The Jungle Fugitives, Edward Sylvester Ellis [fantasy novels to read .txt] 📗

lost; she is lost! Oh, why did we ever bring her to this dreadful country? I wish none of us had ever seen it."

"But what about Dollie? Where is she? How long has she been gone? Compose yourself and tell."

It was not until he spoke sharply that the hysterical woman was able to make known that the child had been absent for hours, no one knew where. When she learned that noon that her big brother would not be back till night, Dollie had pouted because he had gone off without telling her. She was not sure she could ever forgive him. However, she ate her dinner, and soon after went out to play. Some hours later her aunt went to the door to call her, but she was not within sight or hearing. Maggie was sent to look for her, but soon came back with word that she could not be found.

The child had been seen a couple of hours before, running in the direction of the path that led into the mountains, as if she was fleeing from some one, Maggie had gone as far as she dared in quest of her, but her loudest shouts brought no reply and she returned.

The word brought by the servant, as may well be believed, filled the aunt with the wildest grief. Beyond all doubt, Dollie had formed a sudden resolve to hunt up her brother Harvey, who had gone away and left her at home. She had strayed so far into the mountains that she was lost. Fortunately, she was warmly dressed at the time, but exposed as she must be to the wintry winds and cold, she could not hold out until morning unless rescued very soon.

Harvey was stricken with an anguish such as he had never known before, but he knew that not a minute was to be lost. Dollie must be found at once or it would be too late. It added a poignancy to his woe to know that in coming down the mountain path, he must have passed close to her, who was in sore need of the help he was eager to give.

"Have you made no search for her?" he asked.

"I could not believe she would not come back until it began to grow dark. I thought she could not be far away; Maggie and I hunted through the village, inquiring of every one whom we saw; many of the people were kind, and two or three have gone to hunt for her; I started to do so, but did not go far, when I was sure she had come back while I was away, and I hurried home only to find she was not here."

"Are you sure any one is looking for her?"

"There are several."

"Well," said Harvey, impatient with the vacillation shown by his aunt, "I shall not come back until she is found."

His hand was on the knob of the door when his distressed relative sprang to her feet.

"Harvey;" she said in a wild, scared manner, "shall I tell you what I believe?"

"Of course."

"Dollie did not lose herself: some of those awful men did it."

"Do you mean the strikers?"

"Yes; they have taken her away to spite you."

"Impossible!" exclaimed the young man, passing out the door and striding up the single street that ran through the village.

But though unwilling to confess it to himself, the same shocking suspicion had come to him at the moment he learned that Dollie was lost. Could it be that some of the men, grown desperate in their resentment, had taken this means of mortally injuring him? Was there any person in the wide world who would harm an innocent child for the sake of hurting a strong man? Alas, such things had been done, and why should they not be done again? The words that he overheard between Hugh O'Hara and Tom Hansell proved them capable of dark deeds. Could it be that some of the hints thrown out by them during that brief interview in the cabin bore any relation to the disappearance of Dollie.

At the moment Harvey turned away from his own house it was his intention to rouse the village and to ask all to join in the hunt for the child, but a feeling of bitter resentment led him to change his purpose. No; they would rejoice over his sorrow; they would give him no aid, and, if they had had a hand in her taking off, they would do what they could to baffle him in his search. Slight as was his hope, he would push on alone.

"O'Hara and Hansell know all about it; I will search the neighborhood of the path all the way to their cabin and then compel them to tell what they know; if they refuse----"

He shut his lips tight and walked faster than ever. He strove to fight back the tempestuous emotions that set his blood boiling. He was moved by a resolve that would stop at nothing; he would not believe that there was no hope; he knew he could force the miscreants to give up their secret, and had a hair of his little sister's head been harmed the punishment should be swift and terrible.

"When Dollie is found," he muttered, determined to believe she must be restored to him, "I will send her and Aunt Maria away, and then have it out with these fellows; I'll make them rue the day they began the fight."

These were dreadful thoughts, but there was excuse for them, his grief made him half frantic.

The path over which he believed Dollie had either strayed or been led or carried, entered the woods about a hundred yards from the village and gradually sloped and wound upward for a mile, when it passed the door of Hugh O'Hara's cabin and lost itself in the solitude beyond.

The sky had cleared still more during the interval since he came down the mountain side, and he could not only see the course clearly, but could distinguish objects several rods away, when the shadow of the overhanging trees did not shut out the light. But the season was so far along that few leaves were left on the limbs and it was easy, therefore, for him to keep the right course.

He had not gone far when he stopped and shouted the name of Dollie. The sound reached a long way, and he repeated the call several times, but only the dismal wind among the limbs gave answer.

Striding forward, he stood a few minutes later on the margin of the creek that was spanned by the fallen tree.

"She would not have dared to walk over," was his thought: "she must have been on this side, if she wandered off alone."

A moment later he added:

"No; for the very reason that it is dangerous, Dollie would run across; it would be no trouble for her to do so, and there is just enough peril to tempt her. Could she have fallen in?"

He looked at the dark water as it swept forward and shivered.

"Rivers and lakes and seas and streams are always thirsting for human life, and this may have seized her."

Tramping through the undergrowth that lined the bank he fought his way onward until he stood beside the rocks where the waters made a foaming cascade, as they dashed downward toward the mills far away.

"If she did fall in, she must be somewhere near this spot----"

His heart seemed to stop beating. Surely that dark object, half submerged and lying against the edge of the bank, where the water made an eddy, must be her body. He ran thither and stooped down.

"Thank God," was his exclamation, after touching it with his hands, and finding it a piece of dark wood that had been carried there from the regions above.

Back he came to where the fallen tree spanned the creek, and hurried across. No snow was falling, but the earth was white with the thin coating that had filtered down hours before.

"Had it come earlier in the day," he thought, "it would help us to trace her, but now it will hide her footprints."

Hardly a score of steps from the creek his foot struck something soft, and he stooped down. Straightening up, he held a small hood in his hand, such as children wear in cold weather. Faint as was the light, he recognized it as Dollie's; he had seen her wear it many times.

"What can it mean?" he asked himself; "I must have stepped over or on that on my way down, but did not notice it. Yes, Dollie is on this side the stream, but where?"

Aye, that was the question. Once more he raised his voice and shouted with might and main, but as before no answer came back.

Harvey was now master of himself. He had recovered from the shock that at first almost took away his senses and he was able to think and act with his usual coolness. But with this, the belief that Hugh and Tom had something to do with the disappearance of Dollie grew until at times he was without any doubt at all. Occasionally, however, he wavered in his belief.

Thus it was that two theories offered themselves. The first was that Dollie had set out to find him and had wandered up the mountain path to some point above the bridge and then had strayed from it and become lost. Worn out, she had laid down and was at that moment asleep.

The corollary of this theory was that she had perished with cold, or would thus perish before daylight. True, she was well clad when she went out that afternoon to play, but her hood was gone and she could not escape the biting wind that pierced the heavy clothing of Harvey himself. Then, too, there was the danger from the wild beasts, of which he had had too late an experience to forget.

Should it prove that Dollie went off in the manner named, then Harvey made a great error in setting out alone to search for her. He ought to have roused the village, and, with the hundreds scouring the mountains, helped by torches and dogs, discovery could not be delayed long.

The other and darker theory was that she had been seen by some of his enemies as she went into the woods and had been coaxed to some out-of-the-way place, where her abductors meant to hold and use her as a means of bringing the superintendent to terms. All must have known that no method could be so effective as that.

It was hard to believe that the evil-minded men would go any further. Yet it was easy for them to do so; they could make way with a little child like her and have it seem that her death was caused by falling over the rocks or by some other accident that might easily come to her.

"O'Hara and Hansell must have known all about it when I was in their cabin. They were afraid to assail me in the cabin, for I was prepared, and the fear of the law kept them from following me after I left their place."

Harvey was thinking hard