Part 19 (2/2)
”The simpleton is harmless anyway. He is moving to the fence. See him?
Hist!”
After studying the wild growth for a few moments, Sam decided to approach it by way of the fence. There he suddenly dropped to his knees and crept noiselessly--very close beside the fence, toward the tangle. As he neared it he could make out its black cavernous recesses. Twice he paused, his eyes strained with the utmost tension of watchfulness against a surprise, for he now fully believed that the man he was attempting to shadow was a desperate character.
However, he crept nearer, hardly stirring a blade of gra.s.s, so cautious was his progress--so silent his movements. He listened intently, scarcely breathing, lest its sound should betray his presence. His hands gently touched a vine to part the leaves--instantly he was greeted with a hiss and a rattle, and then something glittered close to his eyes, which in the moment of his startled alarm he believed to be the glitter of a reptile's fangs. It caused him to bolt suddenly with a panicky feeling at his heart, and then it brought from Jack a soft chuckle of merriment.
”He's not as plucky as the girl. We must throw him off the scent at any cost,” whispered Rutley, ”or we will be trapped.” Suddenly he laid his hand on Jack's arm and continued with a low, sardonic laugh: ”I have it, Jack. You lead him down on the Barnes road; I'll meet him there,” and without any further delay Rutley slipped down the steep slope to his automobile, which lay in the deep shadow of the canyon walls, a little further to the west, where he waited with the evil purpose in his heart for the climax.
Sam was no coward. He had faced dangerous situations fearlessly, but that hiss and rattle, in the stillness of a dark, lonely and forbidding place, fairly raised his hair, and lent a lightness to his feet that amazed him, when he halted and noted the distance covered in the few moments of his flight.
”One of those deadly reptiles got out of the park zoo,” he thought, ”sneaked his way into that jungle--I guess so!” and he wiped the beads of perspiration from his face as he added aloud: ”An almighty close call! But,” and he looked up at the dark sky, and then around and about, and as gathering confidence returned to him, continued: ”I shall not give up yet, not yet. I guess not.”
Yet it was apparent his pursuit of the stranger had signally failed, and he stood motionless wondering what course then best for him to adopt.
True, he was in a dilemma, and instinctively realized that to remain in the park was useless. So, without forming any practical conclusion, and for the purpose of keeping active, he again moved toward the fence. It was then he conceived the notion to climb over the fence and make a short descent to the gate, in order to catch sight of Virginia, for she could not be far away yet, and to follow her and secretly to protect her on her return to her home. With that object in mind, he climbed the fence, and, securing a position on its top, looked cautiously about. He was some distance to the west of the tangle of vines, from which he was screened by the foliage of a small tree that grew nearby.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Sam--”One of those deadly reptiles got out of the Park Zoo.”]
The gate light threw a faint glimmer along the fence, and on the Barnes road in the gorge below. He peered down the steep hillside, and looked up and down the road. There being no one in sight, he let his legs slip quietly down the other side of the fence, and gradually lowered himself, without sustaining other injury than a few trivial scratches. As he brushed mechanically the debris which had clung to his clothes, he was surprised to see the figure of a man step out, seemingly from the fence itself, and slip down the hillside, and climbing the lower fence, cross the almost dry bed of the stream, close to the road, and proceed cityward.
Sam was sure the man, whoever he was, had not been on the corral side of the fence a moment before, and to give the mysterious appearance a deeper significance, the point of exit was about the location of the tangled vines. The appearance of the man differed from the one he had followed, inasmuch that one had on a long coat and bushy beard, the other wore a short pilot coat and mustache. For a moment Sam was puzzled, and he scratched his head. Suddenly he broke out in an unconscious whisper to himself, as though urged on by some supernatural agency, for afterward it surprised him when he thought of that moment: ”d.a.m.ned if I don't think he's the same party I've been after, disguised.”
And he made straight for the place, as near as he could estimate, where the man had emerged.
It was a few moments before he found it, but a close examination soon revealed two yielding pickets of the fence. True, just sufficient to admit a man's body sideways, but there it was, as he afterwards discovered, and perfectly screened from observation by ma.s.ses of slender leaf-laded branches and twigs. The inner, bushy part being skilfully cut away. The trick employed to evade him was now palpable.
The hiss, the buzzing rattle, the glitter--”Ah; it was the glitter of a steel blade”--and at the thought he s.h.i.+vered, as with an icy chill, for he realized how dangerously near a death-trap he had ventured. As the reaction came, his face flamed with the hot blood of indignation and chagrin at the smart dodge by which he had been temporarily baffled.
In the distance, down near the park entrance, was still dimly visible the retreating form of a man. Sam determined to follow him.
He slid and partly tumbled down the steep hillside, sprang over the lower fence, and crossed the bed of the creek and on to the road--and was so intent on his mission that he did not hear or see, until it was almost upon him, a dark, noiseless machine, approaching from the rear.
He moved hastily aside to let it pa.s.s, but to his intense astonishment, the automobile followed him with evident intention of running him down. Again he sprang aside, but too late. The front wheel grazed his left leg and swung him around on to the rear wheel, which hurled him violently to the ground.
Having accomplished his purpose, Rutley at once stopped the machine, alighted, and examined Sam.
He was soon joined by Jack, who asked, in a low voice: ”Have you killed him?”
”I don't think so. Bad gash on the side of his head, though.”
”Dangerous?”
”Impossible for me to say.”
”Just unconscious?” anxiously inquired Jack.
”Yes; but I don't think he will interfere with us again for some time.
What shall we do with him?”
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