there they'd have to be near water."
"Good idea," said Doc.
"That settles one thing I was trying to dope out," said Tom. "Why shouldpeople come as far as that just to stalk?"
"Maybe they're scouts, camping."
"They'd have smudged up the whole sky with signals," said Tom.
"Maybe it's someone up there hunting."
"Only it isn't the season," laughed Garry. "No sooner said than stung, asRoy would say. Gee, I wish he was along!"
"Same here," said Doc.
"They're probably there fishing," said Tom. "The stalking business is aside issue, most likely."
"That's what the little brook whispers to us," said Doc.
They all laughed except Tom. He was not much on laughing, though Roycould usually reach him.
The woods began abruptly at the foot of the hill and they skirted itsedge for a little way holding their lantern to the ground so as to findthe trail. But no sign of path revealed itself. Twice they fancied theycould see, or _sense_, as Jeb would have said, an opening into the densewoods and the faintest suggestion of a trail but it petered out in bothcases--or perhaps it was imaginary.
"Let's try what Jeb calls lassooing it," said Garry.
He retreated through the open field to a lone tree which stood gaunt andspectral in the night like a sentinel on guard before that vast woodlandarmy. Climbing up the tree, he called to Tom:
"Walk along the edge now and hold your lantern low."
Tom skirted the wood's edge, swinging his light this way and that asGarry called to him. The idea of trying to discover the trail by taking adistant and elevated view was a good one, but the tree was either toonear or too far or the light was too dim, and the four scouts knew notwhat to do next.
"Climb up a little higher," called Doc. "They say that when you're up inan aeroplane you can see all sorts of paths that people below never knewabout. I read that in an aviation magazine."
"_The Fly-paper_, hey?" ventured Connie. "Look out for rotten branches,Garry."
Garry wriggled his way up among the small branches, as far as he dared,while Tom moved about at the wood's edge holding the lantern here andthere.
"Nothing doing," said Garry, coming down.
"We're up against it, for a fact," said Doc.
"That's just what we're not," retorted Connie. "It seems we're nowherenear it."
"Gee-whillager!" cried Garry as he scrambled down the tree trunk. "Slingme over the peroxide, will you!"
"What's the matter?" asked Doc, interested at once.
"I've got a scratch. What Pee-wee would call an artificial abrasion."
"Superficial?" laughed Doc, pouring peroxide on a pretty deep scratch onGarry's wrist.
"See there?" said Garry. "Feel. It's sticking out from the trunk."
As Tom held his lantern a small, rusty projection of iron was visible onthe trunk of the tree about five feet from the ground.
"Is it a nail?" asked Connie.
"Well-what-do-you-know-about-that?" said Garry. "It's what's left of ahook; the tree has grown out all around it, don't you see?"
It was indeed the rusty remnant of what had once been a hook but thegrowing trunk had encased all except the end of it and the screws andplate that fastened it were hidden somewhere within the tree.
"That tree has grown about an inch and a half thicker all the way aroundsince the hook was fastened to it," said Doc.
"It's an elm, isn't it?" Garry said.
Tom thought a minute. "Elms, oaks," he mused, "that means about ten ortwelve years ago."
"There are only two reasons why people put hooks into trees," saidConnie, after a moment's silence; "for hammocks and to fasten horses to.Nix on the hammocks here," he added.
"What I was thinking about," said Tom, "is that if somebody used to tie ahorse here it must have been so's they could go into the woods. The trailgoes as far up as the brook. Maybe they used to tie their horses here andgo fishing. There ought to be a trail from this tree to where the trailbegins in the woods."
"Probably there was--twelve years ago," said Doc, dryly.
"The ground where a trail was is never just the same as where onewasn't," said Tom, with a clumsy phraseology that was characteristic ofhim. "It leaves a scar--like. When they started the Panama Canal theyfound a trail that was used in the Fifteenth Century--an aviator foundit."
"Well, then," said Garry, cheerfully, "I'll aviate to the top of thistree again and take a squint straight down."
"Shut your eyes and keep them shut," Tom called up to him; "keep themshut till I tell you."
"Wait till Tom says peek-a-boo!" called Connie.
Tom gathered some twigs that were none too dry, and pouring a littlekerosene over them, kindled a small fire about six feet from the tree.
"Can you see down here all right?"
"Not with my eyes shut," Garry answered.
"Well, open them," said Tom, "and see if the leaves keep you fromseeing."
"What he means," called Doc, "is, have you an unobstructed view?"
There was always this tendency to make fun of Tom's soberness.
"Wait till I look in my pocket," called Garry. "Sure, I've got one."
"Shut your eyes again and keep them shut," commanded Tom.
"I have did it," came from above.
With a couple of sticks which he manipulated like Chinese chopsticks, Tommoved the fire a little to a spot which seemed to suit him better, thenretreated with his lantern to the wood's edge.
"Now," he called; "quick, what do you see? Quick!" he shouted. "You can'tdo it at all unless you do it quick!"
"To your left!" shouted Garry. "Down that way--farther--farther still--goon--more. Hurry up! Just a--there you are!"
The boys ran to the spot where Tom stood and a few swings of the lanternshowed an unmistakable something--certainly not a path--hardly atrail--but a way of lesser resistance, as one might say, into the densewood interior.<
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"Come on!" said Tom. "I hope the kerosene holds out--I dumped out a lotof it."
Instinctively, they fell back for him to lead the way and scarcely a treebut he paused to consider whether he should pass to the left or the rightof it.
"What did you see?" Connie asked of Garry.
"I couldn't tell you," said Garry, still amazed at his own experience, "Idon't know as I saw anything; I suppose I sensed it, as Jeb would say. Itwas kind of like a little dirty green line from the tree and it keptfading away the longer I had my eyes open. It wasn't exactly a line,either," he corrected; "it was--oh, I don't know what it was."
"It was a ghost," said Tom.
"That's a good name for it," conceded Garry.
"It's the right name for it," said Tom, with that blunt outspokennesswhich had a savor of reprimand but which the boys usually took in goodpart.
"That's just about what I'd say it was," Garry agreed.
"That's what you ought to say it was," said Tom, "because that's what itwas."
Doc winked at Garry, and Connie smiled.
"We get you, Steven," he said to Tom.
"Even before there were any flying machines, scouts in Africa knew abouttrail ghosts," Tom said. "They're all over, only you can't seethem--except in special ways--like this. You can only see them for abouttwenty seconds when you open your eyes. If I'd have told you to lookcross-eyed you could have seen it better."
"Wouldn't that have been a sight for mother's boy!" said Garry. "Swingingon a thin branch on the top of a tree and looking cross-eyed at a ghost!I'd have had that Cheshire cat in _Alice in Wonderland_ beaten a mile."
"Captain Crawford who died," said Tom, "picked up a lot of them. Thehigher up you are the better. In an aeroplane you needn't even shut youreyes."
"Well, truth is stranger than friction, as Roy says," said Connie; "thistrail we're on now is no ghost, anyway--hey, Tomasso?"
Tom did not answer.
"I got a splinter in my finger, too," said Garry.
"Must have been scratching your head," said Connie.
"That's what I get from seein' things," said Garry.
"We'll string the life out of Pee-wee, hey?" said Doc. "Tell him we saw aghost----"
"We did," Tom insisted.
"You mean Garry did," said Doc. "Of course, we have to take his word forit."
"Buffalo Bill saw them, too," said Tom, plodding on.
"Not Bill Cody!" ejaculated Doc, winking at Garry.
"Yes," said Tom.
"Is it _possible_?" said Doc, "Where'd you read that--in the_Fly-paper_?"
"There's a trail ghost a hundred miles long out in Utah that nobody onthe ground ever saw. Curtis followed it in his biplane," said Tom.
"Fancy that!" said Doc.
Tom plodded on ahead of them, in his usual stolid manner. "I don't sayyou can always do it," he said; "it's kind of--something--there's a longword--sike----"
"Psychological?" said Doc. "We get you, Tomasso."