Fred Fenton Marathon Runner: The Great Race at Riverport School

CHAPTER VII
THE SHORT-CUT WAY

"Now, where did you drop down from, Colon?" asked Bristles.

"Me?" exclaimed the tall chum, with a broad smile on his face. "Why, straight from town, if you want to know. You see, I found out, after all, I could get off, and hurried to where you said you'd start, but Fred's ma told me you had half an hour the lead of me. Still, as I happened to know the layout of the trip, I made up my mind I'd follow along, and hump myself a little to overtake you fellows.

"But how'd you know where we left the road, and started across the woodland, tell me, Colon?" asked Bristles; whereupon the other nodded his head, and looked wise.

"Oh! well!" he explained, "you see, Fred told me about where he expected to break away and so of course I kept looking; and I saw that you'd turned out just about under that bunch of birch trees. Why, you left a plain track in the dust on the road. After that I used my eyes and my head, and kept pushing right along. I'm reckoned something of a scout in the woods, you must know."

"You certainly have done a big thing in that line this time, Colon," asserted Fred, vigorously; "I never would have believed him, if someone told me you'd done it. And let me remark that you certainly came in on us at the right time."

"I should say he did," assented Bristles, joyfully. "I was getting tired of swinging my club, and whacking that terrible critter. Talk to me about being able to stand punishment, – I never before saw a dog that could come up fresh every time you keeled him over. Most curs would run away, howling like mad, but he just set his teeth, and took a fresh grip. Whew! I'm sure glad it's all over."

"Either of you get nipped anywhere?" asked Colon, anxiously.

"I hope not," Fred replied, "it's a dangerous thing to have a dog bite you, because you never know what's going to happen. Often the scratch from the claws of a tiger or a lion is followed by blood poisoning, because they tear their prey, you know. I was sent over once, and seem to have a few scratches on my shins, but they came from the stones and thorns. How about you, Bristles?"

"I kicked one of those smaller runts that tried to bite me, but I don't think he got his teeth in my leg. Those blood marks are scratches, where I ran into the thorn bush while I was jumping around so lively. Oh! it's all right, and no damage done, boys. Everything's lovely, and the goose hangs high!"

"But what does all this rumpus mean?" Colon wanted to know. "Whose dogs were they, and what had you done to make the push mad?"

Bristles undertook to tell him, passing on some of the information which he had received from Fred.

"Now I'm posted. I seem to get a grip on the business," Colon confessed, "and I want to tell you I'm mighty glad I made up my mind to follow after, and see if I couldn't come up before you got back home again."

"And believe me we're happy to know you did, Colon," Bristles assured him, "because there's no telling what sort of a hard time we'd have been up against, with that pack trying their level best to pull us down. We might have had to climb up in a tree, and sit there all night, for all we know. But Fred, what'd we better do about it now?"

"About what?" asked the other.

"This dog here," continued Bristles, pointing down at the animal that looked so fierce even in death.

"I was just thinking," Fred told him, "whether we had better lift him into the fork of a tree, so he could be found if we let the farmers know about it, or try to drag him along to the tollgate house."

"It can't be so very far away, I should think," observed Colon, "and I'd be willing to take my turn at dragging him there."

"Nothing like showing the proof, when you tell a whopping big story," declared Bristles, "and I know a lot of fellows who'll like as not lift their eyebrows, and grin to beat the band when they hear about this warm time we've had. We want to be able to stamp the yarn as true as anything that ever happened. So take hold of one leg, Colon, and I'll manage the other. Sho! that's easy enough going, and for one I don't mind it a bit."

"Call on me to take my turn any time, boys," announced Fred, as he started off in the lead.

The wild dog pack had evidently been effectually broken up by the energetic action of the Riverport runners. Not a single bark or yelp was to be heard in any direction. Scattered to the four winds the dogs were apt to return to their respective homes, and change their bad habits. With the loss of their savage ringleader, the impulse to live a wild life would possibly leave them all.

Fred once more began to figure on their course. He knew that the faint trail he and Bristles had been following through the woods had begun to bear away in a quarter that made it impossible for them to pursue it any longer, if they expected to come out near the Belleville tollgate.

Thanks to his possession of the compass, and something of a knowledge of the general conditions, Fred was able to decide on this without much trouble.

They did not make any attempt at speed indeed, that would have been utterly impossible, while they continued to drag the slain dog along after them. Colon finally gave a hint that he was ready to abandon the idea of showing the result of their encounter to the toll-gate keeper, notwithstanding that through him all the farmers in that neighborhood would eventually learn of their good luck.

"But I don't like to quit anything I've started on," objected Bristles, when the long-legged runner had thus casually mentioned that it was no fun dragging the big beast over rough ground. "Think how far we've kept it up already. Huh! want to have that work just wasted? Not much for me! If you're tired, Colon, just say the word, and I'll lug him along by myself, or else Fred ahead there might lend me a helping hand."

"Me tired? Why, whatever put that silly notion in your head, Bristles? I didn't know you set such great store by showing the old thing; but since I see you do, why of course I'm game to hold out to the finish. Hope you don't want to get the blooming dog stuffed, and keep him mounted in your den at home."

"Well, that'd be the limit!" exclaimed Bristles, laughing at the idea. "I feel right now that he's going to visit me lots of times in my dreams, with all that double row of white teeth showing, and his red lips drawn back! Ugh! I'll not forget in a hurry how he looked, I tell you, Colon. And didn't he take the punishment I heaped on him, though? I used up every ounce of strength I had in slinging my club. You notice that I'm toting that along, don't you?"

"Oh! that's the racket, is it? A bow of blue ribbon tied to the club, and hang it on the wall of your room at home? Well, Bristles, I don't blame you much, because he was an ugly customer. If he'd ever gotten you down, it'd been tough on you."

"Here, let up on that style of talk, will you, Colon? It makes me have a cold chill run up and down my spinal column. Let's talk about something more cheerful. What d'ye think about this shortcut through the woods? Fred says it's going to save a lot, and that nearly every fellow will like as not take to it. A mile of this goes against three by the road."

"So long as every contestant knows the ground, it might pay to take the cut-off," Colon remarked, "but I noticed some swampy ground that I'd hate to get lost in. If any runner fails to show up at the tape, they'll have to send out a searching party to look for him through this section."

"That'll be his lookout, then," observed Bristles, calmly. "Everybody shinny on his own side. Preparation is part of the battle. The fellow who is too lazy to go over the course in advance will have to take big chances, that's all. He won't deserve to win."

"This is certainly a dreary place, all right," the tall runner went on to say, as he looked to the right, and then to the left. "Why, I didn't know there was such a desolate stretch of woodland within twenty miles of Riverport. Some of it's good farming land too, if part is boggy, and even that would make a cranberry marsh, if anyone wanted to try it out."

"It's all second growth timber, though," called back Fred, who was still just a dozen paces in the lead, and pushing his way through brush that often entirely concealed the ground.

"Sure it is," Bristles went on to say. "Long ago the original timber was cut down, and sent to the sawmills. Listen to the frogs croaking over that way; must be a pond somewhere around."

"I was going to ask you if you'd run across any snakes yet?" Colon inquired, with considerable show of interest, because, as well known among his friends, the tall runner had always felt a decided antipathy for all crawling things, and would never handle even an inoffensive garter-snake; indeed, slimy greenbacked frogs he abominated, claiming that they had the same clammy feeling as snakes.

"Why, yes, a couple whipped across the trail back there," Bristles admitted.

"Not rattlers, I hope?" ejaculated Colon, coming to a sudden stop, as he turned an apprehensive look upon his companion.

"No," Bristles told him, with a scornful inflection in his voice, for he did not share Colon's antipathy toward crawling reptiles, and could not understand how any fellow could be so foolish as to shiver at sight of a mere wriggling object. "Fred says it's too early for rattlers to show out of their dens. One was a fair-sized black snake, and the other might have been an adder; he was short and stumpy, and had a flat head."

"Just as poisonous as anything that crawls," said Colon, with a shudder, and an involuntary hasty look around him. As a rule, he was far from being nervous, and yet when a stick that had bent under Fred's weight suddenly sprang back into shape again, the tall runner gave a low cry of alarm, and even dropped the leg of the dog that he had been clinging to so sturdily all that distance.

Not liking to be joked about his fears, Colon made out that a thorn had jabbed him in the leg, and bending down he started to rubbing vigorously at his ankle. Bristles, apparently, was aware of the true state of affairs, for he grinned as he waited for the other to assist him once more.

"These thorns do stick you right smart when they get a chance at a bare shin, for a fact, Colon," he went on to observe, grimly, "but so long as they don't draw blood, the damage's not apt to amount to much, I reckon. There's Fred disappeared from sight, and we'll have to hurry if we want to catch up with him before we strike that road, which I calculate can't be a great way off."

It happened that they were passing over some rather rough country just then, with a number of dark-looking gullies intersecting their course. In places it was even necessary for them to drop down into these and then climb up on the opposite side. This took time, but the boys fancied they must be close to the road they had been aiming to reach.

"See anything of Fred, yet?" asked Bristles. "You're such a tall fellow you c'n spy a heap farther than me."

Colon looked, and then shook his head.

"He's nowhere around, as far as I c'n see," he remarked, and dropping his share of the burden, Colon sprang back in alarm, as a voice seemed to come up out of the very earth at their feet, saying:

"Keep back there, you fellows, or you'll be tumbling down on top of me!"

"Hello! there, Fred, where under the sun are you?" demanded Bristles, looking around him in sheer amazement.

"I've fallen into some sort of cave here, that's all!" came back in a muffled voice.

CHAPTER VIII
THE TELL-TALE PIN

Colon and Bristles stood there, and looked at each other in dismay, upon hearing Fred say that he had met with such a strange misfortune.

"Well, if that doesn't beat my time!" the latter exclaimed. "And to think that while you and I talked back there, our chum was lying down in some old black hole. What if he's broken his leg, or even sprained an ankle, – Riverport will miss a good man in this Marathon race, believe me!"

"Let's see if we can find the hole where Fred slipped down," suggested

Colon.

"And be careful we don't go the same way, too," added Bristles, drily.

At that they started to move carefully forward, closely examining every foot of the way as they went. In a short time Colon uttered a cry.

"Found it, have you?" demanded Bristles, with a disappointed grunt, for he had hoped to be the lucky one himself.

"Look there where that root sticks up!" the other called out, pointing as he explained. "Seems to me there might be a gap of some sort. Let's creep a little closer and find out. Yes, that's the hole, and no mistake, Bristles. And Fred – he must have slipped down so fast he just couldn't grab hold of anything. If he did, it gave way, and went down along with him."

They accordingly crept forward, and began to stare down through the opening.

"Why, what's this I see?" ejaculated Bristles. "Somebody's got a light working down there, Colon!"

"It's our chum, I reckon," the tall boy told him, after another look.

"What, Fred?" persisted Bristles. "But whatever would he be striking a match for, I want to know?"

"To look around, I should say," Colon informed him, and the statement seemed so simple that it apparently convinced Bristles on the spot, for he hastened to remark:

"Well, that sure would be just like Fred now, to think of finding out what sort of a coop he'd dropped into, the first thing. Hello! down there!"

"Hello! yourself, Bristles!" came back the cheery answer.

"First of all, tell us if you got hurt any, Fred!" called Bristles, who could not get the notion out of his head that the other may have been seriously injured.

"Why, no, nothing to mention," came the ready answer. "A few more little scratches, it might be, but then they don't count. Kind of knocked the breath out of my body at first, and took me a little while to recover, but no damage done, boys."

"What are you doing with the light, Fred?" Colon wanted to know.

"I only wanted to see what sort of a place this is, that's all," Fred told him, as his match expired, and the darkness came again.

"And did you find out?" continued Bristles, eagerly, possibly his mind beginning to wrestle with all sorts of strange ideas concerning hidden treasure vaults, and, mysterious hiding-places where counterfeiters carried on their illegal trade.

"It seems to be only an ordinary cave, like others we've run across," Fred told them. "If you felt like coming down, I think it would be easy enough."

"Not the way you tried it, Fred; you'll have to excuse me," laughed Bristles. "But I think I can feel the rough rocks here, and seems as if a fellow as spry as Colon might manage to shuffle down. Anyhow, I'm going to try it. I've got a few matches of my own in my pocket, that we could use to look around with."

"Take it slow, and no hurry, boys," warned Fred, at the same time moving out of the way, so that if a stone were dislodged in their passage, it would not come in contact with his head.

For a couple of minutes there could be heard a scraping noise, as the two boys lowered themselves down into the opening. Fred struck another match, which he held up in order to give them the benefit of the feeble illumination. Assisted by this light, both of the newcomers managed to reach the side of their chum without encountering any serious difficulty.

"Well, here we are, fellows, all down!" Bristles declared, with a sigh of relief. "I only hope that when we try to climb up again, it won't be an all day job."

"Much easier than coming in," Colon told him. "It always is, when you're mounting a steep cliff; because then you can see just where you're going. When starting down you hardly know where to put each foot, and when you look to see, it makes you giddy to find how far below the bottom lies."

"Did you see anything when you looked around, that made you want to take a second peep, Fred?" asked Bristles, still clinging to his suspicion.

"I don't know," replied Fred. "It's like this. The match was going out when I thought I glimpsed something on the rocky floor that looked like the ashes of a dead fire! And after that I thought I'd like to make sure before I left here, – just to satisfy my curiosity, you know, boys."

"A fire, eh?" ventured Bristles. "Well, since no wild animal was ever known to start such a thing, that tells us this same cave must have sheltered human beings some time or other."

"Hoboes, most likely," observed Colon; "trust them for finding such a snug hiding-place, after they've gone and robbed some country postoffice, or a farmer's chicken coop."

"I'll strike a light, then, and Fred, you show us where the ashes lie," and with these words Bristles drew a match hastily along the seat of his trousers, causing it to burst into a bright flame.

"Over this way, boys," Fred told them, as he stepped across the rocky floor of the cave that had been found in such a queer way.

It was just as he had said, for there on the stones they could see the plain marks of a fire. Colon knew a thing or two about woodcraft, and the very first indication of this was when he thrust his hand into the ashes.

"As cold as they can be," he observed, immediately.

"Which shows that the fire hasn't been burning lately at all," Bristles hastened to add, to prove that he understood what Colon meant to infer.

"Whoever camped in here cooked a meal or two, that's plain," Fred remarked, as he pointed to some chicken bones that were strewn around.

"Tramps, as sure as anything, and they've been raiding the hencoops around this region, too," Colon ventured to say.

"And that poor old wild dog had to stand the blame for it all," said Bristles. "It's nearly always that way; give a dog a bad name, and everybody condemns him. For all we know, some of the sheep that have been killed might have been pulled down by an innocent looking shaggy dog belonging to the farmer himself, but it's so easy to saddle the blame on the wicked one. What was that you picked up, Colon?"

"As near as I can make out it looks like one of those tin biscuit boxes you see at the store," the tall boy replied, holding the object up. "It's got a rubber band around it. Queer thing for tramps to buy. Only imported biscuits are put up this way, Miss Fletcher told me, and she ought to know because she's English, and won't eat any other kind."

"Let me see that tin, will you please, Colon?" asked Fred, suddenly.

After he had looked sharply at it, inside and out, he nodded his head.

"I thought it might be like that," Fred remarked, mysteriously. This manner of talking caused his comrades to stare, and Colon cried out:

"Now, whatever is there about that old tin to make you speak like that, Fred? If you'd picked up a clue to some robbery, you couldn't look more pleased.

"Perhaps we have," said Fred, meaningly. "Take another look at this tin box, both of you. Notice how the heavy rubber band has been fastened underneath, so it couldn't get lost. You never heard of such a thing being done where there were just plain crackers in a tin, did you? Of course not. Well, don't you see that this would make a splendid receptacle for papers, or securities? And just before your match went out, Bristles, I thought I could see a little scrap of paper sticking in a corner. That would prove it had held such things."

Bristles could be heard uttering a series of exclamations, as he started to get another match going.

"If this doesn't take the cake! Why, all of us ought to remember how old Mr. Periwinkle complained that someone had entered his house and hooked a sum of money, as well as some papers he kept in a tin box in his desk. Why, this must be the same tin box, fellows! We ought to keep it, and show it to him."

They examined the thing once more, while the match was burning.

"Guess you're right, Bristles, and this is the box old Periwinkle kept his valuables in," Colon pursued, "but mighty little comfort it's going to do him to set eyes on the same again. Would you care to have the shells turned back to you, after somebody'd gone and gobbled up the fat kernel of the nut?"

"It will settle the fact that the robber, whoever he could have been, must have stayed in this cave lately," said Fred, seriously. "I don't think these ashes are very old, perhaps not more than a couple of days, at most. So you see that tells us the thief must be around here still."

"Watching out for a bigger haul, more'n likely!" Bristles declared, somewhat excitedly. "I don't believe he got much at Periwinkle's place, because the old man is poor as Job's turkey; leastways he makes out to be, though some folks say he's a sort of miser. But there are farmers that keep quite a sum of money around, and it might be this hobo is waiting to get a chance at a big haul."

"How do we know but what he aims to clean out the Riverport bank some fine night; that sort of thing has been done lots of times in other places?" remarked Colon.

"All of which makes our duty the plainer, boys," Fred told them, "which is to keep this tin box, and show it to Chief Sutton. He'll know what to do about it, and if he says we ought to tell Mr. Periwinkle, why, we'll take a turn up there to-night. I heard that he'd offered a small reward for the return of the papers, and no questions asked; which was a bid to the thief to send the same back, and get paid for doing it."

"And to think of you falling down into this cave the way you did, Fred," Colon continued. "Do you reckon that hole up there might be the only way in and out?"

"Well, as far as I could see around, it's only a small affair, so I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to be the case," was the reply Fred made.

Bristles apparently had brought a bountiful supply of matches along, and did not mean to spare them, if by striking successive lights he could satisfy his curiosity.

The others saw him bend forward, and act as though he had picked some small object from the rocky floor of the cave.

"What did you find, Bristles?" demanded Fred.

"Share and share alike," called out Colon. "If you've discovered a diamond, why we all ought to have a part of what you get for the same. What's that, Bristles? Well, I declare, if it isn't a sort of breastpin, as sure as you live! But such a cheap affair isn't worth ten cents. If that's the stuff this robber has got his pockets lined with, it won't pay the Chief much to chase him down. Only a flimsy little old plated breastpin, with a red stone in it. Huh!"

But the face that Bristles turned on Fred Fenton expressed a vast amount of uneasiness, surprise and concern.

"Gee! I wonder now, if that could be?" he was muttering, so that even Fred began to see that Bristles had struck some sort of clue calculated to stagger him more or less.

"What ails you, Bristles?" Fred asked him, pointedly, as the match went out.

"Why, Fred, as sure as my name is Andy Carpenter, which I sometimes hear it is, I've seen this same silly little pin before!"

"Where?" demanded Fred, almost holding his breath as though he anticipated the answer that was coming.

"That little girl had it on the day we pulled her brother, Sam Ludson, out of the river," was the startling reply.