Part 11 (1/2)
”Tom went over the bank at this point. See! Here are his tracks in the soft earth, and look! There are the bent and broken bushes by which he let himself down over that cliff. Thank heaven we know now in what direction to look for him as soon as morning comes. It would be useless suicide to attempt to follow his trail now.”
”Well, I don't know,” said Jack. ”But I'm ready for that sort of suicide in behalf of little Tom. Give me your best torch, boys! I'm going to follow the trail down the mountain. You see Tom may have slipped off a cliff somewhere down there and broken his legs or rendered himself helpless in some other way. I'm going to follow him right now, and the rest of you can come after daylight--which isn't more than half an hour off now.”
”No!” said the Doctor. ”If you think best to follow the trail now, we're going with you, every one of us. But first let us get our guns and some necessaries. If Tom is hurt anywhere down there I must have some appliances with which to dress his wounds. If he has fallen into the hands of the moons.h.i.+ners we must rescue him, and to that end we must have guns and ammunition. Let us go over his trail by all means, but let us go prepared to do him some good when we find him!”
To this thought there was unanimous a.s.sent, and instantly the Doctor and Jim Chenowith hurried back to the house to bring surgical appliances, guns and ammunition. Meantime Jack, who was greatly excited turned to the two boys who remained with him, and said, in a voice so cold and calm that they knew it meant intense emotion--
”Boys! If the moons.h.i.+ners have caught little Tom and done any harm to him, I am going to drive every moons.h.i.+ner out of these mountains and into a penitentiary or better still to a gibbet, if I have to give my whole life to it. Will you join me in that? And if I get killed will you promise to go on with the work?”
By that time the others had returned, and they had caught enough of what Jack had said to understand its purport. For answer the Doctor grasped Jack's hand and said with emotion: ”To that purpose I pledge my whole life and all of my fortune! If those beasts have dealt foully with little Tom, I'll hire and bring here from Baltimore a hundred desperately courageous men, every one of them armed with the latest magazine rifle there is and commissioned by the revenue chief, and I pledge you my honor that when I am through with the job there will not be a moons.h.i.+ner left in these mountains! I'll do that, Jack, if I have to hang for it.”
The other boys responded with enthusiasm, ”We'll be with you in that job, Doctor, without any hiring!”
”Thank you, comrades!” That was all that Jack could say before the strain upon him overcame even his iron nerves, and for a moment he lost consciousness. It was only for a moment, however. At the end of that time 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 boot marks where he had scrambled over a ledge, was not very difficult to follow for a s.p.a.ce. But then came a long stretch of shelving rock entirely bare, with a dense forest growth beyond, where the leaves that had fallen in the autumn were still a foot deep, and beyond that point it was impossible to trace Tom's course. After earnest endeavors to recover the trail, the effort was abandoned, and sadly the little company made their way back to camp by a circuitous route, for they could not climb again the cliffs over which they had managed to clamber down.
On the way back they were encouraged by the hope that they might find Tom in the camp, when they got there, but in this they were disappointed.
They were all disposed to sit down and mourn dejectedly, but at that point the Doctor's scientific knowledge came to the rescue.
”See here, boys,” he said; ”we've got some strenuous work to do for Tom's rescue, and we must do some clear and earnest thinking before we begin it, in order that we may do it in the best way. We're exhausted.
We have pa.s.sed a night with only two hours or less of sleep, and we've eaten nothing for fifteen hours, for it's now after nine o'clock. In the meantime we have made a tiresome journey down the mountain and back again and worse still--for worry is always more wearing than work--we have undergone a great stress of anxiety. Now we're going to do all that human endeavor can do to rescue Tom. To that end we must have strength in our bodies and alertness in our minds. We must have breakfast at once and a hearty breakfast at that.”
None of the boys had an appet.i.te, but the Doctor insisted and presently there was a breakfast served, consisting of bacon, cut into paper-thin slices and broiled on the sharpened point of a stick, held in a blaze from the fire; corn pones baked to a crisp brown in a skillet, and a br.i.m.m.i.n.g pot of hot and strong coffee. For b.u.t.ter on their bread, the boys had a mixture of the drippings from their recent roasts--the venison, the wild boar, the rabbits and the rest--all of which drippings they had carefully saved for that purpose.
Appetizing as such a breakfast was to hardworking, sleep-losing and exhausted boys, not one of them felt the least relish for it. It required all of the Doctor's urging to make them even taste their food, till presently Harry, who stood outside as a sentinel, threw down his gun and started away at a break-neck pace, calling out at the top of his voice 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 greet the returning boy. They plied and bombarded him with questions, of course, until at last he said pleadingly:
”Please, boys, I'm awfully hungry and tired. I'll answer all your questions after awhile. Just now the only things you really want to know are that I'm back safe and sound, and that nothing worse has happened to me than the loss of a night's sleep, a good deal of anxiety about you fellows, and the getting up of a positively famished appet.i.te. I say,”
he added, as he entered the cabin, ”who broiled that bacon?” and as he asked the question he picked up two or three slices of it and thrust them one after another into his mouth.
”I did,” answered Ed, ”and now that you're back, Tom, I'm going to eat a lot of it too.”
”Well cut three or four times as much more of it,” Tom said, slipping still another slice of the dainty between his teeth, and following it with a mouthful of corn pone, ”and I'll help you toast it. But don't let's talk till we eat something to talk on.”
Ed quickly cut a great plateful of the bacon slices, and every boy in the party except the one on guard duty, sharpened a stick and helped in the broiling.
Tom had brought their appet.i.tes back with him.
CHAPTER XIV
_Tom Gives an Account of Himself_