CHAPTER XII

THE HUT ON BLACK POND

Half a mile up the road, where it turned at right angles to climb the mountainside, Blackie paused and took his first compass observation. His course was northwest; but he remembered that if he looked at the compass only now and then, he might go wide of his goal; the thing to do was to take an observation, note a landmark ahead in line with the NW on the compass, make straight for that place, and from there make a new observation on another landmark. The little shifting needle showed him that his first leg of the journey should take him diagonally up the wooded mountain to a grayish, scarred slide of stones that showed ahead in the dropping sun. He knew what that was, although he had never been there. It was the terminal moraine Gil Shelton had pointed out to him the day he had first landed in camp—the Devil’s Potato Patch, the campers called it—a heap of blotched, round boulders known as a favorite resort for rattlesnakes.

Blackie knew he must hurry if he was to reach the Flatstone valley before dark. Pausing only to stow his plundered supply of food more snugly in his pockets and to shift his blanket-roll to the other shoulder, he set off across an expanse of marshy pasture land toward his first goal. The deer-flies swarmed about his face and neck, stinging pitilessly, and he increased his pace as much as he could to get away from them. He had been prudent enough to wear his heavy hiking shoes, but in several places he floundered into muddy pools and sank into dirty water over his ankles. At last he reached the heavily-wooded base of the mountain, and was forced to slow down and begin a determined climb through the underbrush, up ledges of yellow, mossy rock, and across slippery patches of shale where he had to go slowly and watch his footing. Half-way up the mountainside, he gained the bottom of the terminal moraine. Huge rocks, gray with lichens and scratched in rough, random designs, stretched above him; he was forced to leap precariously from rock to rock, always upward, several times catching himself just in time to avoid a nasty headlong fall. Once, indeed, he slipped on a bit of moss, and toppled sidewise into a cranny between two of the boulders. His blanket-roll saved his body from being more than bruised; but in falling one hand slipped under his body, and his heavy electric flash-lamp banged down upon a rock, crushing one of his finger-tips badly. The darting pain brought tears to his eyes, and he shook the injured finger violently. Scrambling to his feet for fear he might have fallen close to the hiding-place of some vicious, venomous timber-rattler, he struggled on over the great rocks; and after what seemed like hours of toilsome climbing, he at last gained the top of the first ridge.

There, on the mountain’s top, the evening light was brighter, but in the valley he had just left the shadows were long and cool. He turned and faced toward the east. There was the lake, spreading like a polished deep mirror that reflected the gold and blue evening sky, the serried rows of trees along the margin. There were the ordered rows of white tents, the top of the lodge roof with smoke wreathing lazily from the stone chimney and with the bare flagpole standing up beyond. He could see Camp Lenape as if it were a toy model spread out at his feet, almost hidden in the gray-green foliage of the forest. A slight breeze brought to him the faint clatter of trays from the mess hall, the confused hum of campers’ voices. They would be almost finished supper, now. Wally and Haviland and Gallegher and the rest would be sitting about the mess-table, wondering where he had disappeared. Well, let them worry!

The thought of supper made him remember that he had had nothing to eat since dinner-time. He pulled out the piece of cheese he had looted from the ice-box, and began gnawing upon it. He could eat a little while he rested. He turned a bit to the left. Beyond the pasture-land he had crossed on his flight, he saw a line of trees that marked a lane. He knew that lane; it was the one which led to the hermit’s house, the road he had followed the night he had heard murder done by the two tramps, Reno and Lew. He could barely make out the weather-stained, mottled shingles of the roof of the house, and shivered slightly. He would be glad to go anywhere, anywhere away from the neighborhood of that grim house of crime.

Pulling out his compass, he marked a new line of march across the undulating summit of the mountain. It pointed toward a blasted pine taller than the rest, and he resolved to make for that. The going was easier here on the mountain; the daylight was clearer, and the trees were stunted and far apart, scrub pine and small oaks no more than waist-high, for the most part. Blackie trotted along with assurance, chewing upon a piece of raw ham torn from the slice in his pocket in lieu of supper. He crossed a ravine and stumbled up the other side; this took time, and now he could almost watch the sun dropping inch by inch toward the line of trees in the west. There was not a sign that human beings had ever passed that way; Blackie knew that no one ever penetrated that desolate wilderness except deer-hunters and blueberry pickers in the fall of the year. When he again gained level ground, he found that somehow he had lost sight of the blasted pine he had picked as a landmark. This did not trouble him much; he took out the compass and again sighted toward the northwest. His finger was bothering him more than anything else; the tip had swelled, and the nail was fast turning an angry purple color. It felt double its size, and as the boy swung along it throbbed and ached until Blackie was desperate with pain.

He had covered about a mile and a half since landing on the plateau on top of the ridge when he came to a section that was marked by long wooded swales, rank with rotting vegetation, crossing his path. The sun was dropping lower and lower; it shone like a flaming, bloody ball close to the horizon, and its slanting rays blinded his eyes until the woods about him seemed dim and unreal. He determined not to deviate from the line he had laid for himself, for fear of getting off the track; and when he came to the giant bole of a fallen tree, he tried to climb over it instead of going yards around. The knobs and splinters of the rotting trunk caught at his clothing and his equipment; while scrambling over the top he slipped and fell prostrate across it, knocking the breath from his lungs. A train of white ants crossed his arm, and when he crawled slowly and clumsily to his feet, he felt their red-hot stings on his wrist and up his sleeve. It seemed that the insects were everywhere under his clothing, jabbing their poisoned darts of pain into his skin. He jumped from the top of the trunk, landing on his face and scratching it until it was crossed by bloody lines. The ground now became marshy, and he was beset by a humming tribe of mosquitoes. Still he staggered on, until brought to a stop by a spread of green, scummy water that barred his path completely.

Blackie considered. At the rate the sun was disappearing, and at the rate he was taking to make a few miles across the mountains, he would never reach Newmiln by dark. It would mean a night alone in this unexplored region, a night of fighting mosquitoes and unceasing watchfulness for rattlesnakes, night-prowling animals, and perhaps worse. He remembered all the tales he had ever heard of lone travellers caught at nightfall in strange and desolate solitudes, of attacks by bears, wolves, ghosts of slain Indians. And suddenly, like a chilling cloak, fear came to him and enveloped him. He felt the short hairs of his neck rise and prickle; an icy finger trailed down his spine. He would have to get on; he must cross the swamp somehow, anyhow!

The water in the slimy pool was only a few inches deep; through the green scum he could see the muddy, coated bottom. Feverishly he looked about him, and seized a number of fallen branches that lay on the ground, filled with the idea of making a rough bridge by casting them across the few feet of swamp ahead. He worked furiously, and soon had a network of branches thrown ahead, across which he hoped to run and so gain the far side. There was no room behind him for a clear take-off; it would have to be a standing jump. He stood for a second, getting up his nerve; and with a leap he landed upon the center of the improvised bridge. There was a snapping crackle of branches—the ones he had chosen were ground branches, and rotten. They gave under his feet, breaking and sinking into the mud; and he fell headlong on his face into the sticky ooze.

The swamp was a sucking enemy, trying to drag him under and hold him close, until the foul waters should close over his head; it bubbled under him, seeming to chuckle like a fiend. Frantically he fought his way to an upright position; he was standing almost waist-deep in the slime. Urged on by fear, he floundered forward, caught at an overhanging bush, and pulled himself slowly to firm ground. There he lay for a minute, gasping with exhaustion and terror after his exertion. The lower half of his body was soaked with filthy mud; his face and blanket-roll were draggled and stained from his fall. But he must not stop; he must push on, onward to the northwest!

For ten minutes he wandered through the marshy swales, avoiding the frequent pools whenever he could. The forest was too thick for him to spot any landmark ahead, and he gave up the idea of climbing a tree for an observation, because it would take up too much of his precious time. At last the ground sloped upward again; open spaces began to appear; the footing was easier. He pushed on, deadly afraid to halt in that darkening place of horror.

Blackie never remembered afterwards very much what he did during the remainder of that twilight march. He had a picture of himself—a hungry, weary, frightened figure, dwarfed by the bigness and ominous vastness of that solitude, caked with drying muck, scratched with twigs and thorns, and ever followed by a cloud of stinging mosquitoes—fighting his way through the desolation. He had the feeling of one in a nightmare, when the dreamer is pursued by darkness and nameless horrors, and the very ground seems to rise and clutch and hold him back. And he remembered coming to the edge of the rhododendron thickets and feeling that he could not go on.

The tangled network of the rhododendrons fronted an implacable barrier to his steps. There was no way to go around. It offered little resistance as he first plunged into it, but as steadily as he advanced, as surely did the branching horns of the shrub take hold on him. It was like trying to walk through a gigantic wickerwork basket, woven of tough and intertwined saplings. Again and again he plunged like a line-bucking football guard, and inch by inch fought his way. In one place he tried to stoop and crawl beneath the clutching branches, and was caught among the roots as in a vise, until he felt that he could move neither forward nor backward, but would have to stay imprisoned in that dusky brake until he died of thirst and starvation. He gave a frantic heave, and was free to fight his way further. The shadows were lengthening; the clock of the sky warned him that his time was short.

In the midst of his trouble he began talking desperately to himself; and finally he broke into high-pitched, shouting song. Over and over again he roared out to the brooding silence of the woods every hymn-tune he had ever heard. Ridiculously, he thought this would protect him from the unnamed evils of the place, and the singing certainly bolstered his courage.

“Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide, The darkness deepens—Lord, with me abide——”

He had lost his hat, he did not remember where. Plunge—plunge—forward through the gripping coppice!

“When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me!”

At last! He gave a wild cry and broke through the last entangling thicket, and the rhododendrons crackled closed behind him. He was free again!

He did not pause to take any more compass courses, or to straighten his clothing or pack, or to snatch a bite of food. He broke into a staggering run. His flight took him for about half a mile, into the bloodshot eye of the sun. He was dripping with perspiration, and heaving great shaking sobs. A fallen pine tripped him and he rolled heavily down a steep bank. When he picked himself up he found that he was standing on a dimly-traced path through the woods—a bare, almost invisible trail, but a path nevertheless, leading in what he thought was the direction he should follow.

A path meant that humans passed that way at some time or another, and might lead to habitations and possible discovery. But the forest terrors so clouded the boy’s mind that he welcomed any companionship, no matter what kind. It would at least give him company and allies against the loneliness that beset him. It was growing dark; a blue jay somewhere overhead was bickering to himself among the pine branches. Blackie trotted down the path.

It led him along a wooded ledge of naked rock, and down across a marshy flat place where a brook widened and lost itself in a dense hedge of rushes. He crossed on a series of flat stones, and ascended a little hill. One look, and he gave a shout of surprise.

There, spread before him beyond the margin of the reeds, was a long flat sheet of water, a mountain tarn whose unruffled surface, like a plate of polished steel, gave off the last dying beams of sunset. He had come too far to the south; he was off the course he had laid for Newmiln Center. This must be Black Pond, the long body of water he had seen marked on the map in the camp lodge.

The pond, hidden among the rocks and dark trees of the mountain, at no time had a friendly look; now, at nightfall, it presented to the weary boy a face full of sinister threat. He was several miles out of his way; further progress that night was impossible. He would have to camp here on Black Pond.

He was just turning away to locate a camping place, when his eye was caught by something which he had not noticed in his brief survey of the pond and its surroundings. Through the trees to the right a thin wisp of smoke was curling up in a languid spiral.

Someone was camping beside the pond! Blackie did not hesitate; the fear of spending the night alone offered no choice. He ran to the end of the path. There, beside the still waters of Black Pond, was a small shack rudely knocked together from rough pine slabs and chinked with moss. The spreading wings and steel-edged talons of a hawk, shot at some time or another, were nailed to the wall near the low door, in the usual back-country fashion. The smoke of a fire came from a stone chimney at one end. A small rowboat with a puddle in the bottom was drawn up on the muddy shore.

Blackie paused for a moment. He didn’t like the looks of the place, but beggars can’t be choosers; it was now quite dark, and the smoke indicated a cheery fire inside. Some hunter or fisherman, who used this small hut for his camp, must be inside. Blackie tiptoed to the door and knocked hesitantly.

From beyond the rough barrier came a startled grunt, the sound of a body moving swiftly across the hut. Blackie knocked again, growing more and more concerned as the silence continued.

With a sudden jerk the door was flung open, and a man’s figure appeared outlined in the firelight, with one arm menacingly upraised, wielding what seemed to be a short iron bar. Blackie Thorne stared, and gave a shrill scream of fright.

He was looking in the face of the man called Reno, one of the two tramps he had overheard on the night of the snipe hunt planning to rob old Rattlesnake Joe of his imaginary treasure! He could plainly see the seamed face, the gray unshaven jowls, and the green eye-patch of that sinister character.

The tramp was as surprised as the boy. “In the devil’s name, it’s a kid!” he bellowed. “A kid, Lew! Nab ’im, quick!” He made a dive for Blackie, but the boy, pulled by terror, had already taken to his legs back up the path—away, away from that evil face in the hut. He stumbled frantically through the dark—the further away from Black Pond, the better! Behind him he could hear the baffled howling of Reno. He would escape yet——

He stumbled, felt a pair of gripping arms about him, holding him tight so that he could not struggle. A hoarse voice called, “Here he is, Reno! Got the bloody little rat!”

“Good!” came the response. “Bring ’im here to the light. If he’s a spy, I’ll pull out his little throat, blast ’im!”

Helpless and too weary to fight any more, Blackie felt himself being picked up roughly and carried toward the hut on Black Pond that was the hiding-place of the two murderous vagabonds who had done to death the harmless old hermit of the Lenape hills.