Part 10 (2/2)

It took our hero several seconds to collect himself sufficiently to arise. His ear was ringing from the contact with the stone, which fortunately had been a smooth one, and his shoulder also ached, even though the kick had been delivered through the padding of his overcoat.

He gazed along the path, and was just in time to see Porton disappearing around a bend.

If Dave had been thoroughly angry before, he was now even more so; and, shaking his head to clear his brain, he started on a run after the fugitive. He reached the turn in the path to see Porton emerging from the woods and taking to the highway leading to the railroad depot.

”He must be running to catch a train,” thought our hero. ”And if that is so I'll have to hustle or he'll get away.”

By the time Dave gained the highway leading to Barnett, Ward Porton had reached the vicinity of the first of the houses in the village.

Here he paused to glance back, and, seeing his pursuer, shook his fist at Dave. Then he went on about fifty yards farther, suddenly turning into a lane between two of the houses.

”He's afraid to go to the depot for fear I'll get after him before a train comes in,” thought Dave. ”Well, I'll catch him anyway, unless he takes to the woods.”

What Dave had surmised was correct. Ward Porton had thought to get on a train that would stop at Barnett inside of the next ten minutes.

Now, however, he realized that to go to the depot and hang around until the cars took their departure would probably mean capture.

”Confound the luck! How did he manage to get on my trail so quickly?”

muttered the former moving-picture actor to himself. ”Now I'll have to lay low and do my best to sneak off to some other place. I wish it wasn't so cold. When I stop running I'll be half frozen. But, anyway, I had the satisfaction of giving him one in the ear with that rock and another in the shoulder with my foot,” and he smiled grimly, as he placed his handkerchief to his bleeding nose.

By the time Dave reached the lane between the houses, Porton was nowhere in sight. There were a number of footprints in the snow, and following these Dave pa.s.sed a barn and some cow-sheds. From this point a single pair of footprints led over a short field into the very woods where the encounter had taken place.

”He's going to hide in the woods, sure enough,” reasoned our hero. ”Or else maybe he'll try to get back to Clayton, or Bixter.”

”Hi! What's going on here?” cried a voice from the cow-shed, and a man showed himself, followed by two well-grown boys.

”I'm after a fellow who just ran across that field into the woods,”

explained Dave, quickly. ”He's a thief. I want to catch him and have him locked up.”

”Oh, say! I thought I saw somebody,” exclaimed one of the boys. ”I thought it might be Tom Jones goin' huntin'.”

In as few words as possible Dave explained the situation to the farmer and his two sons, and they readily agreed to accompany him into the woods.

”But you'll have a big job trying to locate that chap in those woods,”

was the farmer's comment. ”The growth back here is very thick, and my boys have been lost in it more than once.”

”Huh! we always found our way out again,” grumbled the older of the sons, who did not like this statement on his parent's part.

”Yes, Billy, but the woods are mighty thick,” returned his brother.

”If that feller don't look out he may get lost and get froze to death to-night, unless he knows enough to make a fire.”

It was easy enough to follow the footprints to the edge of the woods.

But once there, the brushwood and rocks were so thick that to follow the marks one would have had to have the eyes of an expert trailer.

Dave and the farmer, with the two boys, searched around for the best part of a quarter of an hour, but without success.

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